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Jerry Seinfeld’s Teen Girlfriend Saga Resurfaces After Duke Walkout
(www.thedailybeast.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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Good. It's what he deserves. I was 9 or 10 when that happened and I remember thinking it was so gross and being confused why people were just like...cool with it? I'm glad people are calling him out now - better late than never, I guess.
Boomers have a much higher tolerance of SA and grooming. Look at how it's just accepted that Rock Stars could have underaged... pursuits.
I know this won't be popular, but it's for a few reasons:
I speak strongly about this because I think we are doing great damage to mental health to repeatedly claim it's a mental disorder to have a completely normal and common biological attraction.
But don't get me wrong, I 100% support protecting minors from predators. I agree these laws should exist, I just wish people would stop pretending that there is something wrong with the attraction itself.
I don't really have an issue with a 16 year old dating an 18 year old. They're close enough that the age thing wouldn't be an issue, but 17 and 38 is a bit different.
I also don't really have an issue with adults being attracted to... people below the legal limit so long as they don't act on it. It's very difficult to have this discussion when most people can't grasp that desires don't always lead to actions and have problems separating fiction from reality. There are people with rape fetishes that find healthy, consensual ways to simulate the act, something that the mainstream can't really cope with.
But that's not really the discussion we're having. Jerry Seinfeld had a teenaged girlfriend when he was 38. Celebrities using their positions of power isn't acceptable.
Romeo and Juliet laws show we absolutely have some tolerance for adults dating teenagers. And nobody I know is saying a 17 year old can't be sexually attractive. The problem is they essentially unarmed against the average 30 year old. And I'd much rather draw a line somewhere than the actual puritanical practice of marrying teenagers to a 40 year old man who happens to have the most money available.
You're telling on yourself quite a bit here. Your mental health doesn't have to suffer if you find a "biologically mature" woman attractive but after a certain age if you're seeing a "hot woman" and not "a young girl" there definitely is some deviation from the norm.
We're talking about sexual attraction to children that don't know how to file their taxes and are just learning what it means to be an adult. If your sexual attraction to someone is purely physical and not affected by your rational mind telling you that they're a kid then there really is a bit of a disconnect there.
Maybe you're closer in age to them than I am, there's certainly a range of "adult ages" where people are still developing mentally, but when you're old enough that you're finding a woman SEXUALLY attractive who is the age of your daughter or your friends' daughters that's a red flag and worth some introspection.
I'm perfectly comfortable with who I am attracted to. Don't worry about my mental health. There is no telling on myself, I'm 100% open about it.
I just recognize that this is the same BS trauma that we've been inflicting on gay people by telling them that their perfectly normal and natural attraction is some kind of mental issue. Just like how I see through when someone claims gay people have a mental problem, I see through the implications that men being attracted to young women is indicative of some kind of mental issue.
We are talking about a young woman in her prime reproductive years. Objectively speaking, evolutionarily, it would make sense that men are attracted to this. In fact, I would argue that if you don't find them physically attractive, you are the one deviating from the norm. Now to be clear, don't confuse what I'm saying with emotional and intellectual attractiveness.
No we're not, we're talking about being attracted to women in their prime reproductive years. They are young and likely immature and we should have laws that protect them, but let's not conflate that with the physical attraction being a mental illness.
I'm probably as old or older than you. I've talked to people in their 40s who I find completely emotionally immature and intellectually unattractive, and I've talked to teenagers whom I've found to be mature and the conversation to be intellectually stimulating. Although the latter is few and far between, and getting further apart as I age.
Would I want to have a relationship with them? No. Would I want to have sex with them? Sure.
girls enter puberty so much earlier than boys, their capable of reproduction anywhere from 10-12. When you talk about "prime reproductive years," know that it includes girls as young as 10. So... stop using that term. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and inferring that you actually mean girls that are on the very cusp of womanhood, like, ages 17-19, but others may not.
Women are hot, girls are not. Some girls can appear to be older than they are, and it's confusing when confronted with a genuinely attractive woman that is not yet 18, because we're caught between the confusing notions of "I am attracted to this person" and "this person is not yet old enough to to be engaged with in a socially conscious manner." It's not wrong to find the person attractive, it IS wrong to engage with them in a manner reserved for those that are fully realized adults. For my purposes, I'm putting adulthood at around age 22-25, when your brain is pretty much fully developed.
So with that being said, No, Jerry Seinfeld didn't do a bad thing by thinking a 17 year old girl attractive, he DID do a bad thing by engaging with her as if she was a fully formed adult.
Prime reproductive years for women is generally late teens to late 20s. I'll keep using the term because I'm using it accurately, and it's exactly the whole point: biologically speaking why would it be surprising that some men would find a women who is prime for reproduction attractive? It just makes perfect sense.
It's only confusing to you because you've bought into the puritanical notion that there is something wrong with being attracted to young women; there's really nothing confusing about it: it's reasonable to find them physically attractive, but almost certainly inappropriate to engage in a relationship with them. This is the misconception I'm trying to dispell here.
I agree that at best he did a questionable thing. However I know nothing of her maturity at the time. As I've said elsewhere, I've met emotionally and intellectually immature 40 year olds (certainly plenty in their late 20s) and intellectually stimulating and mature 16 year olds. If it's legal, and she was mature, why would it be wrong? And would it be wrong if I had sex with "a fully formed adult" when she is emotionally immature? I get we need a rule to catch the vast majority of the cases, but from a moral stand point I can't say why it would be okay to have sex with an emotional immature adult, but not okay to have sex with an emotionally mature adult just because the latter is younger than the former.
Again, don't get me wrong, the vast majority of the time there is some taking advantage going on, and there should be laws to stop it. I'm not arguing against this.
One of the leading causes of death for teen girls aged 15-19 is complications from childbirth. Also infants born to teen mothers have increased risk of death and poorer health outcomes. One of the most common issues is obstructed labor, since their pelvises are too small to accomdate a baby.
Recent research has also found teen pregnancy is linked to premature death later in life.
The science doesn't agree that teen girls are in their prime reproductive years. I wish this idea would fade into the history books and live alongside the idea that women shouldnt ride trains because their uteruses would fly out.
Some links below for your convenience.
https://www.nicswell.co.uk/health-news/teenage-pregnancy-death-concern
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/health/teen-pregnancy-early-death.html
Well a thing being legal does not make a thing right. Emotional maturity is subjective, and thus is not what we use for determining whether a person is considered an adult or not.
Maturity isn't the guiding rod by which we can determine adulthood. I'm suggesting that age is relevant to this, because it's the best we have at determining brain formation. Intellectual disabilities in an adult would mean that engaging with them sexually is wrong, showing that it is the functionality of the brain that determines adulthood. If there was never a need for a draft, I think we would naturally have concluded adulthood starts around 22-25, instead of the arbitrary designation of 18. For the purpose of having a hard rule to stop children from being taken advantage of, age is the best we have (for people without intellectual/developmental disabilities).
With that in mind, we really can say definitively, that no, Seinfeld isn't wrong for finding her attractive, but he was for having a sexual relationship with her.
That being said, arguing that the urges behind the wrong act are "natural," seems to argue for a relaxation of our attitude towards these relationships, which is also wrong. which is why other Lemmineers got the "ick" from your previous comment.
Because nobody is upset that he found her attractive. We're upset because he was a fully formed adult, with super-stardom and all the trappings of power that come with it, engaging in a sexual relationship with a not fully formed adult.
You should absolutely read the rest of this thread because someone outright said that I deviate from the norm by finding some of them attractive, and even tried to equate being attracted to them to having the desire to murder.
But that being said, as I already very clearly and explicitly said, I agree laws should be in place to protect minors from predators. I'm also fine with it being based on age.
It's just that you are, on one hand, saying legality and morality are not the same (correctly, imo) but then arguing with me that it's morally bad in many cases so we need to have a clear law (which I also agree with), which makes what he did immoral. Maybe they were emotionally and intellectually compatible. I don't know, as I don't know either of them, and everyone close to it has said it was a good relationship. Who am I to say it was bad?
additionally, these have been some of the most carefully worded comments of my life lmao
You're fucking gross.
So gross! I can't believe he's out in the daylight. Every sentence I read just got worse and worse...
YIKES DAWG
Can't defend indefensible positions.
Is what you need to start telling yourself.
I'm literally defending my position, you and the other poster are just attacking my character.
It's fine, I get it. It's some of the same exact pushback I saw when I was arguing in favor of rights for homosexuals back during the rise of their widespread acceptance.
You're making the same arguments and even appealing to the same historic causes as pedophilia-acceptance advocates do.
Don't try to make your desire to have sex with teens a civil rights issue, it cheapens everything that LGBTQ+ people have suffered and fought for.
This is an empty ad hominem that I don't care about. I'm not arguing that pedophilia is normal, I'm pointing out that being attracted to young women is not pedophilia and should stop being labelled as such.
I view it as quite the opposite: by labelling a perfectly normal attraction as a mental disorder, you're guilty of the same puritanical nonsense that we have fought against for the past few decades.
I'm really not trying to engage here but if you're appealing to what makes biological sense then killing your sexual rivals and responding violently to aggression or stress are also perfectly normal and should be allowed by your reasoning.
You're jumping through a lot of hoops to justify sexual relationships between people of vast maturity level and power imbalances.
The defining feature of human civilization is that we move beyond biological impulses
I've been very clear and explicit that I believe the laws should exist. And yet you're still arguing that I'm saying that because it's natural, it should still be legal.
Sorry, but it's clear you aren't arguing in good faith or you've completely shut yourself down and are not open to reason, so I'll bow out.
Point is we treat those psychological violent urges and don't brush them off as natural. We teach people how to cope with them. We don't spend an awful lot of time justifying those impulses.
No, you revealed your character by doing a VERY bad job of defending your position. Such that you need to change your position.
Arguing for the rights of homosexuals has nothing in common from what you've said here.
Again, no argument.
Yep. Picking the bear.
Imagine responding to an actual thought out, reasoned argument with some braindead thought terminating snark. Saves the effort of trying to actually engage in conversation or uncomfortable thoughts I guess but that's about it.
Still picking the bear. Your reply, and all the other salty misogynist replies are exactly why.
To me, it's a distraction. I think it's legal in just about every state for someone to marry a child under the age of 15 with the approval of their parents.
It's not. Child marriage is illegal, even with parental consent, in 12 states. Proud Jersey boy here. If you don't live in a blue state that isn't one of the 12, start shaming your politicians.
The issue seems to be that he was dating and fucking them.
Hell, they wrote songs about it. "Jailbait" by Ted Nugent, "Seventeen" by Winger... I'm sure there are more.
You mean the Ted Nugent that had a 13yr old girl living in his house while writing jailbait?
Bro he's a pedophile, pointing to a pedophile and going look there it's normal is fucking crazy.
I'm not saying it's normal. I'm saying it was normalized in the past, and thankfully that attitude is changing now and we can see how gross it always was.
Yes, Nugent is a fucking pedophile. He absolutely isn't alone in the world of rock in that, though.
Chuck Berry: hold my guitar.
Jerry Lee Lewis: hang onto this piano for me.
The list is as long as musicians are famous.
Aerosmith: gestures vaguely at discography
They really do. My own father married a 17 year old when he was 26 (years before he met my mom), and I spent a long time trying to justify it to myself with the fact that a lot of people did that kind of thing in the 70s. It wasn't until I was an adult that I was finally able to process my feelings about him as a human separate from my feelings about him as a father and just admit that was disgusting. He actually said her parents should've had him thrown in jail, but she was already a huge asshole (and still is) and they probably saw an opportunity to pawn her off on someone else. I'm not surprised she was a nightmare with everyone around her totally failing her, though.
Yup. I can't listen to classic rock because it's near impossible to find a band or artist who wasn't fucking people under 16.