Research on the college hookup scene consistently shows it to be heavily gendered and heteronormative. In spite of the extensive research on hookup culture, there are limited data on how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students navigate hookups on college campuses. Yet queer hookups potentially provide a space for students to challenge the dominant understandings of gender and sexuality that permeate the college hookup scene, creating alternative visions for how hookups and other sexual relationships may proceed. Drawing on interviews with 24 LGBTQ college students at a regional university in the southeastern United States, this research investigates how LGBTQ college students negotiate the hookup scene on college campuses. As we show, LGBTQ students are sharply critical of dominant hookup culture and aim to challenge heteronormative practices by deconstructing normative patterns of behavior, emphasizing communication and consent, and queering standards of pleasure. In spite of their stated aims, many respondents replicated gendered practices in their hookups, limiting the transformative potential of queer hookups. This study indicates that while LGBTQ students are actively working to remake hookup culture, and, in some ways, are succeeding, barriers to a more mindful hookup culture remain, even among those who explicitly seek new ways to pursue sexual relationships.
Research shows that sexual minorities and heterosexuals differ in the level of success in educational and earnings attainment, but differences in occupational attainment have been unclear. To extend the literature, this article examines sexual orientation differences in young adulthood occupational status by analyzing the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health Waves 1 to 4. Drawing from the life course literature, a theoretical framework is developed to explain how sexual orientation shifts opportunities and constraints in the occupational attainment process. The analysis shows that the association between sexual orientation and occupational status depends on gender, the type of sexual experience used to measure sexual orientation, and the timing of first sexual experience. Women who report their first same-sex attraction or sexual contact in young adulthood have lower occupational status than those without such experience, and men who report their first same-sex dating relationships in young adulthood tend to have higher occupational status than those without such relationships. These findings extend the existing knowledge on sexual development and status attainment, which has mainly focused on heterosexual development.
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