Well I was asked if I would attend a focus group looking at Aged Care issues for people. So tonight was the night. There were 8 of us 4 women and 4 men. I was by far the youngest. They were a highly intelligent group of people, most of whom had owned their own businesses, two schoolteachers, a board member of a large mining company and little young me!
One of the start of questions was to introduce yourself and say what relationship you were in if any.
Boring, married, children, grandkids - the usual. And then my turn!
Oh I'm married to another woman and I live with my boyfriend on and off as we see fit.
Pin dropped somewhere in the room and a Cheshire cat was sitting in my chair!
For some reason I became a bit of a focus, OK as you know I'm not exactly the shy retiring type so was happy to join in the discussions and to lead them as needs be.
There was some interesting stuff but it became obvious that the questions were stacked to the interest of the company and all of the group were quite antagonistic to both the questions and the company.
A nice group of well educated cynical people!
At the end of the meeting the men wanted to hang around and talk, I was given my honorarium for attending and I left with the other three women.
We got to the lobby and the questions started.
How does your relationship work? I think it would be really cool to have a wife and a boyfriend. Do they get on? etc
What came out was that all three of them thought that having a female as a companion was heaps better than having a husband as a companion. But having a guy around for the things that guys do was also wonderful.
I think that I have now got three women thinking of having polyamorous relationships (not something I ever thought about BTW!)
Who would have thought of the desires of conservative women in their 70's was so radical!!
Oh and no one mention transgender, I doubt it crossed their minds from their questions!
