ISTM that that depends where you are in the dating process. No, if somebody’s going out on a first date, I think it’s absurd to expect that they “need to” pre-emptively disclose their gender identity status without being asked.
(Or their marital history, or their employment history, or their medical history, or anything else that may possibly become very important in a potential relationship with this person but which they are not automatically entitled to be told on the first date.)
On the other hand, if it is very important to you that you date only cisgender people, then you are the one who should disclose that up front. You are responsible for making your own requirements known in your dating situations.
(And of course, if you state up front that you don’t want to date transgender people, then no transgender person should deliberately conceal their status in order to date you. Deliberate deception is not okay.)
It’s perfectly fine to declare up front that you don’t want to date transgender, if that is a major dealbreaker for you. It is not fine to make up a rule that transgender people “need to” voluntarily disclose their gender identity status just to spare you the awkwardness of disclosing your own preference. Your requirement, your responsibility.
Many first dates are last dates. Also, many people meet online, where they are expected to reveal some important things about themselves. To save them and the people they are dating time. To not waste the precious time we have on this earth.
Unless you live in an environment where most of your potential partners are going to be accepting of your transgender status as a potential partner, then yeah, you’re revealing it early. You are a functional minority. You have special dating needs. Examples of other people with special dating needs are bigamists, or a divorced woman who does not want to have sex until remarriage. They are also functional minorities. There is simply no reason to leave something to the second date that winds up in second date failure most of the time. Transgender people are like anyone else and need to be mindful of the needs of others. As well as their own, I don’t know why any person would want to go on all of these second dates and keep getting rejected. No one likes rejection. If it’s going to happen, get it out of the way. Dating is a privilege, not a right or entitlement.
If you want to, sure. If you don’t want to, it is not your responsibility to do so.
If a transgender person is open to dating strangers who might possibly turn out to be transphobic, or merely anti-transgender-dating, they’re free to do so without having to reveal their own transgender identity right from the get-go. If a cisgender person is not open to dating strangers who might possibly turn out to be transgender, then they’re the one with an obligation to reveal.
Your restriction, your responsibility. If you’re the one who’s setting conditions about whom you will or won’t date, then you’re the one with the responsibility to state what those conditions are.
? Bigamy is illegal; being transgender is not.
? A divorced woman who doesn’t want to have sex until remarriage is certainly not in any way obligated to disclose that information on a first date. She can if she wants to, but it’s not her responsibility to do so. If her date doesn’t want to date any women who won’t have sex with him before marriage, it’s on him to make that clear.
Exactly. If you don’t want to go on dates with transgender people, then get it out of the way by stating right up front that you don’t want to go on dates with transgender people. Drop the selfish entitlement of expecting that transgender people must voluntarily proclaim their transgender status so you will be able to avoid them.
If you want to avoid any dating contact whatsoever with transgender people, then it’s on you to proclaim that fact. Your restriction, your responsibility.
It’s both people’s responsibility. It’s dating, not a job interview. It’s also not a gotcha game. Why does the transgender person want second dates with someone that doesn’t want them? What’s the point of the time wasting?
Before I was married, I dated someone with a kid. She told me on the second date. It was dumb of her. She knew it. No, I did not ask. Kids are too big a deal. Now I have kids. If I’m ever dating again, yeah, it has to come up. One way or another. It really doesn’t matter who brings it up. But kids are first date material. First dates are for sorting out.
It seems like quite a complicated calculation to make when it comes to revealing personal issues that likely to affect relationship progress.
Would we apply the same thinking to sexual preference. i.e. would it be fair to expect both people (once things start to move towards a potential “date” situation) to be upfront about their Homo/hetero/Bi-sexuality? Is that substantially different to trans-gender status?
I think that once a certain threshold of date potential is reached then each individual has a responsibility to weigh up what it is about themselves, that may not be apparent to the other party, that might reasonably impact that relationship and decide for themselves whether to divulge it or not.
That calculation and decision will be different for everyone.
e.g. If there is a heterosexual man or homosexual woman then I think the person sitting across from them needs to be left in no doubt about that well in advance of any opportunity to act on it. Similarly, if their date is a trans-woman with male genitalia and physiology then it seems reasonable to expect them to divulge that in return. Not doing so doesn’t make you a bad person, and who knows what ultimately floats a person’s boat? but not doing so in the hope that the other person won’t mind is quite a risk and I think that such a reasonable level of expectation and openness is nothing more than good manners.
Yes, it’s both people’s responsibility to be upfront about their own requirements from a dating partner if they don’t want to waste even one date on someone who might not meet those requirements.
It’s nobody’s responsibility to guess at what the other person’s dating requirements might be. If you’re willing to take the chance that a dating partner might ultimately reject you because of something you haven’t disclosed up front, that’s your choice to make.
If that’s how you feel about first dates, you’re free to say so. You can even open the conversation with a statement like “I feel that first dates are for sorting out potential dealbreakers. So I want us to discuss our gender identities, our parenthood status, our willingness to have sex before marriage” and/or whatever other issues you feel could completely disqualify a potential dating partner for you.
But other people have different expectations and desires about first dates. Some people just like to keep things at the level of casual chat and see whether or not they get along.
You don’t get to determine what personal information other people are required to spontaneously disclose on a first date. You only get to be honest about what personal information you want to give and need to hear from the other person.
AFAICT, the typical mechanisms for dating strangers sort participants by sexual orientation right from the get-go, in categories such as “Men Seeking Women”, “Men Seeking Men”, etc.
If people want to use dating sites that sort participants by gender identity categories as well, they’re perfectly free to do that. If they can’t find that information on a dating site by default, they’re perfectly free to state upfront that they want to know it. There’s nothing wrong with any of that.
Yup, and nobody has the right to make blanket rules about other people’s decisions in that regard.
People do have the right to expect that potential partners will respond honestly to their own requests for personal information, of course. (That doesn’t mean they’ll always get the information they’re requesting right away, though: “I don’t feel comfortable sharing that with you at this point” is an honest response, and the other party can decide for themself whether they want to continue the dating process with this information still undivulged.)
According to a recent survey of 958 individuals, 88% of people (and more than 97% of heterosexual people) would not be willing to date a transgender person.
Of course if someone is declaring themselves as “heterosexual” they are highly likely to be sexually attracted purely to someone of the opposite biological sex so the 97% is not surprising.
What would you like to see? A sea of Match.com listings stating NO TRANSGENDERS!!! in caps like I’ve done here?
I don’t particularly enjoy dating, a lot of people don’t. Most people are looking to get into another LTR. Including transgender people. So the transgender person makes 400 contacts, gets 100 first dates, gets 25 second dates, and ALL of the 25 second dates bomb because the transgender person takes your advice of refusing to sort by people who don’t want a transgender person. Because first dates are fun, and you can reveal that any old time.
I want everyone to have successful dating strategies, not missed connections. I would tell people to use the strategies that are most likely to work. Not just wander down the street blindly. If you are hitting a wall repeatedly, find another method or venue. I’m sure there are people out there who would love transgender, where it would even be a plus. Maybe… the transgender person should seek out same using the best available venues and methods. Just like people who want to remain chaste until marriage should use methods and tactics to attract same. Not hang out in bars, take people home, and then tell them you are waiting until marriage. I don’t think that would work very well.
For you, the chief concern in a first date may be, “Is this a waste of my time?” For a lot of trans people, the purpose of the first date (and occasionally a few subsequent dates) is figuring out, “Is it safe for me to tell this guy I’m trans, or is he going to beat the shit out of me if he finds out?”
But yeah, you maybe having to spend two or three hours with someone you don’t want to fuck is a genuine hardship, I’m sure.
Seems like this problem is easily avoided by upfront disclosure. Then trans people can find partners who love them simply for being themselves.
It’s hard to recommend a dating strategy with a 97% failure rate, unless the thrill of deception is part of the lure.
Society is moving towards “you may define yourself, be open and honest, people should accept you.” As we move towards that, certain deceptive dating practices that may have been more understandable in different times aren’t as acceptable any more. For example, I’d be much harsher on a homosexual man, already active, marrying a woman under false pretenses. Because that man has many options that he didn’t once have. Marrying that woman is using her, using her as an entitlement instead of being in a mutual, loving relationship. The same will apply to trans people. As options open up, prior behavior that was at least understandable no longer becomes acceptable.
You think the problem of trans people potentially being the target of violence if they disclose their status on a first date is best avoided by… disclosing their status on their first date?
You didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about that one, did you?
Having known a couple of people that got married, had kids, got divorced and came out, I wonder if it’s that cut and dried. Love and relationships and sexual preferences being what they are. (And what they are is ‘not necessarily static, easy to identify, and often bound up in formative emotional experiences)
You’re still arguing that the best way for a trans person to avoid violence is to tell more people about being trans, with less basis for assuming that coming out will be safe for them. Violence against trans people doesn’t happen because they “trick” someone into dating them, it happens because there’s a significant portion of the population that is violently opposed to the existence of trans people. With someone like that, there is no “safe” point at which to advertise their status. They are opening themselves up to violence regardless of when they disclose.
There seems to be a conflict here between being “out” and open and the notion of privacy.
For the above my idea is that the person has already been actively sexual in homosexual situations, and is not disclosing this to their new prospective partner. Yes, I do think that with public downside to same sex relationships reduced or eliminated, the reasons for not disclosing same sex activity (which puts the new relationship at higher risk) no longer exist in compelling fashion.
In many serious relationships, the needs for disclosure are only going to increase. I advise everyone to prenup, lawyer up, before any legally serious union is consumated. There is going to be an increase in blood tests, background checks, etc. before people get into these situations. On the Internet, an increasing method of meeting prospective future partners that will only be increasing, “trans” is absolutely going to be a question asked of participants. A “Prefer not to say” answer, I think we all know how that will be interpreted. But yes, disclosure is going to be required in many serious dating circles.
No questions asked venues will remain available for those wishing to engage in hookup type activity.
Honestly, listening to my 18 year old boys, one has absolutely zero interest in the modern dating scene, and the other’s chance of meeting someone IRL is…not good (though I hope that changes with time and maturity). The horror stories I hear about “use an app, fuck on the first date, then see if you’re compatible…”
Sounds like an extinction level event to me and I’m glad I’m not participating.
