Hooking Up: The College Experience The situation is one played out in soap operas, many a movie, and every weekend on college campuses across the nation. Boy meets girl, boy and girl get drunk, and boy and girl wake up together the next morning. It’s the sensation that’s gripping the nation, hooking up. By the time of their graduation the average college student has had around seven of these encounters, twenty-eight percent of graduates have had more than ten while twenty-four percent of graduates never have participated in the culture (James, 2009). Hooking up has been viewed as degrading, liberating, dangerous, and as no different than prostitution. However, the opinion that seems to be most prevalent is that the hook up culture is fun and harmless.
In order to fully understand the hook up culture we must examine how this culture is affecting its participant’s sexuality and their future relationships. In order to answer this question we need to first understand what the controversies surrounding the hook up culture are; why the hook up culture has become so prevalent in today’s society; how the hook up culture has possibly desensitized us to sexual assaults; finally and probably most important we need to understand what the impacts upon the future relationships and sexuality of those who engage in the hooking up culture are.
The hook up culture that exists in today’s society, specifically in college, is a very hotly debated topic among college students, professors, the media, feminist groups, family groups and religious groups. Some have described the culture as “empowering” (James 2009), that it is a way of women choosing for herself who she wishes to be with, that it allows for women to go out and enjoy themselves without waiting for a call from a guy. Others say that the belief that “sex is empowering and a real woman uses her sexuality in any way she