Men’s sexual desire is driven by culture, not evolution, Hugo Schwyzer argues. Here’s what young women are really looking for, and why we’re fools to think otherwise.
In my office, Amber is telling me a familiar story. She’s come to talk about her autobiography paper for my women’s studies class, and she reads part of her rough draft aloud.
“I was 12, and this car pulled up alongside me as I was walking home from school … the driver looked a little older than my dad, at least 40. He leaned out, and I thought he was going to ask me for directions, but instead he asked me how old I was. 
When I told him, he laughed. ‘Damn, you got some big titties for such a little girl.’ He made this gross smacking sound with his lips, and sped away. I ran all the way home.”
Amber looks up at me. “I want to know,” she asks, “why do older men hit on younger women?” She’s 20 now, tall and graceful; she tells me that for the last eight years, older men have been approaching her. “It’s not just me,” she adds, “it happens to most of my friends, almost regardless of what they look like or what they’re wearing. It makes me feel like I can’t trust anyone, like all men want just one thing. Why can’t they chase women their own age?”
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I’ve been writing and researching about relationships between older men and younger women since 2005. While the media is hyping the “cougar” phenomenon, they ignore the reality that in most age-disparate affairs the man is the older (sometimes, as in the case of Hugh Hefner, astoundingly older) partner. We take it for granted that many men in their 30s, 40s, and 50s will be more sexually attracted to younger women than to their peers. While most men and women alike are appalled by stories of adult men hitting on 12-year-olds, we still assume that men will “naturally” lust after young women just a few years older.
In 2005, John Derbyshire, a much-admired right-wing pundit at the National Review, opined:
It is, in fact, a sad truth about human life that beyond our salad days, very few of us are interesting to look at in the buff. Added to that sadness is the very unfair truth that a woman’s salad days are shorter than a man’s—really, in this precise context, only from about 15 to 20.
Remarkably, the “family values” editors at America’s flagship conservative journal let this nonsense run, perhaps because they accepted what he was saying as gospel truth: 15- and 16-year-old girls are more sexually alluring to normal adult men than are women in their late 20s. But Derbyshire wasn’t telling us a truth about women’s beauty—he was telling us a truth about the way we’ve socialized male desire.
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No one thinks babies were the first thing on the mind of Jason Statham when he started dating a 23-year-old Victoria’s Secret model, or that Sean Penn (50) is motivated by the desire to start a family with Scarlett Johansson, who’s barely half his age.
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Ask any porn site operator: the “barely legal” or “teens” sections are among the most popular niches. That doesn’t sound so troubling when you imagine an army of teen boys masturbating to images and videos of their female peers. It’s considerably different to imagine men jerking off to pictures of girls young enough to be their daughters—or granddaughters. Since Hef published his first Playboy magazine in 1953, we’ve raised three generations of men to believe that women peak in desirability somewhere between 18 and 24. For many men, that peak starts much earlier. Ask a 17-year-old how often she’s been leered at (or worse) by a much older man.
For too many men, the term “jailbait” isn’t a warning. It’s an enticement.
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Spare me the arguments from biology or evolutionary psychology, the ones that excuse predatory old guys from staring at “young firm flesh” because that flesh belongs to a woman near the peak of her fertility. The great lengths to which countless men go to avoid fatherhood suggests that the continued evolutionary imperative to “spread one’s seed” is oversold to the point of being illusory. No one thinks babies were the first thing on the mind of Jason Statham when he started dating a 23-year-old Victoria’s Secret model, or that Sean Penn (50) is motivated by the desire to start a family with Scarlett Johansson, who’s barely half his age. This is about the cultural cachet of dating a much younger woman—and about the difficult-to-deny reality that younger women lack the experience and wisdom to call their older lovers on their bullshit.
Two recent books do a superb job of puncturing the argument that male sexuality is primarily a creature of evolutionary programming. University of North Carolina professor Martha McGaughey’s The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates Over Sex, Violence and Science (Routledge, 2008) makes the convincing case that our beliefs about male sexuality form the science, and not the other way around. In other words, men who want a reason to chase younger women are desperate to claim that what is a culturally constructed choice is really an unavoidable biological reality.
Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (Norton, 2010) offers a systematic debunking of the idea that men’s sexual decisions are driven largely by brain chemistry. Both Fine and McGaughey make a compelling case that the actual science doesn’t support the idea that men’s sexual desires are driven by evolutionary imperatives.
In other words, John Derbyshire (and a lot of other grown men) may be sexually attracted to underage girls—but they don’t get to blame that fetish on biology.
Even if it were “natural,” there’s nothing innocent or harmless or healthy about older men pursuing substantially younger women. The cost is high to everyone involved. While a few young women may be attracted to much older guys (often because they falsely imagine themselves to be “so much more mature” than “other girls” their age), most are like Amber—disheartened and disgusted by the endless parade of men 10, 20, or 40 years older who harass and hit on them. These young women aren’t flattered. And even if they seem flattered at the time, it doesn’t mean the attention from older men isn’t doing great harm.
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Lynn Phillips, a psychology professor at New York University, did a famous study of young women (mostly under legal age) who were in relationships with significantly older men. Most of the girls she interviewed described these affairs as mutual, exciting, and fulfilling. They pushed back against the suggestion that they were being exploited, claiming in many cases to have initiated or at least welcomed the sex with older men. Phillips then interviewed a similar number of older women. Each of these was over 30, and each had been in a relationship with a much older man while still in her teens. With the benefit of hindsight and experience, these older women acknowledged that they’d been used and hurt and exploited. They admitted that their claims of maturity and sexual adventurousness were all a pretense. In other words, what Phillips found is that while there are some teen girls who are “asking for it,” it’s not what they really want. Teen girls feign sexual sophistication; men need to be able to see through that.
Kerry Cohen, author of Loose Girl and the forthcoming Dirty Little Secrets: Breaking the Silence on Teenage Girls and Promiscuity, argues that “when adult men sexualize teen girls, even just by ogling them, the girls are reminded that their worth in their world is dependent on how sexy they are.” “Girls who choose men so far out of their age ranges,” Cohen writes, “tend toward low self-esteem and depression.” These aren’t sweet coming-of-age stories. And they don’t fit the pornographic story line that young girls are eager for sexual initiation at the hands of an older, wiser mentor.
Here’s the brutal truth, guys. Teen and 20-something women aren’t nearly as interested in much older men as you may think. Sure, there are high school girls with Johnny Depp fantasies, but guess what? You’re not Johnny Depp. (If you were that 48-year-old actor, you’d be devoted to your 38-year-old French girlfriend.) Yes, some young women do flirt with older men. Some do it for validation, some do it for excitement, but a hell of a lot of them do it because guys like you have already taught them that’s the only thing that older men want.
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A true story about the way younger women really see “older men” (and if you’re attracted to 18- to 24-year-olds, you count as “older” if you’re on the high side of 30).
A few years ago, my friend Sean went through a rough divorce. Newly single and almost 40, he went back on the dating scene for the first time in over a decade. But the woman who caught his eye wasn’t someone he met online. She was his favorite barista at his local Starbucks. She was 19.
Next: The girl behind the counter
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About Hugo Schwyzer
I think that the appropriateness of consensual relationships between young adult women (over 18) and older men shifts based on the age of the younger partner. Frankly, I’m not much concerned when a 35 year-old woman dates a 60 year-old man. But when a 20 year-old woman is in a relationship with a 35 year-old, even though the age difference is less, I am troubled. With teens, anything more than a few years (5<) is problematic. Full brain development doesn't finish until 25 or so (car rental companies are on to something), so in general my hostility to age-disparate relationships diminishes after the younger partner hits that milestone.
A related issue, of course, is not just he impact on young women — but on older women who are ignored and passed over (like Sean's barista's mom) because of the cultural fetishization of youth. That's part of the dialogue as well.
Full brain development doesn’t finish until 25 or so (car rental companies are on to something), so in general my hostility to age-disparate relationships diminishes after the younger partner hits that milestone.
Jeezis, way to toss the bio-determinism in there, Hugo! And that’s really interesting, especially after citing Cordelia Fine’s book as a main source of your argument. “Full brain development doesn’t finish until 25 or so”…? What would fine make of that sort of statement, I wonder? As if we had some reasonable measuring stick for what “full brain development” is, not to mention a way of tying this into emotional maturity, which seems to be the main point of what you’re talking about here.
what it somes down to, Hugo, is that you’re simply pulling arbitrary ages out of your hat and trying to make these ages look as if they were engraved in biology by mother nature or God or whatever transhuman predestination force you’re into this week.
Frankly, I think you’re just casting about for any scientific-seeming argument you can find to hang your prejudices on. That’s the only possible explanation for why someone who claims to take Fine seriously would make statement about “brain development” to support their argument.
You’re really reaching, man.
A related issue, of course, is not just he impact on young women — but on older women who are ignored and passed over (like Sean’s barista’s mom) because of the cultural fetishization of youth.
It is difficult to feel sorry for older women when they seem to have no problem fetishizing young men and boys. Many older women look for their own boy toys, and quite often they literally look for boys. As several men have stated in the comments, there are plenty of older women who act on those interests. It is not like there is a dearth of older women fawning over barely legal boys. Granted, no one regards older woman as “creeps” or “perverts”.
No, they’re mostly regarded as pathetic and desperate.
Which is a characterization of older men that is much more ubiquitous than Hugo and his ilk are willing and indeed able to admit.
Please. Older women that go for younger men are cast in a positive light that that is rarely shed on older men going for younger women.
Those older women are often said to be sexually free, going for what they want, defying the stereotypes, etc… On the other hand older men are regarded as pervs and creeps for simply being attracted to younger women (which is just what Hugo is doing in this post) regardless of their behavior.
I think the reason there is any romanticizing of older women who pursue younger men is just because it is relatively small amount of women who do this compared to men who do it so it is a type of “cultural revenge” not only for dumped or ignored older women but also for young women who miss out on reaching adulthood because they are delayed (or completely arrested if they have a child) with this type of relationship and children of men who abandon their families in this way.
When older women do this with men who are not age 24 or so, they are often culturally shamed for it. See the treatment of Hulk Hogan’s ex-wife, for example, compared to the treatment of Donald Trump or someone like that.
“Many older women look for their own boy toys, and quite often they literally look for boys. As several men have stated in the comments, there are plenty of older women who act on those interests. It is not like there is a dearth of older women fawning over barely legal boys.”
This is completely fabricated.
Many popular dating sites (OKCupid for example) have done analysis and showed that in fact women do not pursue men much younger than them. Men on the other hand, almost uniformly look for women younger than them.
I guess all of these 30 and 40 year old women that keep getting busted with 12 to 15 year old boys (and then given a slap on the wrist compared to the years a man would get) were just made-up stories then.
In the last 10 years I’ve seen only 3-4 news stories about female teachers consorting with students.
It makes the news because it’s rare.
So what do you mean by ‘all these’… are you comparing it to the number of men over 21 who have sex with women under 18? If that is the case… there is no comparison.
Many popular dating sites (OKCupid for example) have done analysis and showed that in fact women do not pursue men much younger than them.
I would like to see that report.
This is completely fabricated.
Of course it is. That is why there are no popular cougar dating sites. That is why there are no media reports about older woman/younger man dynamic, the clubs and bars that cater to those crowds, or the insane amount of marketing geared towards exploiting the dynamic.
Show me a cougar site that is as popular as a mainstream like Match.com, Eharmony, Okcupid, or such.
You can’t.
In fact, I’d say even those weird sugar daddy sites out number your ‘cougar’ site anyday.
You did not ask for proof of popularity. You argued that there are no women interested in younger men. The existence of cougar dating sites like Cougars.com proves that wrong. If you want to retract your previous assertion, fine. However, you do not get to move the goal post.
Very interesting post. I do think after a certain point, age ceases to matter. Why should the age of two people clearly in love hinder that love?
Then again, I think maturity often happens after a certain point, and that point tends to be beyond 20 years old.
Complex issue…
Wink’d
This is a joke, like a feminist forum, the ban and delete facility is used as a means of censorship.
Wow. I wish I could anonymously forward this to just about every dirty old man I messed with in my early 20s! It is totally true about 30 something year old women remembering our actions and choices differently.
Older men are more socially sophisticated, and can really put a young woman on some head-trips. Ya, the seduction and orgasms were real, the sex was great, but afterwards the feeling of having been “taken” was awful. Atleast guys my age were more on my level, and feeling used and unappreciated afterwards never had the creep factor nor the “I was such a sellout” regretful feelings that the 2 or 3 flings with much older men did.
… and, being in my mid-30s, I repeated the exact same mistake with a smooth 60 something who like the other dirty old men also pretended to have a genuine interest in helping me succeed and in my personal growth. It feels the same at 35 as it did at 22- like they were using the wisdom/sophistication that comes with age and their power to get laid/egos stroked/validation and their other needs met.
Forgive me, me, but it sounds like what you’re saying is that you felt “taken advantage of” by the men you had sex with, regardless of their age.
Furthermore, you went on to make the same mistakes in your 30s. I would suggest that the problem has more to do with the kind of guy you seem to be attracted to than with age per se.
I agree with you entirely, Thaddeus. The problem with you, me, is you not older men.
As Thaddeus says, it seems like you’re not willing to consider that you have a pattern. “Early 20s”? Hugo is talking about men treating children and teenagers as the Sexy Ideal. A 30something is a little beyond the age where it’s creepy for a grown man to find her attractive.
Is this why Hugo’s one example, aside from his friend, is Scarlett Johanssen and Sean Penn rather than Warren Jeffs and virtually anyone with a XX chromosone structure within Jeffs’ sights?
Sounds like you had some bad experiences. Sorry to hear it. However, at 20something, you should be old enough to take responsibility for your own actions – especially for repeating bad decisions. The right to disclaim responsibility by blaming creepy old men runs out at some point.
I have always been very well aware of men who leer since I was around 10. It has also happened to my two daughters. It isn’t hard to figure out what they are leering at and why. I learned to never trust men who were older based on a few bad experiences by those who were scum and by the ones who didn’t go any further than leering. Just the same it made me very uncomfortable as a girl who just wanted to be a girl having fun. It took the fun out of being a girl for me.
This is an interesting topic to me because I had two relationships with older men when I was in my 20′s. One man was 12 years older, the other was 20 years older. Now, looking back from the perspective of middle age, I realize that I had serious “daddy issues”. I was seeking love and approval from a father figure to make up for my own father’s serious failings in that department. My father was verbally abusive and often absent during my childhood. He and I had a terrible relationship during my adolescence. As a result, I looked for male affection, approval and mentoring from older guys. Both of my relationships started out as mentoring friendships that turned sexual. I recall experiencing a deep sense of disappointment when I realized that these men did not truly care about me but saw me only as a way to inflate their own egos and recapture their youth by being with a younger woman. They were always commenting on my age, telling me their friends were jealous and so on. I felt like they related to me as a “type” — a “younger woman” — rather than as a person with my own perspective and needs. Ironically, the man 20 years my senior eventually broke up with me because he said our generational differences were too great and he wanted to be with someone in the same stage of life. My other relationship lasted 8 years and I finally ended it because he wouldn’t make a commitment (even after 8 years, he saw our relationship as a fling with a younger woman) and I realized it was holding me back from finding a relationship that would really make me happy.
In retrospect I don’t feel that I was exploited or that these guys were pervy — I really did care about them — but I’m just sorry I wasted my time.
The author also mentions young women being creeped out by attention from older guys, and, yes, that does happen, more than guys ever realize. But it’s not restricted to older guys-younger women. Being the subject of unwanted sexual attention is creepy and men usually have no idea of how poorly they come across.
Oh one other thing I wanted to say (mainly a side note to this discussion) is that I get so tired of all the evo-psych explanations, I.e. men want fertile females with the proper hip to waist ratio, women want to “marry up” because they need a male to support offspring, etc. Although these theories may have a grain of truth in some respects (though even that is debatable), they totally ignore the powerful influence of individual psychology, as well as culture and social conditioning. Richard Dawkins himself has complained about his evolutionary theories being misunderstood and mis-used as a social Darwinist justification for selfish behavior.
Sarah that was so well said! And i agree with alot of what you had to say and could relate to some of your own experiences.
I agree regarding ev-psych, Sarah. It’s amazing to me that people regard that mass of poorly thought-out hypotheses as a serious science. There may indeed be some some serious ev-psych people, but their work is being hidden by a larger mass of folks who seem to want to find determinist explanations for the mythological social behaviors of the U.S. in the 1950s.
And people accuse anthropology of being a soft science! If there’s one thing that anthros are trained to do, it’s to reflexively question the roots of their presumptions. It seems to me that ev-psych could learn a lot from that… if they hadn’t simply dismissed anthropology as “irrelevant”.
Regarding your experiences with older men, you say: “In retrospect I don’t feel that I was exploited or that these guys were pervy — I really did care about them — but I’m just sorry I wasted my time.”
OK, granted. But Sarah, that’s the way I feel about almost every relationship I had when I was in my early twenties. How does age make a qualitative difference there? That’s my question. When I listen to women talk about the relationships they had in their late teens and early twenties, my impression is that these were not relationships full of caring and great mutual understanding. They sound mostly like callow relationships based on sex, irregardless of the age of the partners.
So that’s my question. Given that young women (and men) seem to pretty much make universally bad partner choices in their 20s, based on what, exactly, are we entitled to blame this on age differences?
Hugo himself married three times before his mid-30s, I believe. Now, maybe Hugo thinks that’s because his brain hadn’t physically matured enough. I believe it’s because he made bad choices. And I believe that the only way to learn how to make good choices is through bad choices. That is why Hugo stopped using booze and drugs and that is why he now is in a stable and fulfilling relationship: not because his brain went through some sort of generic physical maturing process.
And this is why I think Hugo is infantilizing women here. I thing that it’s actually part of a general trend in American culture to infantilize young people, in general. Frankly, you guys are one of the few peoples in the world who can AFFORD to give kids a protracted adolescence and now you seem to feel, as a society, that even that adolescence isn’t long enough. I would not at all be surprised if, in the next 50 years, we see American courts constructing another legal class of citizen between the ages of 20 and 30. When that happens, I expect to see social engineers like Hugo applauding the move as “necessary for the protection of young women”.
(One sometimes wonders whether certain people wouldn’t be happier just returning to the legal structures of the Victorian era, where it was presumed that young women were incompetent without proper adult supervision. But I digress.)
But what’s bothersome to me is how many Americans – like Hugo and the men he criticizes – seem to want to naturalize this cultural choice. Here in Brazil, the legal age of consent is 14. The legal age for voting is 16. Our society doesn’t seem to be suffering because of this and – based on my anecdotal experiences watching American and Brazilian university students at play – I find our late teens and early twenties to be MUCH more mature than yours.
I submit to you that this is because Brazilian culture starts giving youth REAL decision-making power from late adolescence on. By the time that you’re 18, you are EXPECTED to be acting like an adult and not like a frat boy on spring break. And sure, lack of experience means that these young adults make many mistakes. But the real responsibility that they have makes sure that they learn from them.
I’d be interested to know how many young adults drank themselves to death or committed suicide or died doing stupid booze tricks last year in the University of California system where Hugo works. This year, our incoming freshmen here at UFRJ Macaé put in thousands of hours of volunteer time helping communities in the surrounding mountains recover from the disastrous floods of February.
Frankly, I do not believe that the best way to make better adults is to keep the training wheels on well into their 30s.
Hugo apparently thinks differently.
As a 22-year-old American college student, I agree with your perspective on adulthood and responsibility completely.
However, I do think there is a real, qualitative difference between two twenty-somethings bumbling through a bad relationship, learning from their mistakes, and a 50-something deliberately exploiting the youthful incompetence of a twenty-something to coerce them into making bad decisions.
It’s a well, well established fact that when older men have sex with younger women, they very rarely use condoms or any other kind of birth control. The majority of teenage pregnancies are caused by older men who vanish as soon as the pregnancy occurs–knowing that a teenager won’t understand the legal system well enough to track them down for child support or help obtaining an abortion.
Unwanted pregnancies and STDs can be a consequence of two young people bumbling through a bad relationship, it is true. But an unwanted pregnancy due to an honest mistake and an unwanted pregnancy due to deliberate lying and manipulating really are different.
And since the irresponsibility of older men is ‘a well, well established fact,’ it should be child’s play (no pun intended) for you to supply empirical verification that these guys who refrain from using condoms are, say, typically five years or more older than the women they impregnate. Or hey, maybe you really are just wasting the money of your parents and some hapless bank getting a university degree.
Just as I surmised. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, the mean difference between pregnant teens and the men who impregnated them was three years, with the man being older. In other words, the typical teen pregnancy scenario is Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston, not Oona O’Neill and Charlie Chaplin. At least O’Neill and Chaplin, unlike Palin and Johnston, got and stayed happily married, not that I unreservedly approve of 18-year old girls marrying 54-year old men.
Care to restate some facts, Julia?
Julia sez:
However, I do think there is a real, qualitative difference between two twenty-somethings bumbling through a bad relationship, learning from their mistakes, and a 50-something deliberately exploiting the youthful incompetence of a twenty-something to coerce them into making bad decisions.
I agree. But let’s restate that in light of the information Cat broight up (to wit, the age difference in teen pregnancy is an average of three years – which puts it right in your two “twenty somethings” example). Would you say that there’s a qualitative difference between two twenty-somethings bumbling through a bad relationship, learning from their mistakes, and a 20-something deliberately exploiting the youthful incompetence of another twenty-something to coerce them into making bad decisions?
Because it seems to me that we’re talking more about experience and manipulation rather than age here.
You say you live in Brazil … but have you been in the favelas? Gang violence, murder, rape, drugs, and widespread poverty.
I’d not hold up Brazil as this model to the world considering how many social problems they have.
Also, less college age people in Brazil go to college than in America. It’s still a very elite institution. You might be ‘exceptionalizing’ your students.
You mention volunteering as a measure of ‘maturity’ which I find odd because kids all the way to adults can ‘volunteer.’ Plenty of American youth volunteer all the time.
Kyle, what do you know about Brazil other than what you’ve seen on T.V. or the internet in English? Have you lived in a favela? Have you even ever been to Brazil?
I ask, because you seem to be making some incredibly blanket and prejudiced statements regarding favelas – statements that, to any Brazilian urban anthropologist, shine out like a red light saying “This guy knows next to nothing about favelas”.
First of all, a “favela”, properly speaking, is simply a community that has been illegally built on squatted land. There are good favelas and bad favelas, comfortable favelas and squallid favelas, safe favelas and dangerous favelas – even poor favelas and relatively well-to-do favelas. Most gringos who know anything about favelas in Rio have seen a film called “City of God”. They’re generally shocked to learn that much City of God isn’t a favela at all, but a housing project. In fact, this is well demonstrated in the film, but I suppose that people stop paying attention when the word “favela” is trotted out.
Some of the worst neighborhoods here in Rio are not favelas and some of the safest and calmest are. So when you chide me about “the favelas” and how they are supposedly synonymous with violence and poverty, what it really shows is your lack of understanding regarding what a favela IS.
Now, yes, there is a lot of violence and poverty in the favelas – as there is in almost EVERY community in Brazil, whether it is a favela or not. Not much of this violence is specifically directed against women, however. The overall murder rate in Brazil ranges from 20 to 40 murders per 100,000 population per annum. The murder rate for WOMEN, however, is 4 per 100,000 – less than the U.S.’ annual murder rate. MRAs actually have a better complaint re: Brazilian violence than feminists.
So your point here is…?
I’d not hold up Brazil as this model to the world considering how many social problems they have.
Far be it for me to hold Brazil up to the world as a model for anyone, but I think your view that the country should be dismissed because of its social problems is rather prejudiced and more than a bit uninformed. You should ask yourself “How is Brazil dealing with its social problems? Is poverty increasing or decreasing in Brazil? Are there more or fewer opportunities for the people there than there were 20 years ago? Are laws improving or getting worse?” When you ask these questions and compare the answers to the same for the U.S., Brazil comes out looking a hell of a lot better.
What I’d say is this:
Even though we are much less wealthy than the U.S. and suffered through twenty-years of U.S.-supported dictators who entrenched corruption and disrespect for the law, we are actually meeting our social problems head on and REDUCING them. The U.S., with all its power and wealth, certainly can’t say the same.
Not bad for a poor and violent country, huh?
Finally, you say…
Also, less college age people in Brazil go to college than in America. It’s still a very elite institution. You might be ‘exceptionalizing’ your students.
This may be news to you, Kyle, but only our Federal system is considered “elite” (along with a handful of state and private institutiuons). The VAST majority of our university students attend private institutions which draw their student body from the lower middle and working classes. I worked for one of these institutiuons for five years: UNISUAM, in Bonsuccesso in Rio de Janeiro. This school was located smack in the middle between the Favela do Maré and the Complexo do Alemão, two of the city’s most notoriously violent favelas. This area is called “The Gaza Strip” in carioca parlance, because of its constant violence. (Here’s a song and a video about it, which I’m sure you’ll understand because – scholar of things Brazilian that you are – you speak Portuguese, right? http://letras.terra.com.br/mc-orelha/1564766/).
On a half-dozen separate occasions while I worked there, UNISUAM was closed down to due to gunbattles between the neighbors. A good third of my students came from the favelas on Federal social inclusion scholarships.
Today, I’m blessed to be working in the federal system. Still, at least 20% of my students come from poor and working class communities, many of them favelas.
So no, Kyle, the majority of our university system isn’t made up of the elite. And even if it was, what would that prove? Are you claiming that the sons and daughters of the elite behave better than those of the hoi polloi? I mean, surely this is the lesson we can take from the American Greek system, right? After all, sororities and fraternities are chock-o-block full of elite kiddies and one rarely hears any complaints regarding their behavior in the American press…. Right?
You mention volunteering as a measure of ‘maturity’ which I find odd because kids all the way to adults can ‘volunteer.’ Plenty of American youth volunteer all the time.
The “volunteering” isn’t the whole of it, not by a long shot, Kyle. But yeah, you’re right: freshman entry week at most big American schools is positively synonymous with the volunteering spirit. Why, I remember when I was an undergrad at UW Madison in the 1980s: the freshman class would ban together every year to refurbish homes in the Milwaukee ghetto. It was quite the big affair. And, of course, that public spiritedness paid off big dividends in terms of American politics today, which is why your nation is synonymous, worldwide, with social justice, equality, fairness and increasing opportunities for your poorer citizens.
Please, man. If you’re going to talk about Brazil – and especially if you’re going to dismiss the country as a poor, violence-ridden hell hole, as you seem to be doing – then get you facts straight and learn a bit about the country from sources that are a bit more dense than Wikipedia and Fox News.
Your mention of all the gang violence proves *my* point… not yours. And you haven’t refuted the fact that less people go to college (which is why it’s still an elite institution… despite the scholarship programs at the college you teach.) It’s still a pretty narrow gateway to upper class life.
Yes, I know that favelas are squatter towns… and that government projects are bad in pretty much every country in the world. Doesn’t change the fact that Brazil’s major cities are literally flanked on all sides by these tin roof shantytowns that go on for miles. You miss out on the reason there are good favelas because social programs and foreign aid come into to fix them but cannot cover all the territory. Don’t get me started on racism in Brazil, bro. Something tells me you are like the people in recent polls that have shown that while almost 90% of Brazilians say their society is racist only 10% admit having any racial prejudice.
Your head is buried in the sand.
Kyle, seriously: what the hell do you know about Brazil? Do you even speak Portuguese?
I’d like to know, because you seem to have some real rank prejudices regarding Brazil and things Brazilian and I’m wondering where they come from.
You’re original point is QUITE prejudiced and has nothing to do with there being violence in the favelas. You seem to be claiming that favelas are synonymous with violence. That is most definitely not the case. Some favelas are violent, others aren’t. So the only possible explanation for why you think my description of the Gaza Strip “proves” your point is that you believe all favelas are alike. You think, for example, o Complexo do Alemão is substantially the same thing as, say, Tavares Bastos.
That is pure prejudice wrapped in ignorance, friend, and all the progressive political posturing about racism and social justice that you’re doing doesn’t change that fact one single bit.
But what really amuses me is how your prejudices contradict each other.
You start off by claimingn that Brazilian universities are “eltie instittuions” and you hold to this even when a person who’s actually TAUGHT in Brazilian universities for a decade tells you that isn’t true, that most of them aren’t.
Why is it important, rhetorically speaking, for you to see all our schools as nests of the elite? Because your argument is that elite kids are somehow better behaved and more socially conscious than non-elite kids,m and this explains why American schools – democratic institutions of the hoi polloi that they are – are full of drunken, alienated students while our students here in Brazil seem to be doing better.
But then you go and bite that argument square on the ass with your ridiculous claim that Brazilians “have their heads buried in the sand” when it comes to social justice, because of a poll taken in the 1980s (thirty years ago isn’t “recent” Kyle) regarding racism.
So what is it, Kyle? Are our elites swinish racist pigs or socially responsible sons and daughters of the boojwahzee?
Can’t have it both ways, man.
Kyle, you might profit from looking at this trope over on wikitropes. You seem to believe most of the ones regarding favelas, at any rate….
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCapitalOfBrazilIsBuenosAires
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the yo-yos at the Heritage Foundation invented EP in stealth.
I’m a left liberal, and I think EP is one factor that drives human behavior, not the sole one. I do have some conservative beliefs, however. E.g., I’m pro second ammendment.
Hey Henry, I asked you this before, but weren’t you once a TA at the U.W. Madison?
No, Thad. That was a guy named Henry Vandenberg. My name is Henry Vandenburgh. He and I are probably related, because our family originated with a similar name in Rensaleer, NY in 1640. (van den hoge berghe) I’m from Redondo Beach, CA, and was born in 1945. My MA is from UC, Irvine (1982) and my PhD is from University of Texas, Austin (1996.) Never went to Madison.
Ahn. Thanks for clearing that up. I was almost certain you were an old TA of mine from back in the 1980s.
I’m a historian and social scientist. When I compare the paucity of proof which back up typical EP claims to the vast and varied proof regarding the ideological roots of biodeterminism and how, time after time, biodeterminist claims have been widely accpeted as “scientific” only to be shot down in flames, it seems to me that it’s more logical and resonable to reject EP for the nonce.
I mean, people talk about how “squishy” anthropology is, but I can take you and SHOW you to hundreds of social institutions and venues where little kids are taught the social attitudes regarding sex and morality which show up in their behavior. Typically, EP proponents vcan nowhere show such direct linkeages between, say, this gene or complex of genes and a given behavior.
Hey Thad,
What do you think of David Buss’ work that has laid the groundwork for EP? EP is extremely adaptationist in in its theoretical framework, which may explain the popularity of biodeterminism. As a graduate student biology, I have been lucky to have been exposed to many different works exploring the great puzzle that is genotype x environment interaction. Suffice to say, there is more to biology than than the gene does not seem to get out to the popular, public sphere.
When I was 12 men started verbally harassing me and yelling disgusting things at me. They were definitely creepy pervs. They also led me to believe that all unknown men were creepy pervs, and that sex was negative and had to be avoided. Then the catcalls mostly stopped by the time I was 20, leading me to believe that unknown men were paedophiles too. Guys, if you want women to be more open to sexual experiences, a good place to start is by NOT giving them the impression that men are creepy pervy paedophiles by yelling disgusting things at them when they’re young girls. And if you observe other guys doing it, tell them that it’s not cool and that they need to stop, because they’re ruining it for everyone.
Well said. I do tell catcallers what they can do to themselves, unless safety prohibits it.
Donna
If you conflate pedophiles, catcallers of adult women with the general male population the problem is more to do with your perception and thinking than anything else.
Male and female pedophiles make up a tiny percentage of the population, their dysfunction, which is likely caused by their being molested by a male or female pedophile is not indicitive of normal healthy masculinity, that should be obvious..
To Alister: I suppose I should clarify since the words indicating past-tense seem to have been ignored. When I was younger, many creepy, pervy paedophiles yelled disgusting things at me and gave me the impression that they were representative of all unknown men. As an adult I have realised this is not true, and to hold all men accountable now would be my own problem. But as a 12 year old, I didn’t have the same reasoning, and saying that it was my own perception problem at that age is like when articles about child rape say that the perpetrator “had sex with” the victim, as though it’s possible to have sex “with” a child. Catcalls have had a damaging effect on myself and many of my female friends, and I think guys don’t realise how much it contributes to the (untrue) stereotype of all unknown men as potential rapists. Meeting non-defensive young women would be a lot easier for young men if those women weren’t in the process of learning that all unknown men aren’t out to harm them.
To TWR: no, the real epitome of “class” is to laugh it off and say ‘boys will be boys’ when abusive things are yelled at children. Of course my message is addressed to all men, because it is every man’s responsibility to say ‘that’s not appropriate’ if they observe a friend or co-worker verbally abusing a child. Along with the creeps were their friends and co-workers who only laughed and said nothing.
No, it’s not every man’s responsibility to a goddamn thing about any of it. No more than it is every woman’s responsibility to do things about paternity fraudsters or gold diggers.
Well it is. Women should recognise the things that give women a bad name and try to steer friends in a better direction. It’s called being a part of the human scene.
I like how you address all men in this post as if we all yell these things at 12 year old girls. That is the epitome of class.
I think Neil Diamond said it best… “Run girl… “
For the best part of my life I’ve been leered at by older men, the first time I remember it was when I was about 12, and a 50 odd year old man who all but crashed his car whiel hanging out of is car window looking at me.
I’m now 30 – little has changed only now the men aren’t 50’s, they are closer to 70…
I’ve been leered at, groped, and propositioned by men old enough to be my father so often that my “defective pheromones” have become a running joke among my girl friends.
The simple fact is – it’s creepy, it’s unsettling and being on the receiving end is not nice, and I do believe it’s had a detrimental effect on my self-esteem.
Whereas men your own age would never commit any of these horrid acts. No, gosh, that’s inconceivable.
” I do believe it’s had a detrimental effect on my self-esteem.”
Most of that is within your control though really. From your description, the men doing this were strangers…why on earth would you let a strangers behavior impact your feelings about yourself so much? Chalk them up as idiots and move on. Their behavior isn’t ok, esp the groping and touching but the leering? That’s kind of just a fact of life isn’t it? Men and women are going to look at other attractive men and women….
maybe the age difference adds an extra squick factor, but don’t take it home at night for goodness sakes.
If you spent your whole life receiving a certain type of attention from anyone, I don’t see how you can’t take it home. Our experiences shape us into who we are. They teach us about the world. As Dalai Lama as it is to let things roll off your back, it’s unrealistic to expect experience both negative and positive to not affect you. People want to be accepted and respected. So even when strangers treat us a certain way, it still sends a message. Now that doesn’t mean you wallow around in it. But it doesn’t mean you can’t be authentic about how those experiences made you feel and what they taught you. And in Nicky’s experience, older men have been treating her crudely for a long time.
Lets not side brush it with talks about how morally superior she should be in not letting those experiences affect her or try to deminish her experiences with sarcastic comments that men her own age could never do that or how if she was a better person (because that’s really the superior attitude that’s being taken here) these experiences wouldn’t affect her. Sorry Catullus and Natasha, you just attempted to shame her for her experiences and that’s jacked.
I’ve been in public where I’ve seen men out with their wives and children ogle me or other younger girls/women. I use to pay more attention to the guys, now I pay more attention to their partners. Their wives ignore it but you can see they also notice it. They see where their partner is looking, they follow their gaze, they give you the once over too, they then try to ignore it. Their husbands are too busy ogling other women to think or care about the impact they are having on the woman with them. And since the women choose not to make it a battle, at least not in public, the men think their actions go unnoticed. But they don’t. Women notice these things. And they plain suck. And they DO affect my perception of men for these experiences.
This really isn’t just an issue for older women. It’s an issue for all women; older women, younger women and girls. Because we are telling women they don’t matter after a certain age. And girls are taught that they won’t matter after a certain age. And too many guys are happy to propogate their worth as men as they grown and age, but are happy to tell women of all ages they apparently just don’t have as much value as men do.
Oh ffs don’t attribute intentions and actions to me that aren’t there, Erin, get a grip. I did not attempt to shame her at all. What I was saying was this:
Why let someone else’s bullshit problem negatively impact your own sense of self worth? If you have a healthy sense of self and a reasonable amount of self esteem, you can chalk their behavior up as idiotic behavior and move the hell on.
I’ve been leered at, stared at, propositioned by strangers and business associates…is it irritating? yep. Do I feel ‘victimized’ in some way? Nope. I feel like a few ass hats have a problem with social norms and it’s their problem not mine. I think more of myself, and find my time to be more valuable than to spend even five minutes fretting because some dumb shit tried to dry hump me in the line at the grocery store.
Maybe it wasn’t your intention to shame her Natasha but my personal view is that you attempted to because she isn’t you and doesn’t take things in like you do.
You mentioned how “your time” was “more valuable” then spending time on “dumb shit”.
That’s great that you’ve developed a mentality in these situations that works for *you*. But just because you’ve dealt with situations a certain way doesn’t mean that’s the right answer for everyone.
Again, I’m not saying to wallow around in self pity. But to deny that the people around us don’t in fact affect us, isn’t honest. I’ve had personal experiences with strangers that were extremely positive and greatly helped me. And I’ve had personal experiences with strangers that were negative and I won’t ever forget and taught me things that changed me. Different people take different things from different experiences. And all Nicky is doing is sharing that she has had an accumulation of negative experiences with older men. It’s affected her self-esteem and I’m sure she understands thats something she needs to work on. Fact remains, she’s had an accumulation of negative attention from men old enough to be her father and grandfather. Since that’s what this piece is about, she’s reiterating her own personal experience. And you’ve distracted from that message by implying that the things that affect her is “dumb shit” just because you wouldn’t have reacted to it the same way. Her piece seems to be more about her negative personal experiences with older men. And her self esteem has been affected by it. Not too far off from the message Hugo is giving in his piece.
If you’re going to quote me, do it in context, don’t cherry pick and rearrange my words or who/what they are directed at.
My words: “I think more of myself, and find my time to be more valuable than to spend even five minutes fretting because some dumb shit tried to dry hump me in the line at the grocery store.”
You presenting my words out of context:
“You mentioned how “your time” was “more valuable” then spending time on “dumb shit”.”
My ACTUAL post clearly implied that the people who engaged in this behavior were dumb shits…..You changed it to read that I thought Nicky was complaining about ‘dumb shit’ and that her experience wasn’t valid. I didn’t say that, or imply it, anywhere.
Nice try though
Hey Natasha, my apologizes for mis-reading your words. You’re right, I did. My bad on that. Your “dumb shits” comment was to call these people “dumb shits”. Everyone makes mistakes.
But based on your other commentary, I do think your implying certain things about Nicky and thought processes and reactions *you* think she should have because of how you take in situations. Although I do think you’re trying to help her. But again, not everyone reacts the same way to the same situations. Neither should they. Like I said in my own experiences, I have had both positive and negative experiences with strangers that I won’t ever forget and changed me.
I also stand by my point that this is a distraction from her original message which is she has had respeat negative experiences from older men. And since that’s what Hugo’s article focuses on, older men’s reaction to both older nad younger women, it seems Nicky is sharing her own experiences in that regard. And just because she mentioned that she developed insecurity over it, we shouldn’t underscore the experiences she has had.
I only reminded Nicky, albeit bluntly, that older men don’t have a monopoly on subjecting young women and girls to horrid behavior. If that’s shaming her, then you’ve set the bar for shaming so low, a sheet of typing paper couldn’t slide underneath it.
Older men don’t have a monopoly on subjecting younger women and girls to horrid behavior. But this article IS about older men and how they treat women, younger and older. If we can’t talk about that without saying “younger men do it too!”, then how do we honestly look at anything? We all know there are always going to be questions about how older people behave toward younger ones. And discussing how older men specifically do isn’t in anyway saying only some older men behave poorly. It’s just taking an honest look at one group and how they treat other people. When we fail to discuss that aspect and try to side track with pointing to another group and saying “look over there, they do it too”, it’s an attempt to distract from the topic at hand.
If you are more interested in talking about how younger men treat women, then I’m sure there are other articles that address that. And if not, why not write one and open up that discussion?
A man leering at any woman is disgusting PERIOD, regardless if he’s a young, old, hot, ugly, fat, loaded, broke or what have you.
A man who uncontrollably leers at women basically says one of two things:
1) The guy IS a pervert.
2) The guy is a wanton inexperienced socially retarded degenerate who couldn’t get next to any woman to save his life.
I see men everyday, and only a very very small percentage actually leer. And being on the receiving end of leering makes the skin jump off our backs. No woman in her right mind, 12, 20 or 40, unless she’s desperate, narcissistic, or lonely wants to be visually raped.
You can blame it on age, preference, social and biological stigma, and dance around it like it’s to be normal and expected but call a spade a spade. Leering = pervert = revolting.
I hear you saying that leering feels invasive and that you feel disgusted by unwanted sexual attention. I respect those feelings. I can see how deep those feelings run. They make sense to me.
I won’t even ask what “leering” means, precisely. I’ve seen obnoxious staring, so I have some understanding.
However, it seems to me that “visually raped” is overdoing it. You don’t like what a man does with his eyeballs and brain and neck, that’s totally fine, you can tell him off. But, he has a right to turn his neck or move his eyes any way he wants to. He hasn’t actually done anything to you, really. Fortunately or unfortunately, a man doesn’t need consent to look at a woman and fantasize. Here’s one place I disagree with my Women’s Studies colleagues — the “male gaze” is not actually a weapon. Looking, even staring, is not an assault.
Let the thumbing begin.
I’ve been leered at ways that felt physically threatening, especially if I’m alone or in a situation where I don’t feel safe. E.g., stopping at a gas station at night and encountering a guy who is obviously looking me up and down, making aggressive eye contact, and grinning at me, licking his lips etc. Creepy, and scary because it’s obvious that he’s fantasizing about me and I don’t know if he is going to say something offensive, try to grab me or follow me home. That’s a lot different than getting a glance in a coffee shop. Men really don’t understand how much women worry about their personal safety. I’m not that strong and if a guy wanted to attack and rape me, he probably could. I always have to be aware of that and take appropriate precautions, while trying not to be paranoid or think of all men as potential rapists. Leering is more than glancing or even staring. It’s a kind of staring that is intentionally aggressive and threatening. The vast majority of guys don’t leer, they just look. Totally different situation.
“…making aggressive eye contact, and grinning at me, licking his lips…”
Ok, so direct eye contact, a smile and a little deliberate lip/tongue display to call attention to the mouth….call me silly, but isn’t that HALF the dating and flirting advice given out to women in cosmo every month?
I don’t think men should follow “flirting” advice for women in a women’s magazine. I may be wrong, but most guys probably do not feel frightened or creeped out by a strange woman on the street corner making aggressive eye contact or licking her lips — unless she’s obviously crazy.
Uh, you might want to try having a man look at your rear end as though it’s a rack of rib eye ala sherry au jus w/ a side of country biscuits announce to his buddies out loud enough so that you can hear how much he’d like to split the sucker in half.
Then you can tell me what it means to be visually raped.
Actually, FW, I’ve been through a very similar experience in a gay club and no, I wouldn’t classify it as rape AT ALL. Rude, yes. Aggressive? Certainly? Rape…? That seems to me to stretch the word far beyond its accepted or legal meaning.
OMFG I wasn’t using rape as a literal term, more of like a slang type metaphor. And for those who think I actually meant it as a form of rape need to chill like soon and maybe get over it.
Let’s see now, you can also call it dismantle, tear apart, turn upside down, devour, cherry pick, pillage, destroy, whatever works. At any rate, it all boils down something nasty and berating <=== That my friends, IS the literal part.
So why would you want to turn a very terrible crime into a “slang type metaphor”? What possible good does this do in allowing us to better perceive what’s going on?
As for “chilling” about this point, I’m not willing to anymore. Why? Because whenever I point out that not every form of sexual aggression, violence, or inequality needs must be claffied as rape, I get a chorus of people reviling me for being a “defender of rape culture”.
You are presumably a feminist, FW, no? So seriously: tell me what do you think most feminists would say if a man used the term “rape” as a “slang type metaphor”?
Again, you are blowing what I said out of proportion and taking everything completely out of context. Lighten up.
And don’t lay up in here and preach to me about being a feminist when you have not a single clue what’s it’s like to be a woman, especially as a man who writes for a men’s magazine that is almost completely and inherently bias. I’ve read plenty of material on here that minimizes and hyper-sexualizes women, and plenty more that makes men masters of the misogynistic neanderthal universe- hence one example the penis size world geographical map article meant to be jovial but instead is grossly ill-informed and utterly ridiculous.
Don’t be so “serious” when a lot of the material on your site is a complete joke backed by junk science. You guys here are more likened to askmen.com than you are Scientific American bro. Write something for JAMA and we’ll talk literal.
Who’s preaching at you about being a feminist? I said I presumed that you are. Given that feminists/MRAs are notoriously “unlight” about the subject of rape, that created some cognitive dissonance for me.
As for material being a “joke” and “junk science”, this may come as some surprise to you, but I’m hardly an editor of TGPM: I’m a guy who’s written one measily article and a lot of comments. That hardly puts me in a position to be responsibvle for the magazine’s content.
I’ll give credit where credit is due, however: TGMP seems to really make an effort at getting all or most male voices heard and, hen one does that, a lot of junk will be published. I haven’t seen anything here, however, that’s more gratuitously “junk science” than the stuff one sees in most women-oriented publications. Stuff about “testosterone poisoning” and “patriarchy”, just for one. Not to mention the gratuitous use many of these sites make of the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder. To hear some female-oriented bloggers put it, even the site of a word like “rape” is enough to permanently shatter the egg-shell fragile psyches of the victims of violence.
A) In this society, you have privileges that women don’t. You have privileges that gay men don’t. As such, a gay man saying something rude like that doesn’t hold the same threat or charge as a htereosexual man saying it to a woman. Period.
B) I agree regarding the lazy and possibly damaging use of the rape metaphor, but we can move past that and agree that the kind of experience FeistyWoman is talking about is damaging, threatening, and non-consensual. I hope we can, anyway.
Eirene, I only bother to listen to accusations of “privileges” when they are backed up by some sort of definition of privilege and an example of what my privilege supposedly is. Otherwise, it’s simply bullshit, because what the person making the accusation is saying is that I have some ineffable trait which means that bad behavior against me is completely justified.
Furthermore, you are pretty well uninformed about how violent certain alternative sexuality scenes can be in Brazil. In particular, transvesites in Rio de Janeiro have a fairly long history of being fairly willing to kick people’s asses at the drop of a dime. I think you are making the kind of observation re: supposed “privileges” that only a very sheltered person would make.
As for “gay men saying something rude” not being a threat, I’m at a bit of a loss to see how rude behavor is ipso facto a threat to anyone. Maybe you could help me out here.
Thaddeus, you’re giving me plenty of anecdotal evidence here. I’m sure you’re aware that the rates of rape and assault on women and gays by men are far higher than the reverse; I’m sure you can practice some basic empathy and recognize that the power dynamics are structured against them. If nothing else, I’m sure you can recognize that because they are marginalized groups, they are socialized to fear assault and rape in a way that men are not. I am not calling transvestites or women weak, but just because said transvestites “kick ass at the drop of a hat” does not mean that this is untrue (and also, transvestites are NOT NECESSARILY GAY).
(One wonders how they came to be known for that in the first place, by the way: presumably circumstances give them plenty of opportunities to do so? Which would support my point.)
I will not remark on your comments about Brazil, because I know too little about the culture. However, I’m confident in the application of what I’ve said to cultures I’ve had exposure to — all the North American cultures, and several of the European ones.
“what the person making the accusation is saying is that I have some ineffable trait which means that bad behavior against me is completely justified. ”
How incredibly defensive! Pointing out that context matters is not “completely justifying” bad behavior against you, and nothing in my post suggested it was. I am simply pointing out that context matters, and that a pass on a hetero male by a gay male is not the same thing as a pass on a woman by a hetero male. It means different things, has different applications, because of the surrounding culture. Surely this is very basic?
The trait, by the way, is hardly ineffable. if you take objection to the word “privilege,” think “cultural context,” if you prefer.
Yeah Eirene, I am aware that the stats – as far as we have them – regarding rape of women by men are far worse than the opposite. As for rapes of gays by “men”, you seem to presume here that gays aren’t men, so it’s kind of difficult to see what you’re getting at there. Do you REALLY think that men who rape other men worry about whether or not their victims are gay? Do you think that there’s some sort of gay ID card they look for and, if a man doesn’t have it, he gets a “bro pass”?
There ARE no stats for male-on-male rape, that I’m aware of, that break down agressors into gay and non-gay categories. So at least half of what you’re saying is simply wrong, Eirene.
Furthermore, in Brazil, like in many places in the world, male-on-male sexual assault is a time-honored method of “demasculizing” one’s enemy.
I recently went to Belém do Para, for example, and saw a prison museum there. One of the commonly used torture tools was a wooden didldo, about 5 centimeters thick. And this wasn’t what the prisoners used, mind you: it’s what the police used to disicipline recacitant prisoners. If you are a male and are ever kidnapped or held captive in Brazil, you can be assured that the threat of sexual torture will be ever present.
When we turn to the topic of male on female rape, the best studies out there indicate that it’s 2-6% of the men doing this and guess what? Those SAME men are also responsible for a big chunck of male-on-male violence.
You’ll notice, by the way, that the male victims of EVERY OTHER violent crime but rape outweoigh the female victims by quite a lot.
Now, I’ll cop to not being that afraid of being raped by a stranger when I walk down a street at night, but if you’re half as informed about rape as you seem to be, you’ll agree that the chances of having that happen to you, as a women, are vanishingly small. The vast majority of sexual assailants are people women know and trust.
So this brings us back to my original question: what “privilege” is this that we’re talking about here?
Certainly it isn’t the privilege of not being assaulted or violated. As a man, I’m much more likely – several times more likely – to be the victim of violence than you are. In fact, it always shocks me just how unaware women, in general, are to any form of potential violence OTHER than rape. I’ll give you a great example that happened to me the other day…
I was walking with a female friend in Largo do Machado at 2AM. We had both been drinking and were looking for a cab up to Santa Teresa. Many cab drivers in Rio don’t like going there because it’s high up, the roads suck and there used to be a lot of robberies.
So after the third taxi driver had turned us down, my female companion shouted out at him “You don’t need to be scared of ST anymore! It’s been pacified so wimps like you can drive up !” The driver slammed on his brakes, reversed and pulled right up to my feet, shouting “What the hell did you call me, motherfucker?”
My companion is half my size and has a voice like a small bird. She was also in the road shaking her fist at the driver. There’s no conceivable way he could have mistaken her voice and stance for mine, but he chose to because I was the man, so thus – in his sexist view of things – I was responsible for whatever my female companion said.
Taxi drivers in Rio – the western hemisphere’s most dnagerous city – routinely go armed and often use amphetamines to stay awake on night shifts. I just spread my hands and said nothing. Luckily, at that moment, the taxi behind the guy started haonking his horn and the driver had to pull off. I turned to my companion and said “Jeezis! Don’t mouth off to these guys, because I’m the one who’s going to catch hell if you do!” She just laughed and told me to “chill out” because it was all just a big game to her.
I admit that men are not too worried about rape, but you’re absolutely wrong if you think we’re not hyper aware of other forms of violence – violence which we are much more likely to face than a woman rape.
So who has the “privilege” of ignoring violence again, Eirene? I’d say that both genders face violence from different angles and both genders tend to ignore the forms of violence which don’t target them. The argument that this is thus some sort of “privilege” is thus pretty damned weak.
…transvestites are NOT NECESSARILY GAY.
Ahn, yes. The Anglo propensity that calling everything by its proper name somehow makes the world more just, righteous and beautiful.
Where did I say that all transvestites were gay, E? In Brazil, transvestites most definitely are people with XY chromosomes who have sex with other men. People with XY chromosomes who dress in women’s clothing are properly “cross dressers”. Given that the common gloss for men who have sex with men is “gay” – and given that the comments section here doesn’t allow us to write long, explicatory footnotes qualifying our terms – I’m fairly certain that you can forgive my horribly unpolitically-correct statement that certain gay scenes in Rio, particularly those involving transvestites, are notoriously violent. It’s debateable whether or not transvestites are gay.
(By the way, most trans people say “no”, resoundingly. Many also say “yes”, however. When the World Political Correctness Congress comes to a concensus on this issue, I hope I will be duly informed.)
If you want to learn more about transvestitism and violence in Brazil, I suggest you read Don Kulick’s excellent Travesti. Or see the film Madame Satan (though Madame Satã was properly a gay cross-dresser and not a transvestite.)
I will not remark on your comments about Brazil, because I know too little about the culture. However, I’m confident in the application of what I’ve said to cultures I’ve had exposure to — all the North American cultures, and several of the European ones.
Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy, too – not to mention the several hundred Native cultures in North America, as well as the many sub-cultures which exist on both continents? And by “exposure”, do you mean you’ve hung out, long term, among the men who have sex with men in all those cultures? Finally, surely you realize that even your worldly experience has put you in contact with far less than 10% of the world’s peoples? Because if not, I would suggest that you are making huge generalizations based on a very narrow database.
I am simply pointing out that context matters, and that a pass on a hetero male by a gay male is not the same thing as a pass on a woman by a hetero male. It means different things, has different applications, because of the surrounding culture. Surely this is very basic?
The original point of your argument, if you’ll recall, is not that these experiences mean different things or that context doesn’t matter: the point is that somehow, as a (presumably) het male, I have no experience in being the focus of dangerous sexual attention.
Here in Rio, in fact, I have been the focus of dangerous sexual attention coming from women. One of life’s small ironies is that while North American women are often terrified by the idea that someone will slip “roofies” in their drink in a bar, in Rio, such practices are almost always directed against by women against men. There’s even a slang term for it: “Good Night Cinderella”. The woman flirts with you, you agree to go somewhere else, she calls for a nightcap and pays the bartender extra to slip you the mickey. When you get where you’re going, you fall asleep and she strips you clean, often dumping you in a gutter afterwards.
So I find it rather humorous when I talk to North American women who presume that they face far many more dangers than I do when going into a bar.
I would consider those comments about splitting someone open to be very rude behavior, and I would call those comments physically threatening. If you slice-kicked him off the barstool and I were on the jury, it would be difficult for me to find you guilty of a crime.
BUT, I’m not sure there is such a crime as “aggressive looking.” The eyes are passive receptors. They don’t actually produce rays that shoot out and bombard other people. And, when I think of leering, I think of someone staring and smiling with a really ugly mouth of teeth. To me, “leering” has the connotation of being stared at by someone not very attractive. Are attractive men guilty of leering, or is it just the unwanted ones? I’m not trying to hairsplit this issue down to nothing, but I tend to think there’s a difference between looking and action.
Of course, I also tend to think the men who make those comments to their buddies are the least likely to be a threat to you. They strike me as being incredibly terrified of women or trying very, very hard to appear strictly heterosexual when there may be some doubts in their minds. A lot of them are barricading the closet door as fast as they can.
I’m missing something here: where did someone talk about “slicing someone open”? Was that post deleted?
Sorry, it was in response to FW’s earlier message:
“Uh, you might want to try having a man look at your rear end as though it’s a rack of rib eye ala sherry au jus w/ a side of country biscuits announce to his buddies out loud enough so that you can hear how much he’d like to SPLIT THE SUCKER IN HALF.[Emphasis added.]
Then you can tell me what it means to be visually raped.”
I must have clicked the wrong “Reply” button
“A man leering at any woman is disgusting PERIOD, regardless if he’s a young, old, hot, ugly, fat, loaded, broke or what have you.”
Exactly.
Trying to cast this as a specific characteristic of older men is ridiculous and offensive.
I don’t see any indiciation where it’s been said that learing is ONLY a specific characteristic of older men. However this is what this article addresses. Other articles on GMP have addressed younger boys and how they react and treat girls too. Are we going to start saying that anything that narrows down to specfics in gender or age is automatically offensive because it pinpoints a certain group? How do we ever really work out any issues if that’s the case?
Older men lear. Yes, younger men can be just as uncouth and lear too. But this issue pertains to older men’s reactions to younger women and how it affects both men and women. By speaking about the different dichotomy that happens with older men and how they relate to women of different ages, doesn’t make it offensive. Because not once was it said that only older men lear. The fact is, there are plenty of older men that lear and we need to be able to talk about that with honesty since it’s clearly an issue for many girls. And we can see that in the women that shared their experience all through out this article.
OMG it’s L-E-E-R….please, it’s just painful and Shakespeare is raging….
I’m going to be 37 next month, not particularly ‘young’, but also not ready to be sexually shelved just yet…and I have to tell you that I’ve been LEERed at more in the past 3 years by BOYS 17-22 ish than I have by men who are in their 50′s or older. And I’ve seen women in their 30′s, 40′s and up LEERing at boys who are in their late teens and early 20′s.
This is not a gender exclusive sexual dysfunction of the pedophilic kind dear, it’s a gender transcendent personality disorder.
Seems to me your experience is for another article, regarding the dichotomy of younger men and older women. I can’t help but wonder if those younger guys that …wait for it …wait for it..leered at you think “check out that hot cougar/milf” or if they just appreciate you as a good looking woman. Because if it’s the first, then we still have a dichotomy of men/boys fetishizing women based on age.
Regardless of your experience, since this piece is about older men and how they relate to younger women, talking about other scenerios only distracts from the true topic at hand. And by talking about a specific situation of older men/ younger women, doesn’t mean anyone is claiming it’s gender exclusive and there aren’t other issues concerning older women that hunt for younger men.
My issue with your arguement is the same point I was trying to make to Thaddeus. By addressing specifics of how older men relate to younger women, and the clear issues that come up (just look at the number of posts by women that stated their negative experiences iwth older men), in no way insinuates that older women that hunt exclusively for younger men don’t have their own set of issues. There is still a much bigger feitishization of older men with younger women then older women with younger men.
No, my post and position is completely on point Erin. Hugo’s article is about how men, specifically older men fetishize younger women, and is peppered with implications about how young women should always be on guard against the dirty old man wanking in the alleyway just waiting for a chance to jump out and rape the first 6th grader they see. The article assigns this disposition to ALL men (as presumably, most boys will not remain boys forever, and will eventually grow up to be “older men” who will look at a younger woman).
To passively accept his maligning of an entire gender rather than looking at the behavior, and how it CROSSES genders is repugnant and not a very intelligent way to have a discussion/debate.
Thaddeus was absolutely right in his post, to paint all older men with this brush is offensive.
Funny how people are so willing to use literary disconstruction to bring out the unstated assumptions of a post when the topic is male vs. female sexism. I agree with Natasha: by applying the same sort of feminist literary critique used on patriarchical texts, it becomes quite clear what Hugo is saying. He most certainly is implying that this is very much an older male problem – almost specifically so (though Hugo is clever enough to always leave himself a textual backdoor out of which he can duck if challenged on his many “-isms”).
All I’m doing here is giving the same critical attention to Hugo’s assumptions and their implications as I would to any patriarchical text. And I have feminist scholars to thank for this skill.
Natasha, if you say your point is spot on, it must be. Case closed.
But clearly there are people that disagree.
Older men do infact fetishize younger women, that’s a reality that happens.
Several woman here have shared their experiences with older men behaving inappropriately toward them. I’ve had my own experiences as well. These shouldn’t be undermined because other age inappropriate situations happen too. And those are good topics and subjects as well. Lets specifically talk about how older women relate to younger boys. Lets specifically talk about how younger men treat younger women. But lets at least be honest enough to also discuss how older men relate to younger women specifically too. If you don’t have the capability to be able to narrow down a discussion to the different components that go into each group, without having to say “this happens over here too”, how can we have a real discussion and solve what happens within a certain group? These ages and gender groups bring on different results and interactions. And to talk about one over the other in no way minimizes anyone else. To say that all groups are equal is disingenuous. There are different questions that come up with each group.
Heck, If we said younger girls are more violent and we need to look at why; that shouldn’t be so offensive that someone would feel the need to counter it with “but older women are violent too!”. Sure, yes. Older women can be violent too. But there are different reasons why younger girls may be acting out violently from older women. That’s not offensive, that’s reality. And it shouldn’t be any more offensive to anyone to pinpoint older men and how they relate to younger women specifically.
I really wonder how many men have been looking at the same kind of porn of women 18-24 since they were teenagers, into their 20s, into their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s….while they and their partners aged on (while the former pornstars they lusted after aged on.) Men’s sexuality is better then that. It has the ability to be better then that. But since culturally young women are fetishized, and porn plays such a big role in speaking to male sexuality, there are a lot of men out there that have let their sexual interests remain stagnate. Men can grow beyond their teenaged years, mentality, physically, emotionally and sexually. Depictions of dumb, ape drooling men in media harm everyone. Implications that a grown man’s sexuality doesn’t grown with the rest of him plays into that “men are one dimensional” media mentality.
What I can’t figure out, Erin, and maybe you can help me here, is the presumption that age-similar relationships are necessarily more just, balanced, less exploitative and etc.
Not necessarily, but come on. Is it so difficult to comprehend that the disparity in power can lead to exploitation? In a way that happens more readily than in age-similar relationships?
OF COURSE individual relationships can be exceptions, but we’re all talking in generalities and trends here. Let’s please get over that.
Dear Eirene,
When you say “Is it so difficult to understand that a disparity in power can lead to exploitation”, I actually do have a hard time understanding what you mean. You seem to feel that power is something that people “have”, a sort of innate quality that adheres to them due to certain discriptors and that said power is more or less uniformly distributed according to these descriptors.
The key assumptio you are making here is that age gives people power. I don’t see that, at all, so perhaps you could explain why you think of age in that way.
Secondly, I’m not quite sure that disparities in power necessarily lead to exploitation. In fact, I’m not even sure how you would define “exploitation”. In much MRA/feminist discourse, these terms get tossed around as if they were self-evident, but looking over the comments section here alone should show us that they are not.
When I talk about generalities and trends, I want to see clear definitions of the terms used and some empirical data to back up the proposed model. So far, all I see here are attempts to create semi-reductionist moral laws (i.e. age-disparate relationships = +exploitation) without any of the terms being deifnied and CERTAINLY without much other than annecdotal evidence being offered up.
Shakespeare rolling in his grave because he wrote _King Lear_ or because he wrote in English? If it’s the latter, then I have to point out that English was not a standardized language until AFTER Shakespeare. In his day there were multiple accepted ways of spelling most words.
I like you.
It’s germane to wonder aloud why bad behavior by older men is worthy of specific examination, Erin. Not just because of what Natasha brings up. Some of the women on this thread have actually opined that it’s worse to be exploited by an older man than an age-peer, on no more solid a basis than that they feel the former is ickier.
Well-remembered, Cat.
Why shouldn’t it be worthy of specific examination Catullus? I think how older women relate to young men is always worthy of specific examination too. I think how young men and women relate to each other is worthy of specific examination. But when we try to distract from how each different group relates to each other, we miss out on digging deeper into their different and personal dichonomies. And lets be honest. How younger men relate to younger girls is different then how older men relate to younger girls.
Of course being sexually exploited by an older man is more threatening. Older men have more power vs a younger boy or girl. They have more experience and knowledge. Younger boys haven’t learned the mature adult ways to get what you want. Younger boys mess up, they are eager to please a girl, they don’t have the knowledge. Older men are naturally more threatening because they are older and knowledgable.
Girls grow up with older men being figures of leadership and strength. So when you hit puberty and start seeing older men responding to you differently, for lack of a better word, it’s confusing. You want boys your own age to respond to you but when older men do, you don’t understand. You grow up seeing your friends mother’s and fathers and you think that these men should naturally be attracted to women their own age. But when you see your friend’s father checking you out for the first time, it’s crushing. When you notice your own dad flirting with the young college waitress for the first time, it’s disappointing. Because these men’s reaction to you is exploitive. Because you thought that these men had more respect for their wives.
If these older men took a less selfish and predatory interest in younger women, and instead treated them with fatherly concern and respect, I really believe young women would learn to develop more healthy relationships with men in general. But if all men are going to do is sexually exploit girls and women, there is no room to develop a healthy relationship OR to learn that there is more to men or that there is more a man could want you for then just sex.
Having read the article and comments, I can’t help but wonder if the fetish is directed at older men.
I’ll qualify this by identifying myself as a 54 year old man.The very subject of your fetish. I happen to have a daughter 25 years younger. What I experience when I am in public with her is most particularly women giving me dirty looks. Of course I should readily accept the fact that a 54 year old man out with his 29 year old daughter must be a pervert.
I also have a 27 year old son and a 6 year old son, when my youngest was still in a stroller, I had people openly comment to me that they didn’t think gay men should be allowed to raise children.
However I try not to let the sexual depravity that governs what some believe to be their intelligence, define the relationships in my life.
I like to think that my fatherhood is a role, and not the skin I wear. It is a dream of mine that my children one day see me as a person and as a man. I have no interest in making it my personal responsibility to father the fatherless. Although I do possess that level of compassion, it’s not my job. Maybe the key to more healthy relationships is to stop trying to fit people into safe and neat little roles.
I have also had a 5 year relationship with a woman 12 years younger than me, she is mother to my youngest son. Although I love her dearly, she has to many issues with her own father and I am not willing to pay his tab.To be objectified by a younger woman in such a manner is I think more common than not.
I think young girls typically have a lot of dependency issues, that make coupling with an older man feel safer for them. For myself I have no illusions, I don’t need the extra years of prolonged parenting.
You don’t know what ‘fetish’ means. Its a sexual arousal from *nonsentient* things. Inanimate objects like shoes or pleather.
The poster does not have a ‘fetish’ for men your age. In fact she has a stated aversion.
WTF are you talking about!?!?!
Let’s examine WHY it’s ickier for a moment, shall we? The obvious answer is that the older men are unattractive, but if you really examine what these women are saying, it’s more along the lines of a kind of threat. Not, of course, an older man threatens a younger woman every time he hits on her, but the power disparity is keenly felt.
If you look at it in the context of a culture where institutionalized sexism still exists, then it makes sense. All other things being equal, we wouldn’t care.
I have a hunch that the “power” thing is way blown up to be something it isn’t. Philosophers would say we’ve reified the concept. My sense, and I could be wrong, is that men signal that they’re available for relationships, and women then do the choosing. I don’t doubt that older men can seem very impressive to young women– or not. Whether they seem attractive physically or not varies according to the women’s tastes.
I said this somewhere else here, but what I suspect is that older women’s regrets of relationships they had when young with an older man is due to a memory shift. Older women have an interest in putting out that older men should not be involved with younger women– increasing the pool of potential partners for themselves.
I agree with Henry: most of the people using the term “power” here couldn’t logically define it if you paid them to. It’s just simply a rhetorical place-holder, something which certain categories of people are presumed to have, but which doesn’t have to be shown or proven.
I myself am constantly wondering at what this “power” is that older people supposedly have in general. And, going on Eirene’s statement above, that “older men are unattractive”, it seems to me that much of the female reaction to this isn’t based on these guys’ power, but their PRESUMPTION.
In other words, the woman inquestion is quite awware that SHE’S the one in the socially superior niche, so how DARE that ugly old street person wink and leer at her?
What is this power?
How about that every single president (with exception of Barack Obama) has been an old white man?
Most congresspeople are old white men.
Most mayors and governors are old white men.
Most college professors until recent have been old white men.
Most employers (top echeleon) are old white men.
The police will treat an old white man much differently than a young black man for instance.
Power is defined as the ability to make someone do something you want them to, even if they don’t want to. Most of us white guys don’t have it either. My definition is a paraphrase of Max Weber’s. I am a college professor, however. Many of our new hires seem to be women or minorities these days. I guess, in all honesty, I don’t really care about any of the issues you list above, except the last one– and I think some (not much) profiling is something it’s okay for police to do. Most of your other issues are changing for the better, and your examples are more historical than current. I certainly want to see increasing diversity in all of the positions you cite, and I think we’re getting it.
Nice to see soemone actually using some social theory for a change instead of buzz-words.
He’s LOOKING at me! Call the National Guard!
Now, now, that’s an overreaction. Simply pass a law mandating eye-birkas for all men. That should prevent impure thoughts. Sunglasses are acceptable in a pinch, I suppose.
You are misinterpreting evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary pysch claims the subconscious is responsible for a lot of our behaviors. Animals don’t mate knowing they’re going to produce offspring. Animals mate due to instinct, but the reason they mate is subconscious and it is to produce offspring. Consciously, older men go after younger women for their reasons, but subconsciously they’re going after young women because young women are more fertile. Ev-psych isn’t justifying this behavior. Ev-psych is trying to make us more aware of this behavior so we as human beings can realize that our subconscious does play an important role in our mating behaviors, and so that way we can have better control over our behaviors. This isn’t cultural, because older men going after younger women has always existed. It’s not a recent phenomenon. What’s recent is older women going after younger men. Since the beginning of civilization, however, it is always been more common for a young girl to be married off to an older man.
It would be great if more people used evo-psych as a way of understanding and having more control over their behaviors. Unfortunately, it seems like it’s become a popular way for a lot of people, who have never actually studied evolution or psychology, to justify behavior WITHOUT having to question or try to understand their own unique motivations, or anyone else’s. In that way, I think it’s reductive, and even nihilistic.
Amber,
You make a good point about the power of biological/subconscious drives and about seeing some value in looking at evolutionary psychology.
However, many people tend to be selective about applying these theories. I’m not saying you’re being selective, but the fact is that there are many (potentially) psychobiological drives in people, and they are not necessarily aligned for a single purpose. They may in fact contradict each other.
First of all, there really is no purposeful end point to natural selection. Evolution is not about moving a species in a particular direction, and not every characteristic of a species is geared towards its survival. Not everything biological is there in order to propagate a species.
Second of all, there are lots of very powerful drives associated with biology that have at best mixed value when it comes to guaranteeing reproduction. One example would be the pretty good tool-making brain that humans have developed over the millennia. It’s great for making hunting tools, cooking food, keeping children alive with medicine (good for survival), but also good for making nuclear weapons and overfarming the topsoil (bad for survival). And, of course, this very naturally evolved tool-making brain has invented birth control, written laws restraining sexuality, and childfree subcultures.
Third, perhaps there is a meta-evolutionary theory here, but I’m not sure where male homosexuality (in terms of preferences, practices, whatever) would fit into this theory about men seeking healthy women. I’m sure Alexander the Great was in touch with his biological drives, was no doubt a fine human specimen, could have devoted many resources to children, and had uncounted opportunity to reproduce, but he spent much more time having sex with men than women.
Finally, even though I think there is something “hardwired” about human sexuality, certainly about attraction, there is certainly a lot of cultural variation, which is I think your point about the “beginnings of civilization.” Human have existed LONG before the societies we call “civilizations” ever began, and before that people did things very differently. The attraction of older men for younger women can also be a product of social and cultural factors, which is I think your point about older men marrying younger women. (And, of course, marriage, which is a social/cultural practice, does not necessarily mean there is a biological attraction.) Not to mention the fact that the brain, even at some very deep levels, is affected by environment – the brain shapes us and we shape the brain back.
Finally men and women are speaking out against the hypocrisy of feminism: http://goo.gl/f4pXo
Actually older men dating younger women is NOT culturally determined, it is biologically determined, and it is beneficial to the human species, according to the latest research: http://scienceblog.com/cms/old-men-chasing-young-women-good-thing-14203.html
doh!!!
nice links Mark.
right now, the tabula rasists are weaving a long winded ‘yarn’ to cover their nakedness
Did you not see the references the article linked dismantling this kind of pop-science, which is by many intelligent estimations tripe? Evolutionary psychology is a very flawed and biased enterprise. Read yourself some Cornelia Fine.
I’ve actually now read much of Fine’s main book. It’s a pastiche of weak social psychological studies. They show things like women doing as well as men in math (in small samples) if properly motivated (hence under special conditions.) It, however, doesn’t account for the many cross-cultural consistencies in female-male differences. And it really doesn’t encounter EP in any meaningful way.
Especially telling is the fact that Fine loses her temper about halfway through and resorts to angry polemics.
well aside from not quite knowing how to respond to the blanket allegation that all men will lust after children and that this is a male only problem i cant help but think of noted feminist Germain Greer , radical feminist type and her book the boy . and im going to post a few quotes this female paragon of all things feminist and good said .
Greer claims, as the last bastion to be mounted, a woman’s right to ogle. Her argument is that during three decades of sexual politicking, women have forgotten the sensual delights to be had from the short-lived beauty of the young male, located between the sprouting of his first pubic hair and the growth of his beard.
Greer can always be relied on to shout down the received wisdom and she begins by contesting the legal outlawry of what she calls ‘boy sex’. Why, she demands, has our society criminalised ‘intimacy between individuals of disparate ages’? If nature didn’t intend boys to be seduced by older men and women, why did it make them so damnably fetching, so downy-cheeked, rangy-limbed and pert-buttocked? And what harm, she asks, can be done by romps that are ‘irresponsible, spontaneous and principally self-pleasuring’? Later she risks a defence of sex tourism, proposing that the carnal traffic runs both ways and demanding: ‘Who is seducing whom?’ I expect that the guardians of public probity have already taken up her cheeky challenge to fisticuffs.
we see more and more evidence of boys being abused by women in the media , so while many men may do this , im sorry its not a male only issue, difference is modern culture dictates that its only men who are wrong .
I had high hopes for this site, im losing them more and more.
I think Eve Ensler’s feminist play “Vagina Monogules” section called “”The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could” in which a 24 year old women rapes and 14year old girl after giving her alcohol and is described as “good rape” is worth a mention here too.
It isn’t only a male issue. You’re completely correct. However, it is predominantly a male issue, and sociology supports that.
Translation – its only a problem if men do it.
No. You are taking things way too personally. THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU OR YOUR WORTH AS A PERSON, THIS IS ABOUT SOCIETY: http://ilykadamen.blogspot.com/2007/03/occasionally-conversations-with-my-man.html
Look, if any intelligent discussion about this is to be made, you need to stop assuming statements like “this issue is predominantly a problem with men, though women also have their version of it as well,” mean “men are in the wrong, women are not.” The trend of older women preying on younger men is worthy of discussion and has, in fact, been discussed quite a bit. I’d be happy to discuss it, and I find what Germaine Greer said abominably creepy, for the most part. But that is not what this article is about; that’s not the subject at hand; and you strike me as yelling “this isn’t a problem because women do it to!”, which is, to be honest, a spectacularly emotion-driven response that misses The Point entirely.
The article did not, in fact, restrict the phenomenon to men. It just assumes that men participate in it more often, which is a correct assumption. (Media fascination with lady teachers and young women aside — NOT the best source of data, there, you see.) Let’s see if I can dig up some studies I’ve found on the matter, shall we? The numbers show pretty conclusively that there is a difference, and there have been some elegant theories as to why it is the case. I don’t know why it matters, because it’s a problem either way and no one said any differently, but if it will help move the conversation along productively I can do it.
No thanks Eriene
I’ve no interest in reading 1000 words that are attempting to masquerade as reasoned response but contain no cogent argument while pretending that you have credible research to back up your unsupported claims and conflate “preying on” with age difference, its too irritating and irrational a style of debate for me.
I love Germain Greer. Now that was a feminist! Ireally don’t give a cra*p about who ogles whom.
Does it now? What sociology, precisely, are we talking about here?
Its odd that a magazine that is supposedly for men is paying someone to write polemics that malign men.
And a man that thinks that men in general are attracted to 10 year olds, is likely telling us more about himself than anything else.
I didn’t get get any thought from the article that it was saying that men in general are attracted to 10 year olds.
I also don’t see what malign’s men here. The reality is that there is an issue with men fetishizing women based on age. And there are certainly enough men that don’t think their peers are as worthy as they consider themselves. When I onlined dated I had so many older men that contacted me that had their standard age range years younger then themselves. They didn’t even want to consider a woman their own age.
Maybe who is really being maligned is women? Since it’s women that get the message that after a certain age, their useless and unworthy. While older men are more reveered.
If you dint see how the OP and his supporters are maligning men, it might be because you are just used to doing it and so don’t notice it.
You seem to be motivated by the fact that people are generally most attractive in certain ways when they are in their 20s and after that its down hill, for most people and if it were somehow possible to control what people find attractive there would be no downward slope in reproductive value after a certain age.
A question, in your ideal society, would women over a certain age be allowed to find men in and women in their 20s attractive?
You clearly didn’t read the article. Try again.
Well, teen girl snark isn’t answering the valid question I asked you about your position and concerns about some single men of a certain age finding women that are younger than themselves attractive.
I also wonder how you envisage controlling male and female sexuality to your ideal specifications, given that older men and younger women is and has been the norm throughout all cultures and many women fetishise the older men men that have got their wealth and power together… and men are responsible for just 20% of divorces, so more often than not, its men that are getting dumped at a certain age.
Also your statement that “older men are revered” is patently untrue, the 50 year old blading divorced guy that does handy work around here is not revered, perhaps you are thinking about some celebrity.
You people tend to think subjectively and in stereotypes, double standards and sexist generatisiations and then get angry when people point it out to you.
Good lord. The amount of projection here is really, really amazing and revealing. Where on earth did you ever get the idea that anyone thinks each and every older man/younger women relationship is bad? Maybe it’s the same far-reaching insight that allows you to KNOW that older men/younger women have “been the norm throughout all cultures.” (Citations, please?)
No erin
you are too irrational and intellectually dishonest.
*Waves* I’m Erin..you were talking to Eirene. But I like her points anyway.
I loved this article, and I would just add to the below comment, that the dismissal of older women effects younger women, and that it’s equally as harmful to younger women as it is to older women (the rejection of age appropriate women), because it’s this terrible threat of aging and invisibility which shadows and nuances everything.
Truth be told, 40 year old men would benefit from loving and dating women their own age, and any woman more than 5 or so years younger really isn’t the same age. The saddest thing is that women blossom after 35, and men their own age are just totally missing out on the really good stuff, beyond fertility markers….. It’s such a waste, and creates so much sadness and loneliness. It just distorts some otherwise very lovely people.
—————————
“A related issue, of course, is not just he impact on young women — but on older women who are ignored and passed over (like Sean’s barista’s mom) because of the cultural fetishization of youth. That’s part of the dialogue as well.”
Do you have any suggestions for keeping male reproductive value high in the minds of women regardless of their looks, age and social status?
This argument that yourself and Erin are putting forward I think is the other side of the coin to the “nice guys” and/or broke guys complaining about women chosing men with swagger and/or money.
IMO its more of a feminist social engineering project than an authentic mens magazine, it gives me the creeps but on the plus side, when stuff like this is published out in the open, its debunked, out in the open.
Frankly, I think the fact that TGMPM is pissing off feminists and MRAs in roughly the same proportion is a great indicator of its relevance to men’s issues.
When both sides if an ideological divide hate you, you know you’re thinking outside the box, at least. It doesn’t make you any more correct, necessarily, but at least you’re no longer going over the same well-worn ground as before.
The gmp is viewed as a feminist publication by the mm and feminists beef is that its not overtly feminist enough, the mm was pissed off because of the way gmp pretended to be interested in the mm, gained some trust and then attacked it, the mm has now lost interest, and gmp hosts blatant misandry and misandrist commentary. So I think that you are mistaken when you view the tmp as being in the center of some ideological divide. There are many here that see themselves as qualified to make blanked statements about the mm, all say different things, none of done their due diligence.
The gmp is viewed as a feminist publication by the mm and feminists beef is that its not overtly feminist enough, the mm was pissed off because of the way gmp pretended to be interested in the mm, gained some trust and then attacked it, the mm has now lost interest, and gmp hosts blatant misandry and misandrist commentary. So I think that you are mistaken when you view the tmp as being in the center of some ideological divide.
I don’t see feminists coming here and posting in frenzied droves like the MRA. False equivalence.
I don’t see feminists coming here and posting in frenzied droves like the MRA.
They do not have to. The site already presents and supports their positions.
No. I don’t think MRAs and feminists are “both sides of an ideological divide”. It’s not like racists and black’s rights activists, or gay-bashers and gay pride people are in any way on equal footing. MRAs are not a marginalized group.
Neither are feminists. They just like to think of themselves as such, and they go out of their way to pretend that only women are victims of discrimination, oppression, and violence, or at least the only victims worth discussing. For any feminist to complain about men’s rights activists is the definition of the pot calling the kettle black. It is akin to members of NAMBLA comparing people they do not like to pedophiles. Considering that feminists have a history of racism, homophobia, sexism, and classism within their movement, so they should not be so quick to make such comparisons.
Maribel, who said “equal footing”? “Two sides of an ideological divide” does not presume “equal footing”. And yes, anti-racist activists are DEFINITELY on the other side of an ideological divide from racists.
As for MRAs not being a marginalized group, both MRAs and feminists are pretty marginalized, actually. Most men and women could care less about the sort of ideological debates which go on across that divide. This is why so many women, for example, say “I’m not a feminist, but…” when they want to comment on some example of sexism.
Not me. I’m married to a 61 year old (still hot sex), and I’m 66 this month. I think 40 – 60 year olds are very attractive. I’ve had a number of lovers. Almost all were 2-7 years younger than me. I’m the oldest boy of seven siblings and cousins. Sibling rank order is supposed to have something to do with preferring older or younger mates. I did have a lover who was 10 years younger than I, and two who were more than 20 years younger than I. I had one lover who was 10 years older.
Among professors, you see few male professors dating undergraduates anymore. They’re too scared. I have seen in the past 15 years three FEMALE professor – undergraduate student relationships though. Two straight and one lesbian.
Is it so difficult to comprehend that the disparity in power can lead to exploitation?
No, however, that does not mean that it will or that exploitation exists in most age-disparate relationships.
Yet that is a non-issue because the comparison is not between people in actual relationships, but people who got harassed on the street by someone older. I experienced more than my fair share of older women leering at me and making comments. Same goes for older men, although I find it creepier when older women do it. That does not mean that an older woman I want to date will treat me that way (although I will never find out as I do not date older women).
In a way that happens more readily than in age-similar relationships?
Perhaps, although I wonder how much of that is because the older person exploited the younger person or that the person carried their own baggage into the relationship. If a person is looking for a father or mother figure, that could make that person feel exploited when the relationship sours.
Dear Joe,
I don’t know about you, but speakling for myself and almost every human being I know, we don’t generally have sex to procreate.
I figure that I must have had sex, oh, about 1500 times in my life. No children yet. People masturbate, too, when they’re horny and, as far as I know, solitary masturbation has yet to lead to one pregnancy.
Well we can eat for pleasure and even when we are not hungry, but the reason we eat and are rewarded for eating is survival of the species.
Right. But do you eat pizza or termites, Alister? You CAN eat both and enjoy them. Culture drives you to the one and not the other.
Same-o, same-o with regards to the targets for your sex drive.
At first I thought this was too simplified an analogy, but the more I think about it the more it seems to work. I would turn it around and take it a few steps further. Eating and sex are things that do keep the species alive, but a lot of those activities do very little to keep the species going. They are “natural” behaviors shaped a whole lot by social and cultural context.
Just because something has some biological or evolutionary roots does not mean that it’s not a problem. Just because it has some kind of survival usefulness does not make it totally acceptable, and just saying that some behavior is linked to instinct doesn’t mean that’s the end of all debate. Saying “all heterosexual attraction is just instinct, end of story,” is like saying “obesity isn’t a problem because eating is perfectly natural, so no more debate.”
(I don’t think older men being attractive to younger is inherently bad. I don’t think it’s actually a big problem, certainly not on the scale of obesity. In that way my analogy is pretty extreme.)
Agreed, Wellokay. No one doubts that the roots of the sex drive are biological. It’s what gets pitched as sexually desirable which varies wildly from culture to culture.
So what? Men go bald…. get a beer gut… knobby knees… less muscle tone… hair in all the wrong places… go gray…
Yeah, technology. And technology is not cultural at all, it’s biological, right?
Hook, the most basic definition of “culture”, proposed by Sir Wdward Tylor back in the late 19th century, includes technology, as has every single other definition of culture since.
So when you say “It’s manipulation of technology which makes women attractive and not biology”, you’re ultimately arguing for cultural determinism.
What bugs me is why is there even argument over whether or not its “normal” or “okay” or whatever?
Outside of the illegal behavior and the rude behavior does it really matter if old guys are attracted to younger women?
Yes, because it gets in the way of the young women reaching adult economic and psychological autonomy so they can make a choice in a mate, if they want to have children, with a clearer head.
I guess if your are a man that likes younger women, you wouldn’t care too much because you don’t really see women your own age as equals or even worthy of thought.
But as a woman who won’t be young forever, who would like to develop a strong monogamous relationship with one man where he sees me as beautiful as we age together, who won’t be oggling his daughter’s friends at some point in his life or always going back to porn of 18 year olds, it matters a great deal. I don’t want a man that’s fixated on younger women. I don’t want a man that wants to live the rest of his life always turning back to “barely legal” porn. I don’t want a man that I see checking out his own daughter’s friends. I don’t think you’re gonna find many women that do.
I do want a man whose sexual life grows with the rest of him. Who doesn’t let himself be reduced to a one deminsional aspect of sexuality because the media says that’s all he’s good enough for.
The issue is deeper then just basic biology. Which men are a victim to as well. Men hit 30 and their sperm count declines. Men at 30 are not as viable biologcal partners as their younger counterparts. Nature’s not that partial to men OR women. But it’s a reality a lot of men don’t want to admit because they don’t like being disposable. Either do women.
It matters. Just as itt matters if a woman is attracted to a guy for his money and objectifies him for it. Neither sex wants to be used for just money or just their body and or youth.
Woops..that was suppose to be a reply to “David” but for some reason it didn’t piggy bak onto his posting.
Joe, forgive me, but it’s hard to take the comment “you people have problems with basic logic” when it comes from the mouth of a guy who uses an eighth grade insult like “that’s retarded” as if it were some sort of serious critique.
No one is claiming that biological drives don’t underlie sex. what we are saying is that they don’t determine your sexual choice.
In the same way, your biological need to eat doesn’t determine whether or not you eat termites, Dominoe’s Pizza, or tofu.
Also, the idea that “whats good for you gives you your drives” is simple bullshit, Joe. You’re much better off eating salad than a Big Mac, but most people crave Big Macs far more than they do salads. It is not “normal” for people to be constantly eating junk food, even though there are pretty good biological reasons for our bodies to crave it.
Nothing in human sexuality is “natural” anymore, folks. Hasn’t been that way for tens of thousands of years, ever since we were “blessed” with culture.
Joe, for a man who likes to toss around the term “retarded” as an insult, you sure seem to have a problem with reading comprehansion.
I’m not critiquing your tone: I’m critiquing the idea that people’s sex drive “naturally” pushes them to one or another type of partner. Again, your biological need for food doesn’t drive you to eat ants and termites, I presume, although they are quite edible (and something opf a delicacy for our nearest biological relations).
The argument that biology “makes people naturally lust after younger folks” is flawed for the same reason. Biology makes you LUST: CULTURE gives you an appropriate target for your lusts.
But here’s the part of your post that I find developmentally disabled. You ask “If there is no such thing as natural why would the retarded article be named that?”
That is because the article is posing what we adults call “a rhetorical question”: Hugo already has an answer when he asks said question. The answer is “No, it’s not natural”.
Evolution has programmed males to seek out females at the height of their fertility, which just so happens to be teens and twenties. That instinct doesn’t go away no matter how old the guy gets.
I like how you point out that ALL men try to get out of fatherhood without even citing a study. It doesn’t matter that some stupid teens had sex with girls who lied about being on the pill and then sue him for alimony for not being ready for fatherhood. Evolution programmed him with desires that are meant to ensure the survival of the species; which have worked for the last few thousand years.
I like something I heard a while ago. “If men didn’t think with their dicks, then why would we be interested in women?”
Please see above for my perspective on evolution. I don’t want to get too redundant. Basically:
Unfortunately, natural selection does not actually program anything, because there is no higher purpose guiding natural selection. (No more than there’s a single God who just wanted men to be horny in his image. I seem to remember from Sunday school the story of God the Father — talk about old! — getting a young Jewish maiden pregnant, and in fact millions of people celebrate that story every year!) Next thing you know, people will be saying that nature hates gay people.
There are parts of human sexuality that make sex fun, and that certainly aids in getting humans to reproduce, but a lot of the fun bits have no chance of making reproduction happen.
If horniness is at heart only some basic reproductive drive, there are some serious flaws with nature’s strategy (assuming there is a strategy to nature). Looking only at the male side of things for the moment, I can think of a lot of sexuality that men “biologically” desire that have zero chance of getting someone pregnant. There is a whole lot of porn that men watch (so I’ve heard, anyway….) that shows activities that most definitely will not result in conception, and the viewing itself usually involves activities that will not result in conception. (I’m staying vague on purpose.)
Now maybe this is just the mind playing tricks to get the “selfish gene” the stuff that it wants, but it’s a crazy way to make that happen. I find the biological determinist argument in its simplest form to be not much deeper than saying “well, that’s just the way God wants it. If you don’t like it, take it up with Him!” (I find that religious argument intellectually lazy, too, no matter how strongly people feel about it.)
Pop evolutionary theory could be used to explain totally contradictory things, which to me means that it’s flawed as a precise theory. For example, you could use an evo-bio theory to show that monogamy is natural, and you could use an evo-bio theory to show that non-monogamy is natural. (I’ve seen both those arguments – can they both be right?)
“I can think of a lot of sexuality that men “biologically” desire that have zero chance of getting someone pregnant.”
Yeah. If the biological determinism were the case, then logically men would be dead set against heterosexual anal sex. (Sorry…)
I don’t see much in the way of convincing evidence refuting the very large historic, anecdotal, and experimental data for the biological/evolutionary explanation on why men find younger women sexually attractive other than “spare me”. I find the cultural argument proposed in this article troubling since it could easily be used (with just as much logical validity as the argument in this article) to say that since culture can and actually does create Men’s sexual desires, it’s our decadent Western culture that creates homosexualtiy or some BS like that. I think when your theories run along the same spectrum of logical rigorousness as the Westboro Baptist Church, you are on shaky ground indeed.
It would seem the ones that are taking how they want the world to be (without regard to how it actually might be) and walking back to a theory that matches that, are those agreeing with the author of this article.
If you are indeed “troubled”, you should be worried about determinism and not about whether or not the determinism is biological or cultural in nature.
Be troubled by this: almost all of the explanations for behaviors, given above, situate the root of said behavior in some sort of transhuman agency. Whether it’s society (i.e. patriarchy) that supposedly makes men act a certain way or biology, what everyone here seems to be arguing is that men have little to no internal agency in the way they treat women.
That’s blindingly stupid, people, and should obviously be refuted by simple observations of daily life, and yet pretty mmuch everyone here is arguing that men are a class of humans whose behavior is pre-determined by some outside factor.
I find this absolutely hilarious because if I were to ask the people making these claims if THEY feel their behavior is controlled by some transhuman factor like culture or nature, those people would most probably quickly assure me that they themselves are responsible for their behavior.
In other words, going on the comments and reactions above, it seems that most of the people arguing here simultaneously believe that they are individuals endowed with agency but that the rest of the human universe is made up of robots programmed to act a certain way by culture or nature.
Er, Hook… how do think cultures get changed? Violence, fear and shame are definitely at the top of the list when it comes to things that change culture. Also, there is no “norm in all other cultures” when it comes to sex. I know that both MRAs and feminists would love to believe that there is, but it simply isn’t true.
Thad, I think that that’s what “stochastic” means. My behavior can be controlled by me, but mass behavior is statistically predictable.
Great point about how certain sexual acts have nothing to do with conception but people love to do them anyway.
I think what a lot of gets put as ‘pop evolution theory’ is in fact a very reduced and simplistic understanding of evolutionary theory itself. When it comes to the evolution of sex, it operates on a spectrum or continuous scale. What usually gets put out is the Panglossian Adaptionist paradigm upon which a lot of evolutionary psychology is based. In actuality, evolutionary biology have been engaged in intense research and debate on the extent on this issue, suggesting that it may more complex that presenting sexual behaviour as “either or.”
yes it can be. its called versatility. its a very important tool for survival.
also don’t forget that our simple procreating desires are here for millions of years long before we became intelligent, the interesting spins to twist them in porn have been here for less than a 100 years.
how can a same age 16 year old boy be more responsible (protection etc.), than a lets say 14 years older (30 year old) guy. this idea is just complete madness
Two words, Hugo.
Twilight moms.