[Jack_]

Originally Posted by alex_front2

I think you will find I genuinely don't care whether or not it annoys others. Just my opinion. I don't feel the need to toe the 'cougars are great' media line designed to make women over 40 feel fu**able

What I don't understand here, and this is genuinely not an insult, just something I'm curious about - is from what I understand you're a woman, yet you are so full of criticism and condemnation for your own sex? I don't get that, women are already oppressed, vilified and stereotyped enough as it is, why contribute to it?

On the subject of what you've just said - it isn't a media line designed to make older women feel '****able' at all (that's so nasty, women, and men for that mater, of all ages can be attracted to all sorts of people of different ages and persuasions, you don't suddenly just become ugly when you reach 40). In fact, I'd say that attitudes in the media towards women who date younger men are overwhelmingly negative across the board, it's yet another moral panic. The same thing goes for all relationships between people of vastly different ages, the media contribute to this bizarre and incorrect idea that it's unacceptable. Rather the opposite of what you're suggesting.

It's not that ~cougars are great~, it's that all people above the age of consent are entitled to date and have sex with anyone else they wish, regardless of the age differences. If you like someone or you find them attractive, that's that. There is nothing inherent or natural that stops you finding older people attractive, or vice versa. That's not how attraction works. Different strokes for different folks and all that.

If two people are consenting and happy, then quite frankly it's the business of no one else but their own what they do in their own private lives. It's an old saying but it is a factual one, age really is (with few legal exceptions) just a number.