3 Things We're Tired Of Hearing About Millennial Sex

A desperate plea to handwringing
pundits everywhere: please, please
stop generalizing about Millennials'
sex lives.
In an Oct. 22 Forbes article about an
instant, portable STD test (which
sounds awesome by the way) Bill
Frezza bemoans the Millennial
attitudes towards sex:
These kids are totally
unencumbered by the social
mores we Baby Boomers
grew up with. They appear to
have no shame, no sense of
privacy, no modesty, and no
concern about their
reputations. They treat sex
like another form of
recreation, like videogames
only messier. They want to
have commitment-free fun,
and they want it now.
Frezza's quote sums up almost every
cliche we're tired of hearing about
Millennial's sex lives few of which
are actually grounded in fact. Here are
three tropes we just can't get on board
with:
1. "Hookup culture" is the new
dating . In August 2012, Hanna Rosin
wrote that hookup culture had
"largely replaced dating on college
campuses and beyond." Cue endless
debates about the emotional and
physical consequences of casual sex.
But research shows that "hookup
culture" might not actually exist -- or
at least it isn't as prevalent as we've
been led to believe. Sociologist Martin
Monto looked at the reported sexual
habits of two waves of college
students, the first from 1988 to 1996
and the second from 2002 to 2010. He
found “no evidence of substantial
changes in sexual behavior that
would support the proposition that
there is a new or pervasive ‘hookup
culture’ among contemporary college
students.”
2. Women are harmed by Millennial
attitudes towards sex. In 2010,
Caitlin Flanagan wrote that girls
"reluctantly endure" hookup culture
-- a viewpoint echoed by many
conservative publications. Flanagan
expanded on this in her 2012 book
Girl Land , claiming: "The men hold all
the cards, and the women put up
with it because now it's too late...
they don't have a choice."
There's little data to suggest that
women are getting the short end of
the stick when it comes to hooking
up. A well-meaning but seriously
misguided piece in the New York
Times last July investigated the love
lives of young women at the
University of Pennsylvania, finding
that many of them -- gasp -- engage in
casual sex and are none the worse
for it.
3. Millennials don't want
commitment. Millennials are often
portrayed as hedonists, skipping from
one partner to the next and never
settling down. But a recent Gallup
poll found that 91 percent of 18-35
year-olds want to get married they
are simply waiting longer to get
hitched. Given that who you choose to
spend the rest of your life with is a
pretty important decision, surely
waiting to find the right person is the
responsible thing to do.