It’s not illegal, but it’s still weird, creepy and potentially harmful and no amount of lambasting about “the problematic age gap discourse” will make it not true.
It’s not illegal, but it’s still weird, creepy and potentially harmful and no amount of lambasting about “the problematic age gap discourse” will make it not true.
I agree with your premise and wouldn’t personally do it. However, I don’t think these situations are quite as taboo or quasi-pedophlic as you categorize them to be. It is acceptable depending on the context of that relationship, or as you place it: power dynamics.
Power dynamics is dependent on: If they are both two consenting adults who are financially and emotionally independent & stable of each other. If those conditions check out, then there really isn’t much of a problem, and it doesn’t qualify as quasi-pedophlic sexual predatory as you seem to be painting these relationships or sexual encounters to be.
I mean, I’ve met couples - with children - who are 19/28 & 23/31 and started out which way. These relationships do happen.
I concede it is weird, at first glance, or when it’s like a 30+ year old who exclusively dates teenagers/undergraduates. Yet people involved in those age ranges are still adults with their full agency behind their actions when they consent to sexual intercourse or romantic engagements; if both partners are financially, socially, and emotionally stable and independent of one another, then categorizing this as creepy, weird, or quasi-pedophilic , feels dehumanizing and infantilizing to reduce teenaged adults into helpless victims of those elder partners.