Hooking Up : Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus Kathleen Bogle (general ebook reader .txt) 📖

Matthew: First of all, I think guys always inflate their numbers and I think girls always deflate their numbers. I think it would depend on the age. If you are talking about my age anything over 15 [past sexual partners] would make me cringe.

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KB: But [you said previously that] your number is over 100 [past sexual partners].

Matthew: Yes . . . there is a double standard. There is a certain amount of hypocrisy to our culture. There really is.

Later in the interview Matthew explained his philosophy on what women should do sexually in the postcollege environment.

KB: So how should things progress sexually in a best-case scenario?

Matthew: I think the less that a girl does [sexually] the better. You don’t want to play your hand right away. Because guys are smart . . . guys know if a girl puts out too much the first night, I don’t think I am anything special. I don’t think I am the cat’s meow . . . and all of the sudden after one night with me she turns into a sexually crazed lunatic. That is the furthest thing from the truth. You have to realize if she [gets physical] with you, who knows what she was doing last week. So . . . a girl that can practice a little self-restraint, I think is the one you are looking to keep.

THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENT

In 2003, the movie Old School premiered, featuring comedians Will Fer-rell, Vince Vaughan, and Luke Wilson as thirty-something friends who buy a house close to a college campus and start throwing fraternity-style parties that attract herds of students. The story reveals that the men enjoy the license that the pretext of college gives them, and, regardless of their age, they start behaving like students themselves. The point is that environmental context facilitates behavior. The alumni I spoke with participated in the hookup scene while in college; after graduation, they began following the dating script because the environmental factors that sustained hooking up were no longer in place.

This does not mean that the alumni never hooked up since graduation.

In fact, there were circumstances, which mirrored campus life, where alumni would revert back to the hooking-up script.

According to alumni, after college, the only major exception to formal dating is when they spend time at the beach (also referred to as “the ll I F E A F T E R C O ll ll E G E

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shore”).6 Going to beach towns is very common among young heterosexual singles on the East Coast. Several alumni I interviewed spent many weekends during the summer at beach towns located a couple of hours from their full-time residences. Generally, they rent a beach property along with a large group of friends and acquaintances. When they are at the beach on weekends throughout the summer, they hook up; from fall to spring, they go on formal dates. A look at environmental context explains why the sexual script changes with the change of a season. Carol, a 24-year-old alumnus of Faith University, mentioned how she hooked up a couple times when she was at the shore. During the rest of the year when she was operating out of her home, she did not hook up (but did go on a few formal dates).

KB: Are you talking about dating and hooking up as two separate things or the same thing?

Carol: Two separate things. Like dating, I would actually go out somewhere like to dinner or to the movies.

KB: Give me a scenario, one of a hookup and one of a date. What are the differences?

Carol: Well, one of the hookups was [when I] met a guy at a bar, but I actually had known him [before that]. This was at the shore, he walked me home and I kissed him. Then the next time I saw him same thing, he’d walk me home [from a bar and] I’d kiss him.

In Carol’s case, her hookups at the shore culminated in “just kissing.” However, for several of the alumni I interviewed, hookups at the shore culminated in greater sexual intimacy on the first encounter. This is not surprising given that the hookup script allows for a greater degree of sexual intimacy even during an initial encounter.

Jake: I met her three weeks ago down the shore and things progressed pretty quickly.

KB: When you say progressed quickly, what do you mean?

Jake: Well we hooked up both nights that weekend [when we met]. And she came back down this past weekend and we hooked up every night, four nights in a row.

KB: Are you sexually involved with this girl fully?

Jake: Not fully yet. Oral sex, not sex-sex.

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KB: Not intercourse?

Jake: Yes. [28-year-old alumnus of State University]

At first glance, interacting one way with the opposite sex for three-quarters of the year and then interacting a different way for one-quarter of the year (i.e., during summer weekends) seems inexplicable. However, when one considers the similarities between the shore and campus environments, it becomes clear why both these environments facilitate the same script for behavior. First, like college, the shore scene contains many familiar faces. Everyone is a friend-of-a-friend, so fear of strangers is nullified. Second, the landscape of the shore is similar to college insofar as you can walk anywhere you want to go.

Will: Yeah, I definitely miss college. I think [that is] one of the [reasons] people of our age . . . look forward to the shore. I think the shore is kind of an extension to college.

KB: And why is that?

Will: Because you have a group of people living together, you are all living within a certain mile radius, where you can forget the car thing. Once you get down the shore for the weekend you can park the car and it’s not going anywhere. You can go out