It’s now considered bigoted to not want to date what you don’t want to date?
If everyone in a town is convinced atheists are actually Satanists who sacrifice babies, and will not employ anyone who volunteers the information that they are an atheist, and might come by and burn my house down if they find out my name - is it still “dishonest” for me not to tell them?
No. It’s simply reasonable and prudent to do so. The same applies to AHunter3’s story about his blatant *discrimination *in the workplace. “Dishonesty” implies wrongdoing. There are many, many circumstances in which withholding information has the result of being a net good, and this is one of them.
Ok, that’s good. But I don’t think my proposal is hypothetical. There are dating sites that have transgender options for a profile.
Not to mention that withholding information is fundamental different from giving false information. We all withhold information in every interaction.
Being dishonest can definitely be reasonable and prudent to do. Doesn’t make it any less dishonest.
Perhaps you can explain what the “net good” is when a transgender woman doesn’t disclose she is transgender before a date?
If that’s part of the standard profile, then I think you can make a fair claim that it’s dishonest to leave it out if it applies to you. But if you aren’t asked, I don’t think there’s any obligation to volunteer the information, and I don’t think it’s dishonest. I imagine everyone leaves out some details when describing themselves on a dating site.
Is there any information that you feel should be disclosed to a person before a first date?
When Person A first contacts Person B through the auspices of a dating web site, there is some process of communication that begins to take place, and at some arbitrary point this process of communication may also come to be called “dating”.
There are people whose tendency is to exchange a couple of rudimentary flirtatious inquiries followed by a proposal to meet in person.
There are other people whose tendency is to exchange a vast depth of information about themselves and attempt to learn a vast amount about the other person over a protracted period of time, before finally getting around to meeting face to face.
Here’s why this is a relevant distinction:
When is it wise and appropriate for a person to discuss such things as their own attitudes towards gender, their own gender normativity or variance, what they are looking for in terms of sexuality and sexual orientation as how the modern dialogue about gender identity applies to that and so forth?
Someone who says “before the first date” may have a not-unreasonable point if their tendency is to exchange long chatty emails and have soul-baring telephone converstaions or chat sessions long into the night for months before meeting up with someone they practically think of themselves as being in love with before they’ve met face to face, if a face to face meeting is what they mean by “a date”.
Reciprocally, someone who says “some time during the course of dating” may have in mind that you go on a date precisely in order to begin discovering these kinds of things about the other person, in order to see how compatible you’re going to be with each other — and that it is on dates that you do the soul-baring and exchange of personal information, not before.
There are also enormous differences in dating sites. Put Tinder on one end and OKCupid on the other. Tinder gives you photos and damn little else to go on and you do your own matching after an initial linking mechanism based on little more than “I am a man seeking women” vs “I am a woman seeking men” and perhaps age and general location. OKCupid asks you thousands of questions and uses your answers, and your rating of the importance of other folks’ answers, and which answers you’d find acceptable in a partner, to match you with appropriate people. Among those thousands of questions are many versions and variations of the subject matter of this very thread.
If you sign up for OKCupid you may very well get the question “When, if ever, do you think it is important for transgender people to tell people on a dating site that they are transgender? On their profile, within conversations before the first date, on the first date, before any physical erotic activity, only if the other person asks, never unless the transgender person feels like bringing it up? And which of these answers would be acceptable in a partner? And how important is this question in matching you with a potential partner: very important, somewhat important, not important at all?”
I do not think that someone using a dating site along the lines of Tinder, who then picks somone out (or gets picked out by someone) and they exchange a couple “Hey what’s up. Hey you doing anything tomorrow, wanna meet up for lunch or something?” type messages and then meet in person has any semblance of a reasonable expectation that the other person is going to tell them that they are transgender (or, for that matter, that they don’t wish to date a person who is transgender).
I would agree that there’s a more reasonable expectation that this kind of personal information would be shared along with and as part of the general process of personal sharing that one engages in when getting to know someone intimately.
The question is, what would be the legal impact if it wasn’t? For example, some women claimed it’s “rape” if a man lies about his profession etc. in order to get women to have sex with him… which of course is nonsense.
But if a transsexual woman (i.e. like Jenner) claimed to be biologically female, then that might be different.
It can be. A guy who refuses to date on the basis of race, religion, etc., is exhibiting bigotry.
Give me another word to describe it.
I think that people have the right to know, and so I think that people should disclose their status when asked, and if they lie about it, they’re being improperly deceptive. Bigots have a right to discriminate, in legitimate “freedom of association” circumstances. i.e., not in hiring, commerce, renting, sales, business contracts, etc., but, say, if you have a birthday party for your little kid and don’t want to invite any Jews. It’s bigotry…but legal.
Sure, what time you want to meet, how to recognize each other, what you hope to get out of the first date…
If what you hope to get from that first date includes sex, I suppose you should probably disclose more. But if I were on the market (I’m not) there’s no way I would want to do anything more than talk in a pleasant public place on a first date and try to get to know each other a little.
I’m pretty sure no one would think it’s rape to have coffee with someone else under false pretenses.
Bigotry seems like a strong word to apply to someone who has sexual preferences that might include race or whatever. It’s bigoted to not invite the black guy to your house when you host the neighborhood block party. It’s not bigoted to only date Asians. IMHO.
(oops, wrong forum?)
This is actually something that’s currently a hot discussion topic among the gay community (such as it is). I’ve seen a lot of FB posts about how “No blacks, no Asians” etc is bigoted. It’s getting a lot of print online.
I agree with the opinion that is IS bigoted. It’s one thing to maybe find fewer African-Americans or Asians attractive than white guys, but simply barring the door with a pre-emptive “NO!” sight-unseen is a bit prejudiced.
Trouble is, I can’t think of a better word. It’s sad, because it diminishes the word and the concept a bit. It’s “okay” to have strong preferences in dating, even if it is kinda churlish.
How do you feel about someone putting “No Transgender women”? Is that bigoted? What about “Cisgender only please”?
I’ve all along been on the side that says people trying so desperately to avoid even having to MEET a transperson that they can’t risk waiting to get to know a person better before demanding that information are holding at least a little bit of transphobia.
I think there is a fair amount of difference between “meet” and “date”.
See, I think the purpose of a first date is to meet each other. Maybe that’s why we see it so differently.
AHEM Post 507
Assuming I’m neither chopped liver nor on y’all’s ignore list…