This is going to be a potentially controversial and polarizing post. Most of it will be behind a cut. It will be poorly organized, because I'm at work and have real work to be doing, but it's weighing heavily on my mind, and I want to say something.
I wrote the following in a comment on another's LiveJournal:I would not let my daughter be part of the local vintage dance scene if she were over the age of 12 and under the age of say 21-25.
It really bothers me to find myself both saying and really believing this, because I really like the local vintage dance scene and (the vast majority of) the people who take part in it.
For more on why I wrote this, what I think the issue is, and what I think can be done about it, click here:
ObDisclaimers:
I am not talking about any one person, nor is this a response to anyone's recent behavior. I'm reacting to a friend's post about the general situation.my wife is nine years younger than I am. When we started dating, she was 22 and I was 31. While I certainly feel there were extenuating circumstances, I am guilty of dating a much younger woman, something I have a problem with when others do it (and which bothered me when I asked her out, or when I met her family for the first time).The times when I have been most active in the vintage dance scene have been when I was single. I have a problem with using dancing as a means of seduction (I'll explain below), but certainly have used dancing to meet women.I have no children. I do have an 18-year-old sister whom I would not encourage to take part in the dance scene if she lived here and were interested. So, all that aside, what is it I have a problem with? I feel that American culture places a premium on physical beauty as a measure of a woman's worth. I feel that the American ideal of feminine beauty is a skinny 18-year-old young woman. I feel that young woman are not encouraged, in general, to own their sexuality, but to be passive and pursued. I feel that male attractiveness is judged largely upon wealth and power. I feel that older men thus trade their wealth and power for much younger women's youth and beauty, and do this despite (or because of) the younger women's relative lack of experience, and that this trade is inherently predatory on the part of the men and is unwholesome. I feel that the vintage dance scene of which I am a part encourages older men to objectify and target for sexual relationships women who are underage (which is illegal) or very much younger than they are (which I feel is, essentially, immoral).
ObDisclaimer: it is none of my business what 18-year-olds do with their bodies. I may not like it when an 18-year-old dates a 45-year-old, but it is legal, and none of my affair.
It is, however, my choice to participate in, or to refuse to participate in, a culture which encourages behavior I find inappropriate. It is also my choice to try to change that behavior when it bothers me. So, the reason(s) for the quoted text above, in the order I think of them:
I am patriarchal and chauvinistic in my approach to women. I think of women as needing protection. "My daughter," at the age of 18, becomes free, legally, to associate with whomever she likes, but I wrote that I would not "let" her until she were 25. Revealing about how I think about women. Who am I to decide that a legal adult needs my protection or permission? Legally, intellectually, I am in the wrong, and I know it. Emotionally, keep your filthy hands off my little girl! (or my little sister).
I don't want 30-year-old women fetishizing my 18-year-old son and sleeping with him, either. However, the dominant paradigms of our culture seem to make this a lot less likely occurrence. I don't think I would have the wildly hypocritical "Way to go, son!" reaction that is sometimes associated with younger men dating older women, but I confess the thought does not provoke the same hair-trigger emotional response, either. I know I would be a lot less reluctant to allow my teenaged son to take part in Dickens Fair or PEERS, since I feel there's a lot less risk of some unscrupulous person targeting his youth and inexperience. I may be totally wrong in this.
I see constant examples of men, from teenage boys themselves to men in their 40's, in the vintage dance scene making jokes about when a certain girl turns 18. The subtext is that if statutory rape weren't illegal that the 16- or 17-year-old in question would be "fair game." This is messed up.
I see examples of underage or just-barely-legal girls being encouraged to hold themselves up as lust objects--scantily clothed, portraying prostitutes in theater, being made the center of attention in a gathering based solely upon their appearance and costume, being repeatedly photographed in revealing poses, being invited to "sit on my lap, little girl," being the "belle of the ball" while older women cannot find partners, etc. Some of this behavior is fine and perfectly normal and understandable, but as a whole, it encourages the idea that young women are valuable solely for being both young and beautiful. And we get young women passing out from cinching their corsets too tight and starving themselves. As in, multiple anorexic young women competing for whose corset is the tightest. This is really messed up.
I feel that older men who consistently target much younger women as sex partners are trying to "cheat" or "wussing out": essentially, they lack some combination of self-confidence, wealth and power, physical attractiveness, and social grace which would make them attractive to women who are their own age, AND they hope to "fool" much younger, less emotionally mature and grounded, less experienced women into sleeping with them because those women are more physically attractive and less likely to "see through them" (and more insecure and in need of affirmation). I feel like they cannot attract women with whom there are more balanced power relationships, or don't want to, so they are "preying" upon younger, less experienced, more-easily-impressed-with-having-your-own-car, women. This is inherently insulting to younger women, as it assumes they are generically foolish, inexperienced, naive, etc. I know that--but I still feel it.
Statutory rape is illegal. I think it's illegal because the majority of the electorate essentially agrees with my reasoning, whether we're right or wrong. I feel like I have a moral obligation to speak out against and to resist illegal and/or immoral behavior. I choose not to do this when my friends smoke marijuana. I choose to do this when they drive drunk. My "interfere-o-meter" allows be to feel righteous about speaking out about targeting young girls, perhaps hypocritically.
The vintage dance scene encourages dancing and costuming as means of seduction. Guys in tuxedos who know how to dance are, so far as I am able to determine, considered more attractive/romantic than they would be in other clothes or with other skills. I feel like, when one has asked someone else to dance and is in close quarters on a dance floor, one has stepped around the rules about physical contact with and monopolizing the attention of a relative stranger. Which is to say, if I, at a cocktail party, were to grab a woman around the waist and speak only to her for three-and-a-half minutes, I would be considered an attacker, not a romantic. Because it is rude to refuse a dance, and *extremely* rude to walk away in the middle of a dance, one's partner has fewer options to avoid an uncomfortable situation in social dance than otherwise. I feel that, as a result, there is a greater burden of courtesy and etiquette, a higher standard of "appropriate behavior," while dancing than otherwise.
Essentially, I feel that dancing should not be an excuse to mack on the honies. Certainly, getting to meet and interact with and even seduce members of the appropriate gender is a lovely bonus, but it shouldn't be the sole purpose of the activity due to the risk of offense, and it should be undertaken with extreme regard for politeness and mutual enjoyment.
Overall, I feel like using the tuxedo and the intimate physical contact and the romantic music (and the more that refusal is impolite) to pursue inexperienced partners who are still dazzled by the whole thing is... unwholesome. In short, wrong. I don't like to be around it. I don't like being party to it by encouraging it with my participation and approval-by-neglect. So what? Why am I posting about it? Well, for one, because this is *my* LiveJournal, and I write about things I care about. Second, because I just had one of those "improve your work process" meetings this morning, where we talked about shifting paradigms and changing entrenched behaviors in order to produce desire changes in outcome. Third, because there was a discussion about statutory rape and how young women are viewed in the dance scene in a friend's journal.
So what can I do to change things? Well, the defeatist answer is, "Nothing. What others do is beyond my control, so get over it or get out." The more hopeful answer is, "Participants in a culture define that culture," and thus "Try to change the culture." I guess this post is at least noting that I have a problem.
I know that I will certainly try to compliment the young women who join the scene on their costuming skills, their dance abilities, or their wit and charm, as opposed to their appearance, more often and more consistently (this is something I already do out of an awareness of the Ophelia and anorexia problems facing young women). I know that I will try, both on my own and more productively through my wife and our female friends, to warn young women not to let the constant attention get to them too much, and to be discerning when considering potential partners (I feel that mentorship from older women is one of the best ways to help short-circuit some of the problems facing these young women). I know that I will continue to try to voice the idea that older men who target younger women are, well, slimy.
What will I do when I see 24-year-old guys hitting on 16-year-old girls? Well, punching them in the face is considered inappropriate. Will I pull them aside and say something? I honestly don't know. I fear being rude. I fear assuming that something is going on when it isn't (and who's going to be honest enough to admit it in the face of disapproval, anyway? How do I *know*?). I fear being considered a judgmental hypocritical prude. But doesn't refusing to say something, out of fear, make me complicit?