Ageism Vs. Age Preferences and Creepy Older Men (critique of post at another blog)

Ageism Vs. Age Preferences and Creepy Older Men

Here is a critique of a blog page by a self identifying, 50- something year old, celibate, Christian by the name of John Morgan (who I had to ban from my blog months before. See other, older posts on this blog for details about that).

Here’s his (J. Morgan’s) blog page about ageism, as it pertains to celibacy and singleness.

(I find it strange that while this guy doesn’t understand women, seems to harbor hostility against them, yet thinks he understands them, so he writes material such as this):

(Link):  Ageism’s Effect on Virtuous Women

Excerpt:

  • Isn’t it odd that virginity is not supposed to exist today after 30, especially for guys? The result is a lot of lonely girls looking for Mr. Right and the typical “I’m too good for you” man-hating language infiltrating the internet dating profiles. How does the virtuous guy interpret that?
  • Not too good. Here’s a sample from a 23 year old girl:
  • ““I’m a virgin and plan on staying that way till I get married. You shouldn’t message me if you’re older then 28. I’m not gonna date you. I’m really not even comfortable being your friend at that point. You better be ready for a conversation. None of this 20 question crap. It’s uncomfortable. I won’t play. You best be ready for a friendship first. That’s right, I only date from my friend zone pile. That’s how I know your character.
  • /end quote by 23 year old woman
  • I guess in her world those of us over 28 and waiting don’t exist. This is what happens when even the eyes of decent girls get fogged over with the ways of the world, when they spend so much time in front of TVs watching the rape and murder stories on the local news that they can’t discern reality.
  • Fornication becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you expect no better than that, you will see no better than that. If you expect all Mr. Wrongs, you will see only Mr. Wrongs.

Here he goes again, blaming women.

He seems to have some real issues with women, and blaming them.

Who runs churches and much of Christian culture? Men, that’s who – especially married men.

Most churches do not permit women to teach or lead or to make decisions about anything beyond what type of casserole to bring to the church potluck.

So I’d say married men in churches, or who are otherwise very influential figure heads in Christian culture (e.g., male Christian authors), are in large measure to blame for how Christian singles are dysfunctional in how they deal with each other and with dating, as they are the ones dictating to everyone else in society how Christian singles “should” be relating to each other. Stop laying that mess at the feet of unmarried Christian women.

(Some married Christian women are to blame for this situation as well, such as author Debbie Maken. However, the ladies are outnumbered by the men who preach, lecture, and crank out books by ten to one.)

At any rate, let’s examine the content of Morgan’s comments and the woman’s quote again.

Where Morgan writes,

  •  Isn’t it odd that virginity is not supposed to exist today after 30, especially for guys?

No, it’s not considered “especially” odd by some in our culture for men to be virgins past 30. It’s considered equally odd by our culture for women to be so past their mid 20s, see this post for an explanation:

(Link): Male Entitlement and Adult Virginity: Who has it worse, Male Vs. Female? (critique of post at other blog)

Quoting Morgan:

  • Fornication becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you expect no better than that, you will see no better than that. If you expect all Mr. Wrongs, you will see only Mr. Wrongs.

It’s not a question of women seeing Mr. Wrongs, as though Mr. Wrongs exist only in their imaginations. There are in fact a ton of Mr. Wrongs in existence, even among self professing Christian males. I have documented many examples, see this page.

See also these pages (some of these links are off site) for more examples of the sexist bullsh-t women have to deal with routinely on dating sites:

Getting back again to the commentary Morgan says he got from a 23 year old woman’s dating profile (question: he told me in the past he’s over 50. What in the hell is he doing looking at the profiles of 23 year olds? Or is he getting her information elsewhere?)

Anyway, she says she is 23 and has an age cap of 28 on men she is willing to date. If you are a man past 28, she says no gracias to you, get lost.

Do you know why she has an age cap of 28?

It’s not necessarily because she assumes all men over 30 are fornicators, but that she would feel more comfortable dating a man within five years of her age.

And that is a perfectly normal, reasonable preference.

I am a woman. I have never been keen on wanting to date a man over five, six years my age, not when I was 20, when I was 35, or now that I am 40ish.

I am a member on a couple of dating sites now, and although I have age limits in place, where I state in the check boxes what ages I prefer in men (which currently, for me, doesn’t go beyond around age 45 – 49, as of this year), I never- the- less get contacted by white-haired, very wrinkled, 70 year old men (who lie on their profiles and claim to be 40).

Some of the only women who are willing to date or marry a guy over ten years their own age are either “gold diggers” or codependent women who are seeking a “daddy figure” because they are insecure and have emotional health problems.

The majority of women are “grossed out” by men ten or more years their senior flirting with them, or asking them out.

This has nothing to do with women assuming all men over 30 are engaging in pre-marital sex, but everything to do with a woman feeling creeped out at age 25 or 45 being “hit on” by a man old enough to be her father or grandfather.

It is secular and Christian culture at large which have no expectation that single adults can remain virgins past one’s mid-twenties.

This is one reason why one seldom hears sermons at church directed to celibate, single adults – because none are assumed to exist.

Morgan goes into a long paragraph which starts out:

  • How are you supposed to discern the good guys from the bad?
  • [Where he then lists tips to women on how they can spot the good guys]

Sorry, no. There is no “fool proof” method to distinguish the “good guys” from the “bad guys”.

I am not saying it’s wrong for women to brush up on insight in what to look for in a guy, but there is no fool proof method for weeding out the creeps and losers.

Visit blogs and forums for Christian women who married Christian men but who had to divorce them because the Christian husband was violent. These were smart, Bible educated women who were seeking a godly man, yet even they ended up with an abusive Christian man as a spouse.

Do you honestly think these women were not practicing discernment in who they married?

I can guarantee you that most Christian women, the genuine ones, are very choosy about whom they marry. They don’t walk into a marriage wearing blinders, or lacking criteria, yet even these sorts of women still end up with jerks.

Abusive men can and do hide their abusive or perverted natures, or sometimes their nature is not triggered until they feel they “own” the woman, and for many abusive men, that state is MARRIAGE.

Instead of offering advice to women on how to spot a “godly” man, as he seems to be doing in his post, I would recommend to women that they buy this book, or borrow it from the library, and learn to look for red flags and signs that the guy you are dating is controlling or abusive:

  • Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft

And this book:

  • The Gift of Fear: And Other Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence by Gavin DeBecker

Morgan writes,

  • For most Christians, that means church. You can’t sit at home and pick out Mr. Right from an onlight catalog.

Warning, warning: first of all, single men no longer attend church, and there are abusive idiots and weirdos at church; single women need to reconsider the whole “use church to meet single men” shtick, unless and until churches improve things for singles. See this post:

(Link): Single, Twenty Something Year Old Women Meets Stalker Ex Boyfriend AT CHURCH

Morgan opines,

  • In my opinion, chastity is more of an intellectual achievement than it is of controlling hormones.

In an older post, he claimed it was “personal conviction” that mattered pertaining to celibacy, not self control.

I say it’s largely self control. Good old fashioned will power, self discipline.

Personal conviction and intellectualism without self control doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

You can have personal conviction all day long and a brain full of facts of the dangers of an all- donut, all- cookie diet, but if you lack self control, you will stuff yourself silly with donuts and cake all the day long.

Morgan says,

  • I wonder if the Godly man who she brushed off earlier would have stuck around a while longer if she had given him some encouragement?

Again with the blame game. Single Christian women do not owe single, celibate men encouragement.

Single, celibate men have not, and do not, nor have they ever, given ME, a celibate adult woman, any encouragement.

His argument also makes the incorrect assumption that the Al Mohlers and Debbie Maken marriage mandaters do: that women who are still single at 40 had loads and loads of single men to pick from in their 20s, but cruelly shot them all down because they were too picky, mean, or too focused on career. That is not true.

If you bother to read through testimonies by Christian women who are still single past 35, despite having wanted to marry, all of them say they had expected to marry, did not put career first, and did not have lots of “godly men” chasing after them.

Most churches do not even have single men past 25 who attend. How the holy hell am I supposed to date a 40 year old man now that I’m 40ish, when the only men who attend most churches are 76 years old, or married 53 year old guys?

I had the same issue when I went to church in my late 20s: all the men were 46 and married, or 83 and widowed. Lots of other women have the same problem: there are no single, adult men at church.

I did not get my first boyfriend until I was in my late 20s, and I broke up with him in my early 30s or so.

I have seen the same situation from a lot of other people. I have a lady friend online who is now in her early or mid 30s, and she’s never had a boyfriend, and not even a date.

The fact is a lot of women are not getting dates at all. They are not being pursued by men. So, to continually posit this situation where supposedly a woman arrives at 40 still single, it’s all her fault because she turned down numerous suitors when she was 25, 26, or 27 years old years old, is false.

Most women do not have lots and lots of, scads and oodles of, normal men chasing after us, hitting on us, asking us out, not in our 20s, not 30s, or older.

That’s right, we don’t have lots of normal, mentally stable gentlemen asking us for our phone numbers or out for a date. We ladies do get our fair share of weirdos and sexually perverted men who hit on us on dating sites and in person, however.

Morgan closes by saying,

  • The only time age is mentioned in the Bible is to shatter the early Christians’ expectations. How would people react today if a 91 year old woman gave birth? That’s how old Sarah was when she gave birth to Isaac. In eternity, where will all the clocks be?

I don’t wish to write a ten page long rebuttal to this view of his, so I will try to keep this short, if I can.

I was a Christian from a young age. I am now a bit past 40 years of age.

As Christian author Julia Duin has mentioned in interviews when she was promoting her book “Quitting Church,” she said, “Christianity does not work.” Duin is over the age of 50.

I also noticed, upon reading Duin’s book about why people quit church, and reading blogs by former Christians who are now atheists, that a lot of them seem to drift away from Christianity by their 40s.

Several of them mentioned they became Christians as kids or teens, but find the faith empty once they get to 40 or 45 years of age. I’m in the same boat. I was “saved” in my youth but am over 40 now and am quasi-agnostic.

I think people drift away around 40 years of age after having accepted Jesus as a kid, because they do see that the faith does not work after years of living it and believing it.

I honestly and sincerely lived the faith out since I was a kid, but I get to 40 and see much of the faith did not help me – it actually hindered me – and the promises in the Bible do not come to pass.

While I do believe that the appropriate Christian response is to believe that God can allow a 91 year old woman to become pregnant, that more often than not, God does not do this.

God – if he exists – no longer operates in our reality on a common basis as he did in the Old Testament days.

I don’t mean to be a “debbie downer.” There is one woman who sometimes visits this blog who is in her late 40s, she wants to marry and have a baby, but she is terribly bummed out because most Christians keep telling her to accept reality that it won’t happen, because she’s past age.

I do think women can and should maintain a positive mindset about getting married eventually, even if they are over 35 years of age (see my previous post (Link): Don’t Give Up On Your Dreams)- I regularly see news items about 40 year old women who marry, but to hold out hope you can and will have a baby past 45, I don’t know.

Which doesn’t mean it cannot happen; last week, I saw a headline about a 50-something year old woman who carried to term and had a baby, but that kind of thing doesn’t happen often.

As I grow older, I just do not see God – if he exists – answering devout people’s prayers too often. I see only a select few be granted miracles. Everyone else? They get no response.

This comment:

  • from a position of hope, not from a position of defeatism.

Sometimes, it’s not a matter of defeatism, but of being realistic.

At any rate, the biggest issue I take with his post is that he is villifying a young woman for having age preferences.

Just as Morgan is clueless or unappreciative about the abuse women receive online from dirt balls and dirt bags (see this link), so too is he clueless about how many, and how often, older men prey on younger women, on dating sites, and in bars and other areas in real life and how distasteful it is.

I too have no desire to date men who are ten years my senior and use age caps on my dating site accounts – that does not make me “anti single, celibate adult male” nor does it mean I assume that there are no male virgins past the age of 25, 30, 45, or whatever.

I don’t care if a man is 83 years old and celibate, I have no desire to date him, as I am in my early 40s currently, and I would prefer to date a man who is closer to my age.

————————————-

Related posts:

(Link): Male Entitlement and Adult Virginity: Who has it worse, Male Vs. Female?

(Link):  Study:  Big Gaps in Age Can Turn A Marriage Sour in Just Six Years

(Link): True Love Waits . . . and Waits . . . and Waits – editorial about delayed marriage and related issues – and a rebuttal to John Morgan’s comment on the page

(Link): A 69 Year Old Man Wants to Self Identify as a 40-Something to Increase His Chances on Dating Sites

(Link): Creepy, wrong, immature and pathetic: older men chasing after much younger women

(Link):  Why So Much Fornication Among Christians and Secular Society – Because Christians and Secularists Have No Expectation of Sexual Purity

(Link):  Christian Host Pat Robertson Tells Christian Woman Who Married Christian Man Who Turned Out to Be Totally Unethical That She has Discernment of a Slug – Single Women: toss Be Equally Yoked teaching in the trash can

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