In the interest of full disclosure, my first long term boyfriend was 22 years younger than me. It lasted for three years and ended badly, but not because of the age difference. The husband - who is four years younger than me - and I know several very happy couples where there is a significant age difference. Yet, seemingly such couples face a double standard all too often compared to heterosexual couples where financially successful men often ditch their first wife for a so-called trophy wife. There were several such couples in my old neighborhood in Virginia Beach. Think of the reaction from some to the relationship of Tom Daley and Lance Black. And now, the same homophobia snark is revealing itself over the planned marriage of comedian Stephen Fry, 57, and 27-year-old comedian Elliot Spencer. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this unfortunate double standard. Here are highlights:
When news broke earlier this week that British actor and comedian Stephen Fry, 57, is now engaged to 27-year-old comedian Elliot Spencer, homophobic social media users suddenly decided they should try to be comedians, too. There have already been innumerable and equally unfunny variations on the joke that Spencer looks young enough to be Fry’s son, as Hannah Jane Parkinson relays on the Guardian. (And yes, someone has already called Spencer a “Small Fry,” har har.) The Internet reaction took an even darker turn when “Stephen Fry disgusting” reportedly trended on Twitter for a brief time following the announcement.
In the media, the couple’s age gap has been treated less like a scandal and more like a spectacle, with headlines predictably highlighting Spencer’s youth. The major outlets have remained more or less respectful beyond these gawking headlines but, as the Advocate reports, tabloid and entertainment sites have taken a more sensationalistic approach which has only been amplified by their comments sections, where people have been calling Fry a “pedophile,” a “pervert,” and a “dirty old man.”
If it’s not obvious by now, the outsized reaction to Fry and Spencer’s age gap is deeply homophobic. Plenty of straight men—especially famous straight men—have wives that are decidedly their juniors: Harrison Ford is 22 years older than Calista Flockhart, Michael Douglas is 25 years older than Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Clint Eastwood is a whopping 35 years older than his ex-wife. George Clooney’s paramours, too, have waxed ever younger over the years. Sure, these Hollywood May-December relationships are surrounded by plenty of hubbub about “trophy wives” and “gold-digging,” but no one thinks that Clint Eastwood is a pedophile just because he married a much younger woman. However much we gossip about heterosexual couples with large age gaps, we at least refrain from calling them sex offenders.
The news of Fry’s engagement, on the other hand, has done nothing but stoke the flames of a particularly virulent brand of homophobia that sees male homosexuality as a synonym for pedophilia and pederasty.
University of California at Davis psychology professor Gregory M. Herek has meticulously documented (and discredited) the history of this unfounded association. . . . . Today, it continues to circulate freely on the far Right.
When Bradley Cooper, now 40, started dating the now 23-year-old model Suki Waterhouse, the Daily Mirror called them “the sweetest celebrity couple ever” and repeated the old adage that “age is but a number.” This same outlet worked the phrase “engagement to toyboy lover” into the headline of their article on Fry. What happened to true love knows no boundaries and all that?
[F]ew gay eyebrows seem to be rising, likely because large age gaps are relatively common among same-sex couples. A Facebook study from last year found that both gay and lesbian couples tend to have much higher age gaps than their heterosexual counterparts with the difference—or the age gap gap—widening as people leave college and start new relationships in adulthood. The reasons for a gay age gap are as varied as the couple. For some, it’s about finding stability and maturity. For others, it’s simply about accepting love wherever you find it.
As always seems to be the case, gays face a different standard that do heterosexuals. One can only hope for the day when we are all judged by one standard.
No comments:
Post a Comment