Dan Savage On The Queer Rights Movement, Monogamy, And Sex

Author, media pundit, podcaster and sex advice columnist Dan Savage is best known in Australia as the founder of It Gets Better, an initiative to combat youth suicide within the GLBTIQA community (it’s basically got the whole alphabet in it now). More recently he kickstarted the global campaign to boycott Stoli vodka in a bid to draw attention to Russia’s shitty “Gay Propaganda” laws, and this week he made his first appearance on the brand new British talk show, Sex Box — which has couples get into a box on TV, do the sexing, and then pop back on stage to chat about how it all went.

Despite all this, his most outspoken critics come from within the Queer scene. One site, charmingly named Fuck No, Dan Savage, labelled him a “cissexist, sexist, anti-asexual, anti-bisexual, classist, racist, sizeist, and ableist douchebag”, and he’s been blamed for bringing the reputation of gay men into disrepute via his relaxed thoughts on monogamy. He was also glitter-bombed once by a trans group — which seems like a strange way to protest against a gay man.

I gave Dan a call from under my bedsheets while he was stuck in a “windy ass LA carpark” to talk about bad vodka, the hot mess that is queer activism, and why you should let me sleep with your partner.

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Brendan Maclean: So Dan, I’m one of those homos who reads loads of free spirited sex articles, and totally loves the concept of an open relationship — but the thought of acting upon it induces crippling dosages of envy and guilt. 

Dan Savage: Do you have a partner?

Urm, well… 

How long were you together with your most recent partner?

Nine months.

Well I’d hope that in those nine months you were not not monogamous.

It’s a general observation that if two people just got together and within a few months they’re already not monogamous, then their thing probably isn’t going to stick.

Most of the successful non-monogamous relationships, including for gay men, include a period of effortless and joyful monogamy before there is an opening — which honestly isn’t about the collapse of their sexual connection. [It’s about] a desire to keep fuelling the fire, and finding new ways to keep the spark alive.

Well for people in longer relationships like yourself, what tips would you have to relax the shackles of monogamy?

It starts with talk. You have to have conversations about it. If either or both of you want to open it up, you just need to talk about it, about what would be permissible or not.

As a gay couple, you have this enormous advantage that — well, men are pigs!

As a gay couple, you have this enormous advantage that — well, men are pigs! The object of desire for one of you could be the object of desire for both of you. It’s not like a hetero couple who want to have a three-way: unless one or both of them are bisexual, someone is going to be having a lot of what they like, and the other one isn’t.

But with a gay couple, you can find another dude you’re both into. How awesome is THAT?!

But you know, the guilt thing again.

Non-monogamy isn’t right for everybody. But to be fair, it’s not us non-monogamous types who run around telling other people that they’re doing it wrong. It’s the monogamous people who are telling people who are choosing to have open relationships that, “Hey, you couldn’t do that if you were really committed.” I’m not here to scold people who are comfortable in their relationships.

Do you think pop culture could accommodate a shift towards that relaxed stance? Do we need a hero of open relationships?

Maybe we do.

Maybe it’s you!

Maybe! Well, HBO has [just cast] a new show called Open, so perhaps that will help?

The problem with open relationships and the way that they’re perceived is that people who are in them aren’t open to the public about it. And a lot of the people who are in open relationships are boring and annoying.

Most people who are successfully non-monogamous are discreet. You only hear about the ones that have failed! We never hear about the relationships that non-monogomy saves.

Most people who are successfully non-monogamous are discreet. They wish to be perceived as monogamous; they don’t run around saying, “Oh just so you know, we’re successfully in an open relationship even though we appear not to be.” This fuels the attitude that all non-monogamous relationships are doomed to fail — because you only hear about the ones that have failed!

If a couple has a three-way and it destroys the relationship, it’s a disaster and all their friends find out. If somebody cheats and it leads to a divorce, we all find out about the cheating — but if a straight couple occasionally has three-ways or sex with other couples and it is actually working well for them, and they’re NOT divorcing as a result, nobody ever finds out. We never hear about the relationships that non-monogamy saves.

Considering that sex-ed is still basically sticking condoms on bananas, do you have an idea of how we might begin to reshape our learning on sex and intimacy?

Well, most of what is covered in sexual education classes is reproductive biology — how babies are made — which people are not thinking about when they’re having sex (unless they’re thinking briefly about how to avoid making a baby). And you can cover that in about three minutes.

The difficult part, and what isn’t covered, is: how do you talk somebody into fucking you? How do you figure out what it is that turns you on? How do you ask for it, and how do you accommodate your partners desires in a reasonable way? And what might be expected of you, skills-wise?

To get people thinking about that at all is difficult. And what makes it harder still is that sex isn’t a one-size-fits-all garment. Everybody has their own quirks, perversions and kinks. If you’re a little kinkster, that’s not a failing: it’s hardwired. The sooner you discover what excites you sexually and embrace it sexually, and can communicate that in an appropriate way with someone you’re attracted to — and talk that person into fucking you — the better off you’ll be.

But we don’t cover any of that in sex ed; we don’t cover the actual having sex! We don’t cover sexual pleasure — which is 99.9% of the sex straight people have, and 100% of the sex gay people have.

How do you talk somebody into fucking you? How do you figure out what it is that turns you on? How do you ask for it, and how do you accommodate your partners desires in a reasonable way? And what might be expected of you, skills-wise?

Do you see the taboo lifting, or the conversation changing?

I don’t know. The only way it gets into schools is if you let the kids ask questions, and the adults have the processing power to answer. Because if you go into schools with this, like, agenda — “We’re going to cover S&M and we’re gonna cover gay butt-fucking and lesbian sex” — people will flip out. They think you’re instilling a desire for those things, when that’s not the truth, that’s not possible. Hearing about cunnilingus did not make me want to perform it. Hearing about butt-fucking is not going to make a straight boy have gay butt sex… as available as we make ourselves.

You once criticised the queer rights movement, calling it “the Hot House of LGBTQ activism”. What did you mean by that, and what do you think has gone wrong?

I call it ‘the Baby Harp Sealification of the rights movement’. Everybody is trying to position themselves to be the biggest victim. And there are different degrees of victimisation. Certainly trans-people are subjected to more violence, bisexual people to more invisibility, and asexual people are claiming that they are the most victimised, because nobody understands them.

Do you believe that the umbrella that tries to cover the whole rainbow spectrum has been overstretched? Is it time to start handing out little umbrellas, for each group to handle themselves?

Well if we could talk about the different ways people are harmed — and the different sorts of services or understandings different sorts of people need — that would be great. But this endless [conversation] about who is more privileged than who is exhausting and pointless. We’re actually driving people out of the organised “LGBTQIFLAG waka-waka-waka etc“ movement.

Personally I think we should all embrace the word “queer”. Queer as genus, and everything else as species: So I come out as queer and that’s my genus, and then being gay would be my species. You could be queer and trans, or queer bisexual, whatever.

Do you feel you’re being driven out of the organised movement yourself? I mean how do you handle criticism of articles, or outrage over your looser use of pronouns and queer vocabulary? 

Well, it makes me grateful that my audience is mostly entirely straight people. It really is only queer people who attack me now.

Best sex advice you ever received?

One of my first boyfriends when I came out, his name was Tommy Lad — and what a perfect name for a first boyfriend. Beautiful, giant dick, sweet, blonde, goofy, and healthy. He was the first person I was ever with who just had this free attitude about sex. I was Captain Teenager still, in college, and he just had this… Okay, you know what? This is gonna be gross — but we were having anal sex and there was poop.

And I mean, yes, you get better and you learn how to avoid it, but I was MORTIFIED, just mortified, and he was like, “Honey, it happens, it’s an ass. Shit happens.”

And just him shrugging it off, the “whatever” attitude, rubbed off on me figuratively, and literally. Sex disasters happen. That advice — to not worry about it — makes sex so much better. To not be shockable.

When he did get me to talk about the things I wanted to try that weren’t just gay vanilla, I was a wreck from nerves. He just said, “Well. what are you going to do? Have sex that doesn’t turn you on all your life? I thought you came out so you could do the things that you wanted!”

It was very liberating, at just the right time in my life.

Are you and Terry still fucking other people?

Terry and I don’t talk about our sex lives but… [long pause] Well, let me put it this way: We’re not one of those couples who is not-monogamous because our sexual connection is dead. We stay together because we are friends, and we fuck other people. But ours is more of a “friendship-partnership” or a “companionate marriage.” Terry and I don’t actually have a lot in common! [Laughs]

Besides being in other people…

If we weren’t fucking each other we wouldn’t even be friends! We just don’t have enough in common. We love each other and have a really strong sexual bond, and we’re one of those couples who sometimes messes around with other people — which is fun for us and adds fuels to our fire and intensifies our connection.

And that’s not unique to us. When I studied for one of my books I looked into the swinging theme, and my prejudice going in was, “I’m going to meet a bunch of people who got into swinging because they’re really not attracted to their husbands or wives anymore…” What you find when you study swinging is that people often say that when they got involved in swinging, their sex life — alone, together — took off as a couple. They were so excited, and it reignited their passion for each other.

Terry and I have had very similar experiences; we end up having tonnes more sex with each other in the lead up to that experience, and in the wake of it.

Things are pretty shitty in Russia for the gay population, and in response you’ve driven a campaign to boycott Russian vodka. What are you hoping to get out of asking people to not drink a certain drink?

What I’m hoping — and for the record, we are moving on to other acts and protests — is that it will keep the pressure on. And what we’re hearing from gay activists on the ground in Russia is that anything we do that makes the news over there makes them incrementally safer.

Putin and his party and his goons thought they could abuse queer people with impunity, and that the world wouldn’t give a shit. So this [campaign] is convincing them that the world does give a shit and that people are paying them attention, and it will hopefully cause them to dial the laws back. It already has begun to dial it back; the Gay Propaganda law passed in four days after it was proposed, but it’s been a couple of weeks now since the “Take Kids from Their Gay Parents” law was put forward. Hopefully the world continuing to scream “No!” will keep that one from being signed off.

Really, I just hope to continue to raise awareness, which the vodka boycott did in a very, very big way. People weren’t talking about Russia at all [before that]; gay people weren’t talking about Russia! And this allowed people to think about it, and to have something to discuss. Whether or not the bar you patronise dump their Russian vodka, at least you are talking about whether it should.

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Dan Savage Australian Tour

Sydney: Saturday November 2 @ The Sydney Opera House (for Festival Of Dangerous Ideas) — tickets here

Melbourne: Sunday November 3 @ The Princes Theatre — tickets here

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Brendan Maclean is a Sydney-based musician, actor, writer and ex-triple j radio presenter. 

Feature image by LaRae Lobdell.