A gay man is mourning the loss of his hair. He shaved it all off, but doesn't like the new look. Are there any other options? How can he learn to love the new bald version of himself? "Big poly mess in aisle 4!" She started seeing a married man who was new to poly. He has a kid, and mere months in, the caller formed a bond with the child. Then he went and fell in love with yet another woman. His wife is divorcing him, but the caller remains friendly with his wife. Can she continue to see the kid? Dan chats with sex educator Claire Perelman about how to maintain your libido for the next 4 years. On the Magnum, it's a new "What Are you Doing?" with Doc Chocolate. He is a former pastor turned porn star and the host of the BULLS & QUEENS show. Doc Chocolate can make all your cuckold fantasies come true. He is also very clever and funny. The caller is aunt to a 23 year-old trans woman. But the niece's dad (the caller's brother) refuses to accept that she is trans, and uses the wrong pronouns and her old name. How can the caller help to bring him around? [email protected] 206-302-2064 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. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Right now, Helix is offering 20% off site-wide with a mattress order + 2 FREE Dream Pillows! Go to HelixSleep.com/Savage. With Helix, better sleep starts now. This episode is brought to you by Feeld, a dating app where the open-minded can meet the like-minded. Download Feeld on the App Store or Google Play. Dan Savage is a sex-advice columnist, podcaster, author, and creator of the It Gets Better Project. From cuckolding, to Dom/sub, gay rights to sexual health and with a dose of progressive politics, Dan Savage has been cultural force for sex positivity since the 1800s.
You're listening to the Savage Lovecast, Dan Savage's sex and relationship show for grownups. If you're under 18, get out of here, young'un.
There are two wolves inside me this morning. One wolf is depressed. The other wolf, he's not happy, but he's trying to take the long view. And right now, long view wolf is saying to depressed wolf, yeah, Donald Trump is the president for now, but cheer up. Anita Bryant is dead and she's going to be dead forever. If you don't know who Anita Bryant was, lucky you.
Sometimes I feel like a crazy person when I explain to younger gay friends that there used to be a whole class of people who were famous and powerful for being homophobic. It was usually a side hustle. Anita Bryant was a singer. Jesse Helms was a senator. Jerry Falwell Sr. was a pastor. But each was a professional homophobe. Attacking gay people brought them to national prominence.
There are still homophobes out there, but they're not as prominent as they once were. Anti-gay bigotry hasn't gone away and it never will, but it's not as lucrative as it once was. It doesn't have the purchase it once did. Anti-gay bigotry in the last decade has been eclipsed by anti-trans bigotry.
The modern parallels to dead professional homophobes like Anita Bryant and Jesse Helms are live professional transphobes like Riley Gaines and Nancy Mace. Anita Bryant died more than a month ago in mid-December, but we didn't find out about her death until a week ago. A lot of people thought she was dead already. A lot of people, myself included, had forgotten about her.
A lot of people had never even heard of her, which is the exact same fate that awaits Nancy Mace. All right, backing up. For those of you who don't know Bryant's story, who don't know how Anita Bryant came to be the most famous and powerful for a time homophobe in the United States.
In 1977, Dade County, now Miami, Dade County, passed an ordinance banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Anita Bryant, a former first runner up in the Miss America contest and a famous singer and kind of a good one. She was at the time the spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission, and she lived in Dade County.
Bryant, a fundamentalist Christian all her life, was outraged and led a campaign to have that law, that anti-discrimination statute, repealed at the ballot box. Now, instead of saying breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine in commercials for Florida orange juice that ran on TV constantly, Bryant was on TV, on the news every night, saying this.
Homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit children to freshen their ranks. I was 11 years old that summer, and I already knew about me. What the boys had said about me my whole life, what I'd angrily denied even before I understood what I was denying, it was true. But no one had ever touched me. I had never been molested. I hadn't been seduced, only accused.
My dad agreed with Anita Bryant. He agreed. Homosexuals recruited children. He went a little further. Homosexuals weren't just a threat to children, but to the economy, to our way of life. because homosexuals didn't marry and didn't have children themselves. So that meant homosexuals didn't buy washing machines and refrigerators. I remember vividly when he said those exact words to my mom.
I can't easily access a lot of memories from my childhood that aren't prompted by photographs from my childhood, but I remember everything about that moment when my dad said that. It is indelible in the hippocampus. I am sitting in the backseat of my parents' Chevy Nova with my siblings, staring at the armrest.
trying not to look like I'm listening and thinking to myself, my dad thinks I'm a child molester. It made me doubt his love. And if I'm going to be honest, it still does. To this day, there is still this tiny doubt. That's how poisonous Anita Bryant's campaign was. It was also successful. Anita Bryant's Save Our Children campaign was
Managed to repeal the anti-discrimination statute in Dade County. Didn't just manage to repeal it. It was repealed by a landslide, a 40-point margin. Bryant's campaign led to other anti-gay initiatives being filed all across the country, including the Briggs Initiative in California, which would have banned gays and lesbians from being teachers.
And everyone believed the bigots would win that one too, because the bigots, like Anita Bryant, they were on a roll. But they lost. And it was the fight against the Briggs Initiative that brought Harvey Milk to national prominence. Today, he's on stamps. And Bryant, forgotten.
The headline for her obituary in the New York Times read, Anita Bryant, whose anti-gay politics undid a singing career, dead at 84. In addition to forgetting Bryant was alive, a lot of people forgot she was a singer. But she had gold records, top 40 hits. She was talented. That bitch had pipes. Actually, let's listen to something from her 1967 album that I own called I Believe.
Somewhere over the rainbow, way above. That I heard of once in a lullaby Somewhere over the rainbow skies Oh
How dare she. And joke's on her. The land we dreamed of was the gayborhood and the dream we dared to dream, getting married, having kids, buying a fucking washing machine and a refrigerator, really did come true. Wright recorded her cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow again in 1967, long before she began her poisonous campaign against gay rights. And I think she did it on purpose.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow was already the gay national anthem in 1967, and the rainbow was already a symbol. The man who designed the rainbow flag in 1978, Gilbert Baker, insists he wasn't inspired by Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, but I don't believe him. Gay men in the late 70s were collectively going through one of our butchered-up, mask-for-mask, straight-acting phases.
Clones with mustaches wearing Levi's cruising the Castro. And being into Judy Garland was... Considered a little too feminine. Cringe, we would call it now. But the rainbow on that flag, like Brian's cover of that song, did not happen by accident. I bring Brian up today, of all days, because we fought her and we won. But we didn't win right away.
The thing about the fight, even when you lose, the fight brings out the best in us. It helps us identify leaders. It helps us craft winning arguments. And fighting the fight puts us in people's living rooms. One of the things I saw on TV that summer, in addition to Anita Bryant saying the most hurtful, hateful, poisonous thing, were gay men and lesbians defending themselves.
I don't want to put too much of a gloss on this moment. The next four years are going to suck. And they're going to suck worse if we let the news cycle and the man who dominates it drain all the joy from our lives. We need to pay attention. We need to fight the fight. But we need to spend as much time as we can over the next four years with friends and lovers doing the things that bring us joy.
Anyone who tells you that making time for joy is a distraction or a betrayal has no idea what they're talking about. watching clips of the protests against Bryant. It's remarkable how much fun the gays and lesbians at those protests in the 1970s that I saw on TV when I was 11. It's remarkable how much fun they were having at those protests.
And during the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. And it was the dance that kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for. It didn't look like we would win then. It didn't look like we would win marriage equality in 2004. But we did. Right now it doesn't feel like we can win.
But we can. But only if we fight. And dance. And me? You know what I'm bringing to the dance and the fight? Both my wolves. All right, coming up on the show today, tons of your cues, lots of my A's. Sex therapist Claire Perlman is here. She joins us to talk about how we're going to maintain our libidos over the next four years.
And on the Magnum, we've got a what are you doing with former pastor turned porn star, Doc Chocolate. All of that coming up today on a jam-packed show. Let's get to that first call. This episode is brought to you by Field, an app where curious people come to connect. Download Field on the App Store or Google Play and find out why so many of my listeners are already using it.
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Hey Dan, I'm a 30 year old gay guy and I'm sorry for how melodramatic this is. I know this is something many guys struggle with, but I'm having a really hard time accepting the loss of my hair and By my mid-20s, I was noticing that it was getting thinner and thinner. Discussions with barbers became about how to make it look fuller and hide the thinness and not what actually looked good.
I knew I was on borrowed time. About a year and a half ago, I saw a picture of myself where my hair looked so thin, I decided to take the plunge and shave it off. About halfway through, I was crying and regretting that choice as it looked terrible. I knew it was going to take some adjusting, too, but every time I saw my reflection, I felt miserable. I didn't even look like me anymore.
I wouldn't consider myself feminine by any means, but I looked like a truck driver, like any guy in a metal band. So aggressively masculine in a way that makes me uncomfortable. There are some people who look good with a shaved head or a buzz cut, but I'm not one of them. I tried to get used to it, tried to convince myself that it was better to accept this as my new normal, but I can't.
I like my hair, I like styling it, I like my partner running his hands through my hair. I like having conversations with barbers and getting their advice. I tried using a prescription treatment service for a couple months to underwhelming results, and eventually my form of acceptance has been just, wear hats and feel bad.
After the better part of a year of trying to live with it, I decided to let my hair grow back in. And while I felt more like myself again, I was back where I started, struggling to grapple with how patchy and thin it's become and the whole seeing it would take on my self-esteem. A week or two ago, I shaved it off again. I still hate the way I look. I don't feel attractive. My confidence is shot.
It's impacting my mental health and My sexual interest in my partner is gone because I feel so unattractive. He's been nothing but supportive of whatever choice I make and tries to make me feel attractive, but I can't feel it. I'm heavily considering hair transplant surgery, but I don't know if I'm in the kind of financial situation where I can justify that for a while.
Until then, do you have any advice for how I can come to accept this and stop letting it ruin my life?
Have you seen Wicked yet? I saw Wicked a couple of weeks ago. Loved it. And I bring this up because, as you probably noticed if you haven't been living under a rock the last few months, the stars of Wicked, Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, have been out doing a press tour. And Cynthia Erivo, who is... delicate, feminine, but has a kind of butch glaze.
She's got a shaved head and there's nothing about Cynthia Erivo that doesn't read femme, but femme in a powerful way. So it seems to me that if Cynthia Erivo can rock the shaved head look and still present femme, but with a butch glaze, that you should be able to do it too. That there's nothing about you having a shaved head that you can't
correct for, compensate for, balance out with other fashion choices or demeanor choices, comportment choices, behavioral choices where you're projecting your sense of your own femininity that your hair can't accomplish for you right now because your hair is going, if not gone. And I don't know how to sugarcoat that.
I wish I could send you some magic hair growing potions, but most of them don't work for most men. They can delay hair loss. They can't really correct or reverse it. Keep reading about and hearing about people going to Turkey. For some reason, Turkey is the world center of... hair transplant surgeries now. It's sort of a hair transplant mill in Istanbul.
And a lot of people get really good results, including somebody I know went to Turkey and has really good results from that hair transplant procedure in Turkey where they're experts at this. But it does cost a lot of money, less than these procedures might cost in the United States. But you got to accept what you can't for now change. And confidence is sexy. And
We are what we pretend to be, as Kurt Vonnegut said. And you can pretend to be confident. You can learn to love how you look with a shaved head by willing it. You can fake it till you make it. It takes some getting used to. It takes some time. But you can get there. I'm confident you can get there. And you can also play. You can play with different hat styles.
And wigs, amazing wigs, really excellent wigs, they're not just for church ladies anymore. If you want...
to have some hair pieces at your disposal where you can have different hairstyles at different times that you can you know do the baseball cap and the trucker look one day when you're feeling it and a day when you want to feel hair down the back of your head or falling across your forehead you have options you could get and it would be cheaper than getting on that plane and going to turkey to get that hair transplant a selection of wigs and just be be
bald, have a shaved head, but have this option and don't feel like you have to lie or you're hiding anything from anybody. You're just rocking a wig every once in a while, a great wig.
When you want to feel a little bit more feminine, when you want that, you know, to catch yourself in the reflection in the mirror or a plate glass window passing by and today you want to see hair, you can make that happen for yourself. But you got to pivot to a kind of Radical self-acceptance. What other option do you have but to love yourself?
And the world is full of people whose bodies over the course of their lives have changed, who've lost their hair, who've gained weight, who've lost weight, who've put on muscle, who've lost muscle, and have learned to love and accept themselves and the bodies they're in now. You fell in love with yourself when you had hair. You felt confident and sexy when you had hair.
You can fall in love with yourself all over again. Just own it. Own it. Own baldness like Cynthia's owned it. Rocking it. Sexy hot and it's a choice she made. And it might help if you got on Instagram for five minutes and just looked at all the hot daddies, some masked, some with that femme sizzle, who are all over social media rocking their shaved heads.
Some of them shaved by choice because they like the look. Some of them wanting to make that look like a choice they made when it was imposed on them by genetics. But rocking it and you can rock it too.
Hey Dan, I have a question for you regarding entanglement and specifically what's a good rule of thumb in terms of How long to wait in a new relationship before meeting your new poly partner's kid or kiddos?
And then alternatively, when you are forced to dump that motherfucker of a dad already, is it ever appropriate to maintain some distant yet respectful version of a relationship with this kiddo that you grew really close to during that relationship? The dad in question, I started dating about eight months ago. I knew he was new to the poly realm, him and his wife. I was open to it.
He seemed so self-aware and just like really emotionally intelligent. So I was ready to take the plunge and I did. And I fell in love with him and his six-year-old daughter. She is awesome. I love this kid. We really hit it off. We had so much fun like building pillow forts and like I'd pick her from school. We'd go on art dates.
She'd tell me that she loved me when I'd tuck her in at night, like that kind of stuff. We got close really fast. We met about two months into my relationship with her dad. And then we started getting really close, like three to four months on. Right around that same time, he starts really pushing for a third partner.
It's almost as if the moment we got comfortable, the NRE still hasn't even worn off. Like he's ready for the next one. I begged him not to do this. Because I had some trauma to work through. I knew what to do. But I knew it takes time. You can't make yourself feel a different way.
I also didn't trust that he had the capacity and he proved that he didn't with time and a lot of really subtle manipulation and the pushing of boundaries. But I don't want to punish this kid for her dad's shitty decisions while he's balls deep on NRE. So in the meantime, things are getting a little hectic with that. I'm really stressed out working on the jealousy stuff.
His wife decides that she's divorcing him. So everyone is dumping this motherfucker already, except for the person who's now dating him, which if I were her, I'd be running for the hills, quite frankly. But I get it. The neurochemicals are strong. So this was incredibly rewarding experience for me in terms of co-parenting. I didn't anticipate this. So it's not all a loss.
But I'm grieving two people now. And God, holy shit, it's hard. I'm so sad. And her mom and I still text. We're kind of distant friends. We share a unique experience now, dating the same person. And she thinks it would be more jarring if I were to just disappear. So I don't know, Dan, what do you think? Is it appropriate? Should I try to hang? Have a play date?
And also, what should I look for in the future? I mean, I get it. Sometimes people just completely change their personality months into a relationship. But what are some good things to be on the lookout for? For future co-parenting opportunities?
Consciously, intentionally seeking out co-parenting opportunities? Dating people because they have kids? Because you want to be a presence in the life of a child or a whole bunch of children? Seems a little... Creepy. Gotta say, it just seems a little beside the point when it comes to dating. You date people if you're open to dating people with kids.
Maybe that means sometimes you date people with kids, but you don't want to be somebody else's kid heat-seeking missile of a girlfriend. Like, the presence of a child is a... is a complication and it's something that needs to be handled with great care because the interests and emotional wellbeing and security, emotional and otherwise, of that child has to be the first priority of the parents.
and it is not best practices to introduce your child to your new girlfriend at eight weeks because at eight weeks you don't know if your new girlfriend is somebody that you're going to want to be with over the long term at eight weeks your new girlfriend doesn't know if you're someone she's going to want to be with over the long term which as you discovered you did not want to be with him over the long term and so you don't want your child forming emotional bonds with
an adult who makes them feel, who tucks them in, who gets some presents, who makes them feel safe and secure, who may then exit their life abruptly if, as most new relationships do, this relationship runs its course. And, you know, dating is a discovery process. Dating is a process of vetting and getting to know somebody.
And to put the positive spin on it, where you're trying to get to know if, like, you guys work together and if this is good and it can last. But what you're also trying to know is, like, is there anything here that... means this isn't going to work.
So you're accentuating the positive, hopefully finding out a lot of good things about your potential partner, but you're on the lookout for the disqualifiers and the deal breakers and the reasons not, the reasons why this can't work. And what you discovered, this guy who talked to you and experimenting with poly a couple months in is that he's not polyamorous. He's
a collector he's a mormon patriarch and fucking poly sheep's clothing or something a mormon patriarch wolf and poly sheep's clothing and he just wants a harem and yeah you didn't think he had the bandwidth for three girlfriends or a wife and two girlfriends and parenting responsibilities and i think that's a reasonable thing to think that is too much and you weren't comfortable with it and didn't want him to and he did anyway so fuck this guy and you had to break up
All right, setting all that aside, should you remain in this child's life? In your case, probably yes, but not because you have any right to remain in this child's life after having a brief relationship of eight months with this child's father who was reckless in introducing you to his child so early and allowing you and his child to bond.
If it was just about him and his kid, no, you don't belong in this child's life. But if his marriage is ending and you and his soon-to-be ex-wife have become close, have become friends, well, then you could still have a role to play in this child's life, which is mom's friend. And, you know, complicating factor, dad's ex.
But your connection to this kid, if you're going to have a connection to this kid going forward, is going to be through the mother. And you would need the consent of the parents or a parent to play any sort of role. in this child's life.
You know, if you'd been together with this guy for a couple of years, if you'd gotten married, if you were really, you'd stepped into that stepmom role in a significant way. Yeah.
Then I think you should assert yourself in saying it's, uh, you know, our relationship is ending after two years, five years, 10 years, but I have a parental bond now with this child and I'm not going to abandon this child just because our relationship is at an end.
But a few months in, less than a year, God, you shouldn't have played this in such a way where exiting this child's life could potentially make this child feel insecure or rejected or harmed or not wanted.
And so, yeah, because you bonded and because you have a friendship with the mother, yeah, you should probably stay involved in this child's life so long as it is something the mom is comfortable with in addition to something the child wants.
If you're thinking about dating somebody else in the future who is already a parent, what you need to tell this person at two months is I really think you're awesome and I really look forward to introducing you to my kid or kids after we've been together a year at least. because I'm not going to risk my kid's sense of security and safety.
And I don't want, while we're still getting to know each other to complicate our relationship by you forming a relationship with my child. Yeah. So yeah. What you want to look forward in the future, if you're going to date people with kids is that they don't introduce you to their fucking kids eight weeks into the relationship.
And if they try to introduce you to their kid eight weeks into the relationship, and from the sound of things, shift parenting burdens and responsibilities onto your shoulders, that's a red fucking flag. Somebody you're dating for six weeks, a month, a couple months is like, I want to introduce you to my kids. You're like, oh, you do? Okay, this is over. We're done.
That's how you handle dating people with kids in the future. And I just want to say, I'm sure there are people out there who are going to point to this question, to your question, as an example of the kind of chaos and drama that polyamory and non-monogamy can create in people's lives and how that chaos and churn can impact others like kids.
Yeah, yeah, this is a good example of that particular kind of chaos that non-monogamy can create. But there are plenty of people in monogamous relationships, serial monogamists, who do this exact same thing. They have one partner at a time, and they bring that person, that new partner, into the lives of their children, and they have a lot of churn and drama, and yet they are monogamous.
So monogamy, non-monogamy, neither protects us from churn or chaos or piss-poor judgment. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Against all odds, I am sleeping pretty well these days. How can this be possible for an admitted insomniac like me? It is because I have learned to shut off my phone and I lay down every night on one of my Helix mattresses. Yes, we have more than one.
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Hey Dan, I am a 30 year old straight female living in the UK and I've been dating my partner for two and a half years. He's always exhibited traits and quirks that I wasn't 100% fond of, but I was chalking these up to me being his first real relationship, coupled with ongoing family traumas that he's been experiencing since he was a child.
In the beginning of our relationship, I believed that we would be able to get over some of these things as we grew together as a couple. However, I've come to the realization over the last few months that no amount of communication is going to be able to create a relationship where both of our needs are met.
An example of this is him not being there for me when I completed something big because there were a lot of strangers that were going to be there if he didn't know. And to me, this felt like a really big thing that he wasn't able to get over his introvertedness to show up for me when I needed him. So I was gearing up to end the relationship.
However, over the holidays, he opened up to me that he believes that he is neurodivergent, a self-diagnosis that he was very reluctant to share with me. This has made me reevaluate our whole relationship. Every trait that didn't gel with my personality could be linked back to this neurodivergent diagnosis. This self-diagnosis has been extremely eye-opening for me.
I don't know a whole lot about neurodivergence, and I don't know what the future holds. On one hand, it has made me start to understand who he is on a fundamental level, and I wonder if it'll actually bring us closer together in the long run by learning how to communicate effectively for our different needs.
On the other hand, I have no idea if we're going to be able to get over some of these hurdles, and I don't want to ask him to mask his personality and feelings to make me happy. So Dan, I need advice from you and your emotionally intelligent and loving community. Can we grow together, or will I be asking him to mask how he truly feels for the rest of our relationship?
diagnosis of neurodivergency, a self-diagnosis of being neurodivergent, is not a get out of fucking absolutely everything free card. It doesn't relieve somebody of the burden, the reasonable expectation that they will attempt to meet their partner's reasonable emotional and social needs. And I say that as somebody who is very deeply introverted.
I am awkward in large groups of people unless I have a job to do. I used to get invited to this annual Christmas party at a restaurant I used to work at. And if I had to sit there at the table with everybody, I was a mess. And so I would go and wait tables at this place. I used to wait tables at the Christmas party because if I had something to do... I was comfortable being in this large group.
And so I feel for your partner. I don't know. I've never been diagnosed as neurodivergent, but I get it. I get why he may have felt uncomfortable accompanying you to this big event to celebrate whatever that accomplishment of yours was. And you wanted him there for you at that moment and he couldn't be there for you. And you were prepared to break up with him because you had decided that
and I'm quoting you here, no amount of communication is going to create a relationship where both of our needs are going to be met. Okay, well, that stands. That can still be true, even if the ways in which he's incapable of meeting your needs stem back or are tied to whatever it is that makes him neurodivergent and prompted him to self-diagnose as neurodivergent. That's not a trump card.
That doesn't end the conversation. You are not now trapped in this relationship because leaving him would mean discriminating against him about something that he has no control over. People leave people all the time for reasons tied to something that person has no control over because whatever it might be, is resulting in the relationship not being satisfying, not working for you.
And somebody doesn't get to turn on their heel and say, you're about to break up with me because I'm an introvert, but I'm an introvert because I'm neurodivergent. You are no longer therefore allowed to leave me ever. You have to spend the next 50 years with me. And you're not allowed to ask me to do anything about this.
You're not allowed to ask me to try to make any changes or get help or work on this because I self-diagnosed as neurodivergent. So I win. No, that's not how relationships work. And if he wants to be with you, you're allowed to say, these are my needs. This is what I need from a romantic partner. And I've invested two years in this relationship. And maybe we can get a little bit closer.
Maybe if more of my needs were being met, or I saw you making an effort to meet more of my needs, I would feel safe, content, seen, cared for in this relationship. And then nobody gets everything they want out of a relationship. No one gets every need met. And if I was getting enough and some effort to meet a little more, maybe I'd be content and want to stay, but right now I don't want to stay.
So let's go talk to a therapist who has some expertise in this neurodivergency area. And let's get you to somebody who can actually is qualified to diagnose neurodivergency and figure out what the fuck it actually is. And if there are ways in which I can relate to you differently, that'll bring out, uh,
of you, some of what I need from a partner to be in a relationship, if there's ways I can function differently in this relationship that accommodates what makes you special, maybe we can make it work. But as it stands now, it wasn't working for you. And him saying the magic word neurodivergent didn't turn it into a relationship that works for you or obligate you to stay in the relationship.
The leverage here is the threat to leave. And he may need help if he thinks he's neurodivergent in some way and he's never had any help with it.
Your relationship with him now could be the incentive he needs to go and get help that may help him understand himself better, help him relate to other people better, help him maintain and sustain the relationship he has with you or maintain and sustain a relationship he has with somebody else if your relationship should end.
which it still could and you are allowed to end this relationship if you need to. Somebody can be neurodivergent and fail to meet your needs and you are still allowed to go.
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We're going to take a quick break from your calls to speak once again with Claire Perlman, a queer Jewish certified sex therapist who lives and works in the Bay Area. She's passionate about creating accessible sex education and normalizing play, pleasure, and sexual freedom for everyone. Claire, welcome back to the Lovecast.
Thank you so much for having me back, Dan.
Hi. Hi. I wanted to have you on today of all days to record for tomorrow of all days after. Because a terrible thing is happening right now while we're talking. And sometimes terrible things, world historical political events that are deeply, deeply shitty can tank a person's libido, can crater a person's libido.
Some advice for folks out there, particularly I think women and other people who are assigned female at birth watching this, that man take the oath of office again. Some advice for people who are struggling to literally or figuratively get back on the stick.
Yeah, it's okay to feel your feelings. I want to make sure that people understand that they are allowed to go through whatever variety of emotions are coming up for them. And if that impacts their sex life, that is okay. And if they want to not Thank you so much for having me. And if we let every single one of those fully impact our sex lives, then we would probably never be fucking.
So if we want to be fucking, we have to be able to acknowledge that this incredibly shitty thing is happening and acknowledge that it's okay if our libido takes a bit of a dive.
And that if having sex is an important value to us, it's an important activity, it's an important way to connect, then we want to hold that grief around it and also hold that we would like to do some other things with that grief. Alchemize the grief. Fuck the grief away. Fuck with the grief. Don't try and let it go away. It's there.
Yeah, I keep thinking he's taken so much from us and occupies so much mental space, emotional space. I don't want to give him this too. I don't want to not fuck because I can't stop doom scrolling, whether I actually have my phone in my hand and I'm doom scrolling, or it's just my thoughts racing away from me.
There's something very... Even if you have to will it to get back in the groove, there's something that... makes you very present if you're having a sexual encounter and it takes off, like you catch momentum, you catch that wave, you're aroused, you're clicking with your partner.
And I just think there's something, especially right now about good sex, good fucking consensual sex, sex with people that want to have sex with you, that you want to have sex with is a way of sort of taking sex back from the Hagsworths. And I'm not even gonna say his fucking name on today's show. That other guy who just got sworn in for a second fucking term.
Good sex is something that they are not capable of. Consensual sex, respectful sex, wanted sex. And it helps me at this moment to feel like good sex is an act of defiance. Not a distraction, but defiance. And we need to defy it all the ways we can.
I fully agree. Great sex right now is the biggest F you to this administration that we can possibly give. And so if we want to be the biggest advocates for ourself and show, not let this administration beat us down in the way that they want us to be small and be not liberated anymore and not be in our full power. The best way to take our power back is to have great sex.
I'm going to trot out the HIV AIDS epidemic. I lived through it. I came out in 1980, 81. Yeah. And then the meteor hit and it was horrible. And, you know, ACT UP happened and just this wave of activism and people taking care of each other.
And one of the things that drove them crazy, the right-wingers, the religious conservatives, the Jerry Falwell seniors of the world, was they would watch us at a demo and then they would hear about, or we would post, you know, we would share photos in newspapers and magazines because there weren't internet then, of the dance party after. And that we were still fucking.
Because they wanted us on the floor in the fetal position, too beat down, too depressed to connect. Not just politically, but also sexually and intimately. And we didn't let the virus take that from us. So just like a message to people out there who feel crushed by this moment. I couldn't have felt more crushed in 1985 by the AIDS epidemic than I did. And we fucked our way through it.
And it was one of the ways we took care of each other was by still connecting intimately and as safely as we could.
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that's really important. And we get to fuck our way through this. Like, let's get our IUDs. The first Trump administration, that was the first thing I did. That's how I remember when I got my first IUD.
Get some IUDs, get some M&Ms, the abortion medications. You can order them and just keep them. They're good on the shelf for five years. Get some morning after pills. Stock the fuck up, not just for yourself, but for friends who might be living in states soon where it's going to be impossible to get these meds. Stock the fuck up now.
Yeah, and have all the fucking amazing queer sex. I have amazing queer sex in my house.
And I have Mipha Pristone and the other one. We have M&Ms that we got so that if we ever had a woman friend, relative, niece who needed it, that we could swoop the fuck in. So that's the theory. We've gone through like the theory of why you should be fucking just a little practical.
If you're having trouble, like, you know, turning the key, getting the motor to turn over, what's a practical thing a person could do.
I think a practical thing you can do is put your phone down and remember that doom scrolling is not actually going to shift anything. And that once you do that, bring yourself back to the present moment. Do the things that get you, help you relax. Like, don't even have the goal of getting in the mood. Just have the goal of connection. Have the goal of feeling more sensual.
Have the goal of giving a big F you to this administration. And go to Naked Hot Springs. Take a long, luxurious bath. Watch some great porn. Give yourself a self-sensual massage. Give your partner a sensual massage. All of those things. Do some really gay eye gazing. I love that.
I do too. I also sometimes think – you know, there's the, the two chief erogenous zones, like the clitoris, the head of the penis, but there's all sorts of other erogenous zones that can kind of function like turning the key. Yeah. The biggest sex organs between our ears, but how do you get your dick in there? That can function a little bit like turning the key in the ignition.
We're just like, instead of like, we're going to fuck and like, we got to get our genitals to kick into gear. Just like, playing with each other's tits, like holding each other, but like the fingers gently moving across the nipples. And then if that's all it's going to be is like gentle nipple play to make you feel present and centered. Great. That's good.
And then maybe like it'll spread and then suddenly you'll be fucking. And I just also want to remind everybody that, Sex is a great way to disengage and it's not a betrayal to disengage with sex or whatever else gives you pleasure. Asexual, ace people who I know listen to the show, whatever works for you physically, tactilely as well, is not a betrayal of the political moment to disengage.
You have to be able to find joy in grief.
And you can re-engage.
Yes, yes.
And you're better prepared to re-engage if your life isn't devoid of sexual connection and joy.
Exactly. Exactly. You actually will be better prepared to re-engage if you are able to fill your own cup.
Or somebody else's cup.
Yeah, that's also the goal.
That's what the parties after the big AIDS demos were like. It recharged us. It was a way of venting a lot of the anger and pain and energy from that day's demo, but also it set us up for the next demo.
Yeah. I mean, nothing is more healing than community. And if you find community in your queer community, which I am always fucking preaching, but anywhere you can find solace in whatever community like brings you that feeling, I think that is the most important thing ever. And then if you fuck within community, you know, that's just an added bonus.
It is impossible, really, I have found, to think about politics when somebody's sitting on your face. It's just impossible. Like they used to say about, you know, an execution when it's scheduled in the morning, it focuses the mind. Nothing else like it focuses the mind. The same is true of somebody sitting the fuck down on your face. It focuses the mind.
There's only one thing you can see at that moment.
I mean, you shouldn't be able to see anything, right?
Agreed. Claire Perlman, queer Jewish certified sex therapist in the Bay Area. Claire, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Let's keep checking in with each other. Let's get through this and help our listeners and followers get through it.
It's going to be a rough four years, and I really want people to make time for the intimacy and connection that makes life worth living no matter who the fuck is sitting in the Oval Office.
Yeah, or who is sitting on your face.
Excellent point, Claire. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
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Hi, Dan. My 23-year-old niece is a trans woman who has been open about her transition for about four years now. My only brother is her father, and while he claims to accept her identity, He still sees it as a choice and he refuses to use her pronouns, continuing to refer to her as his son and using he, him pronouns. His reasoning being that it would be a lie for him to use she and her as he still
sees her as his son, and that cannot change. I've tried all the ways I can think of to make him understand it is not a choice, it's not about him, it's about her and her identity, but he just doesn't get it. So maybe if he heard from fathers of trans women who have had similar difficulties with their child's transition, that might help him get a different perspective than what I can offer.
Your brother's just being an asshole. There's a tweet that goes viral. every year around Thanksgiving. And I'm just going to read it. My younger brother is trans. My parents have been horrendous about dead naming him and misgendering him. At Thanksgiving, I used an air horn to correct them. I fixed a two to three year long problem in two seconds. 10 out of 10 would recommend this training.
method you could the next time you hang out with your brother particularly if your niece is present you could have an air horn in your pocket and every time he misgenders your niece his daughter and sons him or he hims him you press that air horn button and blast him You could fix it. Maybe it'll work.
Nobody knows if this tweet that goes viral, if this is true or if this is just wishful thinking. 1010, I can't recommend it. I don't know anybody who's actually tried it. Maybe you could try it and give us a call back and let us know. your brother's just being an asshole. And he knows what he's doing. He's expressing his contempt and withholding his support.
I would, if your niece had called me, encourage her not to see her father or to see him less, to expose herself to this abusive treatment less. I'm not a huge fan of no contact. I'm a fan of minimizing exposure, but your only leverage over your family as an adult is your presence.
And if every time your niece makes herself present with her father, she is abused by your father in this way, she should stop showing up. When somebody says, I'm going to beat you up in the schoolyard at two o'clock, meet me there. You don't have to meet them there to get beat up on the schoolyard. And that's kind of what her dad is doing.
And you should tell your dad it's contemptible and he needs to stop or he's going to destroy his relationship with his daughter, with his child. Now, when I hear about families doing this, it just reminds me of something that we gay people used to face a lot decades ago. And we used to talk about all the time, which was family members inviting, not bring your boyfriend to Christmas.
We're in husbands yet. A lot of us were husbands emotionally, but we weren't husbands legally yet. They wouldn't say bring your boyfriend or they wouldn't introduce your boyfriend to other family members of friends as your boyfriend. It was if your friend wants to come, um, And it was just this way of holding us with tongs and desexualizing our relationships for their comfort.
Your brother is stripping your niece of her essential sense of herself or gender for his own comfort, but also to communicate to your niece his disapproval, which is part of what our families were doing when it was friend. I will acknowledge this is a friend of yours, but not
what this person actually is in your life, because I'm uncomfortable with what this person actually is in your life and how you live your life and who you are. fundamentally who you are. I'm uncomfortable with who you are. I disagree with who you are. And that's what we were getting when it was, this is Dan's friend.
And we yelled at our parents and we decided, you know, they would say, this is Danny's friend. And I would say, boyfriend, not quite an air horn, but I would, I would make it awkward. So make it the fuck awkward, make it awkward for your brother.
And if there's anybody else out there who faced this with parents, any trans listeners out there who faced this with parents, any supportive siblings or parents of trans kids whose other parent was being an asshole in this way, what did you do? Did you do the air horn?
What did you do if you finally were able to bring that person around who was being an asshole to your trans kid or sibling or friend? What did you do? What did you say? What worked? All right, 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. Says no cute name.
Dan, in your conversation with Rebecca Wolf, you said Antonio Banderas is masturbating Nicole Kidman at the end of Baby Girl. I haven't seen the movie, but I assume the husband is fingering the character, not masturbating her, because by definition, masturbation refers to touching oneself. I would never say someone is masturbating someone else."
If hands are being used, I would say they are fingering if the other person has a clit or stroking if the other person is a penis halfer. All right. So when I masturbate, I jack myself off. But when I jack my boyfriend off, I'm only jacking him off, not masturbating him. Meaning follows usage. And a lot of people use masturbate the way I used it. But technically, no cute name is correct.
However, it does call into question the common understanding of the... Sexual activity referred to as mutual masturbation, which encompasses not just two people sitting side by side and masturbating themselves, not just keeping their hands to themselves, but masturbating their partners too. Says Thingamajig about the mom who called in about their queer teenager.
Parents who call in, how about be more specific about your kids' particulars? Dan did his best to cover the bases, but queer teenager is a big category. And what a gay 13-year-old needs, for example, is probably quite a bit different from what a non-binary 19-year-old might need. I agree, Finger Majig. Yes, I could use more particulars. Queer is a vast and broad category.
Also, could I put in a word for people to stop using the word kiddo? I don't know why it bothers me, but it does. See, also, doggo, hubs, the pod for podcast, and nipple. Never liked that word? Just go with tit. But yes, helpful to know the flavor of queer we're talking about when we're talking about queer kids or queer adults. Finally, it says kindness is key.
This is in reference to the caller who didn't find the romantic interest attractive because the romantic interest was too skinny. Something you said, Dan, got worded weird and it made it sound like the skinny gal would be to blame if she does have an eating disorder. But an eating disorder is not someone's fault. It is a medical condition. and psychological issue they can't control.
I'm sure you know that, Dan. Just be more careful how you phrase things. Thank you. Kindness is key. I am going to have just be more careful how you phrase things tattooed in reverse on my forehead so I can read it every morning before I record the Lovecast. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for your feedback. Thank you for holding me. What's that word people like to use and overuse?
Oh, right. Accountable. And for more listener feedback, check out Struggle Session every Thursday at savage.love, where I respond at length, sometimes great length, to listener comments and reader comments. There's a lot more about Baby Girl in the last Struggle Session. If you're still interested in hearing more about that film, go check out last week's Struggle Session.
And now, everyone's favorite part of the show, mine included, the part where I shut my big gay mouth, and my listeners, who always phrase things perfectly, get the last word.
the guy dating the thin woman do not under any circumstances tell this 24 year old woman to gain weight are you kidding me oh my gosh she will hold on to it for the rest of her life especially at that age women are just fed this idea that you're supposed to be perfect in order to be lovable And all of these little comments, I can remember like it was yesterday.
The things that were said to me at that age, it really just cements inside of you. So if you truly want to adhere by the campsite rule, you will end things because you're clearly not attracted to this woman. And you will not say anything about not being attracted to her when you do that. This is the time when white lies are necessary. You'll say that. You know, you just start feeling it.
You don't know why. And then you walk away.
Hey, this is a response to the caller in episode 950 whose partner makes really off-putting noises when he comes. I think Dan's response was great. I hit the nail on the head. I just wanted to chime in with some personal experience. I have a partner who, when she comes, makes a frankly unattractive face and I fucking love it because I know, you know, knowing her as I do, she would
I wouldn't choose to make that embarrassing face if she could help it. But that's the thing. She can't help it. In that moment, she is completely surrendered to her pleasure and in the throes of ecstasy. And that's because of something I did or something she did or something we did together. And that's amazing. And so I don't know if you can't appreciate that for the great turn on that it is.
Send him my way.
And we're going to leave it there. To get us a question or comment for a future show, go to savage.love slash askdan to record your question or comment directly onto our website. Or you can make a voice memo on your very own phone and email it to us at q at savage.love. Or you can call 206-302-2064 and leave us a message on our answering machine.
Thursday at noon, Savage Love Live, a special show exclusively for Magnum subscribers where I answer questions live. You can ask me live or you can get your question in for this show earlier and I'm likely going to answer it if you get it in early by going to savage.love slash events. And the official hump 20th anniversary after parties hosted by our friends.
at Plura have been announced in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. Get tickets to the 20th anniversary of Hump and join us for the after parties by going to humpfilmfest.com right now. Follow me on Instagram and threads at Dan Savage. Follow me at blue sky at Dan Savage. Follow Claire Perlman, relationship therapist on Instagram and threads at at Sex Clarified.
Follow Doc Chocolate on Instagram and threads at Doc, D-O-C, Chocolate, B-B-C. And check out his podcast, Bowls and Queens, wherever you get your podcasts. The Savage Lovecast is produced every week by Nancy Hartunian and me and Nancy and the tech savvy at Risk Youth. We will all be back at you next week with another installment of the Savage Lovecast and another installment of Sex and Politics.
All that coming up next week.