'If the Victorian era represents the repression of sexual desire, then the era of the hookup is about the repression of romantic feeling, love, and sexual desire too., in favor of greater access to sex - sex for the sake of sex. Women and men both learn to shove their desires deep down into a dark place, to be revealed to no one. They learn to be ashamed if they long for love, and embarrassed if they fail to uphold the social contract of hookup culture and do not happen to enjoy no-strings attached sex that much.
The further irony of hookup culture is that, while being sexually active is the norm for students, the sex itself becomes unmechanical as a result of so much repression of emotion. College, ideally, is supposed to function as a time in life when people get to let go of repression; it's supposed to open them up to the world, not shut them down to it; it's supposed to encourage them to become who they are meant to become, not teach them to hide that self; and, most of all, college is supposed to empower them to find their voices and speak up, not learn that the voices bubbling up inside them are shameful. That a culture that has come to dominate so many colleges and universities thwarts those ideals among its students - and within an aspect of their lives that is so central, intimate, and identity-shaping as sex - is unacceptable.'
Donna Freitas, The End of Sex, p.181.
