Who gives out better sex and relationship advice—you, or Dr. Drew?
I’m going to have to go with me. I think people actually should have the sex that they want in their relationships. Sex that they enjoy, not just that Dr. Drew approves of. I don’t think that anyone with a kink or a fetish is a rape victim who doesn’t know it, or was sexually abused. People who are kinky need kinky sex partners, not therapists. And I’m always suspicious of people like Dr. Drew who try to control other people’s sex lives. I wonder if there’s a dead Girl Scout stuffed between their mattress and box spring.
Ewww.
Sorry about that.
What are you most proud of in your life?
I think my family. I know that sounds so Rick Santorum–y, by I’m most proud of my little family that exists despite the odds.
From which of your mistakes have you learned the most?
Agreeing to do this interview.
You’re mean.
I’m totally kidding! (Long pause.) I’m having trouble coming up with an answer to your question, though. But I don’t want to be like Condi Rice and not be able to admit I ever made a mistake. (Another long pause.) Let me think here … I think it was probably going home with the wrong guy once when I was very young. The assumption I made was that if a guy was gay, he was a good guy. Bad guys were straight guys and bullies and jocks. Gay guys were like my brothers—I would be safe with them. But I had a bad experience and afterward I was like, “Wow, I could have died.” I learned to scrutinize gay people the way I did anybody else.
What advice would you give teenage boys about being a good man?
Don’t mistake being an asshole for being a man.
A recent study found that about 3.5 percent of the population is LGBT. Discounting how people “identify” themselves, what percentage of the population do you think is actually LGBT?
The B is the wildcard. If you look at that study, there are more bisexually identified people than LGT combined. There are a lot of people out there who are hetero-flexible. But how do you define it with something as amorphous as being able to sexually respond to both genders? There’s a lot of people who are straight-identified, and are comfortable being perceived as straight, but when you pin them down …
So to speak …
Ha. Yes, when you pin them down, they’ll say, “I’m a little bit bi.” And what does that even mean when it comes to trying to come up with a number of people who are actually LGBT? The actual percentage is probably much higher. In the end, maybe the figure we should settle on is plenty. There are plenty of us running around this earth. There are more LGBT people in America than there are Jews and Miami Cubans. And the Jews and the Miami Cubans get everything they want from both political parties. We should, too. If there’s a Jewish Miami Cuban homo out there, then that person should rule the world.
Last year you launched the It Gets Better campaign to help gay teens who might be suicidal. Have you ever struggled with suicidal feelings?
I thought about suicide—not because I wanted to die, but because I thought it would be the nice, polite thing to do. I thought, when I was a kid, that my mother and father would be devastated if I ever told them I was gay, that they would never be able to love me. So there was a year or two where I thought it would just be easier for everybody—Mom, Dad, me—if I died. That way I wouldn’t have to come out and they wouldn’t have to suffer. And they wouldn’t stop loving me.
But it never got past simple contemplation. No plans were made, no pills were hoarded. And it didn’t take me long to realize that I was selling my parents short.
You and I had a fun radio debate a year ago about sex addiction. We disagreed on whether sex addiction is real (I think it is, you don’t), but we both agreed that we as a culture have way too much shame around sex. In one sentence, why are we so fucked up about sex?
Because Australia got the convicts, Canada got the French, and we got the Puritans.
You had that line in the can, didn’t you?
Yes.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, are you good in bed?
I would say I’ve never gotten any complaints, but I’ve definitely gotten complaints. Anyone who says they’ve never gotten any complaints is a liar and probably isn’t paying attention. People don’t fill out a complaint form and drop it in the complaint box on the wall of your bedroom. They will try to communicate with you subtly, nonverbally, in whatever way will protect your ego. I think I’m good in bed because I’ve taken those complaints to heart and tried to get better at whatever is being done. I’m a very eager learner.
♦◊♦
More from Sex Week at the Good Men Project:
Amanda Marcotte: What Women Don’t Tell You
Hugo Schwyzer: Male Self-Pleasure Myths
Andrew Ladd: A Billion Wicked Assumptions
Ed Fell: 10 Secrets to Satisfying Sex
Charles Allen: Why I Hate My Giant Dong
Emily Heist Moss: Does Size Matter?
John DeVore: Multiple Inches of Love
Joshua Matacotta: Do Gay Men Fear Intimacy?
Hugo Schwyzer: Mythbusting Bisexual Men
♦◊♦
[ 1 | 2 ]
I’m glad I’m not young, gay, and unsure about coming out since if I encountered people like Dan Savage I would want NOTHING to do with being a gay man since I’d think that because of them being a gay man means being a bigoted transphobic and biphobic, racist drama queen like Dan Savage is. People like Dan Savage who are a part of the GLBT community who feel the need to put down, spout hatred towards, and exclude our own members of the GLBT community who happen to be either bisexual or trans are hypocrites and lower than pond… Read more »
Then there’s the fact that Savage does not actually give a rat’s a$$ about GLBT youth or teens-all while trashing bisexual adults and Transgender adults in his “advice” column and podcasts-but only started his whole “It gets better” project to self promote himself, get money/fame, and get a reality TV show on MTV.
If I recall, Dan Savage has come down on HIV+ gay men who put ejaculate their semen into the orifices of their partners without ever telling them about their status. If you are genuinely stupid, that makes him anti people-with-HIV.
As for his alleged biphobia, I can vouch for the exact same experience as Dan’s; the majority of guys I have encountered who claim to be “bi” seemingly have very little interest in women, but have a passionate interest in insisting that they are “bi.”
You just compared a mainstream pundit who happens to disagree with you to Fred Freakin Phelps.
You have a bright career ahead of you at Fox News.
Nice tv ad with Dan Savage!
I noticed that the flag hanging behind Savage in the photo is hanging with the blue field on the wrong side. The stars in the blue field should be in the upper left corner, not the upper right, when the flag is hung vertically..
Was this a conscious move to appeal to the closeted patriots out there to write in, or was it to inflame the patriotic closet cases out there?
Wait a minute, why am I writing in…..?
Back in the days before everybody in my generation started dying, we HAD lots of men like Dan as spokesmen for our community. They were in every reporter’s “Golden Rolodex”, and they were perfectly articulate, opinionated, and able to speak for us all. Then, everything went to hell when AIDS struck us down. Nowadays, a lot goes IN to HRC and similar groups, but very little actually comes OUT. Everyone is so bound up in “But wait – I haven’t finished sharing my FEELINGS on the topic”. It’s committee-think. Nobody is empowered to make Executive Decisions on our behalf, largely… Read more »
Dear Mr Savage, you are boring. Why not use your power to push or encourage other spokesmen to speak out. Another bitchy gay man ragging on his own community is something we don’t need. Yaaawn! , I recommend that you start your own group. I certainly would support it. Every little bit helps and it definitely better than yet another one of us thinking being “brutally honest” is an excuse for doing something positive.
“Hey, you boring bitchy man, start a gay activism group and you’ll have my complete support”.
What?
I effing heart Dan Savage. He has wonderful, dead-on advice most of the time (I can’t agree always, can I?… well, maybe… but then there was the get-him-to-start-drunk-driving advice…) that encourages us to be more open, honest people.
And, like him, I sometimes think 85% of the people calling his show either a) need someone else other than their friends to tell them X Y or Z, or b) are idiots. I am glad to hear he does bang his head on the desk. Sometimes I want to when I listen to his podcast too.