University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Comparing Intimacies: Race Relations and Racial Inequality in Hookup Culture Sarah A. Spell University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Spell, Sarah A., "Comparing Intimacies: Race Relations and Racial Inequality in Hookup Culture" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2033. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2033 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2033 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Comparing Intimacies: Race Relations and Racial Inequality in Hookup Culture Abstract Racial inequality extends beyond socioeconomic measures: it shapes social interactions. With the shift in sexual scripts (i.e., the normative means to obtain sex) for young Americans from steady dating toward hooking up, recent scholarship has identified how hookups er veal gender and class inequality. However, research has not yet sufficiently investigated racial inequality. Because hookups are by their nature non- committal, they have arguably fewer barriers (e.g., disapproval by family) than more committed relationships. While this indicates that hooking up is a personal choice, broader research suggests that race/ethnicity and gender intersect in ways shaping participation in hookup culture and the interactions across racial lines. This three article dissertation explores how race/ethnicity and gender structure the opportunities to hook up and social distance between racial groups. Using data from the Online College Social Life Survey (n = 18,347), this dissertation identifies acial/ethnicr differences within gender in participation in hookup culture. While Asian men and non-White women are less likely to participate, they are more likely to desire opportunities to hook up suggesting that they are excluded from hookup culture rather than opting-out.