Git along little doggie! A gay man in academia has always been into cowboys. But he fights his brain, due to the inherently problematic nature of this fetish. Can (or should) he scrub these fantasies from his mind? A woman in Berlin would like to go to Folsom Europe. But would she be welcome? Dan chats with kink educator AJ Berlin about gay male sex party spaces, and who is (and isn't) welcome. On the Magnum, Dan chats with a true unicorn- a monogamous gay man. Don Martin is an author, podcaster and prolific THIRST TRAPPER. He's been with his husband for 18 years in a very happy exclusive relationship. They talk about accepting yourself as gay, going the distance with monogamy, escaping body dysmorphia and so much more. They had a wide-ranging conversation and you are invited to listen in. And, are there any foot fetishists out there who are ladies? Anyone? Call! Tell us about it! [email protected] 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by Dipsea: an app full of hundreds of short, sexy audio stories designed by women for women. Get an extended 30 day free trial when you go to dipseastories.com/savage. This episode is brought to you by Talkspace- online therapy that makes it easy to get extra mental health support. For $80 off your first month, go to Talkspace.com/Savage, and use the offer code Space80. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. They make it easy to build a website or blog. Give it a whirl at Squarespace.com/Savage and if you want to buy it, use the code Savage for a 10% off your first purchase.
You're listening to the micro version of the Savage Lovecast at savage.love.
If you're stuck in a relationship quandary, or if you're looking for sexual harmony, well, there's nothing you can't ask on the Savage Lovecast.
I try not to hate. Really I do. But every once in a while, I hate so hard. And I think the people I may hate most, the people I hate hardest, are the people out there who tell the New York Post how outraged and disgusted they are. It's always sex they're outraged and disgusted by, which, of course, none of the vestal virgins who own, edit, write for, or read the New York Post has ever had.
The New York Post, a paper that covers a city that's famously licentious, what do they think people are doing when they're not sleeping in the city that never sleeps? The New York Post has such a problem with sex. Oh, man, I have... long hated the Post for the way it attacks and sometimes outs pro-doms.
And I'm going to crawl out on a limb here and guess that someone in the C-suite at News Corp, the Murdoch company that owns Post and Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, someone at News Corp has patronized a pro-dom at least once this week in New York City. Anyway, here's the headline from the New York Post this weekend that has me all exercised.
Homeless couple filmed having sex in parking lot under NYC's FDR Drive. The paper anonymously quotes the aghast 34-year-old local who witnessed the shocking sight, saying, "...a couple having sexual intercourse on the sidewalk was a new low for the city." That quote made it into the headline. Two people fucking outside. A new low for the city. You know what I think is a new low?
The new high reported earlier this summer. The new high in the number of people living on the streets in New York City. So about this shocked and aghast local, he wasn't so shocked, he wasn't so aghast that he was paralyzed. He was able to pull out his cell phone and start recording a video from his window.
Three videos, in fact, that he sent to the New York Post, which published them on their website. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but what this guy did, who I'm guessing actually isn't a local, not a born and bred New Yorker, I'm guessing what he did... violates New York's revenge porn law, which prohibits the distribution of intimate images without the consent of the people in them.
Now, people fucking in public don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, a legal standard that allows news organizations and individuals to take pictures of people in public. But it would be an interesting test case. Revenge porn statutes punish people who distribute sexual images with the intent to do harm. They want to get their ex fired or ruin their ex's relationship with their parents.
And this guy, Mr. Aghast, he sicked the New York Post on this pair. He wanted the police to do something. And the police aren't exactly a benign presence in the lives of homeless people. They could have been harmed.
Back to the post, locals, they went and found some more of them, locals bemoaned the daylight debauchery as a symptom of the area's decay, particularly given how close it is, where those two people were fucking, how close it is to the waterfront pathway, which is regularly used by bikers and joggers, as well as families out for a stroll. I watched the videos.
They're behind a barricade under a freeway. Anyone walking down the path would not be able to see them. Only someone peering down from the window of an apartment above could see them.
Anyone walking by who managed to maybe hear them over the roar of the traffic on the FDR above them and then decided to climb over the barricade to check out where that wet slapping sound was coming from would only have themselves to blame for what they saw. Look, we're in the middle of a housing crisis that is helping to drive the homelessness crisis.
We talked about it on our last Sex and Politics with California State Senator Scott Weiner. It's been great as a Yimby to see Democrats at the top of the ticket, Kamala Harris, and Democrats who topped previous winning tickets like Barack Obama get on the Yimby bandwagon. Here is Obama at the DNC. In his speech, endorsing the construction of new housing.
We can't just rely on the ideas of the past. We need to chart a new way forward to meet the challenges of today. And Kamala understands this. She knows, for example, that if we want to make it easier for more young people to buy a home, We need to build more units and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people in this country.
That is a priority. And she's put out a bold new plan. Did you just that?
Ugh, music to my ears. Yeah, we need to build millions of units of new housing, which will require cutting through forests of red tape and undoing exclusionary zoning, also known as single-family zoning, locked in place decades ago to keep the poors and non-whites... out.
But undoing the housing crisis we've created for ourselves here, building those millions of new units, which need to include SROs, single room occupancy hotels, bottom rung housing, that is going to take time. That is going to take decades. And in the meantime... People are going to keep fucking. Housed people. They're likely to fuck inside their houses, but not always.
Most of the guys fucking around in the rambles in Central Park have apartments nearby. Most of the guys who have sex in the park near my house, Seattle's Volunteer Park, so named for the men who show up there after dark every night and volunteer to give blowjobs, most of them left their houses to go fuck in the park. Homeless people are unhoused neighbors.
They're going to fuck too, but they don't have the option of fucking at home because they don't have one. And in big democratic cities like New York, for decades, the single biggest impediment to building more housing has been the objections of people who already have housing.
The, I got mine and my property values are rising because demand outstrips supply and I'm going to do my best to make sure you don't get yours by blocking all new construction crowd. That's a choice, politicians listening to those people. That is a choice, and it's one that's had consequences.
And one of the things we're choosing by blocking the construction of new housing and urban centers is that we, those of us with windows, are going to look out those windows from time to time and see homeless people doing in public all of the things we have the privilege to do in private, which include eating, sleeping, reading, peeing, and fucking.
Of course, it's not just the housing shortage that created the homeless crisis. Homelessness as a crisis, multi-causal, but the housing shortage is one of the biggest drivers. And I'm hoping that we're finally, finally going to start doing something about it.
And in the meantime, while we're doing something about it, when we see homeless people in public fucking or living or doing whatever, can we put our phones away and not rat them out to the fucking... Sex-phobe hypocrites at the New York Post.
All right, quick note of advice for all my kinky gay friends who are going to be coming together at Folsom Berlin and Folsom SF and other big gatherings this fall. The new MPOX train we're all worried about, the deadlier one, has not yet been found in Gay or Bi Men. The important word in that sentence is yet.
The old strain, which is no picnic but less deadly, still circulating among gay and bi men at low levels. If you haven't been vaccinated yet, get vaccinated as soon as possible, ideally before you climb into that sling at Folsom Berlin or Folsom SF. All right, a quick programming note. Our next Savage Love Live for Magnum subs happening Thursday, September 12th at noon Pacific.
Savage Love Live is a special Zoom show exclusively for our Magnum Lovecast subscribers. Join me and Nancy Thursday, September 12th. We will answer questions live and chat with our subs. If you want to be one of those subs that we chat with, go to savage.love and become a subscriber now.
All right, coming up on today's show on The Micro and The Magnum, a woman wanted to know if she would be welcome at the gay sex bacchanalia that is Folsom Europe. I got on the phone with Berlin-based kink educator AJ Berlin to talk about inclusion at gay fetish events and whether this woman and her male partner, would be welcome at Folsom Berlin.
And joining me on the Magnum today, Don Martin, author, podcaster, TikToker, poet. Interesting thing about Don, in addition to all the books he's written and all the work he does, he's a gay man in a long-term relationship. He's a married gay man, and he and his husband are... Are you sitting down? They are monogamous.
Don is here to take me to task for saying on my show again and again and again that there's no such thing as a long-term monogamous gay couple. He and his husband, a long-term monogamous gay couple. And Don is here to slap me down. All that coming up on today's show. On to your first question. This episode of the Savage Lovecast is brought to you by Dipsy.
Dipsy is an app full of hundreds of short, sexy audio stories designed by women for women. Get an extended 30-day free trial when you go to dipsystories.com slash savage. 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.
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.
Hi, Dan. I'm in my 30s. I've got quite a sensitive question. My brother has been going out with the most lovely girl for about seven years now. He has bought a ring. He's about to propose, which normally would be absolutely fantastic. He's my little brother. He's always kind of played the field a lot. This is his longest relationship. But I know that he cheats on her quite a lot.
It really annoys me. I've had the conversation with him and he's just like, oh, whatever. It only happens when I'm on a night out with the lads. And yeah, it's upsetting to me because I've been cheated on in the past. And I really, really, really like this girl. I would love to be a part of her family, but...
It's upsetting for me to see her treated like that when I know that she has no idea because we've had many conversations about monogamy and I know she has no idea. And I don't want to break up this wonderful relationship that they have, but it makes me very uncomfortable the thought that I will be at a wedding that is just based on lies. Don't want to fall out with my family.
Don't want to fall out with anyone. But I just feel like... she should be told, or he needs to tell her. He's not grasped how big this is for women who are monogamous.
Oh my God, what an excruciating position you find yourself in. Either you betray your brother, who routinely betrays his girlfriend of seven years, or you smile at this woman, welcome her into the family, and then when this all comes out, she's going to feel betrayed by you and the rest of your family who knew that this truck was barreling at her and you didn't Warn her.
You didn't give her a heads up. Oh, my God. I don't... I'm having to really think right now really hard about what it is that you should... do you can implore your brother to be honest with himself and his girlfriend and admit that monogamy isn't something he can do that monogamy isn't something he wants but if your brother justifies this shit with uh just a night out with the lads therefore pussy
In that context, Strange Pussy doesn't count against me morally or ethically. He's probably the kind of self-centered, serial adulterer, straight piece of shit dude who wants a monogamous relationship, wants his partner to be monogamous to him, couldn't stand the idea of his girlfriend or wife getting with another guy, but wants to give himself...
permission to go get with other women and then rationalize it with the after the fact bullshit like I was drunk or it was a night out with the lads or somehow this pussy doesn't count, but any dick that wasn't his dick under any circumstances would certainly in his mind count. So what do you do? You have to risk here. estrangement from your family.
If you're going to do the right thing by this woman that you have known for however long it was after they began dating that your brother introduced you to his girlfriend. So you've known her for six years, seven years, however long you've known her. Oh my God. This is one of those questions where all I can think is what would I do?
I would say to my brother in a circumstance like this, you tell her or I tell her, but she is going to be told before the wedding what she is signing up for. I am not going to stand by silently and be complicit in your betrayal of her and mask or cover for it. Like when family shows up to a wedding and smiles and is a part of the wedding party, there's a little bit of vouching going on there.
You're standing up at the wedding for the person From your side who invited you to that wedding. If you're up there on the altar, if you're part of the wedding party, you are endorsing not just the relationship, but the person who is entering into this relationship.
We should say to your brother, what I would say to my brother and make this about me and what I would do is I can't in good conscience stand up there and endorse you knowing what I know. maybe you should have kept this from me in the same way you kept it from your girlfriend, your fiance soon all this time. And then I wouldn't feel conflicted in this way.
And maybe there's something that you can do, or you can tell me that will mollify me, like get your ass into therapy, like do some work and recognize how the fucked up this is, or do some work and recognize that you are incapable of honoring or making monogamous commitments. You are not going to make one or demand one from someone else who isn't a cock queen. And those are very rare birds indeed.
So the odds that she would be down with him fucking around on her. or get off on it are pretty slim. Who knows, though? Who knows what she knows? Seven years they've been together. This has happened routinely, regularly. Maybe she knows, and she just doesn't want you to know she knows or other people to know she knows.
Maybe she's being, say it with me, everybody, tolly, tolly amorous about all this shit. The only way to find out for sure what she knows, whether she knows it, whether she wants to know it, is to risk having this conversation. and to risk your relationship with your brother, with your family of origin to do the right thing by this woman who is about to become a part of your family.
I think we have moral obligation to do right by family members and sometimes to do right by someone in advance of them becoming a family member. Someone has a very serious problem that they've hidden from a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a fiance.
Sometimes family has to back channel or front channel and just go to that person and say, look, there is this problem with drugs or alcohol or debt or infidelity or whatever that you need to know about before you get married. It's much harder to extricate yourself from this relationship or God forbid, scramble your DNA together, making it even worse.
impossible to fully extricate yourself from this relationship. Legally, family doesn't have a duty to warn people who are about to marry in. Morally, there are cases when a family does have a duty to warn. I think this is one of those cases. Again, not telling you what to do, but in your shoes, I would say something to her.
Hi. I am a 64-year-old politically aware queer white man living in an East Coast academic milieu, and I have the most disreputable sexual fetish possible, a cowboy fetish. I know perfectly well that cowboys are inherently racist, reactionary, and beyond redemption. but I can't help it. Forget Top Gun or Gladiator, my idea of Hollywood's softcore porn is tombstone.
Why did it have to be cowboys, rather than something respectable like gladiators or skinheads? It's not that I have a rigid physical type, but it's still cowboys I'm attracted to. I'm all too aware that for an East Coast queer academic like me to moon after cowboys is inappropriate behavior not even Camille Paglia would approve.
How can I expunge this cowboy finish from my being and make myself over into a respectable, queer, white, 64-year-old male?
Camille Paglia does not care what makes your dick hard. And you can't really help what makes your dick hard. And yeah, cowboys. Their ties to manifest destiny and their active participation often in... genocide of Native America. Like, yeah, yeah, it's terribly problematic. But you know what the thing is about fetishes and kinks and being into certain types, uniforms?
Nobody dresses up like the good guys. Nobody dresses up like motherfucking Teresa's nuns. Nobody dresses up like Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. People dress up and are turned on by fearsome figures that loom large in our imaginations and then for some,
cross through that barrier and wind up blooming large in our erotic imaginations and there's literally nothing you can do about it you could feel bad about it sounds like you felt bad about it probably for decades and where has it gotten you Cowboys aren't making your dick any less hard at 64 than cowboys were at 54 or 34, 24 or 14. You have to live with your kinks and live with your fetishes.
And what makes you a good or bad person or academic or East Coast pointy-headed liberal is how you express them, how you share them. And there are ways to live out your worst experiences. Sexual kinks, fetishes, to fetishize the worst people without making more terrible people and without being the worst person.
Find other people who share your kink and consensually indulge with them, whatever that looks like. And remember...
kink role play it's just theater and nobody has a problem when you go to a movie and there's hannibal lecter carving people up and people watch that movie and experience fear and release and yeah and that's fine you had a boner and people are like oh i'm a terrible person no you're not a terrible person you just like your desire for this kind of cathartic role play is
is tied up with your erotic imagination. And it's, I'm sorry, you listen to this show, presumably you called me. This is so common, right?
On feminist, strong, powerful women who want to have their hair pulled and their asses slapped and be called sluts during sex by someone who respects them, that they chose and empowered to treat them like that for a set period of time are no less feminist, maybe are more feminist because they're doing what it is that they want to do with who they want to do that shit with than someone who's a feminist who doesn't have that kind of fantasy.
It's just a cliche that people are attracted to the symbolism and power and threat in certain archetypes that are negatively correlated with terrible world events. You don't think skinheads have negative connotations? The reason anti-racist skinheads have to identify themselves as anti-racist skinheads is because the assumption is a skinhead is a racist.
So yeah, the alts you tossed out there, the alternatives you tossed out there to your problematic cowboy fetish, if you thought about them as deeply as you've thought about your cowboy fetish that isn't going anywhere, you would recognize that there are problems with them too. And so stop if this call was for real, like maybe this was JD Vance pranking me.
Stop putting yourself through the, you're 64 fucking years old. The stuff that turns you on is going to keep turning you on until you fucking die. There is nothing that you can do about this. You have to recognize when it comes to kink, fantasy, role play, sexual archetypes that just fucking turn you on.
You have to recognize what you can realize in real life, consensually in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, makes the person that you're with feel good about them, feel good about your connection around this shared kink and the kinks that can never be realized because they're impossible because it's a centaur you want to sleep with or a minor.
There are unrealizable kinks for moral and ethical reasons. Cowboys are not one of them. There are, yeah, some kinks that make other people feel uncomfortable perhaps because they're archetype you're attracted to is somebody associated with world historical traumatic crimes and that's not a coincidence. It's not a coincidence.
Terrifying, terrible figures that loom large in world history or in current events have a way of imprinting themselves on our erotic imaginations because we are drawn to them and repelled by them in sort of equal measure and that line between arousal and disgust is isn't just about eating ass. It's also about getting down on your knees and sucking cowboy cock.
My friend, I just want you to know that I see you and you are valid. But your website could use a little work, my friend. I recommend Squarespace. Here are just a few of the things that you can do with Squarespace. Start a completely personalized website with the new guided design system, Squarespace Blueprint.
You choose from professionally curated layout and styling options to build your own online presence from the ground up, tailored to your special style and optimized for every device. Easily launch your website and get discovered fast with integrated optimized SEO tools so you show up more often to more people and grow the way you want.
And you can sell exclusive content on your site by adding a paywall to sell memberships or courses or sell files your customers can download like PDFs, music or ebooks. This would be cripplingly difficult for my band to set up on our own. So we're very glad to use Squarespace's tools. It's just so easy and it works perfectly. Head on over to squarespace.com for a free trial.
And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash savage and use the offer 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.
Hey there, Dan and the tech-savvy at-risk youth. Great guy from the East Coast here. And I had a little question, a little curiosity. Are there women out there with a foot fetish?
I have heard from a number of my female friends and some of my female partners that they've been with men with foot fetishes, but I've never met a woman who's expressed one or even really heard of a woman who's had a foot fetish. So yeah, it just got me curious. Are there kinks that are gender specific or sort of gravitate towards a particular gender?
Partialism is a sexual interest or obsession with a particular part of the body. Being really into boobs, being really into tits, that is a partialism in the same way that a foot fetish is a partialism, but it's kind of a majoritarian partialism. Most men are into, most straight men are into nice tits.
So the guys who are into nice tits, that common sexual interest, desire, that partialism, they don't feel freakish or weird because it's so widely shared. A thing for feet is a kind of very common partialism. Foot fetishes are a very common partialism, but guys who are into feet feel weird because most guys aren't.
So we recognize it as a paraphilia or an obsession in a way we don't, or a freakish obsession, freakish paraphilia, in the way we don't recognize a thing for nice tits as kind of a fetish. Also a kind of partialism. That wasn't your question. I just always think that's really interesting. But your question is like, are there women out there with foot fetishes?
Well, most people who experience partialism, where there's just a certain body part that they are obsessed with in this way, are men. Which is not to say that there aren't women out there. Glamour UK had a big article where they went and found a few women who have foot fetishes. But it's really uncommon.
It does seem to be something about male sexuality, the male brain, the male capacity, the male brain's capacity. And you know, making generalizations here, about 4 billion people, 4 billion people, there'll be hundreds of millions of exceptions. But the way the male brain, its capacity for abstract thought, abstract associations, is
and I am way out on a limb here, and this shit is way above my pay grade, but it just is a common and observable fact that most people with paraphilias, most people with these kinds of kinks are male people. And sometimes I have conversations with female fetishists who have told me that they think it's all about socialization. Men are encouraged to
ask for what they want, demand what they want, and being encouraged to ask for what you want or demand what you want can help you realize or articulate what it is that you want.
But what you often see is this difference between male and female sexuality where men are kind of males, sign male at birth persons, hyper aware of their kinks and fetishes at a very early age, and women sort of grow into their sense of their kinks. in their late twenties and thirties.
It's why 50 shades of gray was a phenomenon, not among 18 year old women who just got to college, but among 40 year old women whose kid just went to college. Is that socialization? Is there something natural about that? Well, we can point to the slut shaming.
We can point to the way women are socialized to defer to men, which can really bury a person's sense of their own agency and what their desires, their actual authentic desires at their core, what they want might be. I often point to sexual peak like a,
15-year-old boy is masturbating 10 times a day in a way that a 15-year-old girl, even one who is masturbating, isn't masturbating at that furious clip. There's that peak, a male, cliche male, hits. And that sexual peak, women seem to hit their sexual peak later in life. And I think
My pull-from-my-ass theory is there's something about going through that sexual peak that can bring into focus what your kinks are, what your non-normative sexual interests might be. And so males often arrive at all their partner sex, all their relationships with this awareness of what their kinks are, because they were aware of them before they had partner sex, whereas women grow into them.
They hit their sexual peak, all of these things come into focus. And that can be a problem for women in long-term relationships where they went and found the one guy in the pile of guys who doesn't have a foot fetish, doesn't have any weird paraphilias, didn't ask for anything or ask you to be GGG about anything weird. Not, I'm not talking about gross or traumatic.
I'm just talking about you didn't see that coming and yeah. And then you partner with somebody with no kinks and when your kinks kick in at 40 and
You will regret not having had a kinky partner that whole time whose kinks you were indulging and enjoying indulging because you enjoyed giving your partner pleasure who now that you're 35 years old and suddenly interested in S&M or whatever else now they owe you. So anyway, short answer, are there women foot fetishists out there?
Yes, there are, but they are far fewer in number than male fetishists for all sorts of reasons that we can theorize about, but we can't quite understand fully. This episode is sponsored by Talkspace. Whenever I advise people to get therapy, whenever I say to somebody, go get therapy, I often hear the same two excuses. It's too time-consuming or it's too expensive.
But if you use Talkspace, those excuses melt away. Talkspace, the leading virtual therapy provider, makes getting the help you need easy, accessible, and affordable. We'll be right back. Talkspace Therapy and Psychiatry are covered by many insurance plans and employers. Most insured members have a zero copay.
Talkspace provides personalized treatment for individuals, couples, the LGBTQIA plus community, veterans, and teens. And as a listener of this podcast, you will get $80 off your first month with Talkspace when you go to Talkspace.com slash Savage and enter promo code SpaceX.
To match with a licensed therapist today to get the help you need, go to Talkspace.com slash Savage and enter promo code SPACE80. That's S-P-A-C-E-8-0 to get $80 off your first month. Let them know the Lovecast sent you. Talkspace.com slash Savage. Promo code SPACE80.
Hi, Dan. Pansexual polyamorous femdom from the West Coast here. I'm planning a trip to Europe in a couple of weeks for my 40th birthday and to celebrate my 10-year anniversary with my partner. He's a heteroflexible cis man. I recently realized that we're going to be in Berlin the same week as Folsom Europe.
We've attended the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco for many years, but looking online, it seems like the one in Europe might be extra geared toward gay men. A lot of the events that I've seen are marked for men only. I was trying to find some femdom events or events that would be friendly toward poly slash swinger couples, and I haven't had a whole lot of luck.
I looked on Reddit and on the websites, but they're in German, which is a challenge, obviously. I was wondering if you had any advice on events that you're aware of, or if you know on the internet where I might look to try to find these events that are not specifically geared at gay men. Maybe I'll see you there.
Joining me to help tackle this question, AJ Berlin, who has lived in Berlin for eight years, been going to Folsom Berlin for many of those years, a kink educator, teaches BDSM workshops across Europe, and is a gay man or was more gay with pan sprinkles now. AJ, welcome to the Savage Lovecast.
Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here.
So Folsom Berlin, when she asks if I'm aware of any, you know, big leather fetish events that aren't geared exclusively toward gay men, I want to say, yeah, Folsom SF. But Folsom Berlin ain't Folsom SF, is it?
Folsom Berlin is not Folsom SF. Folsom Berlin definitely is much more geared towards gay men and is in many ways, kind of, it has many of the events are kind of by queer people for queer people.
However, there are... Wait, they're by queer people for queer people or by gay men for gay men, many of the events?
Well, it depends how you're defining, if you're throwing gay men in with queer people, how you're defining the gay scene versus the queer scene here. We might need more time to go into that more specifically.
But she says she's tried to look around at the events attached to Folsom Berlin, and a lot of them are for men only. Are they not?
The vast majority of events are by gay men for gay men. Yeah, that's true.
And that's okay, right? Gay men are allowed to have some events that are for gay men?
They have created these events. And so I think they're allowed to create an event and have that event. Yeah.
That said, in Berlin, there are a lot more events and fetish parties that are a lot more inclusive and welcoming. And when we talk about the events attached to Folsom Berlin, we mean the parties a lot. And I go to Folsom Berlin. I've been a bunch of times. I've never been to the parties, but the street festival, which is what a lot of people go for. I see lots of women at the street festival.
Absolutely. I mean, Folsom Berlin or Folsom Europe, as it's commonly called, is the street fair is absolutely welcoming to people from all backgrounds in the same way that it is in San Francisco. And and so A lot of the default venues around the street fair are the kinky gay men's bars. And they are not welcoming to people from all backgrounds.
And many of the bars explicitly do not allow women or trans people. So I've had conversations with them about that. And you are welcome to also talk to them about that.
I do think that's fucked up, particularly on the trans people angle. I've been to some of the sex clubs in Berlin. I was with Qualgeist recently and it was a men's night and there were some trans men there and nobody had a problem with it and it was totally fine.
Absolutely. Yeah, Krellgeist is often a role model for a BDSM and kink venue which does things like exactly how we want them to be, like fully inclusive of trans people, you self-identify at the door, there's no questioning, and you can also be at a men's night and wear feminine clothing and do what you like.
A lot of the bars in Schöneberg, which surround the street fair, I've heard bar managers walk up to people who don't look like cis men and say, hey, no women, no trans, out, in places like Prinzkenest and New Action and things like that.
So that's obviously like... Prinzkenest is a very famous gay bar on Fugastrasse, which is where Folsom Berlin, the street festival where everybody's welcome, takes place. I noticed last time I was there, they used to have a sign saying, over Prince Connect that said men only, and that would be enforced after 10 p.m., and now it says men's bar.
It's gone from a dictate to a suggestion, and maybe there's some progress there.
Yeah, in my experience, I mean, I was in there in Folsom. I mean, I was having a drink outside there at Folsom Berlin last year, and the bar manager was kicking people out who weren't cis men. So I find that quite difficult to deal with, to be honest. And I welcome people to have conversations with them about that.
But to the caller's question, she and her male heteroflexible sub would be perfectly welcome and feel comfortable at the street fair, especially if they're in some gear. If you show up looking like American tourists who wandered in off Kerfurstendamm, you're going to get some looks. But if you show up in gear… looking like you're a kinkster too. You're just straight or pan or by kinksters.
You're not going to get grief from gay men. The gay men at the street fair are happy to see you there. Maybe not the gay man managing one of the bars off the street, but the people at the festival are happy to see you. And we'll be welcome.
Absolutely. Yeah. And the street fair is absolutely welcoming to people from all different backgrounds, especially, uh, people who have more alternative kinks and are playing with things like pony play and ABDL. and things like this that, you know, in, in other places you might get some looks and stuff like that. The street fair absolutely welcomes people like this.
And if they want to go to an event or a party, are there any events and parties, kink spaces, queer spaces that are more inclusive than the men only parties she stumbled over looking around on the internet?
Yeah, I mean, firstly, I would say if you're like, let's say a hetero presenting couple, the two main big clubs which you would go to in Berlin are the famous Kit Kat Club, especially their Saturday night party, the Carnival Bazaar. It's huge and well known. It's been running for a couple of decades. And Insomnia is the other one that people often go to.
Having said that, you can delve a bit deeper. Those are more kinky club nights sort of thing where there's more dancing than anything else. But there are there is a lot of sex and some BDSM happening. If BDSM is your focus and you're really going hard with the kink, then there are nights and all of the nights are clearly labelled as well. You might just have to do some more digging.
But the Felgeist, for example, on the Monday before and after Folsom, they have a party called Blue Monday, which is a hetero and mixed party. And the Kvalgeist is, you know, like a very well-equipped dungeon club with all of the dungeon equipment that you can dream of, such as even things like a Victorian stretching rack and a bondage wheel and a padded cell.
I only go for the cocktails. I'm just there for the food. Of course, of course.
So there are one or two other venues as well. Like Sin Berlin is like a small dungeon club. And there's Club Culture House, which hosts things like bisexual parties and stuff like that. And, you know, there are flinter parties that are happening as well. female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans and agender, FLINTA. So they use it as like a female inclusive acronym.
And like there are, you know, there's nights such as Honey and Spice at Fall Guys, which it'll be like FLINTA, like women inclusive only. Femme Fatalities at Boozer Bourbon. And one of my favorite names of the week is Squirt de Soleil as well.
So there are a lot of options for her. She didn't have much luck looking around on her own on the internet. You've tossed out a lot of names of a lot of places that she could go with her partner and feel welcome. And again, I want to emphasize welcome at the street party. Welcome at the street party. I do want to drill down for just a second though. Like you talked about Flinter.
Cis men don't get to go to this party, right?
Yeah. Cis men are not invited to flinter parties. No, they will go and have fun at their own spaces.
I know it's not an apples to orange comparison because there are very few venues that are welcoming of everybody compared to the many places that are men only. But... you know, if it's a sex space and things sometimes happen in sex spaces when it's all men that probably wouldn't work in a mixed space. I'm thinking of a dark room where by entering the dark room, you've consented to being groped.
And that doesn't like a lot of assigned female at birth persons and women and even some trans men because of the, the trauma that builds up over the course of your life, if you move to the world presenting as a female around unwanted touch or sexual attention, the social norms in a dark room, in a venue that is for men, you're not going to feel comfortable in there most likely.
And so like, is it a good thing that you can't go to that place? Is it a front? Are gay men allowed to have some spaces where we say like, our social norms apply here and these only kind of work in a single sex environment with the caveat that I think trans men belong in those spaces.
I think, I think trans people, in my opinion, belong in all of these spaces. And this is a hotly debated topic. Even I have arguments all the time with my friends about this. I am personally, you know, very experienced with the kink scene and very happy when mixed spaces. And I wish everyone could go into all of these spaces and And I'm very happy.
Like, for example, I've been at places where it's been like vast majority gay men and then there's some lesbians in the sling next to me and we're all having a great time next to each other. And so I'm very happy with mixed sex spaces. There's something about single sex spaces on the men's side or the on the women's side. that it creates an energy that you will only get in single sex spaces.
And that I think is, you know, for me personally, I'm actually comfortable with doing that type of behavior in mixed spaces as well. I know, like, even probably the majority of people are not. So, however, I do also respect that marginalized people on all sides of spectrums here have created a space themselves and have said, this is by us, for us, and we have to respect that.
Maybe the way out of the impasse here is the men's only thing need to be more special events and one-offs as opposed to the norm or the default setting so that everybody feels welcome most of the time. And every once in a while we step back and go, okay, this is the flinter party and me and my dick.
We're going to ruin the vibe and I'm going to like let the flinter crowd have their party and not make it about me and my butthurtness. And like, there's going to be some parties in certain kinds of bars or events or dark rooms where like it's for primarily cis guys and trans guys who, who want to be a part of that kind of gay male energy, which is an exclusive to cis gay men.
But the kinds of like, I've talked to trans guys, guys I know just came out really recently and were a little taken aback by what the norms were in a space like that in Europe. And so, yeah, maybe take some time to acclimate, get you some spaces. All right. We got to go. AJ Berlin, thank you so much for jumping on the phone.
I have to say, I asked you for your social media so I could direct people to your social media. You don't have social media.
I am in social media. Sorry about that.
Such awe and admiration. No social media to find AJ Berlin's workshops. You're going to have to look for him across Europe. He's a kink educator, lived in Berlin for eight years. AJ, thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Looking for a little extra something something in your life? Earphones plus romance audiobooks from Dipsy make working out at the gym a whole lot hotter, let me tell you. Dipsy is the female-founded app for spicy audiobooks and more, created by women for women. Their app has over 1,000 audiobooks, all crafted by a team of professional writers and top-tier narrators.
And man, top-tier is an understatement. Those voice actors, they have got it going on. whether you're looking for a rugged lesbian cowboy or a scottish sailor bay royalty or the god of the underworld you'll find characters you love on dipsey with their easy to explore app you can search for your favorite romance genres like contemporary historical dark sports, western, romance, sapphic, and more.
New chapters are released every week, so you'll always find something new to enjoy. For listeners of the show, Dipsy is offering an extended 30-day free trial when you go to dipsystories.com slash savage. That's 30 days of full access for free when you go to D-I-P-S-E-A stories.com slash savage. Do this, dipsystories.com slash savage.
Hey Dan, I'm a cis queer woman married to a cis het man. We're both in our late 30s, we've been together for over a decade, and we've been exploring E&M for the last year. It was my idea, and so far I've been the more active participant, attending local mixers and events and going on solo dates. We've gone on a few double dates together, and we've also each had some solo virtual fun.
Recently, my husband connected with a woman in another city many hours away, and they've really hit it off. Not only do they have interesting and engaging conversations, they also seem to be super aligned kink-wise. I've
always been turned on by the idea of my husband with another woman and part of me is grateful to her because I get to reap the real life benefits of their virtual play but another part of me is like who is this bitch trying to steal my husband My logical mind realizes that is not the case, but my emotional mind won't let me forget about my insecurities about being rejected and left behind.
Fortunately, my husband and I have really solid communication and I've already shared this all with him, but I'm wondering if you have any additional insight into walking this fine line between desire and jealousy. I'd love to get to a point where I'm not anxiously awaiting his return after he has a call with her.
Agnes Callard is a philosopher, and Ezra Klein had her on his show, The Ezra Klein Show, and they had the most amazing conversation. I recommend everybody go and listen to this conversation.
But what's relevant to you in your particular situation about their conversation is Agnes Callard has these theories about jealousy, and they spend some time really drawing a line, making distinctions between good jealousy and bad jealousy.
And we don't often think about the possibility that some jealousy can be good or allow for the power of jealousy to shape our lives or our romantic lives in a positive way. Jealousy is always framed as a negative emotion. And because it's always framed as a negative emotion, when we're feeling it, we experience it as a negative emotion.
There are times, there are places in our lives where jealousy, if properly understood, viewed from the right angle, if we let go of how we're trained to understand it or frame it whenever we experience it, we can recognize what's positive about it, erotic about it, arousing about it. So here you are. You have an ethically non-monogamous relationship. You have an open relationship.
Your husband has a connection with this woman and It's often the case when men and women, an opposite sex relationship, they go, become ethically non-monogamous, it's harder for the guy often to find other partners because women, because men are testosterone-soaked dick monsters, need a bit more of an investment emotionally to be safe fucking around with somebody.
So your husband has had to forge a little bit stronger of an emotional connection with this particular woman then you might have to with any of the guys you fucked up with because guys are pigs and in less danger in an opposite sex sexual encounter. And so there's this connection here. There's this buzz here and that makes you feel threatened, but it also makes you feel aroused. You're turned on.
You say you want to get to a point where when he's with her, you're not anxious for him to get home so you can not just be reassured that he is indeed coming home, but so that you can reclaim him sexually. And like, damn, that's hot. Why would you want... I mean, you want to contain that. You want it to be good jealousy. You want it to be in harness safely to serve the relationship.
But why would you want to... eradicate that feeling. I think you should luxuriate in that feeling and also in the affirmation that he's coming home because he keeps coming back to you. A lot of people in open relationships will talk about the best sex they have with their partners that they're in long-term relationships with is often in the wake of sex they've had with other people.
That reclamation sex, taking each other back sex can be incredibly hot. And it sounds like it's been incredibly hot for you. So my advice, go listen to the Agnes Callard interview on The Ezra Klein Show. Think about whether this is good jealousy. Are you able to express it to your partner in a constructive way?
When it flows out of you, when you say, I'm jealous, are you lashing out or are you asking for what you need? Like, oh, I feel jealous and insecure. I need you to fuck the shit out of me right now. And then if he does, take the win and don't be in too great a hurry. To wind this emotion down, or euthanize it somehow, let it serve you. Time for listener feedback.
First up, I'm going to read some of the comments left on last week's show in the very lively comment threads at savage.love.
Says Spruce, to the caller with anxiety about performance and multiple orgasms, I am not a healthcare provider, but I have clinically diagnosed OCD, and this sounds an awful lot like my own obsessive ruminations about sex and relationships, particularly those intrusive thoughts sparked by listening to the Savage Lovecast.
Therapy and medication have helped me a great deal in reducing those thoughts and dealing with them when they come up. Thank you, Spruce, for continuing to listen to the show even after the show sparked intrusive thoughts that required therapy and medication. We appreciate you continuing to listen. Couldn't agree with you more, Muriel.
And finally, says MarshLC, about the woman with masturbation shame. Dan talks a lot and often about how shame and transgression are sexy. And I believe that is true for a lot of people, but it's not universal. And I don't know if Dan understands that. Maybe it's because I am somewhat prone to anxiety, but the only thing transgression makes me feel is bad. Stolen apples are not sweeter.
For me and people like me, embracing the shame is not the answer. Instead, the answer is accepting myself, loving myself, and trusting myself. Loving yourself, accepting yourself. You can't embrace shame in the way that I'm talking about when I talk about it on the show.
You can't enjoy your kinks that may be rooted in having been shamed or feeling shame if you haven't learned to love and accept yourself, including the part of yourself that's kinky. Loving the unintentional gifts shame sometimes leaves us with, not all of us, just some of us, such as an amazing kink or two, is the trick that I am attempting to describe. But it involves a kind of neutralized shame.
Once you've neutralized it by loving and accepting yourself, you're left with the pleasure and joy and connection that a kink you share with someone that you get to share it with can create. Maybe it's not so much about embracing shame as it is about defeating shame. Then taking from shame what it tried to steal from you, pleasure and self-acceptance. All right.
There are always some comments that I see in the threads that are too long for me to share here. Pentatonic this week left a great comment also addressed to the woman who's experiencing shame. It's in the thread under last week's show, and I would encourage everyone to go read it.
And for more listener feedback, check out Struggle Session, where I usually respond to listener and reader comments, doing something different for the rest of the summer, posting a brief response or two before sharing a letter, a letter too long for the column and letting the commenters try their hand at giving some advice.
People are having fun with it and giving some really great advice to my letter writers who write letters that are way too long for the column. Check out the last two struggle sessions at savage.love, not behind a paywall for now, and watch for a new struggle session where everybody gets to dive in and give some advice to one of my readers this Thursday.
All right, now everyone's favorite part of the show, the part where I shut my mouth and my listeners get the last word.
This is a message for the man in episode 930 who was feeling pressured to give women
multiple orgasms or more multiple orgasms than their previous lovers and that's what I do find it tends to be I've had this experience with men and it tends to be something that is less based in my pleasure and more based in some competitive desire to be the best lover I've ever had and they're competing with the men who came before them and not really focused on me
Hi, Dan, Nancy, and the tech savvy at-risk youth. This is a comment for the trans man in episode 930 who had a puzzling interaction, possibly exciting interaction with a higher-up in his company at a hotel bar. I think that the options that you presented were great, and more than likely it was that he was expressing his interest in, you know, a man without a dick.
But the other option that wasn't covered is that if he knows that you are trans and he knows that you're gay, he may see a friendly, approachable person who's out and proud, who he might be able to process through some of his feelings with. So instead of going and just going for it and possibly creating an awkward situation, if that wasn't what he was insinuating, I would say approach him as,
a friendly, as someone who he could talk to about his feelings, about his queerness, all of that, and that you would like to get to know him more, and either something will develop physically, or maybe he just wanted someone in the company who can understand a little bit more of what he's feeling.
Hi, Dan. This is for the guy in episode 930 who was injecting meth into his penis because he liked it when it was small. I think a much better approach, or would be for him to find an erotic hypnotist.
A good erotic hypnotist could set up a trigger so that every time this guy looks at his dick, he thinks and sees it as being really small and tiny and shrinking, which will mesh better with his kink and won't have any physical side effects.
And we're going to leave it there. We've got three ways for you to get us your juicy questions and your insightful comments for future shows. You can record your question at savage.love slash askdan. Or you can make a voice memo on your very own phone and email us your question or your comment to q at savage.love. Or you can call us on our landline and leave us a message at 206-302-2064.
My Dirty Little Film Festival, my short porn film festival, Hump, kicks off next week. Hump 2024 Part 2 will be screening 25 brand new Hump films, amazing short porn films, erotica, humor, sexy, sexy sex. Come into theaters in Portland, Oakland, and Sacramento, Washington, D.C. all in the next couple of weeks. Kicking off this weekend in Portland. All films at Hump are under five minutes.
Some are serious. Many are hilarious. All are hot. Get your tickets now for a live screening of Hump. Hump as it was meant to be seen in the theaters at humpfilmfest.com. Follow me on Instagram and threads at Dan Savage. Follow me at Blue Sky at Dan Savage. Follow Don Martin on Instagram, threads, TikTok, and all other social media platforms at Head on Fire Pod.
For all things Don, including his books, go to his website bydonmartin.com. The Savage Lovecast is produced every week by Nancy Hartunian and me and the tech savvy at Risk Youth and Nancy. We will all be back at you next week on the installment of the Savage Lovecast. Thank you for downloading.