NEW YORK — During a class discussion on adolescence, a high school teacher recently asked her students whether they go on dates. We don’t “date,” the 12th graders reported. We “hook up.” If you’re in your 40s, “hooking up” might mean catching a friend downtown for lunch. But to people in their teens or 20s, the phrase often means a […]

Casual sex and one-night stands are almost always framed as damaging to women, particularly young women. In recent years, writers like Laura Sessions Stepp and Wendy Shalit have issued dire warnings about the alleged dangers of sex outside of committed relationships. Let’s call this rhetoric what it is: a tired repeat of the sexist double standards that have haunted women […]

When it comes down to it, relationships take a ton of time. I never thought of the hookup as the replacement for dating…and I never thought of it as a time management issue. The hookup – that meeting and mating ritual that started among high school and college students – is becoming a trend among young people who have entered […]