Chapter Summary
Our class chose to have “Groups” as one of the categories relating to hookup culture because of the many different people encompassed in both our class and the world as a whole. We figured that we could get so many different perspectives from people who have experienced much different things than we have. By creating this category, people can feel comfortable sharing their stories and feel a sense of community with others who identify with the same groups as them. It also relates to intersectionality because one person is not just one thing, they do not just make up one group a lot of the time. Each person can identify with more than one group and hear the experiences of other groups as well. We avoid putting people in a singular box by including the category of “Groups” because it allows people to be and identify with whoever they want.
Throughout the fourth and fifth weeks of the course, students used a variety of different resources for answering questions related to the category of “groups,” within the “hookup” culture. While many students sought out scholarly articles and books, other students looked to YouTube videos and documentaries for answers. Religious groups, particularly those of Christian or catholic affiliation, saw quite a bit of attention from students. Several students cited Amy Burdette’s “’Hooking up’ at College: Does Religious Make a Difference,” as a resource for understanding “hook up” practices of Catholic and protestant college students (Burdette et al.). A video titled “Should You Have Sex Before Marriage? Can They Agree?” was also used to compare sex-related attitudes between religious and nonreligious individuals (Jubilee). Students were also interested in understanding how “hooking up” within the LGBTQ+ community differed from that within the cis-gender, heterosexual community. Several students cited Ellen Lamont’s article, “Navigating Campus Hook up Culture: LGBTQ Students and College Hookups (Lamont et al.). The authors of the study described in the article interviewed 24 LGBTQ college students, in an effort to understand these students’ attitudes towards “hooking up,” as well as their “hook up” practices. The authors of this study also deemed the “hook up” culture to be gendered- a sentiment students in the class agreed with. Students cited articles, such as Leah Fessler’s “A lot of women don’t enjoy ‘hook up’ culture- so why do we force ourselves to participate,” as anecdotal evidence for the female experience of the “hook up” culture (Fessler).
In addition to the resources that students found individually and in teams, the class as a whole utilized Kathleen Bogle’s Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, and Lisa Wade’s American Hook up: The New Culture of Sex on Campus (Bogle; Wade). These two novels primarily served to describe the “hook up” culture as a whole, but were also used in connection to the category “groups.” While other sources were used to gain insight on traditionally underrepresented populations, students used Bogle and Wade’s books to better understand groups that largely makeup and influence the “hook up” culture, such as: those who consume alcohol, those identifying as “heterosexual,” women in sororities, and men in fraternities.
This is our (team cucumbers) first draft for the external resource summary for chapter #1. Any feedback or suggestions for revision are greatly appreciated. I felt it may have been a bit long, but I wasn’t sure what length we were going for with these.
