A good friend of mine enjoys dating and sex but doesn’t want to settle down. He travels a lot for business and isn’t sure where his work will take him. He has good reasons for keeping his encounters casual, so I was a little surprised that he expressed some confusion as to what his dates were looking for.
Carl meets transgender women on hookup or casual dating sites, but he can’t quite get over the fact that they aren’t looking for “more.” What do women get out of hookups? he asked me.
The implication here is always that somehow a man has good reasons, but a woman must have something “wrong” with her if she enjoys casual sex.
What Do Women Get Out of Casual Hookups?
The sex, duh.
What women get out of casual hookups is the same thing men get—sex. I understand that men and women aren’t the same, aren’t wired the same, and approach sexuality differently. But it’s also a myth that women don’t enjoy sex for its own sake, or that we always want something else out of it.
Humans are sexual beings. Sex is one of the most powerful motivators in the world. Asking what we get out of hookups is like asking what we get out of a burger, or breakfast, or sushi: the answer is obvious—food.
This is really the only answer you need, and covers the “why” for the vast majority of women, although sometimes it can be something else.
A chance to experiment and explore her own body.
Transgender women may enjoy casual sex in order to explore their bodies and their sexuality without making uncertain commitments.
Since her body is in flux between the sex she was assigned at birth—surgical or hormonal interventions, and newly constructed body parts—she might be most comfortable determining how they feel and work and what works best for her by exploring different sex with different partners.
The liberation to explore kinks or shed inhibitions.
Women who want to cut loose and get wild, or who are turned on by kinky sex, might feel more comfortable exploring the possibilities with someone they won’t see again.
When I began having kinky sex, I wanted to try other people’s fetishes and experiment with my own without the pressure to follow up. It liberated me to enjoy things fully—or to conclude I didn’t enjoy them—without anyone expecting a repeat, and without disappointing anybody.
Attention and affection.
I’m reluctant to put this here at all because of the old stereotype that a slutty woman must have been abused or neglected and can’t find a real boyfriend. In this old paradigm, women use sex as a weapon to satisfy other needs, or are promiscuous because they are unstable—nonsense, for the most part. There are well adjusted sluts and unstable monogamous girls.
That said, some women enjoy casual sex because they like the attention, and to deny that is dishonest. It’s also time we looked at attention and affection differently—they are human needs and can be fulfilled in a variety of ways, and since I don’t see sex as inherently bad, enjoying sex because you want some companionship or male attention seems to me like a win win for everyone.
Tell us what you think