by Brenda Jin
In light of the recent debate about the need for a Center for Chastity and Abstinence as a safe haven from the “hookup culture,” I’ve been thinking about whether or not the anxiety about the “hookup culture” actually has to do with anxiety about morality. I’m going to say something kind of radical: I think it’s just about gender.
While it has long been more acceptable for men to enter short-term and uncommitted relationships, the stigma surrounding women’s participation in such an engagement seems to be particularly fierce, whether or not the “hook up culture” actually exists. Yet, the fact that the “hook up” culture seems to exist and that there doesn’t seem to be too much long-term dating among Princeton undergraduates is not simply reflective of a morality meltdown; instead, it is symptomatic of shifting trends in the way that gender impacts students’ willingness to seek out and commit to long-term relationships.
While men have for generations expected to find jobs after their undergraduate educations, women haven’t always been able to say the same. Yet women in recent graduating classes have the opportunity to pursue the same accolades, post-graduate fellowships, graduate degrees, and high-paying power jobs as men.
So that means that in four years, we have plans—just like men—and we’re less inclined to change our plans according to a potential partner’s or spouse’s. It is not a myth that emotional attachments inform decision-making, and perhaps in some cases, women reject the risk that a relationship will make a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity seem less desirable, if the location is not optimal for the further development of a serious relationship that has already begun. Furthermore, even such a relationship were equal and both members of a couple agreed to work things out, there would still be a chance of limiting one’s own independence for the sake of a partnership. So when men were expected to lead, and women, to follow, the rules and roles were simple. Now, with the opportunities available, women are less inclined to follow men, while men have not historically been inclined to follow women.
If heterosexual relationships featured men who were as willing to meet women halfway and to support and follow women just as women have followed and supported men, the picture might be different. The “hook up culture” shouldn’t just be seen as an avenue to chastise the immorality of premarital sex or short-term relationships. Instead, we should question the aspects of society that make long-term relationships difficult, and I venture that the lack of expectations for men to be more family- and partner-oriented is to perpetuate a system that continues to exert unreasonably large pressures on independent women with career plans.
