Recreational Hook-ups or Emotional Hang-ups?

By Kylie Harrell
August 17, 2008 

This week the incoming freshman at Duke will be attending The Real Deal-a mandatory orientation event that purports to "help you make responsible social decisions at Duke." No doubt this event will be just as rousing as it was when I was a wide-eyed freshman. I admire Duke's efforts to begin conversations about sexual behavior and abuse. However, this shocking presentation-that features everything from how to use a condom to the infamous "orgasm girl"-left me wondering what kind of social scene I had entered.

Three years later as I begin my senior year at Duke, I know too well the campus culture around me. What started with The Real Deal continued with other Duke-sponsored events like Safer Sex Week and the infamous Sex Workers Art Show. It's not just the events that bother me. It's the culture they sustain and the effect they are having. Too many of my friends and peers have fallen victim to the notion that hooking-up is simply a fun weekend activity. Unfortunately, experience teaches otherwise.

Every weekend, girls across Duke's campus wake up sad and confused. The previous night's choices have not left them fulfilled or content. My girlfriends always seem hurt while the guys easily move on to their next fling. Why are the women upset? After all, it was supposed to be just sex-just one of the "responsible social decisions" discussed in The Real Deal. Without an explanation for their emotions, my friends are left feeling used and embarrassed. All I could do is sit with these women while they let painful tears flow.

Our women's center and sexual health groups failed to tell us the whole truth. They may warn of the physical risks of "unsafe sex" but tend to ignore its emotional toll which also has biological roots. Research suggests that a hormone called oxytocin plays a role in the feelings of attachment and trust that women feel for their sexual partners. Female mammals primarily release oxytocin while giving birth and breast feeding and the hormone facilitates mother-child bonding. Oddly enough, the same hormone is also released during sexual contact causing a sense of attachment. In men, oxytocin's effects are neutralized by the release of testosterone.

Did you catch that ladies? There is a biological explanation for the way you feel and the way he
doesn't feel.

I had always thought casual sex had different consequences for men and women. Now, based on
scientific evidence, I know it does. College women at Duke are suffering emotional pain that's not
only avoidable-but, predictable.

Why weren't we told this three years ago? Why was this important science-based information absent from The Real Deal? Of all the resources on Duke's student health website including women's and sexual health information, oxytocin is not mentioned once.

The explanation is a radical feminist agenda that has a foothold in women's health discussions. As Dr. Miriam Grossman, a psychiatrist at UCLA suggests in her book, Unprotected, "I once assumed campus medicine and psychology had one priority: student well-being. I'm no longer so naive. Radical politics pervades my profession, and common sense has vanished." To propose that "safe" sexual experimentation may not be emotionally healthy and may be more dangerous for women than men is not politically correct. It jeopardizes the sexually liberated culture Duke and radical ideologies bolster.  At Duke, it seems sexual freedom trumps sexual health.

The Real Deal fails to give women all the information they need to make good sexual choices. Encouraging the use of latex, getting tested regularly for Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and having Plan B on hand just in case may protect a woman's physical health but does not protect women's emotions or psyche. In attempts to control the negative consequences of its hook-up culture, Duke simply encourages students to practice "safer sex." But it fails to realize that sex without commitment cannot be "safe" at all.

I will continue to sit with my girlfriends as they work through their heartache. At least now I have the essential information that's needed to make "responsible social decisions at Duke."

Maybe this year the incoming freshman will hear something new. Maybe this year, The Real Deal will give them the whole truth and actually accomplish its goal.

Kylie Harrell is a junior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum and a senior at Duke University.