ARTICLE ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT TheEighty8.com:
DATING & SEX, RELATIONSHIPS MAY 21, 2014
What I’m about to say may come off as a little harsh, but my mother always told me that being straightforward was always better than sugarcoating an issue.
Sometimes Betty Crocker can’t even make a poorly baked cake look better. So why should you try to be sweet with an issue that can’t be dressed up and presented as something acceptable?
There are countless articles on the interwebs about “the hook-up culture” and how it is ruining relationships for millennials. Girls are settling for hooking up guys who don’t actually want to date them, and subsequently perpetuating the idea that men don’t need to commit to women in order to get what they want.
While the hook-up culture is absolutely a factor in changing the relationship landscape of today, the reality is that the entire culture can be entirely changed by women–we just have to want to do it.
This isn’t new news, but there is a double standard in society that says women cannot have the same hook up patterns (publicly) as men. I don’t plan on going into the idiocy of this notion, nor do I feel like I should have to explain to the other half of the human race that women are just as sexually charged as men, but unfortunately, in today’s world, girls cannot go around hooking up with multiple people in short periods of time without earning some sort of derogatory label.
With the advent of technology and the ridiculous idea that being tied down to one person during your twenties is insane, women have settled for steady hooks ups rather than relationships. This is all fine and well until you’re faced with a complete degenerate asshole who doesn’t respect you as a human being.
If you happen to be one of those girls who has decided to engage in a casual hook up situation with Mr. Douche, than please listen very carefully to what I am about to say.
You knew he wasn’t going to be boyfriend material when you started hooking up with him. There was never any thought in your mind that it would turn into something more than sex. When talking about him with your friends, you have associated his name with the following: douche, asshole and loser. You are aware that he does not respect you, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.
The way I see it, you have two choices. You can choose to make sex the priority. You can accept that he doesn’t respect you in the way that he should, and fully look at it as you needing your needs met just as much as he needs his. But it will have to be on a ‘good for him’ basis, because you know he doesn’t always follow through with plans.
Or you can choose to make yourself the priority. Awareness of your personal worth and value as a human being is something so easily compromised today. While you may have needs just like a guy does, by not putting self respect above sex, you’re perpetuating the hook-up culture. You’re making it okay for guys to not call when they say they will, flake on plans and disrespect girls because they know they will be able to get what they want at a later time.
It starts with girls respecting themselves. No one said changing the world was easy, and it’s not always a fair fight. But the girl who respects herself puts out a far better vibe than the girl who is just down for anything, and guys will notice that.
Half and Half 
Why I have a problem with this post:
There is absolutely nothing empowering about anything that was said. Sure, the double-standard was acknowledged, but the solution was for women to simply revert back to “self-respect” and not sleeping around.
That’s 100% the wrong answer.
First, it’s implied that there’s an issue with the hook-up culture; not true. The hook-up culture is not for everyone, but there are far more people who would benefit from sex-capades than not. I’ll try to refrain from the monogamy speech, but basically the concept is bullshit; hook-up culture is the closest we’ve been to acting “normal” for our species than we have in a long time.
Also, it paints the picture of the woman not knowing how to properly hook-up. I’m sorry, but if you get into the sex game, get attached and get your feelings hurt that’s your own damn problem. Women are just as, if not more-so, capable of having a casual hook-up and keeping her self-respect in tact. Self-respect is not solely linked to sex, otherwise men would have the worst body image, highest suicide and eating disorder rates, blah, blah blah. That’s clearly not the case.
If a man is a McAsshole and you want him to be your McSexDoll you simply have to treat him as shitty as he treats you (the saying “treat others the way you want to be treated” was a golden rule for a reason!) and you’ll see him miraculously start acting like you would typically act. Don’t have sex with him unless it’s on your terms. Don’t give him head unless he’s giving you head. Make sure he knows he’s not the only guy in your life (even if he is) and make sure he has the understanding that he owns no part of you whatsoever! You hold the pussy — you hold the power!
It’s not a matter of changing hook-up culture as much as it is a matter of changing the woman’s thought process. She’s her own person. She has every right to be sexually open and to not be ashamed of her body. She has the right to one-night-stands and little black books without being called a whore and she most DEFINITELY has all right to play all the games men play on men. Women have a right to hold on to their self-esteem and have self-worth outside of how many men they’ve slept with or who their husband is. This article doesn’t bring out any of those points at all. It simply tries to reverse any progress made in women liberation.
Not saying that women have to feel this way or interact with hook-up culture; that’s a personal choice. I’m only stating that women have the right to choose if they want to play the game or not without feeling as if they’re supposed to feel regret for it.
I love everything you said, and I completely agree with it. I don’t think there is anything wrong with hooking up, and if it didn’t translate, it was more for women to stop complaining about guys treating them horribly, and for letting it happen. It’s not in any way meant to deter women from being sexually open or active, because that’s who we are, and it needs to be acknowledged. Rather, it should be noted that women who do choose to engage in casual hook ups need to come to terms that they are what they are, and accept them, rather than complaining that the person doesn’t want to date them.
Thank you for reading! I loved your points, all valid, all very true. RESPECT.
Wait, wait, wait. I think I always acted like the guy in the relationship, but now I’m sure. I always prioritized both myself and the sex, and was happy to hook-up when that’s what I wanted.
I like that you’re taking on tough issues. Go girl!
I feel the same way. It’s more about knowing what you want, knowing what you’re getting, and accepting it for what it is, regardless of the status or label.
Thanks for reading!
Excellent post. Hosever, I must arrest you for a “War on Women” crime 🙂
Sometimes I think that the progress we make socially is overrated. I’m imagining that when we were apes, we didn’t have such things as marriages, girlfriends, or boyfriends. There was no romantic love, such as that which we experience today. Everything was communal, resources, people, shared, shared, shared. Then we had a change of the system, so that everybody could get a partner (or partners), fall in love, marry, something, etc. It didn’t work that well. It isn’t working that well. Now we are headed back to the beginning and thinking it is new, calling it liberation–which is probably what we called the invention of romantic love and marriage. Share, share, share. And share some more. It’s like a circle. We are going round and round.
However, understandably, we are in a closed system. We are trapped here. And we have only a handful options, though they might seem plentiful and varied. I once heard a man say, that the end shall be as the beginning. One language, one people, one enormous fuck-up! I can’t say that he was wrong. Afterwards, we will begin to break up again and start doing the things we do now, setting up boundaries and laws and rules and biases and stigmas, and thinking they are all new and good, they are all development, civilization, etc. It’s like that thing about a dog going back to its own puddle of puke and always thinking it’s fresh food. Always. It’s like thinking that the ancient people were less intelligent than we, yet we can’t understand how they did the things they did, like putting up the pyramids, the Easter Island statue, how they understood the solar system, the concept of energy, etc, but we do the same things, only a little different.
Perhaps it is important to note that the problem with the world is us, is in us. We deal with these problems by projecting them on other people and punishing them severely, thinking we’re saving ourselves. We are not.
“Which way I go, hell follows with me; myself am hell.” Milton.
This is a good post, Meg. I find you to be a very thoughtful person, which is why I keep coming back. Thoughtfulness is one of the virtues that seem to be increasingly disappearing from amongst us. But that should be expected, shouldn’t it? After all, we’re time-travelling back to the beginning!
Thank you so much! I totally agree 🙂
I think there are two separate, but interconnected issues here: the hookup and the relationship. The one blogger comment focused rather harshly on the hookup being a woman’s equal power if played equally, and ignored your point about its correlation with the downfall of the relationship. But insulting the hookup wasn’t really your point, was it? Sure, perhaps, as someone else wants to say, biologically man likes to spread his seed; true, but patriarchal society, and even matriarchies are also responsible for “the family unit” in all cultures, in all known human history. We can build arguments for the value of both, but we can’t ignore that we have needed the “relationship”; even the most “liberated” among us tend to get possessive when we find “relationship material”-a person we truly value. All folks I know who don’t seem to mind sharing their “mates” tend to get all bristled and threatened when a sex partner challenges their future with a favored “mate.”. In other words, possessiveness of someone we truly value is as natural as the rest of our sexuality.
But back to your point about Hooking up vs. the relationship. Calling any hookup partner post sex, that you are still planning to continue hooking up with, a douche, dick, asshole implies that he is grossly unlikeable, right? Which means that women are now choosing sex partners on purely meat standards, as men have done since they were free to do so. Here’s where I obviously am stale. I, and most of the women I know, don’t find really pretty men who aren’t likeable sexy. Thus, any sexy man in my book, is likable, and therefore possible relationship material. . .sigh. The flaw in the design. 🙂
Totally right, I agreed with Loww on her points about women’s right to do what they want in a hook up situation, as the double standard shouldn’t exist in the first place. But, the whole point was about girls complaining about not getting a relationship when they know full well going into it what the terms of it are.
It’s basically like, don’t be shocked, because you agreed to this.
In response to Loww:
“Sexual freedom, sexual liberation. A modern delusion. We are hierarchical animals. Sweep one hierarchy away, and another will take its place, perhaps less palatable than the first.” ― Camille Paglia