“The Moral Panic of the US patriarchal society in response to female Hookup culture and sexual promiscuity.” The main object of analysis is the US hookup culture, female promiscuity, and why the US society develops moral panic. Males, who engage in hookups and
promiscuous sex, are viewed positively, while women are viewed negatively. The paper explores if the growing hookup culture among US females is their way of asserting themselves and achieving equality with males. And whether moral panic related to such changing sexual scriipts is an attempt of the patriarchal society to maintain the gender roles and power balance. The first theoretical framework is the works of Gagnon and Simon on Sexual Scripts and sexual conduct. I will explore the layered three dimensions: ‘cultural scenarios,’ ‘interpersonal scenarios,’ and ‘intra-psychic scenarios.’ I will investigate what genders the existing sexual scriipts benefit the most and infer what scriipts the US society considers appropriate for both genders. Another theoretical framework is moral panic and the works of Stanley Cohen. I will explore the stages of moral panic and agents of moral panic. I will investigate why the US society panics that woman use various hookups and dating apps/websites and freely engage in promiscuous sex. Also, I intend to use the ideas of Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda in the book “Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance” to investigate why female promiscuity and hookups are viewed as deviant and inappropriate by US society. The paper will also include the concepts of sexual norms, social norms regarding sexuality, deviance and restrictive behavior, sexual desire, symbolic interactionism, and sexual behavior. It will incorporate the works of Gagnon (2004), Gagnon & Simon (2005), Green (2008), Kinsey et al. (1953), Plummer (1982), and Simon & Gagnon (1986) that we covered in class.
Profesor Notes regarding the Proposal Hi, I think this sounds like an intriguing paper topic. As you work on this, think more about what you want to argue specifically. For example, are you arguing that U.S. culture has seen a shift in gendered sexual scriipts around women’s sexuality from one of “passivity” to one that allows somewhat greater space for the assertion of female agency and pleasure, but perhaps in a way that nevertheless involves moral panic? I’m just making that up – it would be up to you to clarify whether that’s the case, but just thinking aloud here with respect to the argument. There is a double standard when it comes to men and women’s involvement in hookup culture and that’s an important point to explore. But that’s not quite novel enough to be the main argument.
So, think a bit more about what main point you want to make about moral panics and women’s involvement in hookup culture. It’s not (yet) clear what the specific connection is here so if you can draw that out for your reader in your main argument, that will provide a nice thread for the rest of the paper (but only if you think the connection can be clearly articulated – if not, step back and ask what you really want to illustrate in this paper and then work on developing that as your argument).
