Whitmire Does The Hookup Culture

4 Replies to “Whitmire Does The Hookup Culture”

1. There is truth in Whitmire’s concern mixed up with an ignorance of demographic trends and a sexist assumption that women’s purpose of attending college is to find mates.

   Yes, changing the sex ratio will change the social life somewhat. But some part of the sex-ratio trends in college are a result of OLDER women’s attending college at much higher rates than older men. (Here, “older” means older than right out of college, or > 25 years.)

   In addition, the journalistic “hookup culture” claim strikes me as a bogus trend, and Whitemire makes no attempt to back it up with reference to national data. Impressionistic stuff from a few interviews must be enough. At JMU, I’m sure you can find students to tell you almost anything you want if you just talk to enough of them, and I’ll be curious to see how JMU students respond in the blogosphere in the next few days.

   Finally, there’s the odd claims about college and the marriage market. Yes, I met my wife in college, but that’s not why either I or my wife went to the colleges we attended. So is that what Richard Whitmire thinks the public and families should pay college costs for, to serve as a college Match.com?

2. That should have been “right out of high school,” not “right out of college.” Maybe I need more caffeine…

3. As a classroom teacher I don’t have the formal statistics to support what I’ve experienced, but I do see similar dynamics in my classroom. For the last few years I have been lucky to have 10-12 boys in classes of 25 – 32 students. When the ratio is like that I do see the girls competing for the boy’s attention and affection. Though I haven’t been teaching for decades so I can’t say that I’ve seen the behaviors develop and change over time, but I absolutely agree with Whitemire’s observation that gender imbalances accelerate the pickup/hookup behavior. The fewer boys there are, the more girls seem to compete for their exclusive attention, even in a 6th grade classroom.

4. Sherman Dorn asserts with all the certainty and political correctness he can muster that women’s purpose of attending college is not to find mates.

   Mr. Dorn would do well to ditch the pandering to feminist groups and and adopt some measure of balance. Evolution has implanted a predisposition in women to mate. Men are predisposed to spread their seed. To deny this is to refute what any thinking person outside the fairyland of academia knows is correct.

   So, do women come to college specifically to find a mate? Most likely do not. Is this desire a prominent one in most young women, whether they are in college or not? The question scarcely survives its statement. It only stands to reason that the gender imblance will have an effect on women’s mating behaviors.

   Don’t check your common sense at the classroom door, sir.