Just as I was writing my post about the hook-up culture and death of dating, the feminist blog-sphere was being lit up. In this corner the old argument “is the hook-up generation bad for girls?” had been dug up from the bin of tossed around ideas, like a discarded dress with shoulder-pads finding itself once again trendy.
Dusting off the question–usually favored by conservatives– was an unusually fresh “girl’s expert” Rachel Simmons who writes advice for TeenVogue. Her argument was that during this era of easy hook-ups and birth control pills, girls are being expected to be casual and cool about relationships. And that the ball is in the dude’s court on whether or not they become girlfriend-boyfriend.
The girls are then left with bated breath, hoping that he will ask. So pretty much the same old story we’ve been fed throughout generations. Only this time they are engaging in blowjobs before he asks her to the prom and she comes down the stairs in slow-motion with a make-over.
Rachel’s thing is that this is detrimental to girls because the power lies in the guys court. I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that this does happen and that it is a product of patriarch. But Rachel falls into the trap of pining a bit too much over the courting rituals of old. If the hook-up culture is rooted in patriarchy, old style courting was buried in it. I don’t need to point out how the same sexism that ran through dating has trickled down into the hook-up culture. Kate Harding already explained it on Salon more swiftly and gracefully then I ever could.
What does get old for me in Harding’s argument are the many assertions of how the patriarchy hurts women in dating. I think it is sad that some women let men decide when and if they will date– shockingly sad that women’s magazines and self help books have us ruminating over being perfect for a man. But the patriarchy hurts everyone. The male version of “10 ways to keep a man” is the “how to impress a girl ala Maxim/Mystery. Both are products of the patriarchy and I’d rather pluck out my eyelashes then read articles on either.
The advice Rachel Simmons needs to give her TeenVogue readers is to simply start being honest. First honest with themselves about whether or not they truly want a relationship (or if it just seems like the right thing to do.) And second, to start being radically honest with their partners about what they want.
Because that is how we are going to change this. It isn’t going to be about “teaching boys to be more respectful of girls” as she suggests, because really that is not the issue here. It isn’t an issue of conscious disrespect, but rather of playing an expected silent game. The issue here is that these kids are not talking about the relationships they are in. And let’s be honest, it is not just kids doing this.
Now, back to “do I even want a relationship?” This gets sticky when there is social conditioning on how to feel about hook-ups and boyfriends. Girl-Drive sums this up beautifully in her post on the matter “If we’re told that casual sex is unfulfilling and that we’re going to want relationships, chances are we’ll end up wanting them. And why not? That’s what Seventeen, Glamour, and all my friends always told me.”
We should teach girls that they don’t have to justify their hook-ups to themselves. Hooking up is fine, great even for some people. Teenagers are sexual beings with a right to a sex life, and consensual sex of any kind is okay.
11 Comments
Ain’t that the truth! If people want healthy relationships, they need to be more honest, they need to have communication skills, they need to be SELF-aware, and they need to be able to tell potential partners what their wants and desires are. I wouldn’t hurt if people would treat each other equally and with respect in relationships, too!
I have eight years experience with the same woman, and an open, poly relationship, as reference to knowing what I am saying.
Laws,
Thanks so much for your encouraging comment! It is so refreshing to find that there are other people out there who “get it” and are also spreading an agenda of self-awareness. The only other thing I can really say is like, fuck yeah, or rock on or something equally embarrassing.
Another amazing article. I share your blogs but I am not sure if anyone is reading them. I wish I could just send it directly into the consciousness of a lot of people on facebook. They could really use your insight.
This has been an ongoing frustration for me and a lot of my male friends. There’s a ton of pressure on males to do ‘all the work’ in the courting arena which tends to lead to a lot of ridiculous posturing and chest puffing. I can’t tell you how many girls I’ve (over)heard talking about how they’d never ask a guy out.
The conversation usually starts with ‘that’s their job’, but ends up boiling down to ‘I’d be terrified of being rejected’. If guys actually had a realistic sense of how many/which girls were actually into them, then they’d probably have a lot fewer issues with confidence/over-compensation.
Great article as always!
Thanks Kevin!
Sam, oohh you are inspiring me for a new piece. I wonder if women would be open to dating advice of this sort…
I blame rom-coms.
You know Sam, I think you are onto something. In the feminist-sphere one hears a lot of bashing of fairy-tales and Disney for their hurtful and sexist undertones but really the rom-com is just the modern, adult version of that. Now, let’s go picket Jennifer Anniston’s house!
Ha ha ha! Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Seriously though, there appears to be this myth that women can project their desires and men will read their minds and know just what the right response is and everything will be easy. But then when guys aren’t succumbing to the ‘obvious’ overtures, the disappointment sets in, and guys are dumb and oblivious.
Not that I’m bitter or anything.
And that’s also not to say that there aren’t some douchey block-headed dudes out there, but human interaction should be an act of being present and not fall back on X-Men abilities.
You bring up a great point. And the thing is I don’t think this game of expecting men to “just know” and make the relationship perfect ends with dating. If anything I think it gets worse with marriage and long term relationships, and ultimately contributes to a lot of divorces.
Going back to the rom-com fairy-tales we’ve all been fed, women are taught that marriage is the solution to all of their problems. And when her mate doesn’t “fix” her (like we’ve been promised they will) and she finds that she still has all of the same baggage and issues, she begins to think this is HIS fault, something is wrong with HIM. Never-mind the fact that this is entirely unfair and unattainable thing to expect from a relationship.
I think this passive attitude really hurts men and women, and it just gets reinforced everywhere
the truth is that a relationship can never fix you, only you can fix you. But saying that gets so easily written off as therapy-self-help-babble.
It also tends to reinforce terrible stereotypes that men are prone to propagate. If a woman becomes disappointed that a man didn’t respond to an issue he’s unaware of, men tend to write that off as being ‘crazy’, which is really disarming and diminishing, often escalates the problem, and in the end doesn’t do us dudes any good.
Obviously it’s a man’s responsibility to not to be so dismissive, but what can I say, we’ve got our own house to get in order too. Often quite literally, but that’s another conversation.
Hey I’m interested in the idea that women should direct courtship more….never really thought of this before in that way.
I guess because historically women have been the “gate-keepers” of sex, the burden has fallen onto men to “prove themselves interested or worthy” of that “gate” which to a woman who really cares for the guy, means a relationship.
I think the problem comes when two narratives are being negotiated separately at the same time, in terms of dating: the sexual progression and the relationship progression. In the “old” days they were supposed to go step in step, advancement in one narrative similar to meaning as advancement in the other narrative. But nowadays, with casual relationships and hooking up, these narratives have been disentangled from each other and it becomes harder to communicate unless each person is extremely direct at each stage, which is a mature and hard thing to do.
For someone who is less mature in terms of dating or sexual experience, like myself, it leads to a lot of fear beyond just “fear of rejection” that everyone experiences. I have a fear that I don’t “know how to play the game” or that I will have to “play a game” instead of just being myself.
When I have absorbed more images and experiences of women who are in control of their sexuality while fully experiencing it, I think these anxieties will subside. As it is, I think I have been trained to see women who feel comfortable separating sexuality from “relationships” as somehow compromised, even on a level they are not aware of. I don’t know yet what my full feelings are about this even still. Ultimately, I think it is damaging to have sex when you don’t actually want to. And that the decision to have sex with someone is different from feeling attraction, different from really liking them even. I wish there were more discussion or appreciation for these nuances, besides what I am instead inculcated with: mere images of “sexually liberated women” with no story or narrative about their experiences and choices. Men and women are led to imagine that sexual independence is a personality type or lifestyle based on having a lot of sex…rather than an openness to sexuality itself, an openness to choices.