If it's not on, it's not on: College Edition

Reading "If it's Not On, It's Not On" by Gavey, McPhillips and Doherty reinforced the "Hookup Culture" that we learned about last semester. In college and (in my observation) in the Greek system, both the coital imperative and the scarcity of discourse around female desire coupled with the male sex drive discourse are both exhibited prominently.

A coital imperative is defined as "how much control women (or men) have in determining what sexual activity counts as 'real sex' (Gavey, McPhillips and Doherty 323).  I have often heard my friends, especially girls, talking about their night with a guy or boyfriend. Their friends will ask them if they "hooked up" "made out" or "had sex," and each "category" has a specific meaning. When they ask if the girl "had sex," they almost always mean traditional heterosexual coitus.

This also reinforces what the women interviewed said when they often felt like using condoms meant a relationship was less serious. They said condoms were more of a "one night" thing. In the same way, girls in college often feel like going "all the way" means they may get more serious, while they save other sex acts (not "real sex") for one-night stands.

I also see the male sex drive discourse at work in the college/Greek environment. Girls often talk about going further than they normally would, but say that they "feel bad" because they're giving guys "blue balls," which guys often complain about to get girls to do just that. I've heard several different girls talk about how they feel like a "tease" if all they do is kiss, even if that's all that they personally want to do. They want to have a reputation as a good date or a fun girl, and not as a tease or a prude.

One extreme example of this that I have come across is a man who is in the same fraternity as my friend. He once said that if a girl doesn't go "far enough," he criticizes them or their sorority. Girls feel like they need to "prove themselves" and go further than they really want to so that they can protect their and their sorority's reputation. This is the opposite of what sororities are supposed to stand for: educated, strong and empowered women and sisterhood, and shows how women buy into the male sex drive discourse.