This is another great article - thanks a lot.

I think that one of the most jarring issues about this particular age-gap relationship I is that the young women was still, really, only a girl at 16 and a man of mid-30s is already twice her age. This may not be a problem of the young woman was 36and he was, say, 56 because it isn’t just raw numbers in terms of years, but stages of psychosocial maturation.

I think that there is a high incidence of power imbalance in age-gap relationships; they almost lend themselves to this situation.

I also think that it is true to say that as a society, we are softened up to accept these disparities which, as you rightly point out, is padded with pseudo-scientific junk-chatter around biology and fertility.

The simple fact is that men who find themselves in a position of prestige, status and power leverage these things to simply take what they want. We have the Epstein/Maxwell scandal that perfectly underscores this toxic, acquisitive and exploitative mindset and basically elevates the demands of a ‘superclass’ of men and tries to normalise their abusive, exploitative behaviour.

Also, I’m actually amazed at the belligerent defensiveness of some of the commenters on this post.