Today's Atlanta Journal Constitution, in an apparent bid to accelerate their plunge from respectability, gave a column to Jonathon Zimmerman.
Who the fuck is Jonathon Zimmerman, you ask?
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Why, none other than the author of Small Wonder.
Also, he teaches at NYU. He teaches history and Education, both of which make him an expert on the female psyche.
Fellas, take notes. You're gonna learn a lot about the ladies!
How ‘Twilight’ twists teenage hookups
Hey, do you want to hook up?
OK, good. Starting your column with an indecent proposal. Someone went to journalism school!
No, thank you, by the way.
Hey, do you want to hook up?
If you’re like lots of American high school and college students, the answer is clearly “yes.”
The next most common answer is "No, I'm enjoying my life of solitude, celibacy, and masturbation."
But when you look at the reasons, you’ll find an enormous gender divide. Girls have sex in order to score a boyfriend, and boys simply want to score.
That's right, girls don't like sex. They only do it in order to convince boys to be their boyfriends with whom they will never have sex, I guess? Not willingly, anyway.
That explains the overwhelming success of Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” teenage books, as well as the most recent film adaptation, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” which sold $140 million in tickets in its first weekend in North American theaters.
No.
No it doesn't.
Seriously.
Eighty percent of viewers were female, and half the audience was under the age of 21. Why are young American women flocking to a movie where the hero — a hunky dude named Edward, who also happens to be a vampire — refuses to have sex with the heroine-loner Bella, lest he harm her with his supernatural powers?
I don't know, why are people flocking to see "The Blind Side?" Why did "Transformers" do over $400 million? People just love shitty movies.
The answer lies in a University of Missouri survey of 4,000 Twilight fans, to be published next year. And it’s not that complicated: Girls want love, not just sex.
Of course, earlier you said that girls only have sex in order to get boyfriends, now you're quoting a study that states that girls DO want to have sex. So which is it?
“This series represents a backlash to the ‘hooking up’ culture,” explained one author of the Missouri study. “ ‘Twilight’ has been a way for young girls to acknowledge their emerging sexuality without actually having sex.”
So, going forward, studies from the University of Missouri should probably not be taken too seriously. Let's see, a lot of young ladies seem to enjoy sappy romance movies. Hmm, it must be a backlash against the "hookup culture" which exists mainly in the fevered imaginings of Puritans. Because never before in the history of movies has a semi-platonic love story been successful! Young girls must be using this movie as away of acknowledging their emerging sexuality by watching a movie with no sex in it? Or something?
In other words, it’s a female fantasy.
Yes, clearly most young women fantasize about celibacy and chastity.
It’s also every boy’s nightmare. After all, the hooking-up deal works well for guys.
Lots and lots of sex, without all that messy relationship stuff? What’s not to like?
Speaking as someone who was once a young guy, I can state that many young fellas want serious, long-term relationships. Just read any teenage boy's horrible horrible poetry (they all have some). It's never about "hooking up" for one-nighters.
On this not-so-delicate subject, I’ve heard plenty of my 40- and 50-something male peers complain that they were born several decades too early. But I have never, ever heard a woman say she’d prefer today’s hooking-up system to the dating rituals we grew up with.
I have heard women say "leave me alone," "quit staring at my chest," "how did you get this number?" "What are you doing in my bushes?" and "No means no!" but never that they would prefer today's "hookup" scene.
Remember dating? As quaint is it might sound today, dating required you to get to know a girl before you did anything else. The goal might be the same — indeed, it often was the same — but you had to follow several distinct steps to get there.
Ah, the lying, insincerity, and manipulation! Those were the days!
Now, the order is reversed: You hook up first, then decide if you want to “go out.”
And it turns out — surprise, surprise — that most guys don’t want the second part, so long as they get the first.
“They’re in college, they don’t want a girlfriend,” one female college student told LaSalle sociologist Kathleen Bogle. “They basically just want to get ...” (Well, you can guess the rest.)
Wow a sample group of one female college student with anecdotal evidence? Now that's just good science!
So why do women put up with this?
As Bogle explains in her indispensable 2008 book, “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus,” part of the reason is they overestimate the frequency of sex among their peers.
Nationwide, about one-quarter of college students remain virgins. So when women presume that “everybody is doing it” — so they need to do it, too —they’re wrong.
Ha! You think everybody is doing it? You're way off! It's only like three-quarters of everybody.
Moreover, “it” can mean many different things. In one survey at a large Northeastern university, 78 percent of students had “hooked up” at least once.
But among those students, only 38 percent reported a hookup that culminated in sexual intercourse. The rest had kissed, groped or engaged in oral sex without going all the way.
"Going all the way?" You're adorable! "Say, missy, don't go all the way with a fella, or you're liable to get a reputation!"
No matter what you call it, though, many women feel that they must engage in a certain degree of sexual activity to have any hope of finding a boyfriend — or, down the road, a husband.
Because, once again, it must be reiterated that women do not enjoy sex! They only do it because they want to trap themselves a husband! I don't know why someone who didn't like sex would want a spouse, but hey, I'm not an expert on lady psychology like Jonathon Zimmerman!
They well understand that most hookups will not lead to the type of relationship that they really want. But they just don’t see any other way to get there.
God, that just sounds tragic! These poor coeds continually whoring themselves out one booty call at a time, hoping to find the love that deep down inside they know doesn't exist, because men only care about sex and think that love is icky.
Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, women have made enormous strides in education, income and professional achievement.
But when it comes to sex itself, it’s still a man’s world.
Really? Because I think if you ask most men, they will tell you that guys do the asking and women decide yes or no. And unless you're as handsome as your friendly neighborhood professor,
You're going to hear no more than yes.
And that’s why young women are celebrating an imaginary one, in the movies, where the guy actually loves you before he makes love to you.
Even if he is a vampire.
Jonathon Zimmerman, You're weird.
