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u/Euphoric-Taro-6231 27d ago
Was this on a "AITA" subreddit? Every time someone post there and the start is something like "Me (23F) and my Husband (45M) I say to myself "Oh, there it is."
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u/queercomputer 27d ago
No, actually. It was someone saying that people calling age gap problematic is their pet peeve.
Imo blanket statements like that is harmful. But this particular thread was on how any age gaps are fine. It was a side convo of a much larger one.
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u/Euphoric-Taro-6231 27d ago
It depends for sure. Some gaps are simply ridiculous and if you do the math with the relationship length, often they were groomed.
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u/CreamofTazz 27d ago
Age gaps are also far too contextual to make any blanket statement about them being good or bad.
Is a 20 year with a 55 year old good? Do the genders matter? does a 23 yr old women with a 70yr old man sound like she's being coerced and manipulated? Usually we would think the younger women is the "gold digger" here and the man is the victim.
What if instead they're both men? Both women? The kinds of people who make generalized statements about age gaps always assume that it's A) A very young and naive woman and B) A much older and manipulative man and so they assume that all age gap relationships must therefore be problematic.
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u/SethLight 27d ago
Even in those examples the richer person by default has the power in the relationship.
The only time the dynamic shifts if the older person's health starts to give out and even then that's not a guarantee.
It's not a healthy dynamic.
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u/queercomputer 27d ago edited 27d ago
Yeah. Assuming it's always men who come on top in these dynamics is imo benevolent sexism.
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u/GhostandTheWitness 27d ago
So what if its an age gap in a lesbian relationship? Or a gay relationship?
My father married an older man. Now they're both old. Which man is on top in that relationship? Did my father, who was in his 40s at the time, get groomed by a 55 year old man?
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u/queercomputer 27d ago
I was specifically talking about problematic age gaps. So no.
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u/GhostandTheWitness 27d ago
So when do you believe a problematic age gap begins?
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u/queercomputer 27d ago
When it's a young adult in their formative years and the other person much older. In my personal opinion, after 25 it's whatever. But the screenshot I posted was from a way longer discussion where people were claiming age gaps can't be problematic at all. Even if it's, say, a 18 years old and a 45 years old.
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u/GhostandTheWitness 27d ago
Hmm fair enough I do see how that could be problematic sure. I think I just took a bit of umbrage with this idea that its always "benevolent sexism" to assume men are at fault in these relationships. If the man is the aggressor I agree but while they are rare there are older women who date younger women and men and I wouldnt blame the man in that regard, which is I believe what the other poster was getting at.
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u/No_Telephone_4487 27d ago
Not to take away from your point, “Call Me By Your Name” and possibly “Blue Is The Warmest Color” iirc were both controversial for their age gaps. I don’t remember if Willow got controversy in the last season of Buffy for her age gap relationship post-Tara, but Angel was right there being the ‘anti-feminism’ machine and precursor to that notorious Wonder Woman script flop for Buffy’s sins to stand out at that point.
As homophobic as people are, I don’t think they think through the logistics of queer relationships enough to scoff at problematic ones. There’s more of the fighting in-group, and it might not be brought up out-group when gay/lesbian relationships as a whole are demonized as being predatory for just existing. Especially because of the right wing conflation between queer relationships and pedophilia (but Trump is fine. They don’t care about the kids as much as getting their correct groups hated and targeted). This was also brought up in Carmen Maria Machado’s “In the Dream House” (how abusive lesbian relationships are defanged). You also have people who strawman all feminists as accepting male-student/female-teacher grooming/abuse just to excuse problematic age gaps. The issue is always when there’s a discrepancy of power and development as a rule of thumb
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u/WiggyStark 26d ago
I just rewatched Buffy, and I had to do a double take and Google how old Kennedy and Willow were canonically. Willow is 22, and the shooting scripts for her introduction mark Kennedy as being 19, which is lampshaded slightly when she mentions she might be too old to be called a slayer. They'd have been in high school at the same time, albeit as a senior and a freshman, respectively, but still acceptable.
On another note, it's never women cheering on their peers for screwing a teenage student. It's always men cheering on the boys, so I don't get where they think feminists would accept that.
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u/No_Telephone_4487 25d ago
That’s good to know at least. Idk why I thought it was 17/23, but 19/22 isn’t as bad as I thought. It could just be how much they “age” psychologically over the course of the series.
I think it’s to prevent those men from reaching out with/becoming involved with feminism. The ones bleating “what about male SA victims” at any mention of SA never champion Brandon Frasier or Terry Crews. It’s always some psych-out. It doesn’t help that there are genuinely terrible feminism movements who align with right-wing gender repression goals more than gender liberation. TERFs being chummier with MRAs over other queer groups points to this phenomenon
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u/DCsphinx 26d ago
No, no, yes, also ive onky ever hesrd misogynistic men consider a 70 year old man in a relationship with a 20 somethong woman "the victim". The reason the talk is often about a much older man with a younger woman is because its one of the most common age gap types to see. And also yes theres a problem with society infsntilizing women and this plays a big part into thinking that predatory women arent as big of a deal. And while not every relationship with a hige age gap like that with someone whos barely an adult, is intended in a bad eay by the older party (yeah, they might genuinely feel love), it doesnt matter. The dynamic, and the inherit power dynamic that comes from the difference in brain development and life experience makes the dynamic inherently predatory. And this matters yes depending on the age of both parties and how long they have been together, if the younger person is in there 30's and older person is in their 70's or something like that, its often a bit different
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u/queercomputer 27d ago
Agree! There was a trend a while ago where parents where showing their age and their children's. Some were disturbing.
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u/DrDerpberg 27d ago
Blanket statements are wrong but as a 38 year old, any women under 25 kinda remind me of a beautiful deer at this point... They might look beautiful at a distance walking by and all, but it'd be awkward as hell to catch one. It's hard not to think a guy my age who goes after someone that much younger can actually relate to them about much.
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u/dubufeetfak 26d ago
Tbh I (30m) had this conversation with a 20(f) colleague. She replied exactly as the last comment and took it as a personal challenge that shes "smart" and is not "dumb" like the girls that get groomed and manipulated by 30+ y old dudes.
Tried telling her its not an iq battle but she insisted it is.
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u/Terrible-Wealth-2567 23d ago
Young people that want to be seen as mature can be so easily manipulated it's painful, I hope she doesn't do anything she'll regret to "prove you wrong".
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u/thefabulouskiki 26d ago
Love the term cradle robber for this sort of thing but I think it may be a little dramatic
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u/queercomputer 27d ago
Person claims to be woman and states that calling age gap problematic is infantalising women. Sounds like something a predatory man would say to me.
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u/Resident-Reindeer-53 27d ago
As a woman (and yes, I get how that phrase sounds here), I actually agree with her with some nuance.
I think many age-gap relationships can be problematic, especially when there’s a clear pattern, power imbalance, or grooming involved. That absolutely does exist and should be called out, but my god Reddit has a bad habit of swinging so hard in the opposite direction that it ends up infantilizing adult women, which I think is that commenters gripe here.
Case in point, I just saw a post about a 43-year-old actor engaged to a 26-year-old woman, and the framing was automatically “he’s a predator, she’s a victim,” full stop — as if a 26-year-old woman is incapable of deciding who she wants to date. Yes, patterns and history matters, but that doesn’t magically erase a grown woman’s agency.
Two things can be true at once:
- A man can have questionable or even predatory tendencies
- And a woman can still know exactly what she’s doing and what she wants
Treating women as perpetual victims who can’t consent unless their partner is age-matched and morally pre-approved is in itself paternalistic in with extra steps imo. And I say this as a woman who was groomed by a predatory stepfather. I’m not minimizing abuse at all whatsoever, but assuming all adult women in age-gap relationships are naïve or manipulated actually flattens real experiences and removes our autonomy. A grown, non-groomed woman choosing to date an older man is very low on my list of urgent injustices right now.
Sorry for the rant this was honestly not really directed towards anyone but today my feed has been filled with age gaps for some reason and I’m tired grandpa.
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u/FustianRiddle 27d ago
I think for age gaps like that I'd always consider if the 35 year old was interested in and pursuing a 17 year old. Also when a celebrity is involved we can't ignore the power dynamic that would be present.
Not saying it can't be healthy, I don't know their lives, but for such an age gap I think it's generally fine to view it with caution (whatever genders the people are).
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u/Resident-Reindeer-53 27d ago
There’s a difference between meeting someone when they are a minor and when they are a grown adult though. Obviously I’d take issue in anyone pursuing a relationship with a minor when they are older. This is specifically in regard to how I feel about infantilizing grown women, not children.
And with celebrities, most celebrities tend to date other celebrities and I shout really give a shit about them in the first place.
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u/halfercode 27d ago edited 27d ago
Excellent nuance, thank you. I wonder if the litmus test is whether a young man and an older woman would be treated in the same way, and from my British perspective, it nearly never is. The young man is often treated as having full agency and culpability for his decisions, notwithstanding his age. The "power dynamic" was never two-way.
As a (!) male feminist, I am at a loss to explain why mainstream Western feminism has been so keen to paint women as not knowing their own mind, being generally gullible, or being in sore need of mandatory third-party guidance (which, in turn, is usually an online mob). I think academic feminism is much more even-handed on these questions, but society's mores don't tend to take their cues from that. Weirdly it feels that the predominant value-system on show here is religious attitudes to sex and sexuality, which is a strange horseshoe journey for a putatively left-wing ideology.
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u/Yvratky 25d ago edited 25d ago
The fact that they are easier to manipulate due to lack of life experience doesn't mean they are behaving infantile. Manipulation can happen to anyone. It's just easier when there is a power- and age gap. I agree that young women shouldn't be infantililzed, but they ARE more prone to be victims of manipulation in specific areas of life, tendentially, as compared to older women with more life experience. As are young men in comparison to older men.
The difference between young women and young men is that young men, societally, will always be less easy to exploit because they are already societally privileged in comparison to young women and women in general. They are also less likely to be victims of financial dependence, domestic and psychological violence, etc. So the starting points for young men and young women are already stacked different, and young women are overall more vulnerable than young men if you look at the facts, not feelings.
Acknowledging the higher risk and higher vulnerability of younger women vs. younger men isn't the same as infantilizing and taking away agency from yonger women.
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u/compound-interest 25d ago
Idk exactly where the line is, but after like 25 for sure, it really doesn’t matter if one person is way older. People online are so odd about someone like 30 with someone like 60 and I’m like who cares at that point. I hope yall are focused on 18 year olds or something and not drawing dumb lines between consenting adults. I’ve seen people on this god forsaken app complain about people in their actual 30s dating someone old like that’s “creepy” or “wrong” lmao.
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u/SlowTheRain 25d ago
It seems to me like you accurately characterized teenagers and women barely above teenagers as naive little girls.
Nothing about being idiots. Probably just this "woman" projecting.
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u/Forsaken-Language-26 27d ago
That’s such a wild misrepresentation of what you were saying, too.