Often we hear the phrase “chivalry is dead.” In a society where almost half of marriages end in divorce, what is happening to the dating culture of the youth? It is apparent that the idea of a pre-arranged “date” that we once had no longer exists as the norm.
In college, the pre-arranged date is much rarer. Often people start to hook up and maybe they will end up dating. Professor England believes that dating is less likely to be the result of a set date to get dinner or see a movie. Even though most hook ups do not turn into relationships, it seems that in our present college culture that is the only way to get there. This is because the pre-arranged date before that hook up occurs is much rarer. Yes, there may be dates that will occur between the hook up and the relationship but it seems that chivalry really is dead.
Many could argue that chivalry was a sexist idea, but it seems that what is going on today is the reversal of chivalry. Professor England’s data suggests that men are getting more pleasure out of the hook up than women. I believe that this double standard that exists is creating a bad foundation for many relationships. If a relationship is built on equal pleasure, there will always be some sort of resentment or power struggle. Since this is the dominant culture in college, it is creating problems with relationships early on which could be contributing to the problems with marriage later in life.
Jackie Kaplan
The way relationships work compared to the past is very different. As England coined in the video, relationships have turned into a “Hookup Culture” which includes having sexual interactions with someone before dating them or even knowing who they are. These interactions usually happen because most college students go to parties to meet people, since most of these parties involve the consumption of alcoholic beverages, people are more likely to have sex with people that they don’t really know.
The “Hookup Culture” in my opinion is not a completely bad thing, of course there are some negative impacts to this new trend but in a few ways it has positively impacted society. Hooking up at parties has made it easy for women to express their sexuality without being persecuted by society. A woman that comfortably expressed her sexuality a hundred years ago would be persecuted for being a “whore” and would be excluded from society. Of course there are negative impacts of this new culture too, since people have more sexual partners the likelihood of being infected by an STI is incredibly high. Another negative impact is that less people have real relationships which results in people getting married later.
One thing that I did not agree with was the graphs that England presented which showed that mostly men initiate sexual interaction; this gave a negative connotation to male college students which I did not completely agree with. It gave the impression that males mildly force the interactions which I do not think is fair since for most females the reason why they go to parties is to hookup. There is usually consent from both parties when these things happen.