Beth's experience hasn't dampened her enthusiasm for what she calls "adventurous" dating. But experts like Stepp are concerned about the emotional repercussions for women like her. "I don't think we know the answer to how women process these experiences," says Stepp. "Technology has given us new ways to be sexual, but no new understanding of how to cope."
The dilemma, of course, wasn't born with the Internet. Thirty-two years ago, the film Looking for Mr. Goodbar—about a mousy teacher who ends up dead when she tries to create some excitement in her life by having sex with strangers she meets in bars—shook American women to the core. It launched a heated national debate about whether the sexual revolution had truly empowered women, or just let men take better advantage of them. Today, Stepp wishes we'd have the same debate about the new online-hookup culture: "It's relatively anonymous, so women think they're in control. But it's that anonymity that makes them less safe."
Paige Padgett, Ph.D., a sexual health researcher at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, adds that while the Internet can be a tool for sexual empowerment, "these sites bring people together so fast it can be a scary deal, and one of the greatest dangers may be to women's sexual health." A study Padgett conducted in conjunction with seven online dating sites found that an unbelievable 77 percent of women who'd had sex with men they'd met online did not use condoms on the first encounter. "These women believe they have cultivated an intimate relationship," Padgett explains. "If they've exchanged 20 e-mails and he tells her he's STD-free, that's going to sound more trustworthy than it would coming from someone she's just met in a bar. But either way, you don't know this guy."
"Then he handcuffed me and left me there"
Thankfully, none of the women who Glamour talked to said they'd been seriously physically harmed, and none would admit to practicing unsafe sex. But, like Beth, they did describe some pretty questionable encounters. There was Suzanne, of the Craigslist "crazy phase," who admitted, "I got some verbal abuse from guys I didn't want to sleep with." And Laura, 25, an aspiring model who used to wear a knife clipped to her belt for protection, who said, "I walked into one guy's apartment, and he said he had no way of knowing if I was a serial killer. He wanted me to take the knife off, but I wouldn't." And Amy, who once found herself alone in a stranger's bedroom: "Then he handcuffed me and left me there," she says. "The 10 minutes he was gone felt like forever. I was outside my body, like it wasn't happening." But it was.
Perhaps the most frightening what-if scenario of all comes from Steve, the guy who told Glamour he knows every hookup site under the sun. Roguish, "I'll drive to another state to avoid commitment" Steve. Turns out even he's looking for something more. And when he thought he'd found it with a smart, pretty 25-year-old he'd met online, she turned the tables. "We'd been talking, texting and chatting for two or three weeks, and I was into her before I even got there," remembers Steve. "After we had sex, I told her I had feelings for her and I didn't want to leave, and she said something like, Look, you were just here to f—k me. Now get out.' I was like, Wow, now I know how they all feel! And it was so bad, so awful, I remember looking at her and thinking, Why are you even still alive? Because I really want to kill you right now!" He was joking, being melodramatic. But the comment chills when one thinks of the Craigslist killing—and two more recent alleged attacks. In both cases, it seems the guy may have just snapped. One New Jersey woman claims she was choked and sexually assaulted after refusing to be videotaped; the other, from Virginia, claims she was kidnapped. "We get situations where there's online contact and there's an assault," confirms Bergen County, New Jersey, prosecutor John Molinelli. "They're frequent and common. [With online hookups], if you've got boundaries, I don't know how you're going to enforce them."
