Wombat of Kiss & Blog on the new-to-him “cougar” designation.

Cougars are interesting at the very least because it’s one case where women behave in exactly the same way as men. Older guys chasing (much) younger women is passé. We don’t call such men ‘lions’ or ‘striped siberian tigers’. They’re just icky old dudes. When women do the same thing, they get a title, websites and college sporting teams named after them.

But let’s not focus entirely on Cougars. Let’s make this week’s topic about age differences between men and women in relationships.

Does half the man’s age plus seven years work for women too?

He said it here.

I’d like to say I’m all for it, mostly because at least in the statistical/demographic sense it’s evidence of gender balancing. It seems to me that older women pairing with younger men has been less obvious in modern western society mostly because until fairly recently ordinary, non-celebrity, non-wealthy women were rarely in a social, economic, or marital position to make their own partner choices in the first place, let alone either to choose, or be desirable to, younger men. In other words most of the eyebrow-raising has far more to do with its novelty rather than with impropriety.

On the other hand I can’t say I’m all for it because age differences in relationships between older men and younger women, older men and younger men, and older women and younger women can be problematic not because of gender but because age differences are often accompanied by experience, economic, and power differences. The potential for problems between older women and younger men is therefore no different.

But to the extent “cougars” (a term, by the way, I suspect will go away once the novelty wears off) finally balance set of gendered age differences we can begin to look at the issues with less passion but also with greater scrutiny of distribution of power within relationships in general. Because that’s likely to persist even after we move past the artificial and induced traditions of gender imbalance.

Oh, and short answer to Wombat’s direct question? I think half the older partner’s age plus seven is a good ratio to begin introspection on the party’s parts and scrutiny by onlookers regardless of gender mix.