If the hook-up culture is all about liberation, why do I feel so used?

Transcription

1 VIDEO TRANSCRIPT If the hook-up culture is all about liberation, why do I feel so used? Word on Fire Catholic Ministries 6.25 minutes November 7th, 2012 FR. ROBERT BARRON: The hookup culture refers to this mentality that casual sexual encounters, without any kind of psychological connection or relationship or personal engagement, are fine. This is prevalent among young people, but especially at universities where a novel called I am Charlotte Simmons was set. It's about a

2 young girl who comes to an Ivy League school and finds herself completely corrupted by the sexual culture there. In Leonard Sax's thought provoking and disturbing book from 2006 called Why Gender Matters, what becomes clear is that he learned about the hookup culture through the armies of young women who were streaming into his office suffering from anxiety and depression because of their immersion in this strange world. You would think it was a common place, that the hookup culture even as you acknowledge its existence, is something which should be condemned and

3 decried rather than celebrated. But I found an alternative perspective. Just recently I was reading the Atlantic Magazine and there was an article called "Boys on the Side" written by a woman named Hannah Rosin. She says that on the contrary, the hookup culture, especially for women, is something that should be celebrated. She said that it gives women a freedom and a confidence that makes it a great boon for women. Rosin allows that a lot of studies have shown the dark side of the hookup culture, but she argues that a closer look reveals that it is actually very beneficial.

4 Let me just read a couple of quotes from the article. She says, "for most women, the hookup culture is like an island they visit; mostly during their college years, and even then only when they are bored or experimenting or don t know any better, but it's not a place where they drown," she says. How come? She goes on, "the most patient and thorough research about the hookup culture shows that over the long run, women benefit greatly from living in a world where they can have sexual adventure without commitment or all that much shame, and where they can enter into

5 temporary relationships that don't get in the way of future success." Now one might think that the hookup culture will produce all sorts of victims among women; au contraire, she says, Young women who choose a variety of sexual partners and steer clear of pesky relationships manage their romantic lives like savvy headhunters. And here is her grand conclusion, "the hookup culture is too bound up with everything that's fabulous about being a young woman in 2012: The freedom, the confidence, the knowledge that you can always depend upon yourself."

6 It's one of those articles that you are tempted to just put it down and say I can't quite believe what I am reading, but what I want to focus on is that last grand conclusion. Notice the things she emphasizes: Freedom, confidence, depending on yourself are all fundamentally subjective attitudes. No one in his right mind would condemn these things in themselves. Here is the point: Freedom is valuable not so much as an end in itself. Freedom is valuable in the measure that it conduces us toward the good. Self-reliance and confidence is good in the measure that it allows for the fully mature living of the good life.

7 In other words, the subjective attitude always calls out toward the objective good and there it finds its proper point of reference. What really struck me in Rosin's article was the almost complete lack of reference to the objective order. What's the moral and ethical setting for the sexual act? There s no reference to it. What's the purpose and meaning of sexuality? There s no reference to it. What, dare I say, is the religious context for sexuality? There s no reference to it. Apparently it is irrelevant. All that matters is that women become free and confident and savvy headhunters. May I suggest that phrase

8 is very telling? Let it stay in your mind a little bit; a headhunter. This means a subjectivity that has begun to stew in its own juices. A subjectivity that is not connected to the objectively good turns in on itself. The Church refers to this, by the way, as original sin. Left to our own devices, severed from any keen sense of the objective good, we tend to rest in ourselves in a self-absorbed and finally destructive way. I think that explains very well why there is indeed great sadness that comes up out of the hookup culture. What comes to mind here is one of my great heroes, Bob Dillon. One of his

9 really great lines in a song says, "Freedom just around the corner from you, but with truth so far off, what good would it do?" That's exactly this point. Great we are in the land of the free. We love freedom, who doesn t? Freedom just around the corner from you; be a savvy headhunter. But with truth so far off, what good would it do? In fact it won't do any good at all. It will devolve; it will turn in to itself and become something very destructive. What I would say in conclusion is that sexual liberty and the hookup culture will indeed produce a lot of savvy headhunters. I have no doubt about

10 that. They will find themselves in short order in Dr. Sax's office suffering from a very deep sadness of the heart.