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:
- ‘FACE OF PROGRSIVE HATE?’ GAY RIGHTS ACTIVIST DAN SAVAGE GO ON GRAPHIC RANT ABOUT HOMOSEXUALY & THE POPE
- HOW GAY CULTURE HELPED EVERYONE COME OUT OF THE CLOSET
‘FACE OF PROGRSIVE HATE?’ GAY RIGHTS ACTIVIST DAN SAVAGE GO ON GRAPHIC RANT ABOUT HOMOSEXUALY & THE POPE
* dan savage gay rights *
" 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. 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.
Image a cis, straight journalist who regularly wrote, spoke, and tweeted about LGBTQ+ issu, but only ever talked about "ex-gays" and people who went through a phase or experimented one time.
But the problem is, Sgal thks he's not jt smarter than the average trans person, he thks he's smarter than trans people who have not only been livg as trans people for s, but are veterans of trans studi, issu, journalism, and do whe cis gay men (and whe cis lbians like Katie Herzog) thk that they get to be the experts on what is and what isn't transphobic? "This is how I feel when Sgal, Savage, and other cis gay journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Josh Barro say that they're not transphobic or exprsg transphobia and expla why not to the trans people who are tellg them they Sgal, Savage, or any other cis person wants to be an expert on what is or isn't transphobia, they should jt bee trans for a ltle while.
HOW GAY CULTURE HELPED EVERYONE COME OUT OF THE CLOSET
Why do so many cisgenr men -- cludg gay men -- thk they know better than trans people? * dan savage gay rights *
” 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.
This week's Savage Love: Dan giv advice on how to stamp out the JMPGs ("Jt My Preference" Gays). For all our social progrs, why do some gay datg profil still say racist garbage like "no asians?" Joel Kim Booster and Jeff Chu drop to expla. * dan savage gay rights *
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. You know, I moved to datg and relatnships wh expectatns and wants that had been hand to me, and I was surprised by the numbers of gay upl I met who were wrg their own script and dog their own thg.
And tertgly, they found, spe people’s assumptns, that gay male upl are the least likely to divorce; straight upl were more likely, lbian upl most likely.
<p><strong>Dan Savage:</strong> The Republin ndidat now vyg to be most anti-gay will fd they're on the wrong si of Amerin voters November</p> * dan savage gay rights *
Correlatn a’t atn, but would seem that gay male upl are dog somethg right by diffg the bomb that explos so many straight and lbian relatnships, which is this sire for outsi sexual ntact, for tonomo sexual experienc, for the affirmatn of your sirabily by others whose job isn’t to affirm your sirabily, and that n redound to the benef of your mted relatnship, to your primary you look at this study, and you read , and you thk, well, maybe gay upl are dog somethg right here, and I thk, as more gay people have e out, and more straight people have gotten to the gay people that they knew, or gotten to know gay people who they didn’t know, they’ve seen that at work our relatnships. And more straight people have at least entertaed the thought of there beg different possibili, which, a way, ironilly, is the stated fear of social nservativ om the ‘70s and ‘80s, when I was a kid — that gay people led the hedonistic liftyl, and straight people were gog to be tempted to adopt gay, hedonistic liftyl. I don’t know if I n swear on your podst, but gay people had tricks and fuck buddi, and straight people renamed that as iends wh benefs and hookg up.
So don’t surprise me that a lot of the books were wrten by women, and I thk the crique the books about a lot of what’s been sold to people as sex posivy is jt libratg the settgs so that they work for I’ve always thought Andrew Sullivan’s pot about, when you look at gay male sex culture vers lbian sex culture, sometim, that you n see some sort of sential difference between men and women.
And men approach sex, straight men approach sex whout, I thk, an awarens of the implied vlence, the threat that a lot of women will say y to sex bee they don’t feel empowered to say no, and that n rult a lot of women havg sex that they didn’t enjoy, that left them feelg terrible, and the guy don’t even realize, right, bee he’s so thoughtls about , bee he hasn’t projected himself to the woman’s a gay man, as a man who has sex wh men, I thk I have some appreciatn for what ’s like to have sex wh men, and for what men are. How do we ntrol for high-stat men churng through as many women as they n get, jt like high-stat gay men ed to be able to churn through a lot of male partners, and then how do we ntrol for low stat or low social skills?
<strong>Players:</strong> Dan Savage, creator of the It Gets Better project, gay rights activist, Rick Santom's Google Nemis and <a href=" glter-bombg barbarian supporter</a>; The Dan Savage Welg Commtee, "<a href=" anizatn</a>" whose only pot of uny is accg Dan Savage of hypocrisy. * dan savage gay rights *
O who go to see the domatrix, right, the right-on femist woman who wants, durg sex wh a partner that she chose, and she feels safe and fortable wh, wants her hair pulled and wants to be lled a “slut, ” the gay guy, who’s out and proud, and is turned on durg sex, wh someone he chose, to have homophobic hate words hurled at him durg sex. It’s so different to listen to people who are actually negotiatg everythg out and are ed to dog that that that was by far the biggt, like, revolutn what I realized was savageAnd I want to claim cred for that — not me personally, not bee of my lumn — gay kleI thk that’s right, savageI’ve always said, as a provotn myself, gay people have more sex, know more about sex, and are better at sex than straight people are, and then that mak straight people get fensive and reil, and then I tell them why that’s te.