Teen Dating and the College Hook Up

“After the Sexual Revolution: Gender Politics in Teen Dating” an article by Barbara Risman and Pepper Schwartz, deals with the "decline" teenage sexual activity and the arguments for it. In a nationally representative study of over 10,000 students, the percentage of high school students, ages 15 to 17, who reported they had engaged in sexual intercourse dropped from 54.1 percent in 1991 to 48.4 percent in 1997, a dramatic decrease of some 5.7 percent in a short time. Many of the researchers are in agreement with the data on the decrease of sexual activity amongst teens, but the problem arises with the reasoning for this outcome. Researchers are not sure whether or not to attribute this decline to the success of abstinence education, the positive effect of comprehensive sex education, the cultural backlash against the sexual revolution, or the fear of disease. Risman and Schwartz both understand these reasons, but ultimately believe that the decline in the teens sexual activity has to do with the increasing control young women have over the conditions of sexual intercourse.

The decline in birth rates and abortions also has to do with the role young women play in their sexual relationships. Risman and Schwartz speculate that girls are more likely to insist on safer sex than boys. Girls' control over these acts has kept sexual interactions as part of a relationship, where condom and birth control use are more expected. In turn, due to this hold girls have developed on high school relationships teenage intimacy has resulted in less problematic outcomes of coitus.

Still with this decrease in high school sexual activity researchers still consider the sexual revolution in America a problem. Nine out of ten Americans are sexually active by the time they are 20 backing this idea of a sexual revolution in America. This is where the article "Decline of the date and the rise of the college hook up" by Paula England and Reuben Thomas comes into play. The high school sex scene might have declined but in college it is high and prevalent. The term used to describe the college scene is "hooking up".

This hooking up culture has taken over college relations between fellow students. The rise of hooking up in college has come at the price of the decline of the date. The article goes as far to state that today on college campuses the traditional date is nearly dead. The traditional date started with the guy asking out the girl to the movies or to dinner a few days in advance. When we speak of this traditional date it sounds as if it began ages ago, but dating is a fairly new trend according to England and Thomas. They said that it came about in the 1920’s with the invention of the automobile and movie theaters. Before this a man had to “court” a woman at her house with her parents’ approval.

This is idea is long gone though, especially in the college scene. Now with the introduction of the “hook up” dating as stated is not as frequent. Hooking up is when some type sexual activity happens between two people at a social event. It does not mean that sexual intercourse took place always. Hooking up can be as innocent as making out or touching or even oral sex and the extreme would be sex. About of third of the students who were surveyed on hooking up did no more than kiss and non-genital touching and less than a fourth of them said they had sex.

In general, the way to sex during the dating era was through dating and the eventual thought of marriage. Not to say that casual sex never occurred but it was not the social norm. Now with the hooking up craze dating is reserved for those couples who are already considered to be in an exclusive romantic relationship. The hook up scene has brought in cultural changes on society’s outlook of sex.

These changes allow women to express themselves sexually and not be ostracized according to England and Thomas. With the norms about what is permissive liberalizing in terms of sexually, they bring forth question of whether or not this liberating for women? They say feminists are in debate of this question. It isn’t disputed that women have more options to sexual behavior than in the past, but is this a positive? This question is posed because with more sexual freedom for women comes increase in the options men have to easily accessible sexual satisfaction with women than before. According to the statistics, men are still receiving more oral sex than women during these hook ups. Men are also having orgasms more often.

Men get all the pleasure in these relations and still do not face much scrutiny. This double standard still exists. Women have to be more careful about what they do and who they do what with. Even with the cultural changes which have giving women more room to work with this is the case. England and Thomas end the article stressing that while a lot of the gap has been bridged between women and men in terms of education and career opportunities that there is still a lot of work to be done in the college sex scene.

The sexual revolution in America is alive and true. The problem with it, from my perspective, is that America sells sex to the public but then when one acts it out they are labeled and their actions are then not condoned. It is as if they give you a gun and throw you into the line of fire and expect you not to shoot it. This has shaped today’s American youth and is the reason why kids are not as promiscuous today as a decade ago. America is playing on this sense of fear they can impose on the youth. Not to say that myself and friends as teen were not sexually active, but we thought more then than now of what others thought about us. Backing Risman and Schwartz’s article, most of the sexual acts we were involved in happened in relationships.

The difference between high school and college is that relationships are more likely in high school. In most high schools, the majority of the girls my friends and I talked to we had known for a good amount of time. In college though people come from all over and they don’t have their parental figures there to watch over them. With all this freedom hooking up tends to happen more often, as society doesn’t scrutinize college sexual activity as much as that of high school. The statistic that nine out of ten Americans are sexually active by the age of twenty is a perfect example of this.

As a college student I have developed my own views and ideologies on sexual activity here. When I was in high school I just followed the norm that had been set by those before me. We “hook up” because we want to, it is a form of letting go and not worrying about the consequences. I say this as a man in America though, knowing that women still have more think about before acting upon their sexual urges. Hopefully, America in selling sex can learn how to just accept this sexual revolution it has created and all who are a part of it.