Wednesday, May 13, 2015

What do the "Hookup Culture" and "Binge Drinking" have in common?

Turns out, they both have an awful lot in common indeed:

  • Both terms are rather nebulously-defined concepts that can mean anything you want it to mean
  • Both are fueled by the lamestream media's sensationalism, creating a "deviancy amplification spiral"
  • Both are fueled by "pluralistic ignorance", i.e. people falsely believing that everyone else is doing it more than they are and more than is actually the case
  • Both are fueled by a kind of androcentrism that persists in spite of the patriarchy's overall decline (i.e. women are expected to behave more like men rather than vice-versa, and men write the rules)
  • Both are fueled by a sort of "tyranny of the structurelessness" and the persistent belief that they are the "only game in town" on college campuses (spoiler alert: that is NOT actually true)
  • Both are fueled by our schizophrenic culture's ambivalence about both sex and alcohol
  • Both, statistically speaking, tend to go together (albeit not always, though)
  • Both are used as virtual bogeymen of sorts to advance regressive and illiberal agendas, often in the guise of "protecting" young people and especially women
  • Both are often falsely blamed on feminism, when the reality is that, among individual women, there seems to be a somewhat inverse correlation between feminist beliefs and those behaviors.
  • The existence and prevalence of both are heavy on anecdotal evidence, and very light on actual data.
  • And both defining behaviors are actually less common now than in the past, with Millennials being less likely to drink and tend to have fewer sex partners than their Baby Boomer parents.  Even Jean Twenge of all people concedes this.
But don't expect the lamestream media to tell you any of that, though.  Why let mere facts interfere with a good story that can boost their ratings?

3 comments:

  1. The reason why this country's culture is so ageist is because of the amount of intolerance against young people. The amount of ageism against young people is terrifying. The word "hookup culture" is nothing more than a word used to bash young people in the media. The protection of young people is actually oppression so it should be fought against. Mike Males from youthfacts.org has done good research on this country's culture of ageism.

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  2. Indeed, the term "hookup culture" is basically nothing more than an ageist slur against "kids these days", and it seems to have been coined by the lamestream media. While the actual behavior of "hooking up" (when it is used to mean what most people think it means) has always existed and always will thanks to human nature, this idea of it somehow being a "culture" or "the only game in town" exists only in the minds of those who believe that it does. Granted, a clear majority of people do in fact believe in its existence, and according to recent surveys it now seems that the vast majority of college students believe it to one degree or another as well thanks to the lamestream media repeating and sensationalizing it over and over again, even if they do not actually participate in it. In fact, the same surveys show that most students really don't "hook up" that much if at all, regardless of what they believe. And Mike Males has set the record straight numerous times, and certainly is a hero to young people everywhere. Too bad his words keep falling on deaf ears.

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  3. I recently found a great article by Hanna Rosin that sets the record straight.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/boys-on-the-side/309062/

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