THE ETHICS OF THE AGE GAP
Sophie Lancaster

I’m dating a man who is eight years older than me, and I’m wondering what I should think of that. My friends reassure me. We’re both young (I’m 25, he’s 33). He doesn’t look old, just a bit crinkled, like a favourite jacket you wear too much to get round to dry-cleaning. You could not imagine him talking about cars, or investment portfolios, or saying something positive about Jeremy Clarkson.

But I can’t stop wondering to what extent I have become complicit in my own oppression. Whether I’m just helping to normalise the idea that older men are still handsome and women in their thirties or older are there to be passed over for younger models, in our cheaply made clothes and vibrant colours, with our youthful idealism to condescend to. Are we Dracula’s victims offering the neck too readily?

To think of my newish man as Dracula is a bit rough on him: I am still waiting for him to sink his teeth into me. But older men can be a real threat to our principles: with their picking up of the bill, their neo-liberalist certainties, apathies, their anti-Corbynism and misty eyes at the idea of the centre-left. Move in with us and forget the struggle to transform society into a place where you can afford to rent. Forget your friends. Leave them behind. Our mortgage repayments are very reasonable. (A mortgage! we cry.)

My current squeeze, like a romantic lead in an English romcom, works in a bookshop, and is as broke as I am. So I do not feel much at risk in his case that the patriarchy is purchasing me for its particular aims. (Chance would be a fine thing, I sometimes think, before I remember how lucky I am not to be compromised in this way.)

My older man’s age does confer some benefits. He’s not as anxious as boys my age about how to present himself. He’s decided who he is, or at least what he looks like. He’s been around long enough to know a lot of people. He writes for a silly magazine and gets invited to the kind of party where you can drink cocktails for free and get offered drugs by sexual degenerates.

Nevertheless, we always need to ask ourselves to what extent we’re willing to sell our youth to the older generation. It’s a constant temptation. We have what they want and they have some of what we want. Who can blame a woman for accommodating herself to the best options in a bad world? Let’s not talk about blame, but we can do better than this. We have better options than we might think. We won’t achieve equality if we sell ourselves cheap; or even if we sell ourselves dear.