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> Is this a American cultural quirk I'm not understanding? As an American I would say: yes, it is. I suspect it has something to do with the rising neoteny of
by time_to_smile 5y ago
> Is this a American cultural quirk I'm not understanding?
As an American I would say: yes, it is.
I suspect it has something to do with the rising neoteny of more recent generations coupled with America's persistent puritanical views on sex, but there has been an increasingly bizarre fixation on the age gap of couples. All teenagers have recently be re-defined as children, so much that it's common on places like reddit to view even attraction to say a 17 year old viewed as a form of pedophilia.
For nearly all of human history men over 30 forming relationships with women in their late teens has been normal. This was even not too rare 30 or so years ago in the US. But there has been a rising moral panic about age and sex that leads to comments like the above.
- monocasa 5y agoSo wait, it's simultaneously a Puritanical hang up from the past, and also contrary to the way things have always been?
- inkblotuniverse 5y agoMaybe America's puritany is just conserved. As its ire shifts away from some thing as they become liberalised/destigmatised, it shifts onto others.