Hooking up is a term commonly used in contemporary American society to refer to sexual activity between two people who are not in a committed romantic relationship. Data show that although many college students are engaging in hookups, there is no consensus on how to define a hookup. The author uses the concept of “strategic ambiguity” to explore the intentionality and usefulness of the vagueness of this term. Specific to hookups, strategic ambiguity is when individuals use the term “hookup” to (...) describe their sexual activities rather than give details about their sexual activities as an impression management strategy to protect their sexual and social identities. Analyzing data gathered through interviews with heterosexual students at a mid-sized public university in the South, this article addresses the normative character and the myriad definitions of hookups; addresses the underlying heterosexist bias in the definitions of hookups; and analyzes how the ambiguity of the term “hookup” serves women and men in different ways and both reinforces and challenges the current gender order, allowing men to conform to and preserve components of hegemonic masculinity and women to conform to and preserve components of emphasized femininity. (shrink)

The college hookup scene is a profoundly gendered and heteronormative sexual field. Yet the party and bar scene that gives rise to hookups also fosters the practice of women kissing other women in public, generally to the enjoyment of male onlookers, and sometimes facilitates threesomes involving same-sex sexual behavior between women. In this article, we argue that the hookup scene serves as an opportunity structure to explore same-sex attractions and, at least for some women, to later verify bisexual, lesbian, or (...) queer sexual identities. Based on quantitative and qualitative data and combining queer theory and identity theory, we offer a new interpretation of women’s same-sex practices in the hookup culture. Our analysis contributes to gender theory by demonstrating the utility of identity theory for understanding how non-normative gender and sexual identities are negotiated within heteronormatively structured fields. (shrink)

Studies of collegiate sexuality have not examined infidelity. Using in-depth peer interviews with college students, our article investigates the meanings and practices of “monogamy” and “cheating” for college women. College women use ideas about age, class, and gender to construct collegiate sexuality as a kind of “monogamy lite” exempt from the “rules” of adult sexuality. Many have cheated themselves. Simultaneously, they define “real” relationships as exclusive and condemn “cheaters” as bad people. We employ an intersectional analysis to analyze these discrepancies, (...) arguing that the multiple meanings women use reconcile contradictions between expectations for women’s sexuality and expectations about collegiate behavior, allowing women to sustain a commitment to relationships while also participating in collegiate sexual culture. Moreover, by providing a socially legible, gender-appropriate way to end unwanted relationships, these meanings allow women to use cheating to solve dilemmas in their intimate lives. In this case, college women use middle-class ideas about the transition to adulthood to resist gendered imperatives. (shrink)

Commonly referred to as “cougars,” women who date younger men are often imagined as sexually assertive women who actively seek out and seduce younger men, therefore challenging major pillars of the traditional heterosexual dating script. Drawing on 55 semi-structured interviews with women aged 30-60 who date younger men, I explore the relationship formation process women experienced with younger men with the intent of shedding light on women’s behavior in that context. I found that, contrary to common cultural representations of “cougars,” (...) very few women depicted themselves as seductresses who pursued younger men, with younger men passively waiting to be courted. However, the tendency to present oneself as having played a rather passive role during the relationship formation process was more pronounced among participants over 40 than among 30-something women. I argue that in the context of age-hypogamous dating, women’s ability/desire to renegotiate the gendered script for relationship formation is constrained by the common cultural discourse indicating that a woman’s worth declines with age, as well as by the cultural discomfort toward older women’s sexuality. (shrink)