.- Leah Fessler considers herself a feminist.
And the standard feminist narrative is that women can have, and
indeed enjoy, casual sex without consequences – physical, emotional, or
otherwise.
But when her experience with hookup culture (and that of her
friends’) in college failed to live up to its empowering promises and
left her emotionally empty, Fessler decided to look a little deeper.
In an article written for Quartz,
Fessler explains her quest to examine what it was about the prominent
hookup culture, and the ill-defined, non-committal
“pseudo-relationships,” at her Middlebury college campus that were
making her miserable.
“Far more frequent, however, were pseudo-relationships, the mutant
children of meaningless sex and loving partnerships. Two students
consistently hook up with one another – and typically, only each other –
for weeks, months, even years,” Fessler wrote.
“Yet per unspoken social code, neither party is permitted emotional
involvement, commitment, or vulnerability. To call them exclusive would
be ‘clingy,’ or even ‘crazy.’”
These pseudo-relationships would typically follow the same cycle, she
notes. She’d meet a guy she was interested in, they’d start texting,
meet up in their dorms late at night to discuss their mutual interests
and hobbies and families, and have sex. This would happen off and on
over the course of a few months with the same guy, then the relationship
of sorts would just fizzle and die. Wash, rinse repeat with the next.
Fessler wrote that she experienced this with at least five men by her
senior year.
She felt used and desperate for emotional intimacy. At the same time,
she felt bad for being unable to reconcile the fact that she couldn’t
achieve the carefree, empowering feeling that her feminists beliefs told
her was possible.
Fessler decided to devote her senior thesis to this phenomenon that
was taking its toll on herself and so many of her friends, who for all
other intents and purposes were successful, involved, well-rounded
students.
Fessler interviewed 75 male and female students and conducted more
than 300 online surveys. She found that 100 percent of female
interviewees and three-quarters of female survey respondents stated a
clear preference for committed relationships. Only 8 percent of about 25
female respondents, who said they were in pseudo-relationships,
reported being “happy” with their situation.
“The women I interviewed were eager to build connections, intimacy
and trust with their sexual partners. Instead, almost all of them found
themselves going along with hookups that induced overwhelming
self-doubt, emotional instability and loneliness,” she wrote.
The male responses were just as complex,
she adds. Most men interviewed and surveyed also preferred a committed
relationship, but felt pressured to have casual sex with numerous
beautiful women in order to discuss these “escapades” with their friends
and boost their status in a culture where hookups are the norm.
Perhaps it’s time that casual sex ceases to be the progressive norm,
and that women recognize the connection between their need for an
emotionally fulfilling relationship and their sex lives, Fessler notes.
“The truth is that, for many women, there’s nothing liberating about
emotionless, non-committal sex. The young women I spoke with were taking
part in hookup culture because they thought that was what guys wanted,
or because they hoped a casual encounter would be a stepping stone to
commitment.”
“In doing this, we actually deny ourselves agency and bolster male
dominance, all while convincing ourselves we’re acting like progressive
feminists. But engaging in hookup culture while wholeheartedly craving
love and stability was perhaps the least feminist action I, and hundreds
of my peers, could take.”
Fessler’s thesis, “Can She Really ‘Play That Game, Too’?” recently
became available for download and is available at her website: http://hookupmiddlebury.weebly.com/about.html
This article originally ran on CNA May 20, 2016.
Tags:
Women, Feminism, Hook-up Culture
