>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,
oh no no no. when you're in your thirties younger men like you because they think you're hot to trot as the old saying goes. i'm NOT kidding. and while i joke around, i don't think it's all that funny after awhile. there's some perception that ifyou're in your thirties then you're experienced, eager to have flings for the fun of it, and will teach them a thing or two or five. AND, worse worse worse, is that they think you're grateful. I'M NOT KIDDING.
i quite frankly would like to know why there's a lot of TALK about how professional men want to meet professional women, but when it comes down to actually dealing with a woman who has a brain and doesn't smile sweetly and say "yes, you're right sweetcheeks, trading stocks is good for the whole society and doesn't harm anyone one bit" and it's not even about political differences. honestly. it's about the reality of desiring an Image --that of professional woman taking care of herself i guess--and dealing with the reality of that person. and it's not just me because i hear this all the time from professional women about dating on the professional man track.
that's why i left that territory for a while. strictly bookish manual laborers for me. they can handle it because, imo, they're used to strong women taking care of themselves having often come from single mom homes.
now, when i get time i'll fill you in on my students from my sociology of love class last year. yeeehah but the black women in that class ran the show when it came to dating.
>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.
though surely money and class is the issue in so far as 'class status' is gendered. the thing is brett, it's not simply a matter of personal preferences -you're operating with a rational choice model of preferences. rather, our preferences are deeply shaped by society.
>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?
thereis something to this, mostly the pool of availablity i think. fact is, work is where we socialize and mainly meet peope. [the proliferation of singles ads and alternative ways to meet people for hets has much to do with the segregated nature of the workplace --if you are het and mostly work with same sex you're hard pressed to meet someone there] also, there is something pleasurable about being a prof and having a student sit there awestruck by what you say. [i dated one my students because i was superficially vain in that way once myself. oh and he wastn' taking courses with me at the time; graduating in fact. so don't charge me with sex harassment]. at any rate, of the the 12 academic couples i'd say that i know fairly well, 4 of them are older man/younger woman couples --all the women were their students
on the other hand, my mother is 10 yrs older than her hubbie -- who was once her prof. and she dated him *while* she was taking course with him! [she only admitted this recently. i was shocked. just shocked] so, i think it does have something to do with the nature of learning and power in the classroom. i mean, when a student thinks you're the smartest thing walking on the planet it's pretty seductive. i'm always reminded of that scene from moonstruck --the older professor explaining to Olympia Dukakis why he dates 26 yr olds.... seemed to touch on this dynamic as i recall.
but then there's that scene in the john irving novel, Garp was it?, where the woman prof dates her student...... that guy paid big time for that transgression though.
kelley
>Katha
>
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