Originally posted Oct 31, 2014.

While waiting for my lunch to be prepared at Shiraz, I casually opened up Leo Magazine and stumbled on to your page.

What a way to ruin my day. Your advice is the epitome of stupidity and foolishness. Your counsel to the parents concerning their kid who is putting tampons and other objects up his ass makes me want to ram a steel post right up your ass until it hits your brain—perhaps then you'll be able to think with some sense. Your complete disregard for common sense, history, traditional and sensible values, ethics, and morals is despicable. Either you are not a parent yourself, or you are a spineless, enabling jellyfish of a parent who doesn't have a clue how to raise a child right.

Let me summarize your "advice":

1. It's OK that your teenage boy likes to put objects up his butt.

2. As a parent, you have no right to ask him about it in a confrontational way. (Further added to by your smarmy, derogatory use of "POPS" throughout the article)

3. You should not force him to have to lie; instead you should buy him a sex toy/butt plug object thing (which you describe in grisly detail with your "open and enlightened," smarmy tone) for him to carry on his pleasures.

4. And a final, universal objective statement: "Buying sex toys for kids is a hurdle most parents can't clear." The implication is that this hurdle ought to be cleared and that parents ought to be able to get over this!

Here's what your advice should have been:

Son, this is highly disturbing, and highly inappropriate behavior. Not only this, Son, it is highly aberrant, abnormal, and to be confidently politically incorrect: STRANGE. Neither I nor you mother have raised you this way. We do not approve of this. All the soldiers who have fought and died for your freedom in the last century did not have your personal "ass fucking freedom" in mind. They fought to give you the freedom to be a man who lives right and flies straight. A man who knows how to live with courage, honesty, and dignity; a man who will contribute positively to his family and to his fellow man. Character, Son, is what a man does in the dark—what a man does when no one else is looking. It is very important that your inner life is as ordered and pure as your outer life. We should not permit an internal heart of secrets and impropriety, while our external life appears appropriate and ordered.

I'll give you three choices, Son:

1. Don't ever do this again. Period.

2. Move out.

3. I'll help you find a sensible counselor who will reinforce what is right but who will also listen and guide you through this struggle.
Which option are you going to go with?

Now, let me ask you, Mr. Savagelove: Whom will the child thank in twenty years? The Dad who stood up to him with a backbone and demanded that he shape up? Or you, the deviant who suggested buying an ass-probe for this young man and saying, "Have fun!" You, the deviant who turned him loose down the slope of fetishes and other perverted behaviors?

I can only hope your pride does not prevent you from seeing the truth and common sense of what I am saying. Or that your pride and stupidity do not prevent you from recognizing the beauty and value of common sense.

Thank you for your time,

Jonathan

Dear Jonathan,

I was putting things up my butt when I was that kid's age. I'm really glad my parents didn't find out and throw me out of the house.

Freedom,

Dan

p.s. Putting things up your butt is fun. You should try it.

I'm sorry for you, Dan. I can see that you're just the "man" to give sound advice to the public—and to all of the the teens and young people in coffee shops and restaurants who casually pick up a Leo. Perhaps if your parents had kicked you out, you'd be on to something better than dispensing atrocious advice.

Jonathan

P.S. Because you and a few others put things up their butt and call it fun is hardly a convincing argument. Gee, let me go try it right now. NOT. I take joy in reason, Dan. Having sound sense is a hell of a lot more joyful than titillating the inside of my colon.

You put "man" in quotes to suggest I'm not a man? Zing! You got me! Real men don't put things in their butts! Because real men... are afraid of their own assholes.

Can send you a copy of this book: Anal Pleasure and Health: A Guide for Men, Women and Couples. Reading Dr. Jack Morin's excellent book would allow you to reason more reasonably about anal sex and anal stimulation.

Manly,

Dan

You can find anything out there in the world of man, Dan. Just because one can find something out there—like a manual on how to overthrow your government with simple explosives or a manual on poop eating and its associated pleasures or child pornography or bestiality, etc.—does not mean that someone should explore it.

Jonathan

But just so I'm clear: you think that parents should throw their kids out of the house if they disapprove of their masturbatory habits/routines/props? Discarded kids wind up on the streets and many are exploited, some wind up engaging in survival prostitution.

Manually,

Dan

No. Actually, if you could catch my drift, that option is presented to the child almost tongue-in-cheek: almost no teenager would choose to give up shelter, food, support, etc. to live on the street. And no good parent would ever want to kick their child out of the house. It's said with great firmness and intense sternness so that the teenager understands how serious the mom/dad are about his behavior. It conveys to the child that some things are right and some things are wrong. There are clear boundaries and lines that ought to be observed and respected for the health and preservation of a family and of a society. In a sense you're showing your son three options, but there are in effect two being presented.

Do you see the value of those hard, challenging teachers you had along the way. Who really cared about you though you did not realize it then? Tough love is true love.

Which is why I'm writing to you today.

Jonathan

Thanks for the tough love, Jonathan.

But people have been putting things in their butts for as long as there have been people, butts, and things. So if things going in butts were a threat to civilization—a threat to the family and to society—then civilization never would've gotten off the ground. Because things-in-butts came first. (Click here, scroll down—dildos from 23,000 B.C.! Porn from 33,000 B.C.!)

And I'm sorry, Jonathan, but a teenager threatened with homelessness for putting things in his butt—a threat made with "great firmness and intense sternness"—is unlikely to regard that threat as a tongue-in-cheek joshing. There are far too many homeless queer kids on the streets for that, all of them tossed out by parents who argued "that some things are right and some things are wrong," a.k.a. "because I said so/because Jesus said so."

Now some parents believe—erroneously—that they have the power to micromanage and/or dictate their kids sexual interests, orientations, gender expression, etc., but they don't actually have that power. Many have tried, all have failed.

Trust me: a kid who is interested in anal sex/play—with same-sex partners, opposite-sex partners, both, neither—isn't going to stop being interested in anal sex/play just because his dad blew up at him about it. He'll tell dad what dad wants to hear ("I've stopped putting things in my ass, Dad, because freedom! Thank you for guiding me through this struggle!") and go right on putting things in his butt. If POPS were to take your advice, Jonathan, and tear into his kid for the crime of finding pleasure in a manner that annoyed some judgmental jerk waiting for his to-go order at a Persian restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, his kid isn't going to stop enjoying his ass. But he might start hating his dad.

And just to clarify: I don't think parent are obligated to buy sex toys for their kids. That was just a suggestion, an alternative to consider, a thought experiment. On the downside: Buying a sex toy for your own kid—a minor—is squicky thing to contemplate. On the upside: If POPS got his son some butt-appropriate sex toys then POPS wouldn't have to spend the next two years worrying about where every last tampon, toothbrush and root vegetable in the house had been. (I thought this commenter made a good suggestion: "POPS - give your kid a prepaid credit card and tell him to sign up for amazon... trust me... they sell EVERYTHING... done.")

Anally,

Dan