Nowadays, it seems like everyone has either thought about or participated in the culture of having casual sex (i.e. one night stands) without any emotional intimacy. Yes, we’re talking about the hookup culture that has grown in popularity in recent years, for better or worse. The rise of hookup culture can be attributed to many things, such as the feminist movement, and dating apps.
Hookup culture has always been seen as “a man’s game”, and there’s the idea that only men are capable of dividing their emotions and their bodies. And we all know how harmful the culture is for women, but SPOILER ALERT: It’s bad for everyone, even boys.
How Did We Get Here?
As we said, dating apps play a HUGE part in hookup culture. In some studies done on University campuses, comparisons were made in differences between female mating strategies and male mating strategies. What they found is that whichever sex was the minority on the campus was the one that got to dictate the mating strategy, since they were more in demand compared to the opposite sex.
So, on campuses where women were the minority sex, they had a higher percentage of monogamous relationships, because women’s natural dating strategy is monogamy. Yet on the campuses where men were the minority, the campuses had higher rates of hookups, as men’s natural dating strategy is polygamy.
The issue is that dating nowadays is done through dating apps, and dating app data show that women only swipe ‘Right’ 15% of the time, a.k.a making the men the minority, which gives them the power to dictate the mating strategy, which is often having casual relationships with multiple women at once.
Hookup Culture Doesn’t Solve Loneliness
Though hookup culture deliberately means to have sex devoid of any emotions attached, the reality is, many people do hookups to experience emotional closeness. Sounds contradictory, but it’s true. The culture assumes that guys, unlike girls, lack the basic emotional capacity and vulnerability for love. In the end, that sense of loneliness will still be there, and more often than not, it leaves you with hurt feelings, even emptier than before. What many fail to understand is: Your emotional and psychological needs are equally important as your physical needs (if not more).
All that time you spend on casual meaningless hookups and surface level relationships takes away from actually finding someone you can have an emotional relationship with. The issue is that most people want emotional closeness, they just don’t prioritize it. So, in order to get that sense of fulfillment, you HAVE to have emotional connections.
Having Hookups Doesn’t Make You Better Than Others
It’s not uncommon for men to feel pressured into having meaningless sex, especially nowadays, when pop culture loves to portray men who have many different partners as the “alpha male”, or more desirable men. This can be seen in music and TV, with the endless number of songs talking about “hooking up”, having a different girl every night, or even showing off the fact that they’ve slept with a bunch of girls. However, just like how women are mentally affected by hookup culture, men are also susceptible to it too. Researchers have found that participants who were not depressed before showed more depressive symptoms and loneliness after engaging in casual sex. Continuing the narrative that having hookups makes you more ‘manly’ or ‘better than the others’ will do nothing but harm the mental well-being of other young men out there, who often think predatory behaviour is synonymous with masculinity.
Not to mention, having hookups doesn’t mean you’re having good sex. Just like trying anything new in life, it takes practice, and you won’t always get it right the first time. Getting in bed with a stranger who you just met and who knows nothing about you; including what you like and don’t like in bed, won’t satisfy your sexual cravings. Emotional intimacy often bolsters sexual intimacy, because when you’re more emotionally connected to your partner, you’re more willing to connect sexually.
In short, hookups don’t make you more manly, it just shows that you’re afraid to open up emotionally and be vulnerable to your partners because you don’t want to get hurt, which is not really ‘manly’ at all. Healthy masculinity means being emotionally expressive, and being honest with yourself about your own feelings and needs. What do you really want?
Closing Thoughts
Hookup culture is bad for both men and women. The idea that men don’t get negatively affected by hookup culture is simply false and very harmful to young and impressionable men. Rather than finding fulfillment in hookups, we should be teaching young men to be respectful towards women. But of course, while men are the ones who are causing hookup culture, women are also enabling it. So both men and women have a responsibility in ending this toxic hookup culture.
