Health

Savage Lovecast

Welcome to the Savage Lovecast recap thread. Here is this week’s podcast and here’s the column.

Dan starts off by defending himself from a few people who gave him guff for not tweeting about Bi Visibility Day on September 23. There are lots of visibility/awareness/pride days on the LBGT calendar and he tweets about almost none of them. He’s an equal opportunity ignorer; it’s not a sign that he’s anything-phobic. Nonetheless, to make up for his oversight he shares two #BiVisibilityDay tweets from other people.

On to the calls! A mid-50s woman says her parents exposed her to porn from a young age. Sadly, the call is not about that intriguing premise; it’s just how she understands the origin of her active fantasy life. She met a guy who indulged her interest in BDSM for a while but then got too demanding and wanted her to sleep with other guys for him so she kicked him to the curb. She wants to know how to continue to explore this kind of sex post DTFMA-ing. Dan recommends the book Playing Well With Others by Lee Harrington and Mollena Williams. He also suggests making contact with the local kink scene.

I had a TIL  moment with this call. Based on Dan’s many references to the concept, I had assumed that a BDSM munch was a sex/play party but apparently it’s just for talking, learning, and socializing. The More You Know.

A straight female got a message on LinkedIn from a guy with a fake profile who claims he knows her from high school. He wants her to financially dominate him while remaining anonymous. She’s considering it, but thinks maybe he needs to come clean about his identity. Dan agrees. The guy is likely to want something in exchange for the money he’d be giving the caller and knowing who he is provides her with some protection against blackmail. Honestly, I didn’t quite follow this argument. Why would she send him pics or whatever if she’s supposed to be the one dominating him? Isn’t that just porn for hire? Anyway Dan seemed to think this arrangement could be okay if she did her due diligence, but the whole thing sounded hella sketchy to me.

A 24 year old gay guy has been dating his partner for three months. The partner says he’s bored and wants to open the relationship up not just for outside sex but for outside relationships involving emotional connection. Dan says it’s a bad sign that the boyfriend is bored after three months when he should still be bathing in new relationship energy. Maybe the guy would just prefer an open relationship period and the claim of boredom is just what he’s using to justify that desire to the caller. The caller needs to talk to the boyfriend and find out what he really wants.

A 31 year old straight guy is in a DDLG relationship with a stripper. He really likes her but still craves novelty; in fact he says he has to fantasize about sex with someone new to get off. Dan helpfully explains to the listeners that DDLG means “Dominant Daddy, Little Girl” then tells the caller that he needs to be honest with the girlfriend about his need for novelty. Yeah, whatever.

A straight 20 year old woman has been dating an amazing man (/me rolls eyes) for a year. Three months in she caught him having an “emotional relationship” with another woman. He ended it but she can’t seem to trust him anymore. Dan is pretty hard on this caller. He pretty much shits on the idea of emotional affairs in general and completely shits on the caller for calling the boyfriend out for having a female friend. He says she’s should break up with the boyfriend for his sake, not hers.

I thought Dan kind of went off the deep end here. Yes, an emotional relationship could just be friendship but it also could refer to proto-cheating behavior that she happened to catch before it progressed to sex. Seems like it would have been more charitable of Dan to consider that explanation for the caller’s strong emotions rather than just assuming she was irrational. Apparently the boyfriend keeps asking the caller “When are you going to be able to trust me again?” which could be an entirely fair question but also has the ring of gaslighting. Anyway, I feel like he has given much bigger benefits of the doubt to much less sympathetic callers before, so I’m not sure what crawled up his ass this time.

A guy on a work trip is visiting an old friend in a different city. He gets on one of the gay hook up apps and runs across the profile of the friend. The twist is the friend is a politically conservative guy who is engaged to a woman. Should the caller talk to him about what he saw? Dan says the caller isn’t obligated to say anything then spends the rest of the segment trying to convince the caller to say something. His suggestion is a simple “Hey, I saw you on the app. If you ever want to talk I’m here for you.” Maybe the friend will take him up on it but it may be years.

Dan takes a break for a What You Got segment with Dr. Morgan Philbin from Columbia University. Dr. Philbin’s most recent study found that the rates of cannabis use was higher among bi women than other LGBT subgroups. At least I think that’s what it said. Dr. Philbin discussed several different results that compared rates of use across different populations and it was hard to disentangle those results based on this conversation (Dan is not much of science journalist).

Back to the calls. A 24 year old woman thinks it’s normal for younger women not to be able to come because of inexperienced partners. She herself can’t come from getting eaten out and doesn’t use direct stimulation when she masturbates. Maybe she has the female equivalent of death grip syndrome. Is that a thing? Dan reminds us that the orgasm gap that the caller references is only a thing from women who have sex with men; women who have sex with women do fine. He says the female version of death grip syndrome usually happens with women who grow up masturbating by humping pillows. Um, okay. He spends a lot of reviewing DGS in dudes before eventually telling the caller that its fine that she needs more stimulation on the internal structures of her clitoris.

A 26 year old woman has been dating a 10 years older married guy for four months. He wants to tell his wife about the affair and “open up the marriage”. The caller isn’t sure that that’s a good idea. Dan, to his credit, starts by pointing out that even if the wife accepts the open relationship request it could be a case of poly under duress. Beyond that he just tells the caller to think about what she wants from this relationship. I don’t have any problem with ethical non-monogamy but this seemed more like cheating piece of shit territory and I think Dan should have done a lot more scolding.

A 31 year old guy has a crush on another guy at the gym but doesn’t know if he’s gay, much less if he’s interested. Dan says flirt, make an approach (“Hey buddy, can you spot me?”) and see what happens.

A 26 year old woman dated a guy for 9 months. He was “a little controlling” at first but she put up with him until she found out he has another girlfriend. Now he keeps harassing her at work, including parading by with the other girlfriend. She already got a restraining order. What else can she do? Dan points out that someone being “a little controlling” early in the relationship is a huge warning sign. The caller should make sure that the restraining order is being enforced and rather than feeling jealous if she sees the guy with the other girlfriend she should feel relieved.

Twitter feedback: ITMFA is a good name for a pub trivia team. The PrEP caller from last week should get the HPV vaccine. It’s cool that Dan referenced the board game Mousetrap.

Caller feedback: The guy who had the one night stand with the girl with two fingers should leave her alone. PrEP guy is underestimating the health risks of sex outside of his marriage. Licking cum is gross because our fluids become nasty once they’re outside the body.

Thanks for reading.