The Misogyny of Shading Age-Gap Relationships
So recently in internet drama, Keemstar a 39-year-old man is dating a 20-year-old woman and both Ethan Klein and Trisha Paytas have both heavily implied the guy is a pedophile. This set off a firestorm of criticism across the internet.
Because he is dating a grown woman.
A grown adult woman.
Who has the capacity to give consent.
This is nothing but pure misogyny. Treating women like objects, like some valuable resource, and then trying to control who has access to the most valuable of that resource (the youngest and most attractive) without any care given to what the woman herself wants; that is pure misogyny.
So many people are casually throwing around jokes like “Doesn’t Keemstar have a girlfriend to babysit?”
As if infantilizing adult women is so funny.
And people like to throw around the argument that it’s abusive for men that old to date women that young because “the brain doesn’t isn’t fully developed until age 25.”
Yet, I find it very telling these same people never use that brain development point to argue that 20-year-old women shouldn’t receive promotions at work, or be able to get tattoos, or engage in sex work.
Trisha Paytas wants to argue that a relationship with a man 19 years older is traumatic to young women. I would think sex work would be way more traumatic.
Lwt me be clear, I’m not so much anti sex work as I am like umm….I don’t think you should do that, sis.
Maybe I’m a hypocrite because I write smut. But I’ll put it this way, the idea of performing my sexuality online by showing off intimate areas or performing lewd acts makes me deeply uncomfortable. Putting out a smut sotry, words on a page that are not attached to my image, my voice, my body, etc (it’s why I won’t even read the lewd parts of my stories in youtube videos-dudes can fap to stories I write. Dudes can not fap directly TO ME-if I can help it.) I do see a big difference between the two, because there’s that big line of separation.
And I think it also says something that my husband doesn’t care even a little that I write smut. But he’s pretty disgusted by men married to sex workers. We actually had quite the debate over the Idubbz’s girlfriend situation.
I think a lot of men are like that: writing smut, meh who cares? shaking your ass in front of a webcam? No, thanks. Not the lady not for me.
But I guess anyone who doesn’t see the distinction…eh, fair enough.
I don’t think sex workers are bad people. I don’t think we should look down on them. And I’ll admit, I watch amateur porn on pornhub. So sex workers are performing a service that has some value to me.
At the same time, I don’t see how somebody could live that way and not have it affect them in an adverse way.
I never did any sex work. But I did sleep around a lot when I was younger. I went from being a virgin at 18 to having a double-digit body count by age 20. Many of those dudes, I didn’t even know their last name. I didn’t know anything about them. It never felt okay. It never felt enjoyable. But at the time, it seemed like that’s what I was supposed to be doing. Men always came at me like it was expected. All the other women I knew were hooking up and having casual sex. And I mean, I was raised in with a mom who managed a sex toy store. We had vibrators and anal beads all over the house when I was young. Porn was everywhere. Everyone at every stage of my life treated sex like this casual throwaway thing and so I treated it like a casual throwaway thing.
I think it does real harm to the human psyche when we treat sex like taking a dump-like some crass physical need to be filled, rather than as something sacred and precious to only be shared with someone who has committed to us.
Many of the same people who argue that age gap relationships harm young women, who go as far as to heavily imply that a 20 year old woman can not consent to a relationship with a 40 year old man, also advocate for the “right” of women to perform sex work.
Trisha Paytas argues that the age gap relationship Keemstar and his 20 year old girlfriend have will traumatize the girlfriend.
Yet, she’s a 33 year old collaborating with 23 year old Tana Mongeau on Only Fans. Are you shocked Tana is 23? Me too. Between that Real Housewives-esque plastic surgery and platinum blonde hair, she looks like a 42 year old divorcee who just got her groove back. Really younger woman, stop with the plastic surgery; it makes you look older. When a woman has noticeable plastic surgery, people are naturally going to assume she is at least 40.
I thought Tana Mongeau was older than ME (I’m about to turn 33).
Bad plastic surgery and gen-X hair aside, Tana Mongeau is only 23. And Trisha has no problem with collaborating with a much younger woman to create sexually-explicit content.
If the brain is not fully-developed until age 25, and that’s the entire premise for why Keemstar’s relationship is exploitative, than how can it be okay for a 23 year old to consent to sex work that will affect both her public image and her self-image? And let’s be real, it will affect which men will be willing to date her. She can consent to all of those consequences, but not to a relationship with a man a few years older?
The criticism of age gap relationships is both misogynistic and misandrist. It does what so much of feminism does: denies women, particularly young women, agency. It also places a hyper-vigilante lens on male sexuality, labeling a perfectly acceptable, consensual relationship as deviant. Implying a man dating a 20 year old adult woman is a pedophile, really?
It’s insulting and condescending to women and it’s a weird demonization of male sexuality. It’s gross on both counts.
If you want to say age gap relationships are a bad idea, that’s one thing. Personally, I’ve never dated anybody significantly older than me. The most I ever did was date a man in his late twenties when I was 20. I remember being hit on by older men online back when I was 18/19. This was back in the days of MySpace and a couple of times I got into flirty conversations with men in their 40s/50s. Every time it was initiated by them and each time I never really felt a spark. They were so different than me. So established with careers and houses. I couldn’t relate to them. Each of those flirtations fizzled out very quickly. I felt like I was talking to one of my corny uncles or something. I’ve never been able to feel sexual attraction for men significantly older. It works the opposite way too. I don’t think I could ever feel sexual attraction for men significantly younger. I don’t understand the appeal of age gaps myself.
All of that being said, not everybody is me. Not everyone has to do things the way I do. If other people want to date older/younger people, there’s no issue. If it is consenting adults, who cares?
Saying ‘hey, maybe that’s not a great idea’ is one thing. It’s completely another to imply that grown women are children who can not consent and to imply that the men who date younger women are creepy or even pedophiles. In what world is dating a grown adult evidence that someone is a pedophile? That’s a ridiculous implication. It’s a ridiculous and harmful implication.
And Ethan Klein, Trisha Paytas, and everyone else jumping on this bandwagon just because they dislike Keemstar, all need to really think about what they’re saying.
