Social Commentary: Hook-up Culture and the Disempowerment of Women
According to the philosopher Immanuel Kant, human beings should be treated as an ends-in-themselves and not as a means to something else. Therefore, our inherent worth does not depend on anything else — we exist, so we have value.
Yet, this fundamental value is violated in hook-up culture.
But first, to understand why we arrive at this conundrum — where people, instead of finding value in our worth, choose to instead derive value from hedonistic pursuits of casual sex; we have to first understand: what exactly is hegemonic masculinity?
According to the Oxford’s Dictionary of Sociology, hegemonic masculinity refers to the stereotypical and behavioral ideals for males in a culture in a particular period. In contemporary Western cultures, masculinity is typically associated with personality traits such as assertiveness, competitiveness, initiating and being in charge of sexual relationships, and even having multiple sexual partners, to exemplify, perform and perpetuate their dominant masculinity.
Pursuing Hegemonic Masculinity Through Hook-up Culture
Given that having multiple sexual partners and engaging in intercourse is deemed as masculine, men’s status are bolstered through the participation in these casual relationships. As the desire for commitment is seen as feminine, therefore, a lot of the men who want to fit into the category of hegemonic masculinity, shut themselves off from commitment and pursue casual relationships instead. This is so because they want to be viewed in their social sphere as hegemonic men and boost their social points. In fact, according to the research article, Strategic Ambiguity: Protecting Emphasized Femininity and Hegemonic Masculinity, men who participate in hook-up culture, may be doing so to enforce and conform to a hegemonic version of masculinity. Extrapolating on this, given that the men who participate in hook-up culture are seeking to assert a hegemonic version of masculinity, the primary sample of men who women get to choose from — if they were to engage in casual relationships — aren’t that diverse.
The Problems with Hook-up Culture
How Hook-up Culture Perpetuates The Repression of Women’s Agency
According to Ana Psychology, a clinical psychology doctoral candidate, hook-up culture promotes hegemonic masculinity for men, while emphasized femininity is promoted for women. She continues to explain that emphasized femininity is characterized by compliance. Compliance inherently implies that women are not making choices for themselves, but doing things because someone else is making them. As such, they are not in power there. She also quoted that in hookup culture, men get to decide who has enough worth to be committed to. This is so because men are usually the gatekeepers in deciding whether the casual relationship can delve into a more serious, committed ones, while women are the gatekeepers of physicality.
Given that women tend to prefer commitment, while men tend to prefer casual relationships, hook-up culture leads to the repression of women’s agency, as women are forced to submit to and go along with the emotional terms and conditions of the relationship defined by the men, if they wanted to pursue any form of relationship with them. Through this process, women lose their personal power and autonomy, as they are forced to comply to the needs and wants of men in these casual relationships, while suppressing their own.
I personally remember how disempowering it felt when I engaged in a casual relationship. I constantly had to tell myself, how to feel and how not to feel, and I had to steel myself to remain detached and not expect anything more. It felt sad that I had to be someone’s hook-up buddy, and suppress my emotional desires if I wanted to be by their side. Eventually, I worked up the conviction to walk away from this arrangement, in order to regain my personal power and autonomy. It felt liberating to be removed from this entanglement, because I then realized that I deserve to be with someone who values me for my mind, my intellect, and loved for who I am as a person, and not just reduced to a means for someone’s sexual pleasures.
Hook-up Culture Leads to the Objectification of Women
Given that men’s social status is bolstered through the participation in sexual intercourse, this leads to the penchant for men to hype up their sexual interactions. This male assertion of masculinity perpetuates a cycle of female objectification, where guys bond with each other by objectifying women and bragging about how they have acquired these women like objects. In these performances of masculinity, women are mere objects, by which men can use to attain social status, and not equals whom they respect. Women are are valued for their bodies, and not their minds.
And this brings me back to my first point about Kant’s philosophy: Hook-up culture reduces women to tools which men use as a means to assert hegemonic masculinity, boost their social standing, and for their evanescent sexual pleasure. Women are not recognized nor respected for their inherent worth, and, their needs and wants, but are instead, forced to suppress their desires and comply with the arrangements of the casual relationship. As such, hook-up culture even reinforces the problematic gender stereotypes and roles in our society, by promoting genders to conform to their socially ascribed roles, where men are supposed to be dominant and assertive, and women are supposed to be docile and comply.
Moreover, given that a desire for commitment is associated with femininity, while detachment and non-emotionality are associated with masculinity, it leads us to the question: Who exactly is hookup culture designed to benefit? If women tend to prefer commitment, and men tend to prefer casual relationships, and the culture is primarily based on casual relationships, I wonder who the culture is for.
As such, the condoning of hookup culture, indirectly condones and perpetuates the objectification and compliance of women, as well as their gender roles, which only further drives towards the disempowerment of women.
In developed countries, it may seem that we have eradicated sexism on a pragmatic level, where women have the same opportunities and rights as men, such as to education, employment and voting. However, with hook-up culture, the seed of sexism that has been planted into our collective societal constructs, have yet to be fully uprooted.
How Kopi Date Differs from This Status Quo
To me, sex should symbolise the utmost union of two people, with the bonding of bodies embodying the forging of ultimate trust between them, and, with the pinnacle of physical intimacy representing the epitome of emotional intimacy. However, with hook-up culture, this beautiful and intimate act is tainted, and reduced to an empty pursuit of sexual gratification.
Moreover, with dating apps being flooded by people looking for casual flings and relationships, which catalyze the propagation of hook-up culture, it may be increasingly difficult to connect with someone authentically.
In contrast, Kopi Date offers the emotional connection and depth absent from hook-up cultures. It provides you with the meaningful and fulfilling human connection that we are all so intrinsically searching for.
Bibliography
Ana Psychology. (2021). The Pros & Cons of Hookup culture for Women. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIh8LqU7s-o&ab_channel=AnaPsychology
Danielle M. Currier. (2013). Strategic Ambiguity: Protecting Emphasized Femininity and Hegemonic Masculinity in the Hookup Culture. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891243213493960
R.W. Connell, James W. Messerschmidt. (2005). Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891243205278639
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