associate otherwise), or “friends with benefits”
(friends who do not care to become romantic
partners, but may include sex among the activ-
ities they enjoy together). In a sense, the pat-
terns of heterosexual students have begun to
look more like the patterns observed among
their gay and lesbian peers.
On many campuses, the sexual market-
place—gay and straight—is organized around
groups of same-sex friends who go out together
to meet appropriate sexual partners in a casual
setting like a bar or a party. Party scenes fea-
ture hooking up as the standard mode of sex-
ual interaction. In collaborative research I have
undertaken with other sociologists at Stanford,
Indiana, Ithaca, and Arizona, we have found
that for heterosexual students, hooking up cov-
ers a multitude of behaviors, including kissing and nongenital touching (34 percent),
manual stimulation of the genitals (19 percent), oral sex (22 percent), and intercourse
(23 percent). Almost all hooking up involves more alcohol than sex: Men averaged
4.7 drinks on their most recent hookup, women 2.9 drinks.
While “hooking up” is a mutual and consensual activity for heterosexual students,
it is up to the women to negotiate whether it proceeds to a deeper level of intimacy.
Women tend to be more ambivalent about the hookup culture; some report feeling
sexy and desirable; others feel it’s cheap and rarely leads anywhere. On many cam-
puses, women’s initiative is typically to begin a conversation called the “DTR”—
“define the relationship”—or, more simply, “the talk.” “Are we a couple or not?”
she asks. And, as one report worries, when she asks, “he decides.”
Convergence on Campus: Just Saying No
If hooking up culture is the dominant campus sexual culture, then “abstinence
pledgers” may represent a counterculture. Abstinence campaigns encourage young
people to take a “virginity pledge” and refrain from heterosexual intercourse until
marriage (the campaigns assume that gay and lesbian students do not exist).
At first glance, such campaigns appear to be successful. One study found that the
total percentage of high school students who say they’ve had heterosexual sex had
dropped from more than 50 percent in 1991 to slightly more than 45 percent in 2001.
Teen pregnancy and abortion rates have decreased somewhat, and birth rates have
dropped from 6 percent to about 5 percent of all births. Proponents point to the
success of abstinence-based sex education and elaborate publicity campaigns in a
10 percent drop in teen sexual activity.
Abstinence campaigns do appear to have someeffect, but they do not offset the
other messages teenagers hear. Sociologist Peter Bearman and Hannah Brickner
(2001) analyzed data from over 90,000 students and found that taking a virginity
pledge does lead an average heterosexual teenager to delay his or her first sexual
experience—by about 18 months. And the pledges were effective only for students
up to age 17. By the time they are 20 years old, over 90 percent of both boys and
girls are sexually active.
The pledges were not effective at all if a significant proportion of students at the
school was taking them. That is, taking the pledge seems to be a way of creating
a “deviant” subculture, or a counterculture, what Bearman called an “identity
AMERICAN SEXUAL BEHAVIOR AND IDENTITIES 333JOn many campuses, a
“hooking up” culture prevails.
People hook up with others
within a large social network,
fueled by alcohol, for vaguely
defined sexual encounters
that may, or may not, lead to
an actual relationship.