With the surfacing of Kanye’s quarrel with Billie Eilish, I thought this was a topical conversation to bring up.

You may have noticed following the story, that the public discourse on this is bent on packaging Billie (and other women caught in Kanye’s crosshairs) as “young” - implying not just age but also some sort of “helplessness” and “feebleness”. The story always goes - why is a GROWN man harassing YOUNG (INNOCENT, PRECIOUS) women?

I have noticed this motif again and again and again in media, social media and general online/offline conversations. If the victim is a younger woman, she’s explicitly branded as “young girl”, “young woman” - and if the victim is a younger man, it’s always just “kid” or “teenager”. Have you ever seen anyone go - “Why is a grown man/woman harassing this young boy?". So much so, that I noticed an OP of a popular post tell her story on a women-focused sub with these adjectives for herself for the additional brownie points and posted the same story in a neutral way on another sub. I called her out on it and she blocked me.

The point is, in this progressive age of equality and agency for all, why on earth are we delicatizing women with the subtext of them being helpless, poor souls? I personally believe if you are an adult, you have agency and power and don’t need to be romantically victimized further than the actual perpetrator of your harassment.

It goes without saying this isn’t about the harassers - fuck them. Kanye (and others) are just dicks who may have a tendency to bully younger people simply due to the age difference but in this day and age of everyone standing up for themselves, this romanticization does no good.