Author Laura Sessions Stepp argues that casual sex "hookups" can be damaging to young women. Stepp, who is also a writer for the Washington Post, has a new book out about hooking up called Unhooked. According to an MSNBC article Stepp's critics have labeled her a throwback and an anti-feminist.
For that, Laura Sessions Stepp, author of "Unhooked," and a writer for The Washington Post, has been criticized as a throwback to an earlier, restrictive moral climate, an anti-feminist and a tut-tutting mother telling girls not to give the milk away when nobody's bought the cow.
The author "imagines the female body as a thing that can be tarnished by too much use," wrote reviewer Kathy Dobie in Stepp's own paper, the Post, and suggested that Stepp was, in one part, trying to "instill sexual shame." For Meghan O'Rourke, literary editor at Slate.com, Stepp is "buying into alarmism about women," and making sex "a bigger, scarier, and more dangerous thing than it already is."
Stepp argues these critics have misconstrued her ideas.
True, she regrets that "dating has gone completely by the boards." replaced by group outings that lead to casual encounters. True, she regrets that oral sex "isn't even considered sex anymore." But she isn't saying girls should not have sex; just that they should have it in the context of a meaningful connection: "I am saying that girls should have choices."
Too often, Stepp argues, girls and young women say proudly that they like the control "hookups" give them - control over their emotions, their schedules, and freedom to focus on things like schoolwork and career (the students she profiles in her book are high achievers).
It's a complex issue because we want young women to have meaningful relationships but at the same time we don't want women to feel pressured into early marriages or to avoid the possibility of a long and successful career. You can read a few other articles discussing Stepp's book here, here and here.
