What's Love Got to Do With It

1 Pages 269 Words

Summary of “Love” Article
In his July 27, 2001 article from The Washington Post called “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” William Raspberry expresses his concerns to a survey report he reads about college students’ promiscuity. Raspberry’s article includes comparison between dating in his youth and dating today, or lack thereof. His writing tells how he is worried about the nation’s youth, but mostly about young women and their stance on what he referred to throughout the article as “hooking up.” There are four major problems that Raspberry cites in his article. The first one he talks about is how women take a hook-up differently than men, hoping a permanent relationship will sprout up from it. This is an example of how the ideal of sexual equality has taken a step back, according to Raspberry. The second problem with hook-ups is that they eliminate the courting process. Raspberry refers back to his youth when the norm of dating was taking a young woman out to dinner or a movie and paying for it. He even says that a man’s romantic spirit has died away and it has left women to be the more confused gender. The third case he makes is the bad influence of coed dormitories. Quoting the author of the report, Raspberry says that coed dorms encourage “casual sex and the opposite, joined-at-the-hip relationships.” The last subject he talks about is the role alcohol plays, saying that it lowers inhibitions and the amount of guilt the morning after. Raspberry certainly shows his conservative vantage point....