[Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Re: Mistress Judith (was Re: Butler on S]

Brett Knowlton brettk at unica-usa.com
Tue Nov 23 14:27:02 PST 1999


Katha,


> Carl, I can't believe you and Brett are disputing my point

I'm not disputing your point - I didn't mean to give you that impression. I agree that older men date younger women _much_ more often than older women date younger men.


> How is this set up embedded in the sex and gender system, asks Brett.
>Well, age is knowledge, and men are supposed to know more than women.
>Age is also money and power and resources and men are supposed to have
>more of those than women. Youth usually is expected to defer to age, and
>women are expected to defer to men.

I agree with all of this. The fact that older folks have more power and greater incomes than the rest of us is a problem, as I mentioned earlier. Not the May/December thing per se, as you said yourself. So far all of this applies to older women as well as older men, although definitely much more so for men (the differences in wealth and power between the average old man and the average young woman are much larger than the same differences between an average old woman and an average young man).


>Then take looks: female
>attractiveness is bound up with signs of youth , male attractiveness
>with signs of youth OR signs of social power-- gray hair, a lined face
>and a heavy torso is okay for him, but not for her.

This is all true, and it is unfair, but what can really be done about it?

Certainly kelley is correct when she says that a lot of this is due to socialization. And I'm on your team in the sense that I'd like to see a more egalitarian social atmosphere between the sexes, without the stupid expectations that women must defer to men, or that certain jobs are considered "women's work," and without women being beaten over the head by a culture that says they must be thin and attractive, and on and on. This might radically change people's attitudes about what is attractive. Or it might not.

To the extent that it doesn't, there is no societal remedy. Unless you want to forbid people from dating people much younger or older than they are, or take other nasty authoritarian measures which I'm sure nobody would want.


> Maybe these things will change someday, and extraordinary people can
>sometimes make their own exceptions. But that's the way things are now.
>and the reason it matters is that lots of older women end up alone who
>would like not to be.

There are lots of people who are alone and would not like to be, probably 99% of all the people that are alone. But you can't force people to get together.

Brett



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