Exploring the Sexual Culture at Queen’s

Abstract

Students on university campuses are having sexual experiences that seem to be different than sexual experiences of students of previous generations. Traditional “going steady”, committed relationships are being challenged by a pervasive casual sex culture across university campuses (Allen, 2004). Among students and in the media, this culture of casual sex is often referred to as “hookup culture.” Media commentary often presents hookup culture as a sign of negative moral change. I am interested in seeing if there is another side to this argument. I will use student perspective on this hookup culture to identify whether men and women understand this culture differently, and look at hooking up as a source of empowerment. To focus my study, I will look at the phenomenon colloquially know as the “walk of shame” as a way to represent the sexual hook up culture here at Queen’s. I will conduct 2-3 focus groups with a total of 7-10 female and 2-5 male participants. The participants in this study will be self-identifiedheterosexual students who also identify themselves as participants in hookup culture, currently enrolled in undergraduate studies at Queen’s University. Although literature has examined hookup culture among various populations, my research will examine how heterosexual students perceive the sexual culture here at Queen’s. I expect these discussions to offer commentary on hookup culture from a first hand perspective. This study will contribute to the to Queen’s students’ existing knowledge about their ownsexual culture, but also provide insight for non-student members of the Queen’s community.