NYTimes on Penn and the hook-up scene

[Millancad]

<p>

@shawbridge

The males in cultures with burqas are trying to preserve paternity.

</p>

<p>I wish people wouldn’t make Islamophobic comments in threads that have nothing to do with Islam. While we shouldn’t ignore sexism in any of its forms, there are plenty of Muslim women who choose themselves to wear hijab, niqab, burqa, etc. Denying them agency does not help them fight the patriarchy.</p>

[Mandingo]

<p>It looks this thread is getting pretty heated!</p>

[Hunt]

<p>

I wish people wouldn’t make Islamophobic comments in threads that have nothing to do with Islam. While we shouldn’t ignore sexism in any of its forms, there are plenty of Muslim women who choose themselves to wear hijab, niqab, burqa, etc. Denying them agency does not help them fight the patriarchy.

While I agree that this is not really related to the main topics of this thread, I do think this thread raises the question of what women “choose” for themselves, and what they acquiesce to because of pressure from men. Interestingly, it’s a fraught topic with regard to both revealing and concealing clothing for women.</p>

[riprorin]

<p>Does anyone even read the Old York Times anymore?</p>

[07DAD]

<p>Yes, they read the New York Times. It is the most widely read digital US newspaper and has the largest Sunday print circulation.</p>

<p>[ABC</a> newspaper circulation report: New York Times, Washington Post - POLITICO.com](<a href=“http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/05/new-york-times-rising-wapo-struggling-122149.html]ABC”>ABC newspaper circulation report: New York Times, Washington Post - POLITICO)</p>

[riprorin]

<p>People still buy print?</p>

[07DAD]

<p>Yes, they do and write cursive.</p>

[riprorin]

<p>Do they drink with their pinky raised from their tea cup too, lol?</p>

[Niquii77]

<p>It’s amazing how many kids don’t know how to write in cursive. </p>

<p>I knew how to write in cursive when I was 5!</p>

[romanigypsyeyes]

<p>I like writing in cursive.
Makes taking notes a ridiculous amount easier.</p>

[whenhen]

<p>I only started voluntarily using cursive in middle school when I realized that doing so would prevent my teachers from being able to read what I wrote, and thus garner an automatic A. </p>

<p>But yes, people still read the NYT. Even though it’s often elitist and frequently publishes sensationalist stories such as the Penn story, it’s still one of the best mainstream journalistic outlets in the US.</p>

[riprorin]

<p>That’s not saying much.</p>

[cobrat]

<p>Lots of people maintain print subscriptions to magazines and newspapers like the NYT. Just like lots of people still watch TV and maintain cable TV subscriptions even though many alternatives exist on hulu, youtube, and other sites providing alternatives to TV programming. </p>

<p>Keep in mind there are some who prefer those mediums to using digital and internet/based mediums. For one thing, some people don’t want to be on the internet/computer after spending 8+ hours on it for work purposes. </p>

<p>A few others also have pathological fears of “computers taking over everything”…and they’re not necessarily all from the older generations in their 50s and up. There’s a few among late Gen Xers/early millennials I know who also feel that way. They will only use computers if they are mandated to by work/school…but are otherwise quasi-luddites.</p>

[shawbridge]

<p>Milencad, I think you may have misinterpreted my remarks, perhaps because I was writing quickly. I was not talking about decisions individuals make today. I was looking at the basic evolutionary drive to see one’s gene’s survive and how that could result in a cultural expression like what we see today in a place like Saudi Arabia in which women wear burqas, can’t be alone with men (to whom they are not related), are not allowed to drive, etc. The burqa is a wonderful visual example, which is why I chose it, but a similar analysis would apply to ultra-Orthodox Jews or some Christian sects. Given that culture, women can and do make choices to adhere (or not) to those aspects of their culture. I’m not denigrating their choice but trying to think about where the culture comes from.</p>

<p>My response was to romani who was musing about why some cultures do and some don’t express this drive by making “precious” and “protecting” women’s sexuality and others don’t. Interestingly, I’m no anthropologist, but the alternative cultures she describes seem to be other mechanisms to harness the same evolutionary drive, but perhaps in ways that are less sexist. I don’t know the details, but the idea of obscuring paternity to get paternal investment broadly seems pretty interesting.</p>

<p>And, most importantly, as Hunt pointed out, this discussion is a bit of a sideshow to the main point and was just a response to a musing of romani’s.</p>

[poetgrl]

<p>[What</a> Everyone?s Getting Wrong About the Ivy League Hookup Culture | TIME.com](<a href=“What Everyone’s Getting Wrong About the Ivy League Hookup Culture | TIME.com”>What Everyone’s Getting Wrong About the Ivy League Hookup Culture | TIME.com)</p>

<p>Interesting counterpoint from a more recent grad/</p>

<p>

And while I can’t say the sex lives of Yalies represents all college students or even those in the Ivy League, the data from the school about sex is a good reality check. In 2010, the Yale Daily News conducted a sex survey on campus and found that only 64.3% of students had had sexual intercourse over the course of their Yale career. The median Yale student had had only two sexual partners by the time he or she graduated. Promiscuity is not the norm. Not even for men (whom we never hear from in these articles for some reason): 30.5% of Yale men had never had intercourse. Plenty of students are forgoing sex entirely, limiting their sexual partners or engaging in exclusive relationships

</p>

[07DAD]

<p>From the same article:</p>

<p>

A 1967 study by the Institute for Sex Research consisting of 1,177 undergraduate students from 12 colleges found that 68% of the men and 44% of the women reported having engaged in premarital sex. Not “hookups.” Sex. Compare that with Yale’s current 64.3%. In another study, researchers at Western State University interviewed 92 male students and 113 female students annually from 1969 to 1972 and found that during their freshman year, 46% of the men and 51% of the women reported having had premarital sex. By senior year, the figures were 82% for men and 85% for women.</p>

<p>True, we don’t have cold, hard data from that era about how many people these students were having sex with. “But there’s always been casual sex on college campuses,” says Wade. “That’s been true since before women were there.”

</p>

<p>And my father (born 1912) told me back in 1970 that the same was true in college in the early 1930s. He said the only difference was that back then you did not trumpet it about.</p>

[Iglooo]

<p>Do you mean there’s no significant change in young people’s sex life from1930’s to 2013? It may not what media is tooting, but I would have thought there’s significant change especially in young women’s attitude. Interesting.</p>

<p>Yale study is also interesting. The study I heard from a sex expert was that 2/3 HS juniors have had an intercourse. 2/3 is about the same as Yale average. It will be intersesting to see what the average Yale freshmen experience is in this regard. Do they come in with less experienced than national avaerage? The person who cited the number also mentioned it was universal with little difference between national data and our local, upper middle class data.</p>

[07DAD]

<p>Not so much “young people” but those who achieved a college degree. A significant number of these people were having pre-marital sex during college/graduate schools as my Dad’s experience reflected. He graduated from law school in 1936.</p>

<p>Kinsey’s studies between 1937-56 indicated that for people born after 1900 51% had pre-marital sex. 75% of the the women surveyed were college graduates.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so142/premarital/premaritalTs.htm[/url]”>http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so142/premarital/premaritalTs.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>One way to judge the overall “attitude” is to look at Hollywood. By the early to middle 1930s censorship came into play because movies were reflecting a society that included women being sexually active before marriage.</p>

[alh]

<h1>175 poetgrl: Thanks for the link - that sounds about right to me based on all the college students I know.</h1>

<p>07DAD: Film is a good place to see those attitudes. And it is much more reflective of the common culture at the time than the literary examples I’ve been trying to come up with.</p>

<p>

It may not what media is tooting, but I would have thought there’s significant change especially in young women’s attitude. Interesting.

</p>

<p>There is a difference in access to birth control. There is a difference in recognition of rape and reporting rape (I think and hope) There is a difference in professional opportunities open to women. There is a difference of level of sexual harassment in the workplace (again, I think and hope)</p>

[Beliavsky]

<p>Recently at the Harvard Crimson, the most read article was an article about Wellesley from 1951 (!). Things <em>have</em> changed, arguably for the worse overall.</p>

<p>[Wellesley:</a> the Girl Behind the Teapot | News | The Harvard Crimson | May 12, 1951](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1951/5/12/wellesley-the-girl-behind-the-teapot/]Wellesley:”>Wellesley: the Girl Behind the Teapot | News | The Harvard Crimson)

The aspects of this Wellesleyite personality range from, in most cases, a strictly formalized dating relationship to community social graces practiced among the girls themselves. No young man in his right mind calls an attractive Wellesley girl less than two or three weeks in advance for a weekend date.

</p>