Living in a college town is definitely unique. Students not only see each other every day at school but run into one another while shopping, eating out and during the weekends at bars and house parties.

When you have such a prevalent drinking culture at Chico State, or at any college campus, the hookup culture follows right behind. In my opinion, women are now actively and proudly participating in this hookup culture.

It’s no longer just guys trying to go home with a one night stand, get what they want and then never talk to that person again. Women are also interested in only fulfilling those physical needs.

“Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution” is a documentary I recently watched on Netflix. It showed that women are very open with their sexual needs and can also just be seeking sex when out on the town.

The filmmakers went to Miami, Florida for spring break and followed a number of spring breakers who would talk on camera about how easy it was to find someone also seeking meaningless, pleasure filled sex.

Throughout the film, spring breakers were asked whether they would call the person they just hooked up with and whether they potentially saw a future with them. Both men and women would answer with a hard no.

They would then go on to explain that, at this point in their life, they were not seeking anything serious and were just looking for sexual pleasure.

Sometimes this is seen as taboo since women are usually seen as seeking emotional connections, not meaningless sex. Sex has been portrayed as an intimate experience for women and those who choose to “sleep around” would be negatively labeled as a “hoe,“ “slut” or other demeaning names.

However, with an increasingly sexually liberated culture, both guys and girls who are looking to have sex only for the pleasure no longer get judged so harshly.

We can see this in our own college town, where every weekend we catch up with friends and lets them know about the “drunk mistakes” we might have made. This is also reflected in the rise of STDs in Chico.

I believe this growing hookup culture has two sources. First, women are taking control of their bodies and are being very outspoken about what they want and, second, the world is evolving and the taboo around sex is diminishing.

Sex, sexual liberation and taboo sexual practices are all slowly being normalized and the growth of care-free hookups is part of that change.

Consensual, care-free sex is fun when both parties know exactly what they’re looking to get out of the experience. We see now that we just want to experience our next orgasm and it’s about time we are all on the same page.

Nicte Hernandez can be reached at [email protected] or @nicteh7 on Twitter.