Many students have rites of passage they anticipate completing while in college. Some of these include joining a fraternity or sorority, getting drunk with friends, getting into a relationship or having a hookup. Hookups are defined as a sexual relation with either a stranger or someone outside of a relationship. Hookup culture is the idea that hookups are, in fact, a good thing. This, in theory, supports the concept of “my body, my choice.” However, once the number of hookups that people experience becomes a contest or allows for others to be shamed, it causes a toxic culture that promotes sexual encounters to be unsafe, large in quantity, often unwanted.

For women, multiple hookups can cause some men to view her as easy and “prey,” while others view her as a whore. This, of course, is detrimental to the female’s self-esteem and her relationships with others. The double standard between men and women allows for sexism within hookup culture. Men who have a certain number of hookups are often viewed as more manly than other men who are faithful to their partners, chose to save themselves for marriage, or have no one with whom to have sex. Since men, societally, feel obligated to be the most masculine they can be, many men have hookups not out of desire, but out of social obligation. Men in relationships may feel pressured into having sex with their significant others, whether or not either of them are interested in doing so.

Men, typically, are praised for how many women they sleep with, some even going so far as putting notches into bed posts to keep track. At the same time, the women they are sleeping with are being looked down upon as “whores.” While it is ultimately a woman’s choice to have sexual relations with anyone that she desires, the stigma surrounding this concept is what becomes toxic. Women typically get less out of a hookup, so the argument is that women participate in hookups as a way to fit in more socially in a culture that promotes sex as meaningless.

Hookup culture can encourage hooking up with strangers at a party, especially at a fraternity. There has been controversy surrounding frat guys slipping rohyphol or similar drugs into women’s drinks. Some organizations have promoted having a “freshman female only” bowl of punch that contains rohy[hol. This is directly taking advantage of the naivete of younger girls so that the hyper-masculine male can fulfill his duty to get another woman in his bed with as little issue as possible. The glaring issue is that if a woman or man is too inebriated or drugged to give consent, then the situation was rape. Men who participate in this find their sexual encounters more important than the safety and happiness of girls who could be significantly younger than them.

While hookups themselves are not necessarily toxic, the culture surrounding them allows for increased numbers of rape and sexual assault, consent being secondary. Hookup culture is toxic for both men and women, forcing them into roles that neither necessarily want to play. Any socially constructed culture can inevitably cause people to be peer pressured into situations and positions they do not want to be in. Very few are as detrimental to both safety and happiness of teens and young adults in America.

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