Follow-up to "Ivy League Girls Gone Wild"

I really didn’t mean to create an international incident with my email a week ago, in which I made some partly-serious/partly-tongue-in-cheek comments on the NY Times article about widespread promiscuity among young female college students at Penn (no doubt the NY Post would have entitled it “Ivy League Girls Gone Wild”), but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. In addition to the obviously enticing prurient angle, the article touched deeply emotional hot-button issues such as sex, relationships, mortality, physical safety/violence, women’s rights/equality, and our society’s double standards. In hindsight I should have spent more time thinking about these issues and written something more in depth before sending the article around with only brief comments.

It generated an enormous amount of feedback, some of it hilarious (one friend wrote, “I predict a wave of d*ck biting on campuses, hereafter known among young women as “giving good Tilson”!) and some of it very serious and personal. For example, three women who recently graduated from Ivy League schools wrote me that they were “shocked” by my “offensive” comments and called on me to apologize (their email and my response – as well as responses from a few other folks – are below). If you read one of my emails this year to the very end, make it this one – some folks sent me some very powerful stuff.

My comments – especially the “bite it!” – went viral, including articles in the NY Post and UK’s Daily Mail (links here and here). But my favorite was this blog post on Cosmopolitan:

Hedge Fund Dad Gives Unwanted BJ Advice

July 17, 2013 at 2:50PM By Natasha Burton | 1 comments

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/celebrity/news/whitney-tilson

 
Talking to your dad about sex is probably the worst thing ever—for both of you. (But for women without moms or who have divorced parents, it’s pretty much inevitable.)

And while you might think that getting blowjob advice from your padre would be doubly-ick, one hedge fund dad— Whitney Tilson—gave his daughters just that in a blogpost that’s now making the interweb rounds.

Responding to the recent New York Times article on college hook-ups, particularly an anecdote from a woman who was coerced into giving head by a guy she was hooking up with, Tilson shared a five-point plan in case his three girls ever ended up in that awful situation.

He writes: “I certainly hope that my daughters would never spend a second with a guy who would ever dare say ‘get down on your knees’ – but if that happened, they would: a) walk away b) better yet, punch him in the mouth and walk away c) better yet, kick him in the balls and walk away d) better yet, pretend to go along with it, but when he pulls it out, squint, laugh, and walk away e) better yet, bite it!”

Well, put, Tilson. While your very public advice probably mortified your daughters—for the aforementioned reason that dads + sex talk = awkward—it’s totally solid. Bite it, indeed, ladies.

Before I go any further, I want to say that a number of friends and family members have advised me to drop this issue altogether – they argue that there’s just no upside for a middle-aged man to speak frankly – and, at certain points, politically incorrectly – about the sexual behavior of young folks today, especially women. In short, in writing this and making it public, I run the risk of a Larry Summers-type debacle.

It’s good advice, but I’m not going to take it – and not just because, like a moth to a flame, I am drawn toward commenting on controversial topics! I think these issues are critically important and need to be discussed and debated openly – and I’m not sure that’s happening (I certainly can’t think of any men speaking out on this). In addition, the comments I’ve received – some of them deeply personal – have been so amazingly interesting, educational, and eye-opening for me that I feel compelled to share them. Trust me: if you’re a young woman – or a relative, friend, mentor or teacher of one – you’ll want to read the wise and insightful commentary by many women (and men) below. Lastly, I’m writing this for my daughters: when the time is right, I want them to know what they will encounter when they go off to college (as my oldest will be doing in a year) and my views.

I’m not asking you to share them, by the way – and I’m not saying that, in my youth, I always lived by what I’m saying here. They’re just the personal – and, I acknowledge, somewhat preachy – opinions of one individual.

In case you’re wondering where I got some of my views (and my general outspokenness), look no further than my 72-year-old mom. Here’s what she had to say:

Whooeee, this ice-ages-mom might as well get into the fray. As hard as it is to believe, I too almost had a similar encounter except that I was fully sober and, when I said no, the guy was of the old school and backed off.

What could the women who are getting so drunk possibly be thinking?! Throughout recorded time, we have learned (or should have learned) that alcohol and many other drugs remove inhibitions and judgment. Guys know this and plying the woman with booze is the quickest way to lower her defenses and at the same time, minimize any reservations he might have about forcing his way -- even in my time! So, if a woman did not want to get into these mutual-no-brain situations, she did not get drunk and did not get into compromising places.

I find it ironic that the woman in the NYT article said she cannot engage in random sex unless she is drunk. What does this say about violating her own principles? If she is just interested in relieving her sexual needs, why doesn’t she find a willing guy and, while sober, just have a fine time with no obligations? The getting drunk part is where the risk intrudes.

Are any of these women THINKING about what messages they are giving to men when they are engaging in random sex? In my mind, they are saying that they do not care about affection and respect, much less love, and the prospect of a long-term relationship leading to marriage and children. Exactly which men do they think are going to be available for this old-fashioned family idea when they are ready for such at age 30+, especially when the men can, at that time, take advantage of the new crop of younger women? Egads, women’s newfound liberation seems to have gone to the extreme of robbing them of common sense.

By the way, here are pics of her back in the day and the two of us (in 2000):

Those of you reading this who are on my education reform email list might question why I think this topic is relevant. I’d argue that it’s not just parents that have the job of raising healthy, well-adjusted kids with solid amounts of self-esteem, who are prepared to succeed in life – it’s also the job of schools and every educator in them (and I’d argue that this is especially true for schools serving disadvantaged kids). I think both parents and schools need to be teaching kids more than the 3 R’s – they also need to be teaching/instilling the soft stuff like character, integrity, grit – and, yes, about sex/relationships. The latter can completely derail a promising student – especially one who has no safety net (which is typically the case for disadvantaged youth).

(Remember the heart-breaking NYT article from last December about the three young Latina women graduating from high school in Galveston, TX? All had bright futures but no longer do, in large part due to dysfunctional, inhibiting relationships with men (in two of the three cases, significantly older men). There’s no indication that these girls were promiscuous – rather, it was the opposite problem: they entered intense, highly committed (and presumably sexual) relationships at an age where they were not able to handle them.)

At the very least, every high school needs to be teaching young people what they should expect when they go to college – which, sadly, these days often means a culture of frequent binge drinking and “hooking up.” Colleges are, of course, not unique in having this environment – this type of behavior is increasingly widespread starting often even before high school.

I’m disgusted and horrified by this. In particular (turning to the topic addressed in the NYT article), I’m aghast at how hypersexualized our culture has become – and how many people think it’s okay for young people (of both genders) to engage in rampant promiscuity and that we should all be non-judgmental about it. Call me an out-of-touch, old school, fuddy duddy, but I don’t think it’s okay. Having sex with near strangers without any emotional connection (much less real affection or, heaven forbid, love!) is, in my personal opinion, indicative of low moral standards. Surely we can aspire to something higher than this… Sure, casual sex can simply be harmless fun, but I think there’s often a dark side to it – especially for young people, and especially, as I discuss below, for women.

I understand why this behavior is happening, however. When nearly all of the messaging from advertising, TV, movies, and music is that casual sex is fun, normal and healthy, it creates norms, expectations, and peer pressure that can be hard to resist by young people who want to be cool and fit in. Thus, it’s up to parents and educators to proactively teach and model very different behaviors.

Below are many entertaining and insightful responses to my email. I’d like to start with the most critical ones first. One friend wrote:

How about the young men’s responsibility to treat women with respect? Is it the sole responsibility of young women to aspire to and advocate for a sane, safe dating culture? Why is this behavior so much “worse” for young women – are we implicitly suggesting to boys that an unplanned pregnancy or sexually transmitted infection is a girl’s problem to solve on her own?

As the mother of a daughter, I like the first lesson on your list of suggested responses to demeaning treatment and abusive language from a male peer. But, what’s your view on what parents of teenage boys should be teaching their sons? If I ever have a son, the conversation I have with him will be about how real men don’t treat women as sexual objects, and consider the safety and esteem of their female peers in their social interactions; they never coerce a woman to do something against her will, and are especially cautious and respectful if alcohol is involved; and they take responsibility for the unwanted consequences of mutually foolish sexual decisions.

Let’s not advance this “boys will be boys” culture and implicitly give men a pass.

Along similar lines, another friend wrote:

Thanks for sharing. I’d just like to say that yes, women could make better decisions for sure, however, it is all of our responsibilities to consider how we have allowed a generation of young women to believe this is what they deserve. People accept the love and respect they think they deserve, and we are all responsible for the self-esteem of the women around us. What messages do we send? What has the media been telling girls? What hopes and dreams have we allowed women to have or not have? What insecurities and indecisiveness and self-disrespect plague young women today?

AND, though it’s easy to note how logically, women could prevent much of this culture through their own decisions, I think it is unfair to exempt men from the responsibility to be people of character. By making sexuality, rape, etc. a woman’s issue, we downplay the humanity and character of men. Men are not monolithically sexually voracious assholes doomed to rape easily accessible women. Men too are affected by love, relationships, and sex. They help propagate this culture, and are affected by it as well. They have the potential to be people of character, caring, conscientious, and good. We should hold them to this.

I just want to urge you to avoid calling young women stupid for making these decisions. If they are making bad and ignorant decisions, it is all of our faults. It is scary to transition to a college campus with different sexual/physical norms, and many young college students don’t know how to react or what they want when given such a strange array of ‘normal’ choices. I just think that in the world of sexual violence, victim-blaming simply doesn’t help. We all have a responsibility -- in a world of changing gender roles -- to help our young people develop character, self-respect, and a better culture for themselves.

Finally, three young women on my email list wrote:

Whitney - 

As recent graduates of Ivy League colleges who are now key leaders of the national education reform movement, we were shocked to read your commentary on Sunday’s New York Times article. There are three points specifically that we feel you missed and misrepresented in your analysis.

First, your rhetoric fuels a “blame the victim” narrative, which consistently lets men off the hook for their behavior, while putting women at fault. A woman’s choice to take part in campus social life does not equate to an invitation to be taken advantage of. Suggesting this is a fancy way of saying “she asked for it.” 

Second, when you describe what you hope your daughters would do if their experience paralleled those in the article, you completely misrepresent the actual choices available to women in that position or afterward. Suggesting women should “walk away,” “laugh,” or “bite it” when forced to take part in unwanted sexual activity is ignorant. 

Finally, both the article and your own commentary perpetuate a different standard of behavior for women than men. In your world, sexual activity and drinking are not activities young women should take part in. While we can argue about how societal norms have changed, suggesting that women have to play by a different set of rules in this situation or any other is offensive. 

While you do not owe us anything besides the courtesy of reading this email as we read yours, our hope is that you’ll respond as father, writer, and leader in education. We ask that you apologize to the extensive education community that reads your newsletter, use your platform and influence to address and correct dangerous misconceptions and foster dialogue about the true root causes of the issues at Penn and nationwide. The root cause is not women participating in “horrifying”, “stupid” behavior, but rather the cultural norms that women and men learn from a young age.

With respect, 

Jennifer Schnidman Medbery

Columbia University, 2006

Katie Beck

Harvard College, 2008

Andre Feigler

Barnard College, 2009

To help me think about these points, I shared this email with a few women whose judgment I trust. I’d like to share some of their comments before my own. My friend Julie wrote:

Dear Ms. Medbery, Ms. Beck and Ms. Feigler;

I have known Whitney Tilson (socially) for about 20 years, and I have never met another man (or woman) who has done as much as Whitney to improve the lives of vulnerable girls and women all over the world.

With that said, I have also never known, in the 20 years that I have known Whitney, ANYONE who has considered Whitney their go-to guy for parenting advice ;). Whitney is the father of three amazing daughters because Whitney’s wife is an AMAZING mother. And, as such, has taught her girls that when men say stupid things like this, you just squint at them, laugh and walk away.

Julie Singer (Penn, 1990)

On a much more serious note, another friend wrote:

I understand how they interpreted your article. I think you didn’t mean it in the way they interpreted it, but I also felt it when I first read it that you were blaming women. “How can smart young women be so massively stupid” does imply that it is their fault if they are sexually assaulted. While I understand what you actually mean by that, the way you write your response places the responsibility for getting into the situation with the woman. You could think about it another way and say something like “how can young men be such total d*ck heads that they would assume that it is their right to force a woman to suck his d*ck if she gets drunk and ends up in his room”. Society places the responsibility for restraining sexual behavior pretty much solely on women - “well if she is so stupid as to get drunk and go to his room, she deserves what she gets” instead of “men must understand that forcing a woman to do any sexual act against her will is a crime, so men should behave more responsibly and respectfully”. They both say the same thing, but the first places the responsibility and blame on the woman, and the second implies that it is a man’s responsibility to respect if a woman says no. Certainly joint responsibility is needed, but ending up in a situation like the one below should not be described as if she gets what she deserves if she puts herself in that situation.

Having said all this, I’ve been in a situation like that in college and I think it is not that uncommon. What went through my head was exactly what this girl was thinking: “Sh*t, well I got myself into this so what are my choices? Fight him off, bite, scratch, kick, scream and try to get away?” Or, well, just do it because you feel like you got yourself here and it’s not like he grabbed you out of a back alley and is “really” raping you. So you think it’s the easier solution to just do it rather than making a huge stink about it, and then just get away. I guess in one way it allows you to deal with it more easily because you then “consented” instead of being completely forced, even if you didn’t want to do it.

These situations are not black and white. You start out an evening thinking you like this guy and maybe you want it and then as the evening goes on and you are drunk and then something might happen that makes you not want it and then you start resisting a little bit and maybe you say no, but by then he is drunk and already assumes that you want it and he starts getting pushy, and you’re already half way there so you think, “Oh crap, I’ll just do it and get out of here.”

So who is to blame?

Here’s my reply:

Dear Jen, Katie and Andre,

I appreciate your measured and thoughtful reply. A number of people on my email list had a similar reaction.

I think you make some valid points – but also misunderstand what I wrote/meant, and I strong disagree with you in one area. I won’t apologize because I stand behind everything I wrote, but I do want to clarify come things.

To your first and third points, I think you’re confusing what I wrote with your very legitimate concerns about the article. In writing that women who engage in frequent binge drinking and “hook-ups” are “massively stupid,” I am not letting men off the hook, much less saying the young women profiled in the article were “asking for it”. I think the behavior of the young men was equally horrifying, and agree with your criticism that the article didn’t focus on them (as it should have).

This sentence I wrote applies to both genders up to the last four words: “Getting drunk and/or hooking up regularly is such a bad idea in so many ways, especially at such a young age and especially for young women.” So why did I include the last four words (which I stand by)?

1) A large percentage of men are horn dogs – which has been the case since the dawn of time. I don’t know how large, but large enough that any woman would be well advised to assume that, until definitely proven otherwise, a man is a horn dog (meaning he will pull any trick to get a woman to engage in as much sexual activity with him as possible). Worse yet, some men are more than horn dogs – they will go beyond the standard tricks like getting a woman drunk, verbally wooing and/or pressuring her, etc. and, especially when drugs or alcohol are involved, use their size and strength to force (or intimidate) a woman into unwanted sexual activity. I’m not saying this is right – it’s most certainly not – but I am saying that this is a universal truth, and it’s not like it’s some great secret.

The implications for a woman are clear: a) While you shouldn’t live in fear of every man you encounter, be cognizant that men can be dangerous, especially when they’re drunk; b) If you’re not interested in hooking up, don’t behave like you are; and c) While drinking socially is fine and even getting a little tipsy is usually harmless, binge drinking is extremely dangerous in countless ways so DON’T EVER DO IT!

I suspect you’re going to have a strong negative reaction to the preceding paragraph since you wrote “suggesting that women have to play by a different set of rules in this situation or any other is offensive.” My reply: oh please. When was the last time a man who got drunk was sexually assaulted by a woman? OF COURSE women have to play by a different set of rules! Why is it okay to say that if someone gets mugged walking through a known highly dangerous neighborhood, that they were massively stupid (while not excusing the behavior of the mugger), but it’s not okay to say that a woman who (very willingly and happily) gets drunk to the point of almost unconsciousness and gets taken advantage of sexually is massively stupid (while not excusing the behavior of the man)?

2) The older I get, the more I appreciate the importance of one’s reputation. For both men and women, a reputation is based on many things: intelligence, integrity, work ethic, kindness, sense of humor, etc. Most of these factors apply roughly equally to both men and women. But one’s sexual behavior is also an important factor in one’s reputation, so let’s put political correctness aside and acknowledge that in our society, there is a terrible – but very real – double standard: for the same promiscuous behavior, a man is a “stud” and a woman is a “slut” (and one’s sexual reputation lasts a long, long time – it doesn’t disappear upon graduation). This double standard may be diminishing – your generation is different from mine – but I doubt it’s diminished much. Again, I’m not saying this is right – it’s not – but I am saying that it is a universal truth, and it’s not like it’s some great secret. Women who fail to recognize that there’s a different set of rules for them – and adjust their behavior accordingly – are being very naïve in my opinion.

To your second point about what I would hope one of my daughters would do if confronted with a man who told her to “get down on your knees,” what I wrote was partly serious and partly in jest. I was 100% serious when I wrote that “I certainly hope that my daughters would never spend a second with a guy who would ever dare say” such a thing. I think both men and women are well advised to be very careful with whom they become romantically involved. I sincerely hope that my daughters are good enough judges of people such that they can avoid total scum bags like the guy described in the article. In most communities (like a college campus), it’s usually well-known who are the scummiest, sleaziest people, so just avoid them. And if you don’t know someone well enough to know his character, here’s an idea: get to know him better before you start to make out with him (or hop in his bed)!

But let’s assume that a woman did, in fact, get herself in such a position. The moment the cretin said “get down on your knees,” she should immediately do exactly as I suggested: “walk away.” You write that I “completely misrepresent the actual choices available to women in that position,” but I don’t see how. What would you suggest?

Violent, forcible sexual assaults are a very real problem on college campuses (and beyond), as this horrifying 60 Minutes segment shows (it’s about a college basketball player who was forcibly gang raped by three members of the men’s basketball team at the University of the Pacific – it still makes my stomach churn to watch it; it’s also a terrible problem in prisons – remember this scene in The Shawshank Redemption? http://youtu.be/mBlJ9N7Ehgk).

But it’s important to distinguish between this type of violent crime and the far-more-common, sadly-all-too-typical, drunken-college-frat-boy, coercive, boorish behavior described in the NYT article. There was no indication in the article that the guy was truly threatening violence and was going to force himself upon her no matter how much she resisted. Rather, the NYT article says he said “I think that’s fair” (gee, what a threat!) and “When she still hesitated, he pushed her down.” I’d bet my last dollar if she had said, “No way!” and stormed out, he wouldn’t have stopped her.

But you never know – a situation like this is dangerous and unpredictable – so my advice to my daughters (and any woman) would be my first suggestion only: just get out of there as quickly as possible (and report it to the authorities). My other suggestions were tongue-in-cheek – though I will say that there’s a little piece of me that hopes that my daughters would be so strong and self-confident and so outraged by anyone treating them so disrespectfully that they would make the guy suffer in one or more of the ways I described.

Best regards,

Whitney

I asked a female friend to review my response and she wrote:

I will be honest: I think your reply is honest, true to you, and long... and comes off a bit defensive at times -- though I am used to your honesty and emotions, it surely won’t be what they expect to receive in response to their letter (ha ha)!

I think your response is characteristic of a wealthy white male extravert of your age/generation, and that is not meant as an insult or a passive-aggressive statement; it is the most direct way I can explain what I read in your words. I, as a rational, liberal, raised-upper-middle class person, agree with you mostly about the general realities of the situation and I appreciate your bluntness in stating them. I also see some weaknesses in your defense, which I will note here:

1. We are all used to and conditioned by the worlds around us, and for young women just coming out of college, especially after the Steubenville, OH case, the ‘blame the victim’ narrative is something we are extremely sensitive to right now. What you wrote, logically then, was shocking to us in a sense, as it always is when someone says something other than what we expect. Just as, I suppose, the article was shocking to you (and old news to us).

Now, I know that you are not a young woman coming just out of college and haven’t been part of this current conversation because it isn’t as relevant to you and because you posted this article as something new and surprising. This article is the NYT’s attempt to get in pretty late on a conversation that has already been had over a series of issues of The Atlantic. Thus, you obviously haven’t been part of the conversation and are expressing your first opinions on the matter, a matter which is -- for some others -- already very nuanced and highly charged.

2. Your defense of your focus on women, and the realities that women have a lot of say in the situation, is not wrong. It’s simple, and it’s true to what you think. You were not shocked by the men, so you didn’t write about them. You were shocked about the women in the article (and you have daughters), so you did write about them. And especially for a woman, sexual reputation and safety are very important to address (though, I do think your comment about reputations is a little bit last-generation... but I suppose as I get older you may be proved right! To you, a woman who decides to be sexually liberated in whatever sense is rationally destroying one of her necessary requisites for a successful future: a good reputation. For the young liberal world-changing woman in college today, a woman who decides to be sexually liberated, knowing that it is counter-cultural, is trying to blaze a new path for herself and future women to not have to live by such rules. Stupid? Maybe. Brave? Maybe. Different perspectives.)

3. I read your emails enough to know that you are mostly uncensored with your personal opinions and emotions, and you generally stand by what you have said before, probably because you are too mature/rational/wealthy to be insecure about sharing what you think and feel. Why would you be? You have pretty much nothing to be afraid of. You have too much power (money, influence, etc.) to experience that kind of fear.

I am a teacher of teenagers, and I can tell you that choices people make under stress are rarely rational, and they are often based on fear. You are right, list out the options, there are a few good ones rationally, and you can get out of a situation. What your email does betray is -- and I promise this is not meant to knock you at all, because it would be expected of my dad and brother too... pretty much any man -- your misunderstanding of the constant fear women deal with. To be a young woman is to be afraid, especially as a freshman in college in a new place with new social norms, no friends yet, no support network yet, new sexual liberation, no clear rules about a lot of things. To be alone in a room, anywhere, with a strange, larger man still terrifies me today, and I am an adult woman. Adding to that alcohol, sexual expectations, complete emotional insecurity, unclear consequences, a compromising situation... walking out seems like a very distant option indeed. Paralyzing fear and resulting obedience seems much more likely.

I agree: avoid it to begin with, and avoid the scumbags. Though, you might admit, that as a new freshman, you probably just plain don’t know who to avoid yet.

Hey, I didn’t really drink until after college. That’s a good tip for your daughters too? Alcohol is basically to blame in all this, you know. But then, that is kind of social death... maybe teach them to count drinks first.

And I do hope that your daughters have an excellent and mature sense of self-respect when they get to college; it will indeed serve them well. Not all girls are as lucky. Love your daughters, Whitney. Not for anything -- not for their accomplishments, not for their beauty, not for their poise or their character or anything else. Just love them because they’re yours, and respect them as people. That will be, in the end, the most important thing they have.

Turning to other general insightful comments I received…

Another female friend wrote:

My opinion, as an “Oxbridge” student in a heavily masculine atmosphere where sexual harassment by some professors and students is de rigueur and ignored if possible (Oxford lacks a sexual harassment policy of any merit), is that we are not nearly as evolved as we would like to claim, and it’s worth recognizing “how it is” while we work to change it.

I also wonder about the long-term ramifications of not learning how to be a partner, the ignorance of expecting a perfectly “grown” ready-made husband when you hit some “magical” age after 30, and the blithe disregard for the psychological processes of purging that are exemplified by drunken hook-ups. If these women are “getting their sexual satisfaction” then I mourn for human sexuality.

Perhaps this is something women need to do to prove we can and that we know better and then we’ll invite the boys to come along? I don’t know.

More food for thought (I am frustrated by the “leader=hookup, follower=taken advantage of” dichotomy): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sonya-rhodes-phd/to-all-my-daughters_b_3599953.html

A fellow father of three daughters wrote:

I had to respond to this one. I share your views as the father of three daughters, the oldest starting college this fall. Perhaps we are just as out of it as arguably our parents were when we were young. But it sure feels like women are blowing (no pun intended!) the opportunity afforded by women’s liberation and oddly playing into men’s hands. When I was an undergrad, if attractive women (or even unattractive women) had been interested in casual sex hookups and oral sex to end the evening gracefully, I would have thought I died and went to heaven. Guys will never say no.

But it is interesting to see the weird connection of a sort of “Lean In” career intensity and this hookup culture and I guess I can see how some of these privileged young women want to prioritize their careers over any limiting relationship.

Anyways, super alarming!

Another father wrote:

My own experience is that if you give your girls a strong sense of self, they are less susceptible to being confused and falling victim to some of the stuff in the articles. What the research does not do is correlate the instances of hookups/rapes/alcohol/drugs with the self-esteem of the girls. Even smart girls that go to places like Penn can be all screwed up in the self-esteem department. Eating disorders are rampant on the high achieving campuses. Flip side is that girls who have their feet planted on solid ground may still drink too much, but if your actions are driven by your inner compass when your surface behavior is impaired, as long as that inner compass is pointed in the right direction, the girl will be all right. Anyway, my two cents worth.

I hope my friend is right (but fear he’s not):

As father of three girls too (ages 4, 5, 7), I had an identical reaction, but consoled myself with the thought that this is more likely selective, prurient, “sex sells” reporting than anything else. Hope so.

A mother with three daughters wrote:

I, too, have three daughters (14,12,12) - not sure if ‘thanks for sharing’ is the appropriate sentiment. Sad. For those of us who continue to fight fiercely for professional opportunities for women I can state unequivocally that this is not what we wish for the next generation of high-achieving girls.

Feeling better about the decision to send our oldest to Catholic school next year too!

Another mom wrote:

As the mother of a 15-year old daughter and the aunt of three more teenage girls, I really appreciated your comments. A bit shocking to be sure but the situation that young people face is shocking too.

Sometimes it seems to me like our generation gave up on trying to enforce the rules and didn’t have the backbone to shut off the TV, radio, Internet when it got too raunchy. I’m afraid our kids - boys and girls - are paying for this in sad, empty, disrespectful relationships.

So, good for you for putting people on notice that self-respect is alive and well and you better be careful who you disrespect no matter what MTV says.

Another female friend wrote:

Thanks for writing what we’re all thinking. I really don’t understand how psychologists and feminists are corroborating this sort of destructive behavior.

Lastly, I’m going to conclude this email with a lengthy and heartfelt email from another female friend:

I’m sure you’ll get lots of feedback on this! Let me quickly offer mine:

My son and daughter graduated from college in recent years. Here’s how they managed to navigate their four years in college — they both had achieved something that required them to set goals for themselves when they were young adults.

My daughter started taking art lessons when she was about 12. It became a passion but it required long hours in her teacher’s studio — mostly on Saturday mornings. She was also an equestrian and had spent a decade (from age 7 to 17) doing something she loved which was also unbelievably grueling, time-consuming, and challenging. She is cover girl beautiful and could have gotten away with just being a knockout, but she was too busy becoming an accomplished rider and artist. By the time she got to college, her values were rock solid.

My son started playing [his sport] at a very young age and by the time he graduated from high school, was among the best in the US in his age group. He then went on to distinguish himself in college, both athletically and in general, winning one of his college’s top prizes.

Both of my kids found someone special late in college. My daughter has now been in a serious relationship for four years with a fellow artist from her college, while my son has been in a relationship with a young gal who shares his passion for the sport they both play.

Here’s why I think my kids didn’t turn out to be one of the girls or boys mentioned in the story. I drilled values into their heads EVERY SINGLE DAY for as long as I can remember. I spent every waking hour giving them example after example of people who had accomplished great or noble things in their lives. And I set the best possible example I could by walking the talk in my own life.

Also, they had already learned “discipline” very early in their lives through their commitments to their individual passions – art, riding, and [my son’ sport].

The Hook-Up Culture and “Sexting”

My son really saw the hook-up culture at [his college – a top school] and it was BAD. The Greek system is a huge problem as beer pong is all the rage in the frat houses. I had a fascinating conversation with him a few days ago. He said the two major contributors to the new culture of hooking up on college campuses: alcohol and texting/emailing.

His roommate [let’s call him Pete] was a member of my son’s fraternity and would read some of the text messages that he got from “very nice girls” who were sending him what could only be described as “soft porn” text messages. For example, my son asked me, “Mom, do you remember [Jane] so and so?” I said, “Yes I do.” He then went on his cell phone and read a text that Jane had sent to Pete – it went something like this: “I have to have your c*ck in my mouth right now!” I think it definitely takes two to tango but that last sentence has now been immortalized. Wouldn’t Jane’s parents be shocked to learn that their wonderful daughter could say something you might find written on a bathroom wall at the bus station?

99.9% of the time, the girls who sent these porn-sounding texts were so drunk that probably wouldn’t remember what they actually wrote by the next morning. The rule “don’t drink and text” should be the rule of thumb on college campuses. I asked my son if these girls realized that text messages could be forwarded and he said it mystified him! Everyone at the fraternity knew who the hookup texters were because of course guys like Pete would share them, saying, “Dude, wait ‘til you read this!”

I hope the reality of drunken porn text messages that shock the recipient, who then shares them with his guy friends, sends a real wake-up call to anyone considering the merits of hooking up.

Pete is attractive and seriously smart but it’s not like he’s the captain of the football team — he was just happy to hook up with these gals because he literally had no time for a girlfriend — he’s a biology major and spent his life in the laboratory. Pete will probably become a great biologist some day and had wonderful girls to keep him company at night when he had a few hours of “down time.”

I think the “MO” of a guy who hooks up with girls more closely resembles Pete (flattered by the attention) than a guy who is a real a**hole and is sexually assaultive.

Alcohol

I think in the case of my two kids, their success in college has almost 100% to do with moderating their alcohol consumption. My son has been a serious athlete for years and knew that he couldn’t afford to play beer pong every night (in high school or college) and have any shot at reaching the top in his sport.

My daughter has always been somewhat vain — she knows what beer/wine/booze does to her weight so she typically abstains so that she’s in the physical shape she wants to be in to make HER happy. Neither of my kids were big drinkers in college which is why they were sober enough to meet someone great to be in a relationship with.

I think the big question is — are your girls smart about how much they drink?

Clueless Parents

Not only did I pound sense into my kids’ heads when they were growing up, I prepared them for what they were going to find when they got there. This is something that most parents are CLUELESS about! The reason I could have written the book was because [in the context of my work] I spent days, weeks, and months talking to women at the top colleges and universities – and I was blown away by what I heard. By the time my daughter headed for college, I had been giving her “instant replays” of what I’d heard from girls at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Stanford, Penn — you name the school, I was there and I heard IT ALL.

Here’s what I would suggest you do — keep educating yourself re: what’s really happening at our finest schools! The colleges do a terrible job of policing the campuses/parties because they know that alumni come back to campus for football games or some other athletic event or they hang out at the frat houses and behave like they’re still in college!

Parents are so proud of their children when they get accepted to a top college. They think to themselves “my job is done!” They think “now my son or daughter has made it!” — for the most part, they have no idea what their son or daughter is going to be dealing with once they arrive on campus. There is SO MUCH PRESSURE to be part of the “cool crowd” and “just saying no” if you’re a girl is perceived as not cool. That is pathetic.

A Woman’s Reputation

By the way, I agree with you wholeheartedly that your reputation as someone who hooked up with guys follows you right off the campus when you graduate. Reputations are easy to lose, hard to get back. But even if it didn’t follow you, how incredibly hard it is to switch gears once you’re in a job setting — then what? For most top achievers, life gets harder, work hours get longer… How do you suddenly figure out how to be in a serious relationship if you’ve been “dating on the fly” in college?

Trust and Abandonment

Perhaps most importantly, I trusted my kids. Their father, a very great man, walked out of our lives a number of years ago. He literally just vanished. The four of us had always been a team – and we had an incredible life right up until we didn’t. I think he just had a mid-life crisis. Whatever it was, we never saw it coming.

Abandonment has its own brutal set of issues — the three of us literally felt like we had been hit by a tidal wave. I won’t bore you with the details but suffice it to say — I really had to dig way down to find the courage to continue to set the best possible example I could for my kids.

My son had the hardest time as he was extremely close to his father. He started seriously drinking in high school. I told him to bring the party to our house so he did. We had a rule — no one leaves. I actually used to lock the gates at the end of our driveway so no one could leave until daybreak.

Some parents would think what I did was insane but my son had to step up and take total responsibility for his guests. He was so grateful to be able to hang out with his friends (both male and female) at our house and the kids were always respectful.

A close friend gave my two children great advice when they were very young: she told them to “be a leader.” Our finest campuses need more intrepid souls who have the intestinal fortitude to set a better example -- that is REALLY what this is all about. My children never abandoned the moral high ground and they didn’t preach it — they lived it.

Anyway, hope this is food for thought! Thanks so much for bringing this very important topic to light.

I hope you found this discussion as interesting and enlightening as I did!

Whitney

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I sent this email out the next day:

I’ve gotten incredibly positive feedback from yesterday’s email – and now I’m putting this behind me!

But before I do, I wanted to share one friend’s email and my response. He wrote:

As someone who knows how these stories work, I think it's pretty clear that the author went down to Penn looking to write a story about "hook-up culture" and "girls gone wild" and found a handful of women who fit the stereotype she wanted to write about and then based the entire story around their experiences in a way that made it seems as if they were the norm, rather than the exception. And I would further bet that if you asked fellow students about the women in the article that words like "strange" "off-kilter" and "awkward" would come up more often than "slut."

The hook-up culture isn't new either - I could have found the same handful of girls at my college in the early 80s who were engaging in that sort of behavior and written a similar articles, sans texting. You could have too - Elizabeth Wurtzel's "memoir" Prozac Nation was basically a chronicle of all the guys she hooked up with at Harvard and I believe she was there around the same time were. And, to my earlier point, I suspect the words "strange" "off-kilter" and "awkward" would have been used about her too.

Your thoughts and defense are spot on, it's just that I don't think things are any worse than they were 30 years ago. The New York Times Style section (where the article first ran) is just not  the place to find accurate observations of our culture...

I’ve been thinking about my friend’s point (which others echoed) and, while I can’t prove it, I think hooking-up is much more common now for three reasons:

1)      Our culture is more sexualized, in part I think due to the widespread availability of free, hard-core porn, making hooking up much more normal and accepted.

2)      Texting makes it so easy to send porn-like words (and photos). In my day (when, needless to say, there was no texting or emailing), it’s inconceivable that a young women, even a completely drunk one, would call a young guy and say “I have to have your c*ck in my mouth right now!” (quoting from the text message my friend’s son showed her – see the final person at the end of yesterday’s email). And even if she did make such a phone call, it wouldn’t be in writing for the guy to easily forward to all his buddies, ruining the girl’s reputation.

3)      The gender imbalance that’s risen dramatically in the last 20-30 years – both undergrad and grad schools nationally are now 58% women – I think that REALLY changes the sexual power dynamic.

My friend agrees. After reading my points, he added:

All valid points, texting in particular - it creates the sort of depersonalized communication that lets people say things they would never say face to face (similar to email).

I was thinking about it too – another big change (to disprove my own point) is that when we were in school, the mothers of our classmates were products of the 1950s and would have been shocked by the existence of a hook-up culture, let alone their daughter's participation in it. Today's college students, on the other hand, have parents who are well aware of how that works and may well have taken part in it themselves. If nothing else, their parents went to school at time when drugs of all sort were fairly common on college campuses, not just alcohol.

Lastly, here’s a little follow-up blurb in today’s NY Post:

Money to sex ed, that Cosmo guy

·         By KAJA WHITEHOUSE

·         Last Updated: 1:10 AM, July 23, 2013

·         www.nypost.com/p/news/business/money_to_sex_ed_that_cosmo_guy_4LukfToNZjs34nmIIbE1FP  

Ask him anything!

It looks like hedge-fund manager Whitney Tilson just found his calling — as a sex columnist for Cosmopolitan magazine.

Tilson’s unsolicited advice to his daughters for dealing with a guy who tells them to “get down on your knees,” including the suggestion to “bite it,” went viral and was picked up by the ladies’ mag.

“While your very public advice probably mortified your daughters — for the aforementioned reason that dads + sex talk = awkward — it’s totally solid. Bite it, indeed, ladies,” Cosmo wrote in a blog titled, “Hedge Fund Dad Gives Unwanted BJ Advice.”

Tilson, who disseminated his advice last week on his own education blog edreform.blogspot.com, told his readers yesterday that he’s not giving up on the issue, spurred by a recent New York Times article about the campus hookup culture at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I want to say that a number of friends and family members have advised me to drop this issue altogether,” he said. “It’s good advice, but I’m not going to take it.”

“I think these issues are critically important and need to be discussed and debated openly — and I’m not sure that’s happening,” he said, referring to the “dark side” of a burgeoning casual sex culture among young people, especially when large amounts of alcohol are involved.