"Cougers," Entitlement, and Unexamined Bias
Hugo Schwyzer says
I had a similar conversation recently with an old friend, my age (and Dana’s). Single again after a twelve-year marriage, she’s recently been repeatedly “hit on” by her daughter’s soccer coach — a handsome lad in his late twenties, well over a decade her junior. My friend is flattered and physically attracted, but said essentially the same thing Dana did: she has no desire to be anyone’s mother, teacher, or babysitter. “I’m not here to give anyone experience”, she says.
...
Because I post so often on older men, younger women, I periodically get notes asking me to address the reverse: older women, younger men. There are a number of reasons I don’t post on the subject. ... Bottom line: I don’t see older women pursuing young men at the same rate that I see the reverse.
Not to put too fine a point on it but thanks to long-standing traditions having nothing to do with age one doesn't really see that many women of *any* age pursuing men. So it stands to reason you don't see older women (*especially* older women who'd have grown up even more indoctrinated than younger ones) pursuing younger men.
As for whether Hugo's friend would really have all that much to mother, teach, babysit, or "give anyone experience," to someone in his 20s that's, um, just as incredibly arrogant and "othering" as the older men who imagine they could do likewise to young adult women. So it's just as well that she declined.
And I want to be really clear here. I'm not calling that attitude "reverse sexism," I'm calling it just plain old sexism as in "to discriminate against an individual for their failure to adhere to the attributes, characteristics, and roles tradition designates as appropriate."
Because seriously, it's not enough for men to get over disdaining women who are taller, better educated, more intelligent, funnier, better compensated, more aggressive, and older if women aren't comfortable getting over complementary biases against shorter, less educated, less intelligent, less funny, more poorly paid, less assertive, or younger men.**
And just to be clear, I'm *not* flaming anyone here***. The thing about uncovering previously unexamined reservoirs of bias is that nobody needs to apologize or introspect. Not Hugo's friend and certainly not Hugo. But it does need examination.
[** And while I might be repeating myself, if you're really an exception then I'm obviously not referring you. --fl]
[*** Ok, maybe Maureen Dowd. As I've mentioned elsewhere. But since there are only about five single men older, richer, taller, smarter, and more influential than she is and because she thinks it's *feminism's* fault she can't find a "suitable" partner, I think she's a special case. --fl]
It's always struck me as odd when I visit dating sites, i find that the age ranges selected as desirable by the women advertising there are typically up to a decade older, but never more than a couple of years younger than they are.
Which is frustrating because to me the only concern about age is that we'll have enough common ground to converse happily - and and I've decided that can be up to a decade in either direction, so about half the women who match my criteria exclude me from theirs purely on the grounds of age!
That said, I lost my virginity to a woman 18 years my senior. However, describing her as "mother, teacher or babysitter" would be most inappropriate. Not least because the relationship we developed turned out to be "Daddy/babygirl" power-exchange with myself as the "parent"! And she definitely came chasing me, not vice versa.
I think in general terms this mutual distain boils down to the "dominant paradigm" that you write about. An older man is more likely to be wealthy etc, ergo has more of what women are supposed to want. An older woman, on the other hand, is more likely to be experienced sexually and to know what she wants from sex (which is what she's not uspposed to want!). Similarly, a younger woman has what a man is supposed to want, and the "innocence" he is supposed to want to "devour", whereas the younger man has none of the wealth or power that is supposed to attract women (but is potentially physically much more capable in bed - which she's not supposed to want.)
[Nicely put, SE. I mean, yes, if always *always* ticked on to someone twice one's age, or half it, or *expressly* sought sexual relationships with parent or offspring role-models, then we'd want to have a different conversation. And even then in half of all ases such physical-based criteria are only be *masked* by conventions, not eliminated. Thanks. --fl]
Not to put too fine a point on it but thanks to long-standing traditions having nothing to do with age one doesn't really see that many women of *any* age pursuing men. So it stands to reason you don't see older women (*especially* older women who'd have grown up even more indoctrinated than younger ones) pursuing younger men.
Exactly this.
In one of the discussion groups where I spend a great deal of time, one of the regulars is an older woman who occasionally talks about her experience of mate-seeking, or rather not-seeking; it consisted very much of "Sit there and look pretty and hope an acceptable one is interested", female sexuality as pretty flower hoping to draw a bee, more or less.
Which is an alien universe to me -- as I figured out sometime in my teens that the sort of man I was interested in was some combination of too shy and too oblivious to be expected to raise the question of interest, so if I was going to have a partner, I would have to be "the aggressor". And even given that alienness, I'm aware that I was something of an anamoly in a culture in which boy were the askers and girls the askees, off in a little whirl of subculture in which Things Were Done Differently From What They Do.
Maybe the generation currently being born will grow up being able to ask regardless of their sex. I hope they're at least a bit better than mine, and I know mine is much better than hers.
[That makes you one of my small-h heros, Dw3t. I always admire women just get out there because it's *hard!* And yeah, it's hard for men too (which is why we resort to so much cynical, and even counterproductive "pick-up artist" techniques) but at least we don't get that "that's not your role, wallflower" crap you get *on top of* all the rest. And yes, incidentally, I'm not sure the current generation will be 100% on the float, but just watching younger kids at the playground I'm pretty hopeful. --fl]
(Heh. Nice timing, Hugo...)
I think part of the issue here is that Hugo works with lots of people in their teens and early 20s, so when he looks at age difference he tends to think in terms of people who may not have a lot of power in absolute terms, not just relative ones.
I do agree that unless there's some specific vibe that didn't come through in Hugo's post, it's a bit patronizing to elide the difference between "young" and "younger."
[And yes, I should acknowledge that his friend could have picked up on a vibe from the younger man that Hugo doesn't pass along. I agree about the relative nature of "older" in the context of Hugo's work and social life. For instance someone in his or her 60s dating someone in his or her 40s, while "scandalous" in absolute terms probably wouldn't raise as many eyebrows. Thanks,Jfp. --fl]
There may be another factor here that nobody seems to have noticed....
If I am attracted to or approached by a younger man, one of my VERY first thoughts is that he can't be interested in me on my merits, as it were. Compared to women his age, I am not so ... um ... taut, let's say. ;) The gravity has been on a little bit longer for me.
I don't mean to malign men, here. I'm only speaking to my first interior thought -- "He can't possibly be PHYSICALLY attracted to me!" -- and therefore there must be some other reason that he's interested. That's my own internal body image issue, true, but it's also my first thought.
And the free-floating cultural "reason" that I've always been told is that men date older women because they want a "mother, teacher, or babysitter." Or else they're filling in blanks on a bingo card.
If I could be convinced that the interest was for me as a person, not a "mother ..." or some sort of bingo card marker, then I would have (have had) no problem dating a man who is younger, shorter, poorer. But my self-image causes a lot of problems. :P
[That's sort of the reflexes I was thinking about when I raised the issue, Lily Rose. Because when I was a young man I was raised to believe *no way* you ever "insulted" an older woman by flirting or otherwise starting something. I think it's part of why the movie "The Graduate" had been such a scandal when it came out too. But that thing is that that's *conditioning,* not necessity. Anyway, I'm just saying I know what you mean about about how strong it can feel. Thanks. --fl]
As someone who prefers "cougars," I would say that Hugo's friend is way off-base. I've taught and mothered (fathered sounded way wrong) more than I have learned or been mothered. And Lily, some of us like the way your body has matured, mostly because it's linked to a more interesting intellect and personality.
What I have noticed (and I don't have a control group to compare this to) is that cougars generally are more aggressive and appreciate the qualities of a younger man that go beyond the physical. Just ask one once about "men her age." I dare you.
[Interesting irony but I think I know what you mean -- the more recently women have grown up the less likely they are to have been indoctrinated with that "learned helplessness" thing that was still pretty commonly pushed in my youth. It' ssomething I notice in one of the grocery stores I shop in, where the elderly very-much-still "career housewife" shoppers from the staid neighborhood contrast very strongly with the far more "can do" but sometimes not always *that* much younger women from the adjacent rehab/fixer neighborhood. Hmm... I don't want to jump to conclusions but I'll have to think about that. I think there used to be much more of that "cinderella" thing back then, which would make "lesser" men *much* less desirable. But even then I said I wouldn't jump and there's a lot of stereotype hurdles to jump over. Anyway, thanks for the nudge, Horde. --fl]
As jfpbookworm said, nice timing indeed. (And, "you read it here first".)
My reasons for learning to be comfortable (well, as comfortable as can be, because it is hard, even after years - decades - of practice) in the assertive role are fairly close to Dw3t-hthr's. It's even sharper in online circumstances - I'm the one who first noticed JFP, not vice-versa, which meant that I had to exercise some kind of active agency, just so he'd be aware I existed.
He's 31; I'm 46. (He's also a bit shorter, but since I'm 5'11", I'm pretty used to being the taller partner.) Both of us have had, in different ways, some anxiety about the age difference, but it doesn't seem to interfere with anything. There's less power imbalance than in any relationship I've ever been in, partly because it's explicitly founded in feminist principles (a new experience for me) and partly because we're so much on the same page on a lot of things; and not the slightest whiff of "mothering" or "babysitting" (though I'm sure we have things we can teach each other, and experiences to give each other). The gap that makes a difference is the geographic one; we live some 2000 miles apart, so it's strictly an LDR for the time being.
What annoyed me most about Hugo's account of his friend's situation is the blatant ageism. If a man in his late 20s needs or expects "mothering" in a sexual/romantic relationship with a woman more than a decade older, it wouldn't be because of her age or the age difference, but because of his faulty maturation; he'd be equally likely to expect mothering if he were involved with a woman in her early 20s.
Sunflower
[Oh my gosh, Sunflower, JFP. That's so cool. Glad it's working out for you even if you're robbing the cradle cross-continentedly. --fl]