You're listening to the micro version of the Savage Lovecast at savage.love. If you're listening to the show on Tuesday, on the day it came out, the Tuesday before the Thursday that is Thanksgiving, I am on an airplane right now as you're listening. I don't know what I was thinking when I booked this flight more than six months ago. Flying on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving was something, once upon a time, I knew not to do. It was something I'd learned not to do, but apparently...
It was a lesson I had to relearn. So if you're religious, please keep me in your prayers today because I'm going to need them. If you're not religious, keep me in your thoughts. Kind of the same thing. And wherever you are this week, whoever you're spending Thanksgiving with, I hope you have a good one. And hey. I am thankful you're a Lovecast listener. Magnum or Micro, one of my subs, we're still thinking about it. All of us here at the Lovecast are thankful for you today and every day.
All right, I got to go finish packing my bags. I am being mindful of the TSA's list of prohibited items, so I will be packing my cranberry sauce, gravy, and other personal lubricants in my checked luggage. and stuffing my meat in my carry-on bag per TSA regulations. I will also make demure choices where in-flight entertainment is concerned because, according to the hosts of the Pop Culture Podcast and NPR, There is nothing worse than turning on a movie once you hit cruising altitude and then...
Just as someone on screen peels their clothes off or starts spewing blood, a flight attendant comes by to offer you peanuts or pretzels and you realize that you've made a very, very bad choice. I tend to stick to classic movies when I fly. If you've ever wondered why Funny Girl, All About Eve, and Mildred Pierce are among the in-flight movie selections, it's me and other gay men like me. We're the ones watching those movies. We're the people that are keeping them up.
on the flight for, and there are no bare asses or severed heads in Funny Girl. But I gotta say, if you're worried about someone clocking your in-flight movie, it's not the flight attendants you need to worry about. I have it on good authority from my flight attendant pals that they do not give a shit what you're watching. It's the people sitting around you who can see what you're watching, who often can't avoid seeing what you're watching.
I'm old enough to remember when you could smoke on airplanes, and I wouldn't put it past whoever Trump appoints to replace Pete Buttigieg as transportation secretary to bring back smoking on planes, make America hack and cough again, and back then. The movies on planes when you could smoke on planes, they were edited for a general audience. No more.
Looking around from the back row of the airplane during my flight, the amount of sex and violence I see playing out on everyone's screens. It's crazy. It's sometimes distracting. It's hard to concentrate. and Betty Davis in All About Eve when I'm catching glimpses of heads being severed all around me. Anyway, not beefing with the hosts of pop culture podcasts and want a second, one of their recommendations for your in-flight entertainment, The Lion in Winter, 1968, starring Katherine Hepburn.
as Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Peter O'Toole as King Henry II, and a young Anthony Hopkins as Richard the Lionhearted, and a hot young Timothy Dalton as Richard the Lionhearted's boyfriend, the King of France. The gay stuff in Lion in Winter kind of sneaks up on you. So if you're stuck at home with Trumpy relatives, I recommend you put on the Lion in Winter.
All right, for the record, full credit for the very mindful, very demure catchphrase to Jules LeBron, the trans content creator who coined and popularized that saying earlier this year. And yeah. I'm only now just getting around to working it into a podcast intro. Most gay podcasters worked it in within a week, months and months and months ago. Then we're doing ironic callbacks to it a few weeks after that. And here I am only just getting around to it.
before 2024 comes to an end. A merciful, overdue end. We have two guests for you this week on the micro and Magnum coming back on the show. My favorite poly lawyer, Diana Adams from the Chosen Family Law Center. is here to talk about something serious, protections for queer and especially trans folks that we should be thinking about right now. And a little bit of a change of pace, something lighter on the Magnum, comedian Bonnie.
aka Boobie Clapper, here to take some of your questions with me. I invited her on because she had a viral video about a beverage we both despise and I wanted to meet her. I wanted to talk to her. So here she is. on the show. And also from now until the end of the year, when you give the Magnum as a gift, it's half off. We want to spread the show far and wide and you can help us do that by giving the show to a loved one or perhaps your worst enemy. Go to savage.love, click on the...
gift button to give a gift of the Savage Lovecast. All right, let's get to the first call. This episode is brought to you by Liberator, makers of pillows, shapes, wedges, and furniture for new and exciting sex. Just for Black Friday, Liberator is offering an additional 10% off site-wide exclusively for our listeners. Stack that 10% discount on top of their already incredible Black Friday deals.
For the best savings of the year, go to liberator.com and use the promo code savage. This episode of the Lovecast is brought to you by the good folks at Squarespace. They make it easy to build a beautiful website, blog, or online store. Head on over to squarespace.com slash savage for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code savage to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This episode is brought to you by Talkspace, therapy made easy.
Get $80 off your first month when you go to Talkspace.com slash Savage and enter promo code SPACE80. Hello, Dan Savage. There's a social media app I'm on called Discord. There's many beautiful sounding women in certain servers I'm in, and I've been muting and jacking off to them. Is this wrong? Okay. Yeah. This is a creepy thing that you're doing. It's a creepy thing to hear about is a creepy thing to think about, but so long as no one hears about it.
No one has to think about it all day long all over the world. People are doing creepy fucking things that would creep other people out if they knew about it, if they were told about it, if they heard about it. So. Yeah, I guess what you're doing. That's not why people get on discord into those voice channels. I'm not going there to be overheard and listened to and.
jacked off about because somebody out there might like their voice, but we exist in the world and everywhere we go, we might be observed or witnessed by someone who is aroused by our appearance or in this case, the sound of our voices. And we can't control what other people do with their own right or left hands and their own free time. Where it...
becomes a violation as if I guess you forgot to hit that mute button. If you pull the Jeffrey Toobin, he's the former writer for the New Yorker who was on a zoom call with a bunch of his colleagues and. Thought he'd closed his camera and pulled his dick out to have a wank in his own home. You know, the office has invaded our homes. Our homes are where we sometimes masturbate in private.
Not that I think that what he did was good or not creepy. Definitely creepy. Not the time, not the place. But, you know, if he'd successfully turned that fucking camera off, we wouldn't now associate Jeffrey Toobin forever and the rest of his life with... jacking off in front of colleagues at virtual work. So yeah, nobody wants to think about what you are doing and nobody has to think about it if you don't.
tell anybody about it and you don't forget to hit that mute button and someone realizes because they're hearing the fap, fap, fap, what it is you're doing. So long as it's private. Your enjoyment of what these people are making public, so long as you keep that strictly private, no harm, no foul. Doesn't mean it's not creepy to have to think about. I'm having to think about it right now, and I'm a little creeped out.
But so long, if you didn't tell me, if I didn't know, I wouldn't have had to think about it. I wouldn't get creeped out and there would be no harm, no foul. So be sure to smash that mute button. Double check that you've smashed that. mute button. And be careful in the double checking that you smashed that mute button. You're not unmuting the mute button the second time you smash it.
Hello, Dan and everyone. I'm a bisexual cis woman in my mid-20s calling with a question about orgasms. I have been with a fair number of people, almost 40 I think at this point. And I've only ever been able to have an orgasm with one person who is my ex in my most recent relationship. I was in a relationship for a year before that with a woman.
And just faked orgasms the whole time. And when I got into a relationship with my ex, who was another woman, after about six months of dating, I revealed to her that I'd been faking orgasms. It led to a huge conflict.
hurt feelings and embarrassment on both ends and we managed to work through it and then i was able to consistently have orgasms which was great we are no longer together we broke up about six months ago and now i've been dating again and sleeping with people again and i'm just not sure if there's something wrong with me if there's something wrong with my approach i feel that i can only really come when i'm
doing very specific things and thinking about very specific images. Even with my ex when we were having sex and I was in an orgasm, it felt sort of like I was just making myself cum. or as if I were like masturbating or something and she was just there. We often use sex toys. Often it would involve me kind of closing my eyes and picturing other things. And so I haven't really been able to have the experience of approaching Climax.
with another person except for when i'm sort of imagining the things i do on my own i would love to have this experience be something that i can share with another person Things feel really good. I really enjoy sex. I enjoy sex with men and women and people in between. And secondly, in the meantime, I have a very bad habit of faking orgasms. And recently I've been seeing a couple of people, mostly men at this point.
And I can tell that they really like the feeling of making me come. And sometimes they're going down on me and it feels really good. I just know it's not going to happen for me. And so I guess I sort of have a fear. I've had the experience in the past, especially with my... one year long relationship of saying like
Oh, that feels good, but that's okay. And hurting a person's feelings or killing the mood. And so I find it kind of easy and also sometimes sexy to fake the moratorium and see the guy get really turned on by it. And then often that will lead to him. well which was really good yeah so i know that's kind of bad and i'm not sure what the solution is i'm just curious if you have any thoughts on this or if any of the other listeners of any gender have had similar experiences or similar solutions
There is going to be a difference between the orgasms you fake and the orgasms you have. It's not a big deal if you have a one night stand with somebody, if you hook up and for their entertainment and pleasure and because you like. How they get off on it seeming like you're having an orgasm, like they're giving you an orgasm. You fake an orgasm that one time for that one guy. But the problem is if you like that guy and you hook up with that guy again and again and again.
Eventually, when you want to have or actually do have an actual orgasm, he's going to perceive, most likely, he's not an idiot, the difference between the orgasms you faked and the orgasms you actually. have. And so I would encourage you not to fake orgasms because you never know somebody that you have a one night stand with could become somebody that you want to keep having one night stands with. And then suddenly that person is.
your long-term partner or your spouse. So stop faking orgasms. What you need to do to relieve yourself from feeling like you have to fake an orgasm is set expectations going into that first sexual experience with a new partner. And tell them, like, I don't come the first few times I'm with somebody new. It's not anything you're doing wrong. It's just how my body rolls. And so I really enjoy sex. I really.
Get off on it. And there are ways for you to be in the moment and responsive and vocal and give feedback and encouragement to somebody. without having to fake an orgasm that can have the same impact on them as the fake I'm coming, I'm coming noises. And you should explore and opt for those instead and hold in reserve.
what it is that you do and how you sound when you actually come for when you're actually coming with that person. So you're not setting your next relationship up for the same kind of conflict and drama that was visited on your previous relationship when your ex. girlfriend realized you'd been faking that whole time people don't like to be made fools of and somebody who thinks that they've been doing everything that you need them to do to get off somebody who thinks that
They've got the moves and the skill to get you off or they figured out what it takes to get you off. And then they find out nothing they were doing was actually working and you weren't honestly communicating with them that the baked orgasm. Was a lie that you told them? Yeah, that person could understandably be hopefully not furiously angry, but hurt, upset, humiliated. Don't do that. All right. The other question about.
what it takes to make you come. There are some people who just have to go to a script, a mental image. a fantasy to push themselves over the edge. There's that cliche in all sex writing and sex and relationship rackets about the biggest sex organ in the body being the one between the ears.
And just like some people need their nipples played with or their prostate pressed in order to climax. Some people need a finger in their brain, a mental image in their brain, something unspooling in their brain to push their. physical body, everything from the neck down over the finish line. And you may be one of those people. So rather than worrying too much, your body works. You can come, you can climax.
Worrying too much about what it takes, what you need, rather than thinking that there's something broken about you, there's not. This is how your orgasms get built. And what you need to do. What you can do is with a trusted partner, externalize those internal thoughts, mental images, whatever the dialogue might be. If you can be honest with somebody about.
When you close your eyes and you go to that place, maybe with the right partner, you can bring that person along to that place with a kind of secure partner. who isn't threatened by, who knows, who understands that biggest X organ in the body is the one between the ears thing and how that might work and benefit you and benefit them because they can help you build that orgasm and help get there. Maybe you can.
Share that fantasy. Maybe you can speak it. Maybe you could say it out loud. Maybe you can get to a place with a trusted partner where you don't have to close your eyes and go away, where you can look them right in the eye and go to that mental image or that script. together and engage in dirty talk that allows you the fantasy or the images that you need at play at that moment to come without removing you.
From your partner in the moment. Because they're going there at that moment. To that place that you need to go. They're going there with you. Try that. This episode is brought to you by Liberator. I am excited to be able to talk about Liberator on the show because Liberator makes great sex pillows, wedges, bolsters, furniture, and more. All great stuff that can add hot new dimensions and great new angles to your sex life.
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Let them know the Lovecast sent you. Use the promo code Savage. Make some of your fantasies a reality this holiday season. Liberator.com. Let them know the Lovecast sent you by using the promo code Savage and getting that discount. Hey, Dan Savage. What is your policy when it comes to notifying a person that a romantic partner is cheating? I found out a week after my long-term boyfriend had died unexpectedly that he had another serious girlfriend and multiple other sexual partners.
Our relationship was not lacking. With me, he received daily affection and had a very active sex life. So I never expected him to be motivated to seek other girlfriend or partners. Many of his good friends who were my casual friends knew that he had other romantic pursuits and gave him a hard time, but no one ever told me. I wish I knew while we were still dating.
so he could talk about the status of our relationship, but instead I found out in the cruelest of ways. I went to his celebration of life put on by his colleagues, and another woman introduced herself as a girlfriend, and she didn't know that he was romantically involved with me. So do you think a person should out a cheater who won't come clean? Oh my God. Trying to imagine what the scene at that celebration of life, or as we Irish Catholics used to call them, wakes must have been like, no.
I fucked Spartacus. I fucked Spartacus. No, I fucked Spartacus. To your question. And my heart goes out to you. This has to be just, you lost your long-term partner, your boyfriend suddenly. And after finding out that your boyfriend dropped dead, burying your boyfriend, your long-term romantic partner, you found out that he'd been lying to you. He'd betrayed you. And then you find out that.
mutual friends, friends of yours knew that he was cheating on you. And rather than coming to you and telling you that you'd been cheated on or that you were being cheated on. They importuned him to come clean to you, which of course, as a cheater, he wasn't in a hurry to do. And if his death was unexpected for you, I'm guessing it was unexpected for him too.
Maybe he thought he had time to wind down these other relationships or come clean on his deathbed to make a full and honest confession and go to heaven. But he didn't have that opportunity. To make right with God or make right with you, his girlfriend. Sorry to get Catholic on you here. So to your question, are we obligated to tell someone if we know that their romantic partner is cheating on them?
That's one of those questions where everybody wants a black, white, yes, no answer. Everyone wants clear instructions. If you know a friend or a coworker or a family member is being cheated on, you should go to them and tell them. which I think is true most of the time. This recently came up on the show and we talked about that something that can make being cheated on feel so much worse is the realization or the awareness that others knew.
regarded you as a figure of pity or as a fool, or you might feel like you were being regarded as a fool, even if people who are going to your partner and saying, your boyfriend and saying, Jesus fucking Christ, stop lying and cheating, come clean.
Even if they were motivated to confront him like that because they cared about you, they didn't. Why is it hard to give just a black-white yes-no? If you know somebody's being cheated on, you should go to that person and immediately tell them. Because circumstance. You might know someone's being cheated on. You might know if they knew they would feel obligated to leave. And you might think this would be a terrible time for them to leave because maybe they're between jobs. Maybe they have.
Small children, maybe there are things going on that you, as the person who's aware of the infidelity, know about. And you don't want to make shit worse. For the victim, for the person being cheated on, then shit already is just by dint of being cheated on. People knew it was cheating. People knew you wouldn't be okay with it. And that's why those people who cared about you.
told him to fucking knock it off. You can't have a conversation with him. You can't process the violation, the betrayal. You can't ask him what the fuck he was thinking as he played you and other women. But you can't ask your friends. You can't ask your mutuals what they were thinking, why they didn't come straight to you, why they didn't tell you. You can't do anything about your relationship with your dead ex.
wasn't your ex at the time of his death, but maybe you can break up with him now in your heart, but you do still have relationships with these friends. And rather than wondering what the fuck to do about dead ex, I think those are the relationships you need to tend to. And that's indeed why you asked this question. Like what were they, your friends who knew what should they have done?
They should have come to you. Why didn't they? They might have what they thought were good reasons why they didn't come directly to you. So you might want to ask them, ask your friends what those reasons were. And if they didn't have good reasons, it was just cowardice. Well, then maybe they're not your friends anymore. Maybe they never were. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Did you know that Dan Savage's Hump Film Festival runs on Squarespace?
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code savage to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash savage and use the offer code savage. Hi Dan, Nancy, and the tech-savvy at-risk youth. I'm a 44-year-old cisgendered homoromantic bi guy living in the San Francisco Bay Area. My husband and I have been together for five years and married for a little over a year.
We both want to start a family and at my age I feel that time is of the essence. I've always wanted to have a biological child and I've saved $100,000 for the process. but the agencies we've spoken to quote costs around $150,000. That is, if pregnancy is successful in the first try, and many times it isn't. A big chunk of the expense is agency fees, anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000, so we're trying to do an independent surrogacy journey to save on costs.
However, finding a surrogate is probably one of the most difficult parts of the process and why most people use an agency. We've asked family, friends, coworkers, and everyone we're close to, but it seems that everyone we know has faced pregnancy difficulties or complications that would make surrogacy impossible, impractical, and or not a good option. I've tried connecting online in groups and sites designed for independent surrogates and intended parents, but I've only encountered scammers.
At this point, I'm feeling really desperate and I'm brainstorming outlandish ideas, like joining hetero dating sites just to see if someone might want to have a child with me. Maybe exploring kink communities as someone might have a fetish that another man gets their wife pregnant, or finding some other unconventional arrangement.
Generally, when I think of far-fetched ideas, my brain thinks about all the reasons it's not a good idea and how it can go oh so wrong. I'd love to hear your thoughts, ideas, and recommendations for our situation. Do you have any secondhand experience with folks you know who've had biological children in unconventional ways?
Maybe some other outside of the box ideas that might help us have a kid within our financial means. Or maybe there are listeners who've been in our shoes and can share what's worked for them. I'm definitely open to adoption, but I need to explore every possibility of having a biological child before I can go down that road.
Joining me to help tackle this question, Diana Adams, an internationally recognized, internationally lauded legal leader in advocacy for the LGBTQIA plus community and a leader in the fight for inclusive definitions of family beyond the romantic couple. They're the executive director. of the Chosen Family Law Center and a frequent guest here on the Lovecast. Diana, welcome back. Glad to be with you, Dan.
So first question, on a scale where one is very bad squared and 10 is very, very bad times infinity, how would you rank the idea of looking for a surrogate on a pregnancy kink website? I'd give that an 11, Dan. This is one of these things where as a lawyer, it just gives me hives hearing a question like this because it's so risky. And especially right now when...
The laws related to surrogacy and legality are shifting state by state, and it's really controversial. One of the reasons you go through an agency is so that they make sure this is a person who really understands what they're signing, that you're not going to be held. liable as a dad, that she's not going to change her mind at the last minute and want to keep the baby. And what you are saving on therapist bills and lawyer bills later is going to be at least $50,000 pay for the agency.
Pay for the agency. There are, however, alternative routes for gay men or homoromantic, bi men and same sex male relationships to becoming parents. And the one that occurred to me, the caller.
You know, in the caller's defense, did identify this as a crazy idea and bracket it a little bit. But I could detect some like, well, maybe this would work in his voice. So caller, don't do that. Don't do that. No cuckold kink website surrogates. No. But the caller asked for examples that we might have encountered in our lives of people who became dads through alternative routes.
And the most glaringly obvious one, and the one that I was familiar with before I became a parent, was gay men and bi men in same-sex male relationships who parented with lesbian. singles who wanted to be moms and lesbian couples who wanted to be moms and co-parented together. Also an option.
Absolutely. That was going to be my thought as well, Dan, is that I think we can break out of the model of parenting as a couple as the only option because actually many of us are doing something different already.
And kids can really thrive with three or four parents. And so if he really wants to be a biological dad and that's a priority, another option to look at is not just asking from friends of his for the enormous gift of would you be a surrogate and be pregnant for me and then relinquish all rights, but rather. Who was wanting to be a mom out here? And I think that that route of co-parenting with a lesbian couple or with...
an intended single mom by choice, that's a really great option that would then also be significantly cheaper. You definitely need a lawyer to negotiate that agreement, but that's absolutely a great option as well. And if he doesn't have somebody in his immediate social circle. There are websites where people are finding folks to do different kinds of co-parenting with. There's a co-parenting and Mod Amelie websites. I can't vouch for any of them in particular. I would just say...
For platonic parenting, slow down. And this is an even bigger deal than marrying somebody because if you marry somebody and you've screwed it up, you get divorced and it was a waste of your own time and money. But you're bringing a child into the world. You're going to be in this for 20 years whether you get along with this person or not.
you know, slow down, have your first fight, get to know them really well, make sure that you know who this person is if you're going with the route of meeting somebody on the internet. And even if you did meet somebody on the internet, you still will have to do your due diligence legally. Absolutely. You need to get a co-parenting agreement. If it's your best friend or somebody from the internet, you need to both trust them and have an agreement with a lawyer experienced in this field.
I kind of tricked you into coming on the show, just like I tricked your therapy Jeff into coming on the show a couple of weeks ago. I really wanted to ask you a quick question about. The election and the fallout and consequences for queer people. A lot of LGBT people are distressed about.
Donald Trump being back in the White House, it seems that not even trans members of Congress are safe. And I wanted to ask you to do a quick download on what queer people who are worried right now can and should be doing proactively to prepare, particularly trans people. Queer listeners, you are loved, you are cared for, and there are so many people here to help you. And I want that to be heard first. And right now is a time to not panic, but to make a plan.
And I think it's important for people to recognize that what we're about to see, I predict, is geographic differences in privilege and race and class differences in privilege for queer people. For my clients who are white people who live in New York State who are panicking, you're not about to get rounded up. That's not what's about to happen, right? What we're about to see is a lot of harassment of trans people in red states and for people being treated really terribly and probably...
criminalized, right? Getting sent to jail for doing drag in public as if it's a sex crime. So I think that people need to recognize, number one, where do you live? Moving is a tremendous privilege. But there are the trans risk maps which I post on my own social media frequently. And if you could, for example, just move from Texas to Colorado.
you would be facing a whole world of difference in terms of your legal rights. And so if you have the privilege as a person with a womb or a person who's trans or a person in a same-sex partnership to be living in a place where you're not treated as a second-class citizen, move. Don't give them your...
If you can, it's a tremendous. I'd like to add to that a one bedroom apartment in a blue city in a blue state is better than a three bedroom ranch house in a red state where you don't know what's coming tomorrow. Exactly. And to blue states and blue cities out there, build fucking housing. There are people who need to take refuge in our blue cities and our blue states and there's not enough fucking housing which is why those one bedrooms are so goddamn prohibitively expensive and may keep people
out of parts of the country where they would be safe if they could move there, but they can't because we haven't been building enough housing. Sorry, that's a hobby horse of mine. More advice for queer people out there who are worried? If you're looking for that assistance in moving, there also are groups propping up that are trans lifeline kinds of groups about helping you with moving costs.
There are sanctuary laws you can look up by state, such as the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois, having sanctuary laws to help make sure that it's easier to... get your professional licenses transferred into new states quickly. So there are people there to welcome you in blue states. And then also the biggest difference here we'll see is with your federal documentation, making sure that if you've got your passport and your social security, that information.
is updated. If you're living in a blue state, you'll still be able to get your name change and your gender marker change. But you can change your gender marker on your federal documents without any other kind of paperwork just by your own election right now. And I would do that. I'd also be really conscious.
about having an ex-gender marker. Quickly explain what an ex-gender marker is for somebody who may not know. So an ex-gender marker is a gender neutral designation for people like me who are non-binary transgender. Now, if I was going to want...
to feel as gender affirmed as possible in the DMV, I would have an ex-gender marker. However, it is more important to me that I not be outed as non-binary trans when I'm crossing a border with some random TSA agent or when I'm pulled over by a cop in a red state. right? And so
If everyone has to make that decision for themselves, if it feels like it's something that's too anathema for you, that's your own decision. We have a resource article about it at Chosen Family Law Center that you could read more nuance, but be aware that that's something that's both going to be potentially outing you, but also that. then you may have the tremendous hassle of having some of your documents say X and some of them saying MRF.
So if you have your New York State driver's license, for example, that says X on it, and that's no longer allowed at a federal level, you may be stuck with an invalid passport that's got the X on it.
you know, one that says F and then your documents don't match up and now you're trying to leave the country or you're trying to buy a house and you're left with a whole world of hassle. And as a trans non-binary person, you're not trying to invalidate anybody's gender identity. I am a trans non-binary activist. wouldn't personally do it myself because of the enormous amount of hassle it presents to other people, which to me outweighs the affirmation of having that.
So I would personally find other ways to celebrate your non-binariness. I'm buying all the daddy merch that I can. That makes me feel affirmed. I do not need my documents to say X on them personally. It's up to everyone. Because that can create an opportunity for a malicious, state-empowered actor.
to fuck with you. Yes. Potentially a year from now, two years from now. It allows even just a bureaucrat to say, nope, I'm sorry, this doesn't make sense. Your passport says F, but your driver's license says X. You're not the same person. Okay, so. Bring your documents into order. Get your documents in order. Think about fucking moving and. And for other queer people.
This is a moment for a belts and suspenders approach, by which I mean get all of the documents in order. So if you have, for example, two same-sex names on a birth certificate as a same-sex couple, that is valid in states like New York and California.
Places that are not blue states are not going to recognize that. Other countries don't recognize that where they see birth certificates as a record of your genealogy and it doesn't make sense to have a same-sex couple on it. So you also need either a judgment of parentage or a second parent adoption to protect your parentage rights.
If you're married, also, we don't expect that existing same-sex marriages are going to be undone, but future ones may be or some of your federal benefits may be removed. So this is also a time to, in addition to your same-sex marriage, get your wills done. Get your health care proxy.
so that your spouse or partner can visit you in the hospital and make medical decisions for you. Get your power of attorney documents so that you have a legal financial connection. This is so depressing. This is so depressing. I'm sorry. One of the reasons we fought for marriage equality was so you didn't have to go through the expense, the prohibitive expense of powers of attorney, wills, medical directives, all of which a person who's opposite sex before marriage equality could get for the...
cost of the marriage license and same-sex couples had to spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to secure those rights and to think that we're being dragged back to that potentially. Any other last bits of advice? My last bit of advice is that there are organizations that will do this kind of paperwork for all queer people, regardless of their ability to pay.
Chosen Family Law Center is doing that for people in New York State and offering free wills and powers of attorney and health care proxies and judgments of parentage and even co-parenting agreements for people who can't afford to pay. And one thing that's important to realize right now, if you're one of the privileged people who's not worried about moving and has more resources beyond just getting your paperwork in order,
keep in mind that that privilege could allow you to support some of the nonprofits that are really what the resistance is. And there's a reason that the Trump administration, one of the first things they're doing is trying to take away 501c3 status from advocacy organizations and label them terrorists.
terrorist supporting organizations is because they're trying to cut the legs out from under us because we are the resistance and we are the people who are going to be passing laws at a city and state level that block them. We are the people who are going to be helping you get your documents in order and they're trying to stop us. And what we need.
from people who have privilege, is to look at your local grassroots LGBTQ organizations and give them money. At Chosen Family Law Center, we need to hire at least two more people because we have... Four times as many people coming through the door looking for help, but we don't want to turn them away. And there are many organizations like that across the country. So look to your local nonprofits and also be aware of the House bill that's going through that is to basically.
cut the legs out from under nonprofits, call your representatives and fight back against that. We need all of us to stay activated and resilient so that we can be able to push back. Well, because Terry and I have been together so long that we already spent the money on powers of attorney and wills and medical directives. We're going to send some cash to the chosen family law center so that.
You guys can help out some other same-sex queer and trans folks who don't have their documents in order, need to get their documents in order. Diana Adams, Executive Director of Chosen Family Law Center. You can find Diana on socials at DianaAdamsESQ. And again, Chosen Family Law Center. Join me in giving a donation, chosenfamilylawcenter.org. Diana, thank you so much for jumping on with me today. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Glad to be in solidarity.
This episode is sponsored by Talkspace. A lot of us are struggling right now, whether it's you who needs to talk to someone or you're helping someone you care for in your life who needs to talk to someone. Talkspace is a great way, a way that I recommend to connect yourself or the person you love with a therapist right now. Talkspace, the leading virtual therapy provider, makes getting the help you need easy, accessible, and affordable.
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Talkspace provides personalized treatment for individuals, couples, the LGBTQIA plus community, veterans, and teens. And as a listener of this podcast, you'll get $80 off your first month with Talkspace when you go to Talkspace.com slash savage. and enter promo code SPACE80. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com slash savage.
and enter promo code SPACE80, S-P-A-C-E 8-0, to get $80 off your first month and show your support for the show. That's Talkspace.com slash Savage, promo code SPACE80. 80. Hey, Dan. I've been married to my husband for, well, we've been together for 11 years. We have this super open relationship. We have our own sex lives that are fully separate from each other. And we also have a great sex life together. And we're very, very like chill.
about kind of doing our own thing. Recently, we started dating a guy together and it's going really well. It's super hot and fun and I'm really into him. weird sticking point for me is this new guy, he's a little like... he's not specifically asking for monogamy but he's frequently implying that he would prefer to be monogamous or he wants us to be monogamous like he makes these comments like oh i don't need anyone else i have you guys that's enough for me
or like kind of like jealous jokes like I'm going to a bar and he's like those boys better not flirt with you like that kind of thing you know he's a bit younger than us and I also realized that The really great balance that I have with my husband literally took us years to build. So I want to give this guy a bit of grace and let him get comfortable in the relationship before I start pushing him too hard on things.
But I do feel like it's an important part of my identity that I'm not in a relationship that has this kind of possessive tone to it. And, you know, I worked really hard with my husband for years to get to the place that we're at now and I'm finally feeling so good about it and it really kind of hurts me inside to go backwards for someone new.
So I just want to get your advice about how you think I should approach this conversation with him. Why are you waiting to push back? He's telling you what it is that he hopes this relationship is going to. become kind of a closed monogamous triad. Those are his hopes. If those hopes are false hopes, if that's impossible, you need to disabuse him of those false hopes. quickly, as quickly as possible, right fucking now, if the price of admission to be in a relationship with you and your
husband is no expectation that I'm not going to flirt with other guys at the bar, that I'm not going to hook up with other people, that I don't have other sex partners. And he's saying things like, you guys are enough for me. Well, dot, dot, dot. He's hoping he's enough for you. And he's telling you, he's asking you to tell him in that moment where you're at, how you're feeling, and for him to be in this relationship.
with you guys without knowing where your minds and dicks and asses are at is unfair to him. It's. Not fair to him to draw this out. You and your husband know who you are, what you want, and how you want to structure your relationship and how other people might fit into your relationship as one-offs or fuck buddies or indeed as thirds.
His idea of being your third is being your only other sexual partner, yours and your husband's only other sexual partner. That's what he's telling you. And you need to. Pick the fuck up on that hint. The longer you let this play out, longer you let him live in false hope, the worse it's going to be, the bigger shit show it's going to be when he realizes that.
What he was telling you he wanted was not anything you ever wanted and you knew it the whole time. Yeah, he's speaking in hint, he's speaking in gesture and code, but you need to respond directly. to what he's clearly telling you and say, Hey, look, yeah, I'm going to the bar tonight in hopes that other guys flirt with me or just have a define a DTR, define the relationship conversation with him.
You guys worked really hard to get to the place you're at and you don't want to go backwards. So either he's joining the ride you're on at the stage of the ride that you're on or he's not. And you're not going to pretend. that you're being triad monogamous with him as a default setting or an assumption. And you just need to be clear with him. You need to drop both fucking shoes or pianos on him right now.
and tell him the truth. Tell him what it is he needs to know. Tell him what he's asking you in those moments to tell him. The risk you're running here by not leveling with him about... What it is that you guys want and the conflict that might exist between his hopes or expectations and what's possible. You're avoiding the conflict. You don't want to upset him. Maybe the ass is that good. And what's going to happen?
is this conflict you're avoiding now when you finally do have it, when he realizes a month or three months or six months or a year from now. That as he was making his desires, hopes clear to you, you guys were lying to him, kind of, sort of. He'll be able to argue or he'll feel by omission.
He was making himself clear. You guys knew what it was he wanted or expected or hoped to get from you. And you didn't level with him. Why? Because you didn't want him to take his ass at that moment and go. And so. You didn't tell him what he needed to know to continue on, to choose to continue on in a fully informed way in this relationship. And the reason why you wouldn't have told him the first.
12 times he dropped these hints is probably because you're not done with him yet. And so you're stalling. You're avoiding a confrontation that might result in you guys not being able to fuck this boy anymore. But if. You don't get to fuck him because you don't want what he wants, what he's clearly told you that he wants. Well, that's how it should go. You shouldn't get to fuck him if you guys aren't all on the same page about what it is you want.
Level with him now. The confrontation you're avoiding by not being direct with him is going to be so much worse, so much messier if it happens three months, six months from now. Or it happens because he realizes that. What he was telling you he wanted, you were aware of what he was telling you, and it was never what you guys wanted with him or from him.
Time for listener feedback. First up, some of the comments left on last week's show in the very lively comment threads at savage.love. My conversation on last week's show with Tracy Shorn, aka... Chump Lady inspired some great conversations and debates in the comment thread on that show, episode 942. Some of those comments are long, impassioned responses, scathing critiques. Even if me, I can't.
Do the debate justice here, but I wanted to share a few of the comments about that show. It says in Contempo, loved the conversation with Chump Lady. It was evident you guys disagreed, but it was great how you found commonalities. It's clear to me that not all cheating experiences are forgivable, not all are unforgivable, and the difficulty for the betrayed person lies in figuring out how deep the deception goes and if this is a horrible mistake.
or a selfish pattern. Says thingamajig, there are lots of things Sean said and that Dan said that I could talk about, but I will just drill down on one thing she said I really agreed with. Nobody should depend on a marriage or partnership. for economic security. I completely agree with Sean on that point. And it is good news that women are less dependent.
These days, these decades on male partners for economic security, which is one of the things deranging straight men at this political and cultural moment, it hasn't quite sunk in yet. How many women back when America was allegedly great weren't marrying for love or because they wanted to have families or be moms, but because they literally had no other options. Women used to marry under duress, economic duress.
More economic security means less to us, means fewer women wanting to get married at all, particularly when a lot of their options are voting for Trump. Back to Shorn, she agreed that women were almost as likely to cheat as men, but she also said forgiving a cheater means you are...
quote, sucking on the dick of patriarchy. Says Ziba, this implies that sucking a dick is somehow a bad, humiliating, or degrading thing to do. It is not. Although I will say, this is me here, not Ziba. Sometimes it is fun to pretend. Back to Z, but I did really like the comment Chump Lady made about competing for a man being a ridiculous setup, but so is competing for any romantic partner.
That scenario where the side piece is longing for more but is played for a fool sucks in any gender composition as beautifully described in the masterpiece. Good luck, babe, by Chapel Roan. And finally, NoCuteName says, did you all notice that Dan didn't say my big gay mouth this week at the end of listener comments? Just my big mouth?
All right. For more listener feedback, check out struggle session every Thursday at savage.love. And now everyone's favorite part of the show. Mine included the part where I shot. Yes, indeed. My big gay mouth. And let my listeners. Have the last word. Hey, Dan, just calling in response to the guest you had on Tracy. I appreciated your conversation, but I couldn't help but feel that a lot of her.
positions were in relation to her experience of being harmed by an abusive partner. Regardless of the cheating, he... threatened to kill her and to burn her house down like that is the actions of an abusive partner not like a gray area abuse but like you know threats of physical harm are relational and emotional abuse And it seemed like the way she responded and perhaps the community of women she's built around herself in the wake of that experience.
has been also women that they weren't just cheated on, but they were also emotionally abused in the process. And I just think It's really important to understand that cheating is a huge spectrum of behavior going from the very mild end that you frequently discussed of like maybe getting a hand job like one time in 20 years to living a whole double life. to then totally separate and this is the important part separate behavior which is emotional abuse i i think she's conflated the two
not very experienced by doing anal. I would say that there's two options that weren't discussed. The first is I dated a guy who had like a less than three inch dick and was still able to get my prostate. it every now and again when I used a position where on my stomach with one knee pulled up and he would straddle the outstretched leg. That worked really well to get super penetration.
The next one is a cop sheet. I've had guys that I've dated that are, you know, true size queens and being average meant that I needed to do a little bit of extra addition onto my own. So instead of just putting a strap-on on, he can also put in a cock sheath or, you know, an anal stretcher. There's a bunch of them available online that you can insert, and then he's kind of like fucking that tube, and you can feel...
a little bit more filled up. Hey, Dan and Nancy. Just a comment here for the queer guy who wants his partner to top him. I'm a cis female, but my partner and I use penis extenders, which is, I guess, a form of pegging. We want to play around with different sizes. So yeah, you get a penis extender, slap it onto the old cock and wrap it around your balls and you're still penetrating your partner. And it still feels really good for the penetrator.
and the penetratee. And it's different from pegging because with pegging often there's not much of a sensation for the penetrator. But size extenders, cock extenders, you still get that fun. He's still having a great time. I'm still having a good time. Everyone's having a good time.
And we're going to leave it there. We've got three ways for you to get us your questions and comments for future shows. You can record and upload your question directly onto our website, savage.love slash askdan. Or you can make a voice memo on your very own phone and email us your question. or comment to q at savage.love or you can call our landline like it's 1999 and leave us a message at 206-302-2064. Just a couple of weeks left to submit your hump film in addition to the $10,000.
and cash prizes awarded by Hump audiences. Every filmmaker whose movie makes it into Hump 2025 will receive a percentage of every ticket sold. Submissions to Hump are due December 6th. Everything you need to know about getting Your Dirty Little Masterpiece into the best Dirty Little Film Festival in the world is at hubfilmfest.com.
Follow me on Instagram and threads at Dan Savage. Follow me at Blue Sky at Dan Savage. Follow Diana Adams on Instagram, Twitter, and all the socials at Diana Adams ESQ. Be sure to check out their amazing TED Talks, their website, Diana Adams. law.net. Follow Bonnie on threads and Instagram at
boobie clapper. Savage Lovecast is produced every week by Nancy Hartunian and me and Nancy and the tech savvy at risk youth. We'll all be back at you next week. My installment of the Savage Lovecast. Thank you for telling me.