time in such a normal way). I 
found that one side of this spec­
trum sees the sexual freedom 
that hookup culture offers as 
liberating, and think that casual 
hookups save time for more 
important things. From this per­
spective, collegiate women are 
overachieving, highly-focused 
“girl bosses” who simply didn’t 
have time to be tied down to a 
man, and so turn to hookup cul­
ture as the most time-efficient 
type of relationship.
With hookup culture, “you still 
get to manage your dreams 
and aspirations and your career 
without. .needing to give too 
much romantically to men. It’s 
kind of like de-centering men,” 
Iris hypothesized.
Like Iris, many women also see 
their participation in hookup 
culture as a way to rail against 
the stereotype that women are 
more emotional and depen­
dent. “There is the narrative of 
an expectation that the woman 
should want more and the man 
should want less,” Haverford 
junior Jasmine explains, and 
hookups are one way to dis­
prove that sexist idea.
However, this cut-and-dry ver­
sion of female empowerment 
doesn’t sit right with everyone. 
Some of the women I spoke 
with noted the ways in which 
hookup culture seems to be 
set up against women, and—
ironically—intimacy. Because 
hookups are often between ac­
quaintances and strangers, and 
because our generation has a 
pathological fear of awkward­
ness, the culture is designed in 
a way so participants have to do 
the least amount of communi­
cation possible. This ambiguity 
means that students can avoid 
the dreaded awkwardness, but 
it also means that women are 
often subjected to unwanted 
or aggressive attention from 
men that they aren’t given much 
vocabulary with which to disen­
gage. 
Not just that: if you treat your 
partner too lovingly or respect­
fully, it could seem like you are 
looking for a relationship, and 
since talking things through 
itself would be implying too 
much seriousness, the only way 
to prove you are being “cool 
and casual” is to treat your part­
ner poorly. 
Amy, a junior at New York 
University who has “dabbled” 
in hookup culture over the 
years, echoed that idea in my 
interview with her. “The actual 
connotations around dating 
have shifted so heavily, so you 
only do those sweet things 
given you’re committed,” she 
explained. Iris notices the shift 
after a hookup has finished. 
“The bad thing about hookup 
culture,” she tells me, “is be­
cause it’s so casual. . .you sort 
of skip all the steps of intimacy.” 
She gets scared by the way that, 
once the hookup is over, “you 
wake up in the morning and 
[the person has] completely 
changed”: they’ve revoked the 
kindness they used to get her in 
“It would bother me 
when we would hook 
up and he would say 
thank you, because 
that meant I was giving 
him something.” 
bed as a way to remind her that 
she’s just a hookup. 
To many women and men alike, 
hookup culture can feel very 
transactional, and deep con­
nection—something important 
for social wellbeing—seems to 
take a backseat. It is absolute­
ly true that not every woman 
wants a relationship out of a 
hookup, but for those who do 
or for those who are unsure, it 
can feel conflicting. Amy had 
this experience with her most 
recent boyfriend, who started 
as a casual hookup. “I had this 
service—which sounds kind of 
awful—but [hooking up] was a 
service I could give and it was 
something that he wanted, 
and that was maybe my way 
of keeping him around. And 
that definitely felt awful,” she 
admitted. “It would bother me 
when we would hook up and 
he would say thank you,” Amy 
continues, “because that meant 
I was giving him something.”
It is that transactional expec­
tation—whether feigned or 
real—that is a breeding ground 
for dangerous behavior. Mad­
die, a Haverford junior who is 
“generally an abstainer” but has 
met partners through hook­
ups, quipped that her straight 
female friends at Haverford find 
it “hard to find a person who fits 
4

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