Valentine's Day has something for everyone: elementary school children can exchange Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Winnie the Pooh valentines; couples plan romantic dates; flower sales surge; groups of friends get together to watch the latest romantic comedy on DVD; and, there is always candy. Everyone likes candy. Even cynics can rejoice in their hatred of Valentine's Day - there is a growing market for "anti-Valentine's Day" products, such as candy hearts and greeting cards with snarky messages about relationships.
On campus the holiday has become a more ominous occasion, serving as a striking reminder of just how dysfunctional the collegiate dating scene has become. Gone are candlelit dinners and a night out on the town. Dating, in general, is an endangered species on campus. In its stead is the hook-up: casual physical encounters, ranging from kissing to sex, with no expectation of commitment.
The hook-up culture has real harmful effects, especially on women. Women are more physically vulnerable to sex, running the risk of getting pregnancy and more likely to contract many sexually transmitted diseases. Many also face emotional distress associated with casual sex-women may tell themselves that it's no big deal, but their bodies and hormones signal otherwise. Many young women are left feeling confused and depressed.
Thanks in large part to several books on the subject, the negative effects of the hook-up culture are making their way into popular dialogue. Laura Sessions Steep, author of Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both, sums up the hook-up scene in this way, "Love, while desired by some, is being put on hold or seen as impossible; sex is becoming the primary currency of social interaction. Some girls can handle this; others...are exhausted physically, emotionally and spiritually by it. They struggle largely outside the awareness of parents who either don't know what is going on or are vaguely aware but don't know what to do."
One would expect campus feminists to rally on this issue and protest a culture that could be properly cast as demeaning. But you'll be lucky to hear a peep from most campus feminists on the issue. They are too busy parading around campus with a 4-foot "living vagina" named "Joan" (That's at George Washington University), hosting a "Panty Drop Sock Hop: Benefiting Vagina's Everywhere" party (University of North Texas), selling "I love Vagina" t-shirts (Bucknell University), or playing a rousing game of "sex toy bingo" (University of Delaware). They might also be busy performing The Vagina Monologues (which visits hundreds of campuses each year) or hosting a performance of the Sex Workers Art Show (which is scheduled to visit at least 14 campuses this spring).
If it were men's groups that were promoting these events, no doubt they would be visited with sit-ins, protests, and would eventually be forced off campus. But it's women's group sponsoring these events that either play into the hook-up culture or blatantly promote it. The Sex Workers Art Show is a "celebration of whore culture." Performers (strippers, porn film stars, sex phone operators, etc.) parade around stage in little, if any, clothing engaging in a series of R-rated skits. The Vagina Monologues glorifies promiscuity and treats women as sex objects. Women should "embrace" their vaginas, "be" their vaginas. Women are literally defined by, and reduced to their genitalia. Women on campus deserve better from these so-called feminists.
Luckily, all is not lost. Students don't have to buy into a hyper-sexualized Valentine's Day and feminist movement. Students fed up with the hook-up culture can "take back the date." If you like someone, ask them out on a real date. Celebrate romance. Reject the notion that it is empowering to detach sex from emotion. The power to transform the hook-up culture rests with individual students, and there is no better time to start than Valentine's Day.
Allison Kasic is the director of R. Gaull Silberman Center for Collegiate Studies at the Independent Women's Forum.
8 Comments
joanna | February 14, 2008, 12:05am | #
What if a female CAN'T get a date?
What if she does not have a boyfriend, and has finally realized that she does not have to base her self-worth on relationship status because she is in the cast of the Vagina Monologues, surrounded by wonderful women who will be too busy rehearsing to sit at home crying on the sickly commercial and arbitrary day of Feb 14th, Valentine's Day?
Carol | February 14, 2008, 11:16am | #
Joanna
As a woman of 59 who has been there/done that I can tell you the rewards of celebrating not having a date, especially if that "date" means merely a meaningless, unemotional, and empty sex act with a total stranger, are tremendous. I understand it may not look that way right now, when everyone around you seems to be freely copulating, but with the perspective of time and maturity (sorry I know young people think they are mature but so did I and you ain't seen nothing yet dear) believe me things look much different and that will be what you have to live with. When I look back at my life as a younger woman I can't tell you how empty, sad, painful, and demeaned I've felt. And the truly sad part is I was not demeaned by some man but by my own self, me the one who should be protecting ME, I hurt, damaged my own psyche. The popular culture, especially those who call themselves "feminists" (those who are SUPPOSED to be shedding light on issues which impact women.....right) don't want you paying attention to that deep inner voice which tells you to tough it out and go for the substance but that is the route which will truly produce a healthy happy woman. Nothing in life is easy, change is constant, take care of yourself my dearest woman sister. Don't buy into the crap.
Brad Oaks | February 14, 2008, 12:26pm | #
The woman surrounded by wonderful women because she is in the cast of the V Monologues is now basing her self worth on other women instead of men. This is progress?
Women, and men too, have an inherent self-worth, or value. Hooking up, whether it's physically with men, or emotionally/physically with other women demeans and undermines self-worth.
Hostility to members of the opposite gender and the self-loathing and bitterness accompanying it are one fruit of pop culture and the V. Monologues. Self-"empowering" women, adopt the idea that men are pigs, and turn to either casual hook-ups with men (in secret) , or lesbianism, or autosexuality. The result is self-degrading and shallow.
Those men who are selfish have been the biggest benefactor from the advent of the Pill, and abortion and the sexual revolution. They value women for what women can do for them, and not for who they are. Sex is just another form of entertainment for shallow, selfish men.
Real men, those who don't play the hook-up game, because they value and love women in general, and respect and honor the women in their lives, are ridiculed by the pop culture.
Players and pigs are honored by their fellow pigs, and think of women as bitches and hoes. This group is truly misogynistic and believe self-gratification is the highest virtue.
The women in the hook-up culture are just stupid. They seek to be the flame to many moths in an attempt to feel good about themselves. They end up very popular, and usually bitter and confused, and headed to the Next V Monologues showing for self-empowerment.
The V. Monologues "feminists" are the most pathetic, confused bunch of people I've ever witnessed. By trivializing human sexuality in themselves as well as others, they are just as bad as the Players/pigs that they hate, and show anything but self-respect.
"I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member"- Groucho Marx (I think?)
Can't get a date?
No wonder.
modgirl | February 14, 2008, 2:04pm | #
You people just don't get it at all. And obviously have not seen any performance about The Vagina Monolgues. IT IS NOT about "hooking up" and the sole identification of the vagina or to sex. It is a venue to share stories that embrace our womanhood and the special issues that our vagina=woman invoke: incest; rape (which is often done during war to demean a whole culture using the woman as the instrument); being forced by husbands, boyfriends, and commercial society to embrace stereotypes of the ideal woman; motherhood; older woman finally realizing that their feelings and responses to sex are ok; the demeaning words used to define women.
My fiancee was pleasantly surprised when I took him to see it, and thought it to be theatrically brilliant. And its fun and harmless.
Feminism doesn't encourage women to "hook up" with men, rather it teaches them that we can have control over our bodies and sexual experiences and self-respect. Discussing the x-rated sex culture that is prevalent in America and is a huge money maker is another way to look at this issue (and to make fun of it). It is corporate America that is teaching women to "hook up" and adopt sexy attire as a way to get all they want, not feminism.
It would be much more helpful if websites like this would actually start looking at the reason women feel they need to have sex in order to validate themselves, and stop blaming feminism for it. You are blaming one belief system which is just ridiculous. Do you realize that there are many teenage girls who believe that they are still upholding their abstinence pledge, if they have anal sex? And this belief has led to the new term "ass virgins?"
Incidentally, many men also consider to be feminists. And they are welcomed into the fold, not considered players/pigs. In fact it is feminism that has embraced the notion of the many facets of man. It is corporate society that gains by perpetuating the myth of the pig-man, and the hyper sex in woman because it makes the most bucks.
Miss Mabel Gargula | February 14, 2008, 3:38pm | #
I couldn't agree more! Save your goody-bag for your husband, ladies. You'll never get into heaven if you let every man you meet into your pants.
Tom Leykis | February 14, 2008, 4:46pm | #
Well maybe if women kept their mouth shut, take care of their man, the child, clean the home, service their man, feed their man and children, stop creating blogs like these and do what every good woman in the past used to do before the women's right movement; then maybe every women here who think that teaching sex ed is a sin; stand up and go back to the kitchen. Shut this blog down, and be an example. Don't call me sexist, put your words to action and show the Ann Coulters, Michelle Malkins, Dr Lauras, and every conservative women to be the role model for every future woman growing up. Let men be men and women their wife. If you find this sexist, then you're a liberal!
Brad Oaks | February 15, 2008, 3:28am | #
Tom Leykis.
You oinked my point perfectly.
You see ladies, Tom is the result of, and benefactor to the sexual revolution. Without stupid, gullible women, Tom would be a lonely guy indeed.
More than your typical misogynist, though. A too-hip celeb.
Stuck in adolescence, with nowhere to go.
S | January 9, 2009, 2:52am | #
I like the take back the date idea.
One valentine's day in college I made a lot of beautiful colored glittery valentines. When I was done making them I realized I couldn't give them away because I was the person who would appreciate them most. I wrote affirmations on them, and kept them for many years. They really inspired me.
I think love for other people has to start with love for one's self.
Anyway, I haven't seen the play, but I wonder if it were presented for women only, if that might help. It seems like it might bring up a lot of sensitive feelings, since it touches on such personal issues. I think a women's only environment might help, but on the other hand, it might not.