Tag Archives: Hook-Up

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Why do feminist academics think that feminism has empowered women?

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NOTE: This post contains some adult language and themes.

Here is an article written by an academic feminist in the New York Times. (H/T Stuart Schneiderman)

Stuart exegetes the article:

In Bauer’s words: “If there’s anything that feminism has bequeathed to young women of means, it’s that power is their birthright. Visit an American college campus on a Monday morning and you’ll find any number of amazingly ambitious and talented young women wielding their brain power, determined not to let anything– including a relationship with some needy, dependent man– get in their way. Come back on party night, and you’ll find many of these same girls… wielding their sexual power, dressed as provocatively as they dare, matching guys drink for drink– and then hook up for hook up.”

Given the relatively lesser body mass of women compared with that of men, matching men drink for drink is a fool’s errand. Anyone who glorifies such behavior has completely lost touch with reality.

And why should Bauer be in awe of the fact that these girls can match men, hook up for hook up? If these women are so desirous of becoming unique individual self-creations, why should they be trying to emulate male behavior?

And let’s not overlook the piece of undisguised contempt for “some needy, dependent man” with whom these women might have relationships. The latest wave of feminism prefers hooking up to relationships.

According to Bauer, the party ends with said liberated empowered inebriated woman down on her knees. As Bauer so nicely expresses it: “When they’re on their knees in front of a worked-up guy they just met at a party, they genuinely feel powerful– sadistic even.”

Sometimes we get commenters who question whether feminism has anything to do with the behavior of women that we see today in college campuses. And to find out the truth, you have to read the elite feminists at the modern universities who have been grading the papers of women for the last 40 years. Was this alcohol-drenched hook-up culture unexpected by these elite academic feminists? On the contrary. It was their goal.

Feminists wanted to abolish the distinctions between men and women. They decided to achieve this by encouraging women to act like men. And the men they chose to emulate were alpha-male bad boys, since these are the men that women who don’t like marriage seem to really admire. Academic feminists like Bauer believe that women are happier now than they ever have been, with all this hooking up and being raised without fathers. They think they’ve won.

Commentary

MUST-READ: Who is to blame for the hook-up culture?

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I found this post over at Stuart Schneiderman’s blog.

What’s the problem anyway?

If girls are induced to make hooking up their most predominant mode of relating to boys, then they will be giving their sexual favors to a certain type of guy, one who is called a pick up artist.But what happens to another young man, the one who works hard at his studies, who is preparing himself for success in the world, who does not spend his weekend taking a course on how to pick up girls? Isn’t he going to be overlooked, and thus, devalued, by young women who are settling for hookups.

The hookup culture thus undermines a work ethic.

And if the model of the modern relationship is something called friends with benefits, what does that say about the values of commitment, loyalty, and fidelity.

Clearly, many young people have been induced to act as though these values do not matter, because they have learned the amoral lesson that it is alright for two people to exploit each other if they have agreed that they are not exploiting each other.

So how is to blame?

Meantime, Flanagan offers a useful analysis of how the hookup culture started, and how it took hold with the unintended connivance of mothers.

It began in the late 1970s with a generation of feminist mothers who had decided, quite consciously, to bring up their daughters differently.

In Flanagan’s words: “… a large number of modern mothers were committed to helping their daughters incorporate sexual lives within a normal teenage girlhood, one in which sex did not instantly and permanently cleave a girl from her home and her family.”

It might seem dated by now, but these mothers took it for granted that their daughters would experience their sexual awakening within the context of a relationship, with a boyfriend.

In her words: “This set wasn’t in the business of providing girls and young women the necessary information and services to allow boys and men to discard them sexually. Their reaction to the kinds of sexual experiences that so many American girls are now having would have been horror and indignation.”

What started out as a permission slip for teenage girls to have sex with their boyfriends morphed into the hookup culture.

Unintentionally, so.

We are dealing with unintended consequences. Feminists decided that the double standard was unjust. Mothers everywhere bought this idea and taught their daughters that they had as much of a right to sexual pleasure as any boy did. If the unintended result was the hookup culture, then surely they bear some responsibility.

It may well be that they have now learned why there is a double standard and why feminine sexuality should never be confused with masculine sexuality.

Read the whole thing. This is a must-read. I want everyone to click though and print it and read it. Please.

UPDATE: Kelli sends this link to a recent CNN column by Racquel Welch in which she attacks the birth control pill as one of the reasons for the over-sexed culture that is harming young women today. The pill is considered to be a cornerstone of feminism because it divorces sex from procreation and allows women to have sex without having to form relationships with reliable men and vulnerable children.

Commentary

What possible harm can result from premarital sex?

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Here’s an article by a Duke University student that talks about the hook-up phenomenon.

Excerpt:

Every weekend, girls across Duke’s campus wake up sad and confused. The previous night’s choices have not left them fulfilled or content. My girlfriends always seem hurt while the guys easily move on to their next fling. Why are the women upset? After all, it was supposed to be just sex-just one of the “responsible social decisions” discussed in The Real Deal. Without an explanation for their emotions, my friends are left feeling used and embarrassed. All I could do is sit with these women while they let painful tears flow.

Our women’s center and sexual health groups failed to tell us the whole truth. They may warn of the physical risks of “unsafe sex” but tend to ignore its emotional toll which also has biological roots. Research suggests that a hormone called oxytocin plays a role in the feelings of attachment and trust that women feel for their sexual partners. Female mammals primarily release oxytocin while giving birth and breast feeding and the hormone facilitates mother-child bonding. Oddly enough, the same hormone is also released during sexual contact causing a sense of attachment. In men, oxytocin’s effects are neutralized by the release of testosterone.

Did you catch that ladies? There is a biological explanation for the way you feel and the way he doesn’t feel.

I had always thought casual sex had different consequences for men and women. Now, based on scientific evidence, I know it does. College women at Duke are suffering emotional pain that’s not only avoidable-but, predictable.

Why weren’t we told this three years ago?

[…]The explanation is a radical feminist agenda that has a foothold in women’s health discussions. As Dr. Miriam Grossman, a psychiatrist at UCLA suggests in her book, Unprotected, “I once assumed campus medicine and psychology had one priority: student well-being. I’m no longer so naive. Radical politics pervades my profession, and common sense has vanished.” To propose that “safe” sexual experimentation may not be emotionally healthy and may be more dangerous for women than men is not politically correct.

Premarital sex hurts women. But it also hurts men.

It’s not like men are going to be happy about transitioning from years of hooking up with no responsibilities to the rigorous demands of a marriage. Premarital sex destroys the ability of women and men to bond, because it trains them to separate out their emotions from sex. It makes no sense to expose yourself emotionally during sex if you’re not married – you run the risk of being crushed by the pain of separation. Do it enough times, and it becomes extremely difficult to allow sex to bond two people together emotionally.