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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.
You're thinking too much into this and putting forth overcomplicated examples that don't have much to do with the way regular people think about these things. It has nothing to do with contemporary politics. It's that any time there's a large age difference there's a presumption that the guy is in it for the sex and the woman is in it for the money. Most of our social relationships are among our peers, and romantic relationships are just an extension of our social relationships. If a girl in her early 20s invited me to hang out with her friends and they were all in their 60s and 70s, I would certainly think it odd. Since we find these kind of relationships implausible in general, we jump to the conclusion that their must be an ulterior motive, especially since the ones we hear about all seem to involve wealthy men and unusually attractive women. The most pushback I ever got against this idea was incidentally from a rather left-leaning podcast that was discussing Anna Nicole Smith's marriage to Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall. Smith was 26 and Marshall was 89 at the time of the marriage, and he died 14 months later, leading to a probate battle that took years to resolve. They argues that the media focused too much on the money and didn't pay any attention to their personal lives, which made it clear that it wasn't a sham relationship.
Beyond that there are practical considerations. A friend of mine, who is about 50, recently got married to a girl 20 years his junior. There doesn't really seem to be an age difference now, but when she's 65 and at the age when most people are looking to enjoy their retirement, he's going to be at the age when most people are looking at assisted living.
Here's a thought experiment: Suppose there's a skinny male computer nerd who hits it big and is a billionaire at age 30. He marries a 30 year old woman who is very attractive, objectively much better looking than him. To the point where it's pretty obvious she never would have been interested in him if he weren't such a big success.
How will society react? I expect much less negatively than if the same man were 60. If you agree with me, then you presumably agree that there is more to the story than just a relationship which is overly transactional.
Interesting question. I'd say you are probably right but I also wonder how much of that is just because age can be talked about objectively whereas there's no shared way to quantity objectively how far "out of his league" she is.
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