I too tend to think that many older man/younger women relationships are about women seeking protection and a father figure (I know there are exceptions). Verbal and physical abuse from a father and a man sexually abusing a child–that is sexual victimization, which is a quick route to powerlessnesss through the process of objectification. Being objectified and the experience of powerlessness is a terrible teacher, and its lessons are long-lasting. People joke about therapy, but I think seeing a qualified therapist is a very positive step towards self-understanding and healing. I wish you well with that.

I have no sexual interest in men my own age and find myself drawn to much older men. My current lover is more than 33 years older than me. I don’t know why I am drawn to older men…I just am! I know I am an attractive woman…been told I am very beautiful…but my sense of self is so warped that I don’t believe it…and continue to pursue relationships that will never amount to anything except a broken heart. I am deeply in love with my current boyfriend and it breaks my heart because I know it will never work out in the long run. I desire marriage and kids but have absolutely NO sexual attraction to men my own age. My therapist seems to think I am seeking protection and a father figure. I don’t know…I cannot pyschoanalyze myself. All I know is that something inside me is terrible, irrevocably broken…and I don’t know how to fix it.

Hugo wrties:

I’ve repeatedly decried the practice by which some older men use younger women as yardsticks with which to measure their continued potency. I’m more reluctant to judge the tendency of young women like Elizabeth to discover their sexual agency through pursuing older, and presumably more powerful men.” He also writes, “I’m also aware that most men who regularly pursue younger women aren’t doing it to heal themselves of deep psychic injuries; they do it because of social cachet, or because they want to prove that their desirability hasn’t vanished, or they want a fountain of youth, or they are intimidated by the more significant demands of their female peers.”

I don’t see his comments are putting an absolute on the issue. Did you read the entire blog or his other concerning the same issue?

I think that people make a good point that Age disparate relationships don’t fit into an absolute of right and wrong. it a situation where Both parties can benefit.

I find that I have trouble finding people I like enough to date in general. if I get along with someone older or younger I’m going to go for it. It might be another 4 years until I meet someone I can stand for more than a period of 3 months.

When I was 18 I dated a 26 year old. but many of my friends were older than that at the time. Who was I going to meet? We really matched each other intellectually and could talk for hours on end, and we were attracted to each other. It was what I needed at the time. I felt attractive for the first time in my life.

I think it is very likely I will date some older men (I’m 24 now). I’m a nudist. Not very many young men are also nudists. If I want someone to share that with I’m going to end up with someone in their 30s at least possibly early 40s. But I’ve also Had affairs with men a few years younger.

I think the big issue is if an older man is dating a younger woman Simply because she is Younger. Then he is seeing her as a part and not a whole. Same goes for the woman if she is dating a guy simply for his age. Same goes for any issue instead of seeing the individual as a full human. (money, age, position in society)

It does bother me to hear an absolute put on such an issue. Why should you judge who I might fall in love with?

These principles do not, as far as I can tell, support anyone who wants to judge relationships between consenting adults solely on the basis of the age of the participants (please note the word “adults”; I do not refer to people under the age of majority here).

Has every culture, really, a concept of individual autonomy? That seems a very Western way of looking at things… when, if we were to be “culturally relatavistic” we would realize that there are cultures in which individuals, particularly young and female individuals, are not considered to have the nearly the level of “individual autonomy” that they are in ours. Family bonds, for example, are different and power plays out in different ways. Perhaps one could prove that there is a “base level” of individual autonomy granted to all which differs along a sliding scale.

I don’t wish to *ethically* compare FGM and male circumcision, for example, but they are generally practiced on young children *precisely because* young children are not always seen to have a level of bodily autonomy that renders them immune to “harmless” or “necessary” body modification practiced upon them by their families.

I suppose I would argue about “individual autonomy” being a universally held moral precept both in theory (”Of course we have the right to beat my children/modify their bodies/dictate whom they marry”) and in practice (”We have the right, and we do so”).

How do you know it’s universally held? The evidence of it still being a widespread practice doesn’t suggest that it is a universally held moral precept. And for the record, I think it a pretty evil practice and I absolutely disagree with it.

“Mutilating a child with the intention of preventing her from experiencing sexual pleasure perpetrates one of the most violent assaults possible…”

Also John, the practice is not confined to children only. It is also done to teenagers.

Mutilating a child with the intention of preventing her from experiencing sexual pleasure perpetrates one of the most violent assaults possible…

Just for the record, when I wrote that, I did not intend to class female genital mutilation as a harmless cultural practice. It violates a universally held moral precepts: the concept of individual autonomy (from which the concept of cultural autonomy derives).

Cultural chauvanism does not consist of believing that universal moral values exist, it consists of the unexamined belief that your particular culture best exemplifies these values. And in this case, I do not think your cultural chauvanism has much to do with the issue. It has to do with your claim to make a sweeping moral judgment with very little universal basis that I can see.

Arrogance in the defense of the principle of bodily autonomy, to borrow from Goldwater, is no vice.

John Spragge, this is your cue to lament my cultural chauvinism…

Oh, and yeah, I just lost the argument. No need to tell me. Godwin’s Law…