Okay, I’m not sure if this will sit fine with everyone, given how glamorized and normalized hooking up is, in today’s world, but I’m probably not going to antagonize it. I’d rather try to process my feelings about this topic and how it has caused me restless nights, leaving me dazed at whatever I want in such an arrangement.
I come from a very conservative society, where families try to protect their daughters until marriage, which is this “holy” institution approved by society - nobody cares what you do behind the doors once you’re married. Might give way to marital rape, domestic abuse etc. but that’s a separate topic. So the proposal of sex is a very bold thing to do, cause people don’t want to be seen as a slut in public life. If I agree to have sex with you right off the bat, what’s stopping me from agreeing on a similar arrangement with someone else once I’m married to you? So sex was observed as this special gift that you give only to someone special, provisioned through a socially approved process called marriage. Take this conservative idea up a notch, and you’re told that sex is only for childbirth, and you’re probably not supposed to enjoy it too much. Raising a child is a huge undertaking, and the conditions that you as a parent procure for the child decide their relationship with the society. So to keep things as they are, society accepted certain norms, putting restrictions on who you can have sex with.
In a modern, liberal world, a lot of people get in and out of marriage more than once in their lifetime. So it’s not really being treated as this holy institution, a “wedlock”. People seek to experiment with their bodies, deconstructing orthodox, ideas once deemed “true wisdom” and finding them baseless. We, as a species, are able to somehow recognize sex as a recreational activity (I hope you know the world’s oldest profession) and with the invention of contraceptives, this recreational activity leaves minimal consequences to deal with. So now, having sex is just like a smoking session or a spa session - it’s reduced to a commodity, where your life after consuming it, is more or less the same as it was before, excluding exceptional cases of pregnancy, STIs, sextortion or exposé leading to social consequences, which are real possibilities.
Sex has been commercialized, you can sell it as a unit - there’s hourly rates, one magazine, DVD, movie ticket to consume sex, for a certain price. It can be distributed to anyone, and there’s repeatability - you can keep consuming these units over a period of time. There has always been a demand for it. Sex has been used to lure, advertise, market and to reward. You’re bound to subscribe to anything that involves sex.
Hookup Culture is one such product - it’s like a barter system, an arrangement between two consenting adults, to engage in sexual activity without emotional attachment or promise of commitment. This makes you free to have multiple partners, to consume sex from various sources. This kind of makes it a transactional agreement. Throw some FOMO into the mix, now you’re curious about trying out various flavours of it. It fulfils the need for human connection and physical touch, and it somehow validates you, as a desirable sexual mate, as more and more people deem you fuckable.
[to be continued]
I come from a very conservative society, where families try to protect their daughters until marriage, which is this “holy” institution approved by society - nobody cares what you do behind the doors once you’re married. Might give way to marital rape, domestic abuse etc. but that’s a separate topic. So the proposal of sex is a very bold thing to do, cause people don’t want to be seen as a slut in public life. If I agree to have sex with you right off the bat, what’s stopping me from agreeing on a similar arrangement with someone else once I’m married to you? So sex was observed as this special gift that you give only to someone special, provisioned through a socially approved process called marriage. Take this conservative idea up a notch, and you’re told that sex is only for childbirth, and you’re probably not supposed to enjoy it too much. Raising a child is a huge undertaking, and the conditions that you as a parent procure for the child decide their relationship with the society. So to keep things as they are, society accepted certain norms, putting restrictions on who you can have sex with.
In a modern, liberal world, a lot of people get in and out of marriage more than once in their lifetime. So it’s not really being treated as this holy institution, a “wedlock”. People seek to experiment with their bodies, deconstructing orthodox, ideas once deemed “true wisdom” and finding them baseless. We, as a species, are able to somehow recognize sex as a recreational activity (I hope you know the world’s oldest profession) and with the invention of contraceptives, this recreational activity leaves minimal consequences to deal with. So now, having sex is just like a smoking session or a spa session - it’s reduced to a commodity, where your life after consuming it, is more or less the same as it was before, excluding exceptional cases of pregnancy, STIs, sextortion or exposé leading to social consequences, which are real possibilities.
Sex has been commercialized, you can sell it as a unit - there’s hourly rates, one magazine, DVD, movie ticket to consume sex, for a certain price. It can be distributed to anyone, and there’s repeatability - you can keep consuming these units over a period of time. There has always been a demand for it. Sex has been used to lure, advertise, market and to reward. You’re bound to subscribe to anything that involves sex.
Hookup Culture is one such product - it’s like a barter system, an arrangement between two consenting adults, to engage in sexual activity without emotional attachment or promise of commitment. This makes you free to have multiple partners, to consume sex from various sources. This kind of makes it a transactional agreement. Throw some FOMO into the mix, now you’re curious about trying out various flavours of it. It fulfils the need for human connection and physical touch, and it somehow validates you, as a desirable sexual mate, as more and more people deem you fuckable.
[to be continued]