Elbe / Hookup Culture.

Lovely day today. Dad and I walked out on a dike by the Elbe, still in the city of Hamburg but surrounded by farmland on one side and tall reeds on the other. A big herd of sheep was grazing on the dike, with adorable little lambs frisking about.

We had lunch by the entrance to Hamburg's port, watching the big ships come in. An announcer at the little tourist-trap house announced, very importantly, the name and nationality of every ship that came in and played the appropriate national anthem each time.



And the link of the day is Tiger Beatdown, on hookup culture. The gist is that the real question isn't "is casual sex wrong?" but "how can casual sex be done right?" Hookups are fun, but hookups used as a pretext for a screwjob suck.

Money quote: Not just “sex” or “not sex,” when you’ve heard that “sex” consist of “giving a guy who refuses to be your boyfriend a million blow jobs that are never reciprocated.”

It's not really that hard to have non-screwjob casual sex. Just be... friendly. Be generous in bed like you'd be generous with a friend, and be nice to them the way you'd be nice to a friend. Ask what they're into and (within your own comfort zone etc.) do it for them. Unless they explicitly ask you not to, do your damnedest to give them an orgasm. Be honest before and after about the relationship potential you are or aren't considering. If they turn out to be expecting more than you were afterwards, let them down explicitly and politely; if it turns out you feel like seeing more of them, discuss it with them once and then let it go if it's clear they don't feel the same way.



Public service announcement for the guys: you all should start a little cooperative project where whenever you have casual sex, you try really hard to leave your partner happy with the experience. I'm surprised how many guys put a lot of effort into picking up chicks, then put no effort at all into pleasing the ones they succeeded with--even making it a point of pride to burn bridges. Every guy who turns into a clingy creeper or a callous douchebag the instant he comes is drastically reducing the number of women who will be up for casual sex in the future.

There's no point complaining that women won't sleep with you if you don't make the ones who do glad that they did.