There was a time dating was easy. And I’m not talking about the ages when a father saw a nice girl and did everything necessary to make sure she would make him tea in his old days by marrying his son. I’m talking about the days when questions were simpler and easier.
One could follow a playbook and still maintain a chance of winning a girl over. What type of music do you like? Who’s your favourite musician? What are some of your hobbies? If TV or movies, what genre do you prefer above all? You ran the risk cookie-cutter and oftentimes bogus answers like, “I like to spend time walking on the beach or riding horses.”
Still, if you managed to wade through the nonsense of a girl from Nyeri riding horses on a beach, you still knew you were safe with her liking Naija movies or reading novels, although the last novel she read was the set book in high school.
Nowadays, there are potential dates whose identity comes an addendum in the form of a letter. Girls are no longer just plain Emma. If she was born a girl, then she’s cis gender, meaning that a doctor “appointed” her gender for her.
Later on in life, she might be sure if she likes boys only or she also digs girls. For that period, she would be “Q”, meaning Questioning. If she sticks with boys, she misses the chance to get a letter. If it’s girls, she proudly gets an “L” for Lesbian. But as soon she realises either is a good as the other, she becomes “B” for Bisexual. Not to be confused with “P” as in Pansexual, which means attraction to anyone regardless of gender, which doesn’t appear in the main LGBTQ+ alphabets and is represented with the symbol “+” at the end.
Some might not be confusing since I wouldn’t expect a lesbian to go out with me, but others are downright puzzling. Take “T” for instance. If not declared from the get go, this is how you go on a date with a woman and only find out she’s a dude once the lights are dim and the clothes come off. Even if being transgender might mean someone has all the amenities that make them what they wish to be, not every man is okay with having sex with someone who used to be a man, artificial female sex organs or not.
It used to be the worst guess you would get wrong was assuming a woman was pregnant just from her shape. Nowadays, one runs the risk of assuming the person that looks like a dude is a dude. And you might be forgiven for thinking that marrying the cute woman on social media videos will result in loads of babies.
While sexuality is now a matter of personal choice, should it also not be a matter of personal responsibility to declare the issue in the very beginning? In that vein, it seems only logical that I be introducing myself as Tom, no letter.
