A fine question. She's quite attractive, actually. Tall, slender, long (formerly) blonde hair, big blue eyes, delicate features. On the other hand, she's probably around my mom's age. I imagine that 20 or even, ahem, 30 years ago, she was fantastically hot.
I don't have such a belt, Adam. We can't all be divinity school lotharios.
Err . . . I sought clarification from the Smasher offline, but I still don't understand what's supposed to justify the x/2 + 7 formula. Apparently, this is common knowledge, but I never heard it.
This has been discussed here many times. In the olden days, back when men were men and women were young girls, it was bandied about as a formula for determining the optimal age of your wife-to-be. Now, it's become the formula for determining the minimal acceptable age for the rogering of a younger by an older person, regardless of the genders involved (certain combinations of gender may render "roger" an inapposite word).
It is common knowledge, spread about popular culture like hippo shit. I attribute your ignorance to your hoity-toity NYC and Harvard education. I wager Phoebe Maltz is similarly unenlightened.
I had heard (from the always dependable "them") that the formula was developed by Jewish matchmakers, in which case I would expect that Yglesias and Maltz would have both been enlightened.
Right, I understand what the formula purports to do. But what's the justification. Why not +6 or +9?
Because, just as every seventh year one must let one's field lie fallow, so too must add six years of maturation from half one's age before plowing one's inamorata. But wait! you say. You said "six years", not seven. Quite! This is because crafty people "sell" their fields for the seventh to a gentile. So really, you need seven years—if you're crafty.
Think of it this way: Beginning grad students should stay away from freshmen. Junior faculty should stay away from undergrads. I think the numbers add up.
What makes you think it happened suddenly? Anyway, one mechanism could be that knowledge of the formula was retained after it no longer became socially acceptable to have such young wives, leading it to be reinterpreted in a more acceptable way—and I'm not sure it would be completely unacceptable for you to date a 19-year-old. Remember, this is a bare-minimum condition here.
It wouldn't be completely unacceptable, but one should expect to get a lot of shit for it. One of my coworkers married a girl at the low end of the 1/2 +7 continuum and every time his wife calls, his cubemate asks if she needed help with her algebra homework.
Standpipe is the real pwner here, but I fear that I have established the "beaten to the post" standard recentlyandbefore--occasionally with tragic consequences.
(Took me a while to get those links, I fear I will be pwned by my own petard....)
I'm yunger'n Adam, and while 52 is pushing it, I certainly couldn't rule out a woman in her 40s under the right conditions. I wouldn't say 52 was impossible, either, but the circumstances which would produce that are improbable.
This is a question worth teasing out. I initially told MY that his friends would mock him mercilessly if he dated someone who was 19, but I wouldn't have to sit him down or anything. But I'm not so sure. As MY rightly pointed out, this would be a college freshman he'd be bringing around. And we already mock him mercilessly, so that's not much of a disincentive.
Ogged makes a good point in 67. Dating someone young but not hott makes people think you just have control issues or can't handle someone your age. Young + foreign makes people question even more (as in my coworker's case).
I had a really creepy experience where the age of the guy interested in me was greater than X/2 plus 7.
It was the spring of my Freshman year in college, and I was taking a 4th semester Greek class on the Iliad. There were a couple of grad students in the class who were taking it for personal enrichment. One was a doctoral student in Chinese. The other was in the Government department and justified the class, because he wanted to use Thucydides in his dissertation. He must have been about 30.
I had shopped a Virgil class at which the professor had handed out Tennyson's poem "To Virgil, Written at the Request of the Manuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of Virgil's Death". In chit-chat before class I mentioned that I had the poem, and the guy asked me if he could look at it. I said, "sure." He then asked if he could borrow it and promised to return it. I said not to worry about returning it. (Even then I could have gotten it off the internet pretty easily.)
So a couple of days later he hands it back to me, and I put it in my folder. Back in my dorm room, I realize that he's attached a piece of paper to the poem. On it he has composed several lines in Homeric Greek. At the end, it says "Would you like to come over to my house for dinner at VI on Saturday evening?" (It was written with Roman numerals.)
It's creepy as hell, period, but I was especially bothered, because I was barely 18, and he was so much older. One of my roommates was taking a Government class, and it turned out that he was a TF for the course. He wasn't her TF, but she did attend one of his review sessions. I never mentioned it to him, and I refused to sit next to him in class for a while. It probably wasn't the most mature reaction on my part, but he did put me in an akward position, and the age difference made it especially uncomfortable.
Weren't these rules developed with reference to a rather different sense of the term "date" than the one the kids are using today? Where to date someone is to spend time, just with them, in a well-lit place, engaged in some activity with the expectation that, if you like each other, you'll do just that thing again and again and take it from there, the idea of someone Matt's age dating a college freshman doesn't seem so bad. Where it means to sleep with someone, then spend all your time with her, it looks rather different.
On either understanding, however, it would be wrong for Matt himself as opposed to someone simply his age to date a 19-year-old. Matt is a huge celebrity, probably the most important young pundit out there since Jonathan Chait burst onto the scene in the mid-90s. Chicks dig that kind of thing and it would not be right for him to take advantage of it.
Chicks dig that kind of thing and it would not be right for him to take advantage of it.
I think you have it precisely backwards.
Regarding your speculations on the word "date"—the various attentions paid to the youngest Miss Snopes (whose name I can't recall) are informative here.
84 was also intended as defense. After all, you're not the one who runs an entire website devoted to tales of his getting hit on by older persons of the opposite sex.
It's not a poem. It's a song, called "Carousing". It appears on Alasdair Roberts' Farewell Sorrow, which makes me think it's a Child(e?) ballad or something similar, but it is unknown to google.
Re 97. Yeah I got that 84 was intended as a defense, but then I read 85, and I didn't want to damage your reputation too much. So, I didn't mention it. But thanks to Kotsko and Weiner both!
there is the issue of the refrain, though. Some poems have refrains, but in a different way, it seems. (As for songs that repeat the same line over and over, they are either an abomination, or it is done for poetic effect.)
If you're going to enverb (is that the right word to make up?) the name Wolfson, wouldn't it mean TBALB, or to be hypercorrecting, or possibly to know some interestingly obscure references (I try to avoid saying nice things, but I can't always) not to interrupt flirting?
ogmb--Actually, he may not have said 6 PM. It might have been that he wrote out his telephone numbers in Roman numerals. But basically, the answer is both.
Hmm. When I met my wife we exactly matched the age/2 + 7 rule....
She was 21 and I was 28. Which didn't seem a massive age gap at the time given our respective levels of maturity ... :-)
And re: Yglesias comments above, a 19 year old dating someone in their early/mid 20s doesn't seem that odd. (With the usual "it depends on the person" caveats.)
When I was 17 and 18 my then girlfriends were 23 and 24 respectively...
Contrary to 78, dating an 18-year-old for sex would seem highly plausible, whereas dating an 18-year-old for conversation would not. (With a few long-dead exceptions such as Hannah Arendt and Lou Salome.)
Any news on the XXXX Heidegger-Arendt photos, btw?
I always thought the age/2 +7 rule was to yield a range where the age wasn't weird or creepy, not an optimum.
I think the idea was to yield an optimum in the mid-nineteenth century which by current standards is weird and creepy. One neat feature of the formula is that, under the original assumption that the man is the older partner, the appropriately aged partner for a menopausal woman is approximately dead.
I never thought it would happen to me. When I was in college, it seemed weird and creepy when I heard about people my age dating thirty year olds. But then Mr. Manley, the 70-year-old philosophy professor came into my life. His jowls were a little bit floppy, but I can assure you they were the only thing about him that was...
Seriously folks, this all seems like absurdity to me. You can observe a particular relationship with a big age difference and weird dynamics and say to yourself, "something there doesn't seem quite right" (although even then, at least in circles I've been exposed to, people have a tendency to overestimate their standing to evaluate what's going on in a relationship, which is of course mostly conducted in private, or just to find fault quickly because it makes them feel superior; unless you're close to one or both parties the only thing you can really say with authority is whether you enjoy spending time with the couple and why). But this rulemaking?
And BG, as with Ogged and the student who condescended to the UPS guy (or didn't), obviously you interacted with the guy and I didn't, but I don't see what in that story marks him as creepy. That he asked you out in writing so you didn't have to reject him to his face was kind of considerate; it respected your space and your possible shyness (he may have also been protecting himself, of course). Is he creepy just because he was older? But sometime in the history of the universe some 30-year-old has probably had a successful relationship (dating and/or sex) with an 18-year-old, and maybe he thought you were both pretty and well-spoken in class. Since he couldn't know ahead of time whether you'd be the type to say, "30, ew," was there no way he was allowed to express his interest, ever?
Dear Diary,
As regards my own relationship (I am four years younger than an acceptable partner for my mate by the formula, yet he is 8 years too old for me (?)), all of this talk of maturity just seems alien. I think there are ways in which he is more mature than I am (though I wouldn't put it that way), but I don't attribute it to his being older, but to a decade as a therapist. He is a lot better than most people I know of any age at having a conversation about sex or the relationship and not getting defensive or angry; he's a great person to have a fight with. But I know plenty of people older than he who are much less mature in this respect. He can be childish in other senses, as can I; he struggles with impulsivity and addiction, and I with sloth and disorganization, and sometimes those struggles affect the other person. Mostly though, we're both grownups, and unconcerned with who might fan themselves indignantly when we walk by (which is mostly no one).
Anyway, I know y'all are just jiving around, but I just wanted someone to say in this thread, for the record, that the notion that large age differences between adults is somehow unseemly is convention-bound foolishness, though any individual is free to determine his or her own preferences. Personally, Ogged, if she's sexy and you're looking for some hot rewindable-episodes-of-Lost action, as opposed to someone who could bear your children, you should go for it. That is all.
Re Lauren Bacall, and how standards have changed since the ninteenth century, back then a "woman of a certain age" was in her late thirties. Given today's life expectancy / upkeep, how long does "a certain age" last?
My parents flagrantly flaunted the age rule in a time and certainly in a community in which it played a more important role. She was 17, he was 27. But! They're still together, so it's not creepy.
Prior discussion of the Little Women age rule is in the comments to this post. (There was, I think, another post where it got discussed, but I'm not sure where.)
I'd agree with you about this:
if you allow the caveat that 'adult' is a sliding scale, and that someone who's seeking out romantic partners at the very young end of the scale with the goal of finding people who are not emotionally adult and are therefore easily manipulated is probably a big jerk.
Bedizzied by your charms, she could barely see the keyboard or keep her balance, and her finger came down on the wrong key. How is that not your fault?
Who was blaming the blog? The emotional stress of introducing a new HTML tag into my vocabulary of three (italics, bold, link, now blockquote) led me into a typo.
Agreed w/132, most of 124, etc. I thought part of the joke was that Yglesias was asking for specific justifications for the exact numbers of a rule that's obviously somewhat silly.
OTOH, I think the default is that a 30-year-old to be pursuing someone who's barely legal is a touch creepy; and bg's reaction seems to show that there wasn't the sort of special bond that would override considerations of age in this case.
Part of what made it creepy wasn't in the story. I think that he was sort of creepy, and I think he too easily misread a kind of uncomfortable friendliness, but I don't want to make this too diary-esque.
I think that a big part of what made it creepy was that he could have been my teacher if I'd been a Gov. jock instead of a Classics nerd. And I was a Freshman, living in a dorm, adjusting to life in college for the first time. I may have been pretty mature in a lot of ways and able to talk confidently with adults. (I may have been better at talking with people who were rather older, but, in my case, I don't think that was a sign of maturity, so much as a certain kind of hot house growth, but this is getting too diary-esque.)
Armsmasher. I know people who are married and are separated by 10 years. My godmother and my Dad were friends in college, and she married my godfather (10 years older) who was my Dad's expository writing instrucror in college. But he was married to somebody else when my Dad was in college, and they didn't get together until she was in her 30's at which point she'd already finished a PhD, and he was about to start one in the same field (same cuz only U.S. dept of Celtic studies). So by that time the power dynamics were totally different. Professionally, she was ahead of him. (Tia--I think that's part of what was so weird; the huge gap in professional attainment.)
Having said all that, I would be very unhappy if my 17 year-old daughter dated someone who was 21 or older.
P.S. Tia, After I read LB's 129, I have to add that I don't think that he was trying to control or manipulate me. I just think that he was extremely shy and uncomfortable around people his own age.
The roommate who had been to his review session described him as nice (not a a "nice guy" TM--how do you write trademark in HTML?)--sweet even--but she meant it in the sense that she felt sort of sorry for him.
My wife and I were outside the formula-recommended age limits when we met each other, though with the passage of years we have since become formula-approved. I would agree that the formula is useless as regards any particular case of two individuals who are both sufficiently into adulthood (physically and mentally) to know what they are doing. If the age gap seems a little odd to outsiders, but the relationship works for the couple in question, well, vive la difference.
Agreed with 129, but disagreed with 133. There are plenty of people in the world who are out to find partners who are easily manipulated; that sucks and is creepy. I don't think that translates into a default that a 30-year-old's interest in an 18-year-old is necessarily creepy; it depends on the people in question. An 18-year-old can vote and fight in wars, and could have three or four years of sexual experience under his or her belt, etc. Or could be a total naif. Either way, I don't think it's too much to ask that they learn the art of the polite and firm, "Not interested, thanks." I'll take BG's word for it that her suitor's vibe was creepy, and that he was bad at perceiving her discomfort, but I don't think there's anything objectively wrong with asking out someone in those circumstances; he didn't have any institutional power over her, etc. Also, per BG's latest, some older people who are interested in younger partners feel that they themselves are so immature or so tentative that they are not the equal of most other people their own age. A 24-year-old male roommate of mine says endearingly (and I think genuinely) that he has to date 18 and 19 year olds because girls his age are all too mature for him.
This is adolescence-creep. To paraphrase John E. in another thread, by 2300 no one will be allowed to have sex until they're 35. I wouldn't be surprised if values about the boundaries of adolescence were very class-determined, and that outside the circles where it's expected to attend college there is much less of a sense that an 18-year-old is incapable of communicating his or her preferences to someone older who might express interest. But since 30-year-old TF's are living in a culture that treats 18 and 19 year olds like children, sure, a 30 year old who's interested in one should anticipate that they might not be fully adult yet, but how would that 30 year old go about figuring it out if (s)he were interested? If the 18 year old seemed confident and self-possessed? In the abstract case, if not in BG's?
I wonder whether our attitudes about older men dating younger women aren't tied up with rather silly ideas about sexual distributive justice. Most men, even married men with no intention of straying like myself, view sex with attractive women as an extraordinarily prized good, one which ought to be distributed in broadly meritocratic ways. So it offends us morally when a man's wealth, fame or age, rather than his looks or charm, is the basis of his ability to acquire this good. But it doesn't offend for the normal reason for objecting morally to specific sexual encounters namely, lack of consent. That is, while our objections are moral in nature, we aren't actually objecting to anything improper being done to the young women. What's offending us is the same thing that offends us about nepotism. The difference, though, is that where nepotism violates the rights of those more worthy of employment, it really is none of our business why people pair off in the way they do, at least where none of the conditions, such as extreme youth, which speak to lack of consent are present.
So that's my theory. Many of our moral attitudes about age differences in relationships are rooted in a theory of distributive justice which is being inappropriately applied.
Thanks mcmc. Yes, if a bunch of us had gone out for coffee after class one day. The whole thing might have been less weird, but I had only ever talked to him, because I used to get to class 10 minutes early.
That's 137 you're disagreeing with--by your own lights, no one else should try to judge the depth of LB's bedizziment. (Sorry.)
You're quite likely right about the class-bound nature of this. And adolescence is socially constructed, sure. But in the specific case of first-year college students, you've got someone who has just left an environment where they're dependent on their parents--I hope we don't have to argue too much about high school--and is still in an environment that's very far from adulthood, as bg pointed out.
(I think there's a difference between 30 and 24 here, BTW. If you went to college, at 24 you haven't been out long at all. It's more natural to hang around there. And 24/2+7=19, anyhow.)
I'm not necessarily saying the 30-year-old should be pilloried for asking out an 18yo. But he shouldn't be surprised when the reaction is "Ew! You're too old!")
Maybe this could be a rule of thumb: If you don't know an 18-year-old well enough to ask her to coffee face to face, you don't know if she's mature enough to be a good match for a 30-year-old. Maybe it would be better to ask her along to some group outing first.
The meritocratic distribution of sexual goods is complicated by the fact that everyone wants their own kind of merit to count the most -- this is voiced especially often among those who have the most occasion to think about their sexual needs going unfulfilled (i.e., those whose merits are in the intellectual rather than the physical realm).
One might draw a parallel between an older man dating a hot young woman and a jock dating the hottest girl in band -- someone who presumably has wide access to women essentially swoops in and removes the woman from circulation among her peer group, which is made up of men whose prospects are much less wide-ranging.
pjs, I don't think that's entirely it. I had a friend who said, "When I was 18 and I saw 18-year-old girls dating 26-year-old men, I figured that when I was 26 it would be payback time. Now that I'm 26 I realize that those guys were creepy." This relates to seeking out 18 year olds rather than finding that special someone who happens to be 18, but it wouldn't be appropriate if the ick factor were a question of distributive justice--then he would've wanted to use his age-26 wisdom to dazzle the 18-year-olds.
And I don't think anyone is criticizing how people get together. If you have a happy loving couple, I don't care how old they are or how they got together. But that's not exclusively what we're talking about here.
pjs, I think that's right. Relatedly, some older women express a meritocratic right to older men; somewhat opposed to the belief you described in men, who think sex should be a reward for studliness, they treat sex as if it were a reward for virtue and accomplishment, and resent younger women who poach from their forest and make appropriate partners more scarce, as in that scene on Sex and the City when Candace Bergen drunkenly accosts SJP for taking Baryshnikov (sp?) out of her pool.
mcmc, well-taken about the weirdness of the first-date venue.
That's an excellent clarification. For me, the example would be the bookish high school beauty who dates a 25-year-old college dropout who works at a record store or a coffee shop. But it's the same basic principle. The supposed moral offense is not in harming the young woman, who seems perfectly happy, but in taking that which doesn't belong to you.
That makes sense. In fact, I agree with your friend. But what explains the intuition that it's "creepy"? It can't be that it's exploitative. Many relationships between two 18-year-olds are mutually exploitative, but not creepy.
bookish high school beauty who dates a 25-year-old college dropout who works at a record store or a coffee shop ... taking that which doesn't belong to you
Hmm. If that's really the objection, we'd expect 18 year-old boys/men to make it most strongly, no? But that wasn't my experience. Mostly, I think we felt our own insecurities confirmed when hotties dated older guys: it made sense that they'd want something better than we could offer. Most of the time, people objecting are the same age as the older partner, and it seems like a pretty straightforward judgement rooted in the belief that age and maturity are closely correlated, and anyone dating someone younger is immature or unwilling to be challenged by an equal.
I'm not necessarily saying the 30-year-old should be pilloried for asking out an 18yo. But he shouldn't be surprised when the reaction is "Ew! You're too old!")
Maybe this could be a rule of thumb: If you don't know an 18-year-old well enough to ask her to coffee face to face, you don't know if she's mature enough to be a good match for a 30-year-old. Maybe it would be better to ask her along to some group outing first.
I don't really disagree with anything here. I would maybe note that although the 30-yr-old shouldn't be surprised by the "ew" part (as opposed to the "you're too old" part), since it's an occupational hazard of expressing interest in people who may be immature, it would be a sign of exceptional grace and maturity on the part of the 18 y.o. to leave it out, and simply say, "you're too old."
I don't know--it's an interesting question. I mean, back to the thing that started this off (and a review of the bidding demonstrates that it was my fault), if Ogged really wants to get with a hot 58-year-old why not? Though I take it the assumption was that he doesn't, and that's why we're joking. And also that this would not be a longterm relationship (they don't seem to have talked about much besides his stroke and speed). But that's not your question; maybe it's some sort of disparity in presumptive maturity. That's presumptive, of course.
(FWIW, I remember thinking, was Clinton surprised when Monica started acting weird, about how she knew he really loved him etc.? She was only 21! Of course she'll act that way!)
If you don't know an 18-year-old well enough to ask her to coffee face to face, you don't know if she's mature enough to be a good match for a 30-year-old. Maybe it would be better to ask her along to some group outing first.
That's why I think the rule is a decent, um, rule of thumb. When you start a relationship, you really don't know the other person that well; if you're making any kind of judgment about whether it's a good idea to start dating this person it's not with perfect information, or even information accrued over several months together.
I mean, suppose my younger sister, a college sophomore, has an interest in an older grad student. He's 33. He really seems interested in her. She's a hottie. Now, they may be an exception and he may be interested in her as a complete person, but if she's asking me whether she should pursue this guy, the odds are not good on me giving an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
If she were old and wrinkly, you wouldn't find her hot. Ex hypothesi, she is hot (to you, for that's the only dimension that matters here); ergo, she is not old and wrinkly.
Have you considered telling her about your blog, and asking her to weigh in with any thoughts? You could offer to give her some breaststroke tips in exchange.
LizardBreath, I think that ogged's already regretting the number of people who have pierced the veil of his pseudonymity. He's met Kotsko and Wolfson in real life, and he was lamenting the fact that Unf's FFIL reads the blog.
Anyhow, the parts that matter were wrinkly to begin with.
A straight friend of mine, bewailing her romantic fortunes, once complained to me that she'd had so much trouble with men that she'd thought about trying her luck with women instead, but couldn't handle the thought of the "foldy bits".
The conversation was kinda funny, and she is nuts. Last I heard she was living with a bunch of musicians in Austrailia, but that's almost a decade ago now.
well, LB's friend's reaction is kinda typical of straight girls who theoretically want to experiment and who see so many sexualized photos of all the other bits they can imagine getting into them, but when they think of the foldy bits they are confronted by the reality that they really would not be with their preferred gender. Also not a few women are anti-vagina. I had a friend who complained about hers leaking and oozing.
straight girls who theoretically want to experiment and who see so many sexualized photos of all the other bits they can imagine getting into them, but when they think of the foldy bits they are confronted by the reality that they really would not be with their preferred gender.
Some women are just kinky. Awhile back there was this pretty young thing 4/10 my age flirting with me. It was fun but nothing came of it. I ran into her a year or so later and she was living with a different older guy. She had no apparent problems and seemed quite happy.
I am about to reveal my continuing newbiness and my general ignorance, but could somebody please point me to the original use (on this blog) of the phrase "At the Mineshaft"? I tried to use the MT search, but I couldn't find this. Its use here seems to have more than one meaning, and I have a feeling that it refers to something philosophical or German (not perhaps a rational feeling).
Could someone point me to a good, basic explanation so that I won't feel like such a dunce?
Well, we're really thinking of two different senses of imparting knowledge here. In the Mineshaft Situation (henceforth MS), both parties (we can assume WLOG that there are only two parties) gain knowledge of each other, and therefore the MS can be said to impart knowledge to them. However, one of the two (the "impartive" party) imparts knowledge and education to the other (the "receptive" party), if the relationship is healthy and excellent.
189--Now that really embarasses me, because I've read bits of Werner Jaeger's book on paideia, but it was for a paper on Isocrates. And my knowledge of Plato is painfully limited--the whole of the Symposium, bits of the Phaedo and Phaedrus and snippets from a couple of dialogues. I need to grease my Greek a bit and get reading. I have never read The Republic and really should.
Well, having now skimmed those threads, I can see that the Symposium was really all that I needed to know. And yes, I thought that there was an erotic undercurrent to the whole thing.
I firmly [ATM] believe that thread remains the gold standard 'round these parts [ATM]. Misty water [ATM]-colored memories...
And of course the Mineshaft refers to this blog/comment space, so that we can talk about the recent invasion of the Mineshaft by 47-year-old balding men....
I was going to join into the comment-linking fun, but I can't find the one where I said I was worried people would think I was gay if I commented here, at the Mineshaft.
I think it is highly likely that you have misread the situation, and the lady in question went straight home and told her newly-out son "there's this lovely boy at the swimming pool, I think I can get his phone number for you".
This "swimmers are fairies" thing isn't as culturally well-established as "gymnasts are fairies," is it? I confess that I hadn't heard it before dsquared and tripp brought it to my attention. Otherwise, I would have begun swimming much earlier.
C'mon, ogged. You're talking about a sport that is absolutely useless to spectators. These guys churn up the water so much that you can't see any real "grace." All you're left with is slim young boys with absurd bodies who leave the arena wet.
Ignore these people ogged. In seven years of competitive swimming, I never saw someone drop their soap in the shower on purpose or offer to scrub someone else's back. These people just envy anyone who can look good in a Speedo.
I didn't know you were a swimmer, Idealist. I'm not actually concerned by Tim's anxieties, but I didn't want to be ignorant of some cultural marker; apparently, they're just doing it to bother me, in which case, they really should have caught me when I was figure skating.
In seven years of competitive swimming, I never saw someone drop their soap in the shower on purpose or offer to scrub someone else's back.
On the other hand, in a ten minute trip to the Men's Pond at Hampstead Heath I saw three men enthusiastically sucking somebody off, so it pays to keep your eyes open.
Back on point - ogged - the "I want your speed" was a tiny come-on. Be flattered, even if you are not interested.
Personally the best come on I got all weekend was "You can police my neighborhood anytime," and this was from a lady in her 70's!
I agree with, I think, Adam above who said (essentially) that young men and older women who frown on older men dating younger women are simply voicing anger that their pool of potential dates is lessened.
Well, a gentleman wouldn't tell. I'm no gentleman, of course. I'm kinda stringing her along for the inheritance. I think she's been after me for the past twenty five years. You gotta play it cool.
Sadly, my swimming days ended even before you were born. I am now more ursine than delphine.
Figure skating--I do not know if it is gay (and what would be wrong with that) but I imagine it was a great way to meet women. Clever choice of sport ogged.
There's somethign else going on, though -- and not just the 'looking for someone to push around' motivation that I brought up earlier.
To the extent that there's a systematic difference between younger men and older men beyond physical aging, it's that the older men have more stuff: money, sophistication, knowledge, professional status and power. Lots of people disapprove of relationships where one person is attracted by the other's stuff, rather than by more innate qualities like personality or even physical appearance.
I think what's going on in a lot of the older man/younger woman disapproval is an assumption that she's not actually into the guy, but into his stuff. If the woman is young and naive, the relationship looks as if the guy is in a way tricking her into thinking she's attracted to him by showering her with the exciting older-guy lifestyle (even the college-dropout coffee shop guy dating the highschool girl probably has a car, his own place, and more spending money than her peers). With a slightly more sophisticated and mature younger partner, she looks mercenary and he looks like he's hiring his social life. Either way, it's an unsightly relationship, at least to the nosy and judgmental.
(This is in no way intended to impugn relationships across large age gaps where this isn't what's going on, of course.)
I think there's something else other than what's going on in 219, though. I've pretty much always dated older guys (not in violation of the rule, except in one instance), and there's never really been any kind of stuff differential, but it's still somewhat, though to a much lesser extent now than before, frowned upon by my peers. It's not that they see the age difference as problematic per se, but as somehow less than ideal.
I don't think "Wehttam Saiselgy" is taken. You just need to avoid googling and easily-traced-back-to-you random readers, right? I suggest "The Cuban Princess."
LB, I know you're just describing, not necessarily endorsing, a source of societal disapproval for age-gap relationships, but to be a consistent advocate for fuzzy-headed suspension of judgment, I'd just like to say that IMO it's okay when attraction is overdetermined, and you love the person and his/her accoutrements. Much of the stuff associated with older men (professional accomplishment, sophistication, knowledge) is as or more intrinsic to them as appearance. As far as I'm concerned, if it's a fling, it's okay if it's mostly the accoutrements (if its an LTR that would get a little cold at night after a while). I mean, who would fault some l'il slip of a thing who had happy sex while drinking Kristal on the private jet with Chet, her suave I-banker summer boyfriend, as long as she was in control of herself and her circumstances? And if she's happy, why is he doing wrong? Because they don't satisfy our aesthetic judgments about who should fuck and when? If we're all mocking other people for our own entertainment, that's one thing, as long as we don't delude ourselves that our opinions have moral weight.
Re 230 and other substantive posts, I think disapproval of age gap relationships serves, in part, to discourage married middle-aged men from abandonning their families in pursuit of younger women. Like a lot of these things, various innocent parties wound up getting caught in this rather crude net of judgmentalism but its purpose is fundamentally worthy.
People can consensually enter into relationships which turn out to harm them in various (presumably emotional) ways more than they helped, such that the current-self of the person at the end of the relationship will (sincerely) wish that they had never entered the relationship. I take it that this a prudential, rather than ethical problem, but it still seems like grounds to give advice, even if it's not grounds to criticize. And it might be grounds for criticism too, of the, "You should have known better" sort.
Everything said above about people internal to the relationship knowing far more about it than those external is granted.
I agree with Tia. Once you think, as most of us do, that having sex with someone else for purely hedonistic reasons is acceptable (all things being equal), then I don't see how people who have sex in order to get access to a lifestyle otherwise beyond their means can be condemned.
However, I also agree with Wehttam Saiselgy, who basically ruined this whole topic. That's why your professors at Harvard never let you make that kind of argument. It's not that rule utilitarianism is wrong. It's that it's always right and so ruins everyone's fun.
Really, do you find 235 compelling? The disapproval might serve that purpose, but I don't think it has much to do with why the disapproval exists. That seems to have more to do with our notions of equality and autonomy, and how we think relationships are supposed to reflect and nurture our good actualized selves.
I don't actually agree that purely hedonistic sex is entirely ok. It's not something that I would advise my friends to engage in, if they asked. I'm not about to go around telling people that they're bad or to make anyone feel uncomfortable. I'll probably just keep my mouth shut, but I don't reallythink that it's healthy behavior, and I think that too often it degenerates into using another person for one's own satisfaction.
PJS's first remark also gets at something important. It's hard to rationally justify, but we generally don't approve of the idea of using sex in order to acquire anything other than sexual pleasure and/or babies. In women's studies I was taught that this reflects deep-seated male anxiety that women will use their sexual power to the undermine the entire system of power that men otherwise dominate through our awesome patriarchy. That the fear is ostensibly paternalistic concern that the woman in question is being "manipulated" only shows how insidious the workings of yon patriarchy are. The real idea is to deter and punish male defectors from the awesome patriarchal power structure.
I don't know that I believe that. But as with the not-breaking-up-marriages hypothesis, I do think it's a mistake to simply assume that protecting young women is the real purpose of these norms just because that's the normal mode in which disapproval is voiced.
I suspect the disapproval has been around a lot longer than concern for women's equality and autonomy has been around.
Sure, but the reasons needn't have remained the same. When the people I know express disapproval of these relationships, it's usually for reasons like the ones Becks gives in 71.
Sure, but the reason needn't have remained the same.
Right, but that just gets at the question. You have a norm. People usually explain the norm with reference to certain values. But the prevalance of the norm long predates the time when the values were widespread, or widely acknowledged to be important. That raises suspicions that these reasons aren't the real reasons. Not that people who voice 71-ish objections are lying. They suffer from false consciousness.
the prevalance of the norm long predates the time when the values were widespread
Does it? We all seemed to be in agreement upthread that this standard has changed quite a bit, and differences in age which were ok in the past are now frowned upon.
Of course it's possible that there are deeper or more fundamental reasons for the disapproval than 71-type, but it's also possible that it's a norm that finds a place in different societies for different reasons.
I find it perfectly plausible that the rule came into existence for the reasons mentioned in 235, and it continued to exist for the following reasons:
1. Older men continue to find young nubile women attractive and vice versa -- that is, the behavior it was supposed to police is still present in society.
2. Members of each partner's peer group continue to enjoy bitching about and criticizing members of their group, under whatever pretexts they can find.
2.1. This effect is only strengthened because this is a situation involving sex, and people tend to resent those who are having more sex than them -- judging them, then, becomes a way of coping.
One could say that the continued references to rules about female modesty serve the same function -- to give people an opportunity to criticize and judge attractive young women.
Ressentiment latches onto whatever materials happen to serve it -- in this case, now-obselete rules about age difference in sexual relatioships.
Or in still other words, no particular rationale stated for a rule is necessarily the reason for its institution, and the reason behind its institution does not necessarily have any relation to its continued cultural circulation (the rule we're discussing, for instance, seems originally to have been instituted as an "ideal" and eventually was applied to a limit condition -- certainly that's a significant shift).
it's possible that there are deeper or more fundamental reasons for the disapproval than 71-type, but it's also possible that it's a norm that finds a place in different societies for different reasons.
I would like to clarify that the reasons I gave in 71 were observations based on a particular situation. I did not intend to claim that those were the reasons one might disapprove of all relationships that violated that norm.
Also, I agree with what Ogged says in the second part of this statement -- there might be different reasons to support the same norm under different circumstances.
She's a narc, duh.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 5:38 PM
Gone in 30 seconds is how she'd feel about you in bed.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 6:05 PM
re 2
geez, what a stupid comment. my only excuse is that it's really late here in europe and I'm still avoiding work prep for tomorrow.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 6:16 PM
She must be new to town, and looking for a new meth connection.
Posted by dj moonbat | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 6:17 PM
4, meet 1.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 6:56 PM
That's what the old folks are calling it these days.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 6:58 PM
By you, that's euphemistic?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 7:14 PM
Is she fuckable?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 7:56 PM
If so, you might want to go for it, just for the "belt notch." (I assume you already have a notch for "lesbian.")
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:22 PM
A fine question. She's quite attractive, actually. Tall, slender, long (formerly) blonde hair, big blue eyes, delicate features. On the other hand, she's probably around my mom's age. I imagine that 20 or even, ahem, 30 years ago, she was fantastically hot.
I don't have such a belt, Adam. We can't all be divinity school lotharios.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:24 PM
52/2 + 7 = 33
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:30 PM
I'm guessing we're closer to 58/2 + 7 = 36.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:35 PM
I would have gone for 52, but man, 58? Tough call.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:37 PM
So you have to wait (36 - Ogged's age) * 2 years. You're a patient man, right?
OK, I'm going to pg's place to suggest that her November fun trip should be to Daddyville.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:39 PM
Adam, aren't you, like, 24? What's this going for 52 business?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:44 PM
I can't speak for Adam, but I know I saw The Graduate.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:47 PM
25, actually.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 8:52 PM
You should go for it, ogged—she might be a wealthy widow.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:07 PM
Err . . . I sought clarification from the Smasher offline, but I still don't understand what's supposed to justify the x/2 + 7 formula. Apparently, this is common knowledge, but I never heard it.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:16 PM
"Because it's the formula!" wasn't answer enough, apparently.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:18 PM
This has been discussed here many times. In the olden days, back when men were men and women were young girls, it was bandied about as a formula for determining the optimal age of your wife-to-be. Now, it's become the formula for determining the minimal acceptable age for the rogering of a younger by an older person, regardless of the genders involved (certain combinations of gender may render "roger" an inapposite word).
It is common knowledge, spread about popular culture like hippo shit. I attribute your ignorance to your hoity-toity NYC and Harvard education. I wager Phoebe Maltz is similarly unenlightened.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:19 PM
cw--where do you live in Europe?
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:20 PM
Right, I understand what the formula purports to do. But what's the justification. Why not +6 or +9?
What's more, the conclusion that it would be appropriate for me to date a nineteen year-old seems mistaken. That's like a college freshgirl, no?
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:22 PM
I had heard (from the always dependable "them") that the formula was developed by Jewish matchmakers, in which case I would expect that Yglesias and Maltz would have both been enlightened.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:22 PM
LizardBreath says it's from Little Women, and ain't none of us going to argue with her.
It's probably unseemly to mention this, Matt Y., but on my own blog I'm arguing that you got pwned by Al.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:23 PM
Question: howcome we're always making fun of Yglesias for his Harvard education, but not Weiner or baa?
(Note to Matt Y: yes, this is an apparent defense that's actually a setup to let people slam you some more.)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:24 PM
Because I put my education to good use? (Sorry, BG.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:26 PM
Right, I understand what the formula purports to do. But what's the justification. Why not +6 or +9?
Because, just as every seventh year one must let one's field lie fallow, so too must add six years of maturation from half one's age before plowing one's inamorata. But wait! you say. You said "six years", not seven. Quite! This is because crafty people "sell" their fields for the seventh to a gentile. So really, you need seven years—if you're crafty.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:26 PM
You internet peons mock me 'cuz your jealous of my awesome fame.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:27 PM
Fuck. You're jealous. My achilles heel.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:28 PM
haw haw
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:29 PM
And I thought you'd done it on purpose.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:29 PM
re 21 how did an optimal age formula suddently morph into a minimum age one? And I still don't think 24/2+7=19 provides an intuitively correct answer.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:30 PM
Think of it this way: Beginning grad students should stay away from freshmen. Junior faculty should stay away from undergrads. I think the numbers add up.
Posted by not signing my name, sorry | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:33 PM
Ogged, she's plainly uttering her love poem to you, one line at a time.
Your stroke is nice
I want your speed
etc.
I give you one more encounter before she asks you "To do the deed."
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:33 PM
What makes you think it happened suddenly? Anyway, one mechanism could be that knowledge of the formula was retained after it no longer became socially acceptable to have such young wives, leading it to be reinterpreted in a more acceptable way—and I'm not sure it would be completely unacceptable for you to date a 19-year-old. Remember, this is a bare-minimum condition here.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:34 PM
how did an optimal age formula suddently morph into a minimum age one?
My guess is that we had this rule laying about, and acceptable age differences have become much smaller, so we used the rule we had.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:35 PM
Also, it provides counterintuitive results for young people—eg, my ten-year-old can date 12-year-olds, but not 11-year-olds.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:35 PM
Pwned, ogged.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:35 PM
I also think the "optimum" idea is kind of self-defeating. Every other year do you have to dump your bride for the next year's model?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:36 PM
It wouldn't be completely unacceptable, but one should expect to get a lot of shit for it. One of my coworkers married a girl at the low end of the 1/2 +7 continuum and every time his wife calls, his cubemate asks if she needed help with her algebra homework.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:36 PM
I take issue with classifying "beaten to the post" as pwnage. I concede that I was beaten to the post.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:37 PM
You should date people close your pwn age.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:38 PM
every time his wife calls, his cubemate asks if she needed help with her algebra homework
Becks works with a nice bunch of folks.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:39 PM
Indeed, the results are paradoxical. The youngest a 10 year-old can date is a 12, but a 12 needs to find someone who's at least 13.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:40 PM
Yes, I love where I work.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:41 PM
Actually, it could just be a way of enforcing a rule: no dating before you're 14.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:41 PM
Standpipe is the real pwner here, but I fear that I have established the "beaten to the post" standard recently and before--occasionally with tragic consequences.
(Took me a while to get those links, I fear I will be pwned by my own petard....)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:42 PM
I almost called it "Weiner's standard" when I took issue with it.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:43 PM
No! No one cares! cf text.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:44 PM
I'm yunger'n Adam, and while 52 is pushing it, I certainly couldn't rule out a woman in her 40s under the right conditions. I wouldn't say 52 was impossible, either, but the circumstances which would produce that are improbable.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:44 PM
50 to 48, though I fear you're busted.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:45 PM
This is a question worth teasing out. I initially told MY that his friends would mock him mercilessly if he dated someone who was 19, but I wouldn't have to sit him down or anything. But I'm not so sure. As MY rightly pointed out, this would be a college freshman he'd be bringing around. And we already mock him mercilessly, so that's not much of a disincentive.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:46 PM
Dudes, 19 is a sophomore. Were you left back?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:46 PM
Or did the Aggies redshirt you?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:47 PM
I was held back, wanna fight about it?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:48 PM
I was a junior at 19. A junior wouldn't be as creepy.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:48 PM
54 to Armsmasher and Yggi, who are claiming that freshmen are 19.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:49 PM
"I was held back" sounds like Shakespeare for "Someone grabbed my butt."
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:49 PM
It could also be a jr or sr, though. Or doctoral candidate. Don't be closed minded.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:51 PM
"It" in 60 refers to "17"
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:51 PM
or 19, even.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:52 PM
I turned 19 spring semester of my freshman year, was never held back, never went to A&M, and don't have to live in Lubbock.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:52 PM
Ouch.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:52 PM
Late start?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:52 PM
58: and 56 refers to 54. punk.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:53 PM
If you do date someone "too young," it has to be someone smokin' hot, so that people will think you're shallow but not necessarily immature.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:55 PM
BTW, mission accomplished. Yglesias gets a fruit basket!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:55 PM
"Too young"? you can get married in my home state at 12! It doesn't matter if she's younger as long as you make an honest woman out of her!
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:56 PM
Note that the "can go to bars" barrier is in fact significant.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:56 PM
Ogged makes a good point in 67. Dating someone young but not hott makes people think you just have control issues or can't handle someone your age. Young + foreign makes people question even more (as in my coworker's case).
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:57 PM
Well, if you want to be sending Yglesias a fruit basket, or have anything you want to say to him, or debts to settle, you best hurry.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:57 PM
I had a really creepy experience where the age of the guy interested in me was greater than X/2 plus 7.
It was the spring of my Freshman year in college, and I was taking a 4th semester Greek class on the Iliad. There were a couple of grad students in the class who were taking it for personal enrichment. One was a doctoral student in Chinese. The other was in the Government department and justified the class, because he wanted to use Thucydides in his dissertation. He must have been about 30.
I had shopped a Virgil class at which the professor had handed out Tennyson's poem "To Virgil, Written at the Request of the Manuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of Virgil's Death". In chit-chat before class I mentioned that I had the poem, and the guy asked me if he could look at it. I said, "sure." He then asked if he could borrow it and promised to return it. I said not to worry about returning it. (Even then I could have gotten it off the internet pretty easily.)
So a couple of days later he hands it back to me, and I put it in my folder. Back in my dorm room, I realize that he's attached a piece of paper to the poem. On it he has composed several lines in Homeric Greek. At the end, it says "Would you like to come over to my house for dinner at VI on Saturday evening?" (It was written with Roman numerals.)
It's creepy as hell, period, but I was especially bothered, because I was barely 18, and he was so much older. One of my roommates was taking a Government class, and it turned out that he was a TF for the course. He wasn't her TF, but she did attend one of his review sessions. I never mentioned it to him, and I refused to sit next to him in class for a while. It probably wasn't the most mature reaction on my part, but he did put me in an akward position, and the age difference made it especially uncomfortable.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:57 PM
Regarding 67: One imagines your swimming friend saying the same thing.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:58 PM
Michael: I'll meet you in DC in a week. I'm the one who looks like this.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:58 PM
I'm sure you're correct, Bridgeplate.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:58 PM
72: Meh, all debts get forgiven Wednesday night anyhow.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 9:59 PM
Weren't these rules developed with reference to a rather different sense of the term "date" than the one the kids are using today? Where to date someone is to spend time, just with them, in a well-lit place, engaged in some activity with the expectation that, if you like each other, you'll do just that thing again and again and take it from there, the idea of someone Matt's age dating a college freshman doesn't seem so bad. Where it means to sleep with someone, then spend all your time with her, it looks rather different.
On either understanding, however, it would be wrong for Matt himself as opposed to someone simply his age to date a 19-year-old. Matt is a huge celebrity, probably the most important young pundit out there since Jonathan Chait burst onto the scene in the mid-90s. Chicks dig that kind of thing and it would not be right for him to take advantage of it.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:00 PM
BG, I'm going to insist that all further comments from you begin with "Dear diary...."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:00 PM
And Tia's must start with "I never thought it could happen to me..."
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:01 PM
Nah, no late start. I don't really feel that I was much older than the mean in my class, either.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:01 PM
I inadvertently asserted your hottness, didn't I. Own-pwned!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:02 PM
Chicks dig that kind of thing and it would not be right for him to take advantage of it.
I think you have it precisely backwards.
Regarding your speculations on the word "date"—the various attentions paid to the youngest Miss Snopes (whose name I can't recall) are informative here.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:03 PM
You don't like anecdotes that are actually relevant to the topic under discussion?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:03 PM
84 to 79, though I probably shouldn't admit it.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:04 PM
75: And (when I'm angry.)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:06 PM
Man, I just can't comment tonight.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:06 PM
Drunk?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:07 PM
Alas, no.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:07 PM
Send your mom over, though, and we'll a-go carousing.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:08 PM
The Hulk's wearing a pretty goofy grin in that picture, meseems.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:08 PM
(I hope 89 doesn't tarnish my reputation!)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:08 PM
Bostonian Girl is the only reason I still come to this site.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:13 PM
11 comments were added in the time it took me to catch up, then craft my own unique contribution.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:14 PM
Thanks Adam. ogged's comment made me feel very unloved.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:15 PM
Send your mom over, though, and we'll a-go carousing.
Carousing all the evening and the drinking of the wine
The dancing and the wenching and the ladies in line
But we'll be lying idle in the morning of the day
Carousing, carousing, carousing away
And I love to see you angry; then I know you are alive
And you're already rowdy when the flash girls arrive
And we'll be lying idle in the morning of the day
Carousing, carousing, carousing away
And open the bottle and let the wine breathe
Open the bottle and let the wine breathe
Open the bottle and let the wine breathe
And I feel the sickness a-run in my veins
Holy pulse quicken oh easer of pains [?]
Knower of knowledge and namer of names
Worker and shirker and player of games
Oh holy pulse quicken oh how can this be
That that which unveileth does also deceive
So open the bottle and let the wine breathe
Open the bottle and let the wine breathe
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:16 PM
84 was also intended as defense. After all, you're not the one who runs an entire website devoted to tales of his getting hit on by older persons of the opposite sex.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:32 PM
Whoops, did I just Wolfson? Off to read about financial statement restatements.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:35 PM
A google search of the first two lines of ben's poem turns up only a forum entry from the dutch site of Rolling Stone magazine.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:38 PM
It was meant as a light-hearted jibe, people, jeez.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:39 PM
It's not a poem. It's a song, called "Carousing". It appears on Alasdair Roberts' Farewell Sorrow, which makes me think it's a Child(e?) ballad or something similar, but it is unknown to google.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:39 PM
It's not a poem. It's a song,
Songs aren't poems?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:40 PM
Re 97. Yeah I got that 84 was intended as a defense, but then I read 85, and I didn't want to damage your reputation too much. So, I didn't mention it. But thanks to Kotsko and Weiner both!
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:41 PM
No, songs aren't poems, though poems might be set to music, resulting in a song.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:41 PM
i tend to think music lyrics to be very poemesque.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:44 PM
Actually, in this case what I said above was incoherent. You win.
Don't let this go to your head, though.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:45 PM
there is the issue of the refrain, though. Some poems have refrains, but in a different way, it seems. (As for songs that repeat the same line over and over, they are either an abomination, or it is done for poetic effect.)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:46 PM
Don't let this go to your head, though.
My ego remains as small as a dust mite.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:47 PM
If you're going to enverb (is that the right word to make up?) the name Wolfson, wouldn't it mean TBALB, or to be hypercorrecting, or possibly to know some interestingly obscure references (I try to avoid saying nice things, but I can't always) not to interrupt flirting?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:57 PM
WMYBSALB, w/d?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:58 PM
Let's not pretend that Wolfson only practices one distinctive manuever.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 10:59 PM
Indeed, the results are paradoxical. The youngest a 10 year-old can date is a 12, but a 12 needs to find someone who's at least 13.
Well, that's the beauty of it. Stops kids from dating before they're 14, when they're old enough.
Or something.
Posted by Ian | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 11:00 PM
I already proposed that—in comment 47, no less!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 11:02 PM
Another distinctive maneuver: the garyfarb.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 11:12 PM
"Would you like to come over to my house for dinner at VI on Saturday evening?" (It was written with Roman numerals.)
So were you creeped out because he was in his 30s or because he behaved like someone in his 50s?
Posted by ogmb | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 11:20 PM
ogmb--Actually, he may not have said 6 PM. It might have been that he wrote out his telephone numbers in Roman numerals. But basically, the answer is both.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10- 9-05 11:38 PM
I already proposed thatin comment 47, no less!
Dammit! I honestly think I started skimming at 46.
Posted by Ian | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 1:07 AM
Hmm. When I met my wife we exactly matched the age/2 + 7 rule....
She was 21 and I was 28. Which didn't seem a massive age gap at the time given our respective levels of maturity ... :-)
And re: Yglesias comments above, a 19 year old dating someone in their early/mid 20s doesn't seem that odd. (With the usual "it depends on the person" caveats.)
When I was 17 and 18 my then girlfriends were 23 and 24 respectively...
Posted by M4tt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 2:04 AM
Contrary to 78, dating an 18-year-old for sex would seem highly plausible, whereas dating an 18-year-old for conversation would not. (With a few long-dead exceptions such as Hannah Arendt and Lou Salome.)
Any news on the XXXX Heidegger-Arendt photos, btw?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 6:15 AM
cw--where do you live in Europe?
Hmm, I actually got down to work and missed this. I live and work in the US. I'm over here for a short teaching stint for one of my U's programs.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 6:34 AM
I always thought the age/2 +7 rule was to yield a range where the age wasn't weird or creepy, not an optimum.
So for me, 26, the range is from 20 to 38.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 7:26 AM
I think the idea was to yield an optimum in the mid-nineteenth century which by current standards is weird and creepy. One neat feature of the formula is that, under the original assumption that the man is the older partner, the appropriately aged partner for a menopausal woman is approximately dead.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:15 AM
No, LB, the new rule is gender-neutral. One of the beneficial effects of the rule is to protect men my age from sexually predatory 104-year-old women.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:27 AM
I never thought it would happen to me. When I was in college, it seemed weird and creepy when I heard about people my age dating thirty year olds. But then Mr. Manley, the 70-year-old philosophy professor came into my life. His jowls were a little bit floppy, but I can assure you they were the only thing about him that was...
Seriously folks, this all seems like absurdity to me. You can observe a particular relationship with a big age difference and weird dynamics and say to yourself, "something there doesn't seem quite right" (although even then, at least in circles I've been exposed to, people have a tendency to overestimate their standing to evaluate what's going on in a relationship, which is of course mostly conducted in private, or just to find fault quickly because it makes them feel superior; unless you're close to one or both parties the only thing you can really say with authority is whether you enjoy spending time with the couple and why). But this rulemaking?
And BG, as with Ogged and the student who condescended to the UPS guy (or didn't), obviously you interacted with the guy and I didn't, but I don't see what in that story marks him as creepy. That he asked you out in writing so you didn't have to reject him to his face was kind of considerate; it respected your space and your possible shyness (he may have also been protecting himself, of course). Is he creepy just because he was older? But sometime in the history of the universe some 30-year-old has probably had a successful relationship (dating and/or sex) with an 18-year-old, and maybe he thought you were both pretty and well-spoken in class. Since he couldn't know ahead of time whether you'd be the type to say, "30, ew," was there no way he was allowed to express his interest, ever?
Dear Diary,
As regards my own relationship (I am four years younger than an acceptable partner for my mate by the formula, yet he is 8 years too old for me (?)), all of this talk of maturity just seems alien. I think there are ways in which he is more mature than I am (though I wouldn't put it that way), but I don't attribute it to his being older, but to a decade as a therapist. He is a lot better than most people I know of any age at having a conversation about sex or the relationship and not getting defensive or angry; he's a great person to have a fight with. But I know plenty of people older than he who are much less mature in this respect. He can be childish in other senses, as can I; he struggles with impulsivity and addiction, and I with sloth and disorganization, and sometimes those struggles affect the other person. Mostly though, we're both grownups, and unconcerned with who might fan themselves indignantly when we walk by (which is mostly no one).
Anyway, I know y'all are just jiving around, but I just wanted someone to say in this thread, for the record, that the notion that large age differences between adults is somehow unseemly is convention-bound foolishness, though any individual is free to determine his or her own preferences. Personally, Ogged, if she's sexy and you're looking for some hot rewindable-episodes-of-Lost action, as opposed to someone who could bear your children, you should go for it. That is all.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:32 AM
My only contribution is that I just saw an interview with Lauren Bacall on TV, and I'd still hit that.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:35 AM
Re Lauren Bacall, and how standards have changed since the ninteenth century, back then a "woman of a certain age" was in her late thirties. Given today's life expectancy / upkeep, how long does "a certain age" last?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:37 AM
The many potential benefits of a post-menapausal woman, considered in the abstract at least, had not entered my mind before Tia's comment.
Would it be possible at this point for us to shift the conversation toward Ogged's general prudishness?
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:39 AM
My parents flagrantly flaunted the age rule in a time and certainly in a community in which it played a more important role. She was 17, he was 27. But! They're still together, so it's not creepy.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:40 AM
Tia-
Prior discussion of the Little Women age rule is in the comments to this post. (There was, I think, another post where it got discussed, but I'm not sure where.)
I'd agree with you about this:
if you allow the caveat that 'adult' is a sliding scale, and that someone who's seeking out romantic partners at the very young end of the scale with the goal of finding people who are not emotionally adult and are therefore easily manipulated is probably a big jerk.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:51 AM
Huh --
My attempted blockquote disappeared. What should have followed the word "this" was this:
notion that large age differences between adults is somehow unseemly is convention-bound foolishness
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:51 AM
Don't try to blame my site for the fact that you typed a ? to close a tag.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:53 AM
Tia, you hit the nail on the head with this:
People really need to remember that one.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:54 AM
Bedizzied by your charms, she could barely see the keyboard or keep her balance, and her finger came down on the wrong key. How is that not your fault?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:55 AM
Good point.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:56 AM
Who was blaming the blog? The emotional stress of introducing a new HTML tag into my vocabulary of three (italics, bold, link, now blockquote) led me into a typo.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:56 AM
Um, no, actually it was what Matt said. Bedizzied, I was. Absolutely.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 8:57 AM
Agreed w/132, most of 124, etc. I thought part of the joke was that Yglesias was asking for specific justifications for the exact numbers of a rule that's obviously somewhat silly.
OTOH, I think the default is that a 30-year-old to be pursuing someone who's barely legal is a touch creepy; and bg's reaction seems to show that there wasn't the sort of special bond that would override considerations of age in this case.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 9:00 AM
Tia,
Part of what made it creepy wasn't in the story. I think that he was sort of creepy, and I think he too easily misread a kind of uncomfortable friendliness, but I don't want to make this too diary-esque.
I think that a big part of what made it creepy was that he could have been my teacher if I'd been a Gov. jock instead of a Classics nerd. And I was a Freshman, living in a dorm, adjusting to life in college for the first time. I may have been pretty mature in a lot of ways and able to talk confidently with adults. (I may have been better at talking with people who were rather older, but, in my case, I don't think that was a sign of maturity, so much as a certain kind of hot house growth, but this is getting too diary-esque.)
Armsmasher. I know people who are married and are separated by 10 years. My godmother and my Dad were friends in college, and she married my godfather (10 years older) who was my Dad's expository writing instrucror in college. But he was married to somebody else when my Dad was in college, and they didn't get together until she was in her 30's at which point she'd already finished a PhD, and he was about to start one in the same field (same cuz only U.S. dept of Celtic studies). So by that time the power dynamics were totally different. Professionally, she was ahead of him. (Tia--I think that's part of what was so weird; the huge gap in professional attainment.)
Having said all that, I would be very unhappy if my 17 year-old daughter dated someone who was 21 or older.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 9:00 AM
P.S. Tia, After I read LB's 129, I have to add that I don't think that he was trying to control or manipulate me. I just think that he was extremely shy and uncomfortable around people his own age.
The roommate who had been to his review session described him as nice (not a a "nice guy" TM--how do you write trademark in HTML?)--sweet even--but she meant it in the sense that she felt sort of sorry for him.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 9:08 AM
To get a ™, type "™".
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 9:27 AM
Re 124 et al.:
My wife and I were outside the formula-recommended age limits when we met each other, though with the passage of years we have since become formula-approved. I would agree that the formula is useless as regards any particular case of two individuals who are both sufficiently into adulthood (physically and mentally) to know what they are doing. If the age gap seems a little odd to outsiders, but the relationship works for the couple in question, well, vive la difference.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 9:43 AM
Agreed with 129, but disagreed with 133. There are plenty of people in the world who are out to find partners who are easily manipulated; that sucks and is creepy. I don't think that translates into a default that a 30-year-old's interest in an 18-year-old is necessarily creepy; it depends on the people in question. An 18-year-old can vote and fight in wars, and could have three or four years of sexual experience under his or her belt, etc. Or could be a total naif. Either way, I don't think it's too much to ask that they learn the art of the polite and firm, "Not interested, thanks." I'll take BG's word for it that her suitor's vibe was creepy, and that he was bad at perceiving her discomfort, but I don't think there's anything objectively wrong with asking out someone in those circumstances; he didn't have any institutional power over her, etc. Also, per BG's latest, some older people who are interested in younger partners feel that they themselves are so immature or so tentative that they are not the equal of most other people their own age. A 24-year-old male roommate of mine says endearingly (and I think genuinely) that he has to date 18 and 19 year olds because girls his age are all too mature for him.
This is adolescence-creep. To paraphrase John E. in another thread, by 2300 no one will be allowed to have sex until they're 35. I wouldn't be surprised if values about the boundaries of adolescence were very class-determined, and that outside the circles where it's expected to attend college there is much less of a sense that an 18-year-old is incapable of communicating his or her preferences to someone older who might express interest. But since 30-year-old TF's are living in a culture that treats 18 and 19 year olds like children, sure, a 30 year old who's interested in one should anticipate that they might not be fully adult yet, but how would that 30 year old go about figuring it out if (s)he were interested? If the 18 year old seemed confident and self-possessed? In the abstract case, if not in BG's?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 9:43 AM
I wonder whether our attitudes about older men dating younger women aren't tied up with rather silly ideas about sexual distributive justice. Most men, even married men with no intention of straying like myself, view sex with attractive women as an extraordinarily prized good, one which ought to be distributed in broadly meritocratic ways. So it offends us morally when a man's wealth, fame or age, rather than his looks or charm, is the basis of his ability to acquire this good. But it doesn't offend for the normal reason for objecting morally to specific sexual encounters namely, lack of consent. That is, while our objections are moral in nature, we aren't actually objecting to anything improper being done to the young women. What's offending us is the same thing that offends us about nepotism. The difference, though, is that where nepotism violates the rights of those more worthy of employment, it really is none of our business why people pair off in the way they do, at least where none of the conditions, such as extreme youth, which speak to lack of consent are present.
So that's my theory. Many of our moral attitudes about age differences in relationships are rooted in a theory of distributive justice which is being inappropriately applied.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 9:46 AM
also, saturday night, for dinner, at his place, for a first date with a 17 year old? with whom he is too shy to speak?
sounds like a recipe for the date from hell.
for everyone involved, I mean.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 9:48 AM
Thanks mcmc. Yes, if a bunch of us had gone out for coffee after class one day. The whole thing might have been less weird, but I had only ever talked to him, because I used to get to class 10 minutes early.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 9:53 AM
Oh, and mcmc, I was 18. Armsmasher's mom was 17 when sahe was first dating his Dad.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 9:54 AM
That's 137 you're disagreeing with--by your own lights, no one else should try to judge the depth of LB's bedizziment. (Sorry.)
You're quite likely right about the class-bound nature of this. And adolescence is socially constructed, sure. But in the specific case of first-year college students, you've got someone who has just left an environment where they're dependent on their parents--I hope we don't have to argue too much about high school--and is still in an environment that's very far from adulthood, as bg pointed out.
(I think there's a difference between 30 and 24 here, BTW. If you went to college, at 24 you haven't been out long at all. It's more natural to hang around there. And 24/2+7=19, anyhow.)
I'm not necessarily saying the 30-year-old should be pilloried for asking out an 18yo. But he shouldn't be surprised when the reaction is "Ew! You're too old!")
Maybe this could be a rule of thumb: If you don't know an 18-year-old well enough to ask her to coffee face to face, you don't know if she's mature enough to be a good match for a 30-year-old. Maybe it would be better to ask her along to some group outing first.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 9:56 AM
The meritocratic distribution of sexual goods is complicated by the fact that everyone wants their own kind of merit to count the most -- this is voiced especially often among those who have the most occasion to think about their sexual needs going unfulfilled (i.e., those whose merits are in the intellectual rather than the physical realm).
One might draw a parallel between an older man dating a hot young woman and a jock dating the hottest girl in band -- someone who presumably has wide access to women essentially swoops in and removes the woman from circulation among her peer group, which is made up of men whose prospects are much less wide-ranging.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:01 AM
pjs, I don't think that's entirely it. I had a friend who said, "When I was 18 and I saw 18-year-old girls dating 26-year-old men, I figured that when I was 26 it would be payback time. Now that I'm 26 I realize that those guys were creepy." This relates to seeking out 18 year olds rather than finding that special someone who happens to be 18, but it wouldn't be appropriate if the ick factor were a question of distributive justice--then he would've wanted to use his age-26 wisdom to dazzle the 18-year-olds.
And I don't think anyone is criticizing how people get together. If you have a happy loving couple, I don't care how old they are or how they got together. But that's not exclusively what we're talking about here.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:02 AM
pjs, I think that's right. Relatedly, some older women express a meritocratic right to older men; somewhat opposed to the belief you described in men, who think sex should be a reward for studliness, they treat sex as if it were a reward for virtue and accomplishment, and resent younger women who poach from their forest and make appropriate partners more scarce, as in that scene on Sex and the City when Candace Bergen drunkenly accosts SJP for taking Baryshnikov (sp?) out of her pool.
mcmc, well-taken about the weirdness of the first-date venue.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:05 AM
Adam,
That's an excellent clarification. For me, the example would be the bookish high school beauty who dates a 25-year-old college dropout who works at a record store or a coffee shop. But it's the same basic principle. The supposed moral offense is not in harming the young woman, who seems perfectly happy, but in taking that which doesn't belong to you.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:09 AM
Matt,
That makes sense. In fact, I agree with your friend. But what explains the intuition that it's "creepy"? It can't be that it's exploitative. Many relationships between two 18-year-olds are mutually exploitative, but not creepy.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:15 AM
bookish high school beauty who dates a 25-year-old college dropout who works at a record store or a coffee shop ... taking that which doesn't belong to you
Hmm. If that's really the objection, we'd expect 18 year-old boys/men to make it most strongly, no? But that wasn't my experience. Mostly, I think we felt our own insecurities confirmed when hotties dated older guys: it made sense that they'd want something better than we could offer. Most of the time, people objecting are the same age as the older partner, and it seems like a pretty straightforward judgement rooted in the belief that age and maturity are closely correlated, and anyone dating someone younger is immature or unwilling to be challenged by an equal.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:18 AM
I'm not necessarily saying the 30-year-old should be pilloried for asking out an 18yo. But he shouldn't be surprised when the reaction is "Ew! You're too old!")
Maybe this could be a rule of thumb: If you don't know an 18-year-old well enough to ask her to coffee face to face, you don't know if she's mature enough to be a good match for a 30-year-old. Maybe it would be better to ask her along to some group outing first.
I don't really disagree with anything here. I would maybe note that although the 30-yr-old shouldn't be surprised by the "ew" part (as opposed to the "you're too old" part), since it's an occupational hazard of expressing interest in people who may be immature, it would be a sign of exceptional grace and maturity on the part of the 18 y.o. to leave it out, and simply say, "you're too old."
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:24 AM
I don't know--it's an interesting question. I mean, back to the thing that started this off (and a review of the bidding demonstrates that it was my fault), if Ogged really wants to get with a hot 58-year-old why not? Though I take it the assumption was that he doesn't, and that's why we're joking. And also that this would not be a longterm relationship (they don't seem to have talked about much besides his stroke and speed). But that's not your question; maybe it's some sort of disparity in presumptive maturity. That's presumptive, of course.
(FWIW, I remember thinking, was Clinton surprised when Monica started acting weird, about how she knew he really loved him etc.? She was only 21! Of course she'll act that way!)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:25 AM
155 to 152.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:27 AM
In my case, I think that the reaction from other people, of all ages, would have been something like "how the hell did he manage to get her?"
(I'm not a great beauty by any means, but he was not a catch by any conventional standard.)
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:28 AM
If you don't know an 18-year-old well enough to ask her to coffee face to face, you don't know if she's mature enough to be a good match for a 30-year-old. Maybe it would be better to ask her along to some group outing first.
That's why I think the rule is a decent, um, rule of thumb. When you start a relationship, you really don't know the other person that well; if you're making any kind of judgment about whether it's a good idea to start dating this person it's not with perfect information, or even information accrued over several months together.
I mean, suppose my younger sister, a college sophomore, has an interest in an older grad student. He's 33. He really seems interested in her. She's a hottie. Now, they may be an exception and he may be interested in her as a complete person, but if she's asking me whether she should pursue this guy, the odds are not good on me giving an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:32 AM
if Ogged really wants to get with a hot 58-year-old why not?
Because I, like a lot of people, am kind of creeped out by the old and wrinkly, especially when it comes to thinking of them as sexual?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:32 AM
If she were old and wrinkly, you wouldn't find her hot. Ex hypothesi, she is hot (to you, for that's the only dimension that matters here); ergo, she is not old and wrinkly.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:34 AM
She's borderline old and wrinkly, which is the problem.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:36 AM
Have you considered telling her about your blog, and asking her to weigh in with any thoughts? You could offer to give her some breaststroke tips in exchange.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:40 AM
Yet another commenter with my best interest at heart.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:42 AM
Just think of it as taking one for the Tivo, Ogged. Anyhow, the parts that matter were wrinkly to begin with.
That was completely inappropriate and I apologize to everybody here.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:43 AM
LizardBreath, I think that ogged's already regretting the number of people who have pierced the veil of his pseudonymity. He's met Kotsko and Wolfson in real life, and he was lamenting the fact that Unf's FFIL reads the blog.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:43 AM
Anyhow, the parts that matter were wrinkly to begin with.
A straight friend of mine, bewailing her romantic fortunes, once complained to me that she'd had so much trouble with men that she'd thought about trying her luck with women instead, but couldn't handle the thought of the "foldy bits".
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:47 AM
Your friend is nuts. The foldy bits rock.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:50 AM
People, people...
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:51 AM
NTM, doesn't she have her own foldy bits?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:52 AM
Yes, Ogged?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:52 AM
The conversation was kinda funny, and she is nuts. Last I heard she was living with a bunch of musicians in Austrailia, but that's almost a decade ago now.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:53 AM
Oh, nothing...
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:54 AM
Sorry. I'll try to keep it clean.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:55 AM
I'll try to keep it clean.
There's a "foldy bits" joke to be made here, but I'll refrain out of respect for Ogged's tender sensibilities.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 10:57 AM
Keeping it clean is not just an imperative for foldy bits, but also for many Gentile pointy bits.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:00 AM
well, LB's friend's reaction is kinda typical of straight girls who theoretically want to experiment and who see so many sexualized photos of all the other bits they can imagine getting into them, but when they think of the foldy bits they are confronted by the reality that they really would not be with their preferred gender. Also not a few women are anti-vagina. I had a friend who complained about hers leaking and oozing.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:01 AM
I'm just going to go hide for a while, y'all tell me when you're finished.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:02 AM
straight girls who theoretically want to experiment and who see so many sexualized photos of all the other bits they can imagine getting into them, but when they think of the foldy bits they are confronted by the reality that they really would not be with their preferred gender.
That's Paula.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:06 AM
I think that ogged's already regretting the number of people who have pierced the veil of his pseudonymity.
At the Mineshaft.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:07 AM
Also not a few women are anti-vagina.
"According to a new study, 73 percent of women say they're ashamed of their own vaginas. And from what I've seen, they should be." - Tina Fey
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:09 AM
Some women are just kinky. Awhile back there was this pretty young thing 4/10 my age flirting with me. It was fun but nothing came of it. I ran into her a year or so later and she was living with a different older guy. She had no apparent problems and seemed quite happy.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:13 AM
I am about to reveal my continuing newbiness and my general ignorance, but could somebody please point me to the original use (on this blog) of the phrase "At the Mineshaft"? I tried to use the MT search, but I couldn't find this. Its use here seems to have more than one meaning, and I have a feeling that it refers to something philosophical or German (not perhaps a rational feeling).
Could someone point me to a good, basic explanation so that I won't feel like such a dunce?
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:14 AM
I have a feeling that it refers to something philosophical or German (not perhaps a rational feeling).
Ancient-philosophical, maybe. The Mineshaft is a venue of education and the imparting of knowledge.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:14 AM
But Ben, though I also am a newbie, can the knowledge imparted ATM be ancient-philosophical? I thought it was Biblical.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:16 AM
You'll find it in Plato.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:19 AM
Well, we're really thinking of two different senses of imparting knowledge here. In the Mineshaft Situation (henceforth MS), both parties (we can assume WLOG that there are only two parties) gain knowledge of each other, and therefore the MS can be said to impart knowledge to them. However, one of the two (the "impartive" party) imparts knowledge and education to the other (the "receptive" party), if the relationship is healthy and excellent.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:20 AM
Enter The Mineshaft.
At the Mineshaft.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:20 AM
Also, what Joe said. 186 is really just because I can't remember which dialogue.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:21 AM
Well, the apostropher gives the game away, just as I was about to pipe up about character, discipline, and paideia.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:21 AM
The original use was in this epic thread. The philosophy involved seems more Socratic-Alcibidean.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:22 AM
urk. pwned.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:23 AM
Of course it was Labs who introduced it, in this comment.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:23 AM
I firmly believe that thread remains the gold standard 'round these parts. Misty water-colored memories...
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:24 AM
189--Now that really embarasses me, because I've read bits of Werner Jaeger's book on paideia, but it was for a paper on Isocrates. And my knowledge of Plato is painfully limited--the whole of the Symposium, bits of the Phaedo and Phaedrus and snippets from a couple of dialogues. I need to grease my Greek a bit and get reading. I have never read The Republic and really should.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:26 AM
It was a great, great thread.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:28 AM
No! My citation is earlier than the apostropher's! He is pwned! Bwahahahaha!
Still Weiner-pwned on Alcibiades, though.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:28 AM
Well, having now skimmed those threads, I can see that the Symposium was really all that I needed to know. And yes, I thought that there was an erotic undercurrent to the whole thing.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:32 AM
I need to grease my Greek
ATM.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:34 AM
He is pwned!
I concede.
Posted by apwnstropher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:35 AM
An example of one paradigmatic use:
I firmly [ATM] believe that thread remains the gold standard 'round these parts [ATM]. Misty water [ATM]-colored memories...
And of course the Mineshaft refers to this blog/comment space, so that we can talk about the recent invasion of the Mineshaft by 47-year-old balding men....
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:37 AM
Calling 200 used to be funny, but now it's just shrill.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:37 AM
I was going to join into the comment-linking fun, but I can't find the one where I said I was worried people would think I was gay if I commented here, at the Mineshaft.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:50 AM
This (scroll down), is a good song btw.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 11:59 AM
I think it is highly likely that you have misread the situation, and the lady in question went straight home and told her newly-out son "there's this lovely boy at the swimming pool, I think I can get his phone number for you".
and then masturbated furiously, obviously.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 12:00 PM
This "swimmers are fairies" thing isn't as culturally well-established as "gymnasts are fairies," is it? I confess that I hadn't heard it before dsquared and tripp brought it to my attention. Otherwise, I would have begun swimming much earlier.
Adam, here's your comment.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 12:03 PM
C'mon, ogged. You're talking about a sport that is absolutely useless to spectators. These guys churn up the water so much that you can't see any real "grace." All you're left with is slim young boys with absurd bodies who leave the arena wet.
Teh gay.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 12:05 PM
Ignore these people ogged. In seven years of competitive swimming, I never saw someone drop their soap in the shower on purpose or offer to scrub someone else's back. These people just envy anyone who can look good in a Speedo.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 1:00 PM
Occasionally indulging in dalliances with other men, even if respectably married, isn't completely foreign to Persian culture, is it?
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 1:20 PM
I didn't know you were a swimmer, Idealist. I'm not actually concerned by Tim's anxieties, but I didn't want to be ignorant of some cultural marker; apparently, they're just doing it to bother me, in which case, they really should have caught me when I was figure skating.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 1:50 PM
In seven years of competitive swimming, I never saw someone drop their soap in the shower on purpose or offer to scrub someone else's back.
On the other hand, in a ten minute trip to the Men's Pond at Hampstead Heath I saw three men enthusiastically sucking somebody off, so it pays to keep your eyes open.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 1:53 PM
Eureka! Chlorine is hell on the teeth.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 2:00 PM
three men enthusiastically sucking somebody off
That's quite a feat, unless this was the suckee.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 2:09 PM
Back on point - ogged - the "I want your speed" was a tiny come-on. Be flattered, even if you are not interested.
Personally the best come on I got all weekend was "You can police my neighborhood anytime," and this was from a lady in her 70's!
I agree with, I think, Adam above who said (essentially) that young men and older women who frown on older men dating younger women are simply voicing anger that their pool of potential dates is lessened.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 2:51 PM
So Tripp, did you get to , uhhh, "police her neighborhood"?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 2:55 PM
If you do, leave the windows open for the Community Watch.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 2:56 PM
Community Policing #7: Minnesota Blue
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 2:58 PM
Well, a gentleman wouldn't tell. I'm no gentleman, of course. I'm kinda stringing her along for the inheritance. I think she's been after me for the past twenty five years. You gotta play it cool.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 3:08 PM
re: 209
Sadly, my swimming days ended even before you were born. I am now more ursine than delphine.
Figure skating--I do not know if it is gay (and what would be wrong with that) but I imagine it was a great way to meet women. Clever choice of sport ogged.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 3:14 PM
There's somethign else going on, though -- and not just the 'looking for someone to push around' motivation that I brought up earlier.
To the extent that there's a systematic difference between younger men and older men beyond physical aging, it's that the older men have more stuff: money, sophistication, knowledge, professional status and power. Lots of people disapprove of relationships where one person is attracted by the other's stuff, rather than by more innate qualities like personality or even physical appearance.
I think what's going on in a lot of the older man/younger woman disapproval is an assumption that she's not actually into the guy, but into his stuff. If the woman is young and naive, the relationship looks as if the guy is in a way tricking her into thinking she's attracted to him by showering her with the exciting older-guy lifestyle (even the college-dropout coffee shop guy dating the highschool girl probably has a car, his own place, and more spending money than her peers). With a slightly more sophisticated and mature younger partner, she looks mercenary and he looks like he's hiring his social life. Either way, it's an unsightly relationship, at least to the nosy and judgmental.
(This is in no way intended to impugn relationships across large age gaps where this isn't what's going on, of course.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 3:14 PM
What kind of biscuit is this? If someone hasn't already said what LB says in 219, it's right on.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 3:17 PM
Biscuit?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 3:21 PM
I think there's something else other than what's going on in 219, though. I've pretty much always dated older guys (not in violation of the rule, except in one instance), and there's never really been any kind of stuff differential, but it's still somewhat, though to a much lesser extent now than before, frowned upon by my peers. It's not that they see the age difference as problematic per se, but as somehow less than ideal.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 3:21 PM
On reflection, my efforts to manipulate someone about 18 month younger than me aren't going so well, so maybe I should try for a 19 year-old.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:21 PM
I'm sure we can give you advice if you'd like to tell us about your efforts.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:25 PM
Yes, nothing possibly could go wrong with that.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:26 PM
See, this is why I need to adopt a good Mineshaft pseudonym.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:31 PM
I don't think "Wehttam Saiselgy" is taken. You just need to avoid googling and easily-traced-back-to-you random readers, right? I suggest "The Cuban Princess."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:34 PM
Bon MOTT?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:35 PM
"The Cuban Star Princess"; remember the sunglasses, ogged.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:36 PM
LB, I know you're just describing, not necessarily endorsing, a source of societal disapproval for age-gap relationships, but to be a consistent advocate for fuzzy-headed suspension of judgment, I'd just like to say that IMO it's okay when attraction is overdetermined, and you love the person and his/her accoutrements. Much of the stuff associated with older men (professional accomplishment, sophistication, knowledge) is as or more intrinsic to them as appearance. As far as I'm concerned, if it's a fling, it's okay if it's mostly the accoutrements (if its an LTR that would get a little cold at night after a while). I mean, who would fault some l'il slip of a thing who had happy sex while drinking Kristal on the private jet with Chet, her suave I-banker summer boyfriend, as long as she was in control of herself and her circumstances? And if she's happy, why is he doing wrong? Because they don't satisfy our aesthetic judgments about who should fuck and when? If we're all mocking other people for our own entertainment, that's one thing, as long as we don't delude ourselves that our opinions have moral weight.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:45 PM
Technically, that persona was known as "The Princess of the Beach." Besides which, what happens on OBX stays on OBX.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:47 PM
Ygatt Mlesias?
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:48 PM
Terrific. Spill.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:49 PM
Tia, just for the record, you'll pry my moral disapproval from my cold dead fingers.
(Far, far away from the Mineshaft.)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:50 PM
Re 230 and other substantive posts, I think disapproval of age gap relationships serves, in part, to discourage married middle-aged men from abandonning their families in pursuit of younger women. Like a lot of these things, various innocent parties wound up getting caught in this rather crude net of judgmentalism but its purpose is fundamentally worthy.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:53 PM
It's a start, Wehttam, but still no good for bitching about your crazy roommate.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:53 PM
Wehttam Saiselgy--When pronounced out loud, that's a name that's so bad it's good.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 4:58 PM
Tia-
People can consensually enter into relationships which turn out to harm them in various (presumably emotional) ways more than they helped, such that the current-self of the person at the end of the relationship will (sincerely) wish that they had never entered the relationship. I take it that this a prudential, rather than ethical problem, but it still seems like grounds to give advice, even if it's not grounds to criticize. And it might be grounds for criticism too, of the, "You should have known better" sort.
Everything said above about people internal to the relationship knowing far more about it than those external is granted.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 5:20 PM
I agree with Tia. Once you think, as most of us do, that having sex with someone else for purely hedonistic reasons is acceptable (all things being equal), then I don't see how people who have sex in order to get access to a lifestyle otherwise beyond their means can be condemned.
However, I also agree with Wehttam Saiselgy, who basically ruined this whole topic. That's why your professors at Harvard never let you make that kind of argument. It's not that rule utilitarianism is wrong. It's that it's always right and so ruins everyone's fun.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 5:20 PM
Really, do you find 235 compelling? The disapproval might serve that purpose, but I don't think it has much to do with why the disapproval exists. That seems to have more to do with our notions of equality and autonomy, and how we think relationships are supposed to reflect and nurture our good actualized selves.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 5:26 PM
I don't actually agree that purely hedonistic sex is entirely ok. It's not something that I would advise my friends to engage in, if they asked. I'm not about to go around telling people that they're bad or to make anyone feel uncomfortable. I'll probably just keep my mouth shut, but I don't reallythink that it's healthy behavior, and I think that too often it degenerates into using another person for one's own satisfaction.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 5:32 PM
PJS's first remark also gets at something important. It's hard to rationally justify, but we generally don't approve of the idea of using sex in order to acquire anything other than sexual pleasure and/or babies. In women's studies I was taught that this reflects deep-seated male anxiety that women will use their sexual power to the undermine the entire system of power that men otherwise dominate through our awesome patriarchy. That the fear is ostensibly paternalistic concern that the woman in question is being "manipulated" only shows how insidious the workings of yon patriarchy are. The real idea is to deter and punish male defectors from the awesome patriarchal power structure.
I don't know that I believe that. But as with the not-breaking-up-marriages hypothesis, I do think it's a mistake to simply assume that protecting young women is the real purpose of these norms just because that's the normal mode in which disapproval is voiced.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 5:34 PM
I suspect the disapproval has been around a lot longer than concern for women's equality and autonomy has been around.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 5:35 PM
I suspect the disapproval has been around a lot longer than concern for women's equality and autonomy has been around.
Sure, but the reasons needn't have remained the same. When the people I know express disapproval of these relationships, it's usually for reasons like the ones Becks gives in 71.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 5:39 PM
I'm with w/d; it's not that it's immoral., it's that at some point the consequences may be ugly.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 5:47 PM
Sure, but the reason needn't have remained the same.
Right, but that just gets at the question. You have a norm. People usually explain the norm with reference to certain values. But the prevalance of the norm long predates the time when the values were widespread, or widely acknowledged to be important. That raises suspicions that these reasons aren't the real reasons. Not that people who voice 71-ish objections are lying. They suffer from false consciousness.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 5:49 PM
the prevalance of the norm long predates the time when the values were widespread
Does it? We all seemed to be in agreement upthread that this standard has changed quite a bit, and differences in age which were ok in the past are now frowned upon.
Of course it's possible that there are deeper or more fundamental reasons for the disapproval than 71-type, but it's also possible that it's a norm that finds a place in different societies for different reasons.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 6:01 PM
I find it perfectly plausible that the rule came into existence for the reasons mentioned in 235, and it continued to exist for the following reasons:
1. Older men continue to find young nubile women attractive and vice versa -- that is, the behavior it was supposed to police is still present in society.
2. Members of each partner's peer group continue to enjoy bitching about and criticizing members of their group, under whatever pretexts they can find.
2.1. This effect is only strengthened because this is a situation involving sex, and people tend to resent those who are having more sex than them -- judging them, then, becomes a way of coping.
One could say that the continued references to rules about female modesty serve the same function -- to give people an opportunity to criticize and judge attractive young women.
Ressentiment latches onto whatever materials happen to serve it -- in this case, now-obselete rules about age difference in sexual relatioships.
Or in still other words, no particular rationale stated for a rule is necessarily the reason for its institution, and the reason behind its institution does not necessarily have any relation to its continued cultural circulation (the rule we're discussing, for instance, seems originally to have been instituted as an "ideal" and eventually was applied to a limit condition -- certainly that's a significant shift).
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 6:18 PM
Let me note that it's just now occurred to me to wonder what "Wehttam Saiselgy" spells if you read it backwards. I never was any good at word games.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 6:54 PM
After you had posted under it several times?
(Assuming 249 is by the real Wehttam Saiselgy.)
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 7:08 PM
it's possible that there are deeper or more fundamental reasons for the disapproval than 71-type, but it's also possible that it's a norm that finds a place in different societies for different reasons.
I would like to clarify that the reasons I gave in 71 were observations based on a particular situation. I did not intend to claim that those were the reasons one might disapprove of all relationships that violated that norm.
Also, I agree with what Ogged says in the second part of this statement -- there might be different reasons to support the same norm under different circumstances.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 7:09 PM
Becks and I tend to agree. We're moving in!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-05 7:09 PM
Had we known Mr. Wettham Saiselgy would post under a name without first figuring out what it meant, we would have offered a better selection of names.
Posted by