That's not what was going on. She was making separate living arrangements from him and had already moved out of her parental home and was living in a dorm and going to college.
Their choice could have helped push her into living with him as the easy answer in the face of prejudice making other choices harder for her. This could have helped make her into a victim instead of someone who once dated an older man and broke up with him and apparently had a better-than-average early relationship according to the description she has given.
As 42 year old your comment sounds to me like the one that people not wanting to rent a flat with someone that has a black partner is perfectly fine because they might not want to meet that kind of people.
Some older men are interested in younger women. And some younger women are interested in older man. Assuming that this automatically means they have character flaws worthy of ostracism is very prejudicial.
No, because a relationship between a teenager and someone in their 30s is seen as 'more likely than not to be exploitative'.
I've only known two people who fit that bill, and as a third-party observer, both of them seemed incredibly sleazy and manipulative. I'm sure that there are exceptions, but most people would correctly see that kind of age gap as a huge red flag.
Unless by more likely that not you mean a bit more likely than average relationship between a doctor and a waitress.
EDIT:
I'm sorry. While rephrasing the claim I changed its meaning. Please disregard my comment.
The usual guidance to “mind your own business” doesn’t really work here because who I live with and where is entirely my business.
Age gaps are not an immutable characteristic. Nor are they culturally common in the USA. So they are fair game for discrimination just like any other exercise of free association.
And yet discrimination against people that display those voluntary behaviors would also be strongly frowned upon.
I don't think it's due to some innate nature of gender gaps. It's pure prejudice. "We don't like people like that because we believe people like that are less moral than us."
Maybe the time will come where ageism will raise to the same status as transphobia, but currently as you notice it's far from it.
I'd like to see some research to back that claim that over 50% relationships with significant age gap are exploitative.
These two statements are not identical.
Or are you referring to the difference "significant age gap" vs "30 year old and teenager"?
If so I conceed. Those kinds of relationships are so incredibly rare among all relationships that I have no idea about the statistics there.
I'm not claiming that, I'm claiming that it's a common belief about them.
It's definitely no problem to me that people do not want to flat-share with a couple where one partner is 33 y/o and the other in, or shortly after, their "senior year of high school", which if a web search is to be believed usually means 17 year old turning 18. I'm not talking about the law re:that relationship which depending on the jurisdiction might be 100% legal, but these housemates are absolutely in their right to not want to have anything to do with that. Personally, if i was a 18-19 year old looking for a flat to share, I probably also would like to avoid regularly meeting the type of 30-year old that dates a teen, despite the fact that in the author's specific case it was apparently fine and also still fine on retrospect.