. . . . Fraggle . . . . seemed to think that sarcasm is automatically innocent and sweet.
It is often a form of humor, and like all humor (except the pun, which is ironically referred to as "the lowest form of humor") it is usually based on someone's misfortune. In the case of sarcasm, it may merely be the "misfortune" of being wrong.
It is usually meant to insult. Your sarcasm was aimed at us and therefore the insult was to us.
Telling someone they're wrong is not exactly an insult.
Why on earth would anyone think they need to ask if someone has had plastic surgery.
I have a dear female friend who has no figure. She has the classic "shape of a 13-year-old boy" that fashion designers love and in fact she went to modeling school. Despite the shapeless look she's fairly attractive. (One would think they wouldn't have accepted her in modeling school otherwise, but she's also too short to work in the profession and that didn't stop them from taking her money.) Whenever she sees a well-endowed woman (and from her perspective that's just a C cup) she says, "I bet she's had surgery." We have another friend with an absolutely dynamite body (and, ironically, just a C cup) and she has more than once walked up to her and started to ask her if she'd had a "boob job," and caught herself just in time.
If a woman has had an abortion in the past, or was raped, and she doesn't tell her prospective partner about that on her own, without him first requesting information on such issues, is she lying?
In case of rape, the real issue is that the woman underwent a traumatic experience. Many women who were raped bear a psychological scar that can never heal. It can affect their attitude toward men, sex, and perhaps everything else in the world. (Abortions don't usually cause that kind of long-term fallout, at least in the USA.) So I can understand a man thinking that he's been lied to if a woman doesn't tell him this. But it's not something any woman wants to remember consciously, so I can also understand her not bringing it up.
Some situations simply have no rules. You have to do your best and muddle through.
Oh, so you're one of those people for whom hiding the truth is different from lying. Well, that says a lot about your character, and it's not a distinction I would ever draw.
Come on dude. Even our language distinguishes between a lie of commission and a lie of omission. We all have things we don't want to talk about because they dredge up painful memories, or because to cover the subject fairly would take a two-hour conversation, or because they happened when we were seventeen/we lived in a different culture/we hadn't found Jesus yet/whatever and we believe we're a different person now.
I think most people consider any deception such as not telling the whole truth, to be a lie.
As I pointed out, people have very good reasons for not wanting to talk about things in their past. I agree that plastic surgery doesn't seem to fall into that category, but I don't know what this lady's life was like in China so my opinion isn't worth much.
If you're starting a relationship, you have
your own obligations to fulfill, in order to take care of
your own business. If a man wouldn't feel comfortable with a woman who's been raped (which would make him kind of an asshole if you ask me) then considering the statistics about rape he should probably ask the question. A less easily dismissed scenario is whether you would like to know that about the lady because it would inform
the way you treat her and better prepare you to be the man she needs and deserves.
However, take the case where either the man or woman has cheated just once. They felt very bad about it and don't plan to ever do it again and don't want to end their marriage. In this case not telling is the best course of action, because telling will most likely cause a divorce.
On the other hand, if you keep something like that pushed down inside you, it will fester and turn into something ugly. Some day when you're emotionally charged, having a fight, or something like that, you might hear it blurting out of your mouth at the absolutely wrongest moment.
The best disinfectant is sunshine. Justice Brandeis said that when explaining why we should not outlaw groups like the KKK and force them into the shadows where we won't be able to see what they're up to, but it applies equally well to our own thoughts.
Oh, and "ugly" babies don't cause divorces and lawsuits.
Most parents think their own babies are the cutest things that have ever been seen on this planet. It's a genetically programmed instinct to promote good nurturing, in a species that requires intensive parenting for a decade and a half. (Whales mature in 2 years, elephants in 5.)
I saw a news documentary many years ago about a particular country that viewed ugliness as a disability and therefore sponsored cosmetic surgery for welfare recipients that were determined to be ugly. I don't remember which country it was but I think it was Argentina.
Argentina was the world capital of plastic surgery fifteen years ago; I don't know if that's still true. Many Argentines had their faces redone more than once.
I'll never forget this because... you know how sometimes people walk into a plastic surgeon's office with a picture of someone they want to look like? Well prostitutes had to be on top of that because their customers wanted hookers who looked like somebody who was in vogue at that time. In 1996, guess whose was the most common face on hookers in Buenos Aires?
If a one person kills another, completely by accident, there is no malicious intent to take a life. But a life is still taken, is it not? If an amusement park operator does not test all his rides daily, several times even. Assuming since they were fine yesterday there is no reason to assume they aren't fine today. And someone gets hurt because a ride malfunctioned. Something that could have been prevented if he had just tested his rides everyday.
The law calls that
criminal negligence. It's not first-degree murder so you can't be executed for it (in the USA). But you could spend a long time in prison.
And BTW, in the USA the operators of the rides test them every day. For example the roller coaster operator walks the entire track.
What if he had been married several times before. Never had kids by any of them but still had a track record of divorce, and he failed to disclose that? That is something that would bother me because it shows something about who he is as a person.
Divorce is so common in the USA that we all expect to know that about people we date, much less marry. Fortunately it's public-record so we don't have to rely on their disclosure, although most of us do.
These days there's no stigma attached to divorce so it's not something most people would be shy about.
In our culture, anyway, its rude to ask questions that can be seen as prying into one's personal issues. It's more proper to allow someone to disclose as they feel comfortable doing so. I wish we could come out and be direct and ask all the weird questions but our social rules of etiquette don't allow for it.
In my extensive contact with Chinese people (and a few other East Asian nations like Thailand, but not all of them, for example Japan) it's just the opposite. They think nothing of asking personal questions of people they've just met.