on the bus home a random dude started talking to this lady who was minding her own business like “hey you’re wearing a mask” and she was like “I sure am, why aren’t you” and he said “I don’t need one, it’s too hot out there” and she said, I swear to you, in a tone that somehow managed to be humorous yet pointed, “it’d be hotter in hell”
ppl try to defend creepy age gaps of barely legal girls and grown men like “my parents age gap is bigger than that!!” and “my dad met my mom when she was 17 and he was 28!” like okay then your dad is a creep too tf
the people in the notes yelling over and over “my mom was 16 and my dad was 25 and they’re happy!” or those defending it are 1. likely oblivious to what’s happened to their mother, not to mention they’ve likely normalized it by growing up around it
and 2. placing themselves in the younger partner’s shoes. it’s pretty normal to have crushes on people who are older than you, people you look up to and admire, and no one wants to imagine that they’re not mature enough or interesting enough to capture an older person’s interest. but the issue is that they’re not placing themselves in the older partner’s place. I’m sure your mother was lovely at 16, but why did your father, who was out of college, paying his own rent, building his own career, why did he want a high school aged girlfriend? why did he view a high schooler as a potential partner? we like to ignore this side of the relationship, and we like to imagine that a relationship both starts and ends with consent. if they both said yes, we can’t criticize it. consent is, of course, a prerequisite to a healthy relationship, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make unhealthy choices, or be groomed into unhealthy relationships. where do we draw the line and start holding predators accountable?
