Introduction from UnMasking the HookUp
Introduction and Argument
COVID has radically changed the way people exist in the world – as we find many of our relationships and daily tasks that involve other people digitized, plastic-wrapped, and masked. Even as our need to keep living has pushed us out of a state of total lockdown, we continue abiding by social-distancing rules, putting up with routine quarantines and testing, wearing masks, and limiting our movement based on what’s deemed ‘essential’. Unsurprisingly, these new social norms are making many reconsider hooking up, as a “COVID-safe hookup” seems like an oxymoron. In a world rendered socially distant, how can we be physically intimate with those outside our ‘bubble’? This question is especially complicated for college students, who are sexually active but do not typically live (or quarantine) with their sexual partners – and who find themselves accountable to institutions that want them to share as little physical space as possible. This is the case at Hamilton College, at least. While many academic institutions across the U.S. made the decision to keep their students remote due to the pandemic, Hamilton opted to bring students back on to campus – relying heavily on testing and rules to control the spread of the virus. The institution’s decision to bring students back to campus, while requiring them to stay 6’ apart, makes for an unprecedented shift in on-campus intimacy, as students navigate social and institutional changes that have radically challenged their pre-pandemic notions of “hooking up” and “hookup” culture.
As I argue in this thesis, the pandemic, and the social and institutional changes that have accompanied it, necessitate a reconsideration of the topic of hookups, and hookup culture, which have long garnered the attention of Anthropologists. The context of the COVID college campus is particularly well suited for this kind of reevaluation – college as long been considered one of the primary social contexts, if not the primary social context, in which “hookup culture” unfolds. Anthropologists who have studied collegiate hookups and hookup culture in the past have peeled back its many layers — examining aspects such as race, class, gender, sexuality – to highlight how “hookup culture” is exclusive and driven by toxic social influences. Past anthropological work has affirmed the implications of substance-use, peer-pressure, and notions of fun, exposing how the hookup can be harmful to students mental, emotional, and physical health. That said, all their work comes before the context of a global pandemic, which poses an opportunity to build on and reconsider this research.
Even if hookup culture were “toxic” before, hooking up now could have any number of physical, social, and emotional consequences. How do students navigate the biological risk of spreading and catching COVID when they are intimate with others? On a left leaning campus, the physiological risks of the pandemic hookup are compounded by social pressures – many students “trust science,” abide by masking and social distancing rules, and expect their peers to follow suit. Does this mean that students run the risk of being ostracized by their peers for engaging in behaviors considered “careless,” or for being “covidiots”? On top of that, when college students hookup in COVID, they are faced not only with the threat of disease and quarantine, but also with the threat of institutional punishment. If hooking up now could get one sick, in hot water with one’s friends, and in trouble with one’s school, how do students justify doing it? My conversations with 14 students currently enrolled at Hamilton College reveal that despite all odds, COVID has not killed hookup culture, and that it is in fact thriving in more ways than one.
Whereas before the pandemic “hooking up” often served as a lens through which to analyze “unhealthy” social pressures and contexts in which sexual assault was prevalent, for many of my informants being able to hookup during COVID was seen as a positive part of being at college. Thus, before the college hookup scene may have been dominated by careless, one-off acts of intimacy following parties at frat houses and bars, but now it is often discussed as an important part of being a healthy person. However, this doesn’t mean that the choice to hookup comes easily.
Talking to students to understand how they think about and experience hooking up in COVID has presented me an opportunity to find the “good” in hooking up that is so often overlooked when describing the “bad” or the “toxic.” COVID has made the college party scene far less relevant in on-campus social life, and in this context, I have been able facilitate conversations with students that has allowed me to examine their notions of selfhood, the way they understand their ‘needs’, and what it is that makes physical intimacy so important to them. What I’ll show is that, in a time where our entire social world seems to be framed by practices that protect our bodies from physical illness, students have begun thinking about hooking up and hookup culture in terms of mental and emotional health. Though they may be at risk of conduct points and COVID strikes while on Hamilton’s campus, they view the Hamilton College community as a bubble of physical safety, trusting in the frequent testing, cleaning, and protocol of the college to keep themselves and their friends healthy. Because they feel they are able to put the physical risk of illness posed to themselves and others aside, the door opens for them to pursue the physical intimacy that they deem central to their emotional and mental health – especially after months of isolation at home with their families.