A new study by a group of researchers suggests that casual sex might not be ruining our women as previous scientists tried to claim, and it might in fact be the dating that is causing women to be insecure, self-conscious, and submissive.

Sociologist Sinnika Elliot and her co-researchers presented college students two scenarios and then asked them to judge the motivation behind each. The scenarios:

In the first part of each scenario, a man and a woman meet at a party for the first time and hook up. In the second part of each scenario, the same man and woman go on a date a week after hooking up – and the date ends in a kiss (no sex). In one scenario, the woman asks the man out on the date. In the other scenario, the man asks the woman out.

Excitingly, nearly all the students believed that the motivation behind the hook up was mutual – that both the man and the woman in the scenario were looking to hook up. Very few painted the woman in a negative light for being open to casual sex, and instead believed that they were both free to act on their own desires without fear of damaging their reputations.

However, when it comes to the post-hookup date, where no sex was had, the gender inequality is far more obvious:

Approximately half of the students said the woman ended the date that the man initiated with a kiss to fix the man’s impression of her and show that she is “respectable,” and thus good dating material. And when asked about the scenario in which the woman asks the man out, about half of the students said he only went on the date out of a sense of obligation—a pity date—and that he didn’t have sex because he had no real interest in her and did not want to lead her on.

Of course, we can’t make any brash conclusions about a hypothetical scenario, but it’s interesting to see what the students perceived happening, because they had likely been in the situation before. They had clearly seen women go on a “second” date with a man where she felt she had to redeem herself for “looking slutty” or had seen a guy go on a “pity date” with a girl he had no intention of seeing again.

Sure, this may not mean that casual sex is the 100% guaranteed way to end gender inequality, but it does show that perhaps men and women can mutually benefit from a more modern relationship that is not already pigeon-holed into gender roles (man picks up woman, woman dresses to impress, man pays, woman gives road head [just kidding]). It might finally be time for people to widen their view of what is a “socially acceptable” and “healthy” relationship… and that’s news we’re happy to learn.