Sophomore Evan Schwartz, a Hatchet columnist, argues that the trend of “hooking up” does not mean that dating no longer exists.
“Hooking up has always existed because people have always had sexual needs to fulfill, and to assume that this culture of casual sex is just emerging now is naïve. Instead, what we are seeing is a shift from hooking up as quick physical satisfaction, to hooking up as the step just before dating.”
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Whoever wrote this may not have ever actually talked to a girl at GW…
Likely, he’d be in for a shock if this is really his opinion.
So many girls are sick of just hooking up. Sure, its a fun release. Sure, its something to pass the time until you meet someone for real. But a lot of girls don’t want to just go around having meaningless sex. A lot of girls would like to have a boy they haven’t hooked up with take a geniune interest in them for something other than a hookup. A lot of girls would even enjoy a little bit of the awkwardness of a real first date with someone and the development of something sweet and meaningful over time, rather than something hot and heavy when you’ve drank too much at a party…cause drunk sex obviously is a strong foundation for a meaningful and healthy relationship after all…
I can’t speak as well for them, but I imagine a lot of guys might feel this way too.
I think a bit of a culture shift would be extraordinary. Keep the hookups, sure – but a dating scene that was about a little more than just sex would be a nice improvement.
Evan, you make “hooking up” sound like it’s a trip to the local Audi dealership to take a test drive. There are a number of differences between a trip to the car dealership and random sex. The obvious one is that when you leave the Audi dealership, you don’t have an incurable rash on your crotch that will prevent you from having children. Plus the cars make a beeping sound these days to remind you to “buckle up.” Moreover, when you decide to hop in the driver’s seat at the Nissan dealership across the street, the Audi won’t throw itself out of park and come tumbling across the freeway at you. Let me tell you a story about one of my Thurston roommates freshmen year. A few months into school, he was well known by friends for getting around. He became well known by his fellow roommates for spending a little too much time in the bathroom. It didn’t take long for us to all figure out he had an STD. Fortunately for him, it only made his pee burn for a few weeks and was treatable with an antibiotic. But this happened even when he had wore a condom. Watch a few people die of HIV/AIDS after they “put on condoms *most* of the time” or “some of the time,” and then tell me the “quick physical satisfaction” was worth it–whether to fulfill a human need or for test drive purposes.
Evan Schwartz is a god among men. I once saw him save a baby deer from the Nazis with his bare hands and then breast feed it back to health and release it into the wild. I also heard that his roomates are incredibly stylish and that one of them not only has dashing boyish good looks but also a biting wit and charm which allows both him and Evan to coerce women from all walks of life easily into a Thai-harem-style pillow pile for hook ups and dating alike
“The concept of hooking up may seem negative to older generations, but college students know it can function as the trial period before dating. In this way you get to sample the milk first before deciding to buy the cow, and that makes for a healthier relationship – plus strong bones.”
The fact that you treat sex as such a meaningless action is quite disgusting. Not to mention – according to the statistics and studies your whole -sex before a relationship- idea is just wrong. Overwhelmingly, abstinent couples who get married have stronger, more stable, and longer lasting marriages than those who have had pre-marital sex.
Sex is the closest you can get to another human being (save giving birth perhaps). Do you really want to just let anyone get that close to you? If you wouldn’t give them your social security number, why give them your body?
I’m 20, not exactly an “older generation” and I agree that this is all BS. Telling a girl you have had 20 random partners is not impressive. Telling her that you waited until a relationship because you love her and yourself, is.
Take the hint from the other column by Conrad – he has it right.
- A girl who doesn’t give out free samples of milk
Clearly the experiences of females and males is extremely different, but I think we can’t discount Evan’s point. A guy wants to hook up with girls and if after he hooks up with her he still wants to get to know her better and perhaps date her in the future then that is real and elevates dating. Before, the ritual of dating for many males arguably was to just sleep with the girl in the future.
Therefore I find this to be a very interesting perspective.
On the other hand many women have some sort of feelings or interest in a guy before she hooks up with them and this leaves them feeling hurt or more often wanting more from him. While hook up culture claims there are no attachments the reality is otherwise. That is rarely true. So the answer to all of this? Women need to make men work harder if they want something more. If you give it all in the beginning chances are its not going to go very far.
^ prude
Actually, I found Conrad’s article to be incredibly offensive and I think that Evan makes some great points. I thought this was a wonderful article that painted the hookup culture in an accurate light. The truth is that a lot of the previous motivation for dating was simply as a jumping-through-hoops game with sex at the end.
As a woman who wants to be in a relationship from true compatibility, rather than just as an excuse for my boyfriend to have sex with me, I think the hookup culture does a lot of good in helping us see relationships for what they truly are.
And I think that Free Milk should lay off the judgment about how other people choose to conduct their sex lives. You say “I don’t give out Free Milk” in a somewhat holier-than-thou sense, and personally I find that incredibly offensive, even as someone who has never had sex outside of serious relationships.
Natalie:
You shouldn’t be offended if you aren’t doing anything wrong…
I think that anyone that argues this point either way is ignorant of personal choice and preference. Sex or “making love” is not a one party thing, it takes two to do it.
“Sex is the closest you can get to another human being (save giving birth perhaps). Do you really want to just let anyone get that close to you? If you wouldn’t give them your social security number, why give them your body?”
I completely agree with “Free Milk? No such thing…”. We ladies spend the amount of time that we do choosing clothes and shoes, and those only go ON our body. Why shouldn’t we spend a lot of time and thought before we decide who goes INTO our body?
Seeing the number of people who have agreed with this article has left me with little hope of ever finding a guy at GW who will date for unconditional, unsexual love. I am thoroughly disenchanted with the college-aged populous.
~concerned, disgusted student
PS: Saying that women spend more time choosing clothes and shoes is not stereotyping, so please don’t even bother commenting, especially if you’re a guy.
As a guy at GW, and a fairly successful one sexually speaking, I have to say that I’m not really into the hook-up culture. That’s fine for a while, and a lot of fun, but after a while you begin to look for someone to date.
Personally, every serious relationship I have had has not begun with sex. It has begun with a mutual intellectual connection and, when we both felt comfortable in the relationship, we started having sex. Now, I’m not judging anyone, and I’m sure that in some relationships you gain that comfort with the other person very quickly, but I’ve never had a relationship where we had sex the first night go anywhere.
Maybe that’s just me.