YalEditorial: Can Rules for Romping Be Too Resolute?
by Dana Schuster, '07
College sex is all about expectations: fulfilling your own, fulfilling your partner’s and, often, fulfilling collegiate and personal standards for everything ranging from a strings-free one-night romp to the inevitable next-day run-in (lamentably when you’re sporting your library-best accoutré) after a potentially relationship-progressing first kiss.
The prevalence of hookup codes of conduct extends beyond the mere threat of an unforgiving gossip trail. Matters of morals, pride and a sheer unwillingness to share a bed with anything other than one’s 1,000 threads, have culminated in a plethora of rules that dictate everything from when it’s time to leave to when it’s time to come. But with outlined lists—whether derived from media outlets, forthright friends, or Catholic school—dictating hookup protocol from start to end, one has to wonder whether or not we have let our desires for orderly conduct replace our more innate (and at times, animalistic) desires.
Of course, what is and what is not to be expected during a hookup is difficult to gauge—especially since outside influences and parent-infused morals have been so unevenly distributed among America’s college populace. Despite the prevalence of hookup guides, make-out mandates are rooted far beyond the pages of Cosmopolitan or Maxim. Some students’ rules stem as far back to their middle school days when a movie-theater hand job was de rigueur, but oral sex was reserved only for the truly “fast” Sketchers-sporting girl or guy. Which may account for some collegiates’ unwillingness to go down the first time around. “Girls, they all have these rules,” lamented one disgruntled Yale senior. “You’d be surprised how many girls refuse to give head on the first hook-up.” One female undergrad who admits to being fond of performing oral sex— “It’s empowering. I feel totally in control. One snap of my jaw and bam!”—still refuses to flaunt her prowess when hooking up with a guy for the first time. “It’s not that I’m scared of being slutty…It’s just that, well I don’t know, it’s a matter of personal values. I always wait until the second or third hookup. They have to earn it.”
Interestingly, although groups of friends or social institutions such as Greek houses, sports teams, or societies lend themselves to a certain candor whether comparing technique/size/digital pics, students’ hookup decrees exist on a mainly independent level. Everything from the “acceptable” number of people with whom one has slept, to one’s willingness to give without receiving varies dramatically across social, age, and gender pools. Which can make hooking up a rather ambiguous affair. Because even though everyone may play nice in the same social pool, for every sex-crazed East Coast prep-school babe is an equally attractive Midwestern boy, who, despite his ability to shotgun a beer in under 10 seconds and his penchant for Carmen Electra “Singled Out” memorabilia, is actually saving himself for marriage.
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