Pornography. Casual sex. Crude jokes about sex. Hooking up with no strings attached.

Hanna Rosin’s most recent Atlantic article, “Boys on the Side,” describes highly intelligent, career-oriented women engaging in all of these behaviors with a mere shrug of the shoulders. In the minds of many driven young women on college campuses across the country, sexual promiscuity doesn’t harm anyone. Hooking up has become the new sexual norm for young adults, and according to this norm, students shy away from committed relationships and instead enjoy one-time sexual encounters with no expectation of further intimacy. And, Rosin argues, the sexual liberation of the 1960s that led to the more recent “hookup culture” on college campuses is good for women—it allows women to enjoy casual sex without being “tied down” by serious commitment.

Rosin initially substantiates this claim through interviews with her subjects. Most women who are engaging in the hookup culture report that they don’t want to return to the days of chastity belts or even more traditional dating, and Rosin takes these positive reports as evidence that the hookup culture is not only here to stay but is also good for the women involved. She provides no evidence, however, that women who hookup a lot during their early 20s go on to lead fulfilling lives, and she doesn’t offer a counterpoint of women who have opted out of hooking up.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Men • Psychology • Sexuality • Women • Young Adults • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

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