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Recent Savage Love Letters of the Day: He can't come inside her and she's losing her patience, suddenly squirting woman worries about disclosing to future partners, they're in love but not having sex and not sleeping together and the anal trainer kit isn't helping... and she cheated on her boyfriend with her husband while her boyfriend was home with his wife—should she confess all? And, as always, last week's column and Savage Lovecast.

Regarding my rant at the to fo this week's Lovecast about Donald Trump's "celebrate Pride Month" tweets:

THANK YOU for calling out Trump's ludicrous May 31 "LGBT Pride Month solidarity" tweets. It is difficult to describe the feeling you feel as a gay person when you see someone who has worked continuously and systematically in their role as President to erode LGBT rights advertise themselves as some sort of unmitigated champion and guardian of our community! Although this is just another of his many lies, there is something particularly insidious (and "sick," as he would say) about this one, and the way you unpacked his true intentions behind the tweets was much appreciated and much needed, as was the call to "get in the faces" of friends and family who support this moron and "do some screaming and yelling." Couldn't have said it better.

Regarding a quick aside about therapists in my response to Sexually Deprived Gay Man:

Just to defend therapists (I am one), we are not generally encouraged to give direct advice to clients. You being an advice columnist can dole out and recommend things to your heart's content. Therapists walk a tight rope of knowing things are unhealthy and directly telling people what to do, i.e. "DTMFA." Sometimes I really want to say those things but therapy is more about raising people's awareness and motivating them to make those decisions themselves. Of course it is incredibly frustrating when they don't, but that is ultimately their decision. If I tell a client to DTMFA in more therapist-type language, they do it, and regret it, they can take legal action. Whereas you have more protection being an advice/entertainment column. Thanks for sending so many people to therapy! It really does help!

P.S. I used to listen to your podcast on the way to my year-long master's internship and it helped educate and entertain me on my commute! I now read our column daily but have never felt motivated to write or call in. Although I realized through your podcast that I needed my own DTMFA moment and I'm now in a much more sexually compatible (and satisfying) marriage! I once had a therapist tell me to get a divorce, and I dumped her! I just wasn't ready to hear that message yet.

But... but... Nicole Kidman's therapist told her to leave Alexander Skarsgård in Big Little Lies! Just kidding, of course... I know that therapists aren't in the business of telling their clients what they should do, whereas that's basically what advice columnists are supposed to do. But SDGM's case seemed like it should be an exception—not a Skarsgård-level exception, but still.

We had some great chocolate cake at a recent Savage Love Live...

My girlfriend and I saw your Vancouver BC show on March 23, it was perfect and hilarious and thoughtful and wonderful! Having read your columns since my early teens, and I was absolutely thrilled to see a live show. But my question is about that chocolate cake. Damn that was good cake. They handed out pieces as we left the theatre, it was moist and delicious. So my question is, where did you find that cake? I promise I will tell all my friends “Dan Savage introduced me to this cake.”

According to my mean lesbian boss, who procures things for me before show (including last-minute requests for "giant chocolate sheet cakes," that cake came from... Safeway. Never doubt the power (or deliciousness!) of cheap grocery store sheet cake!

About the question from Snorkel Gear Required, a reader who was worried about how her newly discovered superpower would be received...

I have learned that the problem with squirting disclosure isn't disclosing too late in a new relationshiop. The problem is disclosing too soon! Once straight dudes find out... they will do ANYTHING to get laid and wanna collect the experience like a trophy. I have yet to meet a partner who doesn't think it's porno hot amazing. I had one dude beg to collect and drink my cum in a wine glass. Also, the whole "lay down a towel" thing doesn't work and you may wanna adjust your guidance. I am multi-orgasmic and can soak through 3-4 hotel towels and ruin a mattress in under 30 minutes. Waterproof hospital pads are essential for quick disposal hotel or casual encounters. Nice fuzzy waterproof washable blankets for at home. Never go unprepared to a new partner. Do disclose & come packed & prepared to protect their bedding if at their place and the guy who is turned off by it is the wrong one. There are hundreds in line behind him. You have posted before on proper hotel etiquette for ruined bedding and also suggestions for great waterproof blankets. (I personally love Mambe.) I make a giant mess every single sex encounter and never a complaint!

Another squirters seconds the above LW...

I just wanted to let the squirter lady know that most partners I tell that I squirt, get more excited. Some are turned on by the challenge (I can't do it for everyone so if you get me going, you get a million high fives and/or blow jobs). One guy got super frustrated that he couldn't do it but he wasn't listening to me when I told him what worked. Be clear about what works, be patient and encouraging. Towels work the best and rubber sheets suck when you are exhausted from lots of sex and the sheets hold the liquid. I hope SGR has fun with her recent discovery!

And...


So... a little bit more about that time when I was 15 years old and slept with a woman who was in her early mid-twenties... an event of what must be world-historical importance, seeing as we've been debating in this space on-and-off for the last couple of decades at least...

I've written before (and you responded, thanks) about issues of consent and power difference, specifically in the context of powerful men abusing women. I very much appreciate that you are willing to call things out in their complexity, not parrot a simplistic party line. As I said previously, by defining a particular activity as rape or abuse, we are defining a person as being incapable of consent in that situation. If we define a powerful man coming on to a woman that he might potentially have power over as abuse, then by definition that woman cannot consent to being sexual.

Your situation was defined as statutory rape, in total discord with your experience of consent. You were defined as being incapable of consent, and as you've noted many people are trying to jam that word down your throat and say that you really didn't consent even though you think you did. Pretty fucking disempowering if you ask me. We have to recognize the reality that adults often take advantage of young people, powerful men often take advantage of disempowered women, and people regularly lie and coerce to get laid. Yet people also often give real consent even though we've defined them as incapable.

The one legit criticism of my position on my first sexual experience, which met, technically-speaking at least, the legal definition of statutory rape—or a criticism of my honesty about it, and a line of critique that I want to highlight and signal boost (and which I'm doing right now), goes like this: some shitty people in their early mid-twenties might read what I've said about my first sexual experience at 15 and turn around and tell themselves it's okay to go ahead and fuck some 15 year old. For the record: That's not okay. Adults should not just err on the side of not fucking 15 year olds because it's illegal, which of course it is and should be, but adults should refrain from fucking even a 15 year old who appears to want it and appears to be offering their consent because it isn't possible to know with certainty that a given 15 year old actually feels or will continue to feel the way I did and still do, e.g. that the sex they had at 15 with an older partner was consensual.

This relatively new reader does a great job illustrating this point...

First of all, I want to say that after reading your column for the last year I’m one of your biggest fans. I am a heterosexual cis male in a monogamous marriage. Nevertheless, I’m astounded by how often you introduce universal wisdom into very specific situations. It takes a special talent to use the example of two gay bottoms using a double headed dildo to make a universal point of the importance of compromise and flexible expectations in a successful relationship.

I also like the fact that like the rest of us mere mortals, you are flawed human being and not afraid to show your flaws. In your wrap-up sections on Friday, you usually respond to the criticism of your fans with humility and grace. I take issue, however, with your response to the child psychologist who considers sex between an adolescent and an adult rape. A high school classmate was involved in a very bad accident when we were teenagers. He was driving a Volkswagen bug convertible which flipped over. The only thing that saved his life, was the fact that he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and was thrown from the car. I can understand If he decides not to wear a seatbelt ever again in life. However, if my classmate were to decide to lobby Congress to outlaw seatbelts, I would have a problem.

As private citizens you and the woman who also had sex with someone on their twenties when she was 15 have every right to see your sexual encounters as adolescents with adults (and, yes, a 22-year-old is an adult even if her brain will not fully develop for another three years) as positive consensual experiences and not rape. The point the good doctor in last Friday's SLLOTD was trying to make was that sex between an adult and an adolescent too often is a deeply traumatic experience for the adolescent to the point that as a society we need state that sex between adults and adolescents is a hard no!

The concept of the price of admission doesn’t just pertain to sex and relationships. It also pertains to our professions and vocations. You are not a private citizen writing into the Savage Love column. You are Savage Love! Like E.F. Hutton, when you speak, Dan, people listen. That is great power and also great responsibility. There are 22-year-old and 20-year-old newbie adult camp counselors out there who, by your own admission, do not fully developed brains and who may construe your opinion of your own sexual experience at age 15 as a green light )or at least a yellow light) to have sex with the 15-year-old camper that they developed an attraction to.

Life is usually shades of gray, but sometimes we must act as if it’s black and white. Sometimes we need to establish boundaries. Labeling sex between an adolescent and adult as rape is a way of establishing a boundary. It’s a red light. It states that this act is never OK even if we we know there are exceptions to the rule. As a private citizen, you’re entitled to perceive your sexual awakening as a wonderful exception to the rule. However, for the sake of our teenagers, as Savage Love, you have a responsibility to proclaim the rules. Sorry dude. That’s your price of admission for being Savage Love.

One quibble: a camp counselor is in a position of power over their campers—and that wasn't the case with my twenty-something partner. There was an age/power differential but there wasn't an institutional/power differential. It would be illegal for a camp counselor (or a high school teacher) to sleep with a camper (or a student) who was above the age of consent (which is 16 in many states). And with that said... it's an honor to be Savage Love but I don't think I should have to lie to my readers about my first sexual experience to reinforce even legitimate sexual boundaries drawn for even perfectly valid reasons. I believe it's possible to "proclaim the rules" responsibly—as I've consistently done—while also allowing for (and telling the truth about) complicated, messy, subjective personal experiences, my own included. And while your metaphor is apt, I'm not out here lobbying Congress "outlaw seatbelts," i.e. lower or do away with age-of-consent laws. But just as your friend shouldn't be told never to speak truthfully about how not wearing a seat belt that day saved his life, I should be able to speak truthfully about my first sexual experience—with appropriate caveats, of course.

And...

Long time reader, listener, and Magnum subscriber. Thank you for calling out psychiatric professionals who falsely claim that all the sex that we had while we were minors was rape. I grew up in a small town in Vermont and came out in high school at 15 in the late 70s. Aside from one classmate, my only sexual outlet was riding my bicycle sixteen miles to a swimming hole with a very busy gay nude section. I get a kick out of thinking how back then I thought I was the lucky one if the guy I tricked with was willing to put my bike in the back of his truck and give me a ride most of the way home; whereas he probably thought he had hit the jackpot since he had just had sex with a teenager. Fast forward forty years and I live a two mile walk from that same swimming hole. It’s still as beautiful as it was back then, but rarely cruisy now. Thank you for all you do. I don’t *always* agree with you (I’m glad you’ve mellowed on bathhouses, for example), but you’re spot-on almost all of the time. My boyfriend and I have a Tuesday evening ritual of listening to the podcast while driving to and from weekly pub trivia with some of our gay crew. We’ll often pause it after the caller finishes to play What Will Dan Savage Say.

Thanks for writing—wait, I mellowed on bathhouses? When?

About the tone I took with a recent caller on the Savage Lovecast...

I am a listener every week and really enjoy the show—especially the political lectures you give us at the top of the program. Recently you ran two or three comments from listeners agreeing whole heartedly with your response to the guy who wanted a separate gay state and gay reparations. While I agree with the content of your thoughts on the subject, I thought your response was doled out in a really mean, haughty and condescending way. This is not the first time I have noticed this on the show. I'm sure many listeners send you questions or comments which irritate you, but please remember that your audience looks up to you. Even if you think the caller is an idiot, that caller respects you enough to have reached out. There is enough outrage these days to go around for everybody, and your listeners depend on you to keep a level head. And anyway, is it any more difficult to be kind as it is to be mean?

Sorry about that—some mornings I wake up on the wrong side of the sling, I guess.

This isn't about anything in the column or on the podcast... but you should definitely watch:


Okay, we're going to leave it there. Have a great weekend, everybody, and we'll see you Monday!


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Listen to my podcast, the Savage Lovecast, at www.savagelovecast.com.

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