In the book, ‘Cheap Sex’ written by Mark Regnerus, chapter 3, ‘Cheaper, Faster, Better, More? Contemporary Sex in America’ highlights the dating scene within this specific time period. Early on in the chapter, there is much discussion about the dating app called ‘Tinder’. Tinder is a meetup application that can be used for straight or gay peoples. Author, Nancy Jo Sales spoke out on this new and modern technology describing it as a dating apocalypse. One of her interviews was conducted with a psychologist by the name of David Buss. Buss also had comments on this new advancement. In his terms, dating apps are the free-market economy that comes to sex. He further states that the act of choosing consumer brands and sex partners has become interchangeable. Moving off of general comments and statements, Sales performed another interview with Elizabeth Armstrong, a sociologist from the University of Michigan who was investigating into the sexual decisions of undergraduate women at the University of Indiana. I found that most of her comments seemed to be quite bold as she implied that young women have problems navigating sexuality and relationships due to gender inequality. Furthermore, historian Stephanie Coontz makes claims that make Armstrong’s come off as mild. Coontz exclaims that exploitative and disrespectful men have always existed. The new era of hookup culture is said to be preventing men from evolving for the better. These various statements imply that her position on males as a whole is negative and not wholesome by any means.
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