Dear Readers: It’s Sherman Alexie's birthday—happy birthday, Sherman!—and by some strange coincidence... it's my birthday too. And while I’m taking it easy today (just three flights), I don't want to deprive you of your daily dose of Savage Love. So here are two not-very-complicated questions pulled out of today's emailbag—queries I could answer quickly—and one listener response I wanted to share.—Dan

I've been reading your column for the last five years, coming from a conservative household it was like a breath of fresh air. Thanks for saying what needs to be said. I remember seeing a letter of the day or a column a while back where you had a list of intro to bondage books. I'd like to get a book or two for the boyfriend but I can't find the list and google isn't much help. The boyfriend is an engineer so when I said I wanted to be tied up and fucked, he said to get him a book.

Wanna Be His Bond Girl

P.S. I've looked around the internet and I have no idea where to start and as a poor college graduate, not a lot of extra cash floating around.

I recommend Two Knotty Boys Showing You The Ropes: A Step-by-Step, Illustrated Guide for Tying Sensual and Decorative Rope Bondage by Two Knotty Boys with photographs by Larry Utley (used copies available at Amazon for under $10), and The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage by Midori with photographs by Craig Morey (used copies available for under $15). There are also tons of videos online—including videos on YouTube—that can walk you through basic ties. Have fun!

Four years ago, I was hanging out/making out with the person who would later become my boyfriend. He said something I thought was weird as he was stripping my clothes off. It went something like, “Let's pretend you hate me, and I hate you, and we're fucking each other while imagining we're each someone else.” It was years ago, so I'm paraphrasing. But I remember that he said it in a really hot sexy way, because he's good at that. And at the time, I just thought "huh?".

I thought I did not really know him even well enough TO hate him at that point, and additionally we WERE having sex with other people, so despite his ability to make almost anything seem sexy, it did nothing for me. So I just kind of ignored it/kept making out at the time and he didn't say anything more. Nothing of the kind has come up in a make out session since. In fact, I totally forgot the whole thing.

Years later, I love and adore him, and feel like I know him a lot better. So, as I was falling asleep last night, I remembered this exchange from four years ago, and suddenly it clicked in my head that... maybe this actually WAS/IS a kink of his, and he was feeling me out to see how I responded? So what do you think? What's a girl to do? Is there some way I can introduce this again in a playful sexy way after all this time?

Haven't Got A Clue

PS - We both read your column (in fact, we talked about trying to be GGG on our second date) and we TRY to talk about sex too, often successfully, but also often awkwardly. But at least we try!

Why so shy? Just say, “Remember when you wanted to pretend we were hated each? But we were fucking anyway? While thinking about other people? I'd be up for trying that again.” Then see what he says.

I just got to the part of Savage Lovecast Magnum Episode 466 in which Kate Bornstein tells you that "gender spectrum" is no longer the approved phraseology because it's a binary. You suggested "gender jumble," which is funny, but I think we can continue to use geometrical metaphors to make sense of things. Let's look at adding one dimension at a time to our model of gender:

1. Gender Spectrum. One-dimensional. The Platonic Ideal of a spectrum is the number line, running from negative infinity to positive infinity. The gender spectrum, obviously, runs from male to female with androgynous in the middle at zero.

2. The Gender Plane or Gender Surface. Two-dimensional. The Platonic Ideal of a plane is the Cartesian plane with its X and Y axis. In the gender plane, each axis represents masculinity and femininity independently. For example, a person with positive amounts of femininity and negative amounts of masculinity falls in the "conventionally female" quadrant of the gender surface (personally, I find surface ). This two dimensional approach allows you to acknowledge that lots of people are mostly (or even aggressively) one gender but have some attributes of others. (The most commonly examples of this are in gayland - feminine gay men, butch lesbians - but straight people sometimes exhibit this too.)

Also, to please queer radicals, the two-dimensional model allows you to slice hairs the hairs needed to differentiate between agender people (neither masculine nor feminine; think: Pat from SNL) and androgynous people (both masculine and feminine: people with mishmashes of unmistakable elements of both male and female).

3. The Gender Space. Three-dimensional. The Platonic Ideal of a space is the Cartesian plane with an X, Y, and Z axis. I'm not entirely sure what we should put on the Z axis in the gender space model - perhaps queerness? I don't mean queer as in non-hetero sexual identity, but queer as in a way of presenting yourself to the world. For example, I'm gay and pretty conventionally masculine with just a few feminine traits (e.g. too many shoes for my own good). But my gender identity as a man is aggressively conventional. I am very un-queer gay dude. By contrast, I seem to come across a lot of gay trans porn in which the dudes are very queer: lots of edgy tattoos, weird haircuts, piercings, etc. They are aggressively announcing to the world that their body is theirs to modify and fuck you if you think it's your business.

Basically, I think this third axis of gender would be useful helping to differentiate between people who do their gender (wherever it falls on the two dimensional male-female surface) in a queer or conventional fashion. One more example from drag: glamour queens (conventional femininity taken to ridiculous heights) vs. trash queens (very queer androgyny). Actually, maybe these are both queer in their own way... At a certain point, each additional axis you add to the gender model provides diminishing marginal returns and makes your model of gender more cumbersome, which brings us to...

4. The Gender Hyperspace. A hyperspace is any geometric representation of space with four or more dimensions. Human eyeballs can't actually perceive a real hyperspace. We only can see in 3 dimensions. I think the fourth axis in the "gender hyperspace" is perfect to characterize those gender radicals / special snowflakes whose gender identities are too complex for us normies to comprehend. Let's call it the snowflake axis.

If "hyperspace" brings up too many associations with SciFi (think: traveling through a wormwhole or faster than the speed of light), then you could use "hypercube," which is the four-dimensional equivalent of a cube in hyperspace.

Conclusions:

"The gender plane" doesn't quite roll off the tongue; it needs one more syllable and people may confuse it for an airplane.

"The gender surface" or "the gender space" seem like good candidates, depending on how complex you want your model of gender. Plus, they both still start with the letter s, bringing up a mental association with "spectrum."

"The gender space" has the benefit of using a word that is ready thrown around a lot in PoMo land (everything is a fucking "space," isn't it?)

"The gender hyperspace/hypercube" is a good phrase for when you feel flabbergasted by special gender snowflakes (or you like them, but just want to give them a hard time) (E.G. "...Male, female, or whatever corner you inhabit in the multi-dimensional mindfuck of the gender hypercube...")

Hope This Helps

Considering how the conversation about gender gets more jargon-laden, more opaque, and more impenetrable with each passing semester, HTH, anything that makes the gender convo more jargon-laden, more opaque, and more impenetrable would probably be regarded as helpful by the folks at the center of this particular conversational hyperspace. So… well done, HTH!