The letter to the editor below struck me as being a joke at first. Except I know about the Love & Truth group here at EKU.That the second paragraph below strays so far from my own experience on campus is not even my main point.
I went to college in the early and mid 80s, and "prisoner of [my] sexual desires" accurately captures me, my roommates, my suitmates, everyone I ever met, and everyone I ever bedded.
But I've heard from other places that the "hookup" culture has faded within college culture. I don't buy it.
When I saw the letter below, it made me wonder if there's a propoganda mission in place designed to convince of something that isn't true.
Aren't kids still hooking up like crazy at your college?
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From the Eastern Progress (Eastern Kentucky University).
Dear Editor,
I reject the idea that a public university should be providing free condoms, but I reject even more strongly the idea implied in last week's editorial that college students are dominated by their sexual appetites. The statement "College students are going to have sex" suggests that sex is somehow foreordained for our students. That idea is repugnant to any view of human beings as moral free agents who, enjoying the gifts of freedom and rationality, employ wisdom to evaluate various options and then make informed decisions.
As Donna Freitas made clear in her Chautauqua lecture in September, most college students are fed up with the hookup culture. Many students, including students of the new student group Love & Truth, of which I am the faculty adviser, have turned away from sexual experimentation to embrace virginity and chastity as glorious expressions of human freedom. They see sex as a great good, but one reserved for marriage. Human beings possess great inherent dignity; let's not cheapen that dignity by depicting students as prisoners of their sexual desires.
Todd Hartch
Associate Professor
Article.
I gather Love & Truth isn't welcoming chaste gay people waiting for marriage to be legalized...
ReplyDelete"The abstinence approach to sex education is like the 'Just Hold It' approach to toilet training." -- Roy Zimmerman
ReplyDelete@F&T: <>
As for Nick's question, I don't know if my students are hooking up a lot, since we're a commuter college, but their clothing, notebook covers, and classroom flirtation tell me they'd sure like to try.
On my dorm floor last year only six students didn't "hook-up" over the span of a semester. Out of this group three had boyfriends though and ... you get the idea.
ReplyDeleteSo, that leaves me, my Hindu friend, and my Christian acquaintance as the "chaste" ones I suppose.
Also, the all girl floor above us was known as the "whore floor" and the mixed gender floor below us "hell".
At my college, at least, that culture hasn't faded at all.
College students fuck. They want to fuck. They would rather fuck than study, eat, sleep, or shower. Period.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of complexity to this issue. Primarily at odds is the dominant narrative of an expected series of one-night hook-ups with no control over the emotional consequences of these interactions. Pop culture is full of forced expectation and college seems to be more of an experience of upholding these expectations than freely exploring sexuality.
ReplyDeleteOn the other side, we have these bald lies about virginity and chastity being viable alternative. It seems to me that what most people actually want are giving, reliable relationships that create a mix of sex and friendship. Manipulation and hook-ups will not grant that; the idea that god is sex in waiting will not suffice.
Be honest, be forthcoming, don't play games.
Vriginity and chastity were viable alternatives for me. I didn't have sex until I was a grad student and was in a committed relationship with someone that I could live with as my "baby daddy" should that come to pass.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that everyone out there has the ability to delay gratification like my husband and I have. No hour of sex was going to be worth jeopordizing what I had wanted out of life.
But we do need to stop sending the message that is isn't normal or possible or cool to abstain.
Even within celibacy, people still engage in sex forms (masturbation, fellatio, sex with inanimate objects.) Hiding from sex is not a good idea for most people.
ReplyDeleteaccording to the cdc, kids are taking the plunge just as often as they did about 10 years ago, but significantly less than they did about 20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Stelnikov. I hope the decrease is about better choices, not avoidance.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/sr23_031.pdf
When I was an undergraduate I knew a nice Anglican girl who was celibate until she was in a committed relationship with the man she eventually married. I also knew a couple of self-tormented Catholics whose version of chastity was the well-known-for-failure "I'll do anything but that" strategy.
ReplyDeleteWhat my students seem to be doing, from the little I can gather, is getting boyfriends or girlfriends and sticking with them, often moving in together; so, neither hookup culture nor abstinence. They are practicing chastity in fact, which is quite different from celibacy or abstinence. I like the excellent definition of chastity found in Robertson Davies, "to have the body in the soul's keeping".
I've noticed it's a tactic of the proponents of abstinence though to assume that the only option, outside abstinence until marriage, is sluttily having it off with everyone you trip over, probably in groups, and that that's what every unmarried non-virgin is doing. So far as I can see most of my students choose neither.
I am not at all sure about my students....but they seem perfectly normal to me which means (in my book) they are having sex. But "hooking up?" I dunno. I remember that from my college daze (and I did not do it myself) as being something that seemed much more common on a dorm campus----that idea that everyone could and should just fuck the next near random person who wanted them. And then it was supposed to mean nothing, nothing at all, not even that you'd necessarily say hello to the person next time you saw them. It appears to me that people outside of that (dorm) culture are doing something different----having relationships of varying durations---most of which do include sex---after a very short period of time sometimes, yes, but that still depends upon your own personal comfort zone/beliefs. But that hookup thing---that just seems weird to me. It always did.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't universalize. Yes, I wanted sex in college. I suppose just about everyone did. But I had lots of stuff going on in my life. Some people "hooked up," some were more about "serial monogamy" (where you have a series of short-term "relationships" which go bust), some didn't get any, some had stable sexual relationships. Whichever experiences we were or weren't having in the context of sex, most of us had lots of other stuff going on in our lives as well. Getting drunk, for example, or actually studying, or sports. Some even worked. Lots of stuff.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know what my students are up to, and don't particularly want to know. But I usually have at least one unmarried pregnant student a year (that I know of), so I'd say that at least some of them are sexually active. And it's not just hooking up; a significant number mention a boyfriend or girlfriend who is clearly an ongoing part of their lives at some point.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that college students (and 18-22 year olds in general) are certainly more likely than adults a decade or so older to be preoccupied by hormonally-induced thoughts, but responses to the hormonal influx vary widely. A surprising number of my college classmates were virgins when they graduated (a phenomenon which is only partially explained by the fact that many were also still coping with the emerging knowledge/realization that they were gay). Those who were not had engaged in a variety of behaviors ranging from one-night-stands (with friends or strangers) to long-term, monogamous, all-but- or soon-to-be marriages. And yes, we did have a few (mostly Catholics and orthodox Jews) who abstained for religious reasons (and tended to contract some of the earlier -- but, from what I've heard, generally successful -- marriages).
And yes, "chastity" doesn't necessarily mean "celibacy," or even temporary abstinence from sex. At least in some usages (e.g. in one of the Reformed confessions -- can't remember which one; sorry -- which calls for "chastity in marriage") it has more the meaning of keeping sex in its place, engaging in it thoughtfully and responsibly, not letting it become an end/God in itself. Inside or outside marriage, using a condom could certainly play a role in that.