And because nothing goes away on the internet, anyone who even considers dating me has all this dirt at their fingertips
I’m done crying over him. I’m not interested in being friends with someone who doesn’t tell the truth about their feelings or changes them upon learning something that makes me different from all the other women he’s dated. The life I led before I came out makes me a stronger woman today.
Searching for “Dawn Ennis” on the internet yields dozens of stories about my coming out as the first trans journalist in network TV news, about my mental health crisis and frightening delusion and detransition, then getting fired by ABC. Prospective dates can watch my talk show on YouTube and read my blog and the hundreds of articles I’ve written about LGBTQ rights. They will see photos, many of them of me before and after, or with my late wife. Our nightbushing our children and harassing our neighbors about “the tranny next door” endures forever on the tabloid sites that turned me into a laughingstock, and cost me my award-winning, 30-year career in television news.
Transitioning, I tell those who have invited me to speak at conferences and on panels, is hard enough; to do it without screwing up while under the bright spotlight of the media is next to impossible. I wasn’t a celebrity but I was robbed of my privacy just the same.
What I had hoped is that he was someone who didn’t care about all that. I hadn’t told him my last name. I didn’t invite him to be my Facebook friend. But found me he did. Game over, man (in a dress).
“If my past is enough to rule out your potential future with me, fine, keep your distance, and frankly I feel that’s your loss.
And even though part of me felt sure you must have known I was trans and weren’t letting on, I’m convinced if I had told you up front, you’ve made it pretty clear you would never have given me a chance.
That was all I had hoped for. Not to deceive you or play a trick: to have you see me for who I am first, rather than a label. I leave you with this thought: ‘a difference that makes no difference is no difference.’”
Staring into those deep pools of www.datingreviewer.net/local-hookup/sheffield/ azure blue that were his eyes, I realized that for the first time in my life, I had a boyfriend. He was mine. And I wanted him to fuck me.
That is clearly not how Phil thinks, and I have to respect that at least he didn’t just ghost on me, and that he let me know what he was feeling
So why not disclose that I’m trans, too, as Donna suggested? First because it’s my personal, intimate business, not his. Would it be fair to ask him about his most recent prostate exam? That level of intimacy, to my mind, takes awhile. Same goes for my gender identity. I’m a woman, and being trans is perhaps the 6th most interesting thing about me after mom, widow, Irish, journalist, and terrible driver.
Is that unfair of me? Am I not as bad as Phil if I won’t date a trans man? Well, my very clear preference is to date straight cis men, so I’m not looking to meet a trans man. But trans men are men. So, if I were to date a guy and develop feelings for them, then learn they were trans, I would not automatically dump them. I’d give either man a chance. Having already fallen for the person, I wouldn’t focus on the label or their past.