Unhooking from the Hook-Up Culture

"We live in a society that falsely tells us young women that we will be happy and cherished if we wear clothes that undermine our human dignity, think of ourselves and men as sexual objects only, and behave aggressively with men to achieve 'gender egalitarianism'," writes millennial Anna Maria Hoffman in Healing from the Hookup Culture. "We also live in a society that falsely tells young men they'll be content if they treat women and themselves like sexual objects, trade in their kindness for disrespectful behavior, and forget about being a gentleman around others."

The hookup culture is rooted "in a lack of love for ourselves and others," Hoffman argues, and "it's time for our generation to liberate itself from the emotional and psychological shackles" of it.

She offers a few ideas on how to unhook from the culture and to build healthy relationships that don't bruise and abuse one another:

• Cherish others for their dignity—develop relationships that value the uniqueness of the whole person rather than seeing each other as sexual objects to fulfill temporary desires.
• Personalize the consequences of the hookup culture to others—show how and why hooking up creates emotional and psychological pain and strains friendships.
• Use scientific facts to make a strong case against the hookup culture—know and share the research on the negative psycho-biological effects of the hookup culture.
• Be an example—show others how a life of not hooking up makes people more happy, fulfilled and confident.

Hook-up Culture Hurts Boys Too

"An entire generation of parents has spent years panicking about the effects of hookup culture on girls. But what about boys?" asks Ryan Sager @ Time magazine. "That’s the question Rosalind Wiseman takes on in this week’s issue of TIME."

For her new book, Masterminds and Wingmen, she delves into the world of boys. As the mother of two boys, she was eager to make sure that their side of the story was not left out. During two years of research, she interviewed hundreds of boys across the country — individually, in groups, over the course of extended e-mail correspondences — and their stories are really quite striking.

As Wiseman writes, we assume that boys are the perpetrators and beneficiaries of hookup culture — and thus we tend to ignore its effects on them. But those effects, it turns out, can be rather rough.

Boys and young men are much more complicated than our popular culture acknowledges. Here, then, are nine surprising things Wiseman discovered about boys, drawn both from her book and from her piece in this week’s magazine.

Rosalind Wiseman's full article, What Boys Want, is behind Time's paywall, but Sager's preview article, 9 Reasons 'Hookup Culture' Hurts Boys Too, is online, and the reasons he lists may surprise the ladies.