American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics

by Dan Savage

  Emily Yoffe, who writes the Dear Prudence column for Slate, doesn’t think very much of my sexual ethics in general or the GGG concept in particular either.

  A woman who signed her letter “What’s Next?” wrote to Prudie about her long marriage to a discreet cross-dresser. WN’s husband didn’t disclose to her that he “enjoys wearing bras and panties” until after she had given birth to their first child. “I decided to accept him as he was because I loved him,” WN wrote. “[But as] the years went by I found this part of him to be a complete turn-off.” Their marriage was sexless, had been for many years, and with their children grown and out of the house, her husband had started painting his toenails bright red and didn’t seem to care who noticed. “If he’s going to increase his cross-gender desires as we age,” WN’s letter ended, “I wonder if I can live with him for the rest of our lives. What should I do?”

  Prudie advised WN to have a blunt talk with her husband about the state of their marriage—companionate and sexless—and then make up her mind about whether she wanted a future with this man. Then Prudie added…

  Your letter is also eloquent counter-testimony to those who say loving partners should try to accommodate each other’s sexual kinks. Sure, that’s ideal. But it’s simply a fact that the partner without the fetish might find the other’s a libido-killer, as in your case. It was dishonest, even cruel, for your husband to withhold the revelation that he’d literally like to get into your drawers until the birth of your child.

  Prudie was clearly taking a slap at me in that column. (I am the advice genre’s leading proponent of partners trying “to accommodate each other’s kinks,” not extinguish them—as if that were even possible.) So it may come as a shock to Prudie to learn that I agree with her. WN’s husband should be faulted for not disclosing his kinks before marrying her and knocking her up. (In all fairness to Mr. WN, being honest about your kinks was a lot harder thirty years ago than it is today, and the Internet, which made it possible for kinksters to find and date each other, hadn’t come along yet.) I firmly believe that all kink cards should be laid faceup on the table early enough that a non-kinky partner can bail if—to use Prudie’s excellent expression—the kink in question is a “libido-killer.” (I’m simplifying for the sake of argument. Things are rarely as black-and-white as “one partner has a kink; the other doesn’t,” or “one partner is sexually adventurous; the other is sexually dullsville.” Sometimes both partners have kinks, but their respective kinks don’t mesh; sometimes a person is genuinely sexually adventurous but not interested in the sexual adventure his or her partner has in mind. A friend who would have no problem with anal sex, which she sees as adventurous, tells me she would have a big problem with her husband wearing her underwear. One taboo [anal] is a big turn-on; the other [cross-dressing] is a big turnoff.)

  But vanilla people should resist—and advice professionals like Prudie should encourage their vanilla readers to resist—the impulse to immediately dump a boyfriend or girlfriend who has just disclosed a kink. Too many people round “unfamiliar interest” up to “libido-killer” and dump the kinkster who has done the right thing and disclosed. There are two reasons why that’s a bad idea.

  First, we all want kinksters to disclose their kinks early in a relationship. But kinksters are unlikely to disclose—early or at all—if disclosure means being immediately dumped. Prudie, if she wants to live in a world where kinksters disclose, should link arms with me and urge her vanilla readers to take a deep breath before deciding that this, that, or the other kink is a libido-killer. Some kinks are libido-killers. (It might kill my libido if Terry wanted me to chop off his arms and legs, for instance.) But not every vanilla person whose partner comes out as kinky winds up like Prudie’s reader WN (i.e., not every one of them winds up trapped in an unhappy, sexless marriage with an inconsiderate kinky jerk). Something magical can actually happen, in fact, which brings us to reason number two…

  You’ll meet two kinds of people at BDSM clubs, fetish street fairs, and lurking on kink websites like FetLife. People who were always kinky, and people who fell in love with someone who was kinky, didn’t immediately dump their kinky partner after he or she disclosed their kinks, and eventually grew to love their partner’s kinks just as much as they loved their partners. These people aren’t going through the motions; they’re kinksters now too—happily partnered kinksters.

  The existence of these happy and kinky couples stands as eloquent counter-testimony to those who say that accommodating each other’s sexual kinks is a mistake.

  While we’re on the subject of kinksters and disclosure, I would like to take a moment to codify some dating rules for kinksters and vanillas alike:

  Kinky? If you’re dating someone you didn’t meet via a kink-personals website or social club, you must disclose your kinks early. It’s fine to let the other person get to know you first; it’s fine to go out on a few dates; it’s fine to have vanilla sex a few times. (There’s no better way to prove that you can do vanilla and that you enjoy vanilla and that you’re good at vanilla.) But you absolutely, positively must disclose your kinks before any major commitments are made—before you move in, before you get married, before you scramble your DNA together. Ideally your kink cards should be faceup on the table by three months, and certainly no later than six months. (And here’s a bonus tip: Present your kinks like a tragedy, and your partner will react to them like they’re tragic. Present them like a present—not something weird that your partner has to do to be with you, but something fun that your partner gets to do with you—and your vanilla partner is more likely to react positively.)

  Vanilla? Don’t immediately dump the person you’re dating—the kinky person you’re dating—after he or she discloses. Take some time to think it over. If the kink isn’t too extreme, if it’s something you could see yourself maybe trying, keep dating, keep talking, and keep fucking. Take it slow and don’t let your partner pressure you or guilt you into going faster than you’re comfortable going. But you should give kink—and your kinky partner—a chance.

  One final note for any kinksters out there reading this (before I lay my trump card on the table for Maggie and Emily): Some kinksters conveniently skip past the last two words in the definition of GGG when they’re discussing their sexual interests with their vanilla partners. (“Good in bed, giving pleasure without expectation of an immediate return, and game for anything—within reason.”) Extreme bondage or S&M, snot, shit, and puke, emotionally tricky humiliation play, wanting to see your partner have sex with other people because it turns you on (asking your partner to assume all of the physical risks that go along with that, to say nothing of the emotional risks for a partner who isn’t interested in having sex with other people), and so forth—none of that is reasonable. Extreme kinks fall under the FTF exclusion (i.e., “fetish too far”). Into something truly crazy and/or repulsive? Get thee to the Internet, go.

  And now, my trump card: Instead of summarizing, I’m going to reproduce the headline:

  Science proves it: Dan Savage is right

  The sex columnist has urged people to be “game for anything.”

  New research says that means happier relationships

  Debby Herbenick, codirector of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University Bloomington’s School of Public Health, a sexual health educator at the Kinsey Institute, and author of five books about sex and love, authored the story that accompanied that particular headline on Salon.

  Five years ago, sex columnist Dan Savage suggested that, when it comes to sex, we should all aim to be GGG (“good, giving, and game”)…. Long embraced by his readers, the GGG approach now has support from a new scientific study published in the Journal of Sex Research.

  The study Herbenick refers to was conducted by researchers at the University of Arizona and Hanover College. It looked at how being “game for anything—within reason” contributed to intimacy and satisfaction. Well, as Herbenick explains, they didn’t actually examin
e the GGG phenomenon per se; they studied “the nerdier first cousin” of it (Herbenick’s words not mine), which they dubbed “sexual transformations,” or changes people make for their partner or their relationship.

  The study involved ninety-six couples, all heterosexual, who were asked very specific questions about their relationships and their sex lives, the changes they had made to accommodate their partner’s sexual desires, and their satisfaction with their sex lives and their relationships. What they found was “women and men reported higher levels of relationship satisfaction when their partners said they’d made more ‘sexual transformations’ (when their partners had been game for more- or less-frequent sex, trying new sexual activities, etc.).”

  Herbenick clarifies that being willing to make “sexual transformations”—being game to try something new—doesn’t necessarily translate into being game for anything and everything, nor does it mean going through the motions with a scowl to shut your partner up.

  After all, being “game” for switching up one’s sex life isn’t about begrudgingly going down on someone or role-playing with a bored look on one’s face. Being game is about being willing to give something a whirl, and happily so. It’s about bringing your A-game to bed, about not knowing how you’ll end up feeling about it but being willing to give it your best shot, with an open mind and heart…. As with movies, drinks and food, it’s common for people in relationships to have different preferences. One person likes beer and the other digs wine. One likes action flicks and the other favors anything starring Audrey Tautou. One likes vanilla intercourse and the other wants to hold a vibrator to their partner’s clitoris while she’s upside down in wheelbarrow, wearing a pirate costume.

  And this wasn’t the only study that seems to prove the GGG concept: Amy Muise, PhD, a lead researcher on a study of communal strength (which extended to the sexual domain of a relationship) in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto, sent me an e-mail after their study was published.

  I recently published a paper that you might be interested in. It is on something that I am referring to as sexual communal strength (SCS), and I think it provides support for your ideas about being GGG. One of the conclusions of the paper is that being motivated to meet a partner’s sexual needs is good for the self, in that it is associated with higher sexual desire. People who were higher in SCS (or more GGG) maintained higher desire over the course of time in a long-term relationship, whereas those lower in SCS (less GGG) declined in desire.

  If you don’t believe me, believe the science: Being GGG strengthens relationships. Not only does the person whose sexual needs are being met experience an increase in desire and affection for his or her partner, the person who is being GGG experiences increased desire too.

  Maggie Gallagher’s concern is that GGG—the idea of it—is essentially sexist. That it’s about me, a gay man, badgering straight women into accommodating the kinks of straight men. While it’s true that men are likelier to be kinky, GGG doesn’t apply just to kink. It applies to more basic sexual interests and activities. And when I say we should all be GGG for our partners, I do mean all—men and women, gay or straight. Women sometimes find it difficult to be assertive about their desires, women are socialized to defer to men, and many women have a difficult time advocating for their own pleasure. When a couple talks about being good, giving, and game, both halves of that couple are engaged in an explicit conversation about meeting each other’s needs. Maybe the conversation is initiated by the male half of the couple; maybe it’s initiated by the female half. But the conversation is grounded in the assumption that both halves of the couple have needs that the other half should be willing to meet. A conversation about being GGG for each other is empowering—for the male and female halves of opposite-sex couples, and for the kink and vanilla halves of those same couples.

  Anyone who wants to strengthen the institution of marriage—anyone who wants to protect existing marriages—should be seconding, not slamming, my advice to be “good, giving, and game.” Whether a marriage is open or closed, gay or straight, whether a couple is vanilla or kinky or falls somewhere in between, if both partners are going that extra mile, if both partners are meeting each other’s needs—if they’re being GGG—the odds that their marriage will last are improved.

  Not only do I have science on my side, but I have at least one Lutheran minister. “Underlying all of Savage’s principles, abbreviations, and maxims is a pragmatism that strives for stable, livable, and reasonably happy relationships in a world where the old constraints that were meant to facilitate these ends are gone…. Who knows how many good relationships have been saved—and how many disastrous marriages have been averted—by heeding a Savage insistence on disclosing the unmet need, tolerating the within-reason quirk, or forgiving the endurable lapse? In ways that his frequent interlocutors on the Christian right wouldn’t expect, Savage has probably done more to uphold conventional families than many counselors who are unwilling to engage so frankly with modern sexual mores,” Benjamin J. Dueholm, a Lutheran minister, wrote in the March/April 2011 issue of the Washington Monthly.

  Taking my advice might lead to disastrous results? To the contrary, Maggie. Couples that take my advice are likelier to stay together than couples that take yours.

  5. The Choicer Challenge

  Okay, who remembers Herman Cain? Anyone?

  Herman Cain was the businessman/pizza guy who ran for the Republican presidential nomination way, way back in 2012. And for one brief, shining, credulity-straining moment, Cain was the front-runner for the GOP nomination. Cain’s turn as front-runner fell between Michele Bachmann’s and Rick Santorum’s turns—or maybe it fell between Rick Perry’s and Newt Gingrich’s turns. (Some facts are too depressing to check.)

  Cain’s opinions mattered very much during his stint as GOP front-runner, and he was duly asked to opine about absolutely everything from tax policies (“9-9-9!”) to the books he’d recently read (“We need a leader, not a reader!”) to President Obama’s handling of the uprising in Libya (“Um, I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reason—Nope, that’s a different one…. I got all this stuff twirling around in my head”). When Cain was asked the inevitable questions about gay marriage and gays in the military, the then-candidate said, “I believe it is a choice.”

  Joy Behar asked Cain during an appearance on The View if he seriously believed that some people make an active, conscious choice to be gay.

  “You show me the science that says that it is not [a choice],” Cain told Behar.

  On a subsequent appearance on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, Cain reiterated his stand—he told Morgan that he believed being gay is a “personal choice”—which led to this exchange:

  MORGAN: You think people wait—you believe people get to a certain age and say, “I want to be homosexual”?

  CAIN: Let me turn it around to you. What does science show? Show me evidence other than opinion and you might cause me to reconsider that…. Where is the evidence?

  Herman Cain is a choicer.

  “Truthers” believe that 9/11 was an inside job, “birthers” believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and “deathers” believe that Osama bin Laden is alive and well and living in the Lincoln Bedroom. And Herman Cain is a “choicer.” Like other choicers, Herman believes—despite all evidence to the contrary—that people make an active, conscious decision to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Like their truther, birther, and deather brethren, choicers are nutjobs who can’t be swayed by the evidence (which they refuse to look at and then claim doesn’t exist) or by reason (which they lack any capacity for).

  While truthers, birthers, and deathers are uniquely American nutjobs, the United States hasn’t cornered the market on the choicer strain of crazy. The leader of British Columbia’s Conservative Party, John Cummins, declared in a May 2011 interview on CFAX radio in Victoria that the British Columbia Human Rights Code shouldn’t protect gay people because being gay is “a consc
ious choice.”

  Cummins’s comments get to the heart of what the “choice” argument is all about: Gay people don’t deserve civil rights protections or equality under the law because we have a choice. Don’t want to be discriminated against for being gay? Don’t choose to be gay. If you do choose to be gay, well, you can’t complain about being discriminated against because you knew what you were getting into when you made that choice, right? And if you want the discrimination to stop—if you want to get married or serve in the armed forces or keep your job—you can just stop being gay.

  Since no one has to be gay, the Cain and Cummins line of “reasoning” goes, there’s no need to protect gay people from discrimination or to allow gay people to marry or to adopt or to serve openly in the military. But, following that same line of reasoning, no one has to be a Mormon either—or Jewish or Pentecostal or Catholic or Muslim. Religious belief is clearly a choice. It may be a choice your parents made for you, or a choice your grandparents made for you, but it is a choice. (What are all those Mormon missionaries doing out there? They’re trying to get you to choose their religion.) Discriminating against people based on their choice of religious belief is illegal and should be illegal. Arguing that gay people shouldn’t complain about discrimination because we can “choose to be straight” is like arguing that Jewish people shouldn’t complain about anti-Semitism because they can “choose to be baptized.”

  I don’t want to get into the science of sexual orientation here, because, as a reasonable person, and as someone who can be swayed by evidence, I think Herman and John should be given an opportunity to defend their positions. Both men deserve a chance to prove that they’re right about people choosing to be gay. Now it’s difficult to find gay people—or scientists—who believe that sexual orientation is a choice;1 but it’s impossible to find a straight person who can recall choosing to be straight. But I try to keep an open mind—I choose to be an empiricist—so I’m open to the possibility that gayness is a choice that a person can make. What we need is a way for choicers like Herman and John to prove it. And, hey, come to think of it, there is a way for choicers to prove that they’re right…