How Sexual Orientation Affects Different Aspects Of Hooking Up In College

Submitted By xopinkroxy
Words: 2964
Pages: 12

Abstract Researchers have looked into the details of hooking up but not many have considered the LGBT community in their studies. In our study we surveyed 50 participants, male and female, who were heterosexual and a part of the LGBT community. We looked into the various aspects of hooking up and what variations may occur. Being that there is very little known about the process of hooking up we looked in what it is, where do people meet, and the quantity of hook-ups that occur in each gender and sexual orientation.

Everyone possesses his or her own individual perceptions about sexuality and sexual behaviors. Although people may share similar views with one another, one’s sexual orientation may affect the way in which they choose to engage in sexual encounters. The aim of our study was to prove that the LGBT community and the heterosexual community perceive hooking up differently. We hypothesized that members of these two diverse communities hooked up with people in different manners. In our study we were concerned with factors like the different and most common venues people tend to meet potential hookups, how often these hookups occur, and the influence of age and gender. Our research question was: How does sexual orientation affect different aspects of hooking up in college? This includes what you perceive it to be, how often you do it, where you meet the people you hook up with? Etc. We hypothesized that people of different sexual orientations hook up in different ways.
Uecker and Regnerus’s article “BARE MARKET: Campus Sex Ratios, Romantic Relationships, and Sexual Behavior” addresses the importance of sex and romance in college students’ lives. Casual dating where men ask women to go out on a romantic dinner is not so much popular today as it was maybe 20 years ago. Research shows that heterosexual students today engage in “hook ups”, where men and women meet at bars and parties. This study analyzed college women’s sexual behavior and linked it to the ratio of women to men on college campuses. Because women typically outweigh men on American college campuses, their analysis suggests it plays a significant impact on their sexual relationships. Their study sheds light on how market sex ratios influence romantic and sexual relationships within heterosexual women. They focused on women’s perceived ability to find partners on campus, women’s dating behavior, and women’s boyfriend history. Campus sex ratios show that they do in fact affect women’s relationships, and they do so by altering the distribution of dyadic power within relationships and by providing more or fewer opportunities for pairing up with the opposite gender. Our idea to study hooking up in college was influenced and framed by this research. While Uecker and Regnerus focused on heterosexual women’s sexual behavior on campus, we thought it would be interesting to not only examine heterosexual males as well but also men and women in the LGBT community. Instead of linking it to the sex ratio we decided to investigate how a person’s sexual orientation affects their sexual behavior. How does their sexuality affect their ways of hooking up in college? What do they consider hooking up to be? Sexual Hookup Culture: A Review, written by Justin R. Garcia, Chris Reiber, Sean G. Massey and, Ann M. Merriwether considers various influences that may affect hookups and sexual encounters. The authors bring to attention how casual hookups have become increasingly more embedded for young people reaching adulthood in our pop culture society. They explain the way in which hooking up leaves no guarantee of a romantic relationship in the future. The authors argue that there are both evolutionary aspects and societal practices that impact the way young people casually hookup in our culture. This journal article pertains to our research because it includes many of the same factors of hooking up that we intend to research and survey. The authors describe the range of