Hooking Up : Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus (32 page)

Thus, his struggles in finding a relationship seemed to have more to do with his personality traits than the overall situation of men on campus.

7. Komter 1989.

8. The interest some women had in finding a potential marriage partner during college is consistent with Glenn and Marquardt’s (2001) finding that 204

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while many women are “hooking up and hanging out,” they are simultaneously “hoping to find Mr. Right.” Specifically, Glenn and Marquardt found that 63 percent of college women would like to meet their future spouse in college.

9. Rubin 1990; Willis 1992.

10. Teachman 2003. See Earle and Perricone (1986) for a discussion of how men and women’s attitudes toward premarital sex can differ more than their actual behavior.

11. This finding is consistent with what others have found. For instance, only 23 percent of Americans approved of premarital sexual intercourse under certain conditions in 1963 compared to a 76 percent approval rate by 1996

(Reiss 1997). This raises the question: What conditions must be present for premarital intercourse to be accepted? Sherwin and Corbett addressed this question by examining “changes in sexual norms reported by students at the same university on three occasions over a 15-year time period: 1963, 1971, and 1978” (1985, 258). They found that there was a significant increase in approval for sexual intimacy; however, this increase was “most noticeable for those male-female relationships where affection and commitment was present and least noticeable for casual male-female relationships” (1985, 258). See Harding and Jencks (2003) for more on changing attitudes toward premarital sex from the 1960s through the end of the twentieth century.

12. See also Glenn and Marquardt (2001) regarding the labeling of college men as “players.”

13. It seems that the terms “whore” and “slut” are so strongly associated with women that the modifier “man” or “male” has to be put before these words to indicate an exception.

14. The reader should note that in the sections that follow on the unwritten rules for the hookup scene, the majority of quotes are from men. Female interviewees were aware that there is a sexual double standard as well as what behaviors might lead to labeling a woman a “slut.” However, male interviewees were more vocal on this subject and thereby provided the most useful data (or quotes) to illustrate each unwritten rule.

15. Glenn and Marquardt 2001; Laumann et al. 1994.

16. In Carpenter’s (2005) book on virginity loss she discusses a 1924 novel,
The Plastic Age,
on the changing customs of white college youth. In this novel, author Percy Marks refers to “dirty” men who “chase around with rats” (i.e., cheap women). Thus, terms such as “houserat,” which appear to apply to the contemporary college campus, may prove to have historical antecedents.

17. Lemert 1967.

18. Lemert (1967) referred to this type of behavior as “secondary deviation.” 19. College women’s attempt to avoid stigmatization is something that has been found in different eras as well. Holland and Eisenhart (1990) found N OT E S TO C H A P T E R 7

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that college women on the two campuses they examined, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, actively sought steady boyfriends in order to avoid the potential problems managing their reputation if they were single. See Holland and Eisenhart (1990) also for more examples of college women’s strategies to manage their reputation and other problematic aspects of “romantic relations” on campus.

20. See Cassell (1984) for a discussion of how many women feel they must be “swept away” by their romantic feelings in order to justify engaging in sexual intercourse.

21. See also Glenn and Marquardt (2001) on “the talk.” 22. The odds may be against women who hope to turn a hookup into a relationship. In a representative study of undergraduates at a large college in the northeastern United States, only 12 percent of hookup encounters segued into a relationship (Paul, McManus, and Hayes 2000).

23. According to a couple of interviewees, the term “friends with benefits” is something they originally heard on television. A cruder version of

“friends with benefits” was referred to by one interviewee as a “fuck buddy.” This term has been used on the HBO sitcom
Sex & the City.

24. See Afifi and Faulkner (2000) for more discussion on sexual activity in cross-sex friendships.

25. In a few cases, students said women also initiate “booty calls.” 26. A few women I spoke with seemed to indulge in hooking up for its own sake (i.e., they were not looking for a relationship at the time) even after freshman year. For instance, one woman I interviewed wanted to be free for a while because she had had two consecutive serious relationships stemming from high school. Another woman had a “bad experience” with a hookup partner and wanted to stay single as a result. However, even these women admitted they wanted relationships in the past or hoped to have them in the near future. None of the women I spoke with wanted to

“just hook up” indefinitely.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 7

1. Although there are other places where they meet people to date, such as work, the gym, or church, bars and parties remained among the primary meeting places for the heterosexual singles in my sample.

2. In a sense, it is not surprising that women would be fearful or cautious around strange men. In general, survey research indicates that women are fearful of crime, particularly sexual victimization (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics 1998). Therefore, strange men could be feared as potential perpetrators.

3. Thomas 1923.

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4. See Rose and Frieze (1989) for a discussion of how the advice literature has shaped young singles’ scripts for a first date. Importantly, the authors note that “cultural norms for the first date are explicit, formal, and have changed little over the past 30 years” (1989, 259).

5. Since the inception of dating in the early part of the twentieth century, it has been the man’s responsibility to initiate the date, pick the woman up in his car, and pay for any costs incurred during the course of the date (Bailey 1988).

6. There may be other times at which men and women choose to engage in hookup encounters when the opportunity (i.e., “campus circumstance”) presents itself. For instance, many young alumni go to reunion events where alcohol is served and many familiar faces are present. This atmosphere might also be conducive to hooking up, although none of the men and women I spoke with mentioned it.

7. I am thankful to Rob Palkovitz, a member of the Individual and Family Studies Department at the University of Delaware, for reviewing my man-uscript and suggesting the concept of “script-switching.” This concept is anal-ogous to what Elijah Anderson has dubbed “code switching.” This refers to inner-city youth living by the “code of the street” to survive when interacting with their peers in public, while switching to a more polite form of interaction around teachers, close friends, and family members (Anderson 1999).

8. The fact that men want different qualities in potential partners after college illustrates Blumer’s (1986) idea of the changing meaning of social objects. During college, many men view women as “sex objects.” After college, when more men are looking for serious romantic relationships, they view women as potential marriage partners.

9. Although I did not ask alumni direct questions about the use of dating Web sites, a couple of people mentioned using them or having friends who did.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 8

1. Coontz 1992.

2. For example, see Glenn and Marquardt (2001).

3. Although Whyte (1990), in his quantitative study of women in Detroit, examined changes and continuities in dating throughout most of the twentieth century, he did not consider the contemporary hookup scene on the college campus.

4. Skipper and Nass 1966.

5. Bailey 1988.

6. Gagnon and Simon 1987.

7. This finding confirms what previous researchers have found (see Glenn and Marquardt 2001; Paul, McManus, and Hayes 2000; Williams 1998).

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207

8. Whyte 1990. See also Kinsey 1953.

9. In fact, Paul, McManus, and Hayes (2000) found that 30.4 percent of the college students in their study had engaged in at least one hookup that culminated in sexual intercourse. This finding is particularly interesting when one considers that the definition of hooking up employed by Paul, McManus, and Hayes referred to encounters with a stranger or brief acquaintance (or what interviewees in my sample referred to as “random” hookups).

10. Rubin 1990.

11. Carpenter 2005.

12. Reiss 1997; Harding and Jencks 2003.

13. Laumann et al. 1994.

14. Those born between 1933 and 1942 had their first experience of intercourse at approximately 18, while the age for those born 20 to 30 years later decreased by six months (Laumann et al. 1994).

15. Laumann et al. 1994.

16. See Hollander (1997) for a discussion of how different religious affilia-tions (i.e., Catholics and “mainstream” Protestants versus conservative or fun-damentalist Christians) affect attitudes on premarital sex.

17. Rubin 1990, 46.

18. See Carpenter (2005) for more on how many people view virginity as a stigma.

19. See Martin and Hummer 1989; Boswell and Spade 1996; Sanday 1992.

20. Bailey 1988; Whyte 1990. See also Thornton (1990).

21. See King and Christensen (1983) for a discussion of the stages in dating relationships.

22. Women were advised to avoid kissing on the first date (Duvall 1958).

23. Bailey 1988.

24. Goffman 1977.

25. Despite the fact that sexual intercourse is expected in exclusive relationships, some research indicates that a sizable percentage of college couples are not having intercourse. Specifically, Glenn and Marquardt (2001) found that 24 percent of the college women they surveyed had a boyfriend but had never had sexual intercourse.

26. Horowitz 1987; Moffatt 1989; Strouse 1987.

27. Duvall 1958.

28. The expectation that the man is responsible for paying for the date is tied, in part, to the relative economic positions of men and women during the 1920s, when dating became the dominant script for young heterosexual interactions throughout the United States.

29. There is no doubt that some college students feel more welcome than others at campus parties and nearby bars. Recall from chapter 4 that minority 208

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students as well as gay and lesbian students were far less involved with the alcohol-centered hookup scene on campus.

30. In Waller’s (1937) classic study of the dating script at Penn State University, he found that fraternity men dominated the dating scene, while freshman men were generally blocked from dating co-eds. This restriction was not placed on freshman males by the administration; rather, upperclassmen attempted to combat their institution’s unfavorable sex ratio (six men for every woman) by excluding some of the “competition” from participating at all. Although women, at least those at Penn State, had a much more favorable sex ratio on their side, there were other issues that might prevent them from participating in the dating scene. For instance, a woman who did not meet the standard of feminine beauty might find herself “waiting for the phone to ring” while her more attractive classmates were being treated to an evening of socializing.

31. Waller 1937; Bailey 1988.

32. See Wechsler 2003.

33. Cooper 2002; Dermen, Cooper, and Agocha 1998.

34. See Peralta (2001) for a discussion of the effects of drinking on the college culture.

35. See MacAndrew and Edgerton (1969) for a discussion of cross-cultural variation in how alcohol affects members of a society. Interestingly, there are some cultures that use alcohol but do not connect it to sexual activity.

36. See Williams (1998) for more on the connection between alcohol and sexual behavior among college women.

37. A couple of male students from State University told me that if a man hooks up with a woman his peers deem “fat,” he can neutralize any teasing he might receive the morning after by proclaiming that he “went hoggin’.” However, when I asked students directly during interviews if they knew what this term meant, most did not.

38. See also Williams 1998.

39. Bailey 1988.

40. Waller 1937.

41. Bailey 1988.

42. Waller 1937.

43. Bailey 1988.

44. Bailey 1988, 70.

45. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, 1998.

46. See Arnett (2004) for a thorough discussion of “emerging adults” and what factors they believe are most important in making the transition to adulthood. See Arnett (1994) for a discussion of the transition to adulthood specifically among college students.

47. Bailey 1988

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48. Bailey 1988.

49. See Sarch for a discussion of how contemporary single women use the telephone to “exert control and power” in their relationships with men, while being “confined by the cultural belief that a woman ought to have a man without pursuing one aggressively” (1993, 128).

50. Virtually any sociology textbook defines power as the ability to impose one’s will on others (e.g., see Andersen 2003).

51. This is consistent with Glenn and Marquardt’s (2001) finding that the burden is on college women to initiate “the talk” in order to see if a series of hookups with the same partner can evolve into a relationship. Women ask, men decide.

52. Goffman 1977.

53. Waller 1937.

54. Behrendt and Tuccillo 2004.

55. Waller 1937.

56. Although none of the college men in my sample were afraid that women might exploit them financially, many feared women “clinging onto them” by trying to form an unwanted serious relationship.

57. Rubin 1990.

58. Rubin 1990; Skipper and Nass 1966.

59. Skipper and Nass 1966, 417.

60. Reitman 2006.