Gendered Sexuality in Young Adulthood

Abstract

Current work on hooking up—or casual sexual activity on college campuses—takes an individualistic, “battle of the sexes” approach and underestimates the importance of college as a classed location. The authors employ an interactional, intersectional approach using longitudinal ethnographic and interview data on a group of college women’s sexual and romantic careers. They find that heterosexual college women contend with public gender beliefs about women’s sexuality that reinforce male dominance across both hookups and committed relationships. The four-year university, however, also reflects a privileged path to adulthood. The authors show that it is characterized by a classed self-development imperative that discourages relationships but makes hooking up appealing. Experiences of this structural conflict vary. More privileged women struggle to meet gender and class guidelines for sexual behavior, placing them in double binds. Less privileged women find the class beliefs of the university foreign and hostile to their sexual and romantic logics.

Rape Myths and Beyond: A Commentary on Edwards and Colleagues (2011)

“…In general, engaging in such behaviors is viewed as enhancing men's reputation and social status and as proof of their sexual prowess and masculinity (e.g., Grello et al 2006;Metts and Spitzberg 1996;Paul and Hayes 2002). In contrast, engaging in these behaviors has strong potential negative implications for women's reputation and social status, and could result in them receiving a negative social label such as a "slut" or as "easy" (e.g., Hamilton and Armstrong 2009;Metts and Spitzberg 1996;Paul 2006;Paul et al 2000). Indeed, despite the supposed greater freedom women have in Western society in expressing their sexuality and engaging in casual sex, there still appears to be a sexual double standard where the social implications for engaging in sexual behaviors (e.g., having sex with multiple or casual partners, engaging in particular sexual acts) differ for men and women (Smith et al 2008).…”

“…First, these labels appear to represent a permanent stigmatized status (e.g., Crawford and Popp 2003;Hamilton and Armstrong 2009;Paul 2006;Smith et al 2008). In addition, women who are labeled in this manner are often regarded as appropriate targets for aggressive sexual advances by men and as having fewer rights to refuse these advances (e.g., Crawford and Popp 2003;Hamilton and Armstrong 2009). Thus, rather than being empowered or liberated by freely acting on their sexual desires (as would be the typical case for men who engage in the same behavior), these women now have less ownership over their own sexuality.…”

Social context and sexual intercourse among first-year students at selective colleges and universities in the United States

“…For a number of reasons-including continued inequality and stratification along race, class, and gender lines in sexual relationships, and easy access to students among university-based researchers-the sexual lives of college students in particular have drawn a significant amount of scholarly attention in recent years (e.g., Armstrong et al, 2012;Bogle, 2008;England et al, 2007;Glenn and Marquardt, 2001;Hamilton and Armstrong, 2009;Owen et al, 2010). What is missing from these studies, however, is a systematic examination of how social context influences college sexual behavior among students on college campuses.…”

“That’s creepy, dude": Disciplining desire and making masculine selves in the sexual moment

“…However, everyday life pervades the sexual moment, as researchers of hookup culture have argued (Wade 2017;Bogle 2008;Hamilton and Armstrong 2009). Whittier and Simon describe desire as a multidimensional "fuzzy matrix" that is embedded in everyday social life, and they note that "It is easy to see how social the sexual is when one notes that the patterns of idiosyncratic desires flow from all that which is social -racism, sexism, ageism, romanticism, etc.…”