Blogs and Stories
Bedding the Boss
John Paul Filo, CBS / Landov
The Letterman scandal raises questions about the wisdom of sleeping with your supervisor. Tracy Quan on what women want—and how the rules of the game have changed.
What kind of woman sleeps with her boss? In the ’90s, she was cast as a victim, in the ’60s as a predator.
David Letterman's televised account of a blackmailing attempt concerning his sex life has raised inevitable questions about whether he abused his power in the workplace.
Letterman is, however, atypical. Most women don’t work for the king of late night comedy, and most sex-with-the-boss (we hope) is unlikely to attract the attention of Gawker or TMZ.
Common sense tells us that lots of women are attracted to father figures and mentors. Banning such a relationship doesn't just put the brakes on male desire. It’s also an attempt to suppress some healthy female impulses.
Wherever it may happen—whether in media, banking, or a more down-to-earth industry—a man having sex with younger female colleagues is characterized as a lecher or a domineering ogre.
Once upon a pre-feminist time, it was more common to vilify the woman. In the ’60s, she was an ambitious vamp out to destroy her boss's marriage, and the early modern workplace was seen as a hunting ground for capturing a husband—anybody’s husband. As middle-class women became more careerist, this phantom vamp used her carnal savvy to “sleep her way to the top.”
Whether you're the masculine monster in this story or the feminine schemer, you're a dehumanized cartoon.
Still, in the pantheon of stereotypes, culprits are more colorful. Feminist tropes about sexual harassment can make working women seem like ciphers. If you think back to the stories told about Clarence Thomas, he had the best lines and a far more memorable personality than his offended victim.
After making a transition from prostitution to publishing, I find the idea of bedding a boss shocking. I would be horrified if someone I work for came on to me today, but I wasn’t perturbed when it happened in the sex industry. My only experience with sleeping with the boss occurred in my teens. A madam asked me to be part of a three-way with her boyfriend.
• Paul Shaffer on being Letterman’s comic foil
• Lloyd Grove: Is This Dave’s Blackmailer?It was more like found money than coercion, but it would have been awkward to say no. Since she was my only professional contact in the New York industry, I was dependent on her for business and never considered refusing. We had our session before, not after, dinner - a nice touch on her part—and she was an eminently civilized sex partner. A few days later, I compared notes with a male escort who, I was amused to learn—resented having sex with our boss. I really didn’t mind.
Mainstream feminists may regard Stephanie Birkitt, believed to be one of Letterman’s office affairs, and other women in her situation as victims of a power imbalance. This is the official ideology in many a workplace where sex between senior and junior staff is verboten. But common sense tells us that lots of women are attracted to father figures and mentors. Banning such a relationship doesn't just put the brakes on male desire. It’s also an attempt to suppress some healthy female impulses.
It may, in fact, be harder to police female behavior in the workplace, harder to tell women to keep their hands off a man and easier to tell men what they may or may not do—because women and men express attraction and desire in different ways.
If sex between a male boss and his female staff is purely the result of masculine appetite, it’s more easily prevented. The average male likes to know how the system works, what’s available and what’s not. Women are less obvious. We like to break rules, even when we don’t own up to it. We also don’t love being told whom we should be attracted to.
How Rich People Smoke Pot
Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
Justice Clinton?
As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, Mark McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, corporations and causes, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono. McKinnon is co-chair of Arts & Labs, a collaboration between technology and creative communities that have embraced today's rich Internet environment to deliver innovative and creative digital products to consumers.
From Sex Scandal to Corporate Brand
Tracy Quan's latest novel is Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, set in Provence and praised in The Nation as a "deft account of occupational rigors and anxieties before the crash." Tracy's debut, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and the sequel, Diary of a Married Call Girl, are international bestsellers. A regular columnist for The Guardian, she has written for many publications including Cosmopolitan, The Financial Times, and The New York Times.
How Not to Manage a Harem
Tracy Quan's latest novel is Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, set in Provence and praised in The Nation as a "deft account of occupational rigors and anxieties before the crash." Tracy's debut, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and the sequel, Diary of a Married Call Girl, are international bestsellers. A regular columnist for The Guardian, she has written for many publications including Cosmopolitan, The Financial Times, and The New York Times.
Call Girls Out-Class Mistresses
Tracy Quan's latest novel is Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, set in Provence and praised in The Nation as a "deft account of occupational rigors and anxieties before the crash." Tracy's debut, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and the sequel, Diary of a Married Call Girl, are international bestsellers. A regular columnist for The Guardian, she has written for many publications including Cosmopolitan, The Financial Times, and The New York Times.
Veronicaxy
Ms. Quan didn't address the more typical non-consensual victims of those office affairs -- the co-workers.
Being caught around that kind of power differential, mixed with big emotions and families that could implode is stressful and politically dangerous for everyone, not just them.
citivas
Exactly. This is why CBS claiming that Letterman didn't violate their policy is a joke. Of course he did. By definition any woman (or man) he didn't sleep with was harrassed by his actions with those he did. Sometimes it really is that simple. This one is black-and-white. When someone in a direct position of power has sex with a worker under his/her control, everyone is potentially impacted. Any real company strictly forbids this for this reason. If he wanted to have sex with his employees, they either needed to quit or he did. There were millions of other options that didn't compromise the workplace.
He was pond scum. Not as bad as Polanski, but still scum.
mmorgan1969s
"Pond scum"? Because the man was attracted to someone he worked with for 15 hours a day, are you kidding me. Join the Taliban, they're absolutist nuts and absolute hypocrites. Yes, he F'd up. But, "Pond Scum"? Get real. Corporations need the rules you refer to for economic reasons. But that doesn't change human nature, it just keeps it partially in check. Letterman genearates profits. This might cost CBS some of those profits but Letterman isn't going anywhere. In fact, it should help him as he will now be seen as more human and not as old a man. Deal.
ThreeCrows
CBS had a valid point because their policy has no bearings on Letterman. Letterman is not a CBS employee. Letterman's company, Worldwide Pants, Inc. is his company and has it's own policy on interoffice relationships. If you want to be that specific about the rules, this is where it stands. Two separate companies with two distinct policies. If you don't like the guy, that's fine but he is the victim of an extortion plot, a failed kidnapping plot and a stalker who killer herself. So, everyone wants to focus on the boring sex but his life has been besot with people wanting to do harm to him and his family. And if you are to believe these speculative reports about the women he supposedly bedded, not all of them were interns. And all of these rumors are not proof of what may have occurred to a single man who had office romances and also preferred to have his private life remain private. How many were surprised when he announced he was a father?
citivas
mmorgan1969s, you seem to be confusing attraction with action. Have you forgotten that people are capable of self-control and discipline and that most adults are actually held responsible for controlling their impulses? Our entire concept of civilization and society are rooted in our ability to forgo instinctively self-interested behavior in favor of a larger compact that forces us all to compromise in exchange for other benefits, like security, fairness and the potential for greater prosperity. The workplace is no different - just a different variation of this collective compact.
It's not surprising he would be attracted to some women in his workplace. But what does that have to do with sleeping with them? Believe it or not, most people in the workplace actually manage to not sleep with their employees or bosses even despite possible attraction. Is that concept so hard to grasp? And he's pond scum because he was in a long term relationship with a woman he had had a baby with (and was living with) while he was doing this and he didn't just "fall for A woman," he seems to have acted on every woman who gave him a hard on who responded to his advances - he was a serial letch. In the meantime, how do you think it made the people he didn't sleep with who were not promoted in his organization? How can they possibly know whether the fact that they didn't bed him (or weren't his type) was a factor in their career there? That's the whole point of workplace relationships with a boss or subordinate - it's not just the participants but all the non-participants that are potentially victims.
Of course Letterman will survive this. Never thought otherwise. The entertainment world (and politics) is full of pond scum. Success doesn't make them less so.
artois
Welcome to real life - where powere differentials exist between people..
redhot
Exactly. Yin-yang baby...yin-yang. It's the way of the universe as a whole, including personal relationship dynamics.
pricklypear
Those power differentials are not helpful or desirable.
Storeboughtjam
Yes, power differentials are real life, but that doesn't mean they should be exploited on the job. A lot of things would or could be part of "real life" if not for some kind of restraint, whether that restraint be legal, moral, religious, or just plain common sense.
Veronicaxy
'That's the way it is -- so that's the way it always will be and should stay' defies the more pervasive reality, ironically.
ChelseaGuy
The women staffs should have come out to report the sex relation and make lots of $$$$$$.
Bosses should never engage sex act with employees! It's creepy.
kansasrefugee
This article appalled me. In particular, several comments stood out:
"But common sense tells us that lots of women are attracted to father figures and mentors. Banning such a relationship doesn't just put the brakes on male desire. It's also an attempt to suppress some healthy female impulses."
Women who do not have good fathers, who take an interest in them, who respect boundaries with them, and who support their agency in the world, including their ability to develop careers, often do bring this need for a father into the workplace (which has usually become subconscious by that time) and seek intimacy with a boss for this reason. This is not healthy adult female sexuality; this is a dysfunction. And often the women that bosses want to sleep with are younger, under 25 in Letterman's case, and not aware that there are costs to this behavior, not only in reputation but in self-esteem.
"A dominant theme running through pop feminism, affecting so many areas of our culture, is that a woman should mate with an equal-a man who is more like a brother than a father. For many women, peer love sounds okay in theory but spells bed death in practice."
This is not just a theme of "pop feminism." It is a theme of healthy psychology. The "bed death" the author refers to occurs when the woman and man do not have enough emotional maturity to handle true intimacy. Because of this, they think relationships are about drama and power imbalance. And our culture reinforces this idea of sex being about power. Again this is unhealthy, narcissistic sexuality not adult relationship. In fact, good quality sex require that there not be a power imbalance.
The author of this article, like many sex workers, seems as though she may have been sexualized at a young age by authority figures. In any event, sex does unfortunately seem to have become the author's currency for getting things in the world, likely without success as most of us view our "work" as something distinct from our "love." And I for one prefer to keep sex in the "love" arena.
djanimaequeen
Well stated. I totally agree with your statement about women who seek a father figure are dysfunctional. Hookers should not be dispensing advise as to what is normal when is comes to sexuality as they rarely have any concept of it.
ClaudiaBellocq
wow...what an enormous generalisation. Please define 'normal' and explain why a hooker should have any less of a concept of 'normal sexuality' than anyone else? If it's about what we trade in, does a banker therefore have less of a 'normal' concept of money, or a sales clerk less of a 'normal' concept of trade? Are you suggesting hookers are less mentally/intellectually able to discern appropriate boundaries?
redhot
Considering sexworkers are engaging in sex more then the average person, I would disagree that they have no concept of what sexuality is about. The perspective is different, and while the veiwpoint of a sexworker may not be entirely on point, it is a relevent part of the discussion IMO.
I know healthy, well adjusted sex workers, and I know sex workers that have issues...just like I have non-sexworker friends that are healthy and well adjusted, I also have non-sexworker friends that have issues. My friends that still struggle with various issues still can make relevent points sometimes...maybe they don't ALL the time, but that doesn't mean they should be disregarded as a whole.
kansasrefugee
Yes, I suspect they are about as reliable as politicians are on the issue. :)
djanimaequeen
ClaudiaBellocq
Let's see...someone who sells her body for money to perfect strangers.... now that you mention it that's perfectly normal. Are you kidding me? You're comparing a bank clerk to a prostitute? I'm not even going to go there.
And redhot I never said they have no concept of sexuality. I said they have no concept of what is healthy. Selling your body to men desperate enough to pay for it does not strike me as healthy. And if you know a well adjusted hooker then you are either a john or a hooker yourself in which case I would not consider your opinion as healthy or normal. The only people that would take offense to my statement are hookers and the creeps who pay for them. There is nothing normal about what you engage in.
redhot
djanimaequeen-how many sexworkers do you know to actually be able to speak about what they do or do not know, or how healthy or unhealthy they may be?? How many men do you know that pay for sex, and how many would be comfortable enough to *honestly* relate to you why they seek out sex from paid professionals?? It's easy to cast stones about things you know little about, or individuals you know nothing about.
I am far from offended by your comments...I just think they lack a full understanding of what really takes place in sex work beyond the sensationalized stories in the media. You aren't required to value my opinion any more then I am required to value yours, yet I do because opinions being shared help open conversation and the chance for all parties to grow from the knowleged shared. I think most individuals choose to value the opinion of those that are like minded with similar ethics and values, but I try not to limit myself to only embracing those with whom I know share my sentiments. For me, I have come to understand that the world is not easily definable in any black and white terms of right and wrong, and to assume to know what another's experience in life can really leave one eating their own words later in life when a similar situation might find its way to their doorstep.
Try and think beyond the knee jerk of judgement we seem to love to do in our society... I have learned much about life, about myself, about relationships, and about sex in my 17 years as a sexworker, and I can say that I am quite proud of the woman I have become...and so is my mother, much to her surprise I think. It's not a profession for everyone, and it is far from perfect, but it has it's merits beyond your assumptions... Sex is honestly not the only thing that drives the industry...that's just the surface stuff. You would need to want to understand it to get beyond that point.
Regards-
Megan
Cymatic
Redhot - interesting post. I personally believe in the legalization of the sex trade and anything that will help women in that industry be safer from pimps and predators. It's a personal issue for me as a childhood friend of mine was killed by a serial killer, her career on the streets lasted less than a month.
I found the article to be outspoken and balanced. There are some who ignore the reality that some women are attracted to power and find it to be an aphrodisiac. My grandmother was a secretary for my grandfather. In her account, she pursued him with some determination and succeeded - they were together for 60 years before he passed away. The idea that women are always "victims" in this situation is ridiculous. That doesn't negate the fact that some of the time they are - there are indeed men who will leverage their power and position to get sex and this is abuse. The writer acknowledged both realities.
For me the best rule is the old saying - "Don't s**t where you eat!" Unless it seems like it will be a lasting relationship, or neither of you place any value in your jobs then it's better to pass.
kansasrefugee
redhot
I'd like to get to a world where women (and men) don't have to be sexworkers at all, and where children get a full chance at a healthy, non sexualized childhood (which really lasts until the early 20s when the part of the brain involving judgment and intimacy gets fully grown).
Until then, I suggest we not listen to their advice but instead listen to their perspective in much the same way one might listen to an alcoholic or a battered wife or a grown abused child. All they are talking about is their experience, and it is a heavily damaged one, they are not experts.
Storeboughtjam
Very well said. Smart
Veronicaxy
What s/he said. Thanks Kansas.
finderj
Sex is about power, at least in part. If he has it and she doesn't, there isn't a legitimate transfer of that power because they have sex.
Don't sleep with someone in your line of command. Just a word to the cautious.
kansasrefugee
If you are saying that "sex is about power" in that the power differential must be minor or nonexistent then I agree with you.
If you are saying that "sex is about power" in that the man must have more power than the woman, I disagree with you.
Because our culture, political economy and religions still overempower men as a group and underempower women, it is very difficult to get to a relationship between a man and a woman where the autonomy and personal power of both man and woman are respected. This is changing, but we still have a ways to go.
GPatton
Just think, if some normal run-of-the mill responsible official (like Pres. Clinton) or businessman sodomizes or fucks women in the office, he'll get shitcanned. But a member of the celebratocracy like Letterman....everyone is ecstatic because his ratings went up. Is this a ruse? George Patton
kansasrefugee
We can vote with our consumer dollars. I will never watch Letterman again.
I want to see improvement in the quality of female-anchored comedy, or co-anchored comedy like Weekend Update on Sat Night Live.
For this to happen, we have to make it safe to be a woman in public.
sadie101
@Kanasrefugee
How true!!! I just came across this at The Post:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/dump_depraved_dave_now_cbs_uBqwrz2 d0rBl6BRmAamE1M
"A former staffer at "Late Show" described to me a "toxic" atmosphere in the studio. She said women flirt mightily with the man. Sometimes, it works in their favor.
Everyone inside the program knows what it takes to get ahead."
and this at Femisex:
"Women and society have struggled for years to get men to stop abusing their power by using sex as a vantage over our career paths. The abuse was so clear in yesteryear: Those who do get promoted, those who don't get a lesser wage and the leftover positions if they kept their jobs at all."
http://www.femisex.com/content/david-letterman-and-roman-polanski-birds- a-feather
I stopped watching the creep Letterman when couldn't stop himself from his sexist attacks on both Senator Clinton and Governor Palin. Where is our late-night female? And don't even think about giving us Kathy Griffen who is as sexist as Letterman, quite frankly!
kansasrefugee
Yes, I agree.
Maybe we should apply the feminist slogan "Take Back The Night" to late-night comedy for a while in order to even things out.
I agree about Griffin. She is kind-of a patriarchialist in a skirt.
Skate185
Letterman's problems haven't even started yet. I guarantee you that there are about a hundred women right now at CBS sharpening thier knives along with their attorneys. They have been wronged, or feel they have been wronged by some other network exec and will file suuit on an inconsistent enforcement of sexual harrassment policy. What Letterman did is not illegal per se, but violates every know corporate sexual harrasment policy in existence: No quid pro quo. Management does not engage in banging the staff.
Veronicaxy
Men who worked there also have an extremely valid case for a hostile environment.
MOZART
I have watched DL once in awhile for a long long time... but I can honestly say I have never had the hots for him.
Not once.
mortalez
again people jump the gun, we dont even know if the women did or did not concent. if a woman is into you and you take her up on it or you are into her and she says yes its nobody elses business.
now if said woman was raped thats a different story but I feel this issue is between him and his wife( who is the only one wronged in this cluster fuck).
talk about a double standard on one hand you women say power should not be abused by concentual sex with underlings but any guy who has went to a niteclub knows all the hot women flock to MONEY. the work place is no different the guy sweeping floors asks you out and its harrassment the guy in the office with the oak desk asks you out you go shopping for something to wear. so of course the cubical slave who works his way up to the oak desk at the top floor is going to take advantage of his power because along the way the women in the office have shown themselves to not be human.
FreddySez
Hang on.
We're discussing the ethics of a powerful male boss getting intimate with a young, female subordinate... we want to reach back to the 1990s for an example... and we come up with: Clarence Thomas? Who was accused of harassing speech, not any actual sexual contact?
Um, Bill Clinton Bill Clinton Bill Clinton.
Funny how in 1997 we didn't hear any of this debate about the propriety of workplace seduction. How a boss's sexual relationship with an underling could not be separated from the power relationship, and was tantamount to rape no matter what kind of consent appeared on the surface.
Nope, back then if you made that argument you were just a bitter, sexless prude who ought to shut up.
After a dozen years, aren't those blinders starting to chafe a little?
PatriceFitz
Um... gosh, I thought it got him impeached?
Oh, maybe you forgot.
So now we have entertainment personality vs. sitting president. Telling the truth about it versus trying to cover it up. How much it should matter to us the folks as opposed to his wife/girlfriend/significant others.
I don't think anyone argued that Clinton used his power -- she was what, 19? Or was it 21?? Of COURSE he shouldn't have done it. But should it have brought down the presidency? He was hardly the first. He was just the one where the rules changed about exposing such things. (Ha! Pun.)
beidler
Nice article, Tracy. Your piece has inspired the usual flood of hate from your more judgmental and ignorant readers. I am grateful for your voice.
I suppose it's possible that Letterman is guilty of some kind of sexual harrassment, but I think it's much more likely that someone just wanted to bone him and that they both had a great time. There's no need to assume that the women involved have to be either vamps or victims.
Sex is like anything else: the more experience you have, the more you know, and the more people should listen to you and take your advice. Period. You wouldn't say a chemist or a guitar player can't give valuable advice about science or music because they got paid for it, and sex is no different. Some of your readers, I'm afraid, need to get laid--for some of them I think, it's been too long.
kansasrefugee
Beidler-
"the more experience you have, the more you know, and the more people should listen to you and take your advice. Period"
I want to laugh at this if weren't so insipid and dangerous.
The one type of experience this writer apparently doesn't have is getting ahead only by using her brain and the non-sex-organ parts of her body.
And that's the type of experience that is most valuable.
I am very concerned that people think prostitution, incest, sleeping with the boss, becoming a trophy wife is healthy female sexuality. It is NOT.
You can't see what healthy female sexuality is when you don't have a job that doesn't involve or require sex.
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n--Y--grumpyguyThis user is no longer registered.
n--Y--grumpyguykansasrefugee
OK, I might agree with you that it is "sexually primitive."
Or I might not, because many people think this female dependence/male dominance is not "genetic" or "hardwired" but instead is an artifact of a social system that has really only been in existence for 2000-7000 years. Prior to that time men were not as hostile to women (for example goddesses existed and had strong powers just as gods did) and so hooking up with a man was not needed for protection as much as it became so later, especially during the 2000 years of the Christian era but also during Judiasm. In fact the very hostility many men have had (and some still have) toward women comes from men being in constant competition with each other and not being able to relax well in each other's company, so they seek comfort in women, but the women understandably can't relate well to the competition among men and so weren't (and still sometimes aren't) really much comfort at all.
This system, usually called patriarchy, is considered by most, maybe all sociologists to have been socialized. And weirdly and paradoxically, even though it creates an intensely frustrating and difficult life for men, they sometimes prefer it because it gives them privilege over women as a class and the enjoy this feeling of superiority as well as the material and sexual privileges it yields.
We are now seeking to untangle this to form something more functional, peacable, & productive. Prostitution, sleeping with the boss, emotional or physical incest, are abuse by authority figures are not going to help us get there, though.
djanimaequeen
Funny. Judging from your post is sounds like you've had plenty and you're still a bitch. Perhaps it's that incessant crouch itch that's got your knickers in such a knot.
kansasrefugee
Djanimaequeen - are you talking to me? Your post makes no sense to me.
kansasrefugee
The last sentence of my post had a double negative and was probably confusing. I'd like to restate it:
You can't see what healthy female sexuality is like when you have a job that involves or requires sex.
It is not that I like compassion for the author. She appears to be very troubled to me and very damaged, probably both by her upbringing and by the culture. I'd like to see her get help rather than using fora like this to proselytize a dysfunctional and diseased way of life. Who does she think she is?
kansasrefugee
Again, mistyping - my aplogies. The first sentence of the third paragraph should be: "It is not that I LACK compassion for the author."
Siouxie921
Doesn't this scandal sound like a story line from the late, great Larry Sanders show? Larry, a talk show host, also pursued and bedded the young and fetching employees of that show too.
Larry Sanders (as played by Garry Shandling) looked like a jerk then, and David Letterman looks like a jerk now.
dondon6634
As my grandparents met in the context of a boss-employee relationship, got married, and stayed happily hitched until my grandmother's death, I think the general point of this article that we shouldn't judge all boss-employee romantic relationships in the context of power imbalances is well taken. No one should have to put up with sexual harrassment, but we shouldn't assume that all boss-employee relationships are improper or not consensual.
kansasrefugee
Your grandparents lived in a different time when options were different for women. We have had (and are still having) the feminist movement for a reason. And they have made possible a move from the companionate type marriages of our grandparents to the soul mate, passionate, bonded family marriages attainable today. I'd like to see these soul mate, passionate bonded family type marriages become more readily attainable.
ThinkAgain
Don't get your honey and your money from the same place. There should be zero tolerance for this. It's bad for business.
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n--Y--PortmanteauThis user is no longer registered.
n--Y--misterdonOttoheinz
"Women are less obvious. We like to break rules, even when we don't own up to it. We also don't love being told whom we should be attracted to."
Bah, men and women are alike in this regard: we all like the forbidden fruit. Unfortunately for women, men are considered to age more gracefully which is why they pluck the fruit on the bottom of the totem pole while women are more satisfied with older, more successful men.
Plus the income security is nice for you women who haven't been able to overcome your genetic predisposition to seek out that sort of thing in a male partner.
My theory holds up until a woman marries: once they get half they can afford to turn cougar!
kansasrefugee
Please don't generalize women into one category.
I made a big effort in posts to this article to say that I think women & men do need to find careers & work that don't involve sex with bosses, colleagues, or customers.
But one key element to this is healthy families with two engaged parents, at least one of whom (which is traditionally the father) who helps the children in finding this work and does so in a nonthreatening way. Also, fathers getting in touch with any sexual attraction they have to their daughters (which I understand is something all parents feel to some degree) and managing this (i.e. not acting this out, and being able to handle it when the child shows some sexual attraction to the parent) is critical to a girl developing healthy adult female sexuality.
kansasrefugee
Also, you might as well learn now that men don't age more gracefully. As a woman who has always provided for myself (and who luckily had a father who was willling to provide some advice/mentoring/money for education in getting me into that position), I can tell you that older men look much different when they are not needed for money.
Ottoheinz
I'm talking in generalities because the generalities are true. Sorry KS refugee, your entire critique doesn't stand up to anything reality has to offer. Women like older men. Women like tough guys who can protect them. Women like men with money. Conversely, men like women for their looks. Less talked about is how men like women for the social capital they can deliver. But since most women can't deliver, it's about looks.
kansasrefugee
No, the generalities are not true. I am a woman and I do not "like older women, tough guys who can protect me or men with money." I like adult men who respect women, see them as autonomous equals, and are secure in their masculinity and can handle being in presence of (and in fact enjoy) adult femininity.
Also, to debunk another generality: you are a jerk and not all men are jerks.
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n--Y--grumpyguykansasrefugee
grumpyguy-
Oh, but you don't have the weaker status than your female partner! You are her peer, have the substantial ground of humanity in common with her and differ only in your masculinity and her feminiity
And you get to choose the mother of your children every bit as much as she gets to choose you!
Don't let other men, or women, take these things away from you!
Thank you.
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