Culture of Care event discusses hook-up culture

In a discussion about sex, Justin Garcia made it known he would be comfortable talking about the topic and would be open about the subject.

“I talk about sex a lot. I’m wonderful at cocktail parties,” said Garcia, a Kinsey Institute research scientist and assistant professor in the Department of Gender Studies.

The idea of hooking-up is not a new one, he said.

“I hate to break it to you, but your parents were having casual sex,” Garcia said. “Your grandparents were having casual sex.”

Garcia and Leslie Fasone, Culture of Care adviser and assistant dean for Women’s and Gender Affairs, discussed hook-up culture on college campuses.

The talk took place Tuesday night in the School of Public Health as a sexual well-being event for Culture of Care Week.

Hook-up culture is considered exclusive to the age of emerging adulthood, ages 18 to 25, Garcia said, and it is prominent on college campuses.

“If we think about hook-up culture, it’s certainly something that has become very pervasive in American culture,” Garcia said.

About 75 percent of college students have hooked-up, Garcia said, and movies such as “No Strings Attached” and “Friends with Benefits” have brought the idea of hook-up culture into the media.

“I don’t necessarily think hook-ups are a problem,” Garcia said. “Most people are generally happy they did it.”

Many people have only one to two hook-ups within a year, he said, but the numbers are scattered across the board.

Studies show people from certain groups are more likely to engage in hook-ups, Garcia said.

For example, he said, Division I athletes — like the athletes at IU — are more likely to engage in hook-ups and will do so more often.

“It’s not uncommon for an athlete to have a sexual partner every weekend,” Garcia said.

The behaviors that participants of hook-ups engage in are also across the board, he said, although 90 percent of people engage in kissing during hook-ups.

“About one in 10 people are the Julia Roberts that say, ‘We can have vaginal intercourse, just don’t kiss me, that’s too intimate’,” Garcia said.

When discussing a hook-up, Garcia said no one ever knows the behavior someone engaged in because hook-up is a term that is purposely
ambiguous.

“You are categorizing a term which may not be the same way you use the term in your own life,” Garcia said.

He said studies show men think women are more comfortable performing particular sexual behaviors such as oral and vaginal sex than they really are, and this is an issue that pairs with consent.

Consent was the second topic of discussion. Fasone said it is a topic that comes up in all aspects of a sexual encounter.

“You might imagine, if you are waking up next to someone, and you don’t know what to call them, we may be living in a culture where we aren’t discussing what we want and what we like to do,” Garcia said.

He said this leads to issues with consent which are seen across the country. If people aren’t discussing what they want sexually, then there are consent issues.

“If men are thinking women are more comfortable with certain things, then he may assume going to his room means they will have sex, where a woman really thinks it is just to talk,” Fasone said.

She said women are more likely to give verbal cues whereas men are more likely to give non-verbal cues.

“In terms of interpreting cues, men interpret using non-verbal cues, and that can get really tricky,” she said.

Fasone said the absence of no is not yes. Someone needs to explicitly state if they are comfortable having sex. No one can assume.

“Just because someone says yes to one thing, it may mean something else,” she said.

She said you need to ask for consent multiple times during any sexual
encounter.

“And sex can be really good if consent is given and consent is asked for,” Fasone said.

Junior Alexandra Lake said hook-up culture is important to discuss because she said she feels there is a stigma behind it and the topic is rarely discussed.

“I feel it’s important to talk about because it’s real and it’s happening,” Lake said.

Follow reporter Allison Wagner on Twitter @allmwagn.