“Derb’s expressed preference for younger women to look at nude is not incompatible with having a mature, developed relationship with an actual adult woman. ”

Well, I think I’d need to hear his wife’s real feelings before being so confident that it isn’t incompatible…

Derbyshire’s comment is pretty awful-sounding on the face of it, but there are potential mitigating factors. He did marry a woman signifcantly younger than himself, but he’s stuck with her for quite a number of years, and shows no signs of being unhappy with the marriage, or with the presumably declining physical attractiveness of his wife. Derb’s expressed preference for younger women to look at nude is not incompatible with having a mature, developed relationship with an actual adult woman.

Secondly, while many teenage girls have not fully developed sexual characteristics, quite a few have, by age 15 or 16, breasts and hips characteristic of not-so-young women. Additionally, some (though likely less than half at, say, age 16) have developed enough emotional maturity that experimenting with sexual relationships is not “premature sexualization”. There is something ooky about significantly older men being in sexual relationships with women that young, but that’s about the age and power imbalance, rather than the fact of teenage sexuality.

As I’ve gotten older and more mature (two processes running in parallel, but not at the same rate), I’ve discovered that my response to teenage girls I become acquainted with, primarily in the dance community, has become less sexual, but not entirely non-sexual. Fortunately, it’s not terribly hard for me to keep the sexual part of my response internal.

Actually losing knowledge starts much younger than that. Young men and women under the age of 21 know everything about everything. Just ask them. And they know certainly more than their foolish elders. The wonderful thing about this is that they gain all this knowledge without having lived very long in the scheme of things.

When they get older they suddenly figure out they don’t know quite as much about everything as they thought.. Good to know its just “sagging” brain power. I thought it was because I partied too much when I was that age.

I’ll put it my way - vis-a-vis any prospective partner, at any age, a hard and hot body is good for the lust component, but for long term staying power (pun intended) there has to be something more. Want people to be attracted to the inner person? Take steps to cultivate the inner person. Be interesting, and learn to be interested in them.

Added to that sadness is the unfair truth that a man’s brain-power begins sagging long before a woman’s. By age 50, all a man is capable of writing is a bunch of senseless drivel.

There’s actually now evidence that circumcision reduces your chances of HIV infection, but that’s a new thing.

So will a condom, by a significantly larger percentage. There is no biological reason to surgically alter a healthy infant’s genitals.