A book review of Girls Uncovered, by my friend Glenn Stanton, here.
While only 20 percent of young women answered that oral sex is sex (such a question reminds me of the Saturday Night Live “Celebrity Jeopardy” skit where Darrell Hammond’s Sean Connery is stumped by the category “Colors That End in Urple”), more than 40 percent of 15- to 17-year-olds have had oral sex, while 70 percent of 18-year-olds have done so. And it doesn’t get better the older they get. For 20- and 21-year-old women, more than 80 percent report having had both vaginal and oral sex. More than 25 percent report having had anal sex. More disturbing, more than 40 percent of early post-teen women report having engaged in oral sex in the last thirty days. Now anyone who believes these girls are empowered, doing exactly what they want to do, when they want to do it, don’t know the hearts and minds of most girls. They want meaningful relationships where their boyfriends commit, taking them seriously and treating them respectfully. It was not young girls who invented the hook-up culture. But they do acquiesce to it.
A while back now I reviewed Donna Freitas’s Sex and the Soul. It said something similar. And then Dr. Miriam Grossman (Anonymous, MD) and Jennifer Roback Morse also wrote books saying something similar. “Sex is sexist” is a line from this most recent book review. But it’s true, in so far as men and women experience sex differently and want different things from it.
I’d be interested in the book that examines what the hook-up culture does to boys. A friend of mine was recently asked out on a date where she had to pick the guy up, from his parent’s house, he was late, he emerged wearing a robot t-shirt, he made her pay half for a pitcher that she wasn’t really drinking since she was driving and then, wait for it, wanted her to stay over.Wow.
Where did he get the idea that this was a workable proposition? Come on, science, study the negative effects of the hook up culture on boys, too.
______________________
Correction: Said fellow did not ask my friend out, but rather texted her for long enough that she suggested perhaps they could meet. A natural thing to suggest, I’d say. However, it’s worth noting that he didn’t even have the gumption to ask her out.
by 
I was reading along and not thinking too much till I read 21 year old women. That’s how old I was when I got married (7 years ago Monday)….just like many of the people at the conservative Christian university I went to. If you want your daughters to wait till they are married to have sex they are much more likely to marry their college sweetheart as soon as they can support themselves (one week after finals: hello!). I have never been around the ‘hook up culture’, even incidentally, but I don’t think he knows the “hearts and minds of most girls” either. A 21 year old woman in a relationship probably /wants/ to have sex, whether or not she is choosing to have sex. It makes me wonder if a lot of it is just playing on parents fears of their children growing up. I would not have appreciated being called an ‘early post-teen woman’ as a young, married, college graduate. I was a young adult, yes, but an adult capable of making my own life decisions. And I may be a bit mushy because it’s my anniversary but I’ve been very very happy with that decision ;). And I’ll be proud to be able to hold up to my sons so many examples of couples in our family and friend group who waited till they were married :).