Book On "Hook Up" Culture Draws Fire
During a class discussion on adolescence, a high school teacher recently asked her students whether they go on dates. We don't "date," the 12th graders reported. We "hook up."
If you're in your 40s, "hooking up" might mean catching a friend downtown for lunch. But to people in their teens or 20s, the phrase often means a casual sexual encounter — anything from kissing onwards — with no strings attached.
Now a new book on this not-so-new subject is drawing fire in some quarters for its conclusion: That hookups can be damaging to young women, denying their emotional needs, putting them at risk of depression and even sexually transmitted disease, and making them ill-equipped for real relationships later on.
For that, Laura Sessions Stepp, author of "Unhooked" and a writer for The Washington Post, has been criticized as a throwback to an earlier, restrictive moral climate, an anti-feminist and a tut-tutting mother telling girls not to give the milk away when nobody's bought the cow.
The author "imagines the female body as a thing that can be tarnished by too much use," wrote reviewer Kathy Dobie in Stepp's own paper, and suggested that Stepp was, in one part, trying to "instill sexual shame." For Meghan O'Rourke, literary editor at Slate.com, Stepp is "buying into alarmism about women," and making sex "a bigger, scarier, and more dangerous thing than it already is."
Stepp argues these critics have misconstrued her ideas.
True, she regrets that "dating has gone completely by the boards," replaced by group outings that lead to casual encounters. True, she regrets that oral sex "isn't even considered sex anymore." But she isn't saying girls should not have sex; just that they should have it in the context of a meaningful connection: "I am saying that girls should have choices."
Too often, Stepp argues, girls and young women say proudly that they like the control "hookups" give them — control over their emotions, their schedules, and freedom to focus on things like schoolwork and career (the students she profiles in her book are high achievers).
But she says they frequently mistake that freedom for empowerment. "I often hear girls say things like, 'We can be as bad as guys now,'" she says. "But I don't think that's what liberation is all about."
Stepp says her book stems from an experience she had almost 10 years ago. She and other parents were summoned to her son's middle school. The principal informed them that all year long, a dozen girls — ages 13 or 14 — had been performing oral sex on several boys in the class. (Her own son was not involved.) Stepp wrote about the sex ring in a front-page article for the Post, which led to further research.
She's had her share of positive feedback, including from educators and from young women like those in her book.
One 18-year-old student, who calls herself a feminist, e-mailed her to say she had approached the book warily, but came to believe it "will change the way my generation views sex."
© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. If you're in your 40s, "hooking up" might mean catching a friend downtown for lunch. But to people in their teens or 20s, the phrase often means a casual sexual encounter — anything from kissing onwards — with no strings attached.
Now a new book on this not-so-new subject is drawing fire in some quarters for its conclusion: That hookups can be damaging to young women, denying their emotional needs, putting them at risk of depression and even sexually transmitted disease, and making them ill-equipped for real relationships later on.
For that, Laura Sessions Stepp, author of "Unhooked" and a writer for The Washington Post, has been criticized as a throwback to an earlier, restrictive moral climate, an anti-feminist and a tut-tutting mother telling girls not to give the milk away when nobody's bought the cow.
The author "imagines the female body as a thing that can be tarnished by too much use," wrote reviewer Kathy Dobie in Stepp's own paper, and suggested that Stepp was, in one part, trying to "instill sexual shame." For Meghan O'Rourke, literary editor at Slate.com, Stepp is "buying into alarmism about women," and making sex "a bigger, scarier, and more dangerous thing than it already is."
Stepp argues these critics have misconstrued her ideas.
True, she regrets that "dating has gone completely by the boards," replaced by group outings that lead to casual encounters. True, she regrets that oral sex "isn't even considered sex anymore." But she isn't saying girls should not have sex; just that they should have it in the context of a meaningful connection: "I am saying that girls should have choices."
Too often, Stepp argues, girls and young women say proudly that they like the control "hookups" give them — control over their emotions, their schedules, and freedom to focus on things like schoolwork and career (the students she profiles in her book are high achievers).
But she says they frequently mistake that freedom for empowerment. "I often hear girls say things like, 'We can be as bad as guys now,'" she says. "But I don't think that's what liberation is all about."
Stepp says her book stems from an experience she had almost 10 years ago. She and other parents were summoned to her son's middle school. The principal informed them that all year long, a dozen girls — ages 13 or 14 — had been performing oral sex on several boys in the class. (Her own son was not involved.) Stepp wrote about the sex ring in a front-page article for the Post, which led to further research.
She's had her share of positive feedback, including from educators and from young women like those in her book.
One 18-year-old student, who calls herself a feminist, e-mailed her to say she had approached the book warily, but came to believe it "will change the way my generation views sex."
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A 'quickie' and move on. LOL
It's simply a matter of time.
Posted by bluestardad at 07:45 AM : Mar 10, 2007
What exactly are you saying? I hope you're not a father.
"I argue that we shouldn't look at this from a moralistic viewpoint %u2014 as in, our youth is in decline %u2014 and we shouldn't celebrate it either, in a '*** in the City' light," says Bogle, who hasn't read Stepp's book. She also believes that it's wrong to assume women aren't hoping for something more from their hookups.
Then what exactly is she saying? And she has a book coming out?
3 biggies; STD's are stronger than ever before, boys/men talk about their conquests and do no good to a girls reputation, and did you ever hear the unflattering term "unwed" father?
I am still alive and just as dysfunctional as always.....