Assumption of hidden motives hinder hookups

The bears and the bees: Pillow talk: let’s bring conversation to the bedroom

Americans are obsessed with sex. It’s everywhere—movies, magazines, billboards, even our classrooms—and we are constantly talking about it. We want to know how to have good sex, how to get a person to have sex with you, how to get someone to call you after a one-night stand, how to avoid making or receiving that call—the list goes on.
Sex is constantly in the conversation.
But for all the talking we do, there is very little discussion where it matters most: in the bedroom.

The bears and the bees: Condoms aren’t just male birth control

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor.
You’ve probably already figured that out, but I wanted to confirm, because I think it’s time we talk about birth control. Specifically, male condoms.
I’m not going to talk about the pros of using condoms, because if you’re like me, you’ve probably gotten that message countless times in various forms. Possibly including that time the health practitioner interrupted you when you asked about birth control to tell you that ONLY CONDOMS PROTECT YOU FROM STIs. Which isn’t entirely true, though I was a little too taken aback by her delivery to make the point at the time. Then again, this was the same one who slut shamed me over getting a birth control prescription in the first place, so maybe she’s not the best example. I don’t go to her anymore.

The bears and the bees

Assumption of hidden motives hinder hookups

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Anonymous '16

Columnist

January 24, 2014

Hook ups are delicate things. The physical act, maybe not so much—but emotional transactions that occur during can be awkward, to say the least. Last spring I was with a dude in his room having fun when, out of the blue, he told me he “loved my eyes.” Said eyes became very wide. Love? We’d met maybe two hours earlier in a dark basement.

Granted, “I love your eyes” is a far cry from “I love you,” but it was still strange to hear from someone who, in all honesty, probably didn’t even know what color my eyes were. Then again, maybe it had just slipped out in the heat of the moment. I ignored it, assuming that either nothing more would happen between us after that night or we’d get to know each other well enough that I’d be cool with hearing that kind of compliment regularly. As it happens, we took the former path and never really spoke again.

But I did think about the compliment. More precisely, about how that sort of thing—the whispering of overly affectionate sweet nothings—is gendered. A girl, in my experience, could never get away with saying something like that. If, in the middle of an alcohol-fueled dalliance, she said anything beginning with “I love…,” alarm bells would start going off. CODE RED. STAGE FIVE CLINGER ALERT.

Perhaps not to that extreme, but the truth of the matter is that we, consciously or unconsciously, assume that girls want relationships and guys want sex. Of course, that’s not universally true. A lot of guys really want a relationship and a lot of girls really enjoy meaningless one-night stands.

However, we’re still primed to associate women with the desire for emotional intimacy and men with the physical. Since it’s expected that girls want a relationship and guys don’t, dudes have a lot more freedom in their expression of intimacy. And hookups are always intimate, regardless of the degree of emotional commitment felt by either party.

Maybe the social faux pas example hasn’t happened to everyone, but I’d argue that the way we, as a society, gender emotional attachment shows up in even innocuous interactions, like saying “hello.”

I’m a big fan of saying “hi.” I think it’s polite to greet people you’ve met, and I’m pretty sure playing tonsil hockey counts as meeting. We’re not very good at it though. Avoiding last night’s hookup is a skill students cultivate fairly early on in their college careers. It’s easier to pretend not to see someone than to suffer a potentially awkward interaction and the associated consequences, including the danger that you might come off as more or less interested that you actually are.

The space that hookups occupy somewhere between acquaintance, friend, and significant other leaves lots of room for misunderstanding. A public interaction can therefore mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

When we assume girls only want relationships and boys only want sex, our communications get even more convoluted and complex. Is she acquiescing to a purely physical relationship because she actually wants one or is she emotionally attached and just denying it? Is he saying nice things because he’s actually into her or because he wants to sleep with her?

Of course, we could trust each other instead of questioning motives. We could start actually saying what we mean. And many of us do. But we’re college students, and dancing around is half the fun. We just have to avoid making damaging assumptions while doing so.

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