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Older women are dating younger men more often. Over the past two years, according to the dating app Feeld, men who are exclusively looking to date older women increased by 64%.
This stat raised an eyebrow with the women of the New York Times Opinion podcast, who decided it was a subject ripe for some intellectual debate.
Step aside Kim Cattrall as three progressive podcasters — Emily Leibert, Nadja Spiegelman, and Jamieson Webster — gathered to give the verdict on Cougars.
Except of course, this being the NYT, they’re reticent to use a term like “Cougar.” The discussion is instead labelled “Younger Men Are Flocking to Older Women.”
And they will have you know that getting with a younger guy is female empowerment. Objectifying a young man is the ultimate way to stick it to the man.
They talk about how amazing it is to get to “shape” a young man and “build” a boyfriend. They gloat about “objectifying the hell out of” boys in their 20s. They applaud women whose money attracts younger mates.
Ladies, please!
It’s the sort of stuff that would get a man fired if he said it about younger women. But, to these wonks who are holding a feminist theory seminar in a glitzy podcast set, cougars are trailblazers of feminist liberation. Wielding resources and objectifying partners is fine — if they do it.
“It does feel transgressive to be able to look at a dating app profile and really objectify a very strong young man who has maybe been tanning in Costa Rica for a bit,” The Cut staff writer Emily Leibert salivated.
“That can feel like a nice power grab to sit there and be like, you know what, I wasn’t afforded that privilege in the past. I’m gonna sit here and objectify the hell out of these 24-year-olds.”
The April 16 episode of the Times’ “Opinions” podcast confirms a double standard: men treating women poorly are rightfully shamed, but women doing the exact same to men should apparently be celebrated.
Leiber, who wrote an article about women who date younger men, reported that “they do get a sense of joy out of being able to shape a young man” and that “a lot of them” were “very interested in building a boyfriend.” Had a man said this very same thing about young women, accusations of grooming and manipulation would surely be abound.
Leibert even went on to fantasize a future where young men are effectively barefoot and pregnant. She romanticizes a relationship in which they are “dependent” and are “accepting of the fact that they may always be in a beta role,” “contributing around the house in different ways” while women “get to step into that very Mad Men trophy sense of what it meant to be a provider.”
“I think that’s refreshing,” she said. “If young men are down to be home more often, and wait for mommy to come home, then, like, great. Go for it.”
Where “daddy” would be a predator, apparently “mommy” is a feminist icon. But isn’t feminism about egalitarianism? Or is the assumption that women can only ascend if they start objectifying men?
New York Times culture editor Nadja Spiegelman, for her part, attempted to square the double standard, explaining mixed feelings about a friend who was getting tons of attention from young men on a dating app.
“I feel really happy… that she’s getting this attention, that she has this amount of possibility, that if she wants to date men purely for their bodies… that she has this available to her, and I know that I would not feel that way if the genders were reversed,” she admitted.
She’s correct in identifying some very real hypocrisy. Gold digging is bad, of course — except when the expected genders are reversed! And traditional gender roles are toxic and oppressive — but evidently not if you invert them with a young man!
Commenters on the podcast weren’t so easily won over, either. Calling out the hosts — all aged, at most, 40 — one made a very valid point: “Where this discussion fails spectacularly is the noticeable absence of both younger men and older women.”
Another added: “I agree. Why aren’t they asking women who are actually experiencing this?”
Rather than advocate more egalitarian relationships, the women of the New York Times Opinion podcast simply want to invert mistreatment and call it a “win” for women.
But parroting the bad behavior of men is not “taking back power.” It’s taking revenge on young men with nothing to do with historical oppression, simply because you can.
