Comments

1
Unless you've covered by Nationwide.
2
I so needed this laugh today. Thanks Dan.

I have an image of a butt plug as projectile, in flight, soaring across a room. It needs to be animated, possibly in a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Tom farts the plug out, nailing Jerry (shitty little mouse he is) right in the head, taking him out.

Thanks for the laugh Dan. Think I'll go try this for myself, see if it works.
3
Such a ghastly question from a straight man at a dinner party is, if not homophobic, quite rude.
4
I know that the normal frothy mix of lube and fecal matter is called santorum, and that it is the second-most-unpleasant thing I can think of called santorum.

But what would be the word for the frothy mix of lube, fecal matter, blood, brains, bone and muscle that would be the result of a stuck butt-plug blocking a fart and leading the insertee to explode?

"Oh my God. I heard a bang and I walked in, and there was just Huckabee everywhere. On the walls, on the floor, on the ceiling. Just Huckabee. It was horrible, officer."
5
@3, right on! It incenses me that straight people think they have the right to ask gay people intimate questions. They really see us as a lower form of life, sort of zoo animals to be studied and interrogated. I will bet you that they would never ask a straight woman/couple that question.

Dan is different. It's his job. I, on the other hand, have absolutely no wish to be interrogated. Occasionally I will offer up snippets of my life when it's in context, but I do not go to straight people and ask them if they butt-fuck and I expect the same in return.
6
@3; @5. I'm straight. Lots of my friends are not.

And they've asked me plenty of questions just as, or more, disgusting than the butt-plug one. I do not think they are heterophobic. I think they are funny.

Good friends at drunk dinner parties say disgusting things. And that is good. Disgusting humour is what makes the world go round.

7
@4 I believe the startled ghost left behind would be referred to as a "phantorum".
8
@6 agreed. Isn't it better to know what people are truly thinking? This PC thing in Seattle isn't about politeness, it's quiet judging and totally dishonest IMO.
9
What I don’t get is why gay men would be more likely to know. If you have a husband who can fuck you in the ass without buying extra gear, wouldn’t you have less call for butt plugs than if you have a wife who can’t?
10
@7 - excellent! Thank you!
11
@8 - Yes, thank you. And the letter-writer clearly wasn't offended.

And it's not just a Seattle thing. I'm in Sydney, and this sort of outrage (!) happens here too.

Honestly, there's being PC and there's being humourless. Being PC is good. Being humourless isn't.

Or does this make me humourlessnessphobic? Am I discriminating against the miserable-bastard community?

12
Nobody said this person was a friend. He was just somebody at a dinner party. I am up for disgusting jokes and relish them and even extremely un-pc jokes in a safe environment, but some virtual stranger at a dinner party asking me questions like that? Hell no.
13
@12 - "Nobody said this person was a friend.".

No. And nobody said he wasn't.

I'm really quite uncomfortable with the assumptions you're making about straight people here and in point 5. We are, it would appear, all boorish and insensitive arseholes who couldn't possibly have good friends who are gay. We'd study and interrogate gay people like zoo animals, and ask them questions we'd never ask straight people, but we'd never have a gay person as an actual friend.

You're making lazy assumptions about people based on their sexuality. That's what the rest of us have been fighting against for years.

14
@9 Butt plugs are a great warmup for anal sex, as well as fun by themselves. Definitely not a substitute for anal sex, for this lady at least.
15
Thank you, #7 droctopu5
16
I think if you need to fart while wearing a buttplug, you should set up a target first. If you get a bullseye when the buttplug shoots across the room. You win a prize. That prize? A buttplug.
17
@13 I do not refer to my straight friend(s) as " a straight man". I would say "my straight friend". Do you not get that???
18
@13, finally, stop pretending you're some sort of ally. I have checked your comments.
19
@3, @5, et al: You have no context of where the dinner party conversation had been up to this point, how drunken, how dirty, how off-colour. I think if a complete stranger came up with this question out of the blue, with zero prior context, it's Miss Manners who would be getting the letter about it, not Dan. Lighten up. And find friends who throw more interesting dinner parties, the ones you go to are obviously dead dull.
20
@19 - exactly. Well said.

@4 - I love it! Although I'm glad there isn't much Huckabee outside a war zone.
21
As a frequent self-inserter of butt plugs of all manner of girths, I can tell you that it depends on that bulbous end. Try keeping one of those baby beginner plugs in after a hearty meal of navy been soup and popcorn, and you indeed run a high risk of creating a projectile.

A big plug - say the Tantus A-bomb, is not going to be intimidated into moving by some little fart. In my experience, just the act of getting something of that size in is going to scare away any rowdy little flatus that had big dreams of blowing out your sex toys.

Ribbed plugs give you the best shot at both retaining the plug and dispensing with that pesky methane - there is opportunity for bypass as the plug starts to move in response to the ever-increasing pressure.

I have never considering wearing one of the plugs as an accessory, as Dan thoughtfully mentions - although we do have a dinner party with some friends on Saturday. I'll ask my wife which one will go best with my jacket.
22
Ms Fan - The clue is that LW (barring editing) felt it imperative to supply Questioner's orientation rather than their degree of acquaintance. Therefore, not Miss Manners. I can think of one or two other non-straight columnists who tend to field a zero-context question of this sort more often than Mr Savage, but they lack his notoriety.

I'm more or less with you on the probable flow of the party, which I'll presume to be not of the sort that Carson or Lord Grantham would approve. (If this were Downton Abbey, I'd be Isobel.) And then I'll guess that there was just one of those #YesAllQueers moments when a straight person Goes Too Far. Maybe this particular straight person was a button-pusher; maybe it was pure accident.

And I'll grant for Mr 31 - NASPALT.
23
In my experience, when a straight friend asks you funny questions about gay sex or related topics, it's not homophobia, it's curiosity. 3 times out of 5 it will go from tell me to show me.
24
I believe the appropriate answer would have been "I don't know. You tell me. You seem to have thought about this subject a lot more than I ever had to."

Whenever a straight person asks a questions that you deem too personal/sexual/insensitive or somewhat homophobic, the only valid things to do IMO are a) answer with a question that is just as personal/sexual/insensitive or somewhat heterophobic, b) highlight to them (as above) how their question really only reflects their particular interests/obsessions/perversions and have nothing to do with you, or c) laugh.

Of course, life among humans would be much more pleasant generally if we didn't take such things so seriously. In that perspective, Dan's answer was perfect.

25
If he really wanted to know, he could find out for himself.
26
Is a butt plug an ornament, or a tool?

People with pierced ears wear ear rings even though they are inserted into their ears so choice of verb is confusing here. One uses a vibrater rather than wears it. So perhaps one uses a butt plug as well.

One doesn't wear a catheter, even though it is half in and half out. One also doesn't wear a leg bag to collect the urine from the catheter one uses a leg bag because being a medical device it is more of a tool.
27
I appreciate @21's response--I was thinking that a sphincter should be able to stretch just a bit more to pass the gas around the obstacle in question, but I guess I've never really investigated the obstacles in question in enough detail to really know.
28
I'm imagining a cartoon of an incensed JJinAus walking down a busy street being oppressed by every straight person asking intimate questions.

Oh straight people, will you just stop asking JJinAus personal questions all the damn time?
29
@17.
"I do not refer to my straight friend(s) as " a straight man". I would say "my straight friend". Do you not get that???"

No, I don't. I do not always feel the need to clarify whether someone is a friend or not, particularly in an e-mail which I'm writing when I'm still at the party and still drunk (which the grammar and terminology of the original letter would suggest).

@18
", finally, stop pretending you're some sort of ally. I have checked your comments. "

What? What comments have you seen that suggest I am not an ally?

I should make things clearer here. I am an ally of those who are discriminated against. I am an ally of people who fight for equality. I am an ally of my friends.

I will concede, I'm not an ally of you. I'm not an ally of people who support segregation. I'm not an ally of people who make generalisations about people based on their sexuality. I'm not an ally of humourless bastards who clearly don't have any friends. In fact, your username and the terms you use suggest worryingly to me that I may actually have been specifically not an ally of you when you were in a relationship with a friend of mine, but that's pure speculation.

But let's pretend that when you said I was not "an ally", you meant "not an ally of gay people". You say you've been through my posts to find evidence of this. I'd love to see the evidence. Do please tell me where in my comments I have shown myself not to be an ally. I'm intrigued.
30
aww come on. Let the guys determine their own sense of disdain at the question. We don't have to throw third person shame on the straight guy for asking the question. We weren't there... we don't know their relationship. And maybe .... must maybe ... asking a question is what happens right before learning.
31
This is precisely how the butt kazoo was invented.
32
@30 - yes, exactly. Thank you!

@31 - this sounds like the greatest invention in the history of humanity.
33
There has to be some way I can interpret every letter Dan answers so that someone is a villain right?
34
I think comment #24 has it right
35
@ 34 - Thanks!
36
Either option sounds like a lot of fun!
37
Yes to #4!
38
Many years ago there was a question in a lesser-known sex advice column about butt plugs. If I recall, the letter writer had heard that gay men have to wear buttplugs because their asses are prone to leaking from too much anal sex, and wanted to know if it was true. The word "buttplug" still makes me giggle inwardly sometimes, because I picture someone walking around all day with something like a bathtub plug in their ass.

This is one of my favourite Savage questions and answers of all time, perhaps not coincidentally.
39
echo @6 - allowable between good friends, really weird between acquaintances.
40
Even if they just met for the first time at the dinner party it’s not at all unusual for people to engage in escalating gross-out contests. You talk about the slime in gumbo, I talk about eating goat's-head soup and sucking the juice out of the teeth. You ask me a tasteless question about butt plugs, I reply with a reference to felching.

This may not be what’s going on at your end of the table but it’s not impossible that’s what’s going on at my end.
41
@40

...and this is why I always hope to be sat next to someone like you at a dinner party. Because that's the kind of dinner party that's really fun.

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