I don't understand what the last caller's point was. So women should be free to dress up slutty every day of the year, but not Halloween? Else they might be judged by her for succumbing to the pressure/using it as an excuse? You can critique the pressure on women to dress up slutty for Halloween, but you can't really say you support women dressing up slutty every day of the year but you have a problem with them using Halloween as an excuse to dress slutty.

@2: It seems a lot of people have difficulty separating criticism of social institutions from criticisms of individuals subject to those institutions (both in making critiques and interpreting critiques made by others). WHY do most women who dress 'slutty' (not entirely sure what that means, ever, but whatever) do so? Because of a social system that privileges women on the basis of appearance, and specifically the degree to which their appearance/physical presentation conforms to beauty norms (including sexual self-objectification as a beauty norm). This coercive structure is extremely problematic, and we should be encouraging both men and women to resist buying into it. That said, it's absurd to criticize people who, for whatever reason, are not in a position to resist or subvert those norms completely, all the time. At the very least, people usually need jobs in order to earn money in order to survive. As it stands, the USA has no federal laws against firing someone for not wearing 'nice' enough clothing (or, for that matter, 'slutty' enough clothing, though that one could arguably cross the line into sexual harassment, depending on how it's framed) or being pretty enough, though some states do. The effect is that workers (usually women) can be under intense pressure to conform to beauty/physical-presentation norms in order to be able to hold a job. When one is taking people to task for doing so, on is basically arguing that (some) people should starve instead of conforming to these particular social norms, which is pretty fucked-up.

That said, I think it's entirely legitimate to ask people to at least think about why they do the things they do and what kind of social systems might be motivating those behaviors (nobody wears anything "just because I like it" - there's a REASON you like it, there's a REASON it makes you feel good or pretty, and that reason is a problematic system of social norms). They can then make informed decisions, and if they are in a position to challenge problematic norms without severe consequences, I think it's appropriate to encourage people to do that (men and women both - and men are usually in better positions to do so).

So, re: dressing 'slutty' on Halloween, for anyone who like to do so: Why are you dressing 'slutty'? What are the social impacts of that behavior? Are there any problematic ones? Are there ways to achieve the same goals (e.g. feeling pretty, attracting social attention, attracting sexual attention, challenging uptight norms that police female sexuality) that don't involve the problems associated with dressing 'slutty'? Are there problems associated with the alternatives, and are those problems better or worse than those associated with dressing 'slutty'? I'm actually sympathetic to the caller's point (she isn't actually saying people shouldn't dress 'slutty' on Halloween, she's saying they should do it whenever if they like to do so and not ONLY on Halloween in order to dodge social sanction for challenging norms), and the issues at play here are WAY more complicated that either the positions "showing skin is always sexualizing and therefore bad!" or "showing skin is always sex-positive and feminist!" acknowledge.

I always bring in my water bottle with me when I bike as I live in a neighborhood where anything not nailed down is stolen. Now I have a second and completely skanky reason to protectively clutch my water bottle to my bosom wherever I go. Thank you, PSA Dan!

Also, I've had a woman maul the hell out of my lips. They were bruised, swollen, and scabbed in multiple places where she had broken the skin the next day (and for a couple days after that). It was hot at the time, though the aftermath was too painful to be something I'd want to do again. Some people dig biting as a part of sex - it's common enough that we created an entire constellation of mythical figures around it in the form of vampires.

Dan. Dan. Dan. Dan. Shhhhhhh.
It's gonna be OK.
Stop paying attention to the outliers, especially when they're national-level products of highly arbitrary Likely Voter screens, promoted to make this race appear closer than it is. Registered voter polls are more accurate predictors of presidential elections.

Ignore the propaganda and remember to stroke the furry wall.

@3 Wait...you want men to stop enjoying the sight of beautiful women? @_@ At that point, I tl:dr'd.

I agree with 8 that exploding dick guy has had his dick explode before. I wonder whether he maybe has a very tight foreskin? I know people who have had bleeding during sex as a result of this.

Also, I'd like to think that lots of straight people are celebrating Pride, but maybe it's possible that one or both members of mixed-sex couples who celebrate Pride are actually bi?

Dan, Nancy & ARTSY (At Risk Tech Savvy Youth)...
I love you all. Have been listening since the beginning and a dedicated reader before god invented the podcast...

This Halloween episode (and that one from last year that was closer to Xmas, but was still full of "horror" stories) was kind of lame. I'm hoping that this is a tradition that is forgotten... soon. Just listen to the self-absorbed caller who was beside herself when her dude bled from his dick and blamed her. Yep, he's probably an asshole, but he's better off without her. She was the most horrifying thing about this podcast. I found myself not giving a flying fuck about the callers who had to deal with blood or scat or whatever. Horror stories for Halloween is a great idea in theory, but it doesn't translate to podcast land in the same way as people's real problems do.
It was a great experiment that failed. Move on.

#10 is a killjoy. I hope the tradition continues for years to come!

The ants dude sounded really turned on... :S

Re:Ants- I was living in Texas for a while. Down there there are tons of fire ants, which are drawn to water. My boyfriend left a glass of water at the foot of the bed one night (his new apartment with just mattress on the floor for the bed) and we woke up in the middle of the night with fire ants crawling all over us. He got bitten on his dick several times and I still have a scar from one on my leg from one.

A friend of our left half a chocolate Easter bunny on his night stand when he went out. He came home drunk at 3am and took a bite of the bunny without noticing that the thing was covered in fire ants.

Pretty much one long eww-fest from beginning to end. Didn't enjoy this one all that so very much, thank you. Funny or scary might be fun, but gross, no not really.

Okay, ant guy thought he was Vincent Price ... was a little creeped out at his voice more than the actual story. Ants appearing is more disgusting than scary.

I'm going to side with "kill joy" #10 - I enjoy listening to Dan give advice/knock some sense into people more than strangers (sometimes badly) recount gross stories.

#16, the plumbing one was mildly amusing. Otherwise, SO. MUCH. BLOOD. AND. SHIT. Sorry, hearing about people getting bloodily if not seriously injured during sex just doesn't do it for me at all. I actually had to turn it off because I was headed for dinner.

I loved this episode! I am sharing it with my friends!

Yeah, quit harping against this episode. Pervs deserve one episode a year that allows them to express their love of gross sex stories, and Halloween just happens to be the perfect outlet. Pervoween!

This episode was hilarious. Can't wait for next year!

I lost my virginity to a right-wing nut job...Well, over twenty years ago at college, and she wasn't a right-wing nut job at the time. She was a bisexual radical feminist who made no bones about chasing me. Several years later, I met her former roomie on the subway. The roomie told me that this woman had gone ultra-orthodox Jewish and was pumping out the kids. She was still friends with roomie, but refused to talk about anything that happened at college due to embarrasment. More recently, I came across her facebook account, where she describes herself as a "Glen Beck-loving tea party wingnut." She actually lists "An American Carole" as one of her favorite movies! So the morale of the the story is that even the most free spirits can turn into horrible monsters of oppression. (I'm still the big lefty who supports gay rights I was then, by the way.)

I had a similar ant problem when I was living in San Francisco. At the time I was living in a basement apartment with a bad kitchen so I never cooked or ate there so had no idea that there could be a bug problem. Luckily I was friends with the landlord so had access to the nicer kitchen upstairs. One night I baked some brownies for a work potluck. They were still warm when I loaded them into the tupperware so I left lid cracked open when I placed them on my dresser in my bedroom. When I woke up the next morning there was a river of ants stretching from the crappy basement kitchen I never use, down the hall, across my room to the box of brownies. It was so gross. So I definitely think the caller's story is plausible.

This episode was way more gross than scary. Maybe my memory is fuzzy, but I recall last year's being better.

This episode was the best. I writhed, I squealed, I covered my eyes, I sent it to my coolest friends. Fuck the haters, it's only once a year