I'm just amazed this never gets explored or discussed.

P1) Women compete with other women for men

P2) Younger women are the biggest threat to middle-aged women

C1) Middle-aged women have a vested interest in both shaming men away from younger women and making younger women scared, untrusting and negative about older men

C2) Some discussions between older and younger women (and feminists) are masking a hidden agenda on the part of the older woman. This includes discussions around feminism.

It's a bit like the Queen in Snow White: she knows she isn't the fairest of them all any more, she's worried about the loss of feminine power, and needs a strategy for dealing with it. The sexual energy of younger women, coupled with their reluctance to rush into marriage and kids, as well as their physical beauty gives them a massive edge over women 35+ : consequently great efforts are exerted to stear and control the social matrix so that middle-aged men do not (can not) pursue younger women.

The narrative of 'all women in it together' allows for older women, essentially, to disempower younger women in the mating game: much of the advice given to girls about 'feminism' isn't about career progression (which would help attain economic equality), but on 'how and why it's important to not give men what they want' - don't shave, don't objectify yourself, don't wear make-up.

Surely you can think of your own examples of women who seems to be practicing very different things to what they're preaching (i.e. to younger female rivals) when it comes to self-beautification and self-objectification?

More generally, as a middle-aged woman, the best way for me to manipulate younger women (which, by virtue of my age, I'm quite adept at doing) is to instill a victim-complex in relation to men: to paint them as dangerous, abusers, agents of the patriarchy etc.

On r/AskWomenOver30 there seems to be a general ethos of: "If a man wants to have sex with you, a younger woman, he's 'taking advantage', but if he wants to have sex with me (a 35+ woman) there's no problem at all: likewise there's no problem in a 35+ woman having sex with an early-twenties person, it's just a problem when men do it." - if you want to find evidence of the Evil Queen mentality - just hang out in r/AskWomenOver30 - rife with anger and bitterness, often relating to men and their fixation on youthful beauty. Can't we admit that this is a driving force behind the narratives younger women are fed about men?

This is facilitated by the fact that the education system is mainly staffed by middle-aged female teachers: so the main socialisers of gender roles in the education system are middle-aged women - trying their best to change the game to one which is a bit more sensitive to their own egoic needs.

It's not in a middle-aged woman's actual interests to sexually empower younger women! Makes sense to work to make them:

A) Less attractive/feminine

B) Afraid of men/sexuality

C) Believe that their own sexual empowerment makes them "objectified" "victims" of the "patriarchy"

D) Unwilling to give men what want (even if they desire to do so)

E) Angry at "men"

This theory also accounts for the strange mixed messages feminism seems to give around sex. On the one hand feminism is very sex positive (when it comes to middle-aged women getting the experiences they want) but when it comes to sexuality where male sexual energy is focused on younger women all of a sudden feminism gets rather prudish, Victorian and anti-sex.

I'm interested to hear what you think of this theory: I've not read it elsewhere but it seems like the psycho-social 'elephant in the room' - that feminism itself can be a useful tool in mediating the dynamics of 'the sexual market-place' in a way the benefits middle-aged women at the expense of younger women.