Richard Hanania, in The Real Target of Pedophile Hysteria Is Age Gap Relationships, wants us to believe that the only thing standing between civilisational and demographic collapse is our refusal to admit that men are biologically wired to find 17-year-olds (and, by slippery extension, 15- and 16-year-olds) sexually attractive.
Thank you for taking the time to write this up. I am frequently puzzled by why so many people, including people I respect, find Hanania worth taking seriously. He strikes me as an internet troll with the veneer of respectability, working on motivated reasoning to support edgy claims to get attention (and apparently to support his own preferences.) I used to read his work but eventually gave up; there just wasn't anything new that was interesting, just repeating other people's arguments and a lot of obvious edge lord nonsense.
You are being too kind. He thinks he is some smart guy, but has no real lasting insights and mostly goes for hot takes. Reminds me of the kid who got bullied in grade school and never grew out of that so is always going for attention and being an ass in the process.
I like Hanania. His first book on the origins of Woke in expansive human rights law is brilliant. Would it not be productive in this conversation to consider Palestine? According to the UN Population Fund: "In the State of Palestine, child marriage is at 24 percent, which is relatively within the average incidence in the Arab region that is one in five women married before the age of 18.
However, in certain parts of Palestine, prevalence notably exceeds this average, for instance in Gaza three out of ten women aged 20-49 were married before the age of 18 compared to two out of ten women in the West Bank."
General Turginson “You mentioned the ratio of ten women to one man. Wouldn’t that necessitate the abandoning of the so called monogamous form of sexual relationships? At least as far as men are concerned?
Dr. Strangelove, “Regrettably, yes. But it is a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to perform prodigious service along those lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics, which will have to be of a highly stimulating order”
That's Terry Southern's script and plot, actually. The satire is pitch-perfect, of course.
I'm reminded of that scene whenever I read about wealthy tech bros anticipating civilizational collapse and planning to bunker down in remote fortified compounds and private islands- and wouldn't you know, Epstein owned both types of real estate! The New Mexico compound was even intended to host a genetic research lab!
Jeffrey Epstein, Role Model. 21st century pioneer, boldly preparing for the custom crafted future of the centimillionaire-multibillionaire class.
I used to wonder about how the Strangelovean Ruling Cupola of the ultra-rich would control the mercenary legions required to hold the vengeful masses at bay, in the event of the Mad Max Disaster Zone/Private Enclave Utopia scenario that's evidently the limit of their morally crippled imaginations.*
Would the Superhuman Plutocracy castrate their elite commando teams, the way that earlier Imperial Dynasties kept their palace guards and manservant staff in line?**
But then I realized- that's the purpose of the newly invented Robot Armed Forces!
So Much Winning!
(*Douglas Rushkoff alleges that this is already happening, and provides some provocative evidence to back up his claim.)
(**In Norman Mailer's speculative historical fiction novel about Pharoanic Egypt, Ancient Evenings, he makes note of the three ways to castrate men, and goes on to discourse learnedly on the respective effects on the psyche of the three different types of eunuchs.)
Methinks it's technically more accurate to say that the process -- spermatogenesis -- becomes less efficient and more prone to errors and mutations with increasing age. None of us -- as many women often insist about themselves -- are born with all of the gametes we'll ever need. Both spermatogenesis and oogenesis don't "go on line" until the onset of puberty. Although the cycle time -- how often a new gamete comes off the end of those production lines -- is very different between males and females -- about one every millisecond for men but one or two a month for women. Profoundly different tempos to those two biological clocks with probably far-reaching behavioural consequences.
Paula: The antidote is to get feminism out of our schools and institutions, stop ...
Got my vote. Though maybe less feminism itself than the more unscientific versions of "gender ideology" -- something it is largely responsible for since it is "credited" for emphasizing and delineating the difference between sex -- i.e., gonads -- and gender -- i.e., personalities and behaviours typical of but not unique to each sex. Although, according to the OED, the distinction goes back some three hundred to six hundred years; my elaborations on that theme here:
Hannaia is basically wrong. The age gap thing is wrong for the most part. To the extent it existed it was because of the chances of death in pregnancy or childbirth meaning that widowers in their 30s or 40s could expect to remarry a younger second wife. Men who reached the age of 30(ish) unmarried were generally speaking just as looked down upon by society as unmarried women of that age. But a widower with, say, 4 children would not uncommonly marry a younger woman rather than the rarer widow of the same age
Pregnancy related death has been essentially solved for the last almost century in the developed world.
What the world has not figured out yet is that women can be mothers and have careers but they need to do the mother thing first. That is cultural and it doesn't help that culture has also decided that you aren't an adult until you've graduated from university at age 22 or so. I'm not saying women should be married by 22 - though it's not bad if they do - but that if the expectation is that women go to university then start a career and then get married and have children then you have to expect that they will be having their first child around 30 and chances are low that they'll manage more than one other.
If on the other hand the culture expects women aged 18 to enter the workforce as junior labor while they look for a husband, get married have kids and then, say, get a degree when their 3 kids are in elementary school (and they are aged 30ish) and start their career for real afterwards then the women still get a good 30 years working and another couple of decades retired, but the fertility crisis just went away
Not believable. I married a 30 year old woman when I was 31. We had no children, and there was no certain cause - just, “bummer”.
She had a daughter from a previous marriage. I raised her as if she was my own. When her mom - my wife - started having psychotic ideation, coupled with painful “runaway” behaviors, my step daughter (as a teenager) remarked, “it would be better if mom died, instead of cycling through clarity and psychosis - we could grieve her once and be done with it.”
That daughter is married now and with her own child. I was spiritually and financially devastated by my wife, even though she was relatively reluctant to overtly hurt me, because the “good man” impulse led me to expend years of effort, and implicitly, 100s of thousands of dollars in expenses, trying to help her. But in the end, she preferred her thought patterns over the marriage. I legally separated from her in order to stop further injury.
It is now six years later. I have not been profligate with women. I have kept to myself rebuilding a store of wealth by living frugally. The few women who I treated to a coffee or a meal rapidly demonstrated that I was being put on trial - did I fit into their lives. These were 30 and 40 year old women. From my own experience I knew that they may never have children with me, but their starting demands were that I serve them. I quickly realized that this disgusted me. I have three nephews - why would I give my time and resources to a woman who was determined to amass wealth and prestige for herself, at the expense of my nephews, potentially not even giving them cousins that could strengthen the family structure? This was obviously wrong. I concluded that only a woman determined to have children, and able to do so, was worth my self-sacrificial commitment. A woman in her 20s. I am in my early 50s. There is nothing wrong with me aiming at such a pairing if a woman would have me.
My step daughter - and her biological father - would testify that I looked out for her well being even at the cost of my own expediency (I lost time and resources I could have used to have a family of my own). Why is me seeking a wife in her 20s wrong?
You actually do care about what people do (in all aspects of their lives). That’s why you are writing about Richard’s policy prescriptions. We Christians get this silly retort all the time, “I don’t care about your religious convictions (just don’t act upon them)”. This style of retort is childish so of course we ignore them when we hear them. God commands us to act upon His instructions, and we regard God more highly than you, a mere human.
It ain’t going to be easy. I am in a small and conservative evangelical church - I am presuming that this can help me screen for the right moral attitude.
“The film portrays Lester as a contemptible, self-deluding creep who is mercifully murdered before he can ruin another child’s life.“
That’s not quite correct. When the girl Lester has been lusting after the entire movie finally offers herself to him, he realizes that she is a frightened child pretending to be sexually mature. He immediately shifts from treating her as an object of desire to a child in need of protection. He wraps her in a blanket and speaks kindly to her like an adult speaking to a child. It’s a moment of grace and repentance right before he dies. He has a deathbed conversion, without knowing he is on his deathbed. This interpretation completely undermines Hanania’s reading of the movie.
It’s worth noting that, while her character was supposed to be 16, Mena Suvari was 19 at the time American Beauty was filmed. She was a sexually mature adult woman. Finding her attractive doesn’t even make a guy an ephebophile!
Methinks that Hanania's normalization of age-gap "relationships" is simply another vector to immiserate young men. Every 40+ year old that deflowers a young woman is one less woman for young men. Do these older men actually make good husbands? Do they actually have ten kids with their teen wives? Or is it just lust, and these old men abandon the young women when they become inconvenient. There is hardly any evidence that large age gap relationships increase the birthrate. If anything, there is lots of data to the contrary. If you really want to raise the birthrate, normalize young men getting married when they are young (like you said), not having older men deflower all the virgins before the young men can marry them.
Age gap relationships of more than 2-5 years are incredible failures (statistically) compared to relationships between similar-aged couples, statistically. The data against longterm relationships between older men and younger women is plentiful and easy to google. You’re right that young men do get screwed over when old creeps prey on all the young women. It’s definitely not something anyone should be “normalizing,” or whatever these guys think.
Even ten years difference is a problem. 40-30? No problem. 50-40? No problem. 60-50…? Hmmm, a bit of a problem. 70-60, 80-70? That is when problems creep in. Make it 15 or 20 years and it becomes a serious issue. 50-30 and the guy might be suave and settled. Which some women crave. But when he is 75 and she is 55, not so much.
What ultimately matters is how the older party's health is and how well they take care of themselves.
I think you're both overblowing it a bit. People have different needs in these kinds of relationships. Will there be issues with living a normal life and growing old together with a 20 year difference? Yes, but many are aware of that and willing to make that choice.
Exactly. I think the bigger issue is that these women aren’t really ‘marriage material’ if they don’t value chastity. Older men taking them isn’t increasing stable families or the birthrate. It’s just lust and temporary relationships. Normalizing young men marrying young women who are actually committed to family and chastity would do far more for society than these age-gap flings.
Hanania's argument sounds crazy. On the other hand, through most of history girls and some boys too were married at 14. Juliet in Shakespeare's play is 14. No one finds this strange. Mahatma Gandhi and his wife were both 13 when they married. Alexander the Great was 14 when he won his first battle and so was Mughal Emperor Babar. Of course, our ideas about childhood and adulthood are different now. But citing history in this regard is not at all useful.
I address this in the post. In the past a girl would go through puberty years before her 1st period. This allowed some time of safe sexual exploration with peers. Due to high nutrition in the West, puberty & 1st period start at the same time. Early teen pregnancies come with a lot of risks. Peak fertility for women is 25
i compared this piece to another substack article i also enjoyed with chatgpt and here is what it said
If I had to admit only one of these authors to a prestigious institute as a writer, based solely on these two pieces, I would choose the author of Summary 1 (the Hanania critique).
Here’s why—broken down by criteria such institutes actually care about.
1. Intellectual Rigor and Argumentative Depth
Author 1 demonstrates:
Command of multiple disciplines (evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, history, ethics).
Clear identification of logical fallacies (naturalistic fallacy, motte-and-bailey).
Ability to steelman and then dismantle an opponent’s argument rather than caricature it.
Correct use of technical terminology without letting jargon replace moral reasoning.
Even when polemical, the argument is structured, cumulative, and falsifiable. It engages a real, live intellectual controversy and anticipates counterarguments.
Author 2, while insightful, is making a single cultural-anthropological observation and extending it narratively. It’s thoughtful, but not as analytically demanding.
Edge: Author 1
2. Original Contribution vs. Synthesis
Author 1 is intervening directly in an elite intellectual dispute, correcting misuses of biology and evolutionary psychology in public discourse. The argument reframes a debate rather than merely observing a trend.
Author 2 offers a compelling synthesis of existing ideas about snacking, hunger, comfort culture, and self-regulation—but does not substantially revise existing frameworks in nutrition or sociology.
Prestigious institutes select for people who change how arguments are framed, not just how clearly they’re told.
Edge: Author 1
3. Moral Seriousness Without Sentimentality
This matters a lot at elite institutions.
Author 1 handles morally explosive material (sexual predation, minors, fertility collapse) without collapsing into hysteria, while also refusing moral relativism.
They explicitly separate description from prescription, which is a hallmark of serious thinkers.
They understand that civilization is about constraint, not indulgence—an idea that runs through political philosophy from Aristotle to Freud to Norbert Elias.
Author 2 is morally lucid but safer: no real ethical risk in criticizing snack culture.
Edge: Author 1
4. Literary Power and Voice
This is the one area where Author 2 comes close to winning.
Author 2 has a warm, confident, essayistic voice, reminiscent of Malcolm Gladwell crossed with cultural anthropology.
The prose is accessible, rhythmic, and personable.
It would perform very well in magazines or long-form nonfiction.
However:
Author 1’s writing, while sharper and more confrontational, shows greater range—irony, moral gravity, historical sweep, and polemic control.
The Nabokov and American Beauty sections demonstrate genuine literary literacy, not just rhetorical flourish.
Institutes tend to prefer writers who can operate at high temperature without losing precision.
Narrow edge: Author 1
5. Risk Tolerance (a Quiet but Crucial Criterion)
Prestigious institutes quietly prize writers who:
Can withstand backlash
Write under reputational risk
Don’t rely on institutional consensus for authority
Author 1 is clearly willing to:
Challenge fashionable narratives on both Left and Right
Name uncomfortable facts
Accept being misread or attacked
Author 2 is incisive but institutionally “safe.”
Edge: Author 1
Final Judgment
Admit: Author 1
Why, in one sentence:
Because they demonstrate the rare combination of technical precision, moral seriousness, interdisciplinary fluency, and intellectual courage required to shape—not merely describe—elite discourse.
Important Caveat
This is not a claim that Author 2 is weaker overall—only that based on these pieces alone, Author 1 shows greater readiness for:
Fellowship-level debate
Institutional representation
High-stakes intellectual contribution
If the institute were instead selecting for public intellectual essays, cultural commentary, or general nonfiction readership, Author 2 might well be the better choice.
If you want, I can:
Reverse the exercise and argue for Author 2
Assess which author would thrive more in academia vs. public writing
Rewrite either piece to better fit an institute’s admissions expectations
Thank you for getting Lolita right. Too many people seem to think it’s a doomed romance or even erotica. Humbert Humbert is a monster, and the book depicts him as such. There is nothing romantic or sexy about the story.
By the way, Delores (which is the girl’s name in the book — only he calls her Lolita) is supposed to be about 12, not a child but not sexually mature, either. I guess that made Humbert a hebaphile? Not gonna spell check that one, sorry. Both of the actresses who played Delores were older than the character in the book. You couldn’t film the book faithfully and have it not come off as kiddie porn.
"The public is not suddenly forgetting that paedophilia means pre-pubescent children and deciding, in a fit of collective madness, that a 45-year-old sleeping with a 22-year-old is the same thing." I beg to differ. At 30, I met an 18-year-old and we started dating. After fifteen months of dating and engagement, we got married when she was 19, and we waited until our wedding night for sex. Nonetheless, many people explicitly and directly accused me of pedophilia for this marriage.
He's very good at knowing what will get a reaction. This article is exactly what he wants. The best thing to do with Hanania is block him and pretend he doesn't exist.
I dunno, my reading of American Beauty is that Lester *starts out* as "a creepy, self-deluding predator whose “attraction to youth” is… a symptom of his midlife crisis and moral rot", but that he catches himself just in time (refusing to sleep with the girl), and reforms, only to be *tragically* murdered just after his redemption. I think we agree about the first 4/5 of the movie, but I don't see why you think he *remains* a "contemptible, self-deluding creep" after that, and certainly don't read the ending as him being "mercifully murdered before he can ruin another child’s life", but rather as him being *tragically* murdered before he can fully reconcile himself with his wife and daughter.
I was about to make this point. My theory is that people remember the imagery from the movie but not the specifics of the plot. IIRC at the end when he finally gets the opportunity to have a sexual encounter with his daughter's friend he has a gut check and sees her as the child she still is, leading him to back down from his fantasy. By the end he's comforting her as a father would a daughter, and no longer sees her in a sexual way. He's then shot by the neighbor due to the misunderstanding about whether he is gay/in a relationship with the neighbor's son/possibly some kind of homophobic self hatred by the neighbor of himself. Point being the character grows in a positive direction on this particular part of the story, only to have his life cut short by the tangled web weaved with several other characters.
The connection to the fertility crisis isn't as presented here to my understanding.
Part of the fertility crisis is lack of mating crisis.
#MeToo for example - while shining a welcome important light on sexual abuse - has also made flirting harder. More unseemly. So, MeToo has caused less children to be born, and more humans to stay single and lonely.
As for judging MeToo, we should sum up the costs Vs the benefits. But we just admit the heavy cost inflicting on society.
Hanania argument is that the age-gap & paraphilia discourse does expand the scope of perceived paedophilia and "unfair" relationships. Doing something similar to MeToo of making a class of relationships unseemly.
Note that much of the reporting in Epstein is expansionary. Every 18 year old is talked about as a minor. Every willing and well paid prostitute is "groomed"/"abused"/"trafficked". Etc.
Finding that Epstein did sin with underage girls, shouldn't give any excuse to the moralising dishonest reporting inflating everything about Epstein
I've heard that #Metoo has been suggested as contributing but I've not seen any evidence. From the Profumo Affair & Jerry Lewis in the 60s, to Mandy Smith and Bill Wyman in the 80s, Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, and 20 years of Pakistani rape gangs - there has never been a shortage of scandals re child abuse. We just have more media today talking about it so they have to be more polemic to get clicks. The opinion of the general public is stable.
I think MeToo likely didn't have any positives. I've worked in the industry. None of the women culpable in that system were called out. THAT was a moral panic, or rather, a moral fraud.
I agree with the Summer's affair but don't think most people know who he is. The media class are enjoying the schadenfreude. To the average person, who won't be reading in depth, it's not important.
I am an American, so I had no idea who he even was until the scandal broke and he was dead. I saw a TV special about him, and I really wondered: why did anyone trust him, ever? I mean, just looking at him, hearing him talk, and it was obvious he was a creep
Thank you for taking the time to write this up. I am frequently puzzled by why so many people, including people I respect, find Hanania worth taking seriously. He strikes me as an internet troll with the veneer of respectability, working on motivated reasoning to support edgy claims to get attention (and apparently to support his own preferences.) I used to read his work but eventually gave up; there just wasn't anything new that was interesting, just repeating other people's arguments and a lot of obvious edge lord nonsense.
Yup. Agreed
You are being too kind. He thinks he is some smart guy, but has no real lasting insights and mostly goes for hot takes. Reminds me of the kid who got bullied in grade school and never grew out of that so is always going for attention and being an ass in the process.
He’s a troll. This is his job. Your engagement pays his bills.
I like Hanania. His first book on the origins of Woke in expansive human rights law is brilliant. Would it not be productive in this conversation to consider Palestine? According to the UN Population Fund: "In the State of Palestine, child marriage is at 24 percent, which is relatively within the average incidence in the Arab region that is one in five women married before the age of 18.
However, in certain parts of Palestine, prevalence notably exceeds this average, for instance in Gaza three out of ten women aged 20-49 were married before the age of 18 compared to two out of ten women in the West Bank."
Intersectionality maybe has its uses? :)
General Turginson “You mentioned the ratio of ten women to one man. Wouldn’t that necessitate the abandoning of the so called monogamous form of sexual relationships? At least as far as men are concerned?
Dr. Strangelove, “Regrettably, yes. But it is a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to perform prodigious service along those lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics, which will have to be of a highly stimulating order”
Stanley Kubric was sixty years ahead of this.
That's Terry Southern's script and plot, actually. The satire is pitch-perfect, of course.
I'm reminded of that scene whenever I read about wealthy tech bros anticipating civilizational collapse and planning to bunker down in remote fortified compounds and private islands- and wouldn't you know, Epstein owned both types of real estate! The New Mexico compound was even intended to host a genetic research lab!
Jeffrey Epstein, Role Model. 21st century pioneer, boldly preparing for the custom crafted future of the centimillionaire-multibillionaire class.
I used to wonder about how the Strangelovean Ruling Cupola of the ultra-rich would control the mercenary legions required to hold the vengeful masses at bay, in the event of the Mad Max Disaster Zone/Private Enclave Utopia scenario that's evidently the limit of their morally crippled imaginations.*
Would the Superhuman Plutocracy castrate their elite commando teams, the way that earlier Imperial Dynasties kept their palace guards and manservant staff in line?**
But then I realized- that's the purpose of the newly invented Robot Armed Forces!
So Much Winning!
(*Douglas Rushkoff alleges that this is already happening, and provides some provocative evidence to back up his claim.)
(**In Norman Mailer's speculative historical fiction novel about Pharoanic Egypt, Ancient Evenings, he makes note of the three ways to castrate men, and goes on to discourse learnedly on the respective effects on the psyche of the three different types of eunuchs.)
Paula: Sperm do not age gracefully.
Methinks it's technically more accurate to say that the process -- spermatogenesis -- becomes less efficient and more prone to errors and mutations with increasing age. None of us -- as many women often insist about themselves -- are born with all of the gametes we'll ever need. Both spermatogenesis and oogenesis don't "go on line" until the onset of puberty. Although the cycle time -- how often a new gamete comes off the end of those production lines -- is very different between males and females -- about one every millisecond for men but one or two a month for women. Profoundly different tempos to those two biological clocks with probably far-reaching behavioural consequences.
Paula: The antidote is to get feminism out of our schools and institutions, stop ...
Got my vote. Though maybe less feminism itself than the more unscientific versions of "gender ideology" -- something it is largely responsible for since it is "credited" for emphasizing and delineating the difference between sex -- i.e., gonads -- and gender -- i.e., personalities and behaviours typical of but not unique to each sex. Although, according to the OED, the distinction goes back some three hundred to six hundred years; my elaborations on that theme here:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/genspect-feminism-and-the-transcult
Hannaia is basically wrong. The age gap thing is wrong for the most part. To the extent it existed it was because of the chances of death in pregnancy or childbirth meaning that widowers in their 30s or 40s could expect to remarry a younger second wife. Men who reached the age of 30(ish) unmarried were generally speaking just as looked down upon by society as unmarried women of that age. But a widower with, say, 4 children would not uncommonly marry a younger woman rather than the rarer widow of the same age
Pregnancy related death has been essentially solved for the last almost century in the developed world.
What the world has not figured out yet is that women can be mothers and have careers but they need to do the mother thing first. That is cultural and it doesn't help that culture has also decided that you aren't an adult until you've graduated from university at age 22 or so. I'm not saying women should be married by 22 - though it's not bad if they do - but that if the expectation is that women go to university then start a career and then get married and have children then you have to expect that they will be having their first child around 30 and chances are low that they'll manage more than one other.
If on the other hand the culture expects women aged 18 to enter the workforce as junior labor while they look for a husband, get married have kids and then, say, get a degree when their 3 kids are in elementary school (and they are aged 30ish) and start their career for real afterwards then the women still get a good 30 years working and another couple of decades retired, but the fertility crisis just went away
I'm working on a project. I'll post on it when it's finalised
Not believable. I married a 30 year old woman when I was 31. We had no children, and there was no certain cause - just, “bummer”.
She had a daughter from a previous marriage. I raised her as if she was my own. When her mom - my wife - started having psychotic ideation, coupled with painful “runaway” behaviors, my step daughter (as a teenager) remarked, “it would be better if mom died, instead of cycling through clarity and psychosis - we could grieve her once and be done with it.”
That daughter is married now and with her own child. I was spiritually and financially devastated by my wife, even though she was relatively reluctant to overtly hurt me, because the “good man” impulse led me to expend years of effort, and implicitly, 100s of thousands of dollars in expenses, trying to help her. But in the end, she preferred her thought patterns over the marriage. I legally separated from her in order to stop further injury.
It is now six years later. I have not been profligate with women. I have kept to myself rebuilding a store of wealth by living frugally. The few women who I treated to a coffee or a meal rapidly demonstrated that I was being put on trial - did I fit into their lives. These were 30 and 40 year old women. From my own experience I knew that they may never have children with me, but their starting demands were that I serve them. I quickly realized that this disgusted me. I have three nephews - why would I give my time and resources to a woman who was determined to amass wealth and prestige for herself, at the expense of my nephews, potentially not even giving them cousins that could strengthen the family structure? This was obviously wrong. I concluded that only a woman determined to have children, and able to do so, was worth my self-sacrificial commitment. A woman in her 20s. I am in my early 50s. There is nothing wrong with me aiming at such a pairing if a woman would have me.
My step daughter - and her biological father - would testify that I looked out for her well being even at the cost of my own expediency (I lost time and resources I could have used to have a family of my own). Why is me seeking a wife in her 20s wrong?
I'm personally not bothered what people do in their lives. My point is Anania's policy prescription
You actually do care about what people do (in all aspects of their lives). That’s why you are writing about Richard’s policy prescriptions. We Christians get this silly retort all the time, “I don’t care about your religious convictions (just don’t act upon them)”. This style of retort is childish so of course we ignore them when we hear them. God commands us to act upon His instructions, and we regard God more highly than you, a mere human.
You will need a foreign wife to make this happen. Or 8 figure wealth.
It ain’t going to be easy. I am in a small and conservative evangelical church - I am presuming that this can help me screen for the right moral attitude.
I post under my real name with my real visage. There’s no universe where I take a derogatory comment from a random di**head seriously.
I didn’t take Hanania to be defending Lester in “American Beauty”, only explaining his biological urges as natural. But I will reread his essay.
“The film portrays Lester as a contemptible, self-deluding creep who is mercifully murdered before he can ruin another child’s life.“
That’s not quite correct. When the girl Lester has been lusting after the entire movie finally offers herself to him, he realizes that she is a frightened child pretending to be sexually mature. He immediately shifts from treating her as an object of desire to a child in need of protection. He wraps her in a blanket and speaks kindly to her like an adult speaking to a child. It’s a moment of grace and repentance right before he dies. He has a deathbed conversion, without knowing he is on his deathbed. This interpretation completely undermines Hanania’s reading of the movie.
It’s worth noting that, while her character was supposed to be 16, Mena Suvari was 19 at the time American Beauty was filmed. She was a sexually mature adult woman. Finding her attractive doesn’t even make a guy an ephebophile!
Obviously the line for “adult” is arbitrary though. She could vote but not buy cigarettes, which she could have done then.
She could legally have sex with Kevin Spacey in every state (though he apparently would not be interested).
You should try reading the article
You dirty perv!
Methinks that Hanania's normalization of age-gap "relationships" is simply another vector to immiserate young men. Every 40+ year old that deflowers a young woman is one less woman for young men. Do these older men actually make good husbands? Do they actually have ten kids with their teen wives? Or is it just lust, and these old men abandon the young women when they become inconvenient. There is hardly any evidence that large age gap relationships increase the birthrate. If anything, there is lots of data to the contrary. If you really want to raise the birthrate, normalize young men getting married when they are young (like you said), not having older men deflower all the virgins before the young men can marry them.
Age gap relationships of more than 2-5 years are incredible failures (statistically) compared to relationships between similar-aged couples, statistically. The data against longterm relationships between older men and younger women is plentiful and easy to google. You’re right that young men do get screwed over when old creeps prey on all the young women. It’s definitely not something anyone should be “normalizing,” or whatever these guys think.
Even ten years difference is a problem. 40-30? No problem. 50-40? No problem. 60-50…? Hmmm, a bit of a problem. 70-60, 80-70? That is when problems creep in. Make it 15 or 20 years and it becomes a serious issue. 50-30 and the guy might be suave and settled. Which some women crave. But when he is 75 and she is 55, not so much.
What ultimately matters is how the older party's health is and how well they take care of themselves.
I think you're both overblowing it a bit. People have different needs in these kinds of relationships. Will there be issues with living a normal life and growing old together with a 20 year difference? Yes, but many are aware of that and willing to make that choice.
People make the choice though at 30 and 50. When it isn’t a problem. Talk to couples who are 80 and 60.
Do you think they didn't consider the length of human lifespans before getting into a relationship?
I am sure they did. But not many can make good decisions 40 or 50 years in advance.
There is another aspect to this. Why deny yourself some good years now when one doesn’t know how long anyone has.
Exactly. I think the bigger issue is that these women aren’t really ‘marriage material’ if they don’t value chastity. Older men taking them isn’t increasing stable families or the birthrate. It’s just lust and temporary relationships. Normalizing young men marrying young women who are actually committed to family and chastity would do far more for society than these age-gap flings.
Older men have more money, but they can be replaced by higher taxes
Hanania's argument sounds crazy. On the other hand, through most of history girls and some boys too were married at 14. Juliet in Shakespeare's play is 14. No one finds this strange. Mahatma Gandhi and his wife were both 13 when they married. Alexander the Great was 14 when he won his first battle and so was Mughal Emperor Babar. Of course, our ideas about childhood and adulthood are different now. But citing history in this regard is not at all useful.
I address this in the post. In the past a girl would go through puberty years before her 1st period. This allowed some time of safe sexual exploration with peers. Due to high nutrition in the West, puberty & 1st period start at the same time. Early teen pregnancies come with a lot of risks. Peak fertility for women is 25
Peak fertility is not '25'. Your ability to reproduce decreases as you age and sperm count/eggs are reduced.
i compared this piece to another substack article i also enjoyed with chatgpt and here is what it said
If I had to admit only one of these authors to a prestigious institute as a writer, based solely on these two pieces, I would choose the author of Summary 1 (the Hanania critique).
Here’s why—broken down by criteria such institutes actually care about.
1. Intellectual Rigor and Argumentative Depth
Author 1 demonstrates:
Command of multiple disciplines (evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, history, ethics).
Clear identification of logical fallacies (naturalistic fallacy, motte-and-bailey).
Ability to steelman and then dismantle an opponent’s argument rather than caricature it.
Correct use of technical terminology without letting jargon replace moral reasoning.
Even when polemical, the argument is structured, cumulative, and falsifiable. It engages a real, live intellectual controversy and anticipates counterarguments.
Author 2, while insightful, is making a single cultural-anthropological observation and extending it narratively. It’s thoughtful, but not as analytically demanding.
Edge: Author 1
2. Original Contribution vs. Synthesis
Author 1 is intervening directly in an elite intellectual dispute, correcting misuses of biology and evolutionary psychology in public discourse. The argument reframes a debate rather than merely observing a trend.
Author 2 offers a compelling synthesis of existing ideas about snacking, hunger, comfort culture, and self-regulation—but does not substantially revise existing frameworks in nutrition or sociology.
Prestigious institutes select for people who change how arguments are framed, not just how clearly they’re told.
Edge: Author 1
3. Moral Seriousness Without Sentimentality
This matters a lot at elite institutions.
Author 1 handles morally explosive material (sexual predation, minors, fertility collapse) without collapsing into hysteria, while also refusing moral relativism.
They explicitly separate description from prescription, which is a hallmark of serious thinkers.
They understand that civilization is about constraint, not indulgence—an idea that runs through political philosophy from Aristotle to Freud to Norbert Elias.
Author 2 is morally lucid but safer: no real ethical risk in criticizing snack culture.
Edge: Author 1
4. Literary Power and Voice
This is the one area where Author 2 comes close to winning.
Author 2 has a warm, confident, essayistic voice, reminiscent of Malcolm Gladwell crossed with cultural anthropology.
The prose is accessible, rhythmic, and personable.
It would perform very well in magazines or long-form nonfiction.
However:
Author 1’s writing, while sharper and more confrontational, shows greater range—irony, moral gravity, historical sweep, and polemic control.
The Nabokov and American Beauty sections demonstrate genuine literary literacy, not just rhetorical flourish.
Institutes tend to prefer writers who can operate at high temperature without losing precision.
Narrow edge: Author 1
5. Risk Tolerance (a Quiet but Crucial Criterion)
Prestigious institutes quietly prize writers who:
Can withstand backlash
Write under reputational risk
Don’t rely on institutional consensus for authority
Author 1 is clearly willing to:
Challenge fashionable narratives on both Left and Right
Name uncomfortable facts
Accept being misread or attacked
Author 2 is incisive but institutionally “safe.”
Edge: Author 1
Final Judgment
Admit: Author 1
Why, in one sentence:
Because they demonstrate the rare combination of technical precision, moral seriousness, interdisciplinary fluency, and intellectual courage required to shape—not merely describe—elite discourse.
Important Caveat
This is not a claim that Author 2 is weaker overall—only that based on these pieces alone, Author 1 shows greater readiness for:
Fellowship-level debate
Institutional representation
High-stakes intellectual contribution
If the institute were instead selecting for public intellectual essays, cultural commentary, or general nonfiction readership, Author 2 might well be the better choice.
If you want, I can:
Reverse the exercise and argue for Author 2
Assess which author would thrive more in academia vs. public writing
Rewrite either piece to better fit an institute’s admissions expectations
Cool! Thanks!
Totally agree on the structural and cultural aspects of the fertility crisis Hanania’s solution is not going to shift the needle.
Well written.
I like the (age X .5) + 7 general rule for the elder partner starting at age 22.
Personally I don't care. DiCaprio can have his girlfriends.
None of your business
Precisely
Thank you for getting Lolita right. Too many people seem to think it’s a doomed romance or even erotica. Humbert Humbert is a monster, and the book depicts him as such. There is nothing romantic or sexy about the story.
By the way, Delores (which is the girl’s name in the book — only he calls her Lolita) is supposed to be about 12, not a child but not sexually mature, either. I guess that made Humbert a hebaphile? Not gonna spell check that one, sorry. Both of the actresses who played Delores were older than the character in the book. You couldn’t film the book faithfully and have it not come off as kiddie porn.
"The public is not suddenly forgetting that paedophilia means pre-pubescent children and deciding, in a fit of collective madness, that a 45-year-old sleeping with a 22-year-old is the same thing." I beg to differ. At 30, I met an 18-year-old and we started dating. After fifteen months of dating and engagement, we got married when she was 19, and we waited until our wedding night for sex. Nonetheless, many people explicitly and directly accused me of pedophilia for this marriage.
I hope you hurt those people in some way
Why does this person get so much attention? [Hanania]
He's very good at knowing what will get a reaction. This article is exactly what he wants. The best thing to do with Hanania is block him and pretend he doesn't exist.
We’re being ethnically cleansed and replaced by those who don’t have the benefit of a feminist culture
There are other solutions, as I said. Many people are working on them, including me
I dunno, my reading of American Beauty is that Lester *starts out* as "a creepy, self-deluding predator whose “attraction to youth” is… a symptom of his midlife crisis and moral rot", but that he catches himself just in time (refusing to sleep with the girl), and reforms, only to be *tragically* murdered just after his redemption. I think we agree about the first 4/5 of the movie, but I don't see why you think he *remains* a "contemptible, self-deluding creep" after that, and certainly don't read the ending as him being "mercifully murdered before he can ruin another child’s life", but rather as him being *tragically* murdered before he can fully reconcile himself with his wife and daughter.
I was about to make this point. My theory is that people remember the imagery from the movie but not the specifics of the plot. IIRC at the end when he finally gets the opportunity to have a sexual encounter with his daughter's friend he has a gut check and sees her as the child she still is, leading him to back down from his fantasy. By the end he's comforting her as a father would a daughter, and no longer sees her in a sexual way. He's then shot by the neighbor due to the misunderstanding about whether he is gay/in a relationship with the neighbor's son/possibly some kind of homophobic self hatred by the neighbor of himself. Point being the character grows in a positive direction on this particular part of the story, only to have his life cut short by the tangled web weaved with several other characters.
Yes, exactly, well summarized.
The connection to the fertility crisis isn't as presented here to my understanding.
Part of the fertility crisis is lack of mating crisis.
#MeToo for example - while shining a welcome important light on sexual abuse - has also made flirting harder. More unseemly. So, MeToo has caused less children to be born, and more humans to stay single and lonely.
As for judging MeToo, we should sum up the costs Vs the benefits. But we just admit the heavy cost inflicting on society.
Hanania argument is that the age-gap & paraphilia discourse does expand the scope of perceived paedophilia and "unfair" relationships. Doing something similar to MeToo of making a class of relationships unseemly.
Note that much of the reporting in Epstein is expansionary. Every 18 year old is talked about as a minor. Every willing and well paid prostitute is "groomed"/"abused"/"trafficked". Etc.
Finding that Epstein did sin with underage girls, shouldn't give any excuse to the moralising dishonest reporting inflating everything about Epstein
I've heard that #Metoo has been suggested as contributing but I've not seen any evidence. From the Profumo Affair & Jerry Lewis in the 60s, to Mandy Smith and Bill Wyman in the 80s, Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, and 20 years of Pakistani rape gangs - there has never been a shortage of scandals re child abuse. We just have more media today talking about it so they have to be more polemic to get clicks. The opinion of the general public is stable.
I think MeToo likely didn't have any positives. I've worked in the industry. None of the women culpable in that system were called out. THAT was a moral panic, or rather, a moral fraud.
The Summers affair contains multiple facets of expanding the realm of "unseemly"..
So flirting with a fellow professionals is bad.
Sharing those - not even intimate emails - is bad.
Culture changes at the margin.
And Hanania doesn't say "dating 14 year olds will solve fertility".
Rather, "on the margin, will expanding the scope of 'socially unacceptable' flirting, dating and infatuation types, increase or reduce mating".
I think it reduces. And the only question is that of magnitude and the cost/benefit balance
I agree with the Summer's affair but don't think most people know who he is. The media class are enjoying the schadenfreude. To the average person, who won't be reading in depth, it's not important.
Further, I know the majority of the middle class media don't care about working class girls. It's just content. They all read one another.
I am an American, so I had no idea who he even was until the scandal broke and he was dead. I saw a TV special about him, and I really wondered: why did anyone trust him, ever? I mean, just looking at him, hearing him talk, and it was obvious he was a creep
The evidence is in the public conversation and vibes regarding what type of flirting is considered legit.
It seems to be considered much more impolite to flirt with random strangers today Vs 20 years ago. This is my personal impression