Hook Up Culture: I call BS

I'm listening to Kathleen Bogle on WNYC this morning discussing her new book Hooking Up. I'll post audio later. To her credit, she's not as foolish as Tom Wolfe or some of the other idiots who've taken this issue on. But I have to say, this has the whiff of BS all over it. One thing that immediately catches my eye--no one seems to be able to quantify this alleged phenomenon. Maybe we're dealing in the limits of sociology here, but when I hear young men and women are more promiscuous today than in the past, alarm bells start to ring. Of course the first question is, are people just more likely to self-report now than they were in the past? Not that it matters, since I haven't seen much evidence to prove the first claim.

Another problem--maybe I'm just missing this. Allegedly, hook up culture (I can't believe I'm even using that term, it just wreaks of adult condescension) originated in the 80s. By the time I got to college in the 90s, it seemed like people would find their way into sex in all sorts of ways. Some would date. Some would study together. Some would spark an El. Others would just be drunk at the club. Usually there some combo of them all. But it's hard for me to sum all of that up into something resembling a culture. Call me daft, but I'd need to see hard evidence that what I saw in 19795 at Howard University, was not the case in 1975. But then I guess I wouldn't know--Bogle limited mostly all of her study to white people.