Read Hooking Up : Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus for Free Online Page B

college than there had been just twelve years earlier in 1960.69 Today, women far outnumber men on many college campuses in the United States. In fact, currently there are approximately 80 men for every 100 women enrolled in college.70 Compared to the dating era, men are now a scarce resource on campus. The imbalance in the sex ratio is likely to particularly affect campuses with a high residential population, where social interaction is primarily with fellow students. For college men in the hookup era, there seems to be power in lack of numbers. In other words, if there are not enough men to go around, the ones who are there have greater power to determine what suits their needs when it comes to interacting with the opposite sex. Therefore, women may have had to adapt to a script that is particularly beneficial to some college men.
    These interrelated changes, in the culture and demographics of 1960s society, paved the way for a change in the dating script. Although no one can pinpoint a moment in time when students stopped dating as the primary means of getting together with the opposite sex and started hooking up, there is evidence that the shift was likely well underway by the 1970s.71 The next step is to take a more in-depth look at the hookup script. With the two major twentieth-century scripts, calling and dating, as a backdrop, I will next present the experiences of college students and young alumni today.

    3
    The Hookup
    What does it mean to hook up? Consulting a dictionary won’t help, since most dictionaries do not even include an entry on hooking up.1
    Even college students have trouble articulating a definition. My exchange with Tony, a senior at State University, demonstrates the uncertainty.
    KB : Define hooking up.
    Tony : Taking someone home and spending the night with them. I mean intercourse is probably like a big part of it, but I think if you take someone home and hook up, then that’s hooking up.
    KB : So, could hooking up mean just kissing?
    Tony : Yeah.
    KB : What does it usually mean?
    Tony : Having sex.
    KB : So most people you know when they say “hooking up” they are having sex with somebody?
    Tony : Yeah (hesitantly) . . . it depends who the person is, like I can read my friends like really, really easily. Like if my one roommate says he “hooked up,” that means he brought a girl home and this, that and the other thing. . . . But, like if other kids tell me they hooked up, you got to ask, not pry into their life, but it could mean a lot of things.
    KB : What do you mean when you say it?
    Tony : When I say “hooked up”? [I mean] that I took someone home.
    KB : But, [you are] not necessarily explaining what happened?
    Tony : Right, I don’t like to kiss and tell [laughs].
    Collectively, the college students and recent graduates with whom I spoke were able to convey the meaning of hooking up as well as the norms for following the hookup script. However, as individuals they 24

    T H E H O O K U P
    25
    were often unsure whether the specific way they used the term reflected how the student body in general used it. As Tony pointed out, the meaning of hooking up depends on whom you ask.
    Despite the confusion over the term, college students at both of the universities I studied indicated that “hooking up” was widely used on campus to refer to intimate interaction.2 Although my interviewees may have used the term somewhat differently, they consistently identified hooking up as the dominant way for men and women to get together and form potential relationships on campus. This does not mean that everyone on campus engages in hooking up; but students do consider it to be the primary means for initiating sexual and romantic relationships. Among those least likely to participate in hooking up are racial minorities, students who are very religious, and those who are already in exclusive, committed relationships (who therefore have no need to be looking for new partners). Most other students