Even stories saying women are doing really super great with the hookup culture have a bit of a poignant side:
When I asked Tali what she really wanted, she didn’t say anything about commitment or marriage or a return to a more chivalrous age. “Some guy to ask me out on a date to the frozen-yogurt place,” she said. That’s it. A $3 date.
You can have random sex, but you can’t get a guy to take you out for ice cream. Well done, sexual revolution, well done.








When I was a teen, the sexual revolution was just gearing up. I remember my mom giving me a set of books called the Life Cycle Library (in lieu of the “talk.”) My friends and I laughed (out loud!) at the suggestion that a “date” could consist of inviting a boy over to make brownies. I still wish I had had such a date (sigh).
I just wonder how engaging in the hookup culture will play out later in a woman’s life. I can’t really see a woman lying on her deathbed wishing that she had random sex with more relative strangers in her formative years. I can however, see a woman coming to regret an abortion, or a case of herpes, or even that good guy that got away.
We don’t encourage reflection nearly enough in our culture. Is the hookup culture good for women? It’s not good for the women it chews up and spits out.
Reading this article made me so angry I can no longer focus on work… !!
The sexual revolution has helped young women become successful?! Being successful in school requires STUDYING of a Friday evening, not depreciating one’s body.
I couldn’t even finish reading the garbage spewed out in that article. Another tired, unimaginative apologia for bad behaviour. Where is the common sense and moderation in this notion of sex for sex’s sake… most people do not, and do not want to, live like that. Once again, I ask the question: how does such nihilistic, egocentric, assine behaviour advance women’s rights?
I find it comforting to read all of your comments!
And Brigid, that is the question. When did women’s rights come to be associated with nihilism, egocentrism and generally asinine behaviour?
As a student who was in university until recently and who didn’t engage in the hook-up culture at all, I wonder what planet this writer is on. Hook-ups are good for women because now we can focus on our careers?! That’s like saying we can all own cars because of condoms. The two are not mutually exclusive. Did it ever occur to these girls or the writer of this article that a girl could maybe, I don’t know, not have sex. They are willing to put married life on hold, does that mean they have to act like slags and sleep around?
It is this philosophy that says for a woman to be successful, she has to be like a man. Maybe they could get out of the box and say, if I want to be successful, I should be goal focussed. The oddest line was the girls who didn’t want to the hook-up culture to end, even though they were petitioning against it. It’s almost like Stockholm syndrome; they have been so indoctrinated into this culture sans morals that they are willing to perpetuate it. It’s all they know and they’ve been educated to believe that not having sex or being involved with a good relationship is a recipe for disaster or a sexual hang-up.
Frankly, I think these women should learn a little Hebrew. In Wendy Shalit’s book ‘A Return to Modesty’, she quotes a Hebrew saying: “Einb’not yisrael hefker. It means that the daughters of Israel are not available for public use.”
LOR – as a woman who mourns, and is bewildered by, the loss of modesty in our culture, I am thrilled to learn that others have taken notice and have actually written about it. I will definitely pick up a copy of Wendy Shalit’s book. Thanks for that.