Letters to the Editor
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famine and feast?
Well I can't say from experience, but it seems to me that the young woman's alleged feast of drooling older men is nothing to be envied. Most of the women I know are not interested in dating men significantly older than they are, and they are certainly not opposed to dating someone their own age.
And I for one have little interest in high school (or even college) freshmen (I am a junior), nor do I look forward to those days when I, too, can be a crotchety old man on the hunt for a trophy wife. Actually the love of my life is (*gasp*) a year older than me. Oh, the intrigue! We're just like Ashton and Demi.
I don't know why people bring this up as an excuse for older men having the societal "right" to "have" younger women. Besides, it seems to me that the crotchety old guys are just dumping their similarly-aged wives to get the new, younger models (pun not really intended).
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Okay but look
/developmental or other problems:
DO NOT expect sympathy.
DO NOT expect the public to take care of your 'special needs child' which results (oh, and, BTW. all children are special needs children) and that includes bankrupting the local schools for tuition at private facilities which is nothing but theft from everyone else's kids.
DO NOT take a deduction from your taxes for fertility treatments.
DO NOT demand that health insurance cover this exercise in pathological narcissism either, and for pity's sake
DO NOT have a freakin' litter.
Better still:
Just say no.
“Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.”
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First third of letter disappeared...
...er..DO NOT understand why.
But said that is you must pursue this kind of indulgent fragile ego narcissism don't expect sympathy when the child arrives with serious long term health problems or developmental issues...we evolved to have children young not bear our own GRANDCHILDREN.
'Assisted fertility' is deeply obscene.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
- Edward Abbey
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To John of Ventura
"I never had kids and it's probably too late now. I'm a man and I feel regrets. Most women do to."
Your kidding right? My grandfather was in his late 60s (his wife was in her mid 40s) when he had his last child. Yes, I have two half aunts that are younger than me, one of which is young enough to be my daughter. Today my grandfather is in his 80s, but he still looks better than his wife (health wise), whom he has been married to for nearly 30 years now.
But to better that story, one of my first Buddhist teachers was an 80 year old man with a 25 year old wife, and a 3 year old daughter. 8 years later, they are still married, and though the guy is old enough to remember having fought in WWII in the Philippines for the Japanese, he still appears to be going strong. With good healthy habits, diets, and routines a man can stay on top of his game for a long time. Women of course do lose their ability to procreate at around the age of 45 (give or take), but they can stay on top of their game too, and I can attest to desirability of much older women than me, who were able to keep themselves in shape. In fact there is an epidemic of older women catching STDs because they did not use condoms, because they were post menopausal. Age really doesn't make a difference as to whether or not a person is sexy (but health, character, and personality are the deciding factors that determining "Hawt", as they put it).
And in this day and age, why go through the headache of pregnancy, why not just adopt?
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Godmonkey, I'm talking about Explosive, Unsupportable Population Levels.
But, with all your blood locked up in your penis, I guess you're in no position to glean something nuanced right now.
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rosenkavalier
I don't think any guy is saying he has a 'right' to younger women.
Men, in general, are interested in younger women becuz thru evolutionary conditioning, you might say, he knows they are the most fertile--in his unconscious lizard brain or whatever.
Thats why men think young women are hot.
No big mystery or conspiracy.
And everyone--men or women--are going to get the best partner they possibly can get.
The old 80-20 theory----80% of the men want the top 20% of the women, & vice-versa.
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Rock on, BradyLord!
And I'd like to take AfterThat to task.
"No one couple needs to feel guilty about having 3 children in America because someone else will be having one or none. There is no one right number to have so long as the average number is trending stable or slightly down."
Not so. First, given American consumption, 3 children here equal the environmental impact of about 400 kids in a third-world country. The "average number" is not trending down in the US; birth rates themselves don't factor in lifespan of those born or how immigrant resource usage skyrockets in the US compared with usage in their home countries. Also, you are assuming that the current population is within Earth's carrying capacity--not so. We are already in population overshoot, destroying habitat and the other creatures on which we depend for every aspect of our lives (everything from plankton to trees); we're destroying our water and air, and meanwhile, soil fertility and harvests have declined annually for the past 5 years.
Meanwhile, folks in the developing world want the stuff they've seen us play with on tee vee. this means more extraction, more energy (also declining), more non-biodegradable junk--and the equivalent of 4 more Earths to supply all that stuff. If every Chinese gets a car and a fridge, we're all screwed.
There IS a "right number to have"--I'd suggest you read Bill McKibben's excellent book on population, Maybe One. And I say, if you have a kid, you should have to buy a reproduction offset from someone like me who, aware of all the above, has chosen not to spawn--even though my kid could have been the Environmental Messiah.