Just for the record, it doesn't bother me when I see younger men dating/married to older women either (interestingly enough, one of the men in my company is married to a woman 15 years his senior).
What's wrong with older people dating younger people? Adults taking advantage of kids aside, if each person is an adult and capable of making their own decisions, what's the problem?
If there are other reasons for the relationship besides personal tastes, such as women feeling like a man is their best chance to be materially comfortable because good economic opportunities are closed to them, or because they are pressured by cultural traditions into marriages and so forth, then I agree there is a problem. But the old/young relationships are then a symptom of another problem, not the problem itself.
I'm not sure what you mean by the "structure of sex and gender." But I'm sure you will educate me.
Brett
>Of course it doesn't bother you, Brett. you're a man! The thing is, it
>DOESN'T go vice versa -- young women and older men like each other fine,
>but younger men don't go for older women, and after a certain age, most
>men don't even want to date women their own age. It has to do with the
>whole structure of sex and gender, much deeper than money and class.
>Although that's certainly part of it: May-December was a more popular
>marriage form in last century, I believe ("her beauty was sold/for an
>old man's gold" as the song put it) and in macho Latin America older men
>and much younger women is a very prevalent combo.
> I can imagine circumstances under which young women would find older
>men unappealing . But can you imagine circumstances under which 25 year
>old men would want to marry fifty year old women?
>
>Katha