parallel universes
This relates to my comment to Rachel L’s post below, about growing up with a specific crowd. I just finished reading Brigid Delaney’s Griffith Review article all about young women and hooking up and intimacy-less sex.
I know intellectually that there is a part of youth culture that parties hard and abuses lots of substances and fucks lots but I’ve never actually met these people (or at least, not that I’m aware of)and can’t emotionally understand who these people are or how/why they do it. Yeah, when I go to youth festivals I figure a lot of people are going home with each other, but they certainly seem more joyous and less substance-riddled than Brigid’s article describes. I also figure the majority of people are not going home with each other.
I wonder whether I am in the majority or minority? How many young people drink themselves stupid and get their self-esteem through one-night stands found at pounding nightclubs? How many young people really don’t want some sort of longish-term relationship? I know I always have been and always will be a goody-two-shoes, but it just goes to show not only how varied people and young people are, but probably how little of that variety we are exposed to.
In any case it is a good reminder that one only ever can speak for subsets of communities, never the whole thing.
I wrote a Livejournal entry saying almost the exact same thing after reading that article. I’ll copy and paste below, since it was a filtered entry.
“I just finished reading ‘The vulnerability threshold’, by Brigid Delaney, which looks at hook-up culture and how it relates to consumerism.
She writes of women in “backless tops, tiny silk camisoles, high heels and tight jeans”, pumped up on alcohol, drugs, whatever, jumping on men on the dance floor, pashing, dashing, maybe having a quick passionless fuck in the alley outside or going back to someone’s apartment to never see them again the next day.
“The stats point to an emotional disconnect – we are quite happy slipping in and out of each other’s beds, but commitment (and the vulnerability that it entails) is more illusive. However, if we look at what the market has done to sex in the last few decades, are we really surprised relationships are becoming more transactional?”
And I think myself… is all this stuff actually happening? Is it actually how people are living, or is it just another figment of the collective imagination?
From what Brigid writes, I guess it reflects her world. From what Ryan Heath has written, I’m guessing it reflects his world.
But it is not a world that I inhabit. It is not a world that anyone I know inhabits (except some of the gay men I’m friends with). Even the girls who make a hobby of finding men in bars to buy them drinks abandon said men once the drinks are bought. They’ll giggle and point and bat their eyelashes when an attractive guy walks by, but most of the time they won’t kiss him, let alone go home with him.
I’m not naive enough to think that casual sex doesn’t happen, and I don’t even think it’s an invalid life choice, but I do wonder if it’s as pervasive as people say – or as pervasive in that particular way. I’ve joked that I once didn’t notice an orgy happening in the next room, but I just don’t think I know anyone who has random, anonymous sex with people they meet in bars – at least not on a regular basis. What seems to be more common is people having the occasional great relationship and a looooooong drought in between. Or casual sex in the form of short-lived hobby relationships (and I don’t even see much of that). Or sexing buddies.
So I guess what I’m curious about is – is there really this massive hook up culture out there that I have no idea about? And if so, do tell!”