July 22, 2008
“ I think you put words in his mouth. I interpreted his post as being more about older dating younger than man dating woman. I would expect that were he discussing cougars, he would assert that he could see why the older ladies would go for it, but not the young studs. His bias was more about relative youth than gender.

o n e s o n g - more on younger women/older men-comment from

boutofcontext

i have to disagree—i think that if he was talking about age in general…well, then that’s what he would have said, and it’s not.  he could have very easily framed it as “i’m going to talk about this in terms of women, because that’s what i know, but it’s about everyone,” and he didn’t—he very specifically and repeatedly targeted women, and in not a very nice way. 
although i don’t want to debate hypotheticals, i will :) in that i actually do not think that he would have set up the conversation in the same way had he been discussing a gender reversed situation here.  in my experience (both cultural and personal), males are congratulated for “scoring” with older women, whereas the women are chastised for being either cradle robbers or taboo sex goddesses,  (see ashton kutcher and demi moore, stiffler’s mom)—and to be honest, that’s part of what gets my goat here.  it seems to me that no matter what women do when it pertains to their sex/dating lives, they’re fair game for insults.  it used to be that only women dating younger men were taboo—now we’re saying that women dating older men is a problem, too?

basically, women face a lot of pressure from all sides, and their socially accepted options are narrowed by the normative narrative—for example, it’s not okay to be fat, but girls who are perceived as “too skinny” are not okay either, getting told to “eat a sandwich,” and asked if they are anorexic.  it bothers the bejesus out of me when someone—anyone—comes and makes a sweeping generalization about what is/is not okay for women to do, and back to my original point, this is most definitely about women.  men are not mentioned at all, and you can’t just assume that he’s painting a society wide brush when that’s not what is being said.  moreover, if that is the case, then why are women being used as the example?

Comments (View)