(upbeat music) - Because I do love a question and answer for 'em. (laughs) - What do you do? - This is like the secret for sex in some ways, so you know. - Yeah, honestly it really is. - I also am not giving medical advice, but if I may respond to his, don't pour Coca-Cola inside your body. - You're not giving medical advice, but you're gonna urge people to err on the side of not doing the Mentos challenge to themselves. (laughs) - Is oral sex okay for vegetarians, sorry.
That was just sick of all the kids. You know, he had fun, okay? (upbeat music) Hello everyone and welcome to Mean Book Club. This episode we read everything you always wanted to know about sex, explained by David Rubin, MD. - Ooh, you got a copy of the book. - That's interesting. - Oh wow, yeah, I'm showing it off, you know, a visual medium like a podcast. You have to show off that you got the book. - We are. - But we are Mean Book Club.
reread New York Times bestsellers that you tell us really shouldn't be. As always, I'm one of your hosts, Sarah Burton. - I'm Donna Scrabis. - I'm Sabrina B. Jordan. - And we have a very, very, very, very, very, special guest. You're getting ready to have your head blown. Donna, do you want to do the honors? - I would love to.
So our guest today is a sex advice columnist, podcaster and author, actually a New York Times best selling author whose pragmatic and humorous advice has been changing the way America talks about sex, politics, and gay rights since he started his advice column, Savage Love in 1991. In addition to his column, Dan, okay, I've said now his first lesson. - I really don't know. - It does feel like that.
- Dan hosts the Savage Love Cast, a weekly call in podcast, and is the screenwriter of the 2022 feature film, Spoiler Alert, directed by Michael Show Walter for Focus Features, starring Jim Parsons in Sally Field. Dan and his husband Terry also founded The It Gets Better Project. And despite the title of today's episode, there is no sex question that Dan is too afraid to ask or answer. Please welcome Dan Savage. - Woo! - Hey, thank you for having me on the show.
You left out a very important part of the title of this book, though, it's everything you wanted to know about sex, but we're afraid to ask. - The asterix, yeah, you're right, have a die. - The nice, succinct title, just like they always tell you, it really pops. - Well, it didn't hurt him. He got onto the best seller list with it. And it was one of the very first books I ever read about sex. - Wow. - That was gonna be my first question for you. When did you encounter this book?
- You couldn't avoid this book in the '60s and '70s. Literally everyone's parent, uncle, and babysitter, next door neighbor had a copy of this book. And if you were young and curious about sex, it was easy to read that Q&A format. I've always said even about my own column. You see the Q&A format, you can't not just start reading. - Uh-huh. - It was unavoidable. You didn't have to go looking for this book. Your mom had a copy of this book. - Wow. - That's horrifying. (laughing) - Yes, it is.
- Was your first impression of it to be horrified or were you into it? - I was, I picked it up and started reading it when I was just becoming dimly aware of the fact that I was probably gay. - Oh, no. - Oh, no, oh, no, no. It's like 70% of the book that's talking about vaginas and penises and heterosexual sex had very little relevance and I wasn't too terribly interested. And the part of the book that was about homosexuals was terrifying.
And four gay men of my generation, it is sort of a touchstone that we all read this book and we were all harmed by it. - Wow. - Yeah, I can see that. - I'm not surprised to hear you say horrifying. I think there was a quote in the book that said actually that where was it, homosexuals thrive on danger. (laughing) - Yes. - Probably the nicest thing that this book has to say. - I think we have to touch on the versions of this book we read because it's been released, re-released a bunch of times.
I read the 1999 version. Does anybody else know what version they? - I think I read the OG. - Oh wow. - The OG, the 68, 69 version. He did not, he made shit, he just straight up made shit up about gay people to be sensationalistic and horrifying. And then when he brought out the 1999 revision because it was such a huge book. Of course he was gonna want to milk a little bit more money out of it before he dropped the fuck dead.
He didn't walk back or apologize for what he wrote about homosexuality in the original book. He said, well you can't say these things anymore. And basically hinted that okay, he's gonna say relatively neutral things about gay people, but only because it's too politically dangerous to tell, this is what he hinted at, the truth that he told about gay people in the original draft. - Still incredibly offensive to read the 1999 version.
- Wow. - So I was wondering because he claims that he changed 98.6% of the book. - Between versions. - Oh really? I read that too. I mean there's, I'm gonna guess maybe there's a lot of stuff about transvestites as he refers to them in my book that I'm wondering maybe if that wasn't as chunky of a section in yours. - It's in there. - One of the points he makes about gay men is that we all secretly wanna be women. And he describes sex reassignment surgeries.
He talks about what are clearly trans women as what gay men aspire to be because without a vagina we're incomplete. And the reason why gay men are so promiscuous and such risk takers is because we know somewhere deep in our souls that will never be complete without a vagina. So we have, we just keep stuffing penises in our mouth. I guess. And for someone like me, I was always kind of a romantic. And I read, he writes, "What about gay's who live together happily? "The voice of the reader."
And he writes, "What about them? "They are mighty rare birds among the homosexual flock. "Moreover the happy part remains to be seen. "The bitterest argument between husband and wife "is a passionate love sonnet by comparison "with a dialogue between a butch and a queen. "Live together? Yes. "Happily, hardly." But then everyone's, he goes and says something that's kind of true.
Like, in the section about gay relationships, he says, "They may set up housekeeping together, "but the parade of penises usually continues unabated. "And most gay couples are not monogamous." So kind of got us there. Yeah, you know, clock is right twice a day. What's that? A broken clock is right twice a day. Yeah, yeah. My understanding, you said you were a romantic.
My understanding from the book though is that that's not possible for a gay man because it is just about the penis and not the person. So you're telling me that's not true. Yes, it is not true that it's just about the penis, not about the person. It is also about the penis. I think we can walk in sugar at the same time. It can be about the person and the dick.
We can objectify someone and also see them as a human being and appreciate them as an object and appreciate their humanity simultaneously. But yeah, also he wrote things about how there were the SNM, you know, one of the interesting ways to see what he's doing here and his blind spots is he writes about straight people who are kinky and the voice of the readers as aren't these dangerous people. And he writes hardly, they're like timid children playing games.
They can't obtain gratification from grown-up sex so they seek stimulation from the trimmings. But on gay kinksters, he writes, this is the one type of gay guy, the other sphere, rarely will any homosexual knowingly pick up an SNM. SNM, what does that mean? Technically, sadist and masochist, literally trouble. And then he goes on to say that gay kinky people were in the SS and are the cruelest tortures and executioners in the world.
And then a hundred pages later, he's like, oh yeah, straight people who are into like whips and chains are just playing around or just goofing. But gay people into those things, they wanna kill you. - They wanna kill you. He actually goes on to say it usually escalates to mutilation, castration and death. Sadly, that's all part of the homosexual game. That is terrifying. Imagine being this is the first sex book you read.
My God. - It's like, it's so wild too, because he'll give these vignettes, which you could not pay me to believe that he interviewed real people that gave these stories. But he'll give them vignettes where it's like, one dangerous homosexual person, lures this other unsuspecting homosexual person and then is going to cut off his penis. And sadly, that is all too common. That's exactly how these encounters go. - It's just like, what are you talking? Who gave you this information?
Where did you get this? - You made it up. He made those people up. But you know, you can't argue with success. This book sold 100 million copies of some of the New York Times bestseller lists for almost an entire year. - Yes, 55 weeks. - Johnny, can you get some background on the book and the author for sure? - Yeah, for sure. - David Rubens, dude is, he's an MD? That's a real thing. - Well, technically he is.
- Okay. - He is a psychiatrist who started college at 15 and graduated from the College of Medicine at 25. And after that, he had only one year of a psychiatric residency and no record of further training or specialty certification. So those are his qualifications. - Okay. - Okay. - Uh-huh. He was sued by the National Academy of Sciences for Making False Claims. Nothing in the book that is presented as a fact is actually backed up with any sort of statistic or study.
He's 90 right now, by the way. - Oh my God, he's still alive. - He is still alive. - Well, kill him with this cast. - I hate that one. - Kill out there. Yep, we hate that for him. He has stopped churning out books, lucky for us, but he did, as recently as 2014, published a book called Psychiatric Hospital where insanity meets reality and reality is insane, which reveals all the drama and sex of life behind the locked doors of the psychiatric hospital. - Okay, that sounds interesting.
- It sounds interesting. - Like a serial killer, he is escalating. And a little bit about the book, like Dan said, it's one of the pop 20 bestsellers of the 20th century, which is a huge bummer. - Seriously? - Yes. - So wild. - It was number one bestseller in 51 countries, reached more than 100 million readers. So this poisoned a lot of people. And I have to tell you, we talked about, there's the 1999 edition. He added an update to it in all caps that says, "Please read this.
"I am confident that you already know this, "but I would like to emphasize it again. "Nothing in this book is medical advice, all caps." Oh my God. Before we leave the subject of homosexuality aside, there were two other points I wanted to make, and then we can talk about the chaias. - We could stay on it. - Oh no, I didn't think we were done with it.
- Oh yeah, no, no, no. - When he first raises the subject of homosexuality, he describes two guys blowing each other in a bathroom, I think in a bowling alley, and the voice of the reader asks, "Are all homosexual contacts as impersonal as that?" And he writes, "No, much." And he writes, "No, most are much more impersonal." The majority of gay guys, when they cruise, dispense with courtship, they don't even have time for footsy or love notes on toilet paper.
And he writes, "Homosexuality seems to have a compelling urgency "about it." And that may have something to do with other facts and evidence in this book about gay men being blackmailed, arrested, beaten up, persecuted. And yet, the blind spot he has when it comes to gay people the same sex activity is really revealed later in the book when he talks about prostitution. Because he raises the subject, he's talking about prostitution.
He's kind of pro-sex work and pro-sex worker in a way that is gonna seem pressently progressive, but he writes about prostitution in the voice of the reader, but isn't prostitution degrading. And he writes, "Definitely, but we make it that way." By looking down on those who sell sexual favors, by making them criminals, by shutting them off from the rest of society, we succeed in alienating them completely.
So he can see when it comes to women selling sex and in his universe, the only people selling sex are women, that prostitution is dangerous and degrading because it is illegal, because we persecute people who sell sex. But he can't see why homosexuals, sex and gay relationships are fervent, panicked, often in public. At a time when if you were gay, you could be fired, evicted, institutionalized, if you got caught being gay.
And he just cannot perceive the humanity of gay people, but he can perceive the humanity of sex workers, I suspect because he must have patronized a few. - Yes, absolutely. - I absolutely. - I don't think he has met a gay person at the point of writing this book. I don't think so. - Can I read you guys what it says in the 99 version? - Sure, I'm curious. - I'm curious. It's like like every complex area of human behavior, there's no simple explanation.
Some people say it's genetic, other people call it a form of mental illness. Still others believe it's a personal decision. Some people say it's a sexual perversion, other people, most of them homosexuals say it's normal. To complicate matters further, there are 10 other points of view. Who's right? Everyone. - Everyone. - Everyone. - So I remember this section from our version, I think it's the same section where he says most homosexuals think of it as like having a club foot.
- Yes. - Do you want me to read the quotes of it? - Yeah, from the 69 version. Born gay, a lot of homosexuals would like to think so. They prefer to consider their problem, the equivalent of a club foot or a birthmark, just something to struggle through life with. This explanation is a little tragic. It implies that all homosexuals are condemned without appeal to a life. Some of them say they enjoy so much. Actually for those who want to change, there is a chance.
So he is a forefather of the religious conversion. - Oh yeah, he does say that you can be successful by seeing a psychiatrist who can make you straight. - If you find the right one. - Right, of course. And it's on you, you have to find the right one. - Right. - No one's ever found that one. - It's also like the point that you were making about him not understanding. It seems like always at odds with each other. It's like if a homosexual does it, it's perverted.
But if somebody else does it, it's not. And it's like, you kind of, you start to get the idea of who this person is, right? You're like, okay, he's gonna say that phallacio between men bad perverted 'cause it's homosexual. But if a woman does it to a man, that's good. You can kind of wrap your hand around like that version of the person. But then when he gets into the section about peeping Tom's.
And he starts talking about how it's root to call peeping Tom's perverts because they just like haven't fully sexually matured. And they're just like peeping, they're not hurting you. It's not like they're homosexuals. I was just like, I've lost the thread of this man's... - I, yeah, he was very proud.
This is why I feel like this guy was writing for like, just meant he was writing this book for, I guess, straight men who wanted to be like, hey, it's okay to peep and get on the subway and look up women's skirts and also it's okay to, you know, don't tell your wife and go get some, you know, go to a prostitute. That's all chill. There's other stuff though. You and me know it. It's a bit spooked, right? - It was just... - I also wanna bring up the prostitution again.
- Yeah. - Because... - Who's wise? - It is like interesting that he has like a semi-progressive view but he also had an insane perception of the world where he talks about he's like, oh, like, these images of white slavery are great for books and movies but that is just not how prostitution happens. Most people want to be prostitutes if they're prostitutes and they like it and I have got to tell you that human trafficking is so, so real. (laughs) I don't know why he thinks.
I mean, certainly there are people in sex work that want to be doing that. That is, it's not like, by and large, who is in sex work. - Absolutely true. - Yeah. - Yeah, he lives in a confusing and conflicted universe. On the one hand, acknowledge that sex slavery and a sex trade exists and on the other hand, to say that every single person in it is there by choice. All right, let's pause that and we'll come right back after this commercial break.
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - And we're right back, let's get into it. - Another example of how you know this was a book written primarily for men by a straight man. - Yeah. - He asked the question in the section on fragility, why can't some women come? And he writes, "The decision to have a sexual climax is not made in the vagina. It occurs at the other end of the body, the brain.
Enjoim in a sexual intercourse is the individual responsibility of the participants, meaning if she's not coming, it's her fault. There's something wrong between her ears. And it's so jarring to read this book because at one moment you're like, "Oh my God, he's wrong about everything." And then at another moment you read this, unless the clitoris participates or gasm does not take place. This diminutive structure is the center of every sexual climax, all sexual feeling begins and ends here.
He wrote that in 1968. When I was writing that in the 90s and odds, straight guys were like, what? (laughing) - That was myth. This book was not as formative for them. - I still hear from women who think that they should be able to get their climax from vaginal penetration alone.
And so he's wrong about me, about gay people, about kinky people, about so much, but to be right in the mid-60s when he was writing this about the importance of the clitoris, to a woman's pleasure, to her ability to climax. That's something that people would continue to get wrong in print for decades after this book came out.
I have to say this book for that reason is such a rollercoaster because he will very calmly and maturedly talk about exploring masturbation and the ways that you might do that and how important that is. And then on the next very next page, he will say, by the way, do you know Coca-Cola is the best way to douche? (laughing) - No, turn yourself over. - Turn yourself over. - Pour a bottle of coke inside. - I'm gonna let it drain out, which by the way, apparently, is very dangerous.
So I also am not giving medical advice, but if I may respond to his, don't pour Coca-Cola inside your bottle. - You're not giving medical advice, but you're gonna urge people to err on the side of not doing the mentos challenge to themselves. - Yeah, that has been removed and by the time I version, so I get to say that. - That's one good removal. - That's a good removal. - What about all the racism in this section about genital plastic surgeries, he calls it, any sort of genital modification?
And there's just whole section where he goes on and on about like what certain African tribes do, to penis is Asian people like cutting open little slits and adding pearls. He talks about, I think it's Polynesians adding little bells under the skin of the penis and then letting it heal up so that when a man is aroused his penis jingles. (laughing) - Oh, I need a head to the bedroom. - It's also like, ooh, these exotic tribal foreigner, dark people and they're crazy dick magic.
And it goes on and on and on for pages and pages and pages and pages. Is that in the later version of the book? - I'm like, I'm like looking. I'm like, I don't remember that and I don't, I think that also has been removed. I don't, that's, was it also removed where it's that in the United States over 50% have had plastic surgery on their genitals? - Definitely.
- I like read it so many times and I was like, okay, even if we're talking about like circumcision, - Sure, right, but I'm like, that, - Even then, 100% of men, right. - He did also, but later in the chapter he says that he's talking also about just routine male circumcision as adding up to that, but then he's tossing in all these men. I really do wanna read this paragraph. - Please.
- Isn't there an operation like this that gives the man more pleasure like adding pearls under the skin of the penis? Only if he happens to be a music lover, the Burmese have added an aesthetic note. They use the same slit procedure, but instead of bearing small stones under the skin, they use little browns bells. Conceivably a talented Burmese lover can do justice to his sweetheart and play catchy tune at the same time. There are other advantages too.
If a Burmese husband comes home unexpectedly and walks in the door to the music of bells, somebody's in big trouble. (laughs) - You know, the one thing I could say I found in all my years working with penises is I don't need an extra indication that someone is a rouse. Very clear in so many ways. So I personally, I don't need a, like a bell like you would apply to a little kitty cat walk around the house. I'm good. - Yeah, I'm already drooling if it's hard and out.
You don't have to worry about that. (laughs) - I feel like he makes more in this 99 version, more of the claims, like it's always like some say or some people think that 2% of people are homosexual. Like instead of, he always counters it and like, I'm not saying it, other people say it, but it sounds like he used to make a lot more straight up. - Oh, it was definitely declarations as the fact on everything.
And for, I'm curious to know if in the 1999 version, there was more known about women because you know, the reader would pose the question like, how does a woman have an orgasm or something like that and he'd be like, little is known? We couldn't possibly know how to arouse a woman. We do know that her whole fits with your penis though. So that is what she's good for. - Unlike the penis penis and vagina vagina, which equals zero. - Equals zero. - Yeah. - It equals zero.
- Yeah, he also endorses, they call it the husband, not that he says that vagina is through use, which is not true. Get bigger and eventually, just through intercourse the woman's vagina is going to stretch out to such an enormous extent that the guy won't be able to feel anything. Happily, there's childbirth during which most doctors will, of course, without asking a woman or for a woman's consent.
So the vagina back up, the husband's not, good is new, tight is ever, which is why everyone should have a baby and the kind of male smoking in the delivery room, OBGYN is gonna perform non-consensual genital modifications on straight women without their consent. - I still hear about that happening like every once in a while from people having that happen. Like they didn't know what was going on.
- It's really fascinating to read how he writes about it 'cause it's just written about like, I'm endorsing this, it's just like this is what happens. - Right, there's no endorsement needed, it's just the fact. - Right, yeah. Well, not a lot about childbirth in this book. - No, it wasn't a topic. - I mean, fair enough. - Abortion was a topic. Avoiding childbirth, oh, gonorrhea, making you sterile, which the prostitutes love, by the way. They don't wanna have a personal life ever.
They want their work to be their life. So if they could just get gonorrhea and become sterile so that they don't have to have the risk of having children. - Did you have a prostitute in there who was pregnant and make and charging double? Was that in your? - I had a very strong, fiscal breakdown of the prostitutes life and how much she might have to pay for certain abortions and at the end of the day she just got - I guess she just got to make that much money.
- I guess she just got to make that. - But I could have, - In my favor. - Make big money. - Yeah. In your version are most prostitutes lesbians? - You know what? I don't remember it saying that to say that in your version? - Oh, absolutely, it does. - That's interesting. - In our version most sex workers hate men. That is another statistic that is not backed up. Which I assume is his definition of a lesbian that's the only reason. (laughing) There wasn't a ton on lesbians. - Four-stripe.
- Well, can I read the quote from the lesbian prostitute which in our version, the only time we talk about lesbians is in the prostitute section. It's just like a little diversion. - It's a decided best. - A sub-side. - Yeah, I feel like it was still that way in the 99 version to be honest, go ahead. - So what else do lesbians do? The question is asked in the prostitute section. Another common lesbian technique is mutual conolingus.
Some girls consider themselves experts in pro-longness form of intercourse for hours. Marianne, a 27-year-old hustler. That's what we call. - Definitely real. Definitely real person, this Marianne. (laughing) - Yeah, there were a lot of queer people clamoring to speak with them after this. (laughing) - Absolutely. - The musician of the book. (laughing) - She says, "Sure, I'm a lesb, double Z, and I am not ashamed of it. I've been in love with girls since I was 14.
I only hustle so I can take care of my lover girl. I hate men and I don't try to hide it. Only a woman knows how to make love to another woman. I can do more for a girl with my tongue in 15 minutes than a man can do for her in 15 years, and I should know. I've let 50,000 men lay me since I started and wouldn't trade one of them for my girls. One of my girls for all of them, sorry. - That's thousand. - That brings up an interesting question. So the whole, the lesb thing, L.A.Z.Z.
That's like a, how should this Marianne refers to herself? I don't know if you had this Sarah, but in our book, we had a whole, it's some homosexuals have their own language question mark? He writes everything like, "David, is it true?" (laughing) And there was this list of phrases, and I haven't heard almost any of them. Well, I've heard a couple of them, but I was curious, Dan, fish, fish, wife, seafood, chicken, were those words in the LGBTQ-Exicon?
- Well, I'm sad to say that fish was actually used in reference to biological women. As recently as on like RuPaul, seven or seven seasons ago, people were still drag queens would say, fish is a compliment. Like that, you look fishy. Like meaning you could pass for biological woman. And so while an insult, because it references this area type of women's genitals, it's smelling like fish or smelling fishy.
In drag communities, it was the ultimate compliment that you in this drag could pass for a woman that your drag was fishy. But that was like five, six years ago, people started to object to that being used on RuPaul, and it was gone. Chicken was actually a slang term in the 50, 60, 70s into the 80s for a very young out gay man. You might use the way people throw twink around now. That's what chicken meant then. - Interesting. - But all these other food references, seafood, whatever.
He goes on and on and on. And it feels like he heard about fish, and that was true, and he heard about chicken, and then he just made the rest up. He has a similar glossary in the section about prostitution. There's this idea that square straight people had at that time that sexually marginalized communities like queer people like sex workers had their own lingo and languages, and it was true. Because you needed to be able to have a conversation without being overheard or understood.
And so yeah, gay people did have lots of slang words that were ours as to sex workers, but 90% of what's in his glossary is completely pulled out of his ass. He's just riffing, like somebody told him chicken is a young gay man, and he's like, oh, so pork and beef and it's bullshit. - Incredible, 'cause he goes on to say that, again, quoting this like it's a fact, food seems to have a mysterious fascination for homosexuals. Many of the world's greatest chefs have been homosexuals.
Some of the country's best restaurants are run by homosexuals. Some of the fattest people are homosexuals. I just don't understand. Why? - I mean, I'm sure it's true on some level. There are-- - Sure. - People of all shapes and sizes are homosexuals. - So strange to be like, I'm a doctor. I'm gonna put this in my book. This is not something that's in editing room floor thought.
It's like anything that he pops into his head, he's like, just stream of consciousness writes it down in his fugue state. - He's having fun, you know? He's having a good time. - He's having a good time. - He wasn't lacking for content. I didn't think of it as a particularly short, easy read, but not super short. - Yeah, yeah, I was surprised at the directions he went. Sometimes I was like, - Right. - Talking about people who fuck stuffed animals now? - Yeah. - Okay. - I had to be time on that.
(laughs) - I feel like he could have given just a little more attention to women in general. Now, I understand that he himself is not a woman, but I'm to believe that he is a medical doctor, giving advice to the public. - No, no, it's a psychiatrist. - Yeah. - With his MD? - That's the one that gives you medicine, right? - He's weird on that one. - He likes it. - He's just like making so many things up.
And even though I was just thinking about one of the other things in the book, we talked about he was on it with the clitoris, but then he did one of his little rollercoaster moves, and later he was like, well, okay, if during sex you were meant to touch the clitoris. Don't we think that the clitoris would be a little closer to where the penis goes? - Ooh. And he said, the clitoris is having all of the enjoyment it possibly can if you're having sexual intercourse.
It doesn't need additional stimulation. But then later he does talk about how there's manual stimulation sometimes, and I was like, did you write this in a fugue state and this in a separate fugue state and just never reconcile what you were saying? - I feel like we should zoom out for a second and just emphasize again. It sold a hundred million copies. It was on the New York Times, that's what I was for a year. He was a guest multiple times on the tonnitia with Johnny Carson.
He was an enormous pop cultural figure and sensation, and everybody read this book. Maybe straight people read this book and were like, that doesn't comport with my personal experience. And now I doubt the things he's saying about gay people in this book, but probably not. - I don't know. - And there's enough that he gets right.
He rejects Freud's idea of a mature, an immature female orgasm, which in '68 some shrinks weren't doing, but man, man, the damage this did reinforcing, not just the attitudes of straight people about gay life being depressing and gay people being dangerous predators, but it is true that so many gay men my age, it was the time people talk about, it's kind of cliché to say, "Only thing you could find out about homosexuality was what you could look up in the encyclopedia or the dictionary.
You could look up the definition." That was the only thing you could find until this book came along. And then you found all this bullshit about, this is how gay relationships work. This is what gay people are, that it's depressing and you're gonna die and all gay people want to be women and want to have a giant eyes and only then as a gay person feel complete.
He writes actually at the end of that chapter where he talks about gay people, or at the end of this section about him, about homosexuality that gay people who've realized their ultimate goals and fantasies have gotten sex reissants or surgery gotten their penis, he describes getting the penis cut off, the testicles removed, Neo-Vegina created, it doesn't use Neo-Vegina as a term. He talks about having breasts, breast implants.
And then he says, I think he says he knows a couple of guys who had all that done and were finally thought they were happy but still weren't, but then they got breast cancer and died with their fake breast getting breast cancer and men can get breast cancer. And that was as close as they ever got to who they really wanted to be, was dying a breast cancer, 'cause they really wanted to be were biological women.
Yeah, I mean, that really, hammers at home for me a lot of what you said, Dan about just how damaging this is. But just imagine reading that when you're like 12 years old, and gay. Yeah. He seems like he pitted them like, he even, at least in the 99 book at one point, he's like talking and then at some point somebody says like, there's some question that the random person poses to him, like, oh, this is weird, right? Or, and he says something like, no, we shouldn't make fun of them.
They're having a hard enough time as it is. And it was like, what the fuck dude? But wait, I wanna just cut in and just because he said there wasn't much about female or lesbians in your book. I just wanna give you quickly one of the things in the lesbian section he has. First he says, are there many, are there many female homosexuals? No one knows the exact number, but they're probably between two to 10%.
And then it's just lesbians are not as quite as high profile in society as male homosexuals. And then it's, what do lesbians do to each other sexually? In his response, they do the best they can. - Hold me, that was 1999. - They made you in their way. - I like to think we're all doing the best of a baby. - Oh, yeah, truly. - Really? - True. Oh my god. - That's all I'm doing. That is absolutely all I'm doing. - You know, this book came out in 1969, so it was right after Stonewall.
It was right when gay and lesbian people were becoming visible and straight people were curious about what was up with them and how they did it. You know, I came out 40 years ago and it was a really common question that I would get from my straight friends about like how do lesbians do it? Because they couldn't wrap their heads around doing it without a dick. - Right. - And the question for us as gay men was always, who's the woman?
Because the person receiving the dick is in the female role and they could only see gay sex and lesbian sex through the prism of heterosexual framing. And that's what this book does. It actually kind of, you know, oh, you've heard of homosexuals. Maybe you've seen a protest. Maybe you've seen them in the news. Here's what's actually going on. Here's who they actually are. And you know what, they're sad and they're pathetic and they're miserable and their sex isn't good. And it's never enough.
Whereas your magic, PIV sex. Well, and not to politicize it, but I'm going to. But think about who read this book in the '60s through the '90s. Those are the people that are lawmakers now. Those are people that this was, you know, even if they maybe have changed and have learned, this is subconsciously ingrained and this was put there and it's really horrifying to think about that. That this is in a psyche, deep in the psyche of a huge generation of people.
Honestly, I feel like this book contextualizes a little for me how people are so fucking crazy. Like if it went into your brain when you were young and impressionable and you didn't like realize that it was crazy, you think this is all normal and this is a normal way to act and it's like being presented as advice and education. Yeah, it's fun for me to sit here and laugh at like, is it really true that the clitoris is simply a miniature penis? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm clustered.
That's the idea that my clitoris is not simply a miniature penis. But what if this was the first sex book I ever read? And that's my whole world view. Well, we know now that the penis is just a really big clitoris. Exactly, and now we know that. We got it exactly backwards. Yes. Did you guys have a section on date rape drug at all? No. There's a weird section in this ad. She's like a scared ad. The way you're saying it, you leaned into the microphone.
You guys got-- Because it's a very-- it's under a fredeasy axe if you have that section. But it's just talking about like GHB and roofies. And basically just talking about like if you slip GHB into your girlfriend's drink, she will eventually feel relaxed and submissive. The same as if you plied her with a few extra martinis. She might even lose some of her sexual inhibitions just like after she has a few drinks. And it's just-- it's too easy to make in your kitchen. And he edit it.
Idiot can buy the ingredients at a grocery store. And just goes on and I'm like, there's no like, this is bad. Or like-- Oh my god. --do this is just like a bunch of information about-- That was his-- he was like-- I need to revise the book. It was a little out of touch. Some stuff might not be kosher now. So his addition was it's only too easy to date right for your partner. Yeah, let me know.
And you might be doing them a favor because you can give them this magical lixer that lowers the inhibitions. And yet in first it's some women just like to take it. They just like it. They want it. It's so wild. That feels like a wild departure from ours, which talks about-- it was like the three main aphrodisiacs alcohol, which he says, people say it's bad for you. It is not bad for you. Number two, testosterone. And number three, marijuana. And he's like, but marijuana is illegal.
So getting off is not worth prison. And now he's like drugs are cool, as long as you're giving them to someone else. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, to do them the favor of lowering their inhibitions so that they use the exact same way. Right. They would be enjoying it. It weren't for their pesky inhibitions. Yeah, helping them out, really. They wanted it.
Really fucked up. Yeah, I'm-- I actually-- for how-- it's so interesting to look at this book from like the historical perspective and how fucked up it was for its time. I actually-- What'd be banded in 1990? Sorry to interrupt. I was just saying, maybe it wasn't banned yet. It was. It's fine. He's telling you how to make shit. I did it become like a bestseller again in '99. Like did it again launch him? Do we know?
I know a lot of attention was paid to it in '99, but I don't know if it made it onto the bestseller list, but I bet Google will tell me if I Google it. Yeah, I guess I would probably also have that feeling. One fun little moment I wanted to point out, or he goes from woke to extremely unwoken, one single sentence, is women have a basic right to orgasm and enjoy the pleasures of sex as much as men and the family cat and dog. [LAUGHTER] You know what?
If it's worth it for the cat and dog, women, you deserve it too. Wow. I really did feel like for a minute in the beginning of the book, before we got to homosexual men, which I did do a preview of the table of contents. So I knew that that was a section that I was coming upon, but I actually didn't know much about this book. Like I didn't know how embarrassed I should have been to be asking at all four bookstores that I went to. Hard to find now, hard to find.
It is really hard to find, but I didn't know. And when I was reading it, at first, it seems like, OK, this was written in the '60s, but it's not so bad. And we're talking about women a little bit, but then I did realize that women were just like-- they were allowed to have sexual pleasure because if they're enjoying it, the man was enjoying it even more. It wasn't like specifically about them being able to enjoy it.
It was like, well, if you're lubricated, the man-- I actually think I'm becoming radicalized during this conversation of how penis-centric the world is and I'm getting mad. I don't know why it took this moment, but I feel like I need to go out in March. And I hate to drag it back to the gay shit again. But talk about projection. He is so obsessed with penises. The book is revolved around the deck, centers the deck. It's all about the importance of the deck. He is so into deck.
And then what he slams, gay men for is just being too crazy about deck. The whole book is crazy about deck. He's crazy about deck. Yes. But gay men, they're just all about the deck. You're all about the deck, Dr. Ruben. Absolutely. I mean-- 100%. And as someone who rejected Freud, literally, there is an entire section that most men are never really sure their penis has caught up to daddies. And that's why men are obsessed with measuring other men's penises.
He actually says, whenever two nude men encounter each other for the first time in a public shower, why am C.A. Swimmingpool? Their eyes go first to each other's penises. Rapidly. Measuring the organ, comparing it to their own. Now is that true? And how has he studied this exactly? Yeah, how many people were in the sample size? One, one person in the sample size ham and no control group. You boys know how it is. You get into that situation where someone's naked.
You're sizing up their fattles just like you did your father's. Was this book made into a movie? Sorry. Woody Allen made it into a kind of joking-- Oh, OK. So it's not like a real adaptation. He bought the title. OK. The title was iconic. And there were lots of everything you ever you always wanted to know. Riffs, articles, other books. Yeah. That had similar titles that came out on other subjects. In the wake of really the meteor that this book was when it hit.
And so Woody Allen made a film that's just a series of sketches about sex. Some of which are very funny. Woody Allen plays a sperm cell at one point. I'm seeing an anxious way to be launched out of a penis. And he's anxious. And at one point looks at one of the other sperm cells and says, what if it's a homosexual encounter? Worried about where he's about to be launched. I love it. All right. All right. I don't know if Oliver watched that. Yeah, we're not watching Woody Allen. We don't know.
Sarah, I have terrible news for you. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] What? God. I'll fill you in. I'll fill you in offline. OK. OK. Chat me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll chat you. Yeah, I guess is there-- going around the room, is there any more big touchstones we want to get to? I mean, there's so much to hate. Yeah. There's one part where he said exhibitionists are all housewives, bored housewives, and this book, which I thought was funny. It's like, well, he doesn't really know about only fans yet and stuff.
But God, I wonder what his marriage is like. He mentions in the intro that he has a son, two years old that he's neglected during the writing of this book. So-- I forgot about that. His wife was at home with the kid, entertaining herself somehow, probably relieved that he was away off in locker rooms during his penis climpsing research. I am certain that the process of him writing this book was the best time in that woman's life. [LAUGHTER] There was one other thing that I wanted to touch on.
And maybe we kind of circled around it, but it was just so crazy to me how his views would, like, do the rollercoaster. And one of the other rollercoasters was he was like, oral sex is great. It's wonderful. Mutual masturbation is wonderful. As long as it is leading to real sex, if you are just doing it for the fun of it, you have mental problems. There's something wrong with your brain. And it was just so crazy. It's like, so that is OK. Oh, it was also OK if you didn't have a penis.
So anatomically, you're a man, but you have no penis. OK. OK. In that scenario, you are allowed to give your wife kind of lingus. So long as your penis got shot off in the Korean War, [LAUGHTER] OK, real quick. Let's take a commercial break. [MUSIC PLAYING] And we're back. Oh, one other thing that sort of wrote up or is remind me of is that he does say that would women go through menopause. They are no longer a woman, but not quite a man. They're in some sort of in-between stage, now useless.
The very set, that is he's similar to what he says, and that didn't change. Yeah. Yeah, I was actually recently reading an article that after you invited me on to talk about this book that brought up that, what he'd written about menopause. And my heart at that moment ached for the grandmas who picked this book up at the same time that I as a teenager was picking up. Yeah. A tween was picking this book up.
That can't have been very pleasant for probably millions, if not tens of millions, of women who had already gone through menopause or were in pariametopause or were about to go through menopause to pick up and read. You know, wow, that actually breaks my heart thinking of, imagine, I can't almost imagine someone who needs a book more about sex than someone who was raised, maybe grew up in the 1940s. They are now post-menopausal in the late 1960s. It is the sexual revolution.
And they're like, you know what? I do want to know more about my body. I do want to reinvigorate this relationship I have with my partner. Maybe there's more to it than this. And then they get to that section, which is just like, no, no, no, no. My goodness, this one's not for you. You are useless. Yeah. This is it. Little Danny Savage, you're going to get murdered by a sex pervert if you're not already a sex pervert yourself. And you middle aged lady, you're done.
Did how long did it take you to read a different book about sex? I'm my first boyfriend. And when it comes to those kinds of age gap relationships, people are very reactive these days. I was 17 or 18. He was 28, 29. And he made getting to suck his dick conditional upon me reading a book that he called the Society and the Healthy Homosexual. Incredible.
That was by a psychiatrist who, you know, the rap then was like, all gay people are sick according to the shrinks at the mental hospitals where gay people who had been thrown into mental hospitals for being gay were miserable or had comorbidities that landed them there.
And this was the first person who went out and did a random sample of functional gay people who were living in the world and weren't institutionalized or in prisons and found that it was societal attitudes towards homosexuals and homosexuality that warped the lives of so many gay men. But I feel in some ways, you know, when I first came out, I met two kinds of gay guys. I met the gay guys who thought there's something wrong with me.
And I met the gay guys who thought, I'm fine, something wrong with everybody else. Even at 12, 13 when I read this book, I was like, some part of me was like, this can't be true. That makes me so happy. I hope that most people felt that way, although I imagine that's probably not true. No. But then, you know, there was the creation of people like Dan who could be a champion for future young people reading things like this, you know, who could be like, OK, so much. There's another perspective.
Sitting down and rereading this is like, oh my god, this is what I work in a Q&A format about sex. I read this guy's book, a Q&A formatted book about sex, and I hated him so much. And yet, that's what I've been doing now for 33 years. Wow. And those things are tied together somehow. Carmically, if not, no other way. Are you saying David Rubin was an inspiration for your current work? As a format. John, I don't know. I don't know. It's just a bitter irony.
This guy working in the Q&A format did so much damage to so many young gay people in this book was everywhere. And I grew up to be a gay person working in a Q&A format. Maybe it's revenge. I do. I feel like the radicalization that John has experienced during the podcast, perhaps you experienced much earlier and really acted on it. Yeah. Yeah. I also have to say, I was lucky because the first things I ever read about sex were in the Pittsburgh City Paper, and it was the Savage Love column.
And it was-- No, really? Wow. And a appropriate thing for someone to learn, I feel. And I would still point anybody there. Well, thank you. Savage.love. My column still runs every week. It's amazing. We had cinematics, so I wouldn't say about it. Education was as healthy, but I definitely had a lot of education from cinematics.
Yes. I also will say the first naked woman I ever saw, and perhaps the first naked person, was in the shining when the woman transforms forms into a ghoul that is sinking into the water. And I paused it and rewound it and looked at that again. And I just wonder what kind of impact that had on me, as you would be. Can't be good. Can't be good. I found a playgirl magazine at somebody's house when I was in high school during a St. Jerome team club team show cast party. And I snuck it home.
I still put it under my-- It's like a hot. Under my shirt, actually threw my jacket on it and then watched my jacket from across the room an hour and a half to make sure nobody noticed. Nobody was looking at the jacket. Nobody cared about the jacket or thought about was under the jacket, and then I took them both up and left. Nothing's under the jacket, nothing. I was just googling stuff on the internet and then getting viruses on my family computers, we were one computer.
And they were like, why are all these viruses? And I'm like, I don't know. Yeah. I did learn how to search for porn earlier than I learned how to delete my history on my computer. Most-- that is the process most go through. We didn't have browser histories when I got my hands on porn for the first time. So I didn't infect my parents' computers. We didn't have them. We didn't have a microwave or a color TV. That's a old amp. But I had to hide that porn magazine somewhere in the house.
And it was the summer. And so I put it in the furnace under the-- between the burner and the plate in this giant furnace in our basement. And I hit it there and I'd take it out and ask me to put it back. But it's like, this is a temporary solution because I can't be here in the winter. And we had a cold snap in July and the furnace turned on. So my entire family breathed that playground magazine. And held the smoke from that playground magazine. That's so sad too, because it's such a gem.
A precious item. I wish I had it, but all the guys in it had moustaches. And maybe it's part of the reason I hate moustaches. And I was like, everyone was like sweaty and had a moustache. But like, we're-- That really was a thing. Do you guys want to-- do you want to hear some five-star reviews from Goodreads? Let's hear a couple. Oh my gosh. Just a few. Which, amazing, there are a few. Skimsgate says, encouraging group masturbation to teenage boys, what more do I have to say? Forgot about that.
Five stars. [LAUGHTER] Also, that's not gay. So that's not gay. It's not gay. It's totally cool. It's group masturbation. Honestly, it's just crazy to me the number of five-star reviews here that are like, this is really out of date. But I loved it at the time. Five stars. Yeah, this book was revolutionary for its time. But now this isn't a great book. It's a historical occurrence worth studying.
Five stars. So, OK, I guess there's not really many five-star views of people that are just like, this is all true. And I believe it. I did the Coca-Cola thing and my vagina is clean as a whistle. Do you know that I've noticed though, among young gay men, that the kind of sex culture that is described in this book, it existed, bath houses and parks and like, cruzy toilets. And that was-- all gay men had no choice but to get sex there.
Some gay men wanted sex there, but all gay men were confined to those sorts of spaces. And there's a kind of nostalgia among young gay men for these kinds of places. I don't know if you'd notice, but right around pride, there was a meme circulating about how cool it was that-- and it was about lesbians, which is like lesbians did not do this. Gay men did not do this. They would go to the certain bathrooms with shopping bags. They could stand in the shopping bags.
There could be two people in a stall having sex from the outside. It didn't look like there were four legs and four feet, just two and some shopping bags. And there's this kind of nostalgia for the squalid, desperate conditions that Ruben describes as how gay men have sex. When-- when it was documenting, to some extent, was the only way gay men could have sex. Yeah. Right? And now there's some young guys and lesbian, some young queer people who would read this-- What's a risk?
Oh, how do you-- I don't know if it's going to be like, I wish I could have that. Interesting. That is so interesting. I do think it's kind of hot to read, but in practice, I've had sex in some gross bathrooms. It's not good. It's bad. It's not good. The people who are nostalgic for this squalor are the people who wasn't all they were allowed. Yeah, yeah, I believe that. They went on our directed bathroom in a queerist room. The dirty fucking bathroom at the back of the bowling alley.
That was a cruising spot. In my neighborhood, when I was a kid. True. Should we do our hate rates? Yes. Oh, yeah. So hate rates stand just to kind of wrap up the episode. This is where we rate this book on a scale of 0 to 5 stars, 0 being very bad, 5 being very great. But the thing is, the scale is sort of on a curve, because 5 is the best book in the world of bad books. So we're not comparing this to the greatest thing ever written. There's some bad books that are actually pretty fun, you know?
Pretty fun. And a 0 is of course a 0 in the world of bad books, which is quite low. So anybody-- So 0 is a bad bad book. A bad bad book. Yeah, a bad bad. And 5 is a great bad book. Yes, yes. Exactly. All right. I guess I'll go first. I'm going to-- I'm so nervous for what you guys are all going to say, but for me-- They're giving it a 5. This is a 2 out of 5. You know, I could read it. There was interesting parts. But obviously it's very upsetting. There's a lot of wrong information.
I don't know who I would ever recommend this book to. It's sometimes I'm like, oh, I have this type of friend who's really into this slutty murder thing. I'll recommend this book to them. I have no idea who would ever want to read this book. But in terms of a bad book, I think I got through it pretty fast. It was an interesting read, even though it was also an offensive one. So 2 out of 5. I can go. So this is a tough one because I do love a question and answer format. You do.
This is like the secret for sex in some ways, Sabrina. Honestly, it really is. And I just love it. You can get the information so easily. But then of course, there's the harm that it's certainly the husher to the world, which kind of outweighs at least a little bit, right? The question and answer format. The does the format. Yeah. So I guess I guess I'm going to give it a one for the question and answer format.
But it is losing all of the other points that could possibly get, oh no, I got to take it back down to a zero. It was negative in my mind, and then the question and answer brought it back up. I did just remember that in 1999, he added to date rape your girlfriend. For her own good. For her own good. But evidently still didn't add any substance for lesbians. And also bisexual people, they don't exist. Oh, nothing, nothing. But date rape is a selfless act of altruism.
Something every straight man might want to consider not for his own sake. Right. Right for her. It's all for her. So yeah, I guess it's going to have to go back down to a zero, but it really almost got that one for the Q&A format. I'm going to give it a one. But it's hard for me to separate how much I enjoyed doing this podcast. And the book itself. Sometimes that affects it. Oh, yeah. I mean, I also think this is one of the most interesting discussions we've had.
There was so much we were able to talk about because you were here, Dan, about just like what the world was like when this book came out. And it just, I feel like the way we talked about it was so fun. And enlightening. And now I'm wrapped. Five out of five. Five out of five. Five out of five. Five out of five. So I got to give it a one for all of that. But the, the harmfulness really takes it down. This is probably, I would say, the most damaging, societal, mean book club book.
We have ever read it. And we have read some of that. I think so. Yeah. No, we read the secret. I still argue that that was very damaging. I love it. It's not damaging. And it's perfect. Way too crack open the Bible. Oh, yeah. You know, if I had to give it, I'm a little stoned. So I'm a little confused about how to exactly work this. It's however you want. It's whatever you want.
There is a section in the book that it's hard for us now to wrap our minds around this being a progressive and controversial position he was taking. He endorses sex for pleasure. He tries to make that happen. He keeps calling it fun sex one word. And we forget how controversial it was in the 50s, 50s, 60s to endorse recreational sex. So there's this full-throated endorsement of the legitimacy of recreational sex. He talks about reproductive sex. Sex for love.
Sex because you know, you can't express your love any other way. You've said everything and I was just boiling over physically. But then he talks about sex just for fun and pleasure. And he describes it as legitimate. And that was something that straight people needed to hear of them. And it was most of the sex that people have most of the time, which he points out. He couldn't see that that's all of the sex gay people have all the time.
Like we have sex for all the same reasons that straight people do except once or twice when straight people try to get pregnant. Right? Or opposite sex. The worst sex, obviously. Exactly. Yeah. Just going to say. Yeah. Like people spend most of their lives in terror of reproductive sex happening to them. And he endorses fun sex. He didn't make that chap and he didn't make fun sex happen. So I'm going to give it like a point. Oh, one out of five stars.
Okay. Just for putting that in the heads of straight people. You know, the hundreds of millions of straight people who read this book because an appeal to the normalcy of recreational sex sex for fun and sex is an expression of affection is how gay people won a right to be publicly gay. And pushing at that admission that straight people are only just beginning to make to themselves. Sex is mostly for fun is how we got our camel. I'm getting that he's David again was wise by beyond his years.
He didn't even know how. Well, the book is like a thousand pages long. And I think he just like to stop clock. He got a couple of it was like a infinite number of monkeys typing made hamlet. Like everyone's really accidentally struck three sentences together that you're like, all right. Okay. Okay. Okay. What you said about sex toys probably still holds true to this day. Is oral sex. Okay. For vegetarian. Sorry. That was just a couple of questions. You know, he had fun. Okay. Vegetarian.
I just reminded me of those section where he's like, even if you've never deliberately masturbated, I bet you've douished a douche is just like a penis. That's masturbating. I'm like, what is happening? You know what's like a penis loose floppy water. Those two things indistinguishable to me. Shut that coca-cola up there and have a good time. Sit on your coke bottle and shut up ladies. Dan, can we get you to plug? Is there anything you want to plug?
Obviously, we've got your call, your podcast, but anything upcoming that you want to shout out? Nothing upcoming. I write, except savage love. I write savage love every week. I write struggle session, which is where I respond to responses to my responses in my column. Thank you. And I do the savage love cast that comes out every Tuesday. And thank you for mentioning spoiler alert, but I was the co-author or the co-screen writer, David Marshall Grant, and I wrote that together. Got it.
I wrote that my apologies to David Marshall Grant and to you, but congratulations on the success of spoiler alert and what an incredible thing to be out there. Thank you. I got an angry mail about it today. Wow. Then you know it's so funny. What's working, it's reaching people. Yeah. And I just want to say also this, for the savage love cast, like my mom and I both listen to it. It's like one of those funny things that we both, that I'll like talk to her about.
It's like that in the daily for some reason or the two. Listen to it. And I can remember before this comes out, you should send me like a secret coded message that if your mom heard it, she would know it was about her, but it's not revealing in any way. You know, like the training of confidence, but your mom will be like, what the fuck was that? Yeah. I'll work it into an answer. Okay, totally totally.
Yeah, I remember this was a year ago, but you had one where it's like a mom wrote in about her son pissing on everything and how she was she didn't want to tell him to stop pissing on everything because maybe it was like a fetish. I don't, I've always, that's a classic one in my mind. Now I have a two year old son, so I think about it constantly. You know, squash is fetish. Don't let your son piss on everything. I think kink shaming is good because most kinks are a reaction to shame.
And if we stop kink shaming, it's basically genocide against kinks. Like we need a certain like low thrum of kink for there to be more kinky people in the future for the kinky people who are already who are used to enjoy. So like, oh yeah, like people who are diapers, what freaks? It's like, oh, you shouldn't say that it's kink shaming.
No, no, that's the nicest thing you can say about the person in the diaper because that's going to make more people want to put on a diaper and they'll have some company. That's beautiful. No, it's calculus. Oh, I'm very grateful for my Catholic upbringing. Oh, yeah. All right, well, we are meme book club on all the socials. Please join our Patreon, become a patron of the mean arts. You'll get bonus episodes. You'll get photos of dogs. Do we still send those out? Yes, we do. Okay. And cats now.
Oh, and cats. And I think a little picture of my foot stuck in there. What? Yeah, okay. That could get a lot of people paying Sabrina. I'd be careful. I'd be careful. But Dan again, thank you so much for coming on this cast. This was so much fun. Thank you for having me on a blast. So well, very cool that we had Dan Savage on our podcast, right? That was, yeah, that was amazing of him to do it and so cool to hear him talk to us. Usually I just hear him talk at me. This is the product to me.
And yeah, I encourage everyone to definitely check out his podcast, the Savage Love cast and to also read the Savage Love column that he writes, because he is very funny and very blunt and he gives amazing advice. And just for anyone that maybe hasn't read the column before, I wanted to read you guys, if you'd be interested, my favorite answer. He's absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Okay. So this one is called, I will not be ignored Dan Savage. I've written before, but I didn't hear back from you.
Probably because my email didn't contain vlogging or Santorum or whatever. But I won't be ignored Dan. I'm 32 year old female. Second marriage, two kids, one kid with my ex and one with the man I cheated on my ex with, my current husband, my problem. A year ago, I found my first love on a social network. I'd been looking for him on and off for more than 16 years. This person was a jerk who left me for one of my friends back in high school. But he was and still is the love of my life.
Always has been, always will be. He is not married, has never been married and has no children. We began in a fair about seven months after finding each other. My marriage, my second marriage, had been rocky before this. My second husband of three years stopped having sex with me after I became pregnant and this continued after our child was born. We tried counseling, it didn't help. I am in no way using this as an excuse.
I know what I've done is wrong, but I also have a pretty bad track record and have cheated on every man I've ever been with except my first love. This man, my first love is the worst person in the world for me, yet I'm in love with him. I have always been in love with him. He wants me to leave my white collar husband for him, a very blue collar guy. I live in a nice home in the suburbs. My first love lives in a small apartment in the city. Blah blah blah, she goes on, right?
Basically, Dan, pull out all the stops on this one as you famously do and tell me what to do. What's he say? What's your father's? I've read what you've written before, but I didn't respond because I didn't have much to say to you and I still don't. I had the same reaction reading your email today that I had reading all the other emails you've sent. My reaction is a little selfish, but I'm a little embarrassed to share it with you. But you keep pressing me. So here it is.
This bitch could get legally married and I can't. Sorry, sorry, sorry. That was conty of me. No way near the level of respectful professionalism that people expect of me. So I'm going to make amends by scrounging up some of the advice you're after. But I'm going to offer it on just one condition. Never write to me again. Okay. You say you've cheated on every man you've ever been with with the exception of your first love.
You seem to be engaging in a little circular reasoning, reasoning, magical thinking here. You've concluded that he must be the love of your life because you didn't cheat on him. And you didn't cheat on him because he's the love of your life. No, you didn't cheat on him because you didn't get around to it. You two broke up when you were 15 years old. If you'd been with him a little longer, you would have cheated on him just like you cheated on everybody else.
If you leave your current husband and break up your first child's second home and your second child's first home, it won't be long before you get around to cheating on the love of your life too. Because you're a cheater, a habitual serial cheater. You're precisely the kind of person who shouldn't make monogamous commitments or get married or have children. So what should you do? Stay, go. Frankly, I don't give a fuck what you do. Stay, go. It's not going to make a fuck lot of difference.
Your personal life is a mess and it always will be because you see wherever you go, there you are. Wherever you go, there you are. It's really beautiful. So I'm assuming this came out. This was 2011. Wow. Okay, okay. I was like, must have been before. Absolutely. That line killed me. Yeah, that's a very funny one. He's really got a lot of gems in there. I certainly used to obsessively read his column too as well. I still get, like I probably as of like two days ago was reading.
You know, I still get pretty lucky. Yeah, likewise. So it's always good. Yeah, always good. Okay, so if you liked that, there's so much more to like on the internet and on the podcast. And thanks for sticking with us. Yeah, we'll link to it. We'll link to it in the comments, the thread, whatever. Yeah. I'm just so glad. I've just decided that I'm talking now. But I'm just, I'm so glad that he recommended that book because I didn't know about that. Me neither book. I didn't either.
And I certainly when reading it did not have the context of its presence in the world. Like, there, I actually, I did not produce the episodes. I didn't do any research on when it was a best seller. But I thought it was potentially even not a best seller. It was just like something that Dan had wanted to do. And because he was a special guest, we were considering it. You know, or we did it. I didn't realize that it was one of the most sold books of the past. Yeah, he was.
And it sure he was on Johnny Carson. There was something like he was the first person to use the word masturbation on network television. There's like a lot of like random. Yeah, like he was ahead of his time, I guess, in some aspects. Or like people were into him because he was saying shit that like they're like, "Ooh, the shit." I can't believe it, you know. But a lot of it was so fucked. All right, that's awesome. All right, everyone. See you next step. Bye! Bye! [Music] [Clock ticking]