"... and the younger partner has daddy issues or is just out for money.... And even if the older partner is calling all the shots, or some of them, that isn’t necessarily abuse. While Me Too made us all too aware of the way power dynamics can be and have been exploited, it didn’t do away with the fact that desire for these dynamics continues to exist. (Daddy, for instance, was the most-searched term on the porn site xHamster among women in America in 2018.) Sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, who is seven years older than his husband and 22 years older than his boyfriend, has found much of the conversation about age gaps to be fundamentally unrealistic about what human relationships are. 'We are status-obsessed, power-obsessed primates always jockeying for control — socially and also in our interpersonal relationships,' he said. 'There’s no interpersonal relationship without power differentials, without advantages or disadvantages on both sides. And if you want to correct for that, or eliminate that, you have to eliminate human relationships.'"
By the way, Savage was confronted by the mother of his 29-year-old boyfriend. She said she didn't want her son — who "wasn’t working at the time" — to be a "kept boy." Savage "assured her they weren’t wealthy enough for that — and anyway, they were conscious of the type of economic coercion that could affect his choices later on." Savage recommended "the Campsite Rule": "[L]eave everyone in better shape than when they found them." But a person is not a campsite. A campsite doesn't take the initiative and improve itself when no one is around. You need to upgrade that rule into something more like: Leave everyone in better shape than where they'd be if they never got involved with you.
And even that is morally impoverished, premised, as it is, on exploiting the other person — in your "status-obsessed, power-obsessed [ape-like] jockeying for control." If the only other option you can see is "to eliminate human relationships," time to take a break from human relationships.
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48 comments:
One of the problems I have with American Society today is that we take relationship advice from twisted weirdos like Dan Savage.
That being said, I've seen a lot of disparate age relationships work. I haven't seen many fail, but that doesn't mean they don't. Everyone is different.
Why have a husband if you have multiple partners? What’s that dynamic about - how do you possibly leave anyone in that circle better off? Or is this simply a non-human relationship that’s been appropriated by humans?
In grad school, another grad student guy I knew regularly took a series of freshman girls out dancing and drinking at local clubs. He could get an underaged female in the door because he was a local, and friends with the doormen and bartenders. He'd get them drinks, they'd dance, the girls would get drunk and hate themselves and their hangovers the next morning. Mind you, he wasn't having sex with the young drunk girls. He just liked dancing with them, and they'd almost uniformly get plastered on just one or two real cocktails. He called it clubbing the baby seals. Over time he acquired a large number of dancing partners but never got serious about any of them.
Eventually he tired of the immature companions and met a divorced woman his own age who could both dance and hold her liquor, and married her. I think she seduced him to the altar. I've always thought they were a great example of use of power imbalances in relationships.
Dan Savage is a hateful anti-Christian reprobate. For all those that supported/defended him going into schools to spew his nasty bile at children (and subsequently would make fun of and mock them) for holding traditional Christian beliefs, go back and read that sentence again ;
'his 'husband' and boyfriend'.
Can you imagine for a moment if ANY hetro public figure had a publicly-declared wife AND mistress/girlfriend?? We'd laugh them out of the public square and for sound reason. This a-hole deserves to be ignored for the very same reasons. He is a vile & disgusting individual.
Untangle the alphabet Jerry Springer relationship web first and perhaps the age gap problem goes away…
Did I take the bait hard enough?
>"Sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, who is seven years older than his husband and 22 years older than his boyfriend"
"Rosie Mae Turner, 39, a sustainable swimwear designer" (emphasis mine)<
Well, there ya go - it didn't take long to get those clues that this article was going to be bizarro, did it. And just to confirm it, the freak show pix. Pretty much what you knew they were going to look like, no?
Shorter NY Magazine: unfortunately for the equality everywhere crowd, its differences that make the world work.
Older people lusting after young cuties used to be derided and seen as ridiculous, when they wereb't seen as evil. Cf: the old song: Bird in a gilded cage.
Now, we're supposed to accept it as normal. OK whatever. An age between men and women seems to be natural, as long as its not too large. A 20 y/o women and 25 y/o man = OK. A 20 y/o women and a 45 y/o man = not OK.
But if a woman wants to trade her youth and beauty for an "old man's gold", worse things hwave happened.
Of course in TV/Movie land, it all depends on Box Office. In 50s you had established male stars that were constantly being paired with much younger actesses. Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn got through the 50s with male stars who were 20 years older. I always thought their movies would've been better with younger stars. Certainly, Mogambo would've been better with heston in the lead instead of clark gable. And Holden should've played the Bogart role in Sabrina.
Gays need marriage because they just want to settle down in monogamous relationships and raise kids like everyone else. Got it.
Savage leaves every campsite with a bigger fire ring.
So if Melania has implants, doesn't that mean she's being left in better shape than when he found her?
Might as well ask Aunt Blabbie for advice.
Not teh Silly Savage.
Incorporation with "benefits".
Why are so many people obsessed with other people's private lives?
"Sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, who is seven years older than his husband and 22 years older than his boyfriend....
Talk about your Golden Sentences, the kind that reporters and editors go absolutely Ga Ga for.
Here's an open "secret" among divorced men over 50. American women over 45-years-old are a complete pain in the ass. Especially liberal suburban women; the AWFLs. Public School Teacher, swipe left.
Foreign women over 45, different dynamic.
I'm 54. Been divorced since 48. I've dated some women in their mid-thirties. Millennials. The stories they tell. They can't believe a guy will pick up the entire tab for dinner and drinks. Don't get me wrong. I understand the dynamic and not looking to marry someone 20 years younger than me. But...for fun...it's fine.
My proposed solution is match up American Suburban divorced AWFLs over 45 with the young Beta Males they created.
#NoJudgment #NoLabels... perhaps. Social progress.
rcocean said...
In 50s you had established male stars that were constantly being paired with much younger actresses. Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn got through the 50s with male stars who were 20 years older.
Audrey Hepburn was 24, and Humphrey Bogart was 53 when "Sabrina" was made. Cary Grant was 24 years older than Grace Kelly in "To Catch a Thief".
Savage has a husband and a younger boyfriend. His husband also has a younger boyfriend. They all live together.
As the 4chan posters would say:
"Imagine the smell."
The perfect relationship is when the man is 5.8 years younger than the woman.
Original Mike said...
Why are so many people obsessed with other people's private lives?
12/29/23, 10:31 AM
They aren't. But when its foisted on you, demanding a response, they don't like what they hear.
2005 “Upside of Anger”, Kevin Costner Movie. One character is a radio DJ played by Mike Binder who dates younger women. He brings a date to a back yard party and Joan Allen (Terry) asks him why he only takes out young women. She's disgusted.
The DJ replies basically, when you take them out for dinner they say “Thanks, That was nice”….
He finishes his reply with, "What should I do, Terry? Settle down and marry some pissed-off thing like you? I'd rather have someone come over and do dental work, every day, from my backside, up... through my ass!”
Joan Allen then immediately starts beating him upside the head.
'There’s no interpersonal relationship without power differentials, without advantages or disadvantages on both sides. And if you want to correct for that, or eliminate that, you have to eliminate human relationships.'"
I wonder ... kids are constantly bombarded with messages that they are great and the world should be great and they grow up as hothouse flowers. Then, when the world isn't great and just and they aren't getting along easily and happily with other people, they can't handle it. Thus, the decline in dating, etc. Also, why would you want to bring a child into a world like that?
So someone who identifies with 2.5% of the population sexually (at most) is giving advice about sex to 95% of the straight people on earth.
That sounds like it will work out fine.
My parents married when he was 40, she was 25. I think it's fair to say she didn't get as much from him as she'd hoped. Financial security came from her, not him, partly because he got MS. She wanted to spend a lot of time on things like income tax, he acted like he couldn't be bothered. She always admired him for knowing about books, history, and classical music. Noble things, all lost on the woke I guess. They had a kind of Protestantism in common. Late in her life, as a widow, she told me: yout father was an interesting guy. I'm sure there was both praise and love there.
It was thanks to her he had a family; he had been turned down once or twice. Aristotle seems to recommend 35 year old male, 20 year old female. In our world, professor getting tenure, and undergraduate. Experienced actor and ingenue.
Update from the front. I’m 66. My wife is 24. We’re expecting a baby any day now. Fuck all of you haters! And why a normal man would marry an American woman is beyond me.
"...Me Too made us all too aware of the way power dynamics can be and have been exploited".
Shouldn't we have earned this with Bil Clinton?
Gee,I wonder why not...
Whatever happened to “half your age plus seven” ?
Catamites are as old as time, but the relationship sheds no light on marriage.
The Age Gappers (...) say they’re happy. Why is it so hard to believe them?
Jealousy?
When Oso says normal male, he means a beta male. Betas can't handle strong intelligent hard working women, so they target young airheads who are naturally subservient.
Picture Bill Gates and Prince Andy at Jeffrey Epstein's Pedophile island resort.
Given the quality of marriageable women these days /sarc/ it doesn't surprise me in the least that 35 - 40-year-old men may choose to look to a younger pool of women. Women their age have already had their bikes ridden around the block too many times and are likely unable to pair-bond at this point. If they're particularly religious men, it makes sense to seek out a younger woman who will want to be a wife and mother for his potential children. Younger wife = fresher eggs.
Gusty Winds said...
2005 “Upside of Anger”, Kevin Costner Movie. One character is a radio DJ played by Mike Binder who dates younger women. He brings a date to a back yard party and Joan Allen (Terry) asks him why he only takes out young women. She's disgusted.
Here's the scene:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=19dhsPaBuWg&pp=ygUPVXBzaWRlIG9mIGFuZ2Vy
There used to be a thing called "The Creep Factor." It was one half the man's age, plus seven years. That was the minimum age for his partner to be, otherwise, it was creepy.
Superior exploitation was not so long ago a feminist plank. Then women, too, became a burden on social progress. Totally unpredictable.
This is all amusing for those of us who were teenagers in the 1970s. Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' had Woody's character in his 40s dating Muriel Hemmingway's 18-yr old character. 'Hill Street Blues' had a recurring if icky scenes of the 50/60 yr old Sgt Esterhaus waxing poetic about his high school cheerleader girlfriend/later wife.
'Fast Times at Ridgemont High' has 15 yr old Stacy getting laid by the late 20s stereo salesman whom she told she was 19 in act 1.
When I was in high school it was hard to date your female classmates, they all had much older boyfriends. And they would fight tooth and nail against their mothers who tried to keep them from their love. Feminism and all, ya know.
But as a Gen Xer who worked for me opined around 1993, "the Baby Boomers grew up to make everything they did illegal for their kids". Turns out "don't trust anyone over 30" was more warning about their future selves and about their parents generation.
This idea that adult relationships fit neatly into age slots is childish. FFS, the differences between two people of the same age can be night and day in whatever trait you care to measure.
Oso Negro said...
We’re expecting a baby any day now.
That's wonderful. Congratulations and all best wishes.
In some cases, we find it hard to believe them because we know them personally. They are relatives, or ex-lovers, or co-workers whose other habits and attitudes we know. We can describe their power and status tradeoffs pretty clearly.
We are often quite forgiving of such people, such as ex-GFs from our age cohort who clearly needed a level of princessing we were unwilling to provide, or wonderful guys with clumsy social skills who are providing security for similarly clumsy younger women, who often are calling the shots anyway.
It's ugly, but I think everyone has a pretty good idea what their market value is and behaves accordingly. And always ask yourself the Asperger's question - on both sides.
My Dad was 11 years older than my mother. They were happily and faithfully married for almost 50 years, until his demise.
I have nothing but derision for single women of a certain age who presume to instruct me on the propriety, or lack thereof, of my parents' relationship. But even less do I care to hear about the depraved lunatic-fringe shenanigans of urban sex-fiends like this Savage pervert.
and why should we accept advice from a gay man with both a spouse and a boyfriend?
His analysis is pure Marxism, based on the power differential. Nope, no love here, folks. No kids. And who takes care of him when he is old and grey?
FYI: My late husband was 24 years older than I am.
@Howard - oh Howard! Keep believing that!
@Bob Boyd - thanks Bob! Bringing a child into the world is an act full of hope.
Assistant Village Idiot:
It's ugly, but I think everyone has a pretty good idea what their market value is and behaves accordingly.
You need to watch some on-street interviews of younger women who all think they're 10s. Or the Whatever podcast.
I have four good friends who are in such age relationships. J (male) is 58 and T (female) 43. J (female) is 57 and D (male) is 42. These are happy stable relationships
A rule I live by: no relationship makes sense unless you are in it.
Forget age differences. By encouraging multiple partners, anal sex, gender confusion, and grotesque misogyny, Dan Savage has undoubtedly contributed to the death of countless young women and men cut down early by HPV-induced cancers of the throat, cervix, penis and colon.
Paid for by taxpayers and parents at public and private universities.
Are there any adults in academia? Are there any parents courageous enough to do anything except "validate" the sexual dangers their offspring claim as oppressed identities?
More great comments by the Althouse community.
Dan Savage? How very 90s! Do people still actually read him?
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