Hookup culture dominates the lives of college students
today. Most students spend hours agonizing over their hopes
for Friday night and, later, dissecting the evenings’
successes or failures, often wishing that the social
contract of the hookup would allow them to ask for more out
of sexual intimacy. The pressure to participate comes from
all directions—from peers, the media, and even parents. But
how do these expectations affect students themselves? And
why aren’t parents and universities helping students make
better-informed decisions about sex and
relationships?
In The End of Sex, Donna
Freitas draws on her own extensive research to reveal what
young men and women really want when it comes to sex and
romance. Surveying thousands of college students and
conducting extensive one-on-one interviews at religious,
secular public, and secular private schools, Freitas
discovered that many students—men and women alike—are deeply
unhappy with hookup culture. Meaningless hookups have led
them to associate sexuality with ambivalence, boredom,
isolation, and loneliness, yet they tend to accept hooking
up as an unavoidable part of college life. Freitas argues
that, until students realize that there are many avenues
that lead to sex and long-term relationships, the vast
majority will continue to miss out on the romance, intimacy,
and satisfying sex they deserve.
An honest,
sympathetic portrait of the challenges of young adulthood,
The End of Sex will strike a chord with
undergraduates, parents, and faculty members who feel that
students deserve more than an endless cycle of boozy one
night stands. Freitas offers a refreshing take on this
charged topic—and a solution that depends not on premarital
abstinence or unfettered sexuality, but rather a healthy
path between the two.
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