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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   28030 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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If some 20-year-old throws herself at a 40 year old centrist, he will go for it. Yet if you ask him about someone else, he will spout some “it’s creepy, that poor women” conformist sludge. Yet he is also aware of the knock-down “consenting adults, no harm done, women have agency” liberal argument. So he is unable to justify his middle position either in practice or in theory. It just looks like he’s socially pressured by middle aged women into parroting a feeling he doesn’t share or agree with.

It just looks like he’s socially pressured by middle aged women into parroting a feeling he doesn’t share or agree with.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of that going on. "Age gap" discussions have always been farcical. It's OK for a 20 year old woman to take a loan or a job from a 60 year old man, but not to have sex with him? The double-standard is extremely obvious, and it's clear that most "age gap" stuff is just older women being angry at older men not finding them attractive as they once did.

I'd go as far as to say that ~90% of the angry online/feminist discourse regarding the age gap is driven by urban middle-class PMC single women aged 31-33 expecting in vain urban middle-class well-paid high-status PMC single men aged 34-37 to marry them.

It's OK for a 20 year old woman to take a loan or a job from a 60 year old man, but not to have sex with him?

For most normal human beings, sex is tied up with emotion in such a way that these other things are not.

Yes. Although I admit, the age gap argument is the easiest to make, the one where the centrist will most readily concede. But imo it is fully generalizable to most issues involving women having sex : prostitution, porn, workplace sexual harassment, ‘college party culture’/drunk consent. Here again, the centrist is torn. He says one thing (we must protect women), but can justify another (women have agency). Part of his confusion comes from the fact that, as you mention, feminists/progressives and reactionaries are on the same side (women have no agency), so his usual ideological points of reference are all over the place and useless.

it's clear that most "age gap" stuff is just older women being angry at older men not finding them attractive as they once did.

While this may be true, my only exposure to the "age gap" discourse is 40-something women posting on Tumblr about how the teens/20-somethings policing age gaps are talking nonsense.

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