Savage has a new book celebratg 30 years wrg his sex advice lumn "Savage Love." He talked wh NPR about where he's been wrong, what's changed and why gay people know more about sex.
Contents:
DAN SAVAGE: FOR GAY TEENS, LIFE 'GETS BETTER'
* savage podcast gay *
" Savage talked about what he has been wrong about over the years, how wrg has changed and why he thks gay people give better sex advice than straight people. It was 1990 when we started talkg about the lumn and gay people didn't give sex advice to straight people.
And so the joke was I was gog to treat straight people wh the same ntempt that straight advice lumnists had always treated gay people who wrote them letters. I thk what my rears get and what a lot of straight people sort of tuively get is that your gay iends know a ltle b more about sex than you do, and maybe are a ltle better at than you are. You n't be gay if you n't talk about difficult sexual issu, you know, you n't e out to your fay whout nontg a difficult sexual issue.
Dan Savage is an advice lumnist who spawned a worldwi movement after hearg one too many tim about anguished gay teens mtg suici. Savage and his hband, Terry Miller, talk about their "It Gets Better" project, which now has over 10,000 vio submissns. * savage podcast gay *
That's why 's such a cliché for straight people to go to their gay iends wh their sex problems or sex qutns. ” But what’s so important about , I thk, is that Savage, his lumns and his podst, the “Savage Lovest, ” has been this ccial bridge between the gay, queer and straight muni, at a time when sexual and relatnal norms all of them are changg and cross-pollatg. And I’m gay, and one of the thgs that was unique about Savage Love, when I started wrg , was was sex advice for straight people wrten by a gay du, and I got a lot of angry letters the first uple of years om people projectg onto me, as a gay person, their ignorance of gay people as straight people.
Like, they didn’t know anythg about gay people or gay relatnships, and they jt assumed I would know nothg about straight people and straight relatnships, as if my parents weren’t straight, as if my siblgs weren’t straight, as if I didn’t fake beg straight for a while, and didn’t make a very close study of what a straight person acted like, wanted, and did, an attempt to pass myself as straight. Gay people know what straight people are if there’s been any change the last 30 years that I thk is the most signifint is this great cultural cross-pollatn between gay life and straight life that really drove home that thgs we thought of as particular to gay muni, gay subcultur, gay life were not choic gay people were makg, and a lot of thgs that we associated wh straight people, straight life, were not choic that straight people were eely makg, and that, once people were more ee to make their own choic, a lot of gay people acted a lot more straight, and a lot of straight people began to act a lot more kleWe’ve been thkg, to pull back the curta on this a b, about dog a relatnships episo for a while, and what keeps trippg up is that most relatnship books are bad. And one of the reasons I was exced when we thought of havg on is that, one, I realized that a lot of jt the language people e around me now om you, om your lumn, om your rears — you know, “monogamish, ” and “GGG” — and all the thgs you’ve brought to the disurse, but beyond that, somethg that I thk you’ve had a huge fluence on is beg this bridge om gay and queer and kk culture to straight datg culture, a way that has actually ma — at least sce I moved to San Francis, I see much more — straight datg culture very different.
When I first me out as gay and began to meet gay upl, I was surprised.