American Savage

cultural icon and sex columnist dan savage talks about his new book, his sex column & his ultimate legacy

You’ve written several books, so what was the goal with American Savage?

It sort of evolved. When I first started doing this book, it was just going to be a collection of essays and things I’ve already published, so I could then work on my next book. But then I started re-writing things, and writing completely new things, and it sorta became this totally new thing.

So, I accidentally wrote the book I was supposed to write after this book, now. And, I wanted to bring together several things I have talked about at great length and written about in Savage Love — GGG, straight pride, BDSM, monogomy, et cetera — but never sort of unpacked in book form. These things are constant topics in the podcast and column, but I’ve never really dug into them in a deep way.

I’m reading it now, and As a someone raised Catholic, it really resonated with me.

Body autonomy, like the right to control your genitals without having to submit them to your local bishop.

Exactly! In american savage, what are you most excited for readers to uncover?

Regular readers will enjoy the GGG stuff...my defense of it. The Bigot Christmas, the dinner with Brian Brown at the back of the book, and the stuff about gay marriage, which is new. And the stuff about BDSM and straight pride and monogomy...ya know, all the things my readers love, they’ll get plenty of it in this book.

your regular column readers may not know — when you first started Savage Love, it was kind of a joke.

It was absolutely a joke. Not kind of a joke — it was a joke.

then it got serious. People wrote in about real life stuff.

Yeah, you can’t fake it. I couldn’t guess where the clitoris was, I had to find out.

at any time, was there a conscious shift to get more political?

Well, I’ve always written about politics in the column because you have to. When I write about politics, people will write into me and say, “I come to you to for talking about sex, leave politics alone!” And my response to that is always, “Well, I’ll leave politics alone when politicians leave sex alone.” But they won’t and don’t, and so I can’t.

But I was an activist before I started writing this column. I was in ACT UP, and I was a gay activist on my campus when I went to college. And it didn’t take me long to realize that I suddenly had the ears of all these people who wouldn’t be paying attention to a gay writer if he was writing about gay politics, so I wrote about straight sex almost entirely. Ya know, 90% of the content on my column is about straight people, straight sex, straight relationships, and then everyone once in a while I can change the subject to gay marriage or HIV or the plight of bi-national gay couples, and straight readers will read that because they’re in the habit of reading my column. So in a way, I had this ability to subtly still be an activist and politicize my readers and sort of exploit them when they were vulnerable and weren’t paying attention. (Laughs all around)

We’re just gonna sneak this right in.

Right! And I call them my flying monkeys and every once in a while I call them to go and do a mission, like the It Gets Better Project, or Rick Santorum, or Constance McMillan — the girl who was being abused my her high school. That school said letting her go to prom with her girlfriend would be “too big of a distraction” so I said to my readers, let’s make discriminating against this kid a much bigger distraction for this school, which is what they made it. They poured into the email inboxes and fax machines and phones, and really derailed the school.

And so, ya know, I don’t abuse it. I get letters every day from people importuning me to do this cause or that cause in my column, and I have to keep that powder dry most of the time, otherwise my readers will feel like I am just jerking them around. So it has to really be something that I care about, and that I think is a doable thing that my readers, by jumping in and participating, can affect some positive change, which is what the It Gets Better Project was.

And How do you Make that Distinction?

It has to speak to me — and have to feel like my readers can relate to it. And also, I don’t like activism that instills despair in people. Where you put something in front of them and whatever they do, it’s not gonna be enough to create some change. So, I like to put something in front of them where they can take action and maybe have an impact.

In honor of our nsfw issue — what’s the hottest email you’ve ever received?

Oh my god, well, people will send me, as an inducement to respond to their letters, photographs. And, I’m embarrassed to say that really fucking works. If you enclose a hot photograph of your boyfriend I’m much likelier to read that email. Then, after I’ve enjoyed looking at the photo, I feel guilty if I don’t respond. And those kinda rise to the top of the pile. And I’m blushing now.

you’re Just sitting there, recalling all of them.

Well, I’ve seen things made just for me. I got this last week, this woman, I talk about Terry a lot and my type, shaggy hair and 70’s type guys with tube socks and roller skates who look like male hookers in 1978 in Times Square.

And this woman wrote me and said, “My boyfriend is your type.“ And I jokingly wrote back, “Prove it.” And she sent me a video of just him...doing stuff. And she sent it to me and I’m like, wow, you’re right, exactly my type. Her boyfriend is pretty sexually adventurous, I have to say.

Did you ever imagine — people creating porn, just for you.

I know! How honored.

Ok, the kinkiest email — does anything even surprise you anymore?

That’s like the dirtiest bum in San Francisco, how do you figure out the kinkiest email?

True. It’s all relative I guess. What some people think is kinky, other people...

Exactly, yeah, kink is very subjective. It reminds me of a friend who would have very vanilla sex but with a ton of people, and he’d tell me about his sexual adventures and I’d be appalled. And he would ask me what Terry and I got up to this weekend, and I’d tell him and he’d be appalled. Because, Terry and I, we’re very adventurous but it’s just the two of us, whereas Dave is not very adventurous but it’s a cast of thousands. So ya know, it’s subjective.

The kinkiest email? A long time ago, before the cuckolding thing took off, so like 10, 15 years ago.

That’s so crazy, it’s everywhere now.

I know, right. Kinks are like memes — they can explode through a culture.

And what’s that about? Are there sexual trends?

Absolutely, yeah, a kink is a meme, it can rise up, but it taps into something that already exists in people. Like this desire. Cuckolding is about power, domination, femme dom, humiliation, about eroticizing someone’s insecurities around cheating and fidelity and adequacy. And taking those emotions that can be very destructive in a relationship and turning that dynamic on its head into something that make a relationship more fun and more exciting. If you can construct it in the right way where it’s emotionally safe for both parties and physically safe for both parties to still do it, then you’ve taken what for a lot of men and women — in straight relationships — are sort of terrifying, nightmare images and prospects, and making them hot and sexy. And make that couple’s connection much more intense, and much more sexual. But that was out there — fears about inadequacy, insecurity, infidelity — that was all the gasoline on the ground and cuckolding was the match.

When you peel back the activities, every kink is about power, domination and control: foot fetishists, pie fetishists, goop fetishists, femme domme, BDSM, 50 Shades of Grey, all of these things seem so different, but you trace them back to their source impulse and what’s being eroticized, and it’s control, domination, and power.

Ok, anal — is that even considered a kink?

Well, anal is the new oral, in a way. Ya know, oral was super kinky once upon a time. People “got into” oral. It was “oral sodomy” and illegal like anal sodomy was. And then oral became sort of standard, and any model that arrived without oral you would return to the lot. Like, there’s something wrong with this — you sold me a lemon! And you take it back to the bar and leave it where you found it. And we’re sort of getting there with anal. What’s nice is it seems like it’s getting a little more mutual — well, with my readers and probably people in San Francisco — it’s a little more mutual and can be for either partner, even in a straight relationship. But ya know, If it exists in the world, and it’s a hole, somebody out there is gonna want to fuck it. People are fucking toasters and vacuum cleaners, the idea that people don’t want to fuck assholes is nuts-o.

And people have been having anal sex forever, it used to be a really efficient method of birth control. You read things from 200 to 300 years ago, and people were fucking butts.

Looking at your career — your column, your philanthropy and political activism — what do you hope you’ll be remembered for?

On Dan Savage’s tombstone, it’ll probably read Santorum, It Gets Better and GGG — those are the three things I think I will leave the world with.

A dirty neologism, this effort to help LGBT kids, and this effort to help people sustain their sexual interest in each other over the long term, in a long-term relationship. Putting in people’s heads that you have this responsibility to do for your partner, to give, and it actually improves your relationship if you take a pro-adventure tack on your sexual relationship. You want your relationship to survive, you want your partner to look at you and think, “There is the person who makes shit happen for me.” You don’t want your partner to look at you and say, “There’s the reason I can’t.”