Hookup culture is good for women, and other feminist myths

Our take: Amy Julia Becker, blogging for Christianity Today, takes on the hookup culture among todays young adults. The movement was recently extolled in The Atlantic as liberating for women. But Becker argues that a Christian perspective of human relationships and the sanctity of sex offers not liberation but true freedom.

Pornography. Casual sex. Crude jokes about sex. Hooking up with no strings attached.

Hanna Rosins most recent Atlantic article, Boys on the Side, describes highly intelligent, career-oriented women engaging in all of these behaviors with a mere shrug of the shoulders. In the minds of many driven young women on college campuses across the country, sexual promiscuity doesnt harm anyone. Hooking up has become the new sexual norm for young adults, and according to this norm, students shy away from committed relationships and instead enjoy one-time sexual encounters with no expectation of further intimacy. And, Rosin argues, the sexual liberation of the 1960s that led to the more recent hookup culture on college campuses is good for womenit allows women to enjoy casual sex without being tied down by serious commitment.

Rosin initially substantiates this claim through interviews with her subjects. Most women who are engaging in the hookup culture report that they dont want to return to the days of chastity belts or even more traditional dating, and Rosin takes these positive reports as evidence that the hookup culture is not only here to stay but is also good for the women involved. She provides no evidence, however, that women who hookup a lot during their early 20s go on to lead fulfilling lives, and she doesnt offer a counterpoint of women who have opted out of hooking up. Furthermore, Rosin offers a few statistics to demonstrate positive trends nationwide when it comes to sexual mores. The rate of teenage girls having sex has declined from 37 to 27 percent in the past 25 years, for instance. And the rate of rape and sexual assault against females has declined by 70 percent nationally since 1993. Both of these numbers demonstrate significant progress for women. Whether or not the positive statistics correlate to the rise of the hookup culture, however, remains unclear.

Read more about Beacker's response to the hookup culture on Christianity Today.