Hooking up is a term commonly used in contemporary American society to refer to sexual activity between two people who are not in a committed romantic relationship. Data show that although many college students are engaging in hookups, there is no consensus on how to define a hookup. The author uses the concept of “strategic ambiguity” to explore the intentionality and usefulness of the vagueness of this term. Specific to hookups, strategic ambiguity is when individuals use the term “hookup” to describe their sexual activities rather than give details about their sexual activities as an impression management strategy to protect their sexual and social identities. Analyzing data gathered through interviews with heterosexual students at a mid-sized public university in the South, this article addresses the normative character and the myriad definitions of hookups; addresses the underlying heterosexist bias in the definitions of hookups; and analyzes how the ambiguity of the term “hookup” serves women and men in different ways and both reinforces and challenges the current gender order, allowing men to conform to and preserve components of hegemonic masculinity and women to conform to and preserve components of emphasized femininity.

Research on violence against women has consistently revealed that rape-myth acceptance (RMA) is high correlated with rape rates and victim blaming. Other research has shown that education about violence against women is a useful strategy for lessening or stopping various types of violence, particularly rape. Using data gathered at a medium-sized public university in the Northeast, the authors examine changes in rape myth acceptance over the course of a semester among undergraduate students. Comparing students in classes having a greater or lesser emphasis on gender issues (ranging from general sociology to a course specifically addressing violence against women), the authors found significant changes in RMA among students taking a course concentrating on violence against women. The authors conclude that having college courses specifically focused on violence against women can be an effective strategy for changing attitudes about both rape and rape victims.

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290pp. £16.99, $32.95, ISBN 0-415-12675-4 (pbk).There are many women who hurt others and themselves. It is a pattern of behavior that is inconceivable to many, but is also prevalent in American society. Female violence is a difficult subject that is often ignored or avoided by psychologists, social service workers, and lay people alike. Violent acts by women are not something society wants to acknowledge or tackle. However, it is a topic that needs to be addressed because of its increasing prevalence and visibility. Why is society so loathe to address this issue? What are the causes of violence in women? What can be done to help these women and their victims?In The Psychology of Female Violence, Anna Motz offers a clear, well-supported, comprehensible, and theoretically sophisticated examination of three types of violence by women: violence against children, violence against the self, and battered women who kill their batterers. She uses extensive case notes from her own work and practice, and extensively refers to the work of others to support her contentions and conclusions. The lengthy excerpts from her own cases offer both examples of unique individual circumstances as well as illustrations of the patterns of violence she is describing. Although this book will be valuable to clinical practitioners, psychologists, sociologists, and researchers of violence, it is also clearly written and accessible to newcomers to the subject.One of Motz's central contentions is that there is a deep social attachment to, and desire to believe in, an idealized view of both femininity and motherhood and the assumed connections between the two. And violence, whether it be against the self or others, is not something that falls under the purview of these idealized visions. Thus, both individual practitioners and society shy away from the conflict between the idealized view of women and motherhood and the reality of violence perpetrated by women.Expanding on the ideas of E.V. Welldon in particular, Motz argues that the dual social idealization and denigration of motherhood, in particular, results in irresolvable emotional conflicts in women that often lead to violence. These conflicts can result in an inability to psychically differentiate between self and one's child, self-hatred (and thus self-punishment), or a level of learned helplessness that leads women to stay with men who batter them, among other things. In the case of violence against children, the lack of separateness can lead to punishing a child for placing a mother in an untenable emotional state, abusive acting out of self-hatred on the child, or a fierce acting out of displaced anger at an abusive, distant, or absent parent. As Motz states:Abusive mothers characteristically experience serious difficulties in separation

Background On many indicators of mental health, such as suicide, adolescent boys and young men fare worse than girls and young women of the same age.