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It was her responsibility as a mother to ensure that Ada didn't turn out like her father;

Fundamentally, the thing that was wrong with Lord Byron is that he was a poet; and

The opposite of poetry is math.

What a red flag actually means: something here is an indicator of a potential problem (but might be fine with a reasonable explanation)

What people have now decided it means: abuse

I've lost count of the number of times I've now had to read variants of "My partner takes all my money and gives me back an allowance because he says it's a man's job to control finances, but he's racking up gambling debts" being met with "Wow this man is a walking red flag" no Becky that is abuse. That is not an indicator. He is an abuser. Call the police. We have lost the concept of a proxy: a thing that indicates a more important thing. And it's relevant to this conversation because I'm actually going to go out on a limb here:

With the obvious exception of paedophilia, age gaps themselves aren't a problem at all - they are a proxy for the actual harmful phenomenon. Hea me out, let me explain

The reason we don't like age gaps is because of the implied power dynamic. If one partner, usually male, is older than other - particularly if the other is still quite young - the risk is that what we're seeing is a worldly wise predator who is exploiting the lack of life experience of a young beautiful woman by mentally abusing her until she's no longer young and pretty enough to satisfy, at which point he'll move on to the next. There have been enough examples of this in human history. It's unfortunately not an uncommon pattern. Genders can also be diverse in this scenario

We can't necessarily see that dynamic from the outside. But we CAN see an inherent element of it: the ages of the people involved. So age becomes a proxy for the abuse. And, hey, it's often correct.

But here's the thing: the ages themselves are not causing harm.

The power dynamic is. The abuse is.

Plenty of age gap relationships are loving, healthy and steadfast. Two people met and genuinely fell in love regardless of the outer packaging, and have a relationship with all the highs and lows and challenges and rewards as any more traditional pairing. This happens all the time

Is the age gap a red flag? Sure! It indicates a potential issue.

Is it inherently abusive? Absolutely fucking not.

OP is right - we need to stop focusing just on the numbers and twisting the facts to fit by infantilising the younger partners, and start focusing on the actual harms. The DiCaprio Pattern of only dating under 24s repeatedly is itself a proxy, too, actually - but a much stronger one than the simple presence of an age gap.

(Even so, in DiCaprio's case, until any of his former partners come forward and describe him as abusive, actually, even that is up in the air - my personal interpretation, given how strong a pattern it is, is that he's a loser who views women as trophies (consciously or not). If any have come forward and I don't know about it, of course, fair enough. But those women were adults capable of making their own decisions, even if they might later come to regret it. And regretting poor decisions is part of life! That's how it goes, particularly with relationships. As long as they weren't abused, there's no biggie. And just as he was looking for young-and-beautiful, there's no way they weren't, on some level, looking for rich-and-famous; it goes both ways.)

Also, another element of this: I think a lot of modern extreme puritan discourse on this is actually ironically down to the age of those taking part. Up until your late 20s, ten years is actually a huge span of time to you, because in your own life you were in a completely different developmental phase ten years ago (teenager), and a completely different phase again ten years before that (child). That skews your sense of what a ten-year gap means. Whereas once you're in your 30s and beyond, ten years is like. Yeah I was an adult ten years ago, and I still am now. That's two adults. Who cares.

This is harder and harder for audiences to grasp, and I sympathize, honestly, because we have become more keen over the last couple of decades, and we've noticed how many stories have been sold to us as an ideal we should reach for that would be harmful to us if we did so - stories intending to propogandize values centered around control or subjugation

but you have to learn to recognize when that's what is happening and when a work is simply clumsy, indulgent fantasizing shared with others, and how to settle your jerking, trigger-happy reflex when you notice something in a work of fiction that shouldn't be emulated in real life. That's not what fiction is. That is not, at base, its purpose or intent.

recognizing that a situation would be abusive if it were real does not mean that all stories where those situations happen are inherently ABOUT abuse. Unless we have reason to believe the writer is indeed trying to propagandize societal control on some level, then the story is about what the writer says it's about, because it's not real

there's no one with agency involved, there is only what the fictional fantasy writer wanted to happen in their fictional fantasy world. You being able to identify "if these two people existed this relationship would be abusive" doesn't change the intent of the text. It's GOOD that you can identify that! It's actually excellent! It's a necessary component to experiencing fiction and keeping yourself safe in the real world, but it doesn't change the intent of the text

You are absolutely, Capital R Right: if these people existed and treated each other this way, it would be abusive. But they don't exist. They are Anne Rice's Barbies, and she makes them kiss rough and mean and murderous and underage and incestuously, but through it all they remain Barbies, and she had zero responsibility to explicitly designate those Barbie relationships as abusive for the benefit of a reader who feels like they can't trust a fictional text unless it spells things out for them in real-world morality parables.

support women who shave their legs and wear makeup every day

let's hear it for masculine men

reminder that two people of the same gender can have a close platonic relationship!! not everything is gay!!

skinny shaming is hurtful too guys

does anyone else think [ironic kink du jour] is strange and freaky and gross?