Lots of Action With Little Talk Isn’t Exactly Healthy Experimentation
Ever since teenagers have decamped their parents’ homes to university dorms, college campuses have been a hotbed of sexual experimentation.
There were the 1920s “petting parties,” some of which were reassuringly defined in a magazine from the period as “hugging parties,” said Beth Bailey, an associate professor of American Studies at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
In the 1950s, considered the Golden Era of Courtship, the norm was “going steady,” a ritual that formalized monogamous dating, which included couples engaging in every caress short of intercourse.
The 1960s ushered in the free love movement, shifting the boundary of permissible sexual experimentation from everything but intercourse to include it.
Today’s college students engage in a behavior they call “hooking up,” slang for brief, sexual encounters with strangers, acquaintances and friends that can range from kissing to sexual intercourse.
“Playing the field is the norm at college,” said Miquel Moore, 22, a student at Southern Illinois University. “Everyone is looking for people to hook up with at parties, and both people are content with that. A university is like a community of kids--so open, and we are free to really do what we want. I know when I got here, I thought, ‘Oooohhhh, give me all the college girls!”’
Students describe stereotypical hookups as spontaneous, emotionless, no-strings-attached physical encounters. (In the recently released movie “American Pie 2,” the characters who are home from college make numerous references to their freshman-year hookups).
Despite being commonplace, hooking up is hardly a paragon of what sex educators and psychologists would call healthy sexual experimentation. “I don’t think we can come out and discourage sexual experimentation,” said Elizabeth Paul, an associate professor of psychology at New Jersey College. “But what is healthy sexual experimentation?”
Defining healthy sexual experimentation is difficult because it will vary from person to person, said Bailey, author of “Sex in the Heartland” (Harvard University Press, 1999), which details the sexual revolution in a small university town in Kansas.
Certain ground rules, however, raise the likelihood there will be mutual respect, shared consent and responsible behavior between partners, said Herb Samuels, a professor of human sexuality at La Guardia Community College in Long Island City, N.Y.
“In a perfect world, healthy sexual experimentation would begin with a conversation about what each person wants, well before they start having sex,” said Samuels, who added that he doubts even 25% of college students have that discussion because it is perceived as threatening, embarrassing and a spoiler to the spontaneous thrill of sex. Partners need to say, “I am willing to do this and not that,” establishing a contract of boundaries that holds when things get steamy, Samuels said.
Tosha Michel, a 20-year-old Santa Monica College student, was dubious. “It is very doubtful a conversation like that would happen,” Michel said.
“The first time you have sex with someone is more about heat of the moment than saying, ‘OK, let’s stop this and talk about limits and what you want and I want .... You don’t feel that comfortable with someone the first time.”
Still, said Samuels, “The end should be predicted by the beginning, which is where the limit-setting conversation comes in. If [partners] are stoned out of their mind, they are not going to set limits.”
But studies indicate a considerable number of 18-to 25-year-olds report always being intoxicated when they have sexual contact, Samuels said. “In other words, I am not choosing sex, it just sort of happened,” he said. “When drugs and alcohol are involved, people are more likely to put themselves in situations they don’t want to be in.”
Indeed, most hookups occur when partners are intoxicated (80% of participants in two studies who reported hooking up said alcohol was involved), and intoxication increased the odds that hookups would culminate in intercourse.
Pre-sex talks are rare to a hookup because an utter lack of communication is one of its hallmarks.
Most students reported in a study Paul conducted of “best and worst hookups” that there was no talking about what was happening (as in, “What are we doing here?”), no discussion of sexual history (as in, “Have you been tested?”), no discussion of protecting against sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy (condoms, anyone?)
“Sexual experimentation out of the context of a relationship or friendship is harmful,” said Sol Gordon, professor emeritus of Child and Family Studies at Syracuse University and author of “How Can You Tell if You’re Really in Love?” (Adams Media, 2001). “Sex, unrelated to relationship, risks alienating the intimacy and depth of the experience from any meaning. The new fairy tale is that the woman kisses the prince, and the prince turns into a frog and hops away.”
Gordon acknowledged that strong sexual impulses are a hallmark of college-age people. But, rather than incurring the emotional and physical risks of hookups, he said, “It is far superior to masturbate because at least you are having sex with someone you love, as Woody Allen once suggested, and no one is going to turn you down.”
Hooking up may be, as Paul asserts, the result of a cultural disconnect where sex is concerned. The missing link is comprehensive sex education that goes beyond teaching young people about abstinence and arms them with relationship skills.
Some college students seem to understand that sexual experimentation, which by definition will result in bad and good experiences, is a critical part of forging a healthy sexual life.
“Healthy sexual experimentation means, first, to always think safe sex, and second, to understand that we are young and we need to figure out now what we like and don’t like and what sexual orientation we are so we don’t have to figure it out over the next 20 years,” Michel said.
“No matter whether it is a one-night stand or a relationship, you have to respect yourself and respect the other person. If you are not getting respect from the person you are with, then you are with the wrong person.”
Birds & Bees is a weekly column on relationships and sexuality. Kathleen Kelleher can be reached via e-mail at kellehr@gte.net.
