Hooking Up : Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus (5 page)

In addition to the cultural changes underway during the 1960s, a number of demographic trends are relevant to understanding why hooking up emerged and formal dating declined on college campuses.

First, there has been an increase in the median age at first marriage in the United States.65 Currently, the median age for first marriage is approximately 25 for women and 27 for men. This contrasts with 1960, when the median age at first marriage was approximately 20 for women and 23 for men.66 Thus, the number of people getting married during their college years or immediately after has sharply declined in the past 40 years.

Despite this delay in marriage, on average young men and women become sexually active by age 17.67 These demographic realities are relevant to the sexual script on the college campus because now young F RO M DAT I N G TO H O O K I N G U P

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co-eds are under less pressure to find a spouse during their college years, yet they are sexually active. Therefore, they have plenty of time to “play the field” before settling down with a lifelong mate.68 This creates a situation where it is possible to spend one’s college years in more casual relationships than may have been the case earlier in the twentieth century.

Another trend that is likely to be relevant to the emergence of the hookup era is the dramatic increase in women attending college. By 1972, three times as many women were attending college than there had been just twelve years earlier in 1960.69 Today, women far outnumber men on many college campuses in the United States. In fact, currently there are approximately 80 men for every 100 women enrolled in college.70 Compared to the dating era, men are now a scarce resource on campus. The imbalance in the sex ratio is likely to particularly affect campuses with a high residential population, where social interaction is primarily with fellow students. For college men in the hookup era, there seems to be power in
lack
of numbers. In other words, if there are not enough men to go around, the ones who are there have greater power to determine what suits their needs when it comes to interacting with the opposite sex. Therefore, women may have had to adapt to a script that is particularly beneficial to some college men.

These interrelated changes, in the culture and demographics of 1960s society, paved the way for a change in the dating script. Although no one can pinpoint a moment in time when students stopped dating as the primary means of getting together with the opposite sex and started hooking up, there is evidence that the shift was likely well underway by the 1970s.71 The next step is to take a more in-depth look at the hookup script. With the two major twentieth-century scripts, calling and dating, as a backdrop, I will next present the experiences of college students and young alumni today.

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The Hookup

What does it mean to hook up? Consulting a dictionary won’t help, since most dictionaries do not even include an entry on hooking up.1

Even college students have trouble articulating a definition. My exchange with Tony, a senior at State University, demonstrates the uncertainty.

KB
: Define hooking up.

Tony
: Taking someone home and spending the night with them. I mean intercourse is probably like a big part of it, but I think if you take someone home and hook up, then that’s hooking up.

KB
: So, could hooking up mean just kissing?

Tony
: Yeah.

KB
: What does it usually mean?

Tony
: Having sex.

KB
: So most people you know when they say “hooking up” they are having sex with somebody?

Tony
: Yeah (hesitantly) . . . it depends who the person is, like I can read my friends like really, really easily. Like if my one roommate says he “hooked up,” that means he brought a girl home and this, that and the other thing. . . . But, like if other kids tell me they hooked up, you got to ask, not pry into their life, but it could mean a lot of things.

KB
: What do you mean when you say it?

Tony
: When I say “hooked up”? [I mean] that I took someone home.

KB
: But, [you are] not necessarily explaining what happened?

Tony
: Right, I don’t like to kiss and tell [laughs].

Collectively, the college students and recent graduates with whom I spoke were able to convey the meaning of hooking up as well as the norms for following the hookup script. However, as individuals they 24

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were often unsure whether the specific way they used the term reflected how the student body in general used it. As Tony pointed out, the meaning of hooking up depends on whom you ask.

Despite the confusion over the term, college students at both of the universities I studied indicated that “hooking up” was widely used on campus to refer to intimate interaction.2 Although my interviewees may have used the term somewhat differently, they consistently identified hooking up as the dominant way for men and women to get together and form potential relationships on campus. This does not mean that everyone on campus engages in hooking up; but students do consider it to be the primary means for initiating sexual and romantic relationships. Among those least likely to participate in hooking up are racial minorities, students who are
very
religious, and those who are already in exclusive, committed relationships (who therefore have no need to be looking for new partners). Most other students participated in hooking up, albeit to varying degrees.

DEFINING HOOKING UP

Some students, like Tony, feel that “hooking up” generally refers to

“having sex”; however, many others indicated that when they say

“hooking up” they are referring to something less than intercourse. To some it means “just kissing” or “making out.” Others said hooking up involves “fooling around” beyond kissing, which includes sexual touching on or underneath clothing. Still others suggested that hooking up means “everything but” intercourse, which translated to include kissing, sexual touching, and oral sex. Most students acknowledged that different people use the term differently. In fact, many students were already familiar with the term “hooking up” from high school.3

Their previous exposure to hooking up added to the confusion because the definition they used in high school did not always match their college classmates’ use of the term. Thus, you cannot be sure precisely what someone means when he or she reports having “hooked up” unless you ask a follow-up question to see how much sexual activity took place. Nevertheless, some students feel they know their close friends well enough to know what they mean when they say it (i.e., their group has a shared meaning of the term). This is the case with Faith University senior, Trent.

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T H E H O O K U P

KB
: Define hooking up.

Trent
: Kissing.

KB
: So, if someone did more than kissing then it’s not hooking up?

Trent
: It is, but I don’t know. Yeah, like hooking up in one sense is like you hook up with a girl and if you’re hooking up with someone and it happens a few times, then I guess whatever happens, happens.

KB
: Could hooking up mean sex?

Trent
: Nah.

KB
: So, it’s different than sex?

Trent
: Yeah.

In another conversation, Kyle, a senior at State University, offered the following:

KB
: How would you define hooking up?

Kyle
: Just kissing and maybe a little groping.

KB
: Hooking up isn’t sex?

Kyle
: No. I know a lot of other people define it differently.

KB
: So some people say it and it might mean sex?

Kyle
: Yeah. None of my friends would. But I have heard it used that way.

KB
: So if someone says they hooked up you don’t know what they mean, you just know it is something sexual?

Kyle
: Yeah. It involves that. But not sex, everything but sex.

KB
: Oral sex could be hooking up?

Kyle
: Yeah.

Lisa, a sophomore at State University, had this to say:
KB
: Can you define hooking up?

Lisa
: I don’t know, anything from kissing to having sex.

KB
: So, it could mean intercourse, it could mean to kiss someone?

Lisa
: Well, usually if it’s a good friend and we’re talking about it, they’ll tell me if they had sex, but if they say “hooking up” it could mean anything from, in my opinion, kissing to having sex.

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Clearly, “hooking up” does not have a precise meaning; it can mean kissing, sexual intercourse, or any form of sexual interaction generally seen as falling in between those two extremes.

The ambiguous nature of the term should not be surprising. During the well-publicized scandal of 1997 between former president Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, the public debated what it means to say

“have sex” or “have sexual relations” after the president emphatically declaimed, “I did not have sex with that woman,” only to have DNA tests confirm the presence of semen on her clothing. Still, Clinton and his supporters argued that his statement was truthful if one defines sex only as sexual intercourse. However, much of the American public scoffed at this narrow definition, favoring a broader definition of sex, which would encompass sexual touching and oral sex. What was interesting about this debate was how views on the subject broke down along generational lines. Researchers found that members of the younger generation were more likely to agree with Clinton’s contention that oral sex did not really “count” as having sex with someone.4 Perhaps then it is not surprising that the more recent term,

“hooking up,” does not have a universally agreed upon meaning, either.5

Several students I spoke to alluded to the confusion over what hooking up meant. This may stem from regional variation in usage or even more localized variation between high schools. As Kim, a sophomore from Faith University, put it:

KB
: You mentioned hooking up a minute ago. How would you define that?

Kim
: [Laughs] That’s kind of funny actually because at home, like in Virginia, hooking up is like more than kissing, but not all the way. And so I would come here and I would hear people, like my friends, say: “I hooked up with this guy and this guy.” And I was just thinking: “These people are crazy that they would do that with that many people!” But then I just found out this year that here hooking up [sometimes means]

just kissing or making out with a guy at a party.

Even more confusion was generated when college students were discussing hooking up with someone from a different generation. For instance, some female students mentioned that problems arose when they 28

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called home to fill their mothers in on what was going on with “guys” at college. Gloria, a freshman at State University, told her mother that she had been hooking up and this revelation created some panic on the other end of the telephone.

KB
: Do people you know [ever] use the term hooking up to refer to sex?

Gloria
: I’ve never heard that. But my mom saw on the news that hooking up meant oral sex and I always tell my mom, “I hooked up with this guy and he was so nice.” I tell her that all the time. And she called me after that news session [and said], “What does hooking up mean?” Because I was telling her I [hooked up with] . . . Billy and Joe and Rob. I was like:

“No, just kissing.” I guess I never heard it [used] for having sex.

KB
: You said [previously hooking up referred to] fooling around?

Gloria
: Right. Fooling around is not having sex, but [it can be] like oral sex.

Interestingly, Gloria’s definition of what it means to have sex does not include having oral sex. Many of the students I spoke with noted the distinction between sex and oral sex. This provides further evidence that there may be generational differences in perceptions of what counts as sex.6 Adding to the confusion are media references to hooking up that portray only the most risqué scenarios of hooking up, when in reality students use the term to encompass a much broader range of sexual behavior.

It is likely that there is another reason for the ambiguous nature of the term. When students say, “I hooked up,” they leave the details of the encounter to the listener’s imagination. Both men and women may have reasons to be intentionally vague. Men, who often want to feign more sexual experiences than they actually have, can say they hooked up and hope the listener infers
more
than actually happened sexually.7

Women, on the other hand, who may want to protect their reputations, can say they hooked up and hope the listener infers
less
than what actually happened sexually.8 When students speak to their close friends, they may know what the others mean when they say the term or they may feel close enough to ask a follow-up question on the subject. How-T H E H O O K U P

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ever, for those who are not friendly enough with the speaker to warrant knowing more intimate details, someone can simply say, “I hooked up,” and leave it at that. This does not imply that interested parties will not resort to other means to find out what really happened. However, such parties will have to rely on secondhand accounts and rumors to satisfy their curiosity.

Clearly, “hooking up” is a vague term when it comes to finding out what happened sexually between two people. However, there are several other defining features of the script for hooking up, beyond the sexual aspects, which were largely understood by college students in my study across the board. College students recognize hooking up as the pathway to a potential romantic relationship, yet a hookup does not guarantee
any
commitment beyond when the encounter takes place.

After hooking up, someone can opt to ask for the other’s phone number or can try to make plans to meet somewhere in the future, but most students indicated that this is not the most common outcome. Instead, students said that the most likely outcome of any particular hookup encounter is “nothing,” which means not hearing from the person again unless you coincidentally see him or her at another social event and decide to hook up again. Although most hookup encounters do not lead to an ongoing romantic relationship, the possibility is there. Many students, particularly women, often hoped that a hookup would evolve into some version of a relationship. Therefore, all hookup encounters cannot be characterized as “casual sex” or “one-night stands” when often one of the parties is hoping that it will lead to “something more,” and, at least some of the time, it does.