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if you honestly think forty year old women want fifteen year old boys, I don't know how to continue this conversation. Yeah, there are female predators out there as there are male ones, and they're both sick and depraved, not "this is simply evopsych in action".
I do have to wonder, how many of the gentlemen on here with wives/partners, are willing to go into real life and not just argue on The Motte with "Let's face it, honey, if I got the chance and I wouldn't end up charged with statutory rape, I'd dump you in the morning for a fifteen year old to have my babies and cook my meals. That's just evolutionary psychology, science has proved it! And then when she ages out at nineteen or so, I'd dump her for a newer model in her turn. After all, over twenty in a female is going from 8/10 to 5/10 for guys, sad but true, nothing I can do about it".
A long time ago I used to follow the Youtube channel of The Young Turks. (Bear with me please.) The host Cenk Uygur was commenting on the clearly accelerating social trend of relatively hot female high school teachers in their 30s and 40s seducing their male students. He offered an explanation that seemed to be right on point. There is only one thing in this world that a teenage boy can offer a grown woman but a grown man will never do so: undivided attention. It's a temptation many of them can't resist, as their lives are deeply frustrated in that area.
There does seem to be a worrying increase in this, and I don't think it's "because my male students can give me undivided attention" (have you ever tried to teach a class of teenage boys?)
It's a combination of stupid idiot mentally ill women taking advantage of boys who are (due to modern standards of living) tall enough and physically developed enough but not emotionally or mentally mature enough for sexual relationships, to be fooled into "I really love you" and where societal standards do tend to laugh about it happening to boys and make salacious jokes about "I wish my hot teacher had hit on me when I was that age".
It's not funny and it can be every bit as traumatic as if it was older man/younger girl or older man/younger boy. Again, I see a lot of complaining on here about the attitude that Women Are Wonderful, and this is one area where it does damage: it is not taken seriously because even adult women are probably not capable of physically over-powering a teenage boy, so the view is "if he really didn't want it, he could fight her off". That's not how manipulation works!
Predictably, the thirsty betas repeating those jokes also fail to comprehend that boning the high school teacher will not actually elevate your status among your peers as a male student. You'll just be known as that weirdo whom that weirdo teacher woman invited between her legs and manipulated.
But more because it marks you as someone who doesn't want to compete/isn't concerned about taking shortcuts; you're willingly accepting somewhat damaged goods rather than the more-desirable 15 year old peers you "should" be trying to date instead.
Sex you get for free is worthless as a status symbol, just marks you as a dumpster-diver (and marks [the sexual value of] the woman in the relationship as so undesirable she couldn't even give sex away, or merely perverted at best). This is the spear counterpart to the "she isn't yet wise enough to be able to/to know to extract maximum resources from men" argument (usually stated as "not mature enough", eliding the truth that the only maturity that matters in women is physical), by the way.
This matters much less if the teacher's sufficiently hot or young, of course, but of course it would; that's not meaningfully distinct from a successful seduction on the man's part, as the status of having secured that sex is actually significant.
Is sex inherently harmful, or is it not? (This is rhetorical- everyone already knows their own private answer to this; that's why the compromise between 'yes' and 'no' yielded an age of consent, and to a point why that initial compromise progressed/regressed into the modern understanding of a gender of consent.)
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The same way any untimely burden of early maturity can be harmful to boys or girls. Being made the equivalent to an adult in a role that involves physical and emotional support and intimacy, when too young, inexperienced, and incapable to fulfil the demands and needs of that role, stunts growth and development.
You want to be the erastes to an eremenos, you do you, just be careful around the parents and the cops. No point talking more about this, we've both made our positions clear.
Why do I have any reason to trust your discrimination in bed partners? You like 'em young, and the younger the girl, the more like a boy she is; and the younger the boy, the more like a girl he is.
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I think it's less "undivided attention" and more "absence of the open hostility/irony-poisoning typical between grown men and grown women[1]", where undivided attention is a [beneficial?] side-effect of that.
On the female side, I can't think of any larger refutation of "sex for resources" than intentionally going after men who don't even have those resources, and so are selecting for earnestness/potential more than anything else. It also throws out the protection that AoC is supposed to provide [to them as a class], since this is basically the only case where the risk is higher to the woman than it is to the man. (Not that they won't be arrested for sending nudes of themselves, but still.)
It's easier on the men, perhaps, since they won't even get selected if they aren't like that and they're already being frustrated by their cohort of young women only attracted to older men anyway. Perhaps it disadvantages young women once they hit 30 and this is basically allowing the good men to be taken out of the pool they'll be depending on later, but it's not acceptable for women to expect this and for the decent men to be forced to wait and have zero options until then.
Yeah, can't imagine why that would be.
[1] The definition of "grown", of course, being "has become aware of, and internalized, that relationships are sex-for-resources because [reasons]". This is perhaps the main change puberty makes to your brain.
Hold up. No matter what you believe about the wretched state of the current dating scene it’s probably still a stretch to believe that open hostility/irony-poisoning is typical between grown men and grown women. Maybe it’s typical in peculiar social environments but probably not everywhere. However, the important aspect here I think is that if you consider grown men that aren’t bitter or jaded, and are benevolently sexist or whatever, even them are not offering undivided attention to grown women, or at least definitely not to high school teachers willing to invite their students to bone them. I’d also call your attention to these particular normally being married, to husbands that are obviously cucky to one extent or another and occasionally receive pity sex. So yes, the exchange of sex for resources is definitely taking place.
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