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Was the stereotype of much older men taking advantage of the naivety of younger women/girls ever not a thing? I mean, obviously the woke hyperventilate about it, but they hyperventilate about everything. It’s one of the big justifications trotted out for patriarchy- that these men are secretly losers and are targeting young women too naive to see their character for what it is.
Where wokeness and feminism change things is that they can’t use it to justify patriarchal control of those young women anymore, so they redouble on attacking the man, and also can’t endorse more traditional ways that you often had large age gap relationships(because traditional forms of courtship depended on patriarchy). Hence, total condemnation of large age gap relationships because the proper, pro-social way to do them necessarily impedes the autonomy of young women pretty substantially. A full grown man carrying on directly with a very young woman/girl has never been seen positively, for largely the same reasons the wokes don’t like it. Girls/very young women are, to put it bluntly, morons about relationships and generally not competent to pick their own partners, and hence are pretty easy to take advantage of by nefarious actors. Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, wokes sometimes have a tendency to call things ‘abuse’ or ‘harassment’ that are neither of those things. Yes, they talk in a shrill manner about it, but they do that about everything. But ancient and medieval law codes criminalized seduction for a reason. This is just progressives reinventing the wheel and calling it something different, again. The difference is this time, you can’t just talk to her father and have everything be nice and socially approved of. And there’s very legible reasons progressives would insist on that difference. And all of that is pretty compatible with acknowledging that women are most attractive to men from 16-23 and not in their 30’s. And for the most part, wokes and progressives don’t dispute that. They may jabberwok about power imbalances and predatory behavior, but they don’t seem to think they can change Leonardo DiCaprio only dating women under 25.
This is now being applied to cases like this where a 25 y/o almost-certain independent millionaire dating a 40-something y/o millionaire is being harangued enough that she's complaining about it on her page. Or the Al Pacino case where what seems like a 28 y/o gold digger is trying to ride an old man to a position in his will.
Obviously nobody thinks that the predatory male behavior towards immature girls should be tolerated and every society is distrustful of male intentions. This is why we have statutory laws and I'm not even inherently against rules that do things like protect college students from professors, though I do worry about infantlization.
However it seems clear to me that a lot of people are trying to stretch the taboo past that. Part of it may just be the general infantilization of the youth (where college is another state of adolescence).
But I think the reason for that is their own sexual imperatives. And this is revealed in the cases they pick: Florence Pugh is one of the most promising stars in the world, with wealth and status. She honestly was more high status at the time than her partner. If the industry had to pick one... There is no justification for being angry on her behalf. I used to even see women side-eye George Clooney for usually dating ~35 y/os. It never got as big as Leo, since he mainly "tastefully" dated 30+ but it was a thing. Again: once someone is 30 there's no justification for worrying about their consent.
Put it to you this way: this dynamic is actually very similar to black women complaining about "their" men (since black women and older women show preference for black and older men respectively and don't want to compete with perceived more attractive options) being taken. They also come up with their own motivated reasoning for why it's bad.
Do you think black women are actually doing this for the safety of white women? I'm trying to be more optimistic about human nature but...
They're deliberately trying to pathologize it.
This to me is like the "I don't think they're trying to cancel JK Rowling". They're not trying to because they're - rightly - fatalist about it; Leo and Rowling are just too insulated and most people don't care about Leo's dating. They'll do what they can on the margins though - aka whining online endlessly.
But, as I said, I no longer take it for granted that these sorts will stay in their niche.
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