When it comes to sexual behavior on college campuses, there's a lot of hype, myths and perceptions of escalating social crisis and destructive deviant behaviors.
One would think given the continuously suggested trends since the Free Love era of the 1960s, we'd all be fornicating constantly with anything and everything that moves by now. One would think that our campuses would be raging epicenters of STD epidemics. One would think we'd all have families with multiple children from multiple partners by our senior year. Not surprisingly, this is not the reality, and one must take each bit of journalistic alarmism with a grain of salt.
The reality is that sexual behaviors are in fact always changing, and our only criteria for evaluating these changes seems to be solely based on novelty: "It's not normal, because it's new and different; therefore something's wrong."
The latest pariah de-jour, the contemporary terminology replacing "free love" of the 1960s, is the "college hook-up culture." I've written several times about it because many new books are always coming out, myopically decrying the woes of premarital sex, especially how bad it is for women to actually enjoy sex for sex's sake. In the recent past we've seen several peevish publications, griping in part or wholly about changing sexual behaviors, making the best sellers list. Among them are Pamela Paul's "Pornofied," Arial Levy's "Female Chauvinist Pigs" and Jean M. Twenge's "Generation Me," and now a there's a new one.
The latest publication combating the realities of the sexual revolution is "Sex and The Soul" by Donna Freitas. Freitas' book is premised on a flawed perception that the hook-up culture (non-committal and promiscuous sexuality) is replacing good ol' fashioned dating.
The on-the-front-porch-swing sort of dating ended with our grandparents' generation however, back in the 1960s and 1970s. Freitas is a religious studies professor, however - not a sociologist. That flaw aside and to her credit, the book is not so much evangelical hell-fire and brimstone as it is a mostly a long over-due, constructive and supportive effort targeting those who have chosen to abstain from sexuality.
The sad reality is, like unhealthy sexual behavior, there are negative emotional and social consequences when we refrain from sexuality completely. Unlike unhealthy sexual behavior, there shouldn't be.
Abstinence is a healthy and thoughtful choice just as healthy and thoughtful sexual exploration is, and it's a choice which should be at least as rewarding.
So what is really happening on American campuses? Has dating really been replaced by a promiscuous non-committal drunken hook-up culture?
Canadian researchers, publishing in the spring 2004 issue of "Adolescence," found that there are three sexual behavior sub-groups among college students which have not changed proportionally since their long-term monitoring began back in 1980. Thirty percent of us are celibate, 60 percent are monogamous, and 10 percent are "free-experimenters." The average number of partners (4.5 for females, and seven for males), and the median age of first sexual experience (17 for both genders) has remained constant since 1980.
Depending on which studies are cited and how their questions were worded, about a quarter of males in colleges are virgins, and there's been little or no change over recent decades. There was a significant decrease in virginity among females in the late 80s and the early 90s, however. Basically, college women are catching up to men, discovering birth control and discarding their virginity (as opposed to losing it). Currently, about one third of college women are virgins.
So what has really changed?
More of us are using condoms, but we're also having a lot more oral and anal sex - which is not without risks. The former now exceeds coitus amongst adolescents (15-19 year olds) who are sexually active. Or, just as likely, we're no longer afraid to admit to doing as much. Oral sex, however, is not the alternative to coitus we all seem to think it to be. According to the recent study mentioned above, those who are sexually active are having both regular sex and oral sex, and not using oral sex as an alternative to coitus. Amongst young adults who are sexually active, oral virgins are virtually an extinct species.
The pendulum will swing to and fro. What is "normal" behavior does in fact change somewhat, and riding the cresting edge of these tidal changes are young adults - particularly college students. Our sensationalized bouts of excess and hedonism will always be perceived as repugnant, unprecedented or destructive and quite often they are, but that doesn't make these exceptional cases the norm.
The reality is that we're mostly the same college students we've always been, at least since the sexual revolution began.
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