7.2.3: Sex, Gender, and Dating
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Ahhh, dating. What is dating? Filtering through the eligible pool of partners for the purpose of mate selection, right? Maybe. But here are far more reasons to date than to merely select a mate. Some people date for excitement, revenge, attention, access to resources, recreation, sexual activity, or status. Prior to dating, courting was common in the United States. Courting, which involved strong rules and customs and was often supervised by parents, evolved into dating due to wide-spread use of the automobile after the Industrial Revolution. Automobiles enabled young people to have more freedom (including new found opportunities to explore intimacy without their parents’ watchful eyes).
In the United States there are millions of people between the ages of 18-24 (18-24 is considered prime dating and mate selection ages). The U.S. Statistical Abstracts estimates that 9.5% of the U.S. population or about 15,675,000 males and 15,037,000 females are in this age group. 92
Today, men are much more likely to date and have multiple dating partners than are women. Yep, there’s that double-standard rearing its ugly head again. However, for both men and women, homogamy remains the overriding principle for selecting dating partners. When we see people we filter them as either being in or out of our pool of eligibles (the people we could theoretically meet and have relationships with). Filtering is the process of identifying those we interact with as either being in or out of our pool of people we might consider to be a date or mate . There are many filters we use. One is physical appearance. We might include some because of tattoos and piercing or exclude some of the exact same physical traits.
There are a lot of gendered rituals assigned to dating. Like our sexual scripts , blueprints and guidelines for what we define as our role in sexual expression, sexual orientation, sexual behaviors, sexual desires, and the sexual component of our self-definition , we having dating scripts. These scripts are filled with those gendered rituals. We are not just born with sexual or gendered scripts in place; they are learned. Dating and gender trends are learned via culture and socialization (think about movies aimed at young adults). There are as many unique dating scripts as there are people, yet some of these scripts have common themes and can be viewed as a collective pattern or trend in the larger social level. For example, while there are exceptions, who do we typically expect to “make the first move” in heterosexual dating experiences? Most of would agree: men. (Sigh).
Teens often have mutually self-serving motivations in dating that often make their experiences (often love) feel real and powerful at the time (see Table \(6.3.1\)). For many teens who form heterosexual romantic relationships, the girls are often seeking social status and maturity by having a complex relationship with a boy and by demonstrating to her female friends her social capabilities. Typically teen girls seek love, closeness, intimacy, and the status of being a girlfriend, steady, or even engaged. That works conveniently for boys who are often seeking physical affection and social status. 93
Table \(6.3.1\) Adolescent Intimacy-Sex and Love Matrix
| Plays at | Really wants | |
| Boys | Love | Sex |
| Girls | Sex | Love |
This pattern in Table \(6.3.1\) has not been found to apply to adults and has not been found to apply to all teen romances. Adults tend to report more sexual and relational satisfaction when intimacy and friendship are part of the overall relationship. Men typically have more power in initial dating situations, and women often see their actions as being dependent on men’s. Most research on dating trends have been conducted within heterosexual dating patterns, and so far, this has been a very heterocentric perspective of dating, but we will explore same- sex dating trends and the problems with heterosexual focus in a moment.
In general, people engaging in heterosexual dating practices typically identify potential partners exhibiting traditional feminine and masculine traits as being the most attractive as potential partners. In other words, we tend to filter our dating prospects through gendered lenses. That is, how well does the person conform to or violate genders norms. However, and this is when it gets really exciting, marital relationships between such people tend to have lower satisfaction rates, particularly for women. Think about that! While traditional gender roles might be attractive in dating prospects, they often do not sustain or maintain interpersonal satisfaction in a marriage. Calling Freidan! Remember that little book a lady named Betty wrote back in the 1960s called The Feminine Mystique we discussed in the opening chapter? Well, over fifty years ago Freidan revealed the restlessness, loneliness, and dissatisfaction experienced by so many suburban wives living out the outlined gendered scripts in the privacy of their middle- and upper-class homes. Turns out, that trend persists. Androgynous individuals and people in egalitarian partnerships and marriages report higher levels in interpersonal satisfaction.
Speaking of changing dating patterns, the single largest method for spouses to meet now is online. Between 2005-2012, more than one-third of couples who got married in the US met through an online dating site. In the past it was said that people would only look as far as they needed to to find a partner. In fact, in 1932, one third of couples who got married had lived within a five-block radius of each other before they got married! As far as they need to go but no further! 94 This method of mate selection worked insofar as it allowed you to meet an eligible as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Since marriage was understood to be the marker of adulthood it was an urgent matter to find a partner swiftly (to say nothing of the social pressure and ever present fear of becoming a ‘spinster’ or an ‘old maid’!). Potential spouses were filtered primarily through gender roles; could this man be a provider to a wife and children? Could this woman bear and raise children and keep a home? Today, the explicit gender role filtration may have lessened, but it still dominates in our profile pictures. One study even found 90% of your dating success depends on it! 95 The most effective profile pictures encapsulated crucial gendered themes; for men, avoiding looking at the camera, not smiling, and doing something interesting were most effective. For women, a flirtatious and coy straightforward selfie shot with visible cleavage would do the trick.
Most of us tend to think of personal or psychological characteristics when explaining our dating and spousal choices. As we have seen throughout this chapter however, that is a simplified and incomplete explanation. Instead, we must look to sociology to explain the rest. When asked why we choose our partner we might reply with ‘chemistry’ or something similar. But, as we’ve seen before society is often stacking the odds. Isn’t it uncanny how many of our own parents married heterogamously on most attributes (e.g. race/ethnicity, class, age, religion and even level of attractiveness)? Well, it turns out, society organized our lives to make this outcome likely for most. We tend to live in neighborhoods grouped by race and class. When we meet people in the real world it is often at work or school. The people we run into in either location are also likely to have similar backgrounds to us. In other words, the field of availables is stratified into class and racial groups before we meet anyone! By the way, have you ever noticed how much you have in common with people of similar backgrounds to your own? You have similar socialization experiences, similar cultural understandings and lo and behold, you click! You hit it off with that person, becoming fast friends or dating partners. Sounds a lot like that mysterious ‘chemistry’ we spoke of earlier, doesn’t it?
Much has been made of the ‘hook up’ in recent years, particularly among college students. While its meaning isn’t always clear (does kissing count? Any sexual contact?), it is understood to be occurring more frequently. This is facilitated technologically as well as face to face. Not just dating apps however, sociologist Lisa Wade has documented that young people today use many apps, like social media ones, to facilitate hookups. Additionally, Wade has found that hookups resulting in sex are less enjoyable for women than they are for men and this has everything to do with social forces that privilege men’s pleasure at women’s expense. 96
92
United States Census Bureau. Age and Sex Composition in the United States: 2012
https://www.census.gov/population/ag.../2012comp.html
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Hammon and Cheney.
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Ansari, Aziz. Modern Romance. Penguin Press. ISBN 978-1-59420-627-6.
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Christian Rudder,
Dataclysm
, 2014
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http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-rela...-reason-women-
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