We have covered the biological effects of hooking up on a post that delves into sexual biochemistry.

Now, Donna Freitas takes a look at the emotional devastation that is a consequence of sex without commitment.  She the author of a new book, entitled“The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy.”

She shares some of her thoughts in a Washington Post analysis:

Is hooking up a form of sexual experimentation? You’d think so. After all, hookups are all about throwing off the bonds of relationships and dating for carefree sex. But such hypersexuality can be just as oppressive as a mandate for abstinence. Hookup sex is fast, uncaring, unthinking, perfunctory. It has a lot less to do with excitement or attraction than with checking a box on a list of tasks, like homework or laundry. Yet, it has become the defining aspect of social life on many campuses — so common, so obligatory, that it leaves little room for experimentation that bends the rules.

I’ve spent the past eight years investigating hookup culture and talking with students, faculty members and college administrators about it. I thought I would find that the vast majority of students revel in it, but instead I encountered a large percentage who feel confined by it or ambivalent about it (the “whateverists,” as I call them). Nervous to be alone in challenging hookup culture, most students go along with it, even if they privately long for alternatives. They think that if they try to be less casual about sex, it’ll ruin their social lives. Conformity abounds.

…When students are expected to hook up with lots of people, doing so becomes dutiful, not daring. Older ideas of sexual exploration — be it same-sex encounters or one-night stands — have become a basic expectation.

Freitas concludes with a commentary on today’s campuses:

In today’s college culture, it seems that taking a break from carefree sex, or even embracing dating, are a lot like having premarital sex in the 1960s. To dress up in a sexy Halloween costume — well, that’s just passe. Not only is everyone doing it, they’re bored by it, too.

Today, sexual experimentation might be getting to know someone before having sex, holding out for dates and courtship focused on romance rather than sex. From where I sit, meeting a student confident enough to say she’s not hooking up and is proud about that is as experimental as it gets.