Hey there, and welcome to your Savage Lovecast recap and review for the week of June 26. Now that it’s officially summer, what are your favorite summer activities, sexy or not? I really have to get a good novel and get out by the pool.
You can listen to this week’s episode and read this week’s Savage Love column.
Dan wishes all queer people, no matter what stripe of queer they are, a Happy Pride and thanks the volunteers who were out getting marchers eligible to vote. Moving on, Dan tells a story from way back in the 90s, back when Colorado was conservative and voters amended its constitution to prevent gay people from bringing claims of discrimination. (The amendment was overturned by the Supreme Court in Romer v. Evans, the first in a string of pro-gay rights cases at the Court.) Dan was a waiter in a Seattle café at the time, and the aunt and uncle of one of the other (gay) workers came in. They were from Colorado, and had voted for the discriminatory measure. Dan asked for and received permission from the gay owner to kick these people out of the restaurant. Of course, Dan is in support of kicking Trump administration members out of restaurants. Dan believes there needs to be social, not just political, costs for people who carry out immoral policies and lie to the people about them. Finally, there was a New York Times piece over the weekend unfortunately headlined “Is Pride Too Gay?” The author, a lesbian, said that Pride focuses too much on good-looking out gay white men. Dan agrees that they take up too much of the media attention, but says that he saw queer people of all stripes at Pride and believes, implicitly, that Pride does well enough to be inclusive.
On to the calls! A 25-year-old lesbian is trying to get healthier (joining a Crossfit gym, watching what’s she’s eating, stopping drinking) and her friends just don’t understand. They still try to get her the same things they’ve always done together, like go out for pizza and drinks. Is she going to have to slide back into bad habits in order to feel supported? Dan says her friends are supporting her by inviting her along to things. Dan himself hardly drinks anymore, but he goes out for drinks with friends and has a club soda with lime and a pot lozenge. Don’t feel affronted when your friends invite you along to things – you can either resist temptation or suggest alternate things to do or eat. Finally, remember that it takes people time to adjust to your changes, just because they aren’t as focused as you on yourself.
A straight guy worries he’s in the process of getting friend-zoned. He’s talking with and flirting with a woman who is in a long-distance relationship with another man, and he’s concerned that he’s just an emotional placeholder. Should he try to be aloof with her in hopes that she’ll break up with her boyfriend? Dan, exasperatedly, suggests trying the truth instead: “Hey, I’m attracted to you, and if that’s not in the cards because you’re with somebody else, then I can’t be in your life this way. But if you find yourself single, and you’re interested in me, give me a call.” Zooming out, Dan reminds us that all women are different, and being aloof is not the surefire woman-catcher that clueless straight guys think it is. Plus, it directly contradicts the other thing we hear about “all women,” that they want to be pursued. Maybe all women are different and individuals? But that’s just crazy talk. The best way to “attract women” is to be yourself, and the quickest way to let people know who you are is to tell the truth, not to play stupid games.
A straight guy who works at a gay bar told our caller that a lot of gay men get a circumference tattoo on their arms to show how deep they can fist another dude. Is this true? Also is double-fisting a thing? There are some double-fisting videos out there, says Dan, but that is a skill that is rare. The tattoo thing? That’s a sign that the straight bartender is getting pranked by his coworkers. Fisting bottoms don’t look for signs of how deep someone can fist them. That said, Dan has run into gay guys who have tattooed rulers on their arms because it’s fun to watch the inches disappear up a bottom.
A mid-20s woman has been dating her boyfriend for two years. For four years, she’s been getting filler in her lips, mostly to correct an imbalance in her upper lip. Each time she gets the procedure done, he flips out. He says that he’s disappointed, that she was beautiful before and that he didn’t think she was that kind of girl. She argues that it’s her body, and she can do what she wants. The relationship is great otherwise, but every nine months this fight recurs. She’s about to have the procedure redone. What does she do? Dan says that the time for the boyfriend to put up or shut up was the time of the first procedure, about two months in. Our caller made it clear then that this was a price of admission. Now it’s past time for the boyfriend to shut up already. Lay it out: “I made it clear that this is what I’m doing with my body. If you can’t put up with that, it’s over.”
A woman was having sex for about a decade before she learned how to masturbate, so she’s had a lot of bad sex. She describes her libido as dormant, meaning she can go months without masturbating, but sometimes she masturbates several times a week. Is her libido so low because she didn’t learn to pleasure herself early on? Can she increase her libido? Dan says it’s possible that our caller has a naturally low libido. It could also be possible that her birth control is tamping her libido. It is also possible that as our caller continues to recognize that she is entitled to her own pleasure, her libido will shift.
A woman’s privacy was invaded by her employer, and, after a long process, he ended up being charged and convicted of something and registered as a sex offender. Our caller, in pursuing this and protecting herself, has been out of work for a year. How does she discuss this with future employers? Rob Walker, who writes the Workologist column in the New York Times, comes on to help answer this question. Rob agrees with Dan that, in a job interview, you don’t want to lead with the fact that you helped put your last boss in jail. On a more serious note, Rob suggests, in the job interview, keeping it innocuous and positive. (Dan thinks in a perfect world, our caller should be able to put the fact that she got justice on her resume.) Rob says gaps in resumes of a year or so is more common than you think. Practice talking about it in an innocuous but not deceitful way with a friend. The most important thing is to sound like you’re ready to get back to work.
A 23-year-old cis gay man has long struggled with anorexia and body dysmorphia. He is very attracted to muscles. This throws a wrench in his dating life because he sees everyone he’s attracted to as way out of his league, so he either doesn’t talk to them or self-destructs things after a few dates. To make matters worse, any discussion of exercise or dieting or even mention of his body is triggering for our caller. How can our caller cope? Dan says this is a matter of taking yes for an answer. Some gay guys are into their body doubles, and some are into their opposites. If triggering conversation topics come up, you can shut it down deftly, and guys you want to date will be considerate.
A 24-year-old bi woman is having a really bad day. She got back together with her emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend 3 months ago and has been trying to break up ever since. She feels like she can’t say no to him. She fears for her safety. Our caller has been lying to everyone about this, including her best friend. How can she get out of this and explain herself to her friends and family? First step, says Dan: Tell people. Reclaim that support that you said you lost. True, friends sometimes lose patience when they keep seeing people go back time and time again to the same shitty people. If our caller throws herself at their mercy, enough of them will help to make a plan to get her out of there. Womenshelp.gov has a list of tips to help our caller or anyone else escape an abusive relationship. The most important thing is to get physical distance between yourself and the abuser.
A man is in an ethically nonmonogamous relationship with a woman, and they just switched coasts. He’s using the opportunity to open up to new people about their relationship. Can he discuss this in the workplace? Dan thinks you should run things by coworkers on a need-to-know basis. Come out to your family first. Running around the office telling people about your nonmonogamy is TMI.
It’s time for What You Got! Professor Eran Shor, a sociologist at McGill, is on with his new study studying whether porn is getting more aggressive and more violent. The received wisdom is that we become desensitized the more porn we consume and we need more violent stimuli to satisfy us. That wisdom was reinforced with an earlier study, but that had a broad definition of violence and aggression that included consensual spanking with pleasure. The new data shows that, instead, there has been less non-consensual aggression in porn over time. The study is called “Harder and Harder? Is Mainstream Pornography Becoming Increasingly Violent and Do Viewers Prefer Violent Content” and you can find it in the Journal of Sex Research.
A 33-year-old woman has been married to her husband for 6 years. It’s been happy until recently, when she started having depression. She started to suspect her husband was cheating, and she found some texts from his coworker. This led to a huge fight, and they said they wanted to work it out, but now the husband is waffling. He’s hostile and angry all the time. She’s discovered more texts, and now he’s flaking on going to counseling. She needs some advice. Dan says the husband is done. The relationship is over, and the sooner our caller can get out, the better.
A 31-year-old single cis hetero monogamous woman is looking for her partner. She’s been dating a great guy for about a month, and she’s never been treated so good. He even asked if he can take her to London this summer. But her friend looked him up on Facebook, and he has a kid. She wants kids of her own, and having one isn’t a dealbreaker for her. She texted him and asked if he had a kid. He told her that he has two kids and was divorced last year. She’s turned off because of the nondisclosure. Should he have disclosed sooner, and is she right to feel violated? Dan thinks she should give him another chance. Not telling her about his kids within four weeks of dating may not be the right thing to do, but it is understandable, because he didn’t want to be rejected (dating’s hard, y’all). However, if this becomes a pattern, she can pull the plug.
A 25-year-old lesbian has been dating someone for 6 months, but it recently turned casual. A few days before they made this decision, though, she made out with someone else. She never told her girlfriend about this – is that wrong? If this is really weighing you down, Dan opines, you can tell your casual girlfriend about it. How she’ll react is anyone’s guess. But our caller is under no obligation to confess.
An officiant of his best friend’s wedding has no idea what to say in his speech. Dan doesn’t know either. He would farm their friends for ideas and anecdotes for the speech.
Caller feedback! If a woman is only aroused one week a month or so, track her ovulation cycle. Also go to bed at the same time. A truck in Baltimore has the license plate ITMFA, and a woman salutes him. Getting unwanted dick pics is sexual harassment, which Dan acknowledges. Dan apologizes for his imprecise wording last week – he meant that receiving unsolicited dick pics is not criminal harassment, but it can be civil sexual harassment.
Thanks for reading.