I think that’s a great point about how it’s a new system of morals that has developed. Gen X, Boomers, etc., did not give a crap about age gap relationships, really, even if they did raise a few eyebrows. That’s because they did not see a relationship as a system of exercising power. Which is correct. Seeing two people’s (what should be) bonds of closeness and connection as based on a neoliberalized structure of domination and submission that posits financialization as the moral choice is perverse and demented.

And VB is correct that the neo-moralists refuse to discuss this new moral system — either its novelty or that it exists at all. To them, it’s correct and “obvious” even though it is a complete inversion of the moral structure existed only a decade or two before.

Some other (evil) tenets of the new morality:

1) There is no legitimate expression of attraction, especially if you’re a man. Desire itself is treated as always an offense. Not the expression of desire, to be clear, but the mere existence of desire itself.

2) Any supposed power asymmetry between two adults is presumed suspect.

3) Love is no longer treated as mutual admiration and attraction between particular people related to their circumstances and preferences, but rather as a political event subject to audit by any interested others for hidden hierarchies.

4) Desire is always (in their view) coercion unless it is expressed in the sterilized ways already ratified by the new moral busybodies.

5) Economic independence is treated as the supreme condition of moral legitimacy in intimacy, with any other consideration given short shrift or dismissed altogether.

6) Emotional risk, ambiguity, pursuit, and seduction are all counted as should-be illegal offenses unless flattened into sterile meaninglessness.

7) Moral judgment is displaced from the character and intentions of the people involved onto abstract group identities and status hierarchies.

8) The appearance of impropriety is treated as equivalent to impropriety itself, so gossip acquires the force of evidence.

9) The highest romantic goods are no longer closeness, loyalty, eroticism, or devotion, but the maintenance of perfectly-negotiated and Church Lady-approved power parity.

10) Sex itself is treated as inherently suspect, and a man who expresses sexual desire is assumed, ipso facto, to care only about sex despite his own claims, evidence, behavior and motivation to the contrary.

This is a very corrosive moral system that eats into the fabric of civilization itself. But nevertheless, it’s what younger Millennials and Gen Z seems to have adopted as theirs. And I hope they all die unhappy after foisting such vile bullshit on the world.