The Campus Hook-Up Culture, Good or Bad?

I recently read the article "Boys on the Side" by Hanna Rosin in The Atlantic. In this fascinating article, Hanna argues that the hook up culture prominent on college campuses does not demean or endanger women, but actually empowers them. Hooking up, or engaging in less serious, physical relationships, allows women to focus on their careers. It does not objectify them as some may be lead to think. In fact, women as a whole have more control over themselves, their bodies, and their lives. We do not simply have to settle down, marry, have kids, as soon as we graduate. Women are no longer leaving college with a MRS degree. We want to focus on our careers first, which puts relationships on the back burner. Hanna is arguing that sex is the great equalizer. Basically, women can now pursue sex just as casually as men can, without the stigma.

This article kind of reminds me of the movie Down With Love (one of my favorites). It takes place in the 60's just as women are finding a place in the culture of the workplace, and having to deal with men who thing of them as secondary. The main character argues that a woman must abstain from love and learn to have meaningless sex, like a man does, in order to move ahead in the work place. What is obviously tongue-in-cheek commentary on 60's work culture has actually come true in a sense. It doesn't mean that people aren't falling in love and getting married - most women, and men, in college admit that they do want to marry eventually. Just not yet. Gone are the days of chivalrous quarterbacks holding the doors for cheerleaders for whom they buy sodas. The new dating culture has modernized along with the women who partake.