{"id":7025,"date":"2014-01-28T13:04:18","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T19:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/?p=7025"},"modified":"2014-01-28T13:04:18","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T19:04:18","slug":"hookups-commuters-who-dont-women-who-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2014\/01\/28\/hookups-commuters-who-dont-women-who-do\/","title":{"rendered":"hookups: commuters who don’t, women who do"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"There is a lot to learn from hooking up\u2014including when you talk to people who don\u2019t do it in any kind of stereotypical way. Some of the clich\u00e9s that seem to get replayed are that \u201ceveryone\u201d at college is doing it (70 percent of college seniors have some experience of hookups). And by \u201cdoing it\u201d the perception is doing \u201cit\u201d \u2013 even though 40 percent of students who hook up reported doing so in their most recent hook up. Another stereotype is that the hookup scene is typically centered around (straight) men\u2019s desires, even if girls-kissing-girls<\/a> is part of the action sometimes. Two new hooking up studies take on these views of hooking up.<\/p>\n

Is it everyone? What about commuters? <\/b>University of Illinois-Chicago sociologists Rachel Allison and Barbara Risman<\/a> reported this week on their study (\u201c\u2018It Goes Hand in Hand with the Parties\u2019: Race, Class, and Residence in College Student Negotiations of Hooking Up,\u201d forthcoming<\/a> in Sociological Perspectives<\/i>). They analyzed 87 in-depth interviews with commuter and residential undergraduates at UIC: turns out commuter students do not<\/i> typically participate in the hook up culture\u2014but they still believe it is a key feature of authentic college experience.<\/p>\n

But is hooking up the \u201creal\u201d college experience? According to Allison and Risman: \u201cStudents from a range of class and ethnic backgrounds told us the \u2018real\u2019 college experience involves parties and hooking up, but white middle-class students believed they\u00a0actually live the \u2018real\u2019 college experience.\u201d\u00a0One student (a Middle-Eastern woman) in the study explained about hooking up: \u201cIt goes hand in hand with the parties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commuters and minority students talked wistfully about missing\u00a0what they believe is the \u201creal\u201d college experience–often based on what they see in movies or television of campus life. The researchers explained, \u201cThey feel they are getting a second rate experience. It\u2019s not that the commuting students don\u2019t tell us they sometimes have casual sex\u2014they do. But they do not participate in the hooking up culture that most students see as part of college life.\u201d<\/p>\n

And girls kissing girls? Is it always about the guys? <\/b>A study in the April 2014 issue of Gender & Society<\/i><\/a>, reports that for some women the super-straight environment of college hookups is also a setting \u201cto explore and later verify bisexual, lesbian, or queer sexual identities.\u201d Turns out public kissing and threesomes play an important role. Not all of that sex play is about performing for men\u2019s pleasure, and surveys show significant sexual fluidity.<\/p>\n

In the Gender & Society <\/i>study, \u201cQueer Women in the Hookup Scene: Beyond the Closet?<\/a>\u201d Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor (University of California-Santa Barbara), Shiri Regev-Messalem (Bar Ilan University, Israel), Alison Fogarty (Stanford University), and Paula England (New York University) used the Online College and Social Life Survey (OCSLS) of over 24,000 college students from 21 four-year colleges and universities that was designed to study how college students approach hooking up<\/a>, dating, and relationships. To this large data set, the researchers added 55 in-depth interviews with women students at Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, who had had some romantic or sexual experience with other women, to learn more about same-sex activity occurring in hookup settings that are mainly understood to be heterosexual.<\/p>\n

Study co-author Paula England\u2014who developed the OCSLS study\u2014explained, \u201c\u2018Hooking up\u2019 was defined in our survey as \u2018whatever definition of a hookup you and your friends use,\u2019 but we know from talking to students that what they usually mean by a hookup is some sexual activity\u2014ranging from kissing to intercourse\u2014outside of a committed relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hooking up, women with women, and a puzzle. <\/b>The investigators reported that of the 14,128 women surveyed in the OCSLS, 94 percent identify as heterosexual. Though identifying as \u201cstraight,\u201d these women\u2019s behavior did not always line up with that\u2014instead, women had more sexual fluidity. For example, forty percent of women who called themselves lesbians had had oral sex or intercourse with men; two percent of women who identify as straight report having had oral sex with a woman;\u00a0compared to straight women, more women who indicated they were not sure about their sexual identities had same-sex sexual experience: 15 percent have given and 18 percent have received oral sex from a woman.<\/p>\n

To examine sexual fluidity suggested by these women\u2019s reports, the investigators conducted in-depth interviews. They interviewed women who identified as queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or some other non-heterosexual identity in order to learn more about how encounters in the hookup scene played a role in developing their current sexual identities. They learned that, since women making out with other women and threesomes between two women and a man are acceptable as a turn-on for men, this allowed women to expand and explore their sexual identities.<\/p>\n

As study coauthor Verta Taylor points out, \u201cSome students are embracing fluid identities and calling themselves \u2018queer,\u2019 \u2018pansexual,\u2019 \u2018fluid,\u2019 \u2018bi-curious\u2019 or simply refusing any kind of label. The old label bisexual no longer fits because even that term implies that there are only two options: lesbian\/gay or straight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women kissing women. <\/b>In tune with the Katy Perry song, \u201cI Kissed a Girl\u201d, the interviews revealed that for some women, public kissing\u2014typically seen as for the enjoyment of men onlookers\u2014is a key opportunity<\/i> for exploring same-sex attractions.<\/p>\n

Often alcohol played a role in women\u2019s opportunities to explore same-sex attraction, just as it plays a significant role in hookups in general. While some women who make out with other women in public had a previous same-sex attraction, others told interviewers about experimenting when they had had no previous sexual attraction to women. In sum, the authors note that \u201cKissing can result from or lead to emotional connections with women. It doesn\u2019t always\u2014but sometimes<\/i> it leads to more exploration.\u201d The interviews confirmed that public same-sex kissing in the hook up scene is one pathway into same-sex desire and behavior.<\/p>\n

Threesomes<\/b>. About 20 percent of women interviewed for this study reported participating in threesomes. \u201cThreesomes allow same-sex pleasure without the stigma of non-heterosexual identity,\u201d the authors explained. In some cases, women said that threesomes were a way to reduce their anxiety about approaching women on their own. One woman noted, \u201cIt\u2019s not clear how you would initiate a relationship with a woman\u2026I\u2019m really inexperienced chasing women, rather more experienced at chasing men.\u201d In other cases, women explained that threesomes were instigated by male partners, but that it led to women following up\u2014solo\u2014with the other woman in the encounter. The authors explain, \u201cAlthough threesomes may begin with men\u2019s desires, they introduce women to new sexual pleasures or allow them to act on same-sex or bisexual desires.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coauthor and historian Leila Rupp explains that this may not be so new: She points to intimate sexual relationships between co-wives in polygynous households in China and the Middle East, romantic friends in heterosexual marriages in the Euro-American world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and \u201cgirlfriends\u201d in avant-garde cultural environments such as Greenwich Village and Weimar Berlin in the 1920s. \u201cBisexual behavior between women has flourished in a variety of societies where women\u2019s same-sex desires and sexual behavior did not pose a threat to the gender order,\u201d explains Rupp. Whether in these historical settings or in the setting of collegiate hookup culture, women\u2019s same-sex sexuality can flourish in tight conjunction with heterosexuality. What is new in the 21st<\/sup> century setting, however, are the ways in which women can go on to have the opportunity to affirm<\/i> new identities.
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

Note: This is based in part on releases I wrote for CCF and Gender & Society. See \u00a0\u201cNot everyone is hooking up at college\u2014Here\u2019s why<\/a>\u201d (CCF) and \u201cCan I watch? Sometimes women kissing women isn\u2019t about you<\/a>\u201d (G&S) for more links and suggested references.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a lot to learn from hooking up\u2014including when you talk to people who don\u2019t do it in any kind of stereotypical way. Some of the clich\u00e9s that seem to get replayed are that \u201ceveryone\u201d at college is doing it (70 percent of college seniors have some experience of hookups). And by \u201cdoing it\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nice-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7025"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7028,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025\/revisions\/7028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}