#TheAtlantic carries again one of those “provocative” trend-spotting articles which have become its trademark. It’s called “Boys on the Side,” and is written by #HannaRosin. Here is the summary which appears below the title: “The hookup culture that has largely replaced dating on college campuses has been viewed, in many quarters, as socially corrosive and ultimately toxic to women, who seemingly have little choice but to participate. Actually, it is an engine of female progress—one being harnessed and driven by women themselves.”
The basic idea is that the #HookupCulture allows women to postpone marriage and advance educationally and professionally – without foregoing the joy of sex. While they pursue this shrewd strategy, many of the guys waste their youth indulging infantile urges and are falling behind in every area. To bolster her argument, Rosin contrasts the no-holds-barred sexual sampling of the ‘00s to the oppressive patriarchal prudishness of the ‘50s. She concludes that, of course, no sane young woman would want a return to that. She even quotes a female student who had participated in filing a complaint against Yale’s alleged toleration of a “hostile sexual environment on campus” who says: “I would never come down on the hookup culture. Plenty of women enjoy having casual sex.”
Rosin also argues that a couple of years of sexual freedom and experimentation do not undermine the capacity of young people for intimacy. In fact, most students of either sex continue to express a desire for a steady relationship, and some occasionally strike one. They are also thinking of getting marriage and having kids at some later point. Rosin is convinced that eventually most young people will settle down and form a family since “the desire for a deeper human connection always wins out, for both men and women.”
A skeptic could point to some potential hiccups in Rosin’s argument. Maybe the dichotomy she posits is artificial, and there is potentially a third way - real pair-bonding which is not oppressive to women? Or the women’s empowerment she celebrates may entail “manning” a socioeconomic system which is in itself unjust and oppressive? Or that empowerment can be reframed as jumping into the corporate meet-grinder, into the rat-race, onto the hedonic treadmill, etc.? Or toleration and non-judgmentalism in one area (like sexual indulgence) can be associated with free-wheeling in other areas (like winner-take-most distribution of economic rewards)? Or perhaps years of emotionally-distanced sexual gratification can have a slight numbing effect on the psyche, brain, and body – regardless of what survey “subjects” say when pressed for an answer? Or the freedom from attachment and responsibility needed for scaling the first steps of the educational and social ladder may eventually trump the ostensible “desire for a deeper human connection,” with larger number of both men and women “going solo” and loving it later in life, as described in many other articles in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and other high-brow publications? Or if some of the current crop of female college students do decide to pick a suitable “husband” 15 years from now, they may find a greatly diminished supply, given current educational trends? Or even if ambitious professional women do start a family, the imperatives of career advancement will require that they women deploy surrogate caregivers who have sometimes left their own kids behind on the other side of the globe?
Someone could even point to a curious parallel between the sexual liberation enjoyed by the upwardly-mobile college students Rosin describes and the promiscuity encouraged in Aldus Huxley’s “Brave New World.” But I have a sense that all such arguments would hold little water for Rosin – and for most of the sexually assertive young women she quotes. Moreover, anyone making them would likely face condemnation as a retrograde champion of some reactionary form of patriarchy. Why? Because – this is my current hypothesis – truth and validity on complex social and personal issues are a not a matter of conclusive evidence and logical reasoning. Rather, they hinge on emotional resonance.
In any social situation, there is always a sea of data and myriad variables which are intricately connected through multiple feedback loops. And there are always parallel stories spun to make sense of this complexity. Which one of these “theories” makes sense depends on your instinctive emotional reaction; and the position you take then calls forth some sort of rationalization. How do I know that this epistemological theory itself is valid? Yes, you guessed right – it is more emotionally resonant for me, particularly when set against the crude utilitarianism pervading mainstream social science.
In any case, if what Rosin says in her article makes you cringe as you read, you will likely think her explanation and justification are bogus; and the trend she describes may, in fact, be socially and personally corrosive. If she could write what she wrote without cringing, on the other hand, she is unlikely to be swayed even by a cross between Socrates and Google. And if “the heart says whatever” (as stated in the title of a recent personal memoir by a successful young woman Rosin could have interviewed), than, indeed, the sky is the limit; or so it seems…
