Savage Love
Savage Love is a syndicated sex-advice column by Dan Savage. The column appears weekly in several dozen newspapers, mainly free newspapers in the US and Canada, but also newspapers in Europe and Asia. It started in 1991 with the first issue of the Seattle weekly newspaper The Stranger.
Since October 2006, Savage has also recorded the Savage Lovecast, a weekly podcast version of the column, featuring telephone advice sessions.[1] Podcasts are released every Tuesday.
The openly gay author uses the column as a forum for his strong opinions that reject conservative views on love, sex, and family. He generally encourages advice-seekers to pursue their fetishes, so long as activities are legal, consensual, safe, and respectful. The tone of the column is humorous, and Savage does not shy away from using profanity. The cornerstone of his sexual ethics is consent; he is thus strongly opposed to bestiality, child molestation, and rape, as well as speaking out against incest and social inequality. Though Savage encourages sexual experimentation, he does not encourage carelessness. He frequently uses his position to promote safer sex and awareness of AIDS. In political matters, Savage occasionally shows a libertarian bent. He does however vote Democratic because he believes that voting for minority parties gives votes to the Republicans (which he strongly considers to be a wasted vote).
For the first six years of the column, Savage had his readers address him with "Hey faggot", as a comment on previous efforts to recapture offensive words. He was criticized for this by some gay activists. Savage has also been criticized by bisexual activists for what they perceive as biphobia.[2][3] Since 2002, he has written the column at Eppie Lederer's desk, which he, a "lifelong fan" of her Ann Landers column, bought at auction after the noted advice columnist died.[4]
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Neologisms [edit]
During the run of Savage Love, Savage has popularized several neologisms. He has also debunked several sexual neologisms, including the Donkey Punch, The Pirate, and the Hot Karl, saying "They’re all fictions."[5]
Campsite rule [edit]
When in a relationship, especially with a younger person, leave them emotionally and physically at least as healthy as when you started seeing them. Do not risk giving them diseases, getting them pregnant, or emotionally abusing them.
Tea and Sympathy rule [edit]
Shortly after a 2009 scandal in Portland, Oregon involving openly gay mayor Sam Adams and Beau Breedlove, who had allegedly turned 18 almost immediately before the two began a sexual relationship, Savage created a companion rule to the "campsite rule," now known as the Tea and Sympathy rule. The rule is a reference to a line in the play of the same name, in which a much older woman states to a high-school-age boy, right before having sex with him: "Years from now, when you talk about this – and you will – be kind."[6] Savage claimed in an article in The Portland Mercury that, while Adams followed the "campsite rule" – Breedlove did not claim that Adams had given him any diseases or caused him emotional trauma, and in fact still refers to Adams as a friend – Breedlove violated the Tea and Sympathy rule by making public statements that he knew could ruin Adams' career.[7]
GGG [edit]
Dan Savage and his readers often use the abbreviation "GGG."[8] It stands for Good, Giving, and Game, and it means one should strive to be good in bed, giving "equal time and equal pleasure" to one's partner, and game "for anything—within reason."[9] The term has inspired a cocktail and the "How GGG Are You? Test" on the popular Internet dating site OKCupid.[10][11]
Monogamish [edit]
In the July 20, 2011 column, Savage coined the term "monogamish." The term describes couples who are mostly monogamous and who are perceived to be monogamous but who aren't 100% monogamous. Such couples have an expressed understanding that allows for some amount of sexual contact outside the relationship.[12] Savage believes that of all the couples people think are 100% monogamous, a lot more of them are monogamish than people realize. The term has since seen mainstream use.[13]
Pegging [edit]
In 2001 Savage challenged readers of his column to coin a name for the sex act in which a woman uses a strap-on dildo to perform anal sex on her male partner. After multiple nominations and a reader vote, the verb "peg" was chosen (despite Savage's aunt bearing the name Peg) with a 43% plurality over runners-up "bob" and "punt."[14]
Santorum [edit]
Savage reacted strongly to statements made about homosexuality by former United States Senator Rick Santorum in an April 2003 interview with the Associated Press. Santorum included gay sex as a form of deviant sexual behavior, along with incest, polygamy, and bestiality, that he said threatens society and the family; he said he believed consenting adults do not have a constitutional right to privacy with respect to sexual acts.[15] Savage invited his readers to create a sex-related definition for "santorum" to "memorialize the Santorum scandal […] by attaching his name to a sex act that would make his big, white teeth fall out of his big, empty head."[16] The winning definition was "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex."[17] Savage set up a website to spread the term, inviting bloggers and others to link to it, which caused it to rise to the top of a Google search for Santorum's name.[18]
Lifting Luggage [edit]
Following the "rent boy" allegations regarding George Rekers, who has widely promoted aversion therapy, Dan Savage, along with others including Stephen Colbert,[19] promoted the use of the idiom "to lift one's luggage," meaning to supply one's partner with sexual pleasure. When outed, Rekers insisted he had hired the escort only to assist him with lifting his luggage.[20] Rekers also claimed he "spent a great deal of time sharing scientific information on the desirability of abandoning homosexual intercourse" and "shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with him in great detail."[20]
Originally Savage suggested that "lifting my luggage" refer to listening to the speaker expound on the "desirability" of converting oneself from homosexual to heterosexual. Later, after several political humorists started employing "lifting your luggage" as an implicit or explicit reference to various sexual acts,[21] Savage suggested that "Whatever lifts your luggage" supplant "whatever floats your boat" in common parlance.
References [edit]
- ^ "Episode Archives , Savage Love Podcast , Dan Savage, America's only advice columnist, answers your sex questions on the Internets. To record a question for Dan to be answered in a later podcast, call 206-201-2720. The Stranger , Seattle's Only Newspaper". Podcasts.thestranger.com. Retrieved March 19, 2011.
- ^ Dan Savage: Cool With Drinking Piss, Weird About Bisexuality – Stereotypes – Jezebel
- ^ "Bi The Way , Frameline32 , Brittany Blockman , Josephine Decker , USA". Frameline.org. Retrieved March 19, 2011.
- ^ Savage, Dan (December 5, 2002). "Ann Advises On". The Stranger. Retrieved September 20, 2008.
- ^ Dan Savage (December 23–29, 2004). "No Shit?". The Stranger. Retrieved February 16, 2012.
- ^ Deborah Kerr, Actress Known for Genteel Grace and a Sexy Beach Kiss, Dies at 86 – New York Times
- ^ The Tea and Sympathy Rule Portland Mercury
- ^ Ken Walczak, "The GGG Cocktail," www.good.is, 9 May 2012 (accessed 26 Dec 2012) ("Dan is best known for two things: his advice that partners in any relationship strive to be Good, Giving, and Game (GGG) and . . .").
- ^ Dan Savage, Wrong & Right, The Stranger March 1, 2007 (accessed 26 Dec. 2012).
- ^ Ken Walczak, "The GGG Cocktail: A Non-Vanilla Drink Inspired by Dan Savage," www.good.is, 9 May 2012 (accessed 26 Dec 2012).
- ^ OKCupid, "The How GGG Are You? Test," www.okcupid.com (accessed 26 Dec. 2012).
- ^ [1]"Monogamish" by Dan Savage
- ^ [2] Married, with Infidellities by Mark Oppenheimer in the New York Times
- ^ Dan Savage, We Have a Winner!. The Stranger, June 21, 2001. Accessed April 7, 2013.
- ^ Excerpt from Santorum in an interview: "...if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, ... [y]ou have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.", USA Today, 23 April 2003
- ^ Savage, Dan. "Bill, Ashton, Rick", The Stranger, May 15, 2003.
- ^ Savage, Dan. "Gas Huffer", The Stranger, June 12, 2003.
- ^ Mencimer, Stephanie. "Rick Santorum's Anal Sex Problem", Mother Jones, September/October 2010.
- ^ "Colbert Rips Anti-Gay Activist, Throws 'Rentboy' Dance Party" Abramson, Dan (May 6, 2010). "The Huffington Post". Retrieved October 21, 2010.
- ^ a b Hamilton, Fiona; Coates, Sam; Savage, Michael. The Times (London) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7117037.ece
|url=missing title (help). - ^ "'Lift My Luggage' Is the New 'Hiking the Appalachian Trail'" by Daniel Kurtzman "About.com --Daniel Kurtzman's Political Humor Blog". Retrieved October 21, 2010.
External links [edit]
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