Jezebel: Dan Savage

Dan Savage Has Stopped Blaming Black Voters For Prop 8

Megan — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST

A week ago, Dan Savage posted a now-invisible (but helpfully-cached) rant about how difficult it was for him to "[pretend that] the handful of racist gay white men out there — and they’re out there, and I think they’re scum — are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans." Dan has apparently changed his mind about whether the black community is to blame for Prop 8's passage in California. He appeared on the Colbert Report last night and said, "I don't feel like we can pin this all on the African-American community." He's now blaming it on old people "and they're dying, which is some comfort." Although he doesn't address his earlier writings at all, he does crack Steven Colbert up, so watch and enjoy his anal sex jokes.

Dan Savage: Cool With Drinking Piss, Weird About Bisexuality

Megan — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:00:00 EDT

We've had our issues with Dan Savage. Actually, I've had my issues with Dan Savage, personally. There's certainly a place in America for a columnist who assures you that your kinkiest kinks aren't so bad and you can still be loved for them, so get some therapy and practice safe sex! And, at one point not terribly long ago, I was happy that that person was Dan Savage. But then the more I read of his columns and his "vaginas are terrifying" and his whole "women are double-standard having bitches" thing that he likes to harp on sometimes I am like, wow. And now he has on display some pretty heteronormative thoughts about bisexuality: it's great in girls and most of us do it, but it's virtually non-existent in boys. Gross.

Here's what he says:

As for [the writer's male cousin] "playing for the other team" at college, ACK, that can indeed be just a phase—but for women, not men. Heterosexual and homosexual women, if legit scientific research is to be believed, "tend to become sexually aroused by both male and female erotica, and, thus, have a bisexual arousal pattern," according to the results of a 2003 study conducted at LUG-infested Northwestern University. Men, on the other hand, prefer erotica that plays exclusively to their professed sexual orientation. Which means, of course, that female sexuality is a fluid and male sexuality is a solid. Or something.

And ladies? Pointing out your fluid sexuality isn't an insult. It's a compliment — hell, it's a freakin' superpower.

Hmm, seems to me I covered the topic of what turns on the ladies before and found that the scientist who wrote the most recent studies on this said:

To conclude that women are bisexual on the basis of their sexual responding overlooks the complexity and multidimensionality of female sexuality.

Also, if you don't have time to go back and read it, (statistically speaking) women get minimally aroused by watching pretty much anything fuck — including monkeys — but that doesn't make us all bestialists either. Sexuality isn't about who you want to watch fuck, it involves who you actually want to fuck. And if men don't or —in my opinion, more likely — can't express as wide a range of bisexuality as women, maybe that has more to do with the taboos around male hetero- and bisexuality than anything else.

I've known bisexual men and they have it hard (heh) from both ends (sorry, can't stop) of the spectrum. A close friend of mine in college was bisexual, and gay men didn't want to get into a relationship with him, convinced he would leave for a more socially-acceptable female life partner, and women often didn't want to sleep with him knowing he'd had a guy's dick up his ass. I've heard plenty of gay men comment that they wouldn't want to get involved with a bisexual man. I've had one of my close gay friends admit that he is (years after coming out) still attracted to women here and there but that it was usually too much trouble to date women because of the lack of acceptance from certain quarters in his social circle. Bisexual men and women are often considered "really" gay but trying to fit in, rather than there being a wide acceptance that they are actually bisexual. And Dan Savage is a good example of this stereotype, as he tells his reader that the cousin is obviously just a closet case but that, perhaps, his fiancée is the kind of woman who likes a gay guy (as though having a bisexual open relationship is just soooo weird). It's such a weirdly and disturbingly normative answer for a columnist who is all about letting people know the safest way to drink other people's urine.

Oh, and about how female bisexuality is a superpower? Yeah, if playing at or displaying an attraction to women for the sake of titillating men is super, or a power. Maybe us bile-spewing ladies just get annoyed when everyone keeps telling us we are bisexual, Dan, because some of us aren't and the ones who actually are aren't doing it for anyone's benefit but their own.

Ladies, Pointing Out Your Fluid Sexuality Isn't an Insult, It's a Freakin' Superpower [Village Voice]
Savage Love December 5, 2007 [AV Club]
What Women Want (Maybe) [New York Times]

That Dear Abby "My Brother Raped My Wife" Thing Actually Happened (And It Was Legal!?)

Moe — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:00:00 EDT

Here's a familiar familial tale! Remember the one about the woman who's fast asleep in her room when suddenly a man she thinks is her husband comes in and they have sex only to at some later point realize that it was actually her husband's perverted brother? Yes, Dear Abby got a query about this a few weeks back, and she didn't believe the story, so we got all ragey about that, and then Dan Savage said he, too, disbelieved the story, and we unleashed some lite venom on him, but by that point our faith in our own instincts was somewhat shaken. So imagine how very gratified we are to report to you now that the media has confirmed it: masquerading as your brother to rape her girl is actually a new trend! It happened — basement apartment and all! — to Marissa Lee-Fuentes.

She's been trying to take her boyfriend's brother to court, and there is some ambiguity in the Massachusetts law that keeps this sort of thing from being an actual crime. Smart rape technique, eh? Anyway it happens a lot with drunk girls at frat parties too. So they're trying to, you know, criminalize it.

If Your Neighbor Poses As Your Husband, Is It Rape? [NPR]
Husband Remains In Dark About Wife's Nighttime Visitor [Detroit News]

Earlier: Dear Abby Strongly Doubts Your Wife's Rape Story

Savage Hate

Anna — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:45:00 EDT

All week, readers have been writing in about advice-giver Dan Savage's latest column, in which Jezebel — specifically our response to that awful 'Dear Abby' feature from last week — gets a negative mention. Personally, I didn't care one way or another about Savage's slam, but Moe sure did! With every email from a reader that came in, she shot off a response to the entire staff. Click on Savage's picture to read her increasingly-irate responses!

March 25 (10:35 am): "Hahahaha so true. Of course, our POST was about Dear Abby's advice, not that weird fucking letter."

March 25 (10:41 am): "It's also really weird that he's calling us for NOT spotting a fake when we spotted the fake who was plagiarizing all his (purportedly real) letters because they seemed so fake. Whatever, dude. Yeah, it was a super phone sex sounding scenario, but...um...nastier true shit happens every day on TV. Jesus fuck, there's a decent chance someone with this selfsame story winds up on Moment Of Truth by the end of this season."

March 26 (9:54 am): "Yeah, Dan Savage can suck it. He just hates blogs. Sure, the letter was a little porny and Penthouse Forum-y — but you know what happens sometimes? People ACT OUT THEIR PORNY FANTASIES. Weirder shit has happened. Seriously, Dan Savage, fuck you."

March 26 (10:28 am): "What annoys me is just that, hello, we are the ones who spotted his plagiarized letters in that NYPress lady's column. We spotted them because they sounded suspiciously fetishy. Because they had been sent into Savage Love, which is a repository of that sort of thing, okay. But then he went and defended the dumbass plagiarist, and I am assuming that's just because he hates blogs, which is annoying because we work fucking hard, and it's weird to imagine fetishists emailing Dear Abby, but she gets points for giving them exactly the sort of response the average incest orgy rape fetishist wants to hear!"

March 26 (10:29 am): "I bet he is one of those queens who is so sweet and fawning to your face and catty behind your back."

March 26 (10:04 pm): "Aaaack! Fuck fan [sic] savage! Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld."

"Edgy" New New York Press Sex Columnist Stole Incest Question From Dan Savage

Moe — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:30:41 EST

Yesterday a brand-new sex advice column debuted in the New York Press, and an editor at the paper sent me a pitch, wondering if I would link to it. And because it not only featured answers to questions about the sanitary properties of urine and whether it's "gay" to fuck a tranny, but "I came home to find my live-in girlfriend GIVING HER BROTHER A GIANT BONER", I wrote a post wondering just how Claudia Lonow, a former child star best known for her work in Knots Landing, went about the process of finding such shocking, edgy questions without, you know, having an established stream of pervs like Dan Savage. Well, it turned out she just stole them from Dan Savage. After the jump, the evidence — and my rant about what this means.

Here's Lonow's column:

Yo, Lonow:
My girlfriend and I have been living together for two years, and we're beginning to talk about marriage and kids. I love her, but I'm beginning to be weirded out by her relationship with her brother. They're always touching in each other. Then, one day, I come home and my girlfriend is in her brother's arms on the couch. As soon as I walked in the door, they jumped up, and I saw a clear view of the outline of his boner. They both looked guilty. After he left I demanded to know what was going on. She confessed that they had been having incestuous relations since they were teenagers—and didn't think it was a big deal!

I asked her to move out. Of course everyone—family, friends, neighbors—is asking what happened. And I'm missing her. Am I forcing my morality on her, as she insists?

DUMP HER! Dump her and wash your body with that shit they washed Meryl Streep with in Silkwood! Oh, and, by the way... is there statutory rape involved? I bet Elliot Stabler would say, "yes" and punch a cement wall and Mariska Hargitay's eyes would well up and Ice-T would be all, "Damn! White people are crazy, yo."
Seriously people... there is a thing as too much tolerance of other people's perversions. Let's all make an agreement: we don't fuck our dogs, we don't fuck babies, (Africa, I'm talking to you), and we don't fuck our BROTHER! Is that really so difficult?

And here's a Dan Savage column from 2006:

Here's one for you: My girlfriend and I have been living together for two years, and we've talked about marriage and kids. Like all relationships, ours wasn't perfect. But what really bothered me was my girlfriend's relationship with her brother. They were touchy-feely in a way that felt inappropriate. Two weeks ago I came home and found my girlfriend in her brother's arms on the couch. They freaked at my sudden arrival and jumped up, providing me with a clear view of the outline of the boner in his pants. Guilt was on their faces. After he left I demanded to know what was going on. At first my girlfriend insisted that I had a dirty mind. I told her that I recognized a boner when I see one, and she confessed that they had been having incestuous relations since they were teenagers - and didn't think it was a big deal! I told her it was a huge deal to me because (A) she's cheating on me, (B) she's cheating on me with her brother, and (C) EWWW.

I asked her to move out, which she took very badly. Of course everyone - family, friends, neighbors - is asking what happened. I'm also seriously missing the woman I thought would be my wife. Am I forcing my morality on her, as she insists? Or is ditching her a no-brainer? I can't even think clearly anymore. Is this a case of DTBFA - dump the brotherfucker already?

- Serious Incest Since Teens Appalled Him

What is with the incest letters lately? Was the incest taboo rescinded, and only SISTAH and I failed to get the memo? Motherfuckers, brotherfuckers, fatherfuckers - just reading the subject lines on my e-mails is giving me screaming nightmares. Eesh.

Listen, SISTAH: Dumping the brotherfucker was the right thing to do - a no-brainer, a definite case of DTBFA. Would you want the future mother of your children to regard incest as anything other than the taboo-to-the-tenth-power that it is and, if I have anything to say about it, always will be? And don't worry about your ex-girlfriend's future prospects - there's a guy besides her brother out there for her somewhere. Google can help her find a guy who has both a cuckold and an incest fetish, i.e., the kind of guy who is not only turned on by the thought of his mate being unfaithful, but would find it extra-special nifty if his wife was cheating on him with her own brother. That guy ain't you.

As for your family, friends, and neighbors, refrain from telling them the whole truth - your ex has enough problems without everyone knowing she's a brotherfucker. But when you're asked why the two of you broke up, SISTAH, you have every right to say that she was cheating on you with another man.

Kinda kills her credibility as to the origin of queries like this doesn't it?

Every time I watch ESPN or Spike TV I see these commercials for Enzyte "natural male enhancement." Does that shit actually work? Not that I'm small or anything, but I'm a divorced, middle-aged, chain-smoking, overweight single guy that lives in a trailer park. The only things I've got going are a steady job and a car that runs (most guys in this park don't have either). The only girls I can get are the crack whores that live here (of which there are tons). I'd love to land a normal woman but don't know what to do. I figure a few more inches downstairs wouldn't hurt, especially if all I have to do is take a pill every day.

I'll spare you her sage counsel.

This is pitiful and ridiculous and makes me wish I didn't even have to pay attention to this shit for a bunch of reasons, namely that when I emailed New York Press editor David Blum about this yesterday he got all up on his high horse, initially responding:

re your "ick" and "ew" comment: i'd say the q's are actually pretty standard for sex-advice columns these days.

Not arguing with that! And then going so far as to respond with a lengthy defense of the First Amendment and the legitimacy of the topic of incest or something like that: I'll print here:

i don't plan to be censoring questions just because i don't happen to like the question.

Ugh. You know what? You guys are idiots. I don't spend a lot of time critiquing the alternative newsweekly industry, which like the rest of the print industry is dying a slow death, namely because I grew up thinking alt-weeklies were some sort of salvation or anyway they got all the concert listings first but whatevs, and yet. And yet it is shit like this that is why they are so fucking irreversibly irrelevant. Editors who will spend fifteen minutes crafting a self-righteous response tailored to making a critic feel like a prudish Christian Coalition sex-negative asshole or whatever will fail to spend .23 seconds googling their fucking sex columns, or a minute and a half inquiring about the origin of their shocking, too taboo for the glossies! subject material. You know what, dude? I used to work at one of those phone sex call center whose pervy ads found a refuge in your pages/pay your bills. I would say I've heard it all, but on the basis of the wild spectrum of crazyass fantasies and batshit scenarios I know for a fact that I have not heard it all. There is always something weirder, sicker, more hilarious, more disturbing. But disturbing/sick/seamy/shocking/outrageous ≠ interesting. I encourage you to check out porneskimo to corroborate this fact.

At this point I'd rather read your answers to Ann Landers. That, at least, might be useful.

Earlier: How Common Is Incest, Piss-Drinking Anyway?