First-year meat. Each one of us walks up McCormick Road, or down the Lawn, or on Rugby Road as a first-year woman, as flesh for the satisfaction of others - first-year women, creating delicious relationships. We even get to pick our flavor.
What is the problem? In our drive to express values of equality and liberation between men and women, we have lost focus on what it is we assert. Some women like Wendy Shalit have called us to "Return to Modesty;" others make "A Case for [Traditional] Marriage" like Maggie Gallagher and company. Laura Sessions Stepp tells us that our culture is "Unhooked." Perhaps we do not agree with the entirety of these proposals - isn't tradition just conservatism? - but we can agree that something must be done. Our hook-ups are not sustainable. We must turn our focus toward our culture, and begin some self-reflection.
Our culture has created an ideal of communion between persons that cannot satisfy and ultimately will lead to frustration. The kind of "relationship" we create by the "hook-up culture" may appear to support values of equality, personal expression and freedom to enjoy oneself. A more transparent definition is in order, perhaps.
A hook-up is the perfect representation of our culture industry, producing individuals who know how to satisfy their own interests, but know very little about how to love. A hook-up is not love, because it is not an encounter with a human person; it is an encounter with a body. The focus on the body, rather than on the person to whom the body pertains, cannot affirm lovers in their other capacities, whether these be as friend, confidant, spouse, parent or other social identity. Consent does not change the nature of this starvation. It cannot be called a kind of relationship, because it isn't about the other. It is about an economic trade - mine for yours. Would we like to talk about equality? The hook-up culture does not promote equality between sexes. It creates a fungibility between all persons - except of course, by looks and body type: "Let me tell you, girl A is way hotter than girl B." Rather than choosing to be intimate with someone based on who that individual is in his or her totality, hook-up choices have a rather limited realm. How short is her dress? How well does he grind? To be judged and selected on the basis of a physical encounter does not foster a spirit of equality. It is a mutual objectification. Even if both partners agree, the chances that the hook-up will allot both partners mutual respect are slim; anecdotally, we are not so fond of last month's sexual escapades. First, the double standard does not smile favorably upon the first-year woman's "walk of shame." Second, the body of a woman does not allow her to walk away so easily - biological differences ensure a stronger hormonal attachment on the part of the woman after any sexual encounter. It seems that equality comes from a level of encounter opposite the norm of hook-ups - namely, a mutual and committed relationship encountering the whole person - the genuine union of two complete persons.
This picture of hook-ups assumes, perhaps too generously, that hook-ups always are completely voluntary and never encouraged by peer pressure or alcohol.
Our new group, Off the Hook, would like to invite all feminists, conservatives, communitarians, liberals, classicists, Christians ... every human person in every CIO stereotype, to join the struggle with our culture. We come from a variety of perspectives, disciplines and experiences, but we share a common desire to challenge our culture's standards. Begin the dialogue tonight at 7 p.m. in Minor 134.
Maria Pluta is a third-year student in the College.
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