In defense of casual sex

There's nothing unusual about my experience. The New York Times recently ran a Modern Love essay by Marguerite Fields, a college junior, about her search for a boy willing to commit. Like me, and like Broadway, she has worked her way through a number of men and says, "I think what I have been seeking in some form from all of these men is permanence." Near the end of her essay, she ends a third date by asking the guy when she'll see him next. "That's a loaded question," he says, offering a meandering explanation: "He said he had just gotten out of a long relationship, and now he was single and didn't really know how this whole dating thing works, but he was seeing a lot of other people, and he liked me."

I've heard that speech before; I've given that speech before. It shouldn't be mistaken as a symptom of a generation unable to commit; it's simply what you tell someone when you realize that you don't like him or her all that much. For all the anxiety about "hookup culture" the truth is that for many people older than 20, "hookup culture" will sound remarkably like, well, "college." Indeed, students shifted from dating to what was essentially hooking up during a wild time -- perhaps you've heard of it -- called the '70s.

But, as the median age of marriage continues to climb, young women are spending a lot more time romantically vetting -- and being vetted. It isn't just that hooking up is becoming a common preamble to dating, either -- living in sin is increasingly a prelude to marriage. Hopefully, by taking several test-drives before buying, we'll be happier with our final investment.

Of course, there are also very real hazards to hookup culture: namely, rising rates of unplanned pregnancies among young women and sky-high STD rates. It's safe to say many don't take the latter very seriously: Moe Tkacik, a blogger for Gawker Media's feminist blog, Jezebel, recently stirred the pot by writing that condomless sex "feels awesome" because she has "only really engaged in bareback sex with the types of dudes ... whose diseases I don't particularly fear, because the worst thing I can think of about most of them is the ensuing lifetime of awkward conversations." (And, occasionally, sexual empowerment is overplayed to the point of farce, in the case of a recent incident in which Moe and fellow blogger Tracie Egan shrugged off the seriousness of rape.)

But much of the finger-wagging over hooking up neglects those very reasonable concerns. For example, abstinence advocates are fond of the saying: "There is no condom for the heart." But heartbreak isn't always sexually transmitted. In the New York Times Magazine piece on chastity, prominent Harvard activist Janie Fredell lamented the hurt she'd seen women go through in their pursuit of relationships via hooking up -- as though abstaining from sex would have saved them a broken heart. If only.

I learned something from all of the men I dated. Sexually, I learned plenty about what turns me on. More important, by spending time in uncommitted relationships, what I wanted in a committed relationship became clearer -- and it wasn't amorous antagonism but a partnership that didn't trigger self-protectiveness.

I also discovered that a lot of young men are scared shitless -- of women, themselves and their future; that, contrary to our cultural imaginings, they are just as desperate to figure things out as young women. I found that a lot of the pains in the relationships of us 20-somethings can be blamed on cultural prescriptions for masculinity. Yes, there is the stud-slut double standard -- but there's also an expectation that men, unlike women, will not seek safe harbor in a relationship. No, they are supposed to bravely sail their ships beyond the singing sirens and silted waters of their quarter life until they miraculously hit land in the Real Adult World.

As Kathy Dobie wrote in reviewing Stepp's "Unhooked": "We learn less about intimacy in our youthful sex lives than we do about humanity ... Perhaps, this generation, by making sex less precious, less a commodity, will succeed in putting simple humanity back into sex." Indeed, and perhaps young women are putting feminist ideals of equality into sex by refusing shame and claiming the traditionally male side of the stud/slut double standard. Also, the idea that a woman has to test a man by withholding sex -- as many abstinence advocates actually argue -- relies on a paradigm of inequality in which women are forced to rely on such desperate power plays. It isn't that feminism has taught women to have sex like men, as the argument commonly goes, but that withholding sex isn't women's sole superpower; coitus isn't women's kryptonite.

With that in mind, I put my academic and career achievements ahead of romantic relationships, and allowed myself plenty of uncommitted entertainment along the way.

Like Broadway, I happily stayed single until I found someone who seemed truly worth the commitment; unlike Broadway, I wasn't abstinent. These can be different paths ultimately converging on the same plateau of partnership. By the same token, though, you can chastely date more men than you can count -- or sleep with every man who offers you a drink -- and not learn a damn thing about how to find a healthy relationship. We feminists do, indeed, love words like "empowerment" and "respect," but there's one we like even more: choice. The problem is that, too often, the abstinence movement prescribes a particular path, rather than encouraging young women to blaze their own trail.

A year ago, I decided to take a brief hookup hiatus and then, unexpectedly, met a man who is emotionally available and comfortably, not defensively, masculine -- I've never felt the need to challenge him to an arm-wrestling match. We're in a relationship now and he has become my best friend. He openly calls himself a feminist and, smilingly, describes our relationship as "respect run amok."

Oh, and we had sex the first night we met.