@Nancy re: Steve– definitely hit it right on the head. I’ve done a lot of activism that centered on sexuality and relationships, and what I drive it down to is that women are playing the game (finally!) but still can’t make any of the rules. So many parts of hookup culture have been gendered and are masculine; we’re all expected to play along with how hookups play out, no matter how. Women lose, a lot. But to have the NY Times tell me that the REAL problem with hookup culture is that I’m going to be “a victim” if I choose to pursue an education is really insulting. This article tried to make journalistic fact out of the myth that any of us went to college to find a husband. I guess what I’m very much so trying to say (and I get caught up in the words because I want so badly to have everyone talk about it) is that hookup culture, in theory, is something most young people come to rationalize, but not enjoy. If the NYT wants to report on hookup culture, that is fine- but not if they position women as desperate, as victims, as lonely. I want them to dig deeper into it.

I think hookup culture is a very young thing. I think it’s something that my generation doesn’t think is strange, even if it’s unappealing. I think Nancy has it, with the root causes. I think it’s a product. But I think most people are only staying quiet about the culture because they (mistakenly) think nobody else is struggling with it.

A few factors she cites are: rise in binge drinking, co-ed dorms, lack of information/education about sex, and yes, uneven numbers on campus. Seems that if the odds do stack a bit more in favor of the men, they have more power to set the sexual tone on campus.

Malcolm Gladwell just wrote an interesting piece about alcohol consumption for The New Yorker, and how the culture surrounding its consumption dictates the behavior. So we in the states have plenty of college movies, and MTV’s Spring Break illustrating that alcohol consumed in college makes you rowdy, horny, frat boys and girls gyrating in bikinis, and that’s how it is, so that’s what you (college students) should do.

Over here, we think that our shame-based sexual culture, and abstinence only education, which tells young people that sex is for marraige (so anal/oral are ok), and that sex is bed – creates a climate of drinking to justify what are totally normal desires. Pleasure, intimacy, sexual contact. However, most of us were not given these messages, or the tools to navigate this exploration, and we look to corporate media for guidance.

Carmen has done a lot of great writing about how no matter how hard she tries – as a feminist, young person, woman, sexually empowered person – she still gets burned by hook up culture. The reason she gets burned is that hook up culture kind of sucks, not because she’s an intelligent person who wants something better.

In your letter, you write, “The problem with hookup culture isn’t marriage, or sex, but the belief that single women are being hurt by their success and not their colleagues.” I am somewhat confused by this. What you identify as the problem with the hookup culture seems to be the problem you have with the article, not the culture.

I have had no experience with such a culture at either of the two universities I’ve attended for the past 8.5 years, so I’m in no position to offer an opinion on the problems hookup culture creates nor why it exists.

I know – let’s write a story about how hookup culture is hurting men. Wait, The Weekly Standard already did. Jezebel tears it apart at: http://bit.ly/9MhNxW

Women are so darn picky.