Moral Panic Comes 'Unhooked'

This article was originally published by CampusProgress.org.

This Valentine's Day, as conservative groups lamented the supposed death of romance on college campuses due to the popularity of The Vagina Monologues, they found an ally in the mainstream media. In the Washington Post Style section, reporter Laura Sessions Stepp weighed in with a lengthy piece about how women just don't care about finding love anymore.

It was an excerpt from her new book, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both, which explains the purportedly disastrous effects of the "hookup" on high school and college women.

According to Stepp, a hookup is anything from making out to sex to passing out partially clothed in the same bed. For the past 10 years, Stepp has taken a shocked-and-appalled "kids these days!" tone in explaining the youth dating scene to the Post's baby-boomer (and older) readership. (She penned a cutting-edge expose of the "wingman" phenomenon last year, as if friends haven't been helping friends get dates for millennia.) After mining some of her contacts from reporting that story and sending letters to campus administrators, Stepp found a handful of high school- and college-aged girls who were willing to share with her the details of their sex lives for the better part of a year. Their stories make up the bulk of the book.

While this type of in-depth interviewing doesn't really allow for a representative sample under even the best circumstances, Stepp doesn't even make a minimal effort at statistical integrity. She interviewed six college students who attend two primarily white, upper-class, Greek-heavy private schools: Duke University in Durham, N.C., and George Washington University in Washington, D.C. These girls aren't just "privileged" in the sense that they can afford to attend private universities. One drove to school in a brand-new Lincoln Navigator, a high school graduation present from her father. Another girl's mother took her on a Caribbean vacation when she was feeling a bit down after a breakup.

These are women who have been told they can do and have it all, who have grand career ambitions, who work hard in school and play even harder on the weekends. They like to get drunk at bars called Shooters and Charlie's, and maybe go home with the occasional lacrosse player. In the course of Stepp's year with them, most have a series of unfulfilling hookups, as well as at least one more important relationship.

Although she self-identifies as a feminist, many of Stepp's conclusions are soaked in conservative rhetoric. She tells women they don't really like going out and getting drunk, they just think they do. ("Admit it, the bar scene is a guy thing.") She goes on to explain that unlike men, when women have sex their bodies produce oxytocin, a chemical that makes them bond with their partner. And women who have engaged in multiple hookups have trouble settling down with one man later in life because their bodies stop producing oxytocin, so they can no longer form bonds as easily. This is a widely debunked theory, also espoused by many abstinence-only education curricula and by Eric Keroack, an anti-choice advocate recently appointed by President Bush to oversee federal family planning programs.

Stepp says women aren't naturally inclined to initiate sex; they just think they have to because they're encouraged to pursue what they want in other areas of life. Rather than sit demurely and wait for men to come calling, they'd rather enjoy the thrill of making the first move, kissing a guy in the corner of a bar, grinding against a stranger on the dance floor, and taking him home.

They're fooling themselves, Stepp says. She calls for reinstating the sexual double-standard (men pursue, women are pursued) for feminist reasons: It wasn't fair, but it was better for girls because it kept them from getting hurt, and it ensured that loving relationships developed later in life. Back in the good old days "there were generally accepted rules back then about what to do and not do sexually," she writes. "These standards restricted young women more than young men, by no means a fair deal, but they at least allowed women time and space to consider what kind of partners they wanted to love and what that love should look like." Because for Stepp, love, not academic or career ambitions, should be the focus of young women's energies.