Once this butch was showing a little social interest in me and his ex (who was my friend at the time) warned me to stay away from him; she said he was bad scary psycho news...
She also enlisted a couple well meaning mutual acquaintances of ours to join her in discouraging me from getting to know her ex.
I was still shaky at that time from another situation I'd been through, and was new to the scene, and not up for any kind of risk, so I cut off contact with this particular butch.
Eventually, though, all us realized that the femme warning me off, was the problem. And I also slowly realized that it was jealousy that had fueled her "protectiveness" of me.
I still feel bad about listening to what amounted to mischaracterization about an innocent person. And my god, what are we, in the seventh grade???
*************
That said, in the following years I would always ask, What do you know about this person? to a trusted confidante, when I was dating or even just flirting in the threads with someone.
In online communities where identities can be masked in so many ways, I think it's reasonable to get feedback from someone whose opinion you trust, who has been around the block a few times with different groups, and has a lot of real-time contact with folks from all over.
I don't consider this gossip; I consider it intelligence gathering, and I assess the validity of the intelligence as I would any other kind of evidence.
In the end, while I might take this information into account, I make a decision based on personal experience with the person.
The ironic part is that once my emotions and libido kick in, my ability to be objective and look out for myself, are really compromised. I'm afraid that isn't going to change, though I always hoped it would.
|