Let's Talk About It: Hook-Up Culture and Why It's Not as Bad as People Say

There’s been a lot of talk lately about “hookup culture”, and most of it has not been in favor of it. A lot of its criticisms are based on the perceived shallowness of the phenomena. Before we get into the critiques, it’s important to define exactly what hook-up culture is.

According to Urban Dictionary, “hookup culture” is defined as:

“The era that began in the early 1990s and has since prevailed on college campuses and elsewhere when hooking up has replaced traditional dating as the preferred method of heterosexual liaison.”

Or in other words: more college-aged students are favoring a casual sex hookup over traditional dating methods. Many people on Twitter and Facebook will often create statuses lamenting over how they long for the days where people used to care about relationships as opposed to only wanting sex.[INSERT VISUAL HERE: SCREENSHOT] And all of these criticisms are completely valid, as everyone is entitled to their own feelings on matters as personal and intimate as this, but it’s still crucial to explore the opposite side of their arguments.

So I’m just going to go out and say it: hooking up with people isn’t as bad as people make it sound.

It can actually be very liberating, and takes so much pressure off the archaic mentality that someone has to have a partner in order to be happy. That notion is simply as far from the truth as possible; sure, it’s great to have someone by your side through everything, but it’s also critical for people to be independent as well! Not to mention, relationships require a lot more work than what is expected. People may argue, “relationships aren’t supposed to feel laborious! That means you’re in a bad relationship!” which can be true to some extent, but the fact of the matter is that relationships do take a lot of effort whether you’re with the person of your dreams or not! That doesn’t mean relationships are bad, but in our ever-evolving world where more and more women are concerned with their careers (and rightly so!), sometimes intimate relationships take the back seat in our list of priorities. And that’s okay!

What is also okay is understanding that as human beings, we have certain needs. And sometimes, a girl really needs to get those needs met. But she may not have time to invest all that time or emotional work into a relationship, where conventionally those needs could be met quite easily, and that’s where hookup culture makes things easier.

I see hookup culture as a response to the unfortunate phenomenon of shaming women for embracing their sexuality. It has birthed apps like Tinder and Bumble that make the process of finding people for casual relations and hookups much easier and safer, which is also probably a factor as to why it took the dating scene by storm. This isn’t to say that hookup culture will inevitably erase traditional dating; rather, it’s just a nice alternative for people to turn to if they decide that a relationship is something they don’t wish to pursue and don’t have to fear immense judgement otherwise.

Hookup culture is really just people celebrating their sexual freedom, and that’s not a bad thing. It isn’t making people sex-crazed, it doesn’t mean that everyone who likes casual sex ONLY cares about that, and it doesn’t spell the death of traditional dating. All it does is give people an opportunity to be honest and transparent about what they want, and to have fun while doing it.

It’s 2019 and it’s about time we stop hating on others for living their lives the best way they see fit.