On Guyland and some comment
I have commented a few times on this book on this blog, but I find it really good. Here is a slightly long excerpt:
“‘I know it is different at other schools,’ Trey tried to patiently explain to me. ‘I mean, at other schools, people date. You know, a guy asks a girl out, and they go out to a movie or something. You know, like dating? But here at Cornell, nobody dates. We go out in groups to local bars. We go to parties. And then after we’re good and drunk, we hook up. Everyone just hooks up.’
‘Does that mean you have sex?’ I ask.
‘Hmm,’ he says, with a half-smile on his face. ‘Maybe, maybe not. That’s the sort of beauty of it, you know? Nobody can really be sure.’
…
The only point Troy is really wrong about is his assumption is that traditional dating is going on anywhere else. Dating, at least in college, seems to be goner good.”
(An aside: Cornell seems to be the only Ivy League college that was not originally religious, even though all the others dropped their religious identities at some point. I went to mainly Catholic schools, but we had similar issues.)
Just a few thoughts. This may seem misogynistic, but I think in some ways US feminism created some social problems. Of course, women should be able to vote, have workplace equality, and equal pay for equal work. But there was something called “rape culture” when I was a teenager. I think it was really “hang-out culture” because people were not going on formal dates maybe because feminists thought dating was too patriarchal. I went to a few dances with women in high school but not on dates. College was a desert.