Sex Questions, Answered

After reading the cover story, the Masthead team (Matt, Caroline, and Karen) came up with a list of questions for Kate. Here are a few of our favorites. Kate’s answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

In the piece, you reference the term hooking up, which can be used to describe all manner of sexual acts. Why has the phrase become so entrenched in our cultural vocabulary?

Kate: The term seems to date to the '90s in terms of media mentions. And based on interviews that I've done, by the late '80s, it was in more colloquial use. Researchers who have looked at hookup culture find that it's a totally elastic term. It means what you want it to, which is one of the reasons people love the term: It actually can be wonderfully private. You can say you hooked up with somebody, and who knows what really happened? That's between you and them.

Interactions on dating apps only rarely lead to in-person meet-ups. According to Tinder, the number of swipes that end in a match is 1 or 2 percent. What’s the point of a dating app that never actually ends in a date?

The numbers that Tinder has released, which I cite in the story, certainly give a user pause. I will say there is a more positive way to look at the apps. If you're a committed user, you're willing to put in your time. And if you have other things going for you that make you likely to come across well in that venue (for example, you photograph well), the apps can and do work. They are, by some counts, the leading way that people meet each other now. So I do not mean to leave people with the idea that this is a road to nowhere. I just mean to pause and say that apps may not be the most efficient way for some people to find a meaningful relationship, especially the way some people are using them now.

Now that apps dominate the dating scene, you write, people are nostalgic for a time when it was normal to meet each other in bars. But was it ever really “normal” to meet someone in a bar?

It is interesting that this idea has so much cultural resonance for people: whether or not people actually met in bars. That's almost become a shorthand for saying "I met somebody not at my workplace. Not in my neighborhood. Not through my church. I met them out there in the real world in a public setting." I don't think it's really about bars, although bars are not irrelevant either, because if you think about it, the gay community pioneered dating apps with Grindr, and it's commonly said that Grindr killed the gay bar. The bar, in a way, is this thing we have an idealized version of that maybe never really existed—like the Cheers bar is not a real place. That being said, I do find the nostalgia that the idea seems to provoke to be meaningful.

In the early days of dating apps, it was somewhat taboo to say that you met your partner online. Is it less taboo today?