Things that happened this morning:
- We almost got t-boned by a huge pickup truck when Wifey turned left at an intersection. The truck was sitting in the middle of the intersection opposite us with his blinker on signaling that he was turning left as well. Should of worked out except that when we started to turn he apparently changed his mind and started straight for us.
- I was almost for driven off the road by some bitch in a minivan who decided she didn't want to stay in her lane while we turned a corner. Had the nerve to curse at me and honk her horn. I caught up to her and blew a raspberry because I'm vicious.
- I almost got t-boned by another driver who was turning left while I was going straight.
But the thing that prompted this post was my favorite local sports radio show. Yes, again. Not in a negative way this time though. It just gave me something to think about and I thought I'd share those thoughts with my readers (or, reader. Hi Jeff!). They were talking about Michael Phelps and the stories circulating online that his girlfriend is transgender, a man, or whatever. Different "articles" use different terminology in their headlines. I'm trying to find a link that doesn't look like it came from the Enquirer. Let me see...I can't find anything, so here it is.
The story, in a word, is "Yuck". Not that she was born intersex and had the surgery and all that jazz, but that she's more than likely not at all involved with Michael Phelps and is using this for some sort of weird publicity. Bleh. The radio show this morning was also very positive and not at all disrespectful about the process and her history. The question they raised though, was this: "What, if any, obligation does a person have to tell their partner about their past?"
In this case it was clearly bullshit that if she did indeed have some sort of relationship with him she opted to go to the media with the revelation of her surgery and such without telling her alleged boyfriend first. That's a no-brainer and a clear money-grab move. Hence one of the reasons I call shenanigans (not to mention the lack of photos of the two of them together, etc.). Let's move beyond that to the generic. If you are a transgender woman/man, or were born intersex and got some things removed, whatever...do you have to tell your partner? And if so, when?
My short answer is this: if you're having a hook-up, kind've one-night-stand style, and everything looks "fine" down there (i.e. they're not going to find something they weren't expecting), I don't think you do. It's a one-time deal and I think there's some safety concerns involved. You don't know the other person all that well yet in the case of a hook-up, and trusting them with that kind of detail means you're opening yourself up for some potentially psycho behavior. I mean, do you tell them at the bar when you guys are getting cosy and heading "that way", allowing for the possibility of them making a scene to save face in front of their friends or something? Do you tell them when you're alone and about to get personal, introducing the risk of personal harm if they flip out? Have you ever seen "Looking for Mr. Goodbar"?
Personally, I've never met/seen a transgender person who didn't ping something. I'm sorry, I know this will probably offend some transgender folks, but I've never seen one that didn't make me think "That used to be a man" or "That used to be a woman". I just don't know how you could miss it. Even this chick, the one claiming to be with Michael Phelps—she's clearly had some surgery done and went the whole nine to realize her inner woman, but her face man. Her face would make me pause and ask some questions before we got too close. It still has masculine angles. But, if some hot woman managed to slip past my radar and we hooked up, I figure what I don't know won't hurt me. This is clearly not the case with STDs, but being transgender is not transmittable, so...play on! (All of the above is also clearly hypothetical since I'm both married and not likely to attract a hot woman other than my wife.)
If you're in a relationship though, if it's getting serious—yeah, you need to fess up. Getting serious is the line, you know, where it's time to come clean about everything because it's about building a relationship, and trust is a cornerstone there, if I may be cheesy. It shouldn't (hopefully wouldn't) change anything if you're with the right person, whereas if it came out somehow later on from another source it could threaten the stability of your relationship.
My two cents on a totally irrelevant subject.
No comments:
Post a Comment