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Can you define this for me? What does "power differential" mean in the Western context?
Is this like the Dragonball-Z thing where power levels are quantifiable?
Because, to my understanding, in most (all?) western nations, men and women have totally equivalent rights. There's a lot and, somehow, growing legislation in the U.S. to guarantee this. Where exactly is the extra or additional "power" that a husband has over his wife?
Money? Well, ok. If the wife decided to rely on the man to pay for everything isn't that like her decision? It's not like bridestealing is legal.
Age? Even more of a "wha?" from me. Do old guys get magic powers at 50 that let them bamboozle young maidens? Do women under the age of 30 not have their full faculties developed yet (wait, don't answer that. Yass queen slay at any age).
The entire "power dynamic" or "power differential" trope seems absurd to me. Obviously couples often have one partner who is domineering and authoritative. I don't think that's a good thing but the antidote to that is telling both men and women to not let their partner walk all over them. Furthermore, are there also copious examples of couples loving and respecting one another despite massive actual power imbalances? Isn't that kind of the point of a lot of traditional marriage rituals and covenants?
"Power dynamic" seems to be yet another instance of suicidal absolution in which we tell mostly women - "Oh, you have no agency in your own relationship (that you entered into voluntarily) but that's okay because (somehow) this awful, awful man is using his power differential to "gaslight" you."
Either women over 18 (or 20? 21? 25?) have legally and socially incontestable ability to make and abide by their own decisions or else we have to start taking the crazies' "make women property" argument seriously.
There's only very few 10+ year age gap relationships in my extended bubble, but those I can think of have clear power differentials: the guy already owned a house and was established in his career when she left grad school. This means, once she decided to enter that relationship, he got to choose the city they would live in. She's also, by not pushing for it in a prenup, not on the title of the house.
At some point, his pension scheme is going to allow him to retire, maybe even retire early. Whether she will continue to work or retire extremely early herself - together with him - will probably not feel like her choice.
She could have pushed against all that, but by being older, a lot of the default choices were already locked in by him. It would have taken a lot of effort to change some of those defaults, and realistically, the relationship would not have survived that effort.
Oh the other hand: free rent, lots of disposable income, friends in similar situations, a network to boost her own career... certainly nice perks, but I bet she wonders how much of that would survive a divorce.
But none of what you're describing would have been unknown, to either party, even at the start of the relationship. I don't know, to me it just sounds like they're both giving something up (money or choice of where to live) and both getting a lot out of the relationship. Maybe it's not perfectly balanced, but life seldom works out that way.
Admittedly I'm biased, because I finally escaped from a relationship that would have pattern-matched to a "power imbalance" from outside, but from inside was soul-crushingly bad for me. Appearances can be deceiving.
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While ‘power dynamics’ are another example of Marxist fan-fiction as theory, age gaps do correlate quite strongly with patriarchy- but the causation probably runs the other way.
Imagine you are a peninsular Arab man. You love your daughter, but you are a man of your culture, and you know that she needs to marry and will then be at the mercy of her husband. Don't you want to make sure it’s a known quantity? Mathematically that’s going to push older. Older husbands that are less likely to change is a sensible risk minimizing strategy when you don’t have a backup plan.
Yes, my main experience with age gaps is in Islamic villages. It's so uncommon in my home culture as to not have an opinion other than "huh, guess you have unusual tastes," without that much more thought put into it.
I mean at the very least the west is sufficiently different from Islamic third world societies as to be an irrelevant point of comparison, rendering your point two a different point about different people?
There are a decent number of muslims and extremely conservative Christians in America.
Do secular Americans care about an age gap unless it's someone literally in their family? If it's within their family, they would have a lot more to go off of than just that, so their opinions would probably be specific to the people involved.
The median American Muslim- and the vast majority of ‘not a literal cult’ fundamentalist Christians- practice what amounts to love matches, between adults, which are extremely different from middle eastern or third world behavior. This does not produce the same dynamics, because husbands love their wives. Hotbeds of spousal abuse in the US are mostly alcoholism driven, not driven by power structures within religious subcultures.
You’re significantly overrating the structural behavioral similarities to Middle eastern societies. Neither American Christians nor American Muslims regularly practice arranged marriages with unconsenting or underaged brides, preach domestic violence from the pulpit, forbid female education, etc. This includes the sects which teach that women ought to be submissive and domestic.
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Makes sense. It's men playing indirect chess with one another via their daughters. Yes, very patriarchal but actively with the intent of a better, or, at least, better risk adjusted outcome for their daughters.
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