I recently got engaged to the love of my life — a kind, intelligent, beautiful woman who shares my vision for the future. She’s transgender, and I’m a cis woman. This has never mattered to me; she’s simply my partner. The problem lies with my conservative family. Some of them hold hostile views toward trans people. While they’ve said nothing to me directly, I recently learned that one of my relatives referred to my fiancée as “that thing” and said, “He, she, who knows?” This relative has met my fiancée, who “passes” as a woman to anyone who sees her. This didn’t come from confusion — it felt malevolent.
My relative and I already had a strained relationship, not speaking for years because of family drama. We reconnected recently, and I sent them a heartfelt message saying, essentially, “I believe you are a good and compassionate person and would like to have a relationship.” The response was not as sincere, in my opinion, and basically brushed off my olive branch. We are both young, not even out of college. I had hoped that seeing other perspectives through education would change or at least soften my relative’s thinking, but clearly it hasn’t.
I haven’t told my fiancée what was said about her and don’t plan to. I just want to know how much grace I owe someone like this relative. Am I wrong to feel that I’ve waited long enough for change and that, for my own peace and my future family’s, it’s time to move on? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
You mentioned that your fiancée “passes” in an effort to contextualize your relative’s cruelty. But, of course, no one should have to look a certain way to be treated with dignity; plenty of cisgender men and women also don’t accord with the stereotypes of their gender. All are entitled to be treated according to their identity. Courtesy isn’t merely a matter of manners — treating people with appropriate respect is an ethical obligation. Your relative’s remark would have been inexcusable under any circumstances.
But beyond the views your relative has expressed, they don’t sound like someone who treats you with care or warmth. We don’t owe closeness to people just because they’re family. And while shared histories can make us want to offer grace, grace has its limits. You’re building a life with someone you love. It’s more than fair to decide who gets to be part of that life — and who doesn’t.
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a woman who is having trouble processing the death of her 10-month-old cat, who was injured from a fall and then died after a neighbor administered morphine. She wrote:
“ Yesterday he broke through the screen of our third-story apartment and fell off the fire escape. The super was taking out the trash and saw it happen. He landed on the sidewalk, meowing quietly and dragging his hind legs behind him. In a panic, our super asked a neighbor who was also outside for help. She ran off, returned a minute later and gave him some “pain medicine.” Three minutes later, now with a small crowd on the sidewalk, our little guy died. The medicine he was given was morphine. I would be furious with her, but she is caring for a son with a terminal illness, and I can’t imagine her pain. When I asked her via text how much morphine she gave my cat, she said: “Just enough for a rat. I learned this in science class.” I’m hesitant to push this further, because I know that getting a straight answer out of her will be difficult and that nothing is going to bring my sweet furry friend back.
In his response, the Ethicist noted:
“The death of a young animal companion is not a small loss, and the way your cat died is bound to leave you with a kind of moral agitation in addition to grief. You have my sympathies. It was plainly very wrong to give morphine to this cat without knowing the extent of his injuries, without medical training and without the consent of the person who loved and cared for him. That your cat would otherwise have survived the fall and recovered is not something we can know with certainty. But plenty of cats have survived, and recovered from, longer drops. The appropriate course was to get him to a vet: someone trained to assess and address the situation. At this point, the question is not what could have been done differently but what can be done now. And this brings us to the issue of acknowledgment. What you’re grappling with isn’t just the event itself; it’s the absence of accountability. Your cat died in the care of someone who acted with misplaced confidence. What lingers is not only the loss but the sense that she hasn’t owned what she did.
(Reread the full question and answer here.)
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While it’s understandable that the neighbor’s actions may have in some way contributed to the cat’s death, I find it hard to believe that the caring-but-misguided neighbor deserves any more blame than the caring-but-misguided cat owner, who apparently didn’t secure their apartment well enough. They may have thought the room was secure, just as the neighbor thought a bit of morphine was helpful. Losing a pet is awful. Passing the blame won’t give the cat any more lives. — Christian
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As a retired veterinarian who has experience with many trauma cases, it is not uncommon for the owners of such pets to blame someone other than themselves when their pets die of preventable trauma. It is psychologically easier to blame someone else, rather than to grapple with your own feelings of guilt. I have personally experienced the profound guilt of having made a mistake that resulted in the death of a beloved pet, and it is truly awful. However, neither cats nor children fall out of windows that have been properly fitted with barriers to prevent this. High-rise syndrome is still an all-too-common phenomenon in urban cats. What the letter writer could do to make a positive difference is to help spread the word to friends, family and social media contacts to help prevent this tragedy from happening to other cats. — Melissa
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I sort of agree, but it is also understandable that a person who is used to being in a caregiving mode all the time, as the neighbor with the sick son is, can understandably overreact to an emergency situation and reach out for any remedy she thinks will help. I am sorry for the demise of the kitty, and there is no way of knowing if he would have died anyway from internal injuries not immediately visible after such a high fall. The kitty’s owner is angry at the neighbor for his cat’s death, but I think he, too, is overreacting and maybe projecting anger at himself for not having a safer space for his cat. A sad situation all around for sure! — Manuela
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I believe the Ethicist recognized the loss and sadness of the kitty’s owner, and that is so important. But I also believe care should be taken in addressing this further with the neighbors. Caring for a terminally ill child brings daily ups and downs and almost constant stress and weakens our inability to cope as we might otherwise. There is every possibility that the kitty mom might catch the neighbor on a bad day, unable to process what is being said. And lead to an uncomfortable neighbor relationship going forward. — Janet
Kwame Anthony Appiah is The New York Times Magazine’s Ethicist columnist and teaches philosophy at N.Y.U. To submit a query, send an email to [email protected].
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