this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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Why are we infantilizing adults? Interpersonal relationships are complex and nuanced; we can acknowledge and even warn against the potential dangers of severe age-gap relationships without insulting the autonomy and choices of those involved. These neo-puritanical bullshit tendencies creeping in on the left needs to stop; it's a trojan horse for the next generation of conservatives. Reject non-nuanced conservative-bate thinking.
I get what you're saying, but often the age gap isn'tthe problem: the men are.
When a 40 year old man dates a 20 year old, often times the man is an absolutely toxic child. That's why the relationships are bad.
If both people were actually decent then things are okay, but that ain't the case.
I agree that the way we socially condition and, more importantly, hold men accountable are the real issues, which only reinforces my point. If the problem is men rather than age gaps, why disparage age gaps and not male behaviors instead? It's like trying to focus on getting the blood stain out of a carpet while somebody has an open wound on their arm and continues bleeding out; it's focusing on the wrong part of what's wrong in the scenario.
Maybe it's more like walking into the room, seeing three square meters of blood, then saying "holy fucking shit something is wrong"
Your misunderstanding is that people think the blood on the floor is the problem.
And you're right: sometimes there is a perfectly good reason why the floor is covered in blood.
Absolutely. There’s a reason why 40 year olds are going after teens - they know that women their age wouldn’t put up with their bullshit but the younger women will. They’re predators through and through because healthy relationships are equal, there is no power imbalance.
Because while it may result in a stable, positive, loving relationship (or just mutually great, harmless sex that's what they're after), it's a strong predictor when people are actively seeking a relationship with that kind of gap. Think about the likely reasons someone would seek that kind of thing, and the likely outcomes. I think it's reasonable to look at this sort of thing with suspicion, but not to immediately dust off the pitchforks and light the torches.
Not all middle-aged single men distributing candy from the back of their windows van are paedophiles, but it's both reasonable and responsible to look at what they're doing with suspicion.
It's interesting you'd bring politics into this when conservatives seem so wrapped up in protecting child brides, child beauty pageants, fetishise youth, and appear to be massively over-represented represented in paedophilia stats.
If you thought I was defending conservatives, you're wrong. There's nuance to this; the topic is sexual dynamics but the purpose is dominance. This is a conservative kind of principle because it's about limiting autonomy of consenting adults, enforcing social morals, and boogyman logic. We should be embracing and striving for a better, freer, more autonomous world, where everyone, women included, are empowered rather than limited, not just settling for a slightly preferable version of the patriarchy.
Which means embracing a nuanced world. Which is why I said acknowledge and even warn against the potential dangers of severe age-gap relationships; we don't have to be blind to real world dangers, but that we shouldn't let fear of those dangers drive us into blind ignorance again or else we're just repeating the same cycle. Hence the trojan horse. We get better when we accept difficult concepts rather than accept simplified extractions for the masses.
edit: just in case my position is somehow still unclear, yes I'm using conservative as effectively synonymous with "bad" here. I'll consider caring when they consider better conduct and positions.
I dunno. Speaking as a male, the reason I see older men seeking far younger women is that it's easy to seem like the smartest guy in the room when you're also the oldest guy in the room. You can project an air of worldliness that makes you seem smarter and wiser than you really are. You can get younger women, legal women, fawning over you because they're young and haven't really experienced enough of life and people to be wise to the bullshit. They avoid women around their own age because they've been around, they know all the tricks.
Yeah, which falls under the risks I mentioned not to be ignorant to.
But also, sometimes you're a 23 year old who gets put on assignment at work with a 31 year old coworker and are surprised how well you hit it off.
My point wasn't "yay age gap relationships!," it was to evaluate the world around you with the necessary nuanced rather than reductively.
No but it's weird. I bet you didn't think of that
/s
Yeah. Not impossible for the to be healthy relationships but those appear to be the minority. With age generalay comes other factors, like financial resources, that strike a relationship power imbalance.
I don't understand what you are arguing about it than. The post doesn't say we should vote for age gaps in relationships to be banned. Supposedly you think it's good to talk about the downsides of these relationships, but here you are, calling it a "conservative Trojan horse". It seems like you actually do not want people to criticise it.
I want them to criticize the right aspects. In general I want us to approach the world looking for more nuance, not looking for reductivism.
I tend to agree with most of what you said but the main reason this is even a thing is that women typically date older men who are already established. Dating in your early 20s is basically impossible because your female counterparts aren't looking for guys that are just starting out or figuring out who they are. Women seek security and sustainability and the 28 year old guy who knows himself and has his own house, good job and car looks far more appealing than the 21 year old who's living with his parents or going to school. I'm not even criticizing women here, it makes sense.
This is a huge overgeneralization and sounding like it might have come from incel thinking, do you have a source to say how many young women are primarily looking for that?
Call it whatever you want, I guess but it seems like you're projecting. There's nothing controversial about the idea that women seek security or that men are biologically attracted to young women.
You're asking for a source which is funny because you're the one making the counterargument. I'd expect you to have provided something. I imagine that with your bait insult(incel, lol, I'm married but okay) you're not really looking for an intelligent discussion here. But on the off-chance you are, here you go.
Article https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/201907/do-women-really-prefer-men-money-over-looks
One of many studies referenced in the article
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1474704919852921
That wasn't an insult, it was my best guess as to where that idea came from. It's also not calling you an incel, just that I suspect incels came up with that idea and it somehow got to you (one potential way is that you are in incel, but again, that's one way), so I'm annoyed you misinterpreted my careful wording.
I read that study you referenced, and it found that ~50% of both men and women rate "Good earning capacity" between 1 (desirable) and 2 (important), the averages being ~1.1 and ~1.6 respectively. This study shows that women care about it more than men, but, reading the results, they care somewhere between "desirable" and "important", discrediting your idea that "Dating in your early 20s is basically impossible because your female counterparts aren’t looking for guys that are just starting out or figuring out who they are". Looking at their box and whisker plots, it seems you'll find significantly more women than men for whom bad earning capacity is a deal breaker, but that does not mean that most do.
Is it a factor when dating? Yes. Is it an overwhelming factor on average? This study says no.
So your argument is based on opinion yeah?
What argument do you mean? I was suspicious of your claim, based on my biases of course, but I used your study to back up that suspicion. I'm not making an affirmative claim.
So you're just babbling on then? You asked me to source my argument and argued it was incorrect while insinuating I'm an incel, yet you provide no source of your own other than your opinion. This is why I don't reply half of the time. You effectively wasted my time. Please don't argue someone else's claims unless you're prepared to offer more than your opinion.
You must be trolling, I've said I didn't call you an incel yet you repeat it, and I cited your own source to disprove you yet you call that opinion. What source am I supposed to cite if not the very one you used? I'm merely arguing the null hypothesis, I don't have to provide a positive claim/source, only dig holes in yours (which I did).
"yeah your study supports your idea but not as much as you think"
Great analysis there, you really opened up my mind
It doesn't though, please reread.
Not saying you're defending conservatives - just embracing and diving into some of the nuance.
Broadly, I agree with you on this. The main possible point of difference between us relates to the perceived level of risk associated with such relationships. For what it's worth, I've linked a NIH study on the topic to the angry lunatic that also responded to my parent reply.
I think it's reasonable to mind your own fucking business. The judging and flimsy excuses to meddle are guaranteed to cause relationship issues for others.
You act when there's evidence of abuse, not 'predictors'. This is fucking twitter/reddit moon-logic where every day 5000 supposed serial killers are identified based entirely upon whether they kicked a dog or left the toilet seat up.
This is a stupid assumption in itself. Most people don't have a wealth of relationship options to choose from. If you're desperate enough to denigrate yourself using tinder, you're desperate enough to cast as wide a net as possible and settle for anyone not actively smoking meth.
Take a deep breath, my guy.
Yeah - the National Institute of Health's National Library of Medicine is a junk source, but here's the actual data. Spoiler: it's a predictor. I think it's time you calmed down and started acting based on evidence rather than rage and moon logic.
You also seem to be confusing looking upon something with suspicion and actively intervening - why?
I thought we were dismissing moon logic and deferring to evidence. One in eight people in my country use online dating without controlling for anything - age, relationship status, nothing. Forbes Health state that 52% of American adults that have never been married use online dating, and Statistica report 57.44 million users of online dating in the US in 2022. On the other hand, the NIH report 2.5m Americans have used meth in the past year. Reeeally scraping the bottom of the barrel with over half the available dating pool, eh?
Are these feels based on your personal experience? You might be able to do better than meth addicts if you calmed down a little. There are plenty of free meditation resources online - it can't hurt to give 'em a try!
I read this over a couple of times looking for your thesis statement... nope, there wasn't a point hidden in there anywhere, just poorly-contextualised quoting of statistics, like how you gloss over the very poor success rates on dating apps/sites, and an opening strawman.
Just a very overwrought u mad troll. Okay, cool, can't believe I interrupted my movie for a ploy straight out of 2010.
Because there isn't a difference. The moment someone falls on the wrong side of a taboo, they're considered fair game. You're just doing the work of rationalising it.
Did you get as far as the first two sentences from the study? I'll give them here.
I've brought credible, relevant studies and stats, you continue to defer to feels. "nuh-uh - I am rubber you are glue" isn't going to cut it. That's the feels covered, now tell me why you'd type the way you did it you weren't blinded by rage.
There's no difference between looking upon something with suspicion and actively intervening? This is just stupid on the face of it - tantamount to "There's no difference between investigating someone and executing them."
Is your treatment of reasonable suspicion (informed by credible studies) as active intervention, and insistence that you can only date the handful of crackheads in your age group the result of a persecution complex linked with relevant experience?
Fuck me, you're tedious and desperate. Oh noes, I swore again, I must be 'raging'. Absolutely one-note, and about a decade by its best-by date as a troll, let alone a debate tactic. Even if you could get me stirred up, it wouldn't be an impediment to my reasoning skills or articulation because I'm not a child.
...over something that was never a point of contention. You went google-fuing for no other reason than to look like you've got something to argue with me about.
No, if we're going with argument by analogy, what you're doing is stirring up a witch hunt and then claiming no responsibility when people you've enabled drown a bunch of spinsters.
You don't look upon a bunch of strangers' relationships with 'suspicion' if you have any fucking concept of pulling your fucking head in and minding your own business. You're a busybody, a gossip, a meddler. If you want a predictor, try having a healthy relationship with anyone when you've got a bunch of twat neighbours looking through your windows and whispering behind your backs. You're the same kind of arsehole who makes going out in public hell for a lot of mixed-race couples because they get smirks and weird comments about how it must be a 'mail order bride' scenario. Like you're not fighting for some great moral victory here, you just suck.
You go on this diatribe for keeping the data and practicalities in mind when I see a 45 year old guy with an 18 year old as you talk about people afflicted with addiction the way you do? Careful on the high road - I hear it's precarious up there.
I'd encourage you to direct your witch hunt nonsense at the NIH. Not much for me to argue, sorry.
I hope that active imagination of yours is useful in your search for a stable relationship - truly.
And you just assume it must be an age-gap relationship and start getting icky feelings and start looking online for ways to justify your pearl-clutching and feelings of outrage, when on the balance of probabilities they're just a father and daughter with a healthy affectionate relationship you never had growing up, and you just have unresolved emotional issues.
Yeah... ngl, kinda hoped we'd left most of you people behind on reddit.
Yeah - fuck me - I find incest to be a problem too - for all the same reasons and a handful more. Are you going to suddenly start clutching your pearls at that one?
Who said anything about incest? Fuck me, I was on the money. You came at me with a bunch of trolling crap and accusations of 'rage', yet you may legit need help.
You did - When I was talking in context about a sexual relationship with a significant age gap, and you decide that they were related.
Nah, mate, you're just deranged. You see any two people in public together and assume they're screwing, then if someone points out to you that they're probably just related you still think they're screwing? Fuckin' weird.
Do you frequently find it this difficult to follow a conversation, and have to constantly reestablish the frame of reference, or should we read something into your desperation to pivot away from the point?
Serious question, who do you think is being infantilized here?
Subtext. This meme isn't about the image, it's about the culture upon which it is commenting. And a large reaction to that culture is beyond discouraging of age-gap relationships, it's prohibitive of them. This reaction wants to redefine adulthood as post 25, label anyone above 25 who shows interest in those under as automatically and inherently predatory (as opposed to potentially predatory), and in doing so severely infantilizes anyone under 25 as "incomplete" adults, as if adulthood is some kind of clear journey with a specific and obvious destination, who they deem incapable of evaluating risks and circumstances and making autonomous choices.
It's even more than that, it wants to make adulthood some kind of sliding window where the age of the older partner defines how "adult" and "capable of making decisions" we see the younger partner, and the older a person gets the more people at the lower end of the age range get excluded for them from this fictional adulthood. For example: 60 and 30 would also be seen as inappropriate.
Now it's perfectly normal for younger people not to find much older people attractive or suitable to have a relationship with and vice versa, and they may even find the idea repulsive, but this is still a personal preference. It's probably even the preference of the majority of people, but that does not mean we should take away the agency of adults to choose their partners when they have a different, non-conforming preference. At that point it has nothing to do anymore with protecting vulnerable people from predators, but about imposing your own preferences and dating standards on other people, and you're quite right in calling it out for the neo-puritanical and conservative thinking that it is.
Well-stated 👍
dis guy arguments.
It's interesting, I agree with what you say here and this is what I thought you were saying... But when I read it the first time without additional context it kind of sounded like the argument was that we are infantilizing the older individuals. It appeared that the argument could have been: we make the "rules" and apply them to the older half because they are the ones who are incapable of dealing with their emotions, needs and desires.
You are right that it is in the subtext. This is the same poor argument that men are unable to control their desires if a woman wears revealing clothing... Just restructured around women being "taken advantage of" by a "smarter more mature male".
It might also have been why the other commenter thought you were defending the conservative position. There are two steps here that you made when the intermediate step could also apply and would be an honestly revolting position to defend. I couldn't quite figure out if it was a reasonable position or a very well hidden dog whistle.
I guess all I can say to that is that while I try best to communicate my meaning clearly, I am a fallible human who will sometimes fall short of perfect wording. Thank you for reading my words with an open mind and inquiring for more information where necessary rather than jumping to conclusions, I guess.
This issue is constantly telling younger adults that their choices aren't valid and are subject to scrutiny by older adults, even total fucking strangers.
Because muricans.
Found the older dude dating a 19 year old.
I'm 39, in a 10-year long monogamous relationship with a woman who is 35. Prior to her, my previous relationship was with a woman 6 years my elder.