Browsing by Subject "Hook-up"

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    Free(dom)inated: A Feminist Examination of Hookup Culture’s Sexual Empowerment and Sexual Policing of Duke University Undergraduate Women
    (2017-05-05) Farless, Hayley
    How do Duke University undergraduate women experience the seemingly empowering norms of hookup culture? While debate rages among feminists, scholars, journalists, and others as to whether or not hookup culture is beneficial for young women, this research offers a fresh perspective via an ethnographic examination of undergraduate women at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and how they experience hookup culture in a larger structure of male-privileged society. Based on interviews, qualitative surveys, and participant-observation on campus and at parties and bars, I explore the gendered elements of hookup culture and how they simultaneously sexually empower and oppress women at Duke’s campus. I argue that hookup culture polices women and their sexuality; that is, while hookup culture normalizes female participation in sex, it forces women into a prude–slut dichotomy. I then focus on the carnivalesque nightclub and the fraternity party as the primary sites where hookups are initiated, asserting that these spaces encourage female sexuality but also pressure women to objectify and commodify themselves. Finally, I consider the emerging, liminal space of the smartphone application Tinder and its gendered relation with hookup culture, in which women gain more control of the hookup space but are subjected to dehumanization and self-objectification. I argue that although the cultural norms of collegiate hookup culture seem to empower women’s expressions of sexuality by normalizing sexual activity for women, these same cultural norms actually contribute to Duke women’s sexual oppression by policing, objectifying, and commodifying female sexuality to serve male pleasure. This conclusion leads to a broader claim for future research: any degree of female sexual liberation that occurs within patriarchal society and male-privileging social structures only serves to placate women and perpetuate male sexual power.
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    How to end the hook-up culture: An economic and institutional examination of the hook- up culture on college campuses
    (2014-04-21) Strunk, Daniel
    The hook-up culture that exists amongst modern day college students is a well-documented phenomenon in sociological, psychological, and gender studies research, but little to no research exists examining such a culture from an economic or institutional perspective. This paper provides a definitional summary of the literature on the hook-up culture, examining its social norms, origins, and harms, and adds that the hook-up culture can be conceptualized as an economic club good. Borrowing upon Gerry Mackie’s work, it then argues that the hook-up culture can be viewed as a societal convention analogous to the historic Chinese practice of footbinding and the modern day practice of Female Genital Mutilation. Importantly, the author does not claim that the hook-up culture harms men and women to the same degree as footbinding or FGM. Both footbinding and FGM are degrees of magnitude more harmful and more demoralizing than the hook-up culture—and it would be offensive to argue otherwise. Instead, the author’s point in making the comparison is solely structural: when each of the three conventions persist, they persist because those harmed cannot socially coordinate. Thus, to understand how to end the hook-up culture, it is helpful to understand how similar conventions ended (or could end). The paper then provides three frameworks for “solving” the harms the hook-up culture propagates.