OCT 24, 2024 | OPINION | By Fiona Frankel
Editor’s Note: throughout this article, the word “hookup” is used as an intentionally ambiguous catch-all. Hookup can mean sexual intercourse, oral sex, handjobs, fingering or kissing.
In high school, I taught sex education to sophomores using a curriculum of anatomy, consent, relationships and most importantly, games of “Pin the Clit on the Vulva.” Though not all secondary education programs are as creative as mine, most students receive some variation of sex education by the time they enter college.
Though typically lacking in quality, the basic overview of anatomy and puberty was dutifully presented to most adolescents in the United States, beginning in middle school and progressing to relationships and consent education in later years. Despite growing up in one of the most progressive cities in the country, San Francisco, the sex education I received in high school was brief, uncomfortable and punctuated by whispered giggles and jokes from classmates.
Especially with the rise of accessible pornography to adolescents globally and increasing standards of quality sex, consent education is a pressing issue. Sex in the 21st century is more convoluted than ever before because our generation is growing up with the normalization of erotic asphyxiation during sex, impossible beauty standards perpetuated by social media, the normalization of hookup culture and less emotional connection with one another in romantic and platonic relationships.
During New Student Orientation, first-year and new students at Colorado College received the basic overview stressing the importance of consent in romantic encounters more than once. We watched an educational video emphasizing the importance of an enjoyable experience for both participants, drawing uncomfortable laughs from the audience, and when the inevitable question of psychoactive substances (namely alcohol and drugs) arose, the school’s message was clear: an intoxicated individual cannot consent to sexual activity.
However, this message is anything but clear. It’s easy to make black-and-white statements like this, and it’s important for the school’s legal protection, yet in practice, the school’s teachings don’t apply as easily.
Hookup culture at CC is rampant, as it is at nearly every university in the United States. Much of this can be attributed to the fact that, as teenagers just entering our twenties, we’re ostensibly seeking emotional connections in any way we can. We’re horny and sexually charged, and we’ve been told for years that college is the time to explore and run wild. For many women, we are constantly balancing a fine line between being viewed as a slut and a prude.
Hookup culture is not generally designed to establish meaningful connections, nor is the primary intention to provide satisfaction for the other person. According to Shafia Zaloom, a leading expert in sexual consent education and the author of “Sex, Teens, and Everything in Between,” the primary goal of hookup culture is self-fulfillment and sexual gratification; something participants look to achieve in often intoxicated situations while evading responsibility for our partner. The latter comes in many forms: the prioritization of men’s orgasms over women’s, ghosting a partner following a night together, emotional manipulation to maintain a sexual relationship and more.
From what I’ve seen in my short time at CC, the majority of initial hookups happen after parties, which comes with the inevitable addition of psychoactive substances. When thinking about this under the tutelage of the school’s NSO sex education, every hookup between two intoxicated people on campus is nonconsensual. Not only does this diminish the validity of genuinely nonconsensual sexual encounters, but it also leads to discomfort and ambiguity in situations that should, at least hopefully, be enjoyable for both participating individuals.
Most of us should be able to agree that a person incapacitated by drugs or alcohol is incapable of giving consent. But the line becomes blurry regarding intoxication, not incapacitation. In heterosexual hookup culture, men and women absorb alcohol into their bloodstream at different rates, making it difficult to quantify just how drunk or high somebody is. Even more broadly, everyone experiences inebriation differently and veers into incapacitated states at varying rates.
Mind-altering substances, especially alcohol, are known to lower inhibitions and often make people feel more sexually charged than while sober. Yet, it’s important to recognize this as intoxication and not directly conflate it with agency.
On a college campus, ‘hangxiety’ is a constant phenomenon that is often caused by regretting one’s actions from the night before. It is normalized, and even celebrated, to behave in ways one would not otherwise if sober, and it is easy to blame this behavior on intoxication. Hangxiety is often considered a humorous notion to commiserate about the following day. Though this seems innocuous, especially for young college students, hangxiety is rooted in fear of uncontrollable actions that one might not fully remember due to the influence of psychoactive substances.
Through the lens of sexual activity, this issue can easily devolve into dangerous territory as alcohol and drugs are known to make individuals more vulnerable to non-consensual sex. According to the NIH, roughly half of all campus sexual assaults occur with the involvement of alcohol consumption.
Feeling regret and shame while sober following sexual activity has been heavily distorted through media and in current social culture. The phrase ‘cried rape,’ (an allusion to ‘crying wolf’) usually following situations involving psychoactive substances, plants seeds of doubt in an individual’s recollection of the sexual events that took place, exploiting their shame and often lack of memory to create a narrative of once-informed consent that was later regretted.
For those who participate in hookup culture at CC, it is crucial to remember that we are constantly toeing a dangerous line. In my view, an intoxicated sexual encounter is not inherently non-consensual, but it is always a risk. Consent in intoxicated situations goes beyond the basics of agreeing to engage in sexual activity. Statistically, intoxication leads to a decreased use of condoms during sex, increasing the risk of STIs and pregnancy dramatically.
This entire phenomenon of consent and substances also induces common misconceptions surrounding intoxication in sexual situations. An idea I hear often is that two drunk individuals might ‘cancel each other out,’ since they are both drunk. Strangely, the addition of drugs and alcohol is relieving to many: most people I’ve spoken to feel far more comfortable with the idea of both people in a sexual encounter being drunk or high, rather than one intoxicated individual coupled with an entirely sober person.
As a young person, the issues around intoxication in sexual situations continue to challenge and confuse me and many of my peers. Still, I can be certain about one thing: Colorado College, like most academic institutions, must establish better and more comprehensive sex and consent education, beginning at New Student Orientation and continuing through students’ time here. We must acknowledge the incongruence of hookup culture and the words of the law and work to expound these issues so that we are not constantly acting on the verge of non-consensual behavior. Although CC provides resources for students in the event of a non-consensual sexual encounter, students are often deterred from speaking out by the convolution of mandated reporters, the current absence of a campus advocate and the aforementioned issue of intoxication.
One is entitled to feel good about a sexual situation if that feeling is felt independently and freely, without others’ influence. Even following an intoxicated encounter, it is no other person’s job outside of those participating to deem it as consensual or non-consensual, as long as both parties feel genuinely confident and informed in their actions.
Especially in the early stages of sex education, consent was often taught in stilted, uncomfortable ways, deterring young adults from putting it into practice. Few people want to interrupt foreplay by explicitly asking if an action is okay. Subsequently, substance use provides an easy scapegoat for this vital part of hookup culture, which some people errantly view as a hurdle to the satisfaction of a sexual encounter. To be clear, substance use is not an opportunity to disregard one’s responsibility to seek consent.
The issue of consent while intoxicated is inherently ambiguous, especially for young people still exploring their own sexual needs and interests. CC, especially in the early days of NSO Week, must provide a more comprehensive sex education that aligns with the experiences many students will have. First-years in particular, need information on consent that is cognitively congruent with their lives; otherwise, as we are experiencing now, the risky behavior that so many of us engage in will have serious consequences.