damn pedophiles

[AdminAssistant]

I don't even HAVE those parts I was in pain.

OWWWWW.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Hey as long as the age gap is between two people OVER age 18, then I have no problem with it whatsoever.

But I do feel bad for teenage cashiers who have to put up with "dirty old men" types.

[RootedPhoenix]

To me, it's not as much about ages as it is about intent and delivery. If a 30 year old hits on another 30 year old with the wrong intent and delivery, it's still perverted/creepy.

Just my two cents.

[GingerBiscuit]

Ah yes. The whole 30 year olds who hit on under 18's are pedophiles thing. Forgetting that some countries have a age of consent of 16 or younger?

I was 17 when I got together with my now then 30 year old boyfriend.

Regardless of that it IS delivery. I don't mind when someone is flattering and respectful, but when someone starts with the wrong body language and eye contact it just makes you feel... dirty.

[Rapscallion]

Unfortunately for me, guys my own age are already getting beer bellies and going bald before 25.......there is no hope. I guess I will have to resort to 18 year olds just to find a guy with some hair and tone to his body left.

I'll have you know that my mirror tells me every morning that bald is beautiful. I don't hear it anywhere else, but I trust my mirror All I need now is to drink beer and I would have a great excuse for my gut...

On a more serious note, I have to echo Broomjockey on this one. Blanket statements are a fairly dangerous route to go down, and I've seen a few in this thread. I appreciate that there are some cultural differences (age of consent in Europe, last I heard, goes down to fourteen in some cases, whereas I once saw someone hounded around the Internet for having the temerity to not resist a kiss from a seventeen-year-old girl, and his harasser was screaming the word 'paedophile' at him on every occasion). If you want to put forward events you've been involved in, fine, but if you want to say whether another country's laws make them all paedophiles or whatever, that's Fratching, please.

Rapscallion

[smileyeagle1021]

To me, it's not as much about ages as it is about intent and delivery. If a 30 year old hits on another 30 year old with the wrong intent and delivery, it's still perverted/creepy.

Just my two cents.

ditto, there are creepy people out there that were born within minutes of me... doesn't change that they are creepy (ok, I've never asked the creepy people what minute they were born, but you get the idea)

My personal favorite for creepy was a girl at the call center, who was within a year of age of me, and she made it clear to everyone in the call center that she wanted in my bed, and if she didn't... well she'd end up in someone else bed, because she really needed to get laid, but she wouldn't enjoy it as much as if she got in my bed... now you might ask what magical flirting technique I have that would make a girl decide that she could not die happy until she had slept with me... and to be honest, I'd like to know the answer to that too... we had never even spoken to each other before she got this idea in her head and despite many subtle (and eventually not so subtle) hints that I wasn't interested she wouldn't back off. She did eventually end up sleeping with another coworker. Oh and the part that made it creepy (the main reason I wasn't interested)... she did this all while complaining about how her husband sucked in bed. Oh yeah, if I didn't know that she had accepted a job with another company I would have quit because of her.
So yeah, long story short, someone considerably older hitting on someone can be creepy, but it's not a requirement that the person be older for them to be creepy.

[Canarr]

ow ow ow... that was painful just to read

Tell me about it; my legs are STILL refusing to unclench...

There's nothing perverted about being interested in Women (or Men) of a younger age - as long as the interest is in a Woman, not a Child. That's where the difference lies: "normal" men are drawn to women, pedophiles are drawn to children (very simplified). Hell, more than once I've looked at a nice ass or pair of legs on the street, only to be shocked when the girl turned around and, upon seeing her face, realizing that she can't be more than 14. That doesn't make me a pedophile, does it?

Also, being interested in an 18-year-old when you're 30+ is not creepy per se; it's only a matter of taste. You only enter the realm of creepy in case of men (or women) who target teenagers exclusively because they believe it's easier to "score" there. However, if you fall in love with someone, why should it matter that you're 30 and (s)he's 18? Would you object as much if the guy were 40 and the woman 28? Or 50 and 38?

However, age difference can cause some difficulties; I was at a party recently, with my girlfriend (both 30), and we met a friend of hers (mid-thirties, I think) who introduced his new girlfriend (18). She was nice and sweet, but we found it increasingly difficult to find common topics for conversation. While we were talking about our jobs, unions, problems with management and customers, insurances, retirement funds, she was complaining that it sucks to have to ride her bike to school every day.

There's just a difference in mindset there that can be hard to get around. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not. But I guess that can be said for any relationship, huh?

[Samaliel]

ow ow ow... that was painful just to read

I don't even HAVE those parts I was in pain.

OWWWWW.

Tell me about it; my legs are STILL refusing to unclench...

Come on... You're all exaggerating a little, aren't you ? I never understood this whole "if someone else is hurt in the gonads, you feel pain too". However, it made me shuddered and want to crawl under a rock until I'm sure that woman is nowhere near me.

[Gawdzillers]

If he likes teenagers, doesn't that make him a hebephile?

[tendomentis]

Something to bear in mind (however unpopular) is that older men hitting on younger women (down to girls just hitting puberty) is a perfectly natural part of human sexuality. Yes, some men are just creepy, but they're creepy to women their own age too.

Hitting on women who have already hit puberty does not make a man a pedophile (look it up if you don't believe me). Pedophiles go after PREpubescent humans (and that IS gross).

Considering that as little as 100 years ago, a forty year old formally asking a 14 year-old girl's father for his daughter's hand in marriage was considered normal in the United States, let's not be so judgemental.

That said, I am in NO WAY defending actions of creepy men, just a friendly reminder that the drive for older men to steer towards younger women is hard-wired into the human reproductive drive.

[Broomjockey]

Alright, two warnings to stay away from generalizations from two different mods should have been enough, but I guess not. Anyone wants to discuss it more, there's always Fratching.