There is No "Hook Up Culture."

...Then what the hell is going on here?

Image borrowed

So the ballots are in and the research is showing that while we like to pretend that we're a rebellious generation of sex, alcohol, and hip hop music....Turns out, we're actually a lot more like our parents than we thought.  In fact, our parents were having more sex than us.

The Numbers

A new study released from the University of Portland shows that while 59.3% of uni aged students from a sample of 1,800 are having sex at least once a week, comparatively, in the 80's 65.2% of uni age kids were getting laid.  We're not actually having more sex.  ...But we're damn good at acting like we are.

The Words

What the researchers don't understand is that the Hook Up Culture is very much alive and well.  But it's not about sex.  It's a culture that revolves around slang.  We may not be doing anything physically different than our parents' generation did, but we really excel at taking relationship situations and re-branding them under 'cooler' sounding names.  For example, we don't date people.  Dating is, well, out-dated.  We just have friends.  Friends who we hang out with. And then sleep with. Our "Friends-With-Benefits."  And then we have people we don't even really consider friends, but sleep with anyway when we're drunk and can't be bothered to meet new people.  So we gave that a nice friendly name as well, "F*** buddy."

       The Hook Up Culture isn't about the amount of casual sex, it's about making perfectly clear that the sex is casual.  We use these "friendly" new terms to establish something that sets our generation apart:  We are Very Very afraid of commitment. 

        The problem is, it's usually the committed people who are having the most sex.  And even though we're scared of commitment, we still like to seem like we're having a lot of sex.  Frankly, because we're worried that everyone else is.  And with the 'sex-sells' mentality that's been flooding the media since we were born...Can you blame us?

More Vague Than Vulgar

The term "Hooking Up" itself creates a happy conundrum.  It's so vague that it could mean anything from making out to having sex, with a lot of possibilities in between.  It's a phrase thrown around often enough but rarely ever actually explained, leaving most of us convinced that all our friends are out there having sex constantly.  And what this new study really shows is that, we're probably not. 

So in terms of "Hooking Up," does that happen more often in our generation?  Is there more drunk kissing?  And the biggest question of all...Does anybody really care about drunk kissing anyway?

So Mom and Dad, yeah, you may have banged just as many people in uni.  But there's no wayyou drunkenly made out with as many randoms to the sweet melodies of Ke$ha.