To the Editor:
Mike McCaffrey tells women, "You deserve so much better than to be treated as an object of pleasure and then be forgotten about." What I'd like to know is why does McCaffrey suggest that only women will feel the emotional impact of a hook up that means nothing more than just that? Why does he himself create a double standard while trying to argue that it is terrible to treat women as hookups?
He does not reprimand the men on this campus for continuing their promiscuous behavior, nor does he even mention the psychological ramifications a hook up may have on a young male psyche.
By writing this article and leaning towards the idea that mostly women suffer hurt when they have a sexual experience of some sort, McCaffrey encourages the idea of men being shameless in their sexual promiscuity while promoting women to feel shame in having less than monogamous relationships.
This appalls me because he defeats his intended purpose of telling young women to stop "damaging" themselves and instead encourages them to take comfort in their "root insecurity that makes them seek emotional bonding." I find this to convey the wrong message to women who may read McCaffrey's piece, because it tells women that they have no good reason to indulge in sexual promiscuity as men do.
I can think of several confident and self-assured women that I have met throughout the course of my life who have found it perfectly acceptable to experience as many partners as they can within safe moderation. They have not been emotionally hurt on repeated occasions, as McCaffrey suggests may influence women who look at sexual activity casually.
They choose to indulge in this behavior because there is more to life than going from one relationship to the next and waiting for their Prince Charming to come (if there is such a thing as Prince Charming out there any more). There is nothing wrong with being a woman who is interested in a monogamous relationship, but there is no reason to penalize women who are not, as McCaffrey does.
Don't try to pinhole the entire female sex into being needy and entirely monogamous. If men can be promiscuous, why can't women? Why do women need to be subjected to relationships with men who will treat them like sexual playthings once they are established in a relationship? In a relationship, a hookup and eventually sex becomes an expected activity, a repeat condition of a monogamous relationship that gives women less of a choice because they're often subject to what their significant other wants.
By choosing to remain free of a relationship, it gives women the power to choose who they want, when they want, and how they want. I fully support anything that gives women the power to choose.
