I don’t feel we are.

The criticism is usually three fold. It’s not just the age gap, like you suggest.

It’s the serial nature. The volume of grooming and pursuit of the underaged involved, and the quickness of the relationships.

Leonardo hits all of those. He has never dated anyone over 25. At least one of his former girlfriends he was wooing while she was underage. He jumps from relationship to relationship like he’s stopping off at an ATM machine.

Ted Nugent. Same thing.

Clint Eastwood. Did you even know that he married a woman 35 years his junior? That’s because this isn’t a habit with him. He’s not chasing fresh fruit to validate his manhood or whatever. She’s not going to age out and be discarded. She also wasn’t groomed or a minor.

So this is not an absolute. The details do matter.

Name a woman who exclusively dates young men and ticks all those boxes. Lot more rare, aren’t they? Even Madonna and Cher who have raised more than a few eyebrows in this regard don’t check all those boxes.

That’s why. It’s not the double standard you suggest it is and I assure you if a woman who checked all those boxes came to notoriety, she’d get raked over the coals too. Because man or woman, that’s fucking creepy.