Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity

Orenstein argues that aggression is a key component of unhealthy manifestations of masculinity. Along with emotional detachment and sexual prowess, aggression is seen as a necessary to being a man. Aggression and dominance are the ideal, whether on the athletic playing field or in the bedroom. Furthermore, as porn has become more available to teenagers, teenage boys use porn actors as a model and take cues from their aggressive behavior and language. 

Orenstein defines bro culture as a set of expectations. Teenage boys feel they must fit into the masculine status quo. Expectations include bragging about sexual encounters and hookups, as well as liberal use of homophobic terms. Within the context of bro culture, teenage boys are expected to be emotionally superficial or even suppressed. Bro culture is often associated with hypermasculine environments such as all-male sports teams.

Orenstein argues that teenage boys are largely deprived of healthy emotional expression. Boys are expected to suppress their feelings, rather than express them in a productive, authentic manner. Lack of emotional expression results in a general lack of empathy, combined with a tendency to demean or diminish women. Without healthy emotional expression, teenage boys do not develop into men equipped to process their own complex feelings.

Hookups are vague by definition, but generally refer to casual encounters that range from kissing at a club to having sex in a college dorm room. According to Orenstein, over 60% of hookups don't include intercourse, which means that a hookup often involves mostly kissing and groping. In hookup culture, casual sex precedes emotional intimacy, if emotional intimacy is ever achieved at all. A hookup does not require emotional connection.

Many of Orenstein's subjects reveal their complicated relationship with the word intimacy, both physical and emotional. For many teenage boys, intimacy is defined not as authentic emotional connection between people, but by drunken sexual encounters with girls they barely know. Orenstein points out that boys typically learn very little about sex from their parents, nor does society expect them to understand what healthy emotional intimacy really is. While emotional intimacy requires connection built on honesty and transparency, many of Orenstein's subjects experienced only the sexual form of intimacy.

This refers to the often-demeaning language heard in sports team locker rooms, in which teenage boys brag about sexual conquests. According to Orenstein, these conversations are largely exaggerated, as teenagers try to gain social cache by showing that they have control and power over female bodies. In locker room banter, boys often dehumanize girls by the way they talk. As Orenstein points out, the language to describe sexual situations takes on an element of violence or destruction: "they pound, they bang, they smash, they slam, they hammer" (28). 

Misogyny refers to hatred or prejudice against women. Without fundamental respect for women, boys use words and actions that implicitly or explicitly reveal misogynistic bias. Even as women have seen their rights expanded, Orenstein draws attention to the fact that misogyny and sexual harassment are pervasive elements in modern society.

SHIFT (Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation) refers to a three-year study of undergraduate students at Columbia University. This led to many findings about sex within the context of a college campus environment. The study found that women are exponentially more likely to experience unwanted sexual touching and assault on college campuses, and that, regardless of their gender, victims of sexual assault will often downplay the experience.