Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4, Section 1 Summary and Analysis: “What’s Sauce for the Gander”

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual assault.

“Hookup culture” inspires panic among older generations, but research shows that young people aren’t having more intercourse than they used to. Orenstein pinpoints the pill, the rise of the women’s rights movement, and the sexual revolution—all of which happened when Baby Boomers came of age—as the beginning of the big rise in premarital sex among young people. Hookup culture is only different in that sex is separated from intimacy; sometimes it’s a precursor to it, and more often it’s a replacement for it. There is no emotional commitment beyond sex.

By senior year of college, most students report having an average of seven hookups. Mostly affluent, white heterosexuals hook up, while hookups are least common among African American women and Asian men. Studies show that most young adults overestimate their peers’ preference for hookups: In reality, about 80% of subjects from both sexes said they’d like to be in relationships.

While some girls say they feel liberated by hookup culture—free to avoid emotional responsibility for their partners—Orenstein finds that hookups are rarely physically satisfying for women. Men rarely perform cunnilingus during hookups, and only 40% of women have orgasms during hookups involving intercourse. Men tend to be less interested than women in their hookup partners’ pleasure, and while 82% of men say they feel good about their hookups, only 57% of women feel the same.

However, hookup culture also provides benefits for women. Women used to experience pressure to find husbands in college instead of focusing on their careers and self-actualization, and young women were often stigmatized if they pursued sexual connection without a relationship. Now that has changed. Many of the girls Orenstein interviewed claimed to be too busy for relationships. Hookups allow girls to enjoy a sex life while focusing on their academic and professional goals.

Orenstein expresses concern about the implication that women can’t balance romance and ambition, which she calls a throwback to the idea that women can’t have it all. Psychotherapist Leslie Bell agrees. She points out that young adults believe their identities can only grow outside of relationships, and only once they’ve developed themselves enough can they have relationships. She calls this “a perversion of relatedness and interdependence—as though for women to participate in a relationship will always mean a loss of self” (108). Young women might be overcorrecting from the days when unpartnered women were stigmatized.

Orenstein is careful to point out that relationships shouldn’t be idealized, though. The girls she interviewed shared a range of stories, and for those who had been in relationships, some found happiness while others experienced abuse, manipulation, and emotional pain. There wasn’t a dogged attitude toward hookups or relationships among the girls she interviewed. Orenstein concludes that hookups are neither “good” nor “bad,” so much as another sex culture that young women have to navigate while maintaining agency and respect.

Chapter 4, Section 2 Summary and Analysis: “The Happy Hookup”

At the colleges Orenstein visited, Greek life dominated the hookup scene. Most sororities are voluntarily dry, so fraternities provide the alcohol and escort girls to parties. Alcohol is a huge part of college hookup culture, and when it comes to many fraternities, so are misogyny and racism. Lisa Wade, a sociology professor, calls the combination of drinking and casual sex “compulsory carelessness,” in which college women “signal to one another that the sex they’re having is meaningless” (117). College women—white women in particular—binge drink an average of three times a month. Most college students get drunk before random hookups—89% of them—and 75% get drunk before hookups with acquaintances. Penetration of any kind is more likely to occur if alcohol is involved, and girls who drink before hooking up are more likely to regret the experience. Meanwhile, Orenstein’s interviewees suggested that the idea of sober sex for college women seems “awkward,” as it suggests the desire for a real relationship.

Chapter 4, Section 3 Summary and Analysis: “Everyone’s Slutty Friend”

Megan, a college student, wrestled with how to feel about her behavior with men. She playfully said, “I’m the slutty friend” (124), but then she also noted that, “No boy wants to date the slut” (124). Orenstein observes a tension in which girls say they don’t “slut” shame, but then they do and then police their own behavior as well. Despite the normalization of casual sex, the idea of a “slut” didn’t go away with hookup culture: It just became more complicated. Megan shared that girls want to find a balance between being effortlessly hot without being desperate or overly sexual. Girls have to walk a thin, confusing tightrope.

Orenstein observes that girls faking orgasms is on the rise and cites many reasons that girls do so: they’re bored, they want the sex to be over, they’re in pain, or they don’t want to upset their partners’ egos. With this, she concludes that girls don’t have hookups for physical pleasure, or at least rarely do; girls mostly enjoy the excitement of the hookup itself and feeling special.

Chapter 4, Section 4 Summary and Analysis: “When the Fun Stops”

Megan recounted a time when she got too drunk and hooked up with a boy who pushed for intercourse and raped her when she said no, both vaginally and anally. The next morning, he dropped her off, and she thanked him, which she still regrets.

College women face a greater risk of rape due to campus party scenes. Orenstein observes that girls are expected to be “fun” and deferential, to not make a fuss if someone playfully grabs their ass or does something similar. “Fun girls” drink freely, letting go of inhibitions at the cost of control. Alcohol can make it more difficult to resist, remember, or even report sexual assault. A Justice Department study found that only around 20% of campus sexual assault victims file reports (less than their non-student peers). The reasons are numerous: fear of blowback, shame or self-blame, and the low rate of punishment for assailants. Campus rapes are complicated in that the instances include many factors and mixed cultural messages, including the fact that hookups themselves can create a blurry landscape for consent.

While most college students report that they are happy with their last hookups, the majority express regret over some of their casual sex experiences; boys often feel bad about using people, and girls feel bad about being used.

Chapter 4, Section 5 Summary and Analysis: “Victims or Victors?”

This section focuses on “friends with benefits,” arrangements that Orenstein finds rarely work out well. Most often, the friendship winds up damaged or destroyed because one person develops feelings.

Psychologist Leslie Bell says that girls are neither victims nor victors when it comes to hookups and that they’re setting themselves up for disappointment. Orenstein asserts that hookups rarely provide opportunities for girls to learn how to have good sex or healthy relationships. She also observes that many women pride themselves in cultivating emotional distance:

Some girls bragged to me that they could “have sex like a guy,” by which they meant they could engage without emotion, they could objectify their partners as fully and reductively as boys often objectified them. That seemed a sad, low road to equality (140).

While girls might assume that behaving like the oppressor instead of the oppressed is liberation, Orenstein notes that young women’s choices within hookup culture are still limited by cultural expectations. Objectifying or using boys doesn’t repair the patriarchal injuries for either sex. She argues that it would be much more revolutionary if boys started having sex like girls: caring about their partner’s pleasure and emotional well-being.