Demise of Formalism [N8's Advice and Consent]
After the first several years of exclamatory Woah-Is-Me articles, transparently tinged with vouyeristic jealousy, I thought older Americans were mostly done bemoaning the sexual morality of the young, specifically the move away from formal dating toward group dating and hooking up. Nope. The NYTimes (that’s how we young people might abbreviate “The New York Times”) columnists still opinion on the topic, such as Saturday’s short update “The Demise of Dating” by Charles Blow. Where Mr. Blow, whose surname I plan to use as often as possible in this post, particularly reveals the visceral aversion of some older Americans is his discussion of the positives of group dating followed by a sweeping and warrantless dismissal (”Now that’s just sad.”).
It is actually not my intention to malign Mr. Blow personally, except to say that, if you didn’t know better, you’d think that the New York Times would send a correspondent to investigate social science issues who understood social science. The Times calls Mr. Blow their “visual Op-Ed columnist,” and he is a man with an impressive graphics background by training and experience. However, his is not — apparently — a man with any social science training, even though a cross-section of his visual pieces suggest that his opinions are often intended to provide explanatory context for a graphic, usually one based on polling or other social science data. One gets the clear impression that an eye-catching graphic is created and then an interesting rationale is advanced to explain it, rather than the other way around (which some might call condensing factual information INTO visual information, or “journalism” but that term is as dated as formal dating is).
As you would expect, this cart-before-the-horse approach (for those of you under 30: that’s what our parents got into to ge instead of cars to get to the market) will yield the worst kind of opinion, the kind with the aroma of an evidentiary basis from which a “visual columnist” might extract any post hoc causation out of thin air and then uses them as a foundation for moralism (see, e.g. Mr. Blow’s suggestion that Black Women voted for Prop 8 in California moreso than black men because, among other reasons, “[w]omen who can’t find a man to marry might not be thrilled about the idea of men marrying each other.”). Proffering any unitary explanation for such complext multivariate data is at best misleading. Yuck. And it’s no defense of this kind of yellow journalism to say that he says “might” in there.
To get back to sex, it’s a topic where generational lines are telling. As Mr. Blow said in a recent opinion about John McCain concerning his run for the presidency, “within that context, your age gives me pause.” Same here, buddy.
Anyone who has studied group dating, such as Mr. Blow’s source Prof. Kathleen Bogle, knows that evolving dating patterns have myriad benefits (e.g. integration of the formerly dateless into the social fun of a Saturday night) as well as costs for the individuals involved. My own post hoc explanation of your pretty picture is not to conclude that the upshooting line suggests that people have lost the ability to get to know each other. How do you possibly get there when you acknowledge already that people are mostly hooking up with their friends. Presumably, friends are people you already know, although I don’t know if it works that way for people over 30 and wouldn’t want to assume. Rather, it is possible to explain the graph as a growing dislike among the young for the excessively formal concept to which the term “dating” refers, an idea that strikes many of us as a cold approach to something an personal as romance, rather than the desire to get to know one another (which seems absurd when you think about it). It is your generation that equates the term “dating” with getting to know someone. We equate it with poodle skirts and malt shops.
Which brings me to my primary substantive points about so-called “relaxing values” in the context of sexual behavior of the young. Firstly, sex is not a bad thing. If you disagree, we can talk about it later, but I don’t think this discussion is actually about the merits of more sex or less sex. In any case, you point out that there’s some evidence that people in the group dating-hookup model don’t necessarily have sex with one another sooner than people did in your cherished Before.
Secondly, and more importantly, I see no reason to elevate one form of getting to know someone over another. More formal dating may have had advantages, most obviously that it seems to come with a more defined set of expectations. But formalism also keeps people at a distance from one another and can pose a real obstacle to developing intimacy. Though it might seem chaotic to those who aren’t familiar with the more organic dynamics of group dating, like any social system, group dating has its own group-defined norms and signposts that let people know what is socially appropriate and what isn’t. Arguably, the lack of formal dating allows people to get to know one another more fully and more meaningfully than the arms-length transactions of the 1950s which seem to be the nostalgic jumping off point for those who bemoan the practices of modern dating. Group dating may also provide more flexible structures to allow people to self-define how a romantic relationship progresses (or doesn’t) and seems to place a greater — not a lesser — emphasis on friendship and intragroup loyalty, including between men and women.
I won’t go any further into the weeds at the moment, except to end my own opinion with the rejoinder that I promise, your way of going about the dance of dating is at least as horrifying to us as our way is to you.