I’ve written over and over again about the dangers of older men, younger women relationships — particularly when the woman involved is in her early twenties or younger. I’ve written too, from painful experience, independent research, and acquired wisdom of the importance of observing excellent boundaries between professors and students. Luke’s email is an important reminder that those boundaries ought not to exist solely to protect vulnerable women from predatory older men. It is also an important reminder that young men can get crushes on female professors or authority figures. With our narrow assumptions about the nature of the erotic, we sometimes assume, usually because of some specious argument derived from pop evolutionary psychology, that older men are “naturally’ attracted to younger women. But since that same “argument from nature” doesn’t apply nearly as well when the sexes are reversed, we ignore the obvious potential for older women and younger men to find each other attractive, and we ignore the reality that this particular brand of age-disparate relationship can be just as problematic.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
2 comments:
I wonder whether age really has all that much to do with it. It seems to me that a young (say early 30s) assistant professor dating a non-traditional student (say also late 20s to early 30s) is just as problematic as if there were an age difference, but the reason is because of the authority and power dimension rather than age.
Well, as the kid who's writing in to Hugo notes, the age factor does play in. It'd be one thing if a near-contemporary makes a move of a sexual nature on a student (and not, of course, at all appropriate, even if it doesn't violate the narrow rules on these things); it's clearly a complication for the student that his professor's age confers an addition level of authority or power--she is his mother's age. When one thinks about relating to people of their parents' age, especially when still relatively young, that does constitute a significant gap to cross.
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