Hey there, and welcome to your Savage Lovecast recap and review for the week of July 31. Let’s get right to it.

You can listen to this week’s episode and read this week’s Savage Love column.

Dan’s opening rant this week is about our voracious sexual imaginations, which mixed with politics this week in a Virginia House race. Instead of focusing on the white supremacist running for Senate that he’s endorsing, Denver Riggleman has been called out for being a devotee of Bigfoot erotica. There’s an entire category of it on Amazon. Dan points out the real scandal isn’t that Riggleman wrote some erotica, but that he’s palling around with white supremacists in the first place.

On to the calls! A woman wants to know if she can insert a lollipop into her vagina. Sugar in your pussy can lead to a nasty yeast infection, says Dan, so stay away. Dan reiterates that he is opposed to mixing food with sex.

A 19-year-old gay man has usually been a top, but he wants to bottom for the guy he’s seeing. Unfortunately, even with foreplay and fingering and understanding and going slow, it’s painful. Dan says our caller needs to make the fingering and foreplay the main event. By making each time merely a prelude to our caller’s boyfriend’s dick in the ass, they are adding pressure and anxiety. Take the focus off the dick until you get less tense. Create positive associations with anal pleasure with, for example, buttplugs.

Jesse Kramer, a queer storyteller who grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family, is on to talk about an interesting story he found in the Bible. The book of Numbers (5:11-31), which is a book of laws, has a passage called “the test for an unfaithful wife.” The test basically involves a man giving his wife, who he asserts to be unfaithful, a tincture from the priest. If she drinks and is fine, she has been unfaithful. If she drinks it and miscarries, she has been unfaithful and will presumably be put to death. To put a point on it, this is God telling His people that they must administer abortifacients. Of course, there is controversy about this passage, and we are relying on translations of translations. Dan wonders how this isn’t talked about more, especially since Numbers and Leviticus are the sources of so much anti-gay rhetoric in the Bible. Kramer also points out other passages that indicate that the Hebrews did not think fetuses had the same right to life as people, such as in Exodus, when a different penalty was proscribed for causing the death of a fetus and causing the death of a woman. But this kind of gotcha Bible study won’t shame militant pro-lifers any more than the shrimp cocktail argument will. While this is interesting as a matter of history, it ultimately won’t change anyone’s mind.

A woman has found her sex life skyrocketing after getting out of her 7-year marriage. She’s seeing several guys at the same time. One of them is in a long-term relationship and has a one-year-old child. He’s been upfront about it and he’s been nonmonogamous for eight years. Our caller’s friends think he’s cheating, or at least his partner isn’t thrilled about their arrangement. Our caller trusts her instincts, but finds it hard to defend herself to her friends. What should our caller do? Dan thinks she should stop talking to her friends about it. The bad thing about open relationships is that it’s tough to independently verify them, and guys looking for sex can be very effective liars. If our caller needs to prove this arrangement to her friends, or to herself, she can get in touch with the partner.

A 28-year-old straight woman has been dating a man for about a year who has a now 2-year-old daughter. The child’s mother is abusive toward the man. The daughter has recently started talking and has started saying the caller’s name. The mother flipped out when she heard the daughter say this and forbid the caller from seeing the daughter. The caller, to her objection, has not seen the daughter in about six weeks. Before, the caller was seeing the daughter a few times a week. Our caller is getting frustrated at this situation. What should she do? The mother is holding the daughter hostage to do what, Dan wonders – force the man to never date anyone again? Keeping the daughter away from the caller is not going to work long-term. He may have to take her to court to make the custody clear and to make clear that he can introduce the daughter to other partners.

A 30-something bi woman keeps finding her sex drive dying whenever she gets into a relationship, but her sex drive is high when she’s single. As Polonius said, and Dan says, “Know thyself.” Our caller wants the stability and love of a long-term relationship but the excitement of new sexual partners. She can have both in an open relationship, and she should go find it. It might even be the relationship she’s currently in. Dan predicts that once she stops seeing a relationship as the end of adventure, her sexual appetite for her partner will be sustained.

A 27-year-old gay man has been with his partner for eight years. Four years ago, they brought a third into their relationship. They are only open with one guy at a time. The other day, while scrolling through his phone to change a song on Spotify, our caller found two videos of his partner having sex with strangers. Our caller doesn’t know how to get over this. Dan calls back. Dan is sympathetic, saying that the partner cheated by violating the clear rules they set up for their open relationship. Can our caller forgive him? Can our caller get assurance that this won’t happen again or can our caller rewrite the rules to make this retroactively okay? Our caller had a discussion last night, and the partner blamed the cheating on being anxious and depressed. That’s not a good sign, says Dan. If the partner makes himself the victim and shuts down discussion, that’s troubling. The caller is taking this very hard. No matter what happens, these guys need a couples counselor.

A man gets shamed because he isn’t on Prep. He can’t be on Prep, he’s on chemo. What’s the best way to respond? This is yet another instance where you tell a person one thing about you, and their response tells you everything you need to know about them. If they give you a hard time for not being on Prep, your best response is

A 25-year-old straight woman has been with her husband for six years, married for one, with a one-year-old son. The son handed our caller the husband’s phone, which had a locked photo app. She opened it up, because she wanted to see the sex video they had just made, but instead she found raunchy photos of the husband’s cousin. He says he was curious about her body, but never wanted to act on those urges. How should our caller handle this? First cousins can get married all over the place, Dan reminds us, including in 26 U.S. states (and their marriages are recognized in all 50, and have been since before the marriage equality movement). Dan thinks our caller should chill and treat this like any other attraction the husband has. Dan then seems to contradict himself by saying that the caller should feel the fuck out of her squicky feelings and ask the husband to delete the pictures. And advice to the husband: change the password.

A woman accidentally fucked a Trump supporter. After she found out, she was able to share ideas with him, including Coates, and he’s shared some ideas with her. She thinks she has changed his perspective on the world, so Dan’s advice never to fuck Trump supporters is wrong. Dan still stands by his general rule. Maybe our caller found a Trumpist who could be reached with the promise of good pussy. Dan would still encourage our caller to make further access to her pussy contingent on him voting straight Democratic in 2018.

A 21-year-old man has begun asking for explicit consent for everything and has begun every touch relationship with the phrase “enthusiastic and explicit consent is very important to me.” He started a non-hierarchical, nonmonogamous relationship with a 19-year-old woman three months ago. She told him that she has a hard time saying no and avoids confrontation. He’s tried to get around his by making “I want” statements. After not seeing each other for a few weeks, they ran into each other at a music festival. She was not enthusiastic to see him, he left in a huff, and when she tried to apologize later, he told her he felt disrespected and that he needed space. Today, he reached back out to her, intended to renegotiate and “step entirely away from touch with her.” She texted back that she felt that he was taking advantage of her by asking all the questions he did. They agreed not to see each other anymore. What did our caller do wrong? Dan says a yes isn’t always enough. He can’t say for sure, but he wonders if the woman was saying yes when her body language was not. The caller sounds intense, says Dan (that’s a good word to use) and was asking for X, Y, and Z, and the woman may not have felt in a position to say no. If our caller is to be as woke as he seemingly wants to be, he needs to err on the side of caution: get enthusiastic consent, double- and triple-check, read body language, and be aware of how you’re coming across.

A 31-year-old man has a best friend who, 2.5 years ago, separated from her abusive husband. Six months ago, the divorce became official, and she got custody of the children and an order against domestic violence. During the separation, our caller and the best friend kicked around the idea of being together, but they called it off after a couple months when it was clear she wasn’t ready to be in a relationship. Last fall, they tried again, but she’s still not ready. Our caller has waited for her all this time. While she’s not ready to be a relationship, she also does not want our caller to date anyone else. Not being friends is not an option. What’s the solution? Also, what if he compares every woman he dates to his best friend? Also also, should he tell women he dates that he and his best friend have a romantic history? Also also also, when do abuse survivors get back to a place where they can date again? Dan says our caller has to move on with his life. He’s essentially been dumped. He can hold on for six months or a year, but he can’t do it forever, especially since what she’s saying – “I’m not ready for a relationship right now” – is a white lie that people sometimes tell when they want to let the other person down easy. You need to be honest with the future people you date, because you don’t want to date someone who will freak out when you have lunch with someone you used to date.

Caller feedback! It’s unfair to ask a former anorexic to just make some adjustments to her diet – it’s something she should work out with a therapist. She should also check in with her primary care provider, and she might be in the throes of an active eating disorder. Columbo calls in to poke holes in the abusive boyfriend’s blackout memory.

Thanks for reading.