Why We Hook Up

In a recent Jack Grimes column ("Hook-up culture," March 30), he criticizes the hook-up culture on campus. He writes, "Appeals to self-determination and sexual empowerment to support hook-ups are now given by women. And this I find strange. I wonder what is so empowering about being, in essence, an unpaid prostitute. The boys may politely clap and publicly congratulate the women for liberating their sexuality and owning their miniskirt and so on, but privately they are having a good laugh and passing the word on who is the easy lay. A woman who embraces the hook-up culture is simply making it easier for guys to treat her as a sex object."

I must admit that when I watch "Grease" too many times in a row, I too get a bit nostalgic for the 1950s. But of all the things that I could bring back if given the option (poodle skirts, drive-in movies, and doo-wop music), dating wouldn't make the list. In a modern world of polar-tech, DVDs, and music that doesn't beat around the bush, we have the chutzpah to admit that going on dates with someone you hardly know just isn't always that practical.

And not because we're a culture of over sexed, slutty youth, but because growing up in today's world you learn to see though the bullsh*t. I mean honestly, buying a girl a ten -cent malt before getting in her pants isn't any sort of indicator of the amount of respect that the guy has for the girl, or the girl has for herself.

It's not that we don't date anymore, it's that dating has been preempted by hooking-up in our courtship practices. Our 21st century "hook-up culture" is more than two people meeting drunk in the basement of a frat party, screwing and then never talking again. Hooking up doesn't have to be a one-night stand; it can be more of a 30-day, risk-free trial.

Before you invest too much time, money and commitment into something you get to try out the product, and see if you like it. There is no reason that talking to someone at a party and then hooking up with them is any sleazier than taking someone to a movie and then hooking up with them. At least at the party you have more of a chance of getting to know someone than sitting beside them and staring blankly at a screen.

Girls "embrace hooking up" because it allows us a sense of comfort that dating cannot provide. If we spend some time talking to a guy at a party and then decide we're not interested, we can leave the party alone, and with no guilt. Realistically, if a guy spends $100 taking us out on a date, we're going to feel a lot more pressure to hook up with him at the end of the night. Preferring the possibility of a "random," but natural hook-up to a date situation filled with guilt and obligation does not mean that women are sexually objectifying themselves. It means that we are in tune with, and avoiding, certain situations that may make us uncomfortable.

When we talk about "liberating our sexuality and owning our mini skirt and so on," it means that our sex and sexuality are not services to be bought or sold. And this doesn't make us "unpaid prostitutes," it makes us not any form of prostitutes, paid or not. Asserting that sex is something that a man must earn from a woman though a certain number of candlelight dinners and movie tickets is treating sex like a business transaction, rather than a loving exchange. Treating women's sexuality as a good that must be bartered for is what causes men to view women as sex objects, not the "hook-up culture."

If we are truly concerned with whether or not men view women as sex objects, then let us not dwell on the practice of dating or hooking up. If you want to show a girl you respect her, offer her something more meaningful than dinner and a movie. Really listen to her when she talks, take her thoughts seriously, and have the decency to study the female anatomy before you hook up with her. If we don't want women to be sex objects then allow them to be the subjects of their own sexuality. And this means accepting that, yes Jack, women enjoy sex too, and that doesn't make them slutty.