Melody Thomas leads a frank and often-entertaining exploration into sex, sexuality and intimacy.
In the second episode of season two, Melody speaks with three people in their 30s and 40s about dating – including BANG! illustrator Pinky Fang, who faces a unique set of challenges when it comes to meeting someone new.
Illustration by Pinky Fang Photo: RNZ
Pinky is charming and funny, with killer style and a really beautiful dog.
If you met her for the first time, as I did, face to face in a well-lit room, you might never know she’s also legally blind.
Pinky has a rare genetic disorder called retinitis pigmentosa – which causes a breakdown and loss of cells in the retina.
The degeneration is in the periphery of her eyes – “so basically I’ve got tunnel vision and it’s getting more “tunnelly” … the hole is getting smaller,” she explains.
Another side effect of this type of blindness is that Pinky’s eyes don’t adjust to the dark, and at night she’s completely blind.
At 31 years old, the last time Pinky was in the dating game, she says ‘dating’ wasn’t really part of it.
“Growing up in New Zealand and in a small town, there wasn’t so much dating as there was going to a party and getting drunk and hooking up with some guy. Dating has never really been a thing ’til semi-recently.”
These days if you’re ‘dating’ you’re likely on Tinder, Bumble, Grindr or any one of the growing number of apps built specifically to bring people together.
But these apps can be a minefield of unsolicited dick pics and various iterations of the greeting “how u?”
Not to mention the hours of ‘admin’ that goes into messaging back and forth until someone bites the bullet and suggests a date – but for Pinky the process is especially fraught.
Before she even swipes on a person’s photo, Pinky is looking at their picture trying to figure out if they might have stuff in common (“There’s so many outdoorsy guys on there… I can’t climb a f***ing mountain, I can’t see!!”), if they'll be OK with her guide dog (“dog allergies are a deal breaker”) and how they might respond when she eventually tells them about that part of herself.
“I feel like I’m looking at this person like ‘Would they be weird about blindness?’… Like, how can you know? You can’t.”
When it comes to dating with a disability, issues around ‘disclosure’ can cause a lot of stress.
At what point are you obligated to tell someone about this part of yourself?
“I don’t put on my profile that I am blind. Yes it is a big part of me and I’m not ashamed of it at all, but there’s all this other stuff and it’s not a big deal… and there’s this whole spiel that goes with it… I can’t be bothered wasting my time unless I’m actually gonna see them.”
When Pinky does have ‘the conversation’ it can go a number of ways.
There was the guy that joked that “I won’t tell you what my profile pictures look like, then!”
Then there was the one who asked her if she could drive and, when she said confirmed that no, she was in fact “blind blind”, followed up with “how are you typing?!”
Pinky doesn’t want to give out a list of rules – that’s the kind of thing that’s likely to make people who are already nervous more so.
But she’s happy to share an example of a time the whole “BTW I’m blind” conversation went really well.
“I went on a really good date with a guy where… I was like, ‘Just so you know I have a guide dog and I’m blind’ and he was like, ‘Oh cool, I could tell you not to worry about it but you’re obviously not’… He just treated me like a normal person, which I think is all I want, really.”
Pinky knows this is difficult for people – her blindness is normal to her because she’s lived with it a long time.
If you’re encountering the idea for the first time you’re bound to have questions.
But she’d love it if the people she opened up to about her blindness could follow her lead in their responses.
“You know, like gradually seeing how I do stuff or asking at the time or observing as opposed to straight up asking … “How is that possible?” Which just makes me feel like a curiosity.”
Pinky's story is part of a wider discussion about dating. In the full podcast episode (above), we follow Ollie as he gives speed dating a go, hear Christie talk about dating while also trying to get pregnant, and columnist for The Guardian Jean Hannah Edelstein offers advice for dating in the wake of the Me Too movement.
