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Lately I have been wondering why our society is (or seems to be) increasingly hostile towards romantic/sexual relationships between a (1) a man; and (2) a much younger woman. Recently I read that a well respected football coach -- Bill Belichick -- was denied admission to the Football hall of fame based on the fact that he is in a romantic relationship with a woman who is much younger than him.
What's interesting to me is that for many years, there has been a popular idea that it's completely fine for two consenting adults to enter into a sexual/romantic relationship, even if those two adults are the same sex; even if they are different races; and so on. Societal disapproval of relationships between an older man and a younger woman seem to be an exception to what could be called the "love is love" principle.
I admit that I have a personal interest in this issue: I am a middle aged man and my fiancee is a good deal younger than me. I will call this an "age-gap relationship" or "AGR." (For purposes of this post, I am referring to AGR's involving an older man and a younger woman.)
I can think of a few hypotheses:
(1) My initial assumption is wrong; outside of a few extremists online, most people don't care about AGRs. As noted above, my fiancee is a great deal younger than me; we have gotten the occasional curious glance while out in public, but I haven't directly experienced any hostility. That being said, the case of Bill Belichick seems to suggest that this sentiment is affecting real world decisions.
(2) This is reflective of society's increasing hatred of and hostility towards men. Although it's been common for decades for TV commercials to portray wives as smarter, wiser, and generally better than their bumbling idiot husbands, it seems this trend has gotten much more intense in recent years. "women are superior to men" is pretty much the constant drumbeat in most media these days. Coupled with that is the idea that male desires are invalid and illegitimate. Against this backdrop, arguably one would expect that society would disapprove of AGRs inasmuch as they are perceived to satisfy the common male sexual desire for younger women.
This explanation appeals to me since it fits with the (very satisfying) idea that my outgroup (progressives) are mainly just bad people who are full of hate, but I will try to keep an open mind.
(2a) Women (whose sentiment has a huge impact on societal values) object to these relationships since it reminds them of a significant disadvantage they have in comparison to men: Female sexual attractiveness inevitably and steeply declines relatively early in life. Since women tend to compare themselves to the most elite men, they get the frustrating impression that society has made life extremely unfair for them. Perhaps women have always felt this way and what's changed is that they have more of a voice.
(3) The internet and social media has made it much easier for AGRs to develop so it's a bigger issue. This seems plausible to me, but on the other hand when I was in high school many years ago there were sexual/romantic relationships between teachers and students. Although these were never approved of, they are far less tolerated nowadays than they were in the 70s and 80s.
(4) Society has become aware that these types of relationships have a much greater opportunity for abuse. While there are definitely a lot of predatory men out there, my issue with this explanation is that there are a lot of relationships (both romantic/sexual and non-romantic/sexual) which entail a lot of abuse and predation, which relationships society doesn't seem to care all that much about.
(5) There's no real reason per se. It's just a self-reinforcing bandwagon effect. This is definitely a possibility but it's difficult to think of how this hypothesis could be verified. Besides, this hypothesis doesn't seem to explain, in a satisfactory way, why society would make this exception for the general "love is love" principle.
(6) It reminds people of guys like Jeffrey Epstein. The thinking is that if a man will openly date a 19 year old, chances are he secretly lusts after females who are below the legal age. This seems plausible, but it doesn't really account for societal disapproval of a relationship between someone who is 70 and someone who is 24. (Or does it?)
Anyway, I would be interested to hear peoples' thoughts on this subject.
From my perspective, any man that divorces his wife of simillar age to fuck a just about teenager is morally a piece of shit for deontological reasons.
Secondly: If the only thing you care about is youth and beauty, you are a shallow piece of shit.
Thirdly: Some part of the reason women don't want to have kids or get married is cultural memory of men saying they are down for a life long commitment to this family, then dipping as soon as their dicks could get wet easier elsewhere. We don't want the same group of people berating them thusly: "Settle down! Have kids! Sacrifice your freedom for family and the state! If your partner fucks off for some young pussy, don't get in your feels about it!"
Indeed- now it's the women doing the
"Settle down! Have kids! Sacrifice your freedom for family and the state! If your partner fucks off for some old dick and takes those kids and most of your resources, don't get in your feels about it!"
dance, and it's just as bad as it was when the men were doing it.
In a healthy system, men and women check each other (according to their biological/instinctual strengths and weaknesses), but we broke that system in the 1900s with the first wave of mass automation (replacing mostly men, which removed their ability to check the way women conduct abuse due to being in surplus) and then entered an economic boom that temporarily restored that balance (and the people in power now grew up under these conditions). If the second wave of mass automation, which may or may not be bearing down on us right now, replaces mostly women, society will rebalance somewhat; if it does not, and it replaces mostly men, this will get worse.
Once again, the institution of marriage was solving some pernicious coordination problems (women don't want to get pumped and dumped and left preggers, men want to marry a virgin or as close to it as possible, neither can truly verify the intentions of the other) so for COMPLETELY SECULAR REASONS its very very useful to have "abstinence until marriage" as a strong norm and "'til death do us part'" as an 'enforceable' obligation.
But there's a lot of other obligations that we tie up in there that trip people up, to say nothing of the obligations to the children that emerge.
But
A) You can't really construct a piecemeal version of this and expect it to work. and
B) You need some severe punishment for breaching the covenant to really make it stick. Religious folks have fear of their God as a factor, I don't know what we can impose on nonbelievers (short of a death sentence) that will keep them in line, even against their baser instincts.
Any secular punishments we create can likely be circumvented by clever/powerful enough actors.
It seems to me that there are two nodes for human sexuality.
Going full chimpanzee "Death do us part except for cheating [oppresses and protects men and women equally], all sex is rape, woman must marry rapist, woman must be virgin if still living at home [protects father's property rights]" is stable. (Yes, the enforcement for deviation from this procedure was death, but enforcement for everything in the ancient world was death. Personnel were cheap back then.)
(The all sex is rape + woman must marry rapist requires a bunch of unpacking: technically speaking, it doesn't prohibit casual sex, but gives the woman the means to invoke a shotgun wedding if she becomes pregnant. It also draws a stated distinction where a woman was assumed, and not assumed, to have cried rape by default- which protects the man.)
Going full bonobo "No STDs or pregnancy and everyone fucks like rabbits, marriage is for life (even including adultery) and carries sexual/financial obligations for both parties, single motherhood very institutionally difficult" is also stable.
Law must protect and bind men and women equally. Right now, it only binds men; 100 years ago, it only bound women. (To a point, modern problems are caused by women taking revenge for this bondage against their sons.)
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Can you maybe offer, at least, some perspective or background on why you feel this way?
Right now, this post is just three or so "boo outgroup" assertions.
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