The College Fix

Whether most ladies are willing to admit it or not, they want a little romance on Valentine’s Day.

The problem for most women on today’s college campuses? They haven’t put themselves in a position to get any.

The higher percentage of women on college campuses today compared to men, coupled with the hookup culture in which these young girls have convinced themselves that no-strings-attached sex is what they want, means that it’s a man’s world on Valentine’s Day.

And if you have been on this planet long enough, you know most men lack a romance gene. Ergo, the guy you gave it up for last week probably barely remembers your name, let alone plans on bringing you flowers and chocolate today.

From an academic standpoint, Dr. Mark Regnerus, associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas, points out there are larger pools of women on campus than men, so in terms of sexual economics, the supply outstrips demand; only 43% of college undergraduates are male.

He also notes that the hookup culture means female students are willing to agree to the cheap asking price of the consumers, male college students. Women give men what men want – cheap sex – and fail to secure reciprocal investments in return.

Put more succinctly: they’re selling themselves short.

If female college students as a whole joined forces and stopped giving it up so easily, they’d force men as a whole to give more to them in return for sex. Think romantic dates and perhaps some whirlwind Valentine’s Day adventures.

And what have they got to lose, anyway? Orgasmless sex?

Recent research involving 600 college students found that women are twice as likely to reach orgasm during sex if they are in a serious relationship with their partner, but far less likely if it’s a casual hookup. A second study that looked at 24,000 students at 21 colleges over five years that found “about 40 percent of women had an orgasm during their last hookup involving intercourse, while 80 percent of men did.”

Steven Rhoads, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia and the author of Taking Sex Differences Seriously, reports that he recently asked 16 female seminar participants “if they personally knew — not knew of, but knew — a woman who they thought had been very seriously harmed emotionally because of hook-ups. Every hand went up.”

“The more sexual partners a woman has in her lifetime, the more likely she is to be depressed, to cry almost every day, and to report relatively low satisfaction with her life as a whole,” Rhoads notes.

Underscoring all this, yet another recent study of nearly 500 female college students found that women who casually sleep around experience feelings of depression afterward, and that young women who engage in such behavior have “poor mental health.”

“Hookup behavior during college was positively correlated with experiencing clinically significant depression symptoms,” state the study’s authors in the Journal of Sex Research. “Overall, the present findings, coupled with prior research, suggest that hooking up is associated with poor mental health.”

On a personal note, many years ago I could have been one of the young ladies who raised their hands in Rhoads’ seminar when he asked of personally knowing a woman very seriously harmed emotionally because of hook-ups. On the flip side, I personally knew young women who protected their sanctity, and they left college unscarred.

It’s a shame what the Sexual Revolution has done to young women. Sure puts a damper on Valentine’s Day.

Jennifer Kabbany is associate editor of The College Fix.

IMAGE: Mr. Jakie / Flickr

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