Hook-up culture vs boy sober: What young New Zealand women want

This story deals with themes of sex and violence.

When 19-year-old Zoe was in high school, her friends loved joking about getting choked during sex, a fantasy sometimes displayed in today’s increasingly violent porn.

“That’s no exaggeration, which was interesting that they loved to talk about it.”

The influence, says Zoe, came from the manosphere, corners of the internet that promote masculinity and war against modern female power. The friends also declared themselves anti-men, something you might associate more with liberal feminism.

“I will be honest, I had some very negative sexual experiences with partners where we have tried that kind of stuff, and it was horrible, and I never want to do it again,” says Zoe.

Now, her values regarding sex are inching closer to something like social conservatism, where sexual encounters come with more boundaries. Case in point: she insisted she and her current boyfriend wait a few months before having sex.

Zoe’s experience hints at the whiplash young women are experiencing in dating today, a culture that traces back to the sexual revolution, where contraception promised women carefree sex in or outside of marriage. Then, there was the Sex and the City ideal of the 1990s and 2000s of having sex like a man (unemotional and frequent). It was supercharged by the launch of dating apps in the 2010s, resulting in a gamified hook-up culture. The #metoo movement that pushed back against rape culture was a bright spark for women, but it was quickly submerged by a swollen river of porn that is violent and degrading to women (remember: the choking, or the nicer-sounding “breath play”).

It’s a concoction outlined in journalist Louise Perry’s book, A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century, a young adult’s version of her surprise bestseller, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. Both are a land, air, and sea assault on the sex positive movement, where the only boundary that matters is mutual consent. Perry argues that the sexual revolution and hook-up culture did not result in freedom for heterosexual women, but left them in emotional and physical turmoil while providing men with more consequence-free sex. Instead, she suggests that women should treat sex seriously, wait to have it, and only have it with men who would make a good father to any children they might have. And then the clincher that would make any budding feminist cringe: get married and do your best to stay married.

We asked six young women from Northland to Dunedin to read Perry’s book and tell us how it contradicted or supported their experience and views on sex and relationships. Here’s what they told us during two focus group sessions:

Perry argues that the majority of women cannot partake in casual sex without forming some sort of attachment. “Women did not evolve to treat sex as meaningless, and trying to pretend otherwise does not end well,” she writes.

All six young women agreed with Perry. From the experience of Sophie, 20, the level of emotional attachment from sex is almost always divided by gender.

“It can only last so long before [women] have to admit to themselves that they're denying themselves. They're trying to hide how they really feel, and it is actually making them really sad. Or they just keep having different hook ups to kind of distract from that.”

A friend of Estella, 17, has been hooking up with different guys since recently ending a relationship. She keeps getting emotionally attached and declaring she is in love.

“I’ve been like, 'are you sure you’re okay doing this?' Like, 'how are you with it?'

“And she’s like. ‘No, it’s so empowering. Why would you even question it?'"

For 23-year-old Olivia, who calls herself a romantic at heart, hook-up culture can be emotionally safe for women, but only if communication between the two people is clear and consistent on the level of commitment, which is challenging.

“It never is communicated because when you go to somebody's house for a hook-up, the last thing either of them really wants to talk about at that moment is like, 'is this the last time we're going to be having casual sex or not?'”

However, not all men can maintain a cut-and-dried approach to sex either. Zoe mentions she has numerous male friends who were burned by hook-up culture in their search for long-term relationships.

Lilyan, 17, feels that if she is dressed up and out with her friends at a party, guys assume they are there to hook up. When a guy's proposition is declined, his response is typically confusion, she says.

“When you get there in the moment, and it’s like what? What else would you do?”

“It doesn’t feel very free. If that’s what sexual freedom is... I don’t think it's for me.”

While there is pressure from men, the majority of the six women feel greater pressure from their female friends to participate in hook-up culture.

“There is a lot of judgment for not engaging in casual sex or sex at all. So that's been a huge thing for me, with judgment from friends, peer pressure, like, why wouldn't you do that? Because everyone's doing it, especially at uni,” says Maddison, 20, who is surprised that her Christian faith aligns with many of Perry’s arguments. The similarities are something Perry, a women's rights advocate, also acknowledges.

Estella is in a long-term relationship. However, some of her friends prefer that she wasn’t, and it makes her uncomfortable.

“...I feel a lot of shame because my friends have told me, ‘I can't wait until you guys break up so you can be free and come into town with us.’”

TV shows such as Euphoria, a drug-fuelled exploration of teenage love, as well as the talk at school, had Sophie thinking everyone was having sex. However, during a school talk on sex, she realised that was not the case. On average, New Zealanders first have sex at age 17, meaning that half of year 13 students are not having sex.

“It's just a lot of gossip... the people that are doing a lot are talking a lot about it because that is its own currency - to talk about what you've done.”

Perry makes the case that “holding off on having sex with a new boyfriend for at least a few months is a good way of discovering whether or not he is serious about you, or just looking for a hook-up.”

Zoe still isn’t too sure why she asked her now-boyfriend to wait to have sex, something that could appear to have religious undertones. However, her parents are not religious and nor is she.

“....a lot of people get weirded out by that because it just doesn’t feel like there’s any kind of moral grounding to make that kind of statement.

“I mean, I’ve also just always thought that sex was a special thing.”

Celibacy has gone under a rebrand lately. It has emerged as “boy sober” in recent years, where women (and probably some men too) swear off dating and sex for a period of time - or indefinitely. Olivia went boy sober for two years after a partner cheated on her.

“...the experience was both liberating and yet also extremely difficult. The difficulty came from dealing with the desire. A lot of my femininity comes from the compliments or acknowledgement from men.”

Romance novels, also known as smut, provided some comfort for Olivia, who is a “romantic at heart.” While many young men have entrenched themselves in pornography, a rising number of young women are reading romance.

“Romance novels fill that void of what you aren’t receiving in real life, for sure. I believe having a complete text that romanticises everything is almost like an escape from what, in reality, is men who only want something physical.”

Most of the young women felt uncomfortable with Perry’s blunt advice to “get married and do your best to stay married”. Monogamy produces wealthy and stable societies, as men seeking sex will likely be forced into responsible marriage material, she argues. Perry admits that marriage is “clunky,” but “where critics go wrong is arguing there is a better system. There isn’t.”

Estella’s parents are not married, and Sophie’s parents only recently got married. Like all the young women, they both wanted to get married in the future. But not now.

“Marriage is really good for the kids and bringing up a family. But yeah, I feel like it's not the only way,” says Estella.

“It’s also very trapping for a woman in a marriage, and studies have shown that the most dangerous man in a woman’s life is her husband.”