Nearly every evening, no matter how frigid the air outside, a warm, enchanting glow emanates from Le Majestique Montreal: a popular bar in the Jewish Quarter of St. Beneath a row of incandescent light bulbs, couples sit on eclectic, mismatched stools, dining on oysters and white wine. In recent years, travel brochures and magazines have commented on Montreal being a nexus of love and charming date spots.
Between ice skating on Beaver Lake in the winter and strolls through Atwater Market in the summer, it is not surprising how many view Montreal as the ideal weekend getaway for lovestruck couples. Whether by virtue of its enormous size or its young, achievement-driven student body, McGill today facilitates a culture of anonymous, casual sex, more so than it does intimate long-term relationships. Young people today are not only having less sex than they have in the past, but this sex is becoming increasingly transactional.
The expectation of immediate physical gratification with intimacy as an afterthought pervades colleges campuses across North America today. Whether this culture of casual encounters is harming or empowering our generation is up for debate.
Orenstein describes how these young men on American campuses feel overwhelmed by the pressures of casual sex. Hookup culture feeds into a mythos that other young people are having more sex β and better sex β than you. This comparison can foster a feeling of inadequacy, especially among young, heterosexual men, who often discuss sex and hookups with the language of conquest. Ironically, a lot of this fear is perceived, but not reflective of reality.
A sexual partner every semester or so does not exactly sound like Bacchanal hedonism. And make no mistake, this pressure has been instilled in us since high school and remains persistent for years. Students ultimately have to find time within their busy schedules to pencil in a possible date, and this does not come without any guilt. Gone are the days when students had an entire Saturday to themselves; hangouts with friends have turned into group study sessions in the library.
