DEAR ABBY: I moved to the United States when I was 19. A month after I arrived, I met an American boy I'll call "Colin." We have been together for five years. Lately, I have noticed that Colin acts weird. He will only watch boys on TV, and he gets all nervous when my gay friend visits me. One day, I asked my gay friend if he had noticed anything. My friend told me that when I left the room, he got the impression that my boyfriend was hitting on him. The other day I was making the bed and found a gay porn magazine under Colin's side of the mattress. I also found a phone number in his pants pocket. I called the number and a guy answered. Colin and I are supposed to be married in three months. What should I do? Should I ask him if he's gay? - Needs To Know Advertisement DEAR NEEDS TO KNOW: It is highly unusual for straight men to keep pictures of naked men under their mattress. You have given me three reasons why you suspect he's gay, which indicates that your alarm bells are sounding. By all means address the subject with your boyfriend. Although your boyfriend may not be gay, he may be bisexual - and that spells trouble ahead if you marry him. If I were you, I'd put the marriage on hold and listen to your intuition.Why would bisexuality spell trouble ahead? Are bisexuals bad husbands? Unfaithful? Child molesters? What's this about?
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Terrible Advice Column
Emily points me to this "Dear Abby" column. The second-to-last sentence, which I've made bold, is one of the stupidest sentences I've ever read. Here's the column in its entirety:
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Can I assume that our dear advisor would admit that if Colin were marrying a blonde and admitted that often he found brunettes attractive, that wouldn't by itself show that there is trouble ahead. I can't see how this isn't just uninformed prejudice. Which is what you'd expect from the sort that write these advice columns.
ReplyDeleteI saw the same article and thought the exact same thing! However, in Abby's defence (which just doens't happen all that often in my view) it can be assumed that miss "needs to know" would find any behavior other than strictly straight as trouble, with comments like "he's acting weird" etc. While certainly, any sort of other activity might not be trouble for OTHER people - Abby infers it spells trouble ahead specifically for HER, which I would believe to be true. Sadly - it just isn't written very well to make that point clear.
ReplyDeleteI had hoped that she'd post a clarification in a follow-up column, but it doesn't look like it.
ReplyDeleteWhat I hope and imagine she meant was "Although your boyfriend may not be gay, he may be bisexual - and the fact that he has not been honest with you about this and therefore either has not accepted this fact about himself or has reason to believe that you would not accept it if he did or is cheating scum spells trouble ahead if you marry him."
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