Ladies! Step away from the dudes!* Yes, do it. Step away RIGHT NOW, unless you have some form of Very Serious Commitment, preferably signed and documented in a highly official manner in the sight of several armed witnesses. For we have heard some alarming news re: dudes, and sleeping with dudes specifically, if you are into that sort of thing.
The news is (are you ready? Brace yourselves! Light a cigarette, have a drink, sit down, for we are about to BLOW YOUR MIND in some potentially very upsetting ways) that sometimes, if you sleep with dudes, you might want them to Fall In Love with you! And sometimes – this is where it gets absolutely terrifying – they might not Fall In Love!
I know, right? UNPRECEDENTED! SHOCKING! Who do we blame for this? Well, if you are An Old Person, you might well wish to blame The Hook-Up Culture (otherwise known as “sex”) that all the kids are into today. And some have! Amanda Hess of The Sexist and I, however, have some alternate theories. Pay attention, and you will see them laid forth in this exciting chat!
ILLUSTRATION: The Kids Today! With their “acronyms” and their “ambiguous relationships” and their “sexual intercourse!” I don’t understand a bit of it! Why, in MY day…
AMANDA: Well hello!
SADY: Hello Amanda. Before we go any further, I should let you know that I am not too “committed” to this chat. This chat will not buy you dinner! This chat will not visit your many relatives in Phoenix, Arizona! This chat is a “no strings attached” form of chatting.
AMANDA: Is this why I overheard you silently weeping throughout your college years?
SADY: And AT THIS VERY MOMENT, yes. Actually, I feel like the least qualified person in the world to discuss Hookup Culture! Since I have always been a visitor to it from my own home town of Serial Monogamyville.
AMANDA: And as such I assume that you have never had any boy problems!
SADY: Well, it’s interesting. Did you know that if someone calls himself your boyfriend, and you are in a relationship in which there is substantially more emotional vulnerability in play, this person is LEGALLY AND MORALLY OBLIGATED never to hurt your feelings? Like, ever! To be fair, though, I think that the Simmons piece – and I have always really liked Rachel Simmons’ work, so maybe I am partial – did have SOME interesting points in play. As did the amazing Harding response!
AMANDA: And Amanda Marcotte’s, too.
SADY: Oh, yeah. That did lay open some of the structural issues, in terms of what needs men and women are even allowed to HAVE, much less express. So what I think Simmons is saying is that if we have a “dating culture” where the obligation is to act like things are casual even if one or more parties would not like them to be, and if this is particularly based on the idea that the males are skittish creatures who will basically shit themselves and die if you are too affectionate or make it clear that you consider them boyfriends or whatever, well: peoples’ needs don’t always get served in this culture.
AMANDA: True, and I think one of the problems with most of the critiques about the “hook-up culture” is that they look longingly back on the “good old days,” instead of admitting that perhaps there is a third option beyond accepting the “hook-up culture” as-is or going back to the 50s. Or the 1850s. People talk about it like it’s “freedom to have sex!” or “abstinence,” and forget that there are a lot of ways to have sex and to talk about having sex
SADY: Right! Because, basically, sometimes people really DO want to just have some sex and not get too involved. And in a monogamy-and-courting-centric dating culture, THOSE peoples’ needs (particularly if they be lady people) are shamed and hard to fulfill. So, yeah: I think Simmons is interesting, but (maybe inevitably) not really taking the WHOLE ENTIRE picture into account. What about shy dudes who see sex as this really intimate thing and get crushes afterward? What about them? They are missing from this analysis! They might also not be served by The Hook-Up Culture!
AMANDA: I’ve been constantly disappointed by the reluctance of researchers in the field of Hook-Up Studies to talk to boys about this stuff. I mean, I knew many guys in college who wanted girlfriends badly, and who were dissatisfied with casual sex
SADY: Yeah. I mean: I have to tell you, that is one reason I am at the very least more charitable to the Simmons piece than I am to the many anti-hook-up screeds which I have delighted in tearing to pieces. Because a lot of them go so far as to MAKE UP BRAIN CHEMISTRY REASONS why a person who is a lady can never have casual sex, ever, without crying all over the binder on which she is compelled to write the dude’s name 9,000 times.
AMANDA: Along with rough sketches of wedding dresses.
SADY: And plans as to what you will name your first baby. So at least Simmons is not gender-essentializing TOO much in that regard. But dudes and their vulnerabilities – and the problems with the idea that dudes want sex, nothing but sex, all the time, and that sex is therefore a good which women must trade in exchange for a dude agreeing to Totally Be Your Boyfriend OMG – always kind of get left out of these conversations, which is interesting to me.
AMANDA: Yeah, I mean, they tend to just support stereotypes. The women who are interviewed are all miserable about it, and the men are all just basking in the blow jobs. The End. There are no women who are getting what they want, and if we actually interviewed those women—I don’t know—maybe we would come to a better model of sex?
SADY: Right! Exactly! I mean, I feel like a lot of OH NO THE KIDS ARE HOOKING UP is, like, just this weird hysteria over what are pretty common dating experiences.
AMANDA: Yeah, I mean, mistakes must be made. There’s no use of us Elderly Folk attempting to make kids get it right on the first person they fuck.
SADY: Yeah, exactly. And, I mean: when you first meet someone, or even for a few months after meeting someone, you might be unsure as to what they want, and there’s the potential that you might not know them that well (in fact, a certainty that you don’t) and they therefore might turn out to be a jerk in various exciting ways. Like 97% of Jane Austen novels are about that! Except that nowadays, Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy would have been banging ever since that first party they attended together, so you might end up having sex with someone while getting to know them. OH NO!
AMANDA: Oh, no. And it’s not that I don’t appreciate narratives about female sexual dissatisfaction. There are definitely a lot of structural ways that the dating culture values men’s pleasure and devalues women’s pleasure, and so if women aren’t satisfied, I understand that! The problem is when you try to just stuff all women into another structure — well, maybe girls would be happier if they didn’t give it up so fast — that also devalues them
SADY: Exactly. Like, that’s the thing, and where I have to depart from “hook-up culture” critiques. If you, lady, will be sad if the guy you have sex with does not want to be Your Boyfriend, well… don’t have sex with that guy? Like, conversations about consent and boundaries and why it is OK to have the needs you have without apologizing are a lot better, in my experience, than telling people to have sex or not have sex in these specific ways.
AMANDA: Right. The problem isn’t with this “new trend” in sex, but that our sexual culture dutifully follows trends at all. I know this is not “cool” of me to say! But perhaps kids would be better off if we didn’t crumple under the weight of hysteria over kids having sex and just emphasized that they should be having sex the way they want.
SADY: Exactly! And emphasized that you might want different things at different times, and with different people… like, it’s not like I have never BENEFITED from The Hook-Up Culture. Sometimes you are just like, “okay, this dude and I are never going to run skipping through a field of daisies, but he is cute, though.” And other times, you are like, “well, I don’t necessarily want to be putting myself out there for someone unless I think that person and I have the potential to get along real well.” And sometimes you are me! And you just don’t care! Because you have one million other things to do!
AMANDA: Yeah. A recent study came out that said that abstinence-only education could be effective in delaying sex among young teens. And the headlines were like, “Abstinence-only education works!” I mean … I guess it works if you think that the point of sex education is for people to just call the whole thing off because it’s too hard? But really we should be focusing on what happens when kids DO decide to have sex—what that sex is like.
SADY: Yeah. And, I mean, that’s where sex leaves the level of the biological and the health-related and the ideological and enters the realm of the personal. And, like… I don’t think, no matter what “dating culture” we have, we are ever going to avoid the fact that girls are going to crush out on unavailable or unattainable dudes. Or dudes on the unattainable or unavailable ladies! I mean, we have basically explained the careers of Taylor Swift AND Megan Fox right here! But getting girls to the level where actual SEX is something they know they have options regarding and the right to say “no” or “yes” to depending on what is up at the moment… that probably should be the goal, yeah?
AMANDA: Right. Not just “sex” or “not sex,” when you’ve heard that “sex” consist of “giving a guy who refuses to be your boyfriend a million blow jobs that are never reciprocated”
SADY: Haha, yeah. Let’s just get to the point of “blow jobs should always be reciprocated.” MAN, I have NO IDEA why I am not working in the public schools right now! “Ladies, blow jobs are fun… TO RECEIVE, THAT IS!!!!!” And that is the story of how Sady Doyle got sued by thirty sets of parents at the same time, the end.
*Also, if you are the lady known as Sady Doyle, you might want to step away from the “He’s Just Not That Into You” jokes. It is NOT MY FAULT, all right? I can come up with like 15,0000 separate fake titles for a sequel to that book! This, however, will be my final one. I SWEAR.
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god, I have tried to explain this SO MANY TIMES but people never really seem to get it! am I doing it wrong? maybe I don’t actually know how to speak english, and the entirety of my social experiences have been one gigantic web vivid hallucinations.
web OF, rather.
All this hook-up culture stuff baffles me. People have been having all kinds of non-maritally sanctioned sex since sex was invented, and college culture has been full of it for decades. It’s not new. It’s just more public. It’s now okay to talk about it without getting forced into marriage or treated like crap by your peers and professors, or sent off to be reprogrammed (if you’re GLB) or whatever.
Most of the guys I knew in college (early 2000s) where in monogamous relationships or whined about how they weren’t in monogamous relationships and if they just had a girlfriend, all their problems would magically disappear (I knew a lot of Nice Guys). I do not think most of them would have said no to casual sex, but it wasn’t their goal. I can think of one guy I was friendly with who was nonmonogamous and noncommitted–he didn’t make a secret about it, but I don’t know how his friends with benefits felt about it.
I never participated in “hook-up culture”, never felt compelled to, and knew plenty of girls who were either in monogamous relationships or not dating at all. Even virgins! Yes, there are women who make it through college without having sex because they choose not to until they’re ready! I knew a handful of polyamorous people, one of whom is now in a stable, long-term triad, and certainly not hoping one of her partners will leave.
But all this “omg, hook-up culture is destroying society!” implies that there are two kinds of people in college:
1. Men who are not interested in relationships, monogamous or non, and who just want to have lots of sex with women.
2. Women who long for a committed, monogamous boyfriend, but who keep having pseudo-casual sex with these guys hoping to change them into the type of men who commit.
There are no
1. Queer people
2. Monogamous couples
3. Happily, honestly polyamorous people
4. People who are single and not desperately seeking partner
5. People who are focusing on academics
6. Asexual people
7. People who only consent to sex when they really want it and feel good about their relationship or lack thereof with the other person
And certainly no one ever approaches dating and sex differently after college, in the adult world. Whatever you do in college will determine your happily-married or doooooomed-to-eternal-unfulfilled-slutitude future!
Did you know that if someone calls himself your boyfriend, and you are in a relationship in which there is substantially more emotional vulnerability in play, this person is LEGALLY AND MORALLY OBLIGATED never to hurt your feelings? Like, ever!
I really think this is the crucial part.
Adolescence and young adulthood have a lot of parts that hurt because you are learning your own boundaries and values, and sometimes you accidentally do things that make you feel like crap and learn how to not do them again.
This could be giving dozens of unreciprocated bejammers to boys you wish were your boyfriend because you think you’re supposed to be hooking up OR getting engaged to someone you don’t really know and taking too long to disentangle from that process because you think you should be settling down.
Or lots of things in between.
Life can really suck no matter what you do, and there’s no way to set it up beforehand that guarantees you’ll never be hurt.
An interesting look at the expectations of sex at university versus how much sex actually occurs at university is in Guyland by Michael Kimmel.
Most people at university think everyone else is having sex, which creates expectations about behaviour etc – turns out about 7% are.
It’s a really interesting book which examines the expectations and aspirations for college-aged men.
This is going to be a touch of a tangent but I think it is relevant, and you’re not the only Thing On The Internet to make me cast an eye askance at this issue of late: but what’s with this weird thing some people have where “giving oral sex to your partner” is some distasteful maneuver to be endured because, in return, you will have leverage to convince your partner to perform an act on you that they find similar displeasure in?
Like, if you are a guy who likes getting blow jobs, I would advise said guy to find a lady who enjoys giving them. Similarly if a lady likes receiving cunnilingus I would advise her to find a guy who really enjoys that. I say this not as some kind of “well, duh” no brainer because, fuck, nothing sexual is that much fun if you know your partner is “putting up” with it for you, but also because I think this is something which seems to get overlooked, and in damaging ways. Some people enjoy giving head.
Let me tell you a personal story. I am interestingly sexually fucked up in ways that have much to do with the idea that, when I was a young man experimenting with this whole “having sex with various ladies” thing, my orgasm was some kind of distasteful thing that the girls I was with would put up with at best and, as a default assumption, actively disliked. None of them, to my knowledge, ever told me this: it was something I picked up from “the culture”. If I bothered at all it would be in a kind of perfunctory and half-hearted manner to get it over with and mostly I wouldn’t bother, considering it to get in the way of the real business of achieving that wonderful female orgasm or seven that it was my “job” as the compassionate, 21st century lover to do. Now this was not a major deal, I thought at the time, because I found out I quite like cunnilingus and other associated sexual acts. But, because I am a fucking moron, it never occurred to me until quite some time later that perhaps if I was enjoying the female orgasm, perhaps there were ladies who feel the same way about guys, who don’t see the male orgasm as something gross to be endured but who actually look forward to it? Maybe this has been true of some of my past sexual partners and I have therefore left them disappointed — was the clue in the fact that they said they were disappointed, I wonder? And, also, that maybe this attitude was actually just as much of a product of the proscriptive, gender normative mythos of sexuality, just from another direction.
And OK, I know the blow job thing was a throwaway comment, but I think it stems from exactly the same “everyone must fit into this sexual category” thinking that propagates this “hook up culture” mythos as a way of describing the vast and complex range of what humans are actually doing with their genitals in a way that is easily comprehensible to people who read 3,000 word features in the New York Times. That as you’re pointing out here the “hook up culture” is as much a cultural phenomenon of expectations and social reinforcement as the monogamous slut-shaming one and that, since we’re talking about peculiar cultural generalizations that happen to leave 50-75% of the population in a position of Not Being Particularly Well Served In The Sexing Department, it’s kinda disappointing that Ms Sady Doyle would go round telling girls that giving blow jobs is only fun for dudes, even in jest.
Because, even if in jest, I went round hypothetical classrooms saying “Guys, eating pussy is fun… FOR THE GIRLS, THAT IS!” I would be a) wrong, b) perpetuating a myth about standard sexual desires, and c) helping to ensure that those people whose sexual desires are unfulfilled remain unfulfilled. Like I might actually reduce the amount of good oral sex taking place because I remind some guy that they’re supposed to find vaginas as this distasteful smelly thing rather than this super awesome part of their girlfriend’s body. And I’d be reminding boys, again, that because men are ugly and gross (as opposed to the beautiful, sexually alluring ladies) that sex is some kind of favour they are earning in exchange for various boyfriend duties, rather than something that maybe happens because girls find them sexually attractive. And reminding girls that they must in no way express any kind of weird or kinky desire like, I don’t know, actually liking blow jobs because if they do that makes them odd and slutty.
I guess what I am saying is that there are lots of different proscriptive myths around the “hook up culture” and that “giving someone oral sex is an obligation to be endured” is actually one of them. And that while I am not opposed to the idea, especially while young and experimenting, that if you expect someone to go down on you you should be willing to go down on them, when you’re young you’re only mediocre to rubbish at sex anyway so it doesn’t really matter. Later, when we have worked out what we like and don’t like, it gets significantly better if sexual acts aren’t something done out of obligation and duty. All of which means I would get more complaints than you because my class titles would be “you can have fun during sex even if you are not having your own personal genitals stimulated right this very second, for fuck’s sake.”
Sometimes I feel really uncomfortable when I admit that I am not that much into sex. I do not mind it but… I do not see the big deal about it. I can live or without it (although with it it’s much nicer, I admit).
The worst part was the last time when this was used against women at all as a proof that “AHA! So you are just pretending that you like sex as much as men and that you have sex just for the sex.” It’s awful that my personal opinion and choices are held as a proof as if I am the official re-presenter of the womenkind. Well, I am not nor are the examples that this horrible people used to deny any opinions that doesn’t suit them.
When I finally entered the dating/sex area of life I went through a brief period where I assumed if i didn’t want casual sex all the time something was wrong with me. But that evened out and I found out that heaps of guys want girlfriends, heaps of girls want casual sex, and lots of people want things in between.
The good thing about the ‘hook up culture’ is that all the options are there.
Rachel Simmons did actually make up brain chemistry reasons, but not in the original piece. When I criticized her (in the comments and at my blog) for treating the “ladies like relationships and dudes like boning” thing as natural rather than a product of patriarchal conditioning, she said, “While this is very much true, even largely true, there are some very difficult-to-challenge signs that there may be a biological basis for these behaviors [referring to other behaviors that ladies exhibit]. I would imagine the same is true for sex.”
This is, in some ways, even worse, because she doesn’t even flesh out the Brain Chemistry Reasons enough for them to be critiqued.
This ought to be in bold: “But really we should be focusing on what happens when kids DO decide to have sex—what that sex is like.”
AMEN. AMEN.
This is the ONLY way we can make sure that sex doesn’t hurt. We have to get away from the circumstances (hookup/no-hookup, inside-marriage/outside-marriage) and focus on the quality of the act itself.
People can be raped in marriage, so abstinence until marriage does not magically prevent rape or hurtful sexual interactions.
Purely physical interactions can be quite pleasurable if _both_ parties are in it only for pleasurable sensations. It can be quite despairing if one or the other wants more. We desperately need to understand that sex is not merely a set of acts. Sex is first and foremost the entire cognitive, emotional, and spiritual frame of mind that goes along with those acts. Pain in sex comes when partners’ frames of mind diverge from one another too greatly.
We need to understand better how that state of mind relates to consent. Is consent an on/off thing? Or is it a dance, where each step must be done in sync lest toes or worse are broken?
I also have to wonder about baby-boomers groaning about the way things used to be. Wasn’t that the generation of free-love and swinging?
This ought to be in bold: “But really we should be focusing on what happens when kids DO decide to have sex—what that sex is like.”
AMEN. AMEN. This is the ONLY way we can make sure that sex doesn’t hurt. We have to get away from the circumstances (hookup/no-hookup, inside-marriage/outside-marriage) and focus on the quality of the act itself.
People can be raped in marriage, so abstinence until marriage does not magically prevent rape or hurtful sexual interactions.
Purely physical interactions can be quite pleasurable if _both_ parties are in it only for pleasurable sensations. It can be quite despairing if one or the other wants more. We desperately need to understand that sex is not merely a set of acts. Sex is first and foremost the entire cognitive, emotional, and spiritual frame of mind that goes along with those acts. Pain in sex comes when partners’ frames of mind diverge from one another too greatly.
We need to understand better how that state of mind relates to consent. Is consent an on/off thing? Or is it a dance, where each step must be done in sync lest toes or worse are broken?
I also have to wonder about baby-boomers groaning about the way things used to be. Wasn’t that the generation of free-love and swinging?
I am almost certainly too old to be reading your blog, so I should probably not even posting a query, but here goes: why do you keep calling a pudenda a vagina? Rhinestones will not stick to a vagina. Lady Gaga didn’t show her vagina in the video, it was her pudenda. (And that wasn’t even shown; it was obscured by some fuzzy overlay.)
Perhaps I missed your memo that said “We’ve decided that ‘pudenda’ doesn’t sound provocative enough, so we’re going to call it ‘vagina’ now, but I haven’t had time to read your old posts. It’s just very confusing to have to stop at that word each time and think “I’ll bet she means pudenda.”
This discourse is really interesting to me, as a previously-sexually-promiscuous lady-type-thing (I have the hardware, that means I get the membership card, right? Even if the software is totally FUBAR? uhhh…) For, I say to you! I was on the Supposedly Dudes-Only side of the COMMITMENT PANIC!! Yes, once upon a time, I was in an open relationship (still poly, but polyfidelous now, in case the internet wants to know), and I would sometimes bring home a Dude (and/or a Lady) and do the sex with him (and/or her)! And then he (and/or she) might spend the night! Or not! Often these Dudes (and/or Ladies) were friends of mine, and I did indeed have a few casual-sex-hook-up-friends-with-benefits-type-situations. Occasionally it would turn out that one of these dudes (and/or ladies) would be developing feelings I did not share, or vice versa, and we would work it out like grown-ups (so, with talking and hugging and getting drunk and saying I LOVE YOU MAN a lot until we both felt better).
However! Once upon another time, during this same period, I brought home a Dude that I knew, and had been friends with. And we had the sex, and it was fun, and very reciprocal and friendly and whatnot. And then, a few days later, he told me he loved me! And he called me his girlfriend! And my response was approximately: YYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!!?! Because I had only known him a little bit before we did the sex and holy wow it is really creepy and weird to know that someone you had sex with A) apparently got WAY MORE, emotionally/mentally, out of that interaction than you did, and B) is possibly slightly more emotionally unstable than you had previously thought, given that one physical interaction after a few months of moving in the same circles is apparently enough to decide someone is In A Relationship with you and also that you are In Love with them. I wound up with this really weird uncomfortable feeling of responsibility, like: I like this guy, he is a nice guy. I do not want to hurt his feelings. I do not want to be That Lady-Type-Thing Who Broke His Heart. But on the other hand, I do not love this guy, and I had thought that I was pretty clear on the no-commitment thing ahead of time. What to do??
(I wound up trying to politely explain the situation to him, and that we were not, in fact, In A Relationship, and express that I liked him and wanted to be friends with him but perhaps we should not do the sex anymore… aaand he has not spoken to me since. Yay! I am now That Person! It was very sucky.)
So, in some ways, I guess I can see why college-age guys develop this hard and spiny ‘ALPHA MALE’ exterior. It is really emotionally difficult and uncomfortable to deal with someone who wants commitment when you don’t like them that way! And with the culture raising girls to think that they must GET A BOYFRIEND RIGHT NOW OMG AND SKETCH WEDDING DRESSES there are a lot of girls and young ladies who expect an instant connection from very little interaction. So, in a lazy, privileged sort of way, it is probably easier to just build a reputation for treating women like sex objects and not people to try to head that sort of thing off, than it is to treat every lady like an individual and try to deal with the resulting mess when some of them expect more than you want to give, if you are a conventionally attractive dude who likes casual sex.
Obviously it is not a good way to be, but given the atrocious, needy, anything-to-please-you-sir sort of personality that is held up as the ideal for girls and ladies, I can definitely see why some of these dudes might want to curl up into an empty, prickly shell rather than touch the messy icky emotional stuff. And then suddenly uncurl and launch themselves at a lady and go I WANT THAT ONE!!! when they do find one that they think they might be compatible with. Except that doesn’t tend to work so well either. :<
RAMBLE RAMBLE RAMBLE SHUT UP ALREADY FARORE, GOD