Provocative "Sex on Campus" article in the New York Times on Sunday. Not surprisingly, the piece skews toward wealthy white elites in choosing the campus and co-ed's of the University of Pennsylvania. Despite its biases, it's a well-written and honest sketch of common attitudes about sex amongst college-age Americans. It's a scary picture. The author extolls the fact that young women now act like men in the sexual marketplace: quick easy hook-up's over real relationships, hook-up buddies over boyfriends. This is cause for celebration from a feminist standpoint in achieving equality of the sexes. As the title and photo suggest, now she can do it too.
What's most disturbing to me isn't the equality, although that's a problem too, as women are the ones who should regulate sexuality (basically keep men in check), not de-regulate it into a contact-sport-like free-for-all. What's really disturbing is the dehumanizing quality of these interactions. People are getting together and in many cases engaging in the most intimate act between two people simply for personal pleasure. The other person is not an object of love or affection but of animalistic desire. The other person is more or less an object to be used to feel good. Love and by extension sex should be about giving of yourself. But in the norms discussed in the article, it's all about taking for yourself with minimal regard for the other. Quite a sad perversion of what it can be.
And do the women at Penn really enjoy the sex? Men, of course, do, and have few qualms about it (generally speaking, of course). Do the women really enjoy being used in this manner, even if they're also the users themselves? How is this situation fulfilling for women at all?
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