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

hope for this invitation. However, when dating became the dominant script, only men could initiate a date.48 Men were responsible for paying for the date, so the decision was in the hands of the man to figure out what he could afford and then ask a woman of interest to accompany him for the evening. This often left women waiting by the phone for a man’s invitation.49

With the hookup script, the power to initiate is less gendered; both men and women can signal interest in hooking up. So, with regard to initiation, women in the hookup era may have more power than women had in the dating era. However, in the hookup era, it is not the power to initiate, but the ability to ultimately get what they want that demonstrates men’s continuing dominance.50 Many of the women I interviewed indicated that they wanted “something more” than just a one-night hookup encounter. Women do not necessarily object to hooking up per se; rather, they object to how often hooking up fails to evolve into some semblance of a relationship. Moreover, women feel that men have the power to decide whether a hookup turns into “seeing each other” or “going out.”51 Thus, women have a great deal of difficulty obtaining what they want via the hookup script. This is not the case for men. Many of the men I interviewed indicated that they could choose to be in a relationship if they wanted to; however, they often preferred to hook up with no strings attached.

KB: You didn’t want to be a steady boyfriend?

Tony: No, definitely not.

KB: Why not?

Tony: Because then you get into that whole other world and it’s a fucking mess. [Laughs]

KB: So, why are relationships a mess? Why do you like the other way of interacting?

Tony: Well, they [relationships] can be cool, don’t get me wrong, like I loved being in relationships before, but as far as right now, that’s not what I want and I think a lot of people don’t want that just because they’re graduating. Like why hang out with a girl right now, this is actually [a] pretty good

[thought], why hang out with a girl right now when you 174

H O O K I N G U P A N D DAT I N G

have one semester left before you’re graduating? So, a lot of my time is going into hanging out with my good friends and I hate to lose that and invest it into a girl, which I’m probably more than likely not going to marry, you know. So, this is the last couple of months with my best friends; why would I invest my time with someone that I’m not going to hang out with that much [after college].

KB: You mentioned marriage [earlier]. Do you picture yourself getting married at any particular age? Or do you ever think about that?

Tony: Definitely. Probably like around late twenties. [Senior, State University]

Although Tony did “go out” with someone for part of his college years, he often terminated relationships before they got to the point of being serious or exclusive. Many of the men I interviewed, like Tony, were active members of the hookup scene, but were not utilizing it for the purpose of finding a relationship. They were able to have satisfying sexual encounters via the hookup script without offering commitment in return. During the dating era, a man often had to spend a great deal of time with a woman before she was willing to become sexual with him.

Moreover, the man often had to ask a woman to marry him before he could hope to have sexual intercourse.52 This is no longer the case in the college hookup scene. Although this is a difference between the hookup and the dating scripts, the commonality is that men have a greater share of power in both eras. During the dating era, men held the power because only they could initiate dates, while women played a more passive role. During the hookup era, both men and women can initiate hookup encounters, but it is men who still have the power to control the intensity of the relationship.

As in the dating script, as described in Waller’s study of Penn State University students in the 1930s, relationships today are governed by the “principle of least interest.”53 This means that the person with the least interest in continuing the relationship holds all of the power or has the upper hand. In the dating era, this could be either the man or the woman. In the college hookup scene, men typically are the ones with the least interest in a continuing relationship. The college men I interviewed talked about the feeling of having many women to choose from, so there was no need to hold on to a particular woman. Most of H O O K I N G U P A N D DAT I N G

175

the college women I spoke to, on the other hand, were interested in turning hookup partners into boyfriends. Violet, a junior at State University, relayed an example from her own experience.

KB: Have you ever had a situation where you wanted a hookup to turn into something more and they didn’t want it, or vice versa?

Violet: Yeah. I had a friend of mine who I hooked up [with] one night and it was the kind of scenario where we were friends and I wanted something more out of it and he didn’t.

KB: And how did he know you wanted more and how did you know he didn’t?

Violet: Well, like I called him after we hooked up and he was like:

“Hey, what is going on?” And I was like: “If you want to go out sometime give me a call.” And he was like: “Yeah, okay.” And he never called me. And we would see each other

[sometimes] . . . and he’d just be like: “Hey.” And it never came to anything; [it was] just that one time.

Liz, a freshman at Faith University, encountered a similar