Masculinities and Hooking Up: Sexual Decision-Making at College

Abstract

A great deal of empirical research on hooking up has emerged in recent years. While gender is the most common variable examined in hookup behaviors, the overwhelming majority of this research is focused on women. It is often assumed that casual sex practices like hooking up are explicitly masculine, so that enthusiastic male participation is expected. This article examines males’ assumption of agency in collegiate hookups regarding partner choice and sexual behavior. Using in-depth interviews from male undergraduates at a large public research university and focus groups from a small liberal arts college, both on the East coast of the United States, I find that the peer group is instrumental is shaping sexual decision making and reinforcing the double standard. Additionally, awareness of rape culture serves to complicate males’ choices and behaviors regarding sex.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 14 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.