“I never really intended to write about sex.”
Peggy Orenstein, a New York Times bestselling author, discussed her career writing about society’s relationship with sex during her visit to Emory University at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Administration Building Auditorium on Oct. 26. Her talk covered a diverse array of topics related to consent, hookup culture in college and how men and women are impacted by stereotypes about sex.
Emory Panhellenic Council President Edina Hartstein (23C) said she brought Orenstein to Emory after reading her books during quarantine.
“Especially in the Greek community, we could use an overhaul of how we talk to one another about hookup culture, about sex, about intimacy, because no one ever talks about it,” Hartstein said.
Orenstein started her discussion by talking about consent in sex education, saying consent was “where the conversation was ending.”
While understanding consent is important, Orenstein said, it’s the bare minimum when it comes to a comprehensive grasp of sex.
“Consent — that’s a floor. That’s not a ceiling,” Orenstein said.
She continued an analysis of women’s disconnect between a sexual encounter they might define as consensual, but then when they describe the encounter, it sounds like sexual assault. One person Orenstein interviewed for her book said that she identified as an intelligent woman, but conceded that the identity ended with sex.
The Barbies and other toys girls played with encouraged them to care about their appearance first, and that translated to adulthood, Orenstein explained.
“Pink and pretty play turned into the imperative to be hot,” Orenstein elaborated.
Orenstein examined whether or not women dressing suggestively in this journey to be “hot” was actually empowering to them. She suggested that women sometimes engage in behaviors that disadvantage them in exchange for personal power.
“College women would tell me that they felt simultaneously free to choose a sexualized image and also that they really had no other choice,” Orenstien said. “Are they taking control of their sexuality or are they engaging in self objectification?”
Discussing sex for college women, Orenstein analyzed the implications of heterosexual sex. She asserted that devaluing sex acts that are not traditionally defined as “sex” is problematic, because downplaying something like oral sex means that women might engage in it and believe it is not a “big deal.”
Who is “entitled” to enjoy sex impacts how young people interact during sexual encounters, Orenstein noted. While college-aged women are more likely to measure their satisfaction by their partner’s enjoyment, college-aged men understand it through their own orgasms. This is also related to women’s generally low expectations of heterosexual sex, Orenstein explained, saying that men expect to orgasm from sex, but women hope to not experience discomfort.
“Absence of pain?” Orenstein said. “That’s a really low bar.”
She also examined how men see sex as a “race to a goal” rather than a “pool of experiences.”
Orenstein shifted the conversation to the prevalence of sexual assault in college spaces. While she acknowledged that assault is perpetuated by the assaulters, she attributed some of the issue to the lack of education among women. Orenstein explained that sexual assault often starts with “level verbal coercion,” which under-educated women might not recognize.
“When girls are in touch with their own desires, the pressure can become visible more quickly,” Orenstein said.
In contrast to heterosexual sex, Orenstein complimented members of the LGBTQ community on their understanding of consent. She commented on how gay men in particular use “four magic words” coined by Author Dan Savage: “What are you into?”
Heterosexual women, on the other hand, might not even know what they like, Orenstein said, adding that there is a gap between the orgasms heterosexual women have — or do not have — and the orgasms gay women have. In general, Orenstein said LGBTQ people “turned out to be real models” of consent because the “script wasn’t obvious.”
Orenstein then launched into discussion on another piece of her work — “Boys & Sex.” She began by talking about mens’ relationship with their emotions. Orenstein said men are only allowed to be happy or angry, and are raised to “put a wall between the world and their real feelings.”
In her interviews, Orenstein found that guys describing the “ideal man” still conformed to traditional masculinity, even if they had more female and gay male friends.
This results in “boys struggling with their relationship to vulnerability,” Orenstein said, elaborating that “when we cut boys off from vulnerability, we reduce or deny them the capacity to have mutually gratifying, personally fulfilling relationships.”
Men’s lack of vulnerability means that they often see sex as a form of “status seeking,” and develop unrealistic expectations through exploration or pornography and hookup culture, according to Orenstein. Orenstein argued that even if men know that porn is not real, they are still influenced by its contents.
“Porn is media, and any media that we consume influences our feelings, beliefs and behaviors, even when we think it doesn’t,” Orenstien said.
In terms of hookup culture, Orenstein discussed how the term was ambiguous on purpose, so college students overestimate what their peers are doing and possibly consent to more than what they want to do.
“The hallmark of hookup culture is the resistance to catching feelings,” Orenstein said.
Alcohol, which Orenstein calls an “emotional condom,” is another piece of hookup culture on college campuses. Alcohol impairs men’s ability to hear no, and gives them the courage to push ahead when they might be more doubtful while sober. Their understanding of consent is “elastic” in this case, and Orenstein said that when men were confronted with their intoxicated activities, they often “expanded the definition rather than questioning their actions.”
Next, Orenstein discussed how men’s intentions are perceived differently based on their race. Even on “woke” college campuses, male students of color still said they experienced discrimination from sexual partners based on their race, according to Orenstein. Where white men’s masculinity was seen as neutral, Black men’s was seen as a threat, and Asian men had asexuality “projected on to them.”
Orenstein finished her presentation by discussing her hopes for the future. She began with sex education, saying that “holistic, pleasure-based” sex education is the key, and “I wish that you all had that.”
For women, Orenstein said she wants sexuality to be a “source of self-knowledge and creativity and communication,” while she hopes men “examine and transform the rules of masculinity.”
Finally, she addressed the crowd.
“I hope you take this moment in your lives as an opportunity to … demand the intimate justice that you all do richly deserve,” Orenstein said.
