Dan Savage on Slog
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Savage Love SL Letter of the Day: Six Months of Vanilla Sex
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 5:37 PM
I need your help. I used to have an awesome adventurous sex life with my partner, which has slowly devolved into really, really terrible sex as of late.I’m 30-year-old woman and have been with my partner for the last 4 years. We got together through a mutual interest in pegging. I love guys who crossdress, and while this was new to him, he really got into it. We shared fantasies about threesomes of various kinds, though nothing has eventuated yet. We’ve done lots of light bondage and S&M.
In the last year he went through a rough patch and put on some weight. He pretty much stopped dressing up, because while it used to make him feel sexy now it just makes him feel bad about his weight. Picking up people for threesomes is off the table because he wants to lose weight and feel more confident first. We are having a lot less sex because he doesn’t feel sexy. He told me that while he was happy with the kinky stuff in the past, but now it makes him feel bad. Like he’s not enough for me as he is, because there’s always some element of fantasy in the stuff that gets me off.
So he wants to have only vanilla sex for a while, to prove that I can be just as attracted to him without any of the kinky stuff. I enjoy vanilla sex with him but the crossdressing stuff gets me noticeably more hot and bothered than the other stuff. I can’t change that. So I’m unhappy because the things I enjoy are being phased out, he’s unhappy because with all this extra pressure the vanilla sex isn’t working, and it makes him feel worse about himself, and the sex is getting progressively worse and worse.
Can you help me find a way out of this mess Dan? Apart from “he should lose weight,” which he is but progress is slow. It makes me feel awful that what I want makes my partner feel worse about himself, but I really miss taking him out dancing in a cute dress, then coming home and fucking his ass, and just generally being adventurous and having heaps of fun sex.
Depression Ruins Erotic Success Story
My response after the jump…
Homo More Marriage Equality News
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 12:28 PM
Efforts to strip same-sex couples of their right to wed failed today in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Homo Marriage Equality Activists In New York City...
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 12:16 PM
...are planning a protest designed to drive home the absurdity of denying marriage licenses to gays and lesbians. Same-sex couples are going to apply for marriage licenses this Friday morning at the City Marriage Bureau in New York and, after their applications are rejected, one opposite-sex couple—a gay man and a lesbian—will apply for and receive a marriage license. Here's the plan for the action this Friday in NYC:
A gathering of same-sex marriage equality proponents for a press conference and rally in the park opposite the bureau; The application—and subsequent rejection—of several same-sex couples hoping to obtain a marriage license inside of the bureau; The application—and subsequent approval—of a lesbian and gay man, whom according to New York State law may legally marry each other, for a marriage license; and a significant act of civil disobedience to rival the lunch-counter sit-ins of the 1960s, in which black Americans asserted their rights of equal treatment by society at large.
If part of that plan sounds familiar—a gay man and a lesbian getting a marriage license?—it's because a co-worker and I did it here back in 2004...
The clerk called over her manager, a nice older white man, who explained that Amy and Sonia couldn't have a marriage license. So I asked if Amy and I could have one—even though I'm gay and live with my boyfriend, and Amy's a lesbian and lives with her girlfriend. We emphasized to the clerk and her manager that Amy and I don't live together, don't love each other, and don't plan to have kids together, and that we're going to go on living and sleeping with our same-sex partners after we get married. So could we still get a marriage license? "Sure," the license-department manager said, "If you've got $54, you can have a marriage license."...
Amy and Sonia and I didn't show up at the county building last Friday because we were planning to sue. We came to make a point about the absurdity of our marriage laws. Amy can't marry Sonia, I can't marry Terry—why? Because the sanctity of marriage must be protected from the queers! But Amy and I can get a marriage license and enter into a sham marriage, if we care to, a joke marriage, one that I promise you won't produce children. And we can do this with the state's blessing—why? Because one of us is a man and one of us is a woman. Who cares that one of us is a gay man and one of us is a lesbian?
So marriage has to be protected from the homos—unless, of course, the homos marry each other.
The New York activists—a new group called Queer Rising—is also planning acts of civil disobedience for Friday. I'm all for it. I'm all for gay men and lesbians obtaining marriage licenses to demonstrate the absurdity of bans on "gay marriage" and I've already called for acts of civil disobedience. It's time, people.
Chow How's That Hopey, Changey Stuff Working Out For Childhood Obesity?
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 10:39 AM
The problem isn't what we're feeding our kids. The problem is what we're feeding ourselves. Adults are reluctant to make "better, healthy choices" for their kids because they don't want to make better, healthier choices for themselves. Kids aren't going to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, and opt for skim milk or water with meals, so long as mom and dad are sitting there scarfing down bags of chips and sucking down Cokes.
And people aren't going to make better choices so long as we're subsidizing the production of cheap, sugary, crap snack-and-fast foods. Soda should be taxed like alcohol and snack-and-fast foods should be taxed like cigarettes, i.e. not so heavily taxed that they're completely out of reach (people still drink, people still smoke), but taxed heavily enough that people can't afford to live on corn syrup and crap.
Anyway, the White House launched its "fight against childhood obesity" today—and somewhere Sarah Palin is preparing two-pronged attack—a Tweet and a Facebook status update—denouncing the White House's efforts as a hopey, changey socialist plot to indoctrinate our children and destroy our country by preventing American children from developing adult-onset diabetes in their early teens like God intended. And when the predictable and imbecilic attack comes the Democrats will stand there helplessly with their dicks in their hands.
News Now That You're Not Fooling Anyone...
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 9:46 AM
...and now that everyone knows where you are, and now that everyone knows what your new name is, and now that you're granting ambush interviews to KIRO News...
...maybe now you can let your hair grow back? The shaved head and the scraggly beard isn't much a disguise, Alex, and the look doesn't suit you.
Politics / TV Palin 2012: Abandon All Hope That Anything Will Ever Change
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 9:30 AM
City While We're Buying Up Property on Capitol Hill...
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 9:20 AM
...to build new urban parks, can we please start making plans to build—and then actually build—a skatepark in one of these new parks? People who live on Capitol Hill who skateboard—and people who live on Capitol Hill whose, ahem, children skateboard—don't have a goddamn skatepark. Capitol Hill is the most densely populated neighborhood in the city, lots of skateboarders live on Capitol Hill, lots of kids who skateboard live on Capitol Hill, and Capitol Hill's skateboarders shouldn't have to schlep—or be schlepped—to Seattle Center or Greenlake to get to a skatepark.
The space right behind the Seattle Asian Art Museum isn't particularly lovely, is in shadow for most of the day, and is usually deserted. How about there? How about building a half-acre skatepark in the seven-acre Cal Anderson Park?
Homo Straight Up
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 8:37 AM
So... it turns out that the federal judge overseeing the Prop 8 trial in San Francisco is... gay. The haters at NOM aren't happy because as everyone knows only straight people can be impartial when it comes to issues like gay marriage because straight people are scrupulously fair at all times, of course, and if we've learned anything from the Prop 8 trial so far, geez, it's that no straight person has ever harbored an irrational, anti-gay bias.
Monday, February 8, 2010
TV RuPaul's Drag Race Episode 2
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 9:40 PM
This is your Stranger Slog Absolut Interior Illusions Joanna Fabrics Olive Garden open thread, people! And may the best commenter... WIN! My only comment this week: we spend so much time with the girls as boys in the workroom that I can't tell who's who when they're girls.
Discuss.
Savage Love SL Letter of the Day: The Toilet Brush Off
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 5:57 PM
My boyfriend and I have agreed to abide by whatever decision you make. Resolve this dispute for us.We've been together for nine months. We are gay. Neither of us is hung up on monogamy so that's not the issue. We live in a college town. We both found jobs here after we graduated so we stayed. Since his sophomore year my boyfriend has had an "arrangement" with an older man, a professor at the university. Did I say older? I meant old. We are in our mid-20s, this man is in his late 60s. There is no sex. The old man comes to my boyfriend's apartment once a week and cleans it. Does his laundry too. Washes his dishes. He actually pays my boyfriend for the privilege of cleaning his apartment. It's not much, $50, and the old perv says it's for my boyfriend's "time," since a part of their deal is that my boyfriend has to be in the apartment while the old perv cleans it because that's what the old perv gets off on. He's particularly pervy about how he cleans my boyfriend's bathroom. Dan, the old perv cleans my boyfriend's toilet bowl with his own toothbrush, which he uses to brush his teeth the rest of the week!
There is no sex. (Presumably the old perv goes home and beats off after cleaning my boyfriend's apartment.) None of this would matter if—you had to see this coming—my boyfriend and I weren't talking about moving in together. I want this "arrangement" to stop. I don't feel comfortable using a toilet that a man old enough to be my grandfather cleaned with his toothbrush. This has been going on for six years. The old perv has been cleaning up after my boyfriend since he was living in student housing. My boyfriend says likes the clean apartment more than he needs the money and that's true—at least it's true now—but I say all good things must come to an end and if I'm moving in we'll have to clean up after ourselves or pay a real cleaning lady to come around once a week, like regular people.
But we agreed to leave it up to you. Dan: The old perv stays? The old perv goes?
Toothbrushes Are For Teeth
My response after the jump.
Religion Stephen Fry v. the Catholic Church
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 1:14 PM
The Intelligence² Debate - Stephen Fry (Unedited)
Uploaded by Xrunner17. - Check out other Film & TV videos.
Guess who wins?
Homo / News Parents, Not Controversies
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 10:19 AM
Gay couples with children exist. And many gay couples with children send their kids to public schools—schools that gay couples, and gay singles, help to fund through property taxes. Acknowledging the existence of families headed by same-sex couples no more "teaches homosexuality" than acknowledging the existence of opposite-sex couples "teaches heterosexuality."
In the diversity-embracing, socially progressive cocoon of Oak Park, RoiAnn Phillips and Kelly Fondow are raising Eva, a precocious 5-year-old. Eva's school has other kids with gay parents. Her kindergarten classmates have never shied from asking Phillips or Fondow: "Eva has two moms, which one are you?"But the couple got a quick reality check when an Oak Park elementary school came under criticism last month. What Beye Elementary saw as an effort to prevent anti-gay slurs in the classroom turned into a tug-of-war over whether teachers should discuss same-sex relationships with children as early as kindergarten.... [For] conservatives, including three families at Beye, it's not a matter of looking down on gay families. They agree no kids should feel unwelcome or bullied in school. What they don't agree with is introducing the words "gay" or "lesbian" or "homosexual" at the elementary level.
"We do not want any sexuality, homosexuality or heterosexuality, discussed in the classroom for K to 5," said Margaret Brown, a parent at Beye, which has about 10 gay families. "It's inappropriate, and it's not (the school's) place to tell our children what is morally right or wrong on this controversial topic."
Sorry, bigots, but you're going to lose this one. Gays and lesbians are not "controversial topics." We are people and some of us are in long-term relationships and some of us have kids and some of our kids are going to school with some of your kids and acknowledging the existence of families like ours does not constitute an age-inappropriate discussion about human sexuality. Admit it: what you really want is the fraudulent right to raise your children in complete ignorance of homosexuality—in complete ignorance of families headed by same-sex couples—because you're worried that your hatred and bigotry may not survive the exposure to actual gay human beings and our families. Sorry, haters, but raising your children in complete ignorance of same-sex couples and gay and lesbian individuals is no longer possible. Well, it's not possible in public schools. There are plenty of private Christian schools that you can send your children to where they'll never be exposed to families headed by "controversial topics."
Religion Youth Pastor Watch, Headline of the Day, O They Will Know We Are Christians...
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 9:26 AM
Ex-youth pastor tried to hire hit man to kill girls he was accused of molestingA former Greenwood Salvation Army youth pastor has been charged with trying to hire a hit man to kill three teenage girls with whom he was accused of having sex. Johnson County prosecutors who charged 30-old Jonathan James Hartman with conspiracy to commit murder Thursday say he also tried to have killed a child of one of the victims, whom he believed to be his. Court documents allege that Hartman offered a fellow inmate $50,000 for the killings while he was being held in Johnson County Jail awaiting trial on charges of child molesting and sexual misconduct with a minor.
Politics Rush Limbaugh Is a Big, Fat Exception
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 8:40 AM
When can you use the word "retard"? You can use it when you're being satirical. For instance, it's not okay for Rahm Emanuel to say that liberal activists are "fucking retarded" in a private meeting because 1. that's mean and 2. he's a Democrat. But it is okay for Rush Limbaugh to describe a meeting between Emanuel and advocates for the developmentally disabled as “a retard summit at the White House," and to use the word "retard" forty times on his show because, um... I'll let Sarah Palin explain it...
"[Limbaugh] was using satire... I didn’t hear Rush Limbaugh calling a group of people whom he did not agree with ‘f-ing retards’ and we did know that Rahm Emanuel has been reported, did say that. there is a big difference there."
So... it's okay to call someone a retard if you're making fun of them, if you're being satirical, but it's not okay to call someone a retard if you simply disagree with that person. Now the allowable use of "retard" could get complicated, of course, if you're using "retard" satirically to mock someone with whom you disagree. Better to play it safe and stick to leotarded.
UPDATE: Rahm apologizes...
Politics Krugman: The Polish Joke...
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 8:27 AM
...is on us.
We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic. What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.
Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.
Read the whole thing.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Hetero Every Child Deserves a Mother and a Father
Posted by Dan Savage on Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 11:13 AM
The war comes home:
A U.S. soldier has been accused of 'waterboarding' his four-year-old daughter because she couldn't recite the alphabet. Joshua Tabor admitted to police that he used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry. As his daughter 'squirmed' to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face—upwards—three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline. Tabor, 27, admitted to investigators that his daughter was terrified of water and he had deliberately chosen the punishment.
It happened in Tacoma, Washington, while the girl's mother looked on. Thanks, I think, to Slog tipper Scary Tyler Moore.
Politics Palin's Cheat Sheet
Posted by Dan Savage on Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 9:52 AM
Sarah Palin gave a speech to the tea party convention last night...
...and she had some crib notes on her hand: "Energy," "Budget Cuts," "Tax," "Lift American Spirits." Those are, it turned out, Palin's priorities should she decide to run for president—and it seems pretty clear that she is running for president—and she had to write them on her hand. Andrew Sullivan picked apart Palin's speech as the venom dripped from her mouth last night and you can read his take here, here, and here. It makes for pretty depressing/terrifying reading.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Events The 13th Annual Valentine's Bash—Now With Cupcake Royale's Deathcake!
Posted by Dan Savage on Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 3:01 PM
If you're single and bitter about your break-up, separation, divorce, de-slave-collaring ceremony—whatever—look around for a memento of that failed relationship and bring it to the Stranger's 13th Annual Valentine's Day Bash. Wedding rings, china, sex toys: bring your memento to Neumos on Saturday, February 13, tell your sad story to the cheering mob—they'll be cheering for you!—and then I will personally destroy your memento for you live onstage in a heart-mending ritual that will help you heal and move past your heartbreak. You will love again! And since the Bash this year is on Valentine's Day Eve, and since Neumos will be packed with other single people who are ready to laugh and date and have sex again, you could wind up with a date on Valentine's Day! Come to the Bash! And... since Valentine's Day just isn't Valentine's Day without chocolate, everyone who comes to the Bash with a memento to smash will receive a Cupcake Royale Deathcake. (The Stranger's resident sugar addict's review of the Deathcake is here.)
The Valentine's Day Bash goes down Saturday, February 13th, at Neumos (925 E. Pike). Doors at 8, show at 9:30. $6 advance, $8 at the door. And you can get your tickets in advance here.
Politics Was This On Slog Yesterday?
Posted by Dan Savage on Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 11:42 AM
Via TPM:
The red bars are the accelerating rate of job loss during President Bush's last year in office; the blue bars are the decelerating rate of job loss during President Obama's first year of office.
Savage Love Neologism Needed
Posted by Dan Savage on Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 11:10 AM
A "Savage Love" reader writes...
You know how sometimes men use their stream of piss to knock off pieces of fecal matter from the side of the toilet bowl? It seems like there should be a term for that. Is there, perhaps, a politician?
Suggestions?
Hetero Every Child Deserves a Mother and a Father
Posted by Dan Savage on Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 9:09 AM
Turkish police have recovered the body of a 16-year-old girl they say was buried alive by relatives in an "honour" killing carried out as punishment for talking to boys. The girl, who has been identified only by the initials MM, was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.... Her father and grandfather are said to have been arrested and held in custody pending trial. It is unclear whether they have been charged. The girl's mother was arrested but was later released. A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried.
Politics Tea Party Crowd Believes That Only Good Spellers Should Vote
Posted by Dan Savage on Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 9:00 AM
Ahem:
The opening night speaker at the Tea Party convention suggested a return to a "literacy test" to protect America from presidents like Obama—a segregation-era method employed by southern US states to keep blacks from voting. In his speech Thursday to attendees, former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo invoked the loaded pre-civil rights era buzzword, saying that President Barack Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country." Southern states used literacy tests as part of an effort to deny suffrage to African American voters prior to Johnson-era civil rights laws.
And Tancredo added...
Tancredo.... complained that "people who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama."
Sadly for Tancredo facts can be inconvenient things...
Another group that's key to [Obama's victory], college graduates, represented a majority of the U.S. electorate for the first time this year. Obama carried college-educated voters 53 percent to 45 percent for McCain.
Does the Tea Party crowd really want to deny the vote to people who can't spell?
Friday, February 5, 2010
At Large There's Nothing Better Than...
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 9:15 PM
...a cozy little hotel bar when it's cold outside and you're far from home and missing your man. And a briskly efficient cocktail waitress with a Polish accent is always a tonic.
Savage Love The Stranger's Annual Valentine's Day Bash...
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 3:40 PM
...is a blast.
The 13th Annual Valentine's Day Bash goes down Saturday, February 13th, at Neumos (925 E. Pike). Doors at 8, show at 9:30. $6 advance, $8 at the door. Get your tickets in advance here.
Savage Love No "SL Letter of the Day" Today...
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 12:45 PM
...because I'm answering questions all afternoon over in Questionland.
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