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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.
I met my wife when she was 18 and I was 27. I'm not exactly a social butterfly but I never noticed any obvious disapproval of this in the real world. I think the dynamic is fairly obvious and is an instance of Sailer's Law of Female Journalism. I think your explanations 2 and 2a are most applicable. Male desires are invalid when they aren't female-approved, but female desire for height and a full head of hair are never questioned outside of incel forums.
I once saw a good joke on twitter that went something like this, "Female desire for men to have a full head of hair is rooted in pedophilia", and truthfully, that is exactly the level most of these critiques are operating at.
Was with a woman at one point who started drinking the feminist kool-aid and hit me with the whole "Wanting me to shave down there is patriarchal pedophilia" thing. I countered by pointing out that she also preferred me (my face) to be clean-shaven. No answer to that of course.
That relationship lasted a lot longer than it had any right to and many years later I still feel relief to have escaped. I have a beard now, too.
Honestly? Shaving the pubic area only came in for the West relatively recently. It used to be for softish porn, where you couldn't show any sexual elements too overtly yet you wanted your models to reveal as much flesh as you could get away with, hence the notion of shaving the pubes so it wouldn't be seen as signal of sexual maturity.
There's a reason this is called a Brazilian wax, because skimpy thongs were and are the de rigueur beach wear. And now apparently there's a Hollywood wax, which is complete hair removal.
It really does smack of wanting a Barbie doll/immature partner, where normal female hair growth which comes about with sexual maturity during puberty is now seen as "ugh, disgusting, unnatural". We've moved from shaving armpits and legs to "you must be hairless everywhere except abundant flowing locks of head hair".
When guys start normalising shaving their legs, pits, and groins as well as faces, come back to me on this demand.
I for one prefer natural pubic hair and eyebrows.
Dear God, the eyebrows on modern women, it's an atrocity worse than any genocide.
So, you know. Checkmate feminists.
Yeah, plucking eyebrows is something that needs to be done carefully if you're going to do it. Plucking too much will eventually cause the eyebrows to stop growing and then you have to pencil in fake brows and it looks terrible.
Occam's non-razor: Just stop it altogether. I'd rather Frida Kahlo than the pencilbrows.
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I assumed a big factor in all of this was the prevention of crabs / pubic lice infestation? Anyway, I as just another dudebro can assert that I find the Brazilian wax rather cringe, whatever aesthetic value skimpy thongs may or may not provide. On the other hand, I find the argument regarding signals of sexual maturity to mostly just be motivated reasoning from lipstick feminists.
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You bothered to write that so I'll respond in kind.
Not really pertinent imo.
I've met plenty of women who seem hellbent on making this analytical leap, and about zero men who think that way at all. I don't think women's pubic hair is disgusting or unnatural. I do think it hides the structure of the pussy, which I enjoy looking at, and that going down on her is about fifteen times more pleasant when I'm not fighting through hair and stopping constantly to pull loose strands from my mouth. Also, any grooming methods coded as 'interested in enjoying sex' are going to be de facto attractive on some level.
I've never met a sexually-confident woman who has weird paranoias on the subject, whereas every woman I've met whose mind runs immediately to 'this is some kind of weird desire for prepubescent girls' has been, uh, we can say sexually-not-confident. In short it seems to me that it tends to have more to do with personal insecurity than any kind of rational objection.
I wouldn't. But it is worth noting that 'more body hair' is masculine-coded and 'less body hair' is feminine-coded so this is a pretty poor equivalence. Roughness, coarseness, and hairiness are masculine traits; smoothness and so on are feminine ones. Calling attention to, and amplifying, places and patterns that are sexually-dimorphic is normal human sexual behavior and no weird motivations need to be imputed beyond that.
Also just... just, while we're here, I have several prepubescent daughters whose hairless vulvas I see fairly often (during diaper changes, bathtimes, and general little kid craziness) and hopefully it doesn't need to be affirmed that I don't find anything attractive or sexually-compelling about that per se.
It seems to me that the "pedophile!" argument proves too much. Because the same argument could be made about leg hair and armpit hair. Is there something very wrong with a man who prefers female partners who shave their legs and armpits? Hard to believe it.
Anyway, as another poster pointed out, it's easy to flip the argument around. If a woman prefers a man with (1) a full head of hair; and (2) a clean-shaven face, does that mean there's something very wrong with her? I would say "no," it's possible she simply prefers an adult man with a more youthful appearance.
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Cunnilingus is not the point of having pubic hair. I'm not objecting to grooming, I'm objecting to "this is one more chipping away at the natural appearance of women for an artificial beauty standard that does not apply to men".
Yes, your young daughters are not yet at the age to undergo the bodily changes of approaching adulthood. But are you going to raise them that the beauty standard men prefer is that they retain as much of their neotenous features as possible? "Hi girls, now you've turned ten, here's a complete shaving kit because men don't like hair on women! Now that you've started growing some in those places, it's yucky and disgusting, shave it all off or no man will want you!"
I don't find this statement appropriate in context and appreciate it even less in quotation marks.
Hello, Butterfly! I kind of remember you for something, did we exchange views before?
All too often. I'm thinking that this may be the last time.
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Women only optimize for this "beauty standard men prefer" because they are too caught up in competing with other women in exploiting male sexual attention. If they viewed men as partners rather than exploitable peons they wouldn't be "forced" to retain "as much of those neotenous features as possible". Instead they impose this race to the bottom on themselves, because obviously treating men as people rather than resources is a bridge too far.
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I don't think pubic hair removal is that odd for men. Most women, if they chose to tell their male partners to remove their pubic hair, their male partners would do so. Especially if it is offered as a condition for more or better sex. It seems odd to penalize men morally for asking for something and getting it.
Do women ask it of men? I've heard of gay men shaving, but are men getting Brazilian waxes too? Google, help me out here!
Apparently even men are going for Brazilians now, though the most popular is still "get rid of back hair".
Gentlemen, my sympathies. Wax hair removal is no fun, and on sensitive areas like the groin? Ouch!
Most don't, but some do. Being women they tend to ask in a more passive "wouldn't it be sexy if..." or "gee, it'd feel better down here if..." way rather than a "YOU DISGUSTING PIG MAN SHAVE IT OFF" way. Manscaped sponsors half the podcasts I listen to lately, they're selling to somebody. Sex and the City and Larry the Cable guy had comedy bits about this twenty years ago.
Personally, I trim my pubic hair periodically, mostly because I grow little other visible body hair, and I just think it looks vaguely ridiculous to have smooth skin and then a four inch bush. I do it for me <3
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N=1, but my female partner is generally appreciative of me keeping the area well-groomed and trimmed down (not waxing) for the sex-adjusted equivalent of the reasons TitaniumButterfly mentions.
I have no reason to believe she's attempting to make me look younger or more feminine as she's quite happy with hair in other places, but hair in the mouth is never pleasant, and trimming things down in that region often visually accentuates what's there quite well.
She appreciates my mustache being kept trimmed down for similar reasons.
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Hello, I'm the strawman you're suggesting doesn't exist. I personally find body hair, including pubic hair, unattractive on women for the same reason I prefer shorter women with smaller breasts (and bigger eyes!), because I see signs of physical maturity as unappealing in this context. Yes, I am aware that this is weird/creepy/gross/pedo-ish of me, but that's how the concepts connect in my head, femininity is right next to neoteny, and while I'm aware that most men don't think the same way, I didn't feel I could let the idea that men in general don't think that way stand.
I don't think that men in general think that way, and yes you're fairly unusually pedo-adjacent. Certainly pedos exist and that's probably some kind of a spectrum and hopefully you're on the right end of it, but this doesn't imply anything about normal male sexual preferences.
Fair enough! Though the reasons to be skeptical of self-reporting on this particular issue are fairly obvious.
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It's depressing how easy it is to run circles around so many arguments I've heard from women I've dated. But it doesn't strengthen the relationship, i.e. she treats as dispassionate sport and maybe learns something. It just creates bad vibes and results in a breakup. But I can't be with a dullard either, who isn't interested in ideas and arguing, no matter how nice or well-composed or healthy she is. It's a bummer.
My ex once burst into tears in the middle of a restaurant because, after several days of sending me Instagram reels about female emotional labour (and me managing to discuss them as dispassionate sport), I sent her one reel back about how male weaponised incompetence (“babe, where do we keep the paper towels”) gets wives incandescent with rage but female weaponised incompetence (“what’s this light on the car dashboard mean”) is treated with amused paternalism by husbands. “Why would you defend being a useless husband who doesn’t know where the paper towels are?!?!” she wailed, over the wagyu beef I paid for.
…which is my long-winded way of saying, I also recognise the dynamic that you identified. I wonder why women are so bad at decoupling? If I had to hazard a guess, it’s because they’re evolved to operate at such an Nth-level epicycle of social intrigue in their status-jockeying against other women that it is very difficult to get them to believe that any conversation you’re having with them is not actually about them, in some way.
Of course the shorthand term we have for that is ‘narcissism’. YMMV.
Stuff like this is why chillness is in my opinion an extremely underrated quality in women.
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I don't love the sound of your ex but this is surely a lot about areas where partners are proud to have knowledge. A lot of men are proud to know a bit about cars, compared to women being proud to know about cleaning kitchens.
Weaponised incompetence by women can be as legitimately annoying as by men, in household finances for example, but I definitely don't find it hard to understand why 'Where are the paper towels?' wrt one's own household would annoy someone, anyone, everyone outside of a household setup so traditional as to be anachronistic.
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They just communicate differently. The object level is a distant concern compared to the status signals it encodes. Once they feel safe and satisfied they're as capable of sincere intellectual exploration as anyone else.
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