casual sex is good and if people wanna fuck let them. but i do think capitalist alienation makes people have a tendency towards non lasting relationships that make them less happy. so hookup good but like everything capitalism makes it worse.
I don’t think you can view hookups outside of their material conditions. Hookups under capitalism are transactional because everything is.
this is the only take imo, hookups in a communist society would have a completely different character to what they are now. People hookup casually now id say primarily cause they want/need to have some human affection or are bored, and that is a symptom of our society where people are largely alienated from that
What if they just like fucking/getting fucked, and want to derive pleasure from sex. I understand what angle you’re taking, but I think you’re looking at it too deeply… people just like sex.
Now for people paying sex workers I feel like your analysis works better, but not casual hookups.
I don’t know anyone that does hook up culture and is a happy person. I don’t think hook up culture is the cause, a least not across the board, but it’s definitely not just people enjoying sex. you go on an app and show off your body so people can decide if you’re hot enough and then you have a fake date, fuck, and leave.
Kollontai most likely wrote something about this topic.
She did! https://redsails.org/winged-eros/
Briefly, Kollontai promotes “Winged Eros”, which is a multifaceted connection between people, and not “Wingless Eros”, which is sex without friendship or emotion. But on the other hand, she also denounces the bourgeois ideal of love, which is possessive and centered around the economic unit of the married couple, and which denies the multifaceted nature of love.
The essay covers more than just that though: she starts by tracing how ideals of love change as socioeconomic systems develop, and she ends with a discussion of what proletarian ideals of love could be. It’s a great essay.
This is an excellent essay, but I would say that Kollontai would be against hook-ups and hook-up culture… its more that we can form deep, meaningful relationships sans possession, and outside of the framework of bourgeois monogamy.
Call me out if you think this is bullshit.
Relative to the feudal conception of sex only after marriage as the acceptable form of relations to have (not that people didn’t get around before then), I’d say that it is an improvement to protestant/catholic traditional forms of relations. Various forms of birth control unburdened women the full consequences of free sex.
I suspect that the “free love” movement was kind of a movement for white petite bourgeoisie to just use social justice as a meme to have sex with alot of women. The new term is “sex positivity”, but sometimes that really is just encouraging sexual relationships over relationships that actually promote commitment. I don’t know to what extent this is intentionally promoting people to spend money on dating apps, memes to pretend to be the ideals of masculinity/feminitity over to seduce, but over time the mask slips. This results in therapy. This results in marriages of unhappy people or children without both parents. This produces more miserable people to create more gears for the capitalist machine to keep on running. All of these things cost money to the people and promote GDP growth. Promoting animosity between men and women and rightfully seeing each other as deceitful creates conflict to obscure class relations. Not all people buy into this bullshit but this way of thinking seems to create dysfunctional relationships.
I suspect we should build institutions that can take feminism seriously and encourage relationships that nurture both parties in more complex ways than just sexual ways. This does not mean we fully conform back to the old ways that are trans/homophobic. We can recognize what works in relationships for most people but we don’t need to alienate all of the outliers either. Mental healthcare for all would be a boon for everyone in the society.
As Mao has famously said: “touch grass”
