Hook-Up Culture: The Friends, The Foes And The Fatherless

Image courtesy of Rhododendrites (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A man described casual sex to me as a cigarette: short-term pleasure, with no long-term benefits.

I can imagine your distaste, reader, as you exclaim, ‘Of course, of course it's a man!’ Indeed, of course, it is a man, the person in a heterosexual relationship to which all beginnings and ends, pleasures and non-pleasures are centred around, says he enjoys casual sex. For men and male needs, a body you can consume and not think about after you’ve enjoyed yourself is akin to a sexual experience with a woman.

For women, at least a cigarette can last 10 minutes. For women, a cigarette is unlikely to harass, abuse or rape them. Perhaps a cigarette can’t reply to your texts either, but isn’t that a measly trade-off? 

“Not all men,” I hear the male readers cry! I turn to shield myself from this onslaught, and fall face-first into a crowd of angry shouts: “I’m a woman and I can have casual sex!” Oh dear, how do I escape from this? How do I balance right and wrong, men and women, psychological and social? 

Well, my best solution was a survey.

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1. Have you participated in casual sex? (i.e. having sex without being in a committed romantic relationship). 

2. Have you enjoyed your casual sexual experiences? 

3. Have there been negatives to casual sexual experiences which you have not encountered in committed sexual relationships? (e.g. ‘feeling used’)

4. Have there been positives to casual sexual experiences which you have not encountered in committed sexual relationships? (e.g. ‘low pressure’)

5. Would you recommend casual sexual relationships to a friend? 

6. Would you recommend casual sexual relationships to an enemy?*

Last question removed for the sanctity of the survey: the altar at which all social science degrees bow. 

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My first obstacle was struggling to define casual sex. My boyfriend asked me, “Was the sex we had before we were together casual?” I couldn’t come up with an answer to this, but I decided to use it as a basis for my definition: sex without being in a committed romantic relationship. I left a note in my description: feel free to use liberties as I’m more interested in what people have to say than getting stuck in the nitty-gritty.

Most of my responses were from women. This shocked me, because, to my knowledge, every man I’ve ever been with has told me all his exes were virgins. Regardless, I power on through the 40 or so replies, filtering out those which answered ‘no’ to my preliminary question, Have you had casual sex? Not because I don’t care about their opinions, but because I am focusing on the lived experiences of people within this type of relationship. 

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One of the main questions I wanted to tackle was: ‘Do women actually enjoy casual sex?’ This question gives rise to all sorts of outraged answers, a large proportion from men. I asked my friends this question, and they all ‘ooh,’ ‘aah’ and ‘umm’ in response; I think no one has a straightforward answer. 

If I rephrase, ‘Can a woman enjoy casual sex?’ the answer turns into a resounding “yes.” So what is the difference between the individual and the collective? I believe it lies in our definition, that heterosexual sex relies on one main act: PIV (penis in vagina) a.k.a penetrative sex. This is the image that comes to mind when most of us envision sex, whether we want to or not. It is the barrier between ‘body counts’ and ‘doing bits’, ‘third base’ and ‘going all the way’, ‘how do lesbians have sex’ and ‘illegal homosexual acts’. Why is PIV the be-all and end-all of sex? And how does this affect women in their perception of casual sex? 

Most women do not orgasm from penetrative sex because they rely on clitoral stimulation, which is hard to achieve with solely PIV sex. The clitoris is the female equivalent of the head of the penis – imagine if men were expected to have sex without having the head of their penis stimulated! 

In this vein, it is easy to imagine why casual sex doesn’t lead to orgasms or a fulfilling experience for most women. If PIV sex is the main aim, and the man’s orgasm signals the end of an encounter, how can women find fulfilment within this paradigm? 

Some women have more nerves around the entrance to their vagina, or they are more easily stimulated by the friction created during PIV. However, neurological studies show that many women do not know what an orgasm is and confuse it with ordinary sexual pleasure. The chemical and physiological signals that indicate an orgasm do not match self-reporting by women. 

It is also important to note that an orgasm may not be achievable for many women due to psychological or physical reasons, and women can still experience enjoyment from sex without an orgasm. 

However, there is another link in this chain. Many claim that women simply view sex differently due to psychological and biological factors. The stereotype is that women view sex as an emotional endeavour, while men view it from a solely physical lens. Perhaps this is tied into the stigma surrounding ‘virginity’ and ‘body counts’ in women, as well as patriarchal religions that emphasise ‘purity’ in women (think of the Virgin Mary, one step below Jesus). 

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Let’s compare this analysis to my survey answers.

Disregarding the neutral answers allows us to compare those who answered more negatively and more positively. 12 people answered negatively, and 8 people answered positively. Considering 70% of survey-takers identified as women, this distribution is not as stark as I expected. The discourse surrounding casual sex and hook-up culture paints a picture of poor, traumatised women seeking connection, exploited by sex-seeking men who view them only as bodies. 

Perhaps some of this narrative is true. When survey-takers were asked to report any negatives associated with casual sex, 64.3% reported that they had experienced negative interactions. 

When asked to describe these negative interactions, the word ‘used’ or its equivalents appeared 46.7% of the time, and ‘miscommunication’ or its equivalents appeared 40% of the time. 

The word ‘used’ is interesting, as it appears more commonly in female discourse around casual sex. It is harder to envision a man saying he feels ‘used’ when engaging in casual sex, though this does happen. What is the reason for this division between the language used? 

Women are taught that men will ‘use’ them for their bodies, while disregarding their desire for emotional connection, which women internalise as innate to their desires. On the other hand, men are taught that they should always feel sexual, that men don’t get assaulted or raped or put in compromising situations (unless they are violated by another man). Men will always ‘benefit’ from a sexual encounter because they achieve orgasm and get to ‘have’ a woman, whereas women always ‘lose,’ whether they want the sexual encounter or not, because they’re ‘giving up’ something to a man who does not fulfil their ‘innate’ desire for ‘emotional connection’. 

Do women really desire emotional connection over all else? Perhaps some do. However, I believe it is just as likely that women have casual sexual encounters for all sorts of complicated, intertwined, conflicting and selfish reasons – just as men do. Surely women have this capacity. Yet, combined with the orgasm gap between men and women, especially between men and women with no emotional or romantic connection, it becomes easy to see why a woman feels ‘used’ for a man’s pleasure, while her own is neglected. 

Stereotypes around women who engage in casual sex may also play a role in the language used. Women are branded ‘easy’, ‘sluts’, ‘whores’, ‘unclean’ and a number of other terms with no male equivalent. The term ‘fuckboy’ has less negative connotations than ‘slut’ – a ‘fuckboy’ is almost seen as a winner, while a slut is not. Even the word ‘fuckboy’ itself is more positive – a boy who likes to ‘fuck around’. A slut is a term for a woman who is sexually promiscuous – she is not a woman or a girl, she is an object of sexual promiscuity. 

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Another refrain commonly heard about casual sex is that it ‘goes against human nature’. Sex is extremely intimate and bonding, and sharing this with a partner who you are not committed to can be seen as bastardising the sacredness of sex. From traditional religions, where sex is shared between a heterosexual couple within the confines of marriage, to feminist perspectives on ‘free sex’ where sex should be with a committed partner who respects you, it feels like the narrative around sex always repeats the same moral. 

Perhaps it is less a female issue than a human one – if we remove the elements of misogyny and patriarchy, are we not still left with an emotionally intimate and intense act that is ruined when emotional connection doesn’t play a role? Yet, out of seventeen responses, 80% reported the ‘lack of commitment’ as a positive of casual sexual relationships. A few responses featured the words ‘fun’ and ‘confidence building’. 

So, my question to you is – does it matter if it goes against human nature? We do things in opposition to human nature all the time: flying planes, texting, eating processed food, and capitalism. Does the fact that emotional connection during sex is natural mean that we shouldn’t have casual sex? I don’t think so. 

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My final question was ‘Would you recommend casual sex to a friend?’. This was more of a lighthearted question, yet the responses intrigued me. 

Despite the majority of people saying they didn’t enjoy their casual sexual encounters, the majority of people would recommend it to a friend. Perhaps this means that despite the negatives, the pleasure, character building and fun they experienced during these interactions allows people to advise their friends to also participate. 

So, you heard it here first. Go sow your wild oats. 

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Edited by Zarah Hashim, Sex and Relationships Editor