Current mood:

annoyed

Older men/younger women-- bad idea, good idea, or none of anyone's business?
I know that Hugo Schwyzer's weblog has been linked here at least once before; right now I'd like to direct your attention to a couple of his recent posts, here and here, concerning feminism and relationships between older men and younger women.

To summarize, Mr. Schwyzer seems to believe that in most if not all cases, these relationships are harmful to the woman, particularly if she is under 21; according to him, they invariably lead to objectification and exploitation. He argues that older men should not regard younger women as sexual or romantic prospects, because these women do not have the capacity to deal with adult sexual relationships; instead, older men have a responsibility to be positive role models, mentors and protectors.


Personally, as a college-age woman in a happy, healthy, long-term relationship with an 8-year age gap, I find his generalizations offensive and condescending. He seems to have a highly stereotype-based perception of these relationships-- the man is always a predator who's only interested in sex and/or manipulation, the woman is always a childlike innocent who's so desperate to sit at the big kids' table that she gets herself in over her head. What's more, he generalizes about all age-gap relationships based on the ones that contain obvious power imbalances, such as teacher/student or mentor/protégé relationships; the thought that people of different ages could meet and interact as friends and equals doesn't seem to occur to him.

I won't deny that relationships with age gaps can result in the older partner taking advantage of the younger, but that can happen in relationships where both partners are around the same age as well, as can objectification, pressure to go farther than one's comfort zone sexually, and all the other things he blames on the age gap. (To prove this I need only look around me at my friends and peers in school, whose disastrous love lives often make me very glad I'm dating someone who's past the college stage and isn't involved in the convoluted soap opera of campus life.) The issue is not age, but maturity; any relationship in which one partner is drastically less mature than the other is likely headed for disaster, but to assume that age is a perfect indicator of maturity is unfair and lazy thinking.

I also find it disturbing that he dismisses the fact that these women are legal adults, most of the time arguing as if they're indistinguishable from children. I don't believe that people magically gain perfect decision-making skills and become entirely self-sufficient the moment they turn 18, but I do think that once people reach that age they deserve to be treated and respected as adults unless they prove they are incapable of relating on an adult level. Sure, some 18-year-old girls probably aren't ready for an adult sexual relationship (though I find that qualifier strange too-- sleeping with a 25-year-old would scar them for life, but sleeping with another 18-year-old would be just peachy?); others are. It's impossible to make any sort of blanket statement, and defaulting to treating all of them like ignorant babies who don't know what they want and can't be trusted to make their own decisions certainly isn't the answer.

In general, the whole idea that young women need to be sheltered and protected and put on pedestals because they're too fragile to play with the big boys really, really bothers me. Of course women deserve to be respected rather than treated as objects, but going so far in the other direction as to deny women the right to choose certain types of relationships isn't particularly respectful either.


Any thoughts? Is he being a responsible and respectful male feminist, or is all of this a load of condescending paternalistic dreck? I'm interested to see what sort of responses the issue will get from the members of this community.