We previously noted An Argument Against Hook-Up Culture at Princeton at the Princeton Tory.

In a new op-ed at the Daily Princetonian, writers Audrey Pollnow and Ben Koons offer their critical take on the hook-up culture at their own school.

Sexual standards

Princeton should have sexual standards that allow people to live the good life. Recent ‘Prince’ op-eds have rightly criticized Princeton’s present sexual standard insofar as it promotes hookups as right for everybody. But we should go farther. In seeking a good sexual culture, a culture that offers the proper freedom and support, we cannot bracket the question of whether hookups are bad. Our actions forge a culture that affects our community, our relationships, our actions and even our preferences.

Hookups are dishonest, harmful and naive. Some people can walk away from a sexual encounter without growing fond of the person in question, but this isn’t characteristic of erotic desire nor of human sexuality in general. Sex is an action of love, and to agree not to love while engaging in such a desirous act is jarring; it denies the reality of our bodies and the meanings of our actions. But it’s also unjust to hookup without such an agreement, to say “we may fall in love, we may not.”

It’s easy to get attached, especially when you care for one another, and it is a cruel and insensitive thing to cultivate this attachment in someone else without reciprocating. And even when you both fall in love, you’ve done so without sufficient freedom: You engaged in practices which induce affection without evaluating whether that affection is conducive to your good. You may even end up married, but you also may both have been better off with someone else, with someone you evaluated as a potential spouse before sleeping with them.