Book Reviews
Secret lives of students
How sex and spirituality relate (or fail to) on campus.
By Jane Lampman | May 27, 2008 edition
Jane Lampman talks with Donna Freitas
It began in a college course on dating, where students’ honest feelings dribbled out about the sexual ethos on campus. Most were quite unhappy with the “hookup culture” – the casual sex many felt pressed to participate in but secretly hated. That class at a Roman Catholic college gave birth to a national research project and to this candid, disturbing, yet ultimately hopeful new book by Donna Freitas: Sex & the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America’s College Campuses.
Freitas, now an assistant professor of religion at Boston University, raises a clarion call. Her engrossing book captures the poignant, intimate struggles of students at a variety of colleges and universities, many of whom find that their religious upbringing has not given them the resources to navigate a destructive social environment.
Today’s college students are intrigued with religion and spirituality – particularly spirituality, studies show. Yet Freitas found that her own students – students at a religious college – saw little or no connection between their faith and their decisions on sexual behavior. She wondered if it might be different on other campuses.
Selecting seven different colleges and universities – public, private, evangelical, and Catholic – Freitas conducted surveys of 2,500 students and then interviewed more than 100 (63 women, 48 men). The students also journaled about their spiritual and sexual lives.
What quickly became evident was a clear distinction between evangelical schools and the others. At the two evangelical colleges, a strong “purity culture” prevailed, where students were expected not to have sex (or sometimes even kiss) until marriage. A vibrant sense of community supported this culture. At all other schools, hookup culture was rampant, and they were on their own in dealing with it.
“Though many students at non-evangelical colleges profess an interest in ‘spirituality,’ most have no idea what to do about either spirituality or religion, or where to find the resources for living a more spiritual life,” she writes. “They tend to hide their religious and spiritual longings deep inside themselves.”
Those calling themselves “spiritual but not religious” frequently had difficulty defining spirituality. And Catholic students, she says, sometimes “laughed out loud” at their church’s teachings on sex.
On most campuses, the hook-up culture has displaced traditional dating, and many students feel they must engage in casual sex to have any prospect for a long-term relationship. Yet long-term relationships elude them. One male student even expressed disdain at the idea that he should spend time with a woman “during the day.”
Most disturbing is the development on the campus party scene of theme parties with names like “Millionaires & Maids,” and “CEOs & Office Ho’s” (whores), which reflect pornographic scenarios. The old double standard has morphed into something rather ugly.
“Instead of simply watching porn … college men get to re-create these fantasies live … among women with whom they go to class,” Freitas says. The sexualization of American girls has left many entering college without an idea of where to draw the lines.
While the evangelical schools offered a more integrated and supportive environment, students who lapse from the purity culture often feel cut off, that they’ve failed everyone, including God. Reminiscent of the 1950s, women are expected to be totally passive, yet to have an engagement ring by senior year.
Yet Freitas found that young people on all campuses long for boundaries and guidelines that could foster healthy relationships. The ideal of romance appealed strongly to women and men, and they defined it in asexual, almost old-fashioned, terms – long talks and walks, watching the sunset, genuine communication, and emotional connection.
Then why doesn’t this prevail? Because campus environments don’t encourage it or even provide avenues for discussing spirituality and its relation to life choices, Freitas says. Social life is run by a powerful peer minority.
What is hopeful is that “the hook-up culture, though pervasive, does not appeal to the average student,” she writes. “This means student life … is only a small step away from transformation – the beginnings of change lie in the[ir] willingness to openly discuss what they really desire….”
A community sets standards, she adds, and colleges need to foster discussions that enable students to better communicate on spiritual matters and sexual behavior.
Throughout this beautifully written book, Freitas presents students’ feelings and experiences in an unflinching yet compassionate way. You care about these young people and their struggles. This book is a great service to students, parents, and those at colleges and universities who want to prepare young adults not just for the workplace but for healthy and fulfilling lives.
Jane Lampman is a Monitor staff writer.
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Comments
2. Laura Clayton | 05.27.08
What a service this book is toward furthering discussion about morals, religion, and campus culture. Young people it seems are set “adrift” when they enter college when it comes to dating, sex, and relationships. How can teachers, administrators, ministers, and parents be of support and offer guidance if they don’t know the nature and extent of the “hookup” culture, how ultimately destructive and demoralizing it is, and how many young people, according to Freitas’ findings, want to be free of it — or at least have a chance to talk openly about it and not risk ridicule? This book goes along way toward furthering a much-needed dialogue. Thank you for the audio interview also — which offered even more vital and fascinating insights. Certainly young people don’t want to be preached at, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to talk about these issues and explore the concept of helpful limits and boundaries when it comes to sex. To know that the hookup culture is NOT all-embracing, as much as pop-culture portrays it that way, and to know that there are peers and compassionate adults standing by to help sort through the pressure to conform, would be a great relief to young people, I’m sure. Let the discussions begin!
3. nancy myers | 05.28.08
Students will not find peace in their sexual lives until they understand the laws of God. Sex today means no more than a kiss used to mean. But God meant it to be a bond in a committed relationship, marriage, and the way to procreate. Students are not taught to know God, to revere or understand his ways for humans. Thus they are cast adrift on a sea of relativism, where everyone makes up their own mores. Students in evangelical colleges understand this, thus their clearer behavior. But they are not supported enough in these views in the culture. I am a college professor and have been saddened by the wrecked lives I have seen because we do not honor or even know that God loves us and wants the best for us (thus the “rules”).
4. Matt | 05.29.08
Nancy, evangelical schools provide a great step backward into a time where women are subjugated and sex is taboo. Clear behavior is not necessarily healthy behavior.
It’s not that students’ religious upbringings haven’t given them the resources to deal with the “hookup culture,” it’s that student’s religious upbringings encapsulate them in an idealistic world devoid of real problems. Once in contact with the world outside of mom and dad’s oppressive watch, the students make bad decisions from ignorance influenced by peer pressure, leading to the “hookup culture.” It’s not only college communities that need to foster better communication, but the families and high schools that send their inept communicators off to college.
5. Andy | 05.29.08
The review brings to point an interesting disparity in sexual mores between evangelical and other post-secondary educational institutions. Before reading this article I might have assumed that “kids will be kids” and that everyone is interested in experimenting to a degree mostly dictated by nature instead of nurture. I hypothesize that the crucial difference between the evangelical vs. non-evangelical collegiate scenarios is the degree of difference between students’ home life prior versus during college. I guess that your average student attending an evangelical college will feel more “at home” than your average student attending, say, a public university. This would mean that there is less of a behavioral vacuum to fill with new ideas and morals from friends, predatory frat-boys, etc.
I propose a hypothetical example to illustrate my point and how it wanders from the conclusions drawn by the author. If popular culture dictated that students abstain from sex except while their previous home culture encouraged casual sex, students would be better prepared for public universities than evangelical schools. They would better know what they are looking for ethically and spiritually and would not be as lost and filled with transitional angst. Not that I’m espousing pre-marital sex, but I see no reason why the effects noted by the author must stem from the relative value of a particular ethical framework; I would say she has not succeeded in proving this as a causal relationship.
6. Montgomery | 05.30.08
Donna Freitas clearly does not have an understanding of the true Catholic ethos on “purity/chastity.” You can find out this true Catholic ethos for yourself in John Paul II’s magnum opus entitled, “Theology of the Body.” Here we have the relevant answers to the “hook-up culture,” which is so anti-romantic, and totally focussed on using someone as an “object” for his or her own selfish sexual gratification, and being totally callous and blind to the person being objectified. There is no meaning to this study without an authentic and deep examination of beauty of Theology of the Body as contrasted to what students are doing to themselves out of complete lack of knowledge of who they are as persons and the gifts they have been given to procreate which come from God who created us male and female. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is not the fearful “theologian” speaking as she refers to in the audio portion of this review. She is not honest in her conversation without the guidance of JPII’s TOB in a “pre-college” sex/romance talk among students and parents.
7. Dawn W. | 05.30.08
The arguments for this book ring shallow and its reasoning is faulty. The internalization of the teachings of Jesus through belief in Jesus and by staying close to Jesus through the daily reading of the “world of God”, reading of Christian Apolegetics, receiving of the Eucharist, constant and continual prayer all must be continued and practiced in order to “distance” ourselves from the “hook up culture of today.” It is really easy to “rationalize” and “compartmentalize” everything in life, be it religious beliefs or sexuality. The more things change, the more they remain the same! New ideologies, more isms today….Atheism, liberalism, agnosticism, relativism, all have no “moral compass” all offer freedom from religion under the disguise of “free thinking” and all rationalize and compartmentalize any/all the teachings of the Judaic/Christian teachings! The sexual revolution of the 1960’s has already reaped its fruit from its teachings/lifestyles. We see a decrease in marriage and an increase in cohabitation lifestyles and yet long term studies done by Stanford University and other colleges/universities have found that these lifestyles have lead to an increase in domestic abuse and couples marrying other individuals other then their “live-in” boyfiends/girlfriends. So the “old age” arguments of “sexual compatability” ring shallow and prove otherwise. Young people, especially at the College level are taught not to believe in the foolishness of the Christian/Jewish beliefs but if one stays close to their religious beliefs and act upon them by the “renewing of their mind”, the ability to withstand all the isms of today can be done. Today, more than any other time in history, the practicing Christinans have to be knowledgeable in their faith, uncompromising, and show the same “militaristic” frame of mind toward their beliefs/lifestyles as those who disdain Jesus. It also boils down to “what part of NO don’t you Understand?” It is not easy being the only fish going upstream when everyone else is “doing it”. But when you settle down and have a family and find out twenty to thirty years later that your colleagues, your friends who “bought” the “feels good philosophy” are already divorced after five to ten years of marriage, (or even less!, or for have been involved in “serial cohabitation” for twenty to thirty years); you look at your faith in Jesus, in his teachings, in his commandments and say, “It was worth it.” If you don’t stand for anything, (and most today only stand for good times and good sex); you will eventually fall! You can’t sit on the fence of moral compromise, rationaliztion, and compartmentalization without evenutally betraying yourself and becoming just like everyone else who can’t or who didn’t stand up for their Christian beliefs and personal relationship with Jesus!
8. Scott Belyea | 06.11.08
“But when you settle down and have a family and find out twenty to thirty years later that your colleagues, your friends who “bought” the “feels good philosophy” are already divorced after five to ten years of marriage, (or even less!, or for have been involved in “serial cohabitation” for twenty to thirty years); you look at your faith in Jesus, in his teachings, in his commandments and say, “It was worth it.””
Settled down, had a family, happily married after 39 years … and I’m an atheist of over forty years standing.
Please don’t fall into the smug trap of assuming and preaching that “faith in Jesus” is necessary for “morality” or “proper behaviour.” It just ain’t so, and never has been.
9. Steve Stephens | 06.17.08
Ditto that, Scott. I engaged in “casual hook ups” when I was younger and so did my wife. Also, dating and breakups and friendships that lasted and friendships that don’t, successes and failures, surprises and disappointments… I thought this was all part of the self discovery and experimentation we do as young people trying to learn about life and relationships and ourselves so we can develop into well rounded adults.
My wife and I are both atheists. We’re been married for 15 years, going strong. We are parents of healthy, happy kids who are doing great in school, and who are being raised with a solid moral foundation without ever having tasted the blood of christ. Imagine…
10. Dan | 08.26.08
I don’t know that Donna Freitas doesn’t have a good understanding of official Catholic teaching on the topic. I think she simply understands that on many campuses there is little connection between that official teaching and the ethos of student life.
11. Jeff | 11.24.08
Matt………sorry, I disagree. I believe that it IS students’ religious upbringings that ineptly prepare them for sexuality, and at times, life. I am a former evangelical Christian, and have moved on to a more open-minded, liberal progressive Christianity. My evangelical roots had much that prepared me for life, like accountability and compassion. What it did not prepare me for was intimacy, emotional stability, and dealing with past abuse from my childhood. There was more of a dependence upon a theistic God (who does not exist) than upon the God-given abilities that resided within myself. Evangelical kids who come from families that are strong emotionally and promote strong self-esteem often made the best choices in Christian colleges.
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1. Dilara Hafiz | 05.27.08
Lovely review - finally a book which tackles this thorny subject! Sounds like essential reading for every college-bound student as well as their anxious parents. As the mother of a recent high school graduate - I’m encouraged to learn that the ‘hook-up’ culture may not be as desirable or as prevelant as Hollywood movies and anecdotal stories depict - thank God!