Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual assault.

“Hookup culture” inspires panic among older generations, but research shows that young people aren’t having more intercourse than they used to. Orenstein pinpoints the pill, the rise of the women’s rights movement, and the sexual revolution—all of which happened when Baby Boomers came of age—as the beginning of the big rise in premarital sex among young people. Hookup culture is only different in that sex is separated from intimacy; sometimes it’s a precursor to it, and more often it’s a replacement for it. There is no emotional commitment beyond sex.

By senior year of college, most students report having an average of seven hookups. Mostly affluent, white heterosexuals hook up, while hookups are least common among African American women and Asian men. Studies show that most young adults overestimate their peers’ preference for hookups: In reality, about 80% of subjects from both sexes said they’d like to be in relationships.

While some girls say they feel liberated by hookup culture—free to avoid emotional responsibility for their partners—Orenstein finds that hookups are rarely physically satisfying for women. Men rarely perform cunnilingus during hookups, and only 40% of women have orgasms during hookups involving intercourse.