LIVE: Dan Savage

It's unbelievably flattering to think that three people that special would come out and sing the armchair I turn things on it's kind of hard to accept. I am so so so happy to be in Seattle I'm not placating you. I spent more time here than any city other than LA and Detroit the infamous Brie Mary's bill her parents are here tonight Greg and Carol So to have been accepted as a family member in their house for nine years going up to Mary's bill was so special I'm so so grateful to be here so flatter that you guys all came out Another special thing my favorite interview of all time my beautiful mom Laura's here tonight Don't many wonderful women in my life. My mom.

I got a real perfect soulmate in a very very miniature package You guys know where's the woodwind creature from Atlanta, Georgia, please welcome Monica Padmo. I love Seattle Oh, it's really nice here. You should try ecstasy here tonight. Yeah, go to gas works part.

Maybe somebody brought some I can share the very kind folks at lazy boy always supply us with this furniture and then we donate it and tomorrow It's going to habitat for humanity. So thank you lazy boy I want to share a pet peeve about lazy boy though So my wife and I had a very famous feud about a lazy boy that I had in our house that she was unhappy about and it was in front of the Viewing area of the TV it became kind of a thing she was very anti-lazy boy I was very pro lazy boy. I've always believed in the product as a trusted brand I don't know if anyone's watched TV lately, but guess who's selling fucking lazy boys her She has a very cute face. She can sell anything.

Yeah, and that's that's that's all you can also she didn't have a problem with lazy boy She had a problem with you. Um, we wanted to have a guest tonight that was somebody that was really important to Seattle and this is somebody I've been mungus fan of for years and never had the pleasure of meeting until backstage this evening tonight We have for you the pride the feather in the cap of Seattle the one and only Dan Mr. Savage welcome it is my hope that this ends up being the purview episode. We've ever recorded I want to make sure my mother was here and my ex-girlfriend's parents.

It was really important to me that they all Just really find out the underbelly of my imagination I guess right out of the gates first of all you've had an incredibly successful long-running Podcasts savage love cast which is so great. I've listened to countless episodes I'm always fascinated with the comfort level you have talking about nearly anything which I think is a unique quality unique to gay men Generally is it unique to gay men generally? Well, you can't be gay if you don't open your mouth and say something that other people sometimes are gonna have a problem with You know, I think the problem for straight people is that it's not hard to just be straight You know if you looked your mother in the eye when you were 15 years old and said effectively mom I put dicks in my mouth Talking about anything else with anyone else is never as scary as just that one basic fundamental Great. Yeah, it's like everything else is a cake walk there.

Yeah, that makes a bit of sense Is that what raising you used? Is that the exact phrase? It's not it's not the expression I use but we'll look on her face meant that's what she heard Well, as I remember the way you told me is you said let me take this out That's how kids come out these days because they skyped to do it But you're not from the background that would lead me to guess that you were gonna be so vocally Prosex pro many things an activist in many ways you went to a Catholic school your parents were very Catholic Yeah, type or Catholic my dad was deacons used to be like novices are women who are gonna become nuns They're like apprentice nuns and deacons were apprentice priests and in the 70s to address the priest shortage the Catholic church created the permanent Deaconate where you could become a deacon and just stay that way and so married Catholic men could be deacons Oh and the deal they made with the church was if your wife died you would become a priest which kind of Kind of put a bounty on your Catholic mom's head because if they need more priests There's one real good way to get them My dad was in the very first class of the permanent deaconate and growing up there's this expression like a preachers kid Like you're the preachers kid you're down with the preachers in the pulpit I was a Catholic preachers kid and then my dad was up on the altar every Sunday helping to say mask giving the homily doing everything A priest does accept the transubstantiation hocus pocus. That's the bread that becomes a sacrament.

Yeah, right? That's how Catholic we were my mom was a Catholic way minister I went to the seminary. Yeah, but we had sort of a Jesuit kind of education You have to win an argument to get fed in a kind of Jesuit household like ours. Yeah, Jesuits are basically atheist Catholics Okay, hyper rational Catholics are like, yeah, yeah, transubstantiation and Mary floated up to heaven whatever But I'm Catholic Do you recall the internal dialogue while you were a kid and dad was up there and did you have a relationship with dad?

No, okay great. We do know but then it was very strange like that cliche You know you didn't have a really good relationship with your dad That's what made you gay? Yeah, I was gay and that really fucked up my relationship with my dad Religious conservatives and people who criticize gay people and argue that we were not born were made get that exactly backwards It's not that shitty relationship with dad made you gay being gay distanced you from your father in this weird way because he knew what was up He did yeah, like I my parents were of that generation because I'm 54 They were of the generation that looked at Liberacean didn't think he was gay. Yeah, that's one of the great mysteries He won a lawsuit against the British newspaper that implied he might be gay He went damages that then that British newspaper tabloid conservative newspaper tried to claim back from him after he'd stayed after he died Oh, she wanted the money back.

Yeah, cuz obviously he'd been gay. But the thing was for Are we sure? Yeah, we're sure. I saw the HBO show But anyway back to my parents They looked at Liberacean think it was gay because to think someone was gay was to think the worst thing you could think of that person Made you a bad person to think that so they looked at me listening to Camelot in the dining room on the a track tape Uh-huh and when they asked me what I wanted for my 13th birthday in Chicago I said tickets to the chorus line, which was touring.

That's a good line for me. Yeah, and a few years later I come out of her like what you went to chorus line with me. Don't you remember my enthusiasm right like Lee You put that question to my brothers and they wanted to go to a bears game and I was like chorus line Yeah, I knew they didn't think I was gay. I want to say this just right out loud anyone who's getting something out of religion I'm so for it.

I just want to say that. I'm so for anybody who's getting something out of anything I'm not bashing anything. I'm just speaking for me personally I just want to say that However, you have to take responsibility for the fact that your belief system exists on a continuum that takes us to pilgrims and Spanish Inquisition executing people sure sure sure People have to accept and wrestle with it's part of the responsibility of faith my parents wrestle with that as people by faith I think if you are devoutly Catholic or any one of these religions It wouldn't kill you to acknowledge that to your point and own it and then work through it I think that would be productive and cool because you want to be one of those people of faith who helps inoculate faith against those kinds of Abuses, yes, not just blind to it and then led into the yeah Now with all that said I just never bought in I believed you didn't yeah That's what I was curious about so when you were a young boy and your father was up there I'll be at a complicated relationship. What were your thoughts during that time?

Well, I thought Mass was incredibly boring Oh, that's church itself a physical place because we were Catholics and it was Northside and old Catholic was beautiful And so it appealed to like my little inner Gatorade shir. Aesthetically yeah, yeah, I found the whole thing tedious, but I believe that I believe that Jesus was the son of God I believe somehow in the son father Holy Ghost three-in-one package deal I'm really glad that I ended up being gay because there was this moment where I sort of realized I was gay and then thought okay What the church is telling me about me ain't right they're wrong about that And some people gay people like we're raising conservative or anti-queer religious traditions Well, then just shift to like a less homophobic or not homophobic faith community Yes, sort of editing out what you know brings them into conflict with faith and when I did even I was a kid I just started like pulling at the thread of that garment and the whole thing was unraveling in front of my eyes Like they're wrong about me. What else are they wrong about? Yeah, and then even going you know I read the Bible I covered a cover three or four times There's two books I've read cover to cover three times the Bible and rise and fall of a third-right Yeah, that's a beast of a book I like to read it when I'm super depressed and I don't know why that is exactly um, but you know I be gonna read the Bible and critically without You know that the spectacles are blinders of faith and you know There are two creation myths one right after the other at the beginning of Genesis where things are created in entirely different orders And so they both can't literally be true not that Catholics believe that the Bible is the inerrant literal word of God Right, but then like even in the New Testament shit just started to fall apart It was my sexuality that prompted me to take that critical look and I am so glad I'm a cocksucker Yeah, we all are coast it I could be Ross do that today if I hadn't yet to put a dick in my mouth and tell my mom about it and what age was that?

Like 14 15 not that I came out at that age, but right when I read your history And I knew that you you ended up basically going to a kind of preparatory school Catholic school that people would go if they were gonna end up in the seminary or be tried to prepare a territory seminary And it's a big big building with like 300 Catholic boys thinking about being priests entirely staffed by priests Uh-huh and it's like late 70s early 80s, and there were two Catholic priests in their 20s Who had an office and the plaque on the door said disciplinarian and they sat in their office all day long to have Catholic high school boys sent to them to be spanked That was their job as Catholic priests After they eliminated that position, I didn't want to be Catholic priests anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, you're right. What's the point? Yeah, but I That's what I really fell apart from it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, um wait was there stuff going on? I mean obviously we're going on there's all sorts of Catholic sex abuse scandals and all sorts of priests and children who were damaged and adults were damaged by Predatory priests, but nothing ever happened to me and it was like a chicken covered in bacon grease sitting in the middle of a much Aghina sure sure.

Yeah, I did just go to the seminary with all these crazy priests Lying tunes. Yeah, yeah Maybe was this you know, it actually made you a mark like so many young Catholic gay boys were prayed upon by priests because the priests relied on your own Sense of shame and complicity. Yes, you had a secret as well. Right.

Yeah, you already practiced at keeping a secret I was never molested by a priest but you couldn't go to your parents and say this happened to me without drawing attention to your sexuality Yeah, and so many Catholic priests even like bishops in the last couple of years have blamed the children for disusing the priests So if they'll say that to a newspaper in their defense Never tried to tell your kid that can't have ice cream. It's almost impossible. So not well who told your kid that you guys cream out of a priest Was there a moment at all that you considered when you were in that school Wow if I take this path into being a priest I will avoid having to ever deal with this whole sexuality issue That's why I was there like I was realizing I was gay in like seventh-a-th grade And I went I chose this place because I thought I can never come out I can never tell my parents I'm gay so my options are find some woman that I can lie to forever and that conflicted with my Catholic values You couldn't use someone like that you couldn't treat someone like that you wouldn't want to be treated like that if I let the golden rule And so I couldn't do that and I thought okay So I'm gonna be a priest as so many other queer Catholic kids throughout history Yeah, I thought I can I'll do this instead and it would have been a terrible idea Thank God for the you know, it's the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots I would have a stone wall right to get my ignorance well There was a gay rights-queer rights movement pre-stone wall and activist pre-stone wall and protests pre-stone wall But Stonewall was a bar in New York City that the police raided toward the end of June in 1969 And rather than allow themselves to be beat up and dragged to patty wagons the crowd in stone wall I'm gonna cry talk about the crowd in stone wall, which was a mixed crowd people of color white people trans people Cross-dressed with drag queens gay guys They fought back against the cops and there were three nights of riots in the village and that kicked off the modern LGBT civil rights movement And really rolled out the concept of pride and you know the end of June being our thank God the cops raided the bar You know not on November 10th, so we don't have to march in a cold right right on June. Yeah, I'll be accident and quintently Up it was the day of Judy Garland's funeral was that And a lot of people you know have said apocryphal the queers were fed up they had to bury Judy Garland So thank God like that happened in 1969 I was going to the school in the late 70s very early 80s And there'd been a progress and like the idea that you could be a gay person live a life out that my only option wasn't the priest Twitter the closet yeah, there was something else yeah, and the gay rights we you know It put in front of me that I could live in a big house where dresses and fuck boys without getting retained Uh-huh and live with some integrity and get to do all those things and by boys I mean adult men right Yes with mustaches or not you choose whatever No, okay, I'm thinking of the 70s is yeah Happy there's a problem for me in the 70s like all the girls I could get my hands on like a burr Reynolds sure I found a playgirl magazine when I was in my formative stage with burr Reynolds in rug yeah, and I own it I would put my thumb over his mustache One hand while my other was occupied sure sure sure so prior to the stonewall then there's no one really in the public I that you can even look at or look to right that's living out loud at that point well There's Paul Lynn and Charles Nelson Riley the deal with the culture made with particularly gay men to the gay white men pre stonewall Was you know here's some bushes in the park where if you go there we're not gonna arrest you often here's a bath house If you go there and you can publicly sort of be gay can be liberachi you can be Paul Lynn you can just never say you're gay So that we can pretend we don't know the original don't ask don't tell kind of right that was the deal for a very long time So there were you know gay communities gay people were out to each other But you know there were a couple of together who had separate phones to their apartments and one guy would answer his phone The other guy would never answer each other's phones because if their families found out they could be committed lobotomies They could lose their jobs and get to another apartment if they're landlord found out It was a very tough way to live and it made gay relationships unstable and Lasting and then psychologists looked at that and said well being gay is obviously sick because their relationships are so fragile I've recently got in an argument with someone's dad about that same thing well look at the rate of mental health issues Am I like chicken or egg be completely excluded from your social group and you don't think they'll ever be a downriver result right in Yes, do you think because again I speak anecdotally living in Los Angeles where we have West Hollywood?

Which is by the way when I first moved to Los Angeles. I moved to Santa Monica. I was bored I just moved there I thought I'm gonna go get a cup of coffee was that night I'm gonna just gonna drive down Santa Monica Boulevard the first place I see that looks busy I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna go and I'm fresh from Detroit I parked my car first happened in place is West Hollywood if you leave Santa Monica I'm on a bar and as I walk by rage, which I then learn his rage I'm like oh yeah, tons of dudes dance with each other. That's that's a gay bar that makes sense Then I sit down in the Starbucks and I notice there's like a ton of dudes making out at Starbucks and I say to the guy next to me I'm like this is like a gay Starbucks.

I didn't know there was a gay a gay Starbucks and he goes oh yeah, it's a gay Starbucks. It's a gay town and I'm like it's a gay town He's like yeah, the cops are gay. I'm like the fucking cops are gay like it was it was truly a mind It's you put enough of us anywhere. We can turn whatever it is gay.

There are gay cruise ships because they put him up on one That is a tipping point and a cruise ship is a cocksucker Yes, so start talking this guy gorgeous dude talking him for a while super good hang he goes Hey, it's dollar rolling rock night at motherload across the street. You want to comment? I'm like I'm anywhere that beers are a dollar Go to motherload with him. He's super hot so everyone's inviting us into the bathroom to do coke So it's free coke and dollar rolling rocks.

I was like I chose wrong this could have been So so that town again This is anecdotal and it's probably quite misleading But several of our best friends Monica and I mutual friends are gay and in Los Angeles and in their 20s It was a pretty reckless lifestyle by any metric the very high rate of drug use very high rate of everything And I was initially like are those things correlated? How are they correlated and our good friend said to us? You know when you are certain that your life is gonna end short from HIV or it's gonna end because you're gonna get beat up in an alley or drug Mine a cup you kind of don't really give a fuck. There's almost a research shows that gay men you know use drugs at higher rates abuse drugs I would say it's I think you can use drugs about abusing them.

I would give it yes continue a lot of people Using a Ferrari to go the speed limit. Why do you even get the fuck? And it's a little hard to separate out because you know to be gay is to say sex and desire is not Sanctified or ennobled by Reproduction this is for pleasure and connection and I think for a lot of guys what then happens is okay What else is for pleasure and connection? Yeah, and it's sort of a natural extension and Gay guys don't do anything like sexually with the sexually out of control stuff They don't do anything that straight guys wouldn't do a straight guys could but a guy's camp cuz women won't I always say Did you see the SNL with John Mulaney and Pete Davidson joking about Clint Eastwood made a movie?

He's 90 years old he made this movie where his character He wrote and directed it his character that he wrote for himself has two three ways in this movie At age nine go get him Clint and Pete Davidson and John Mulaney are looking at this going Mulaney goes I'd never had a three way and Davis is like I've had one and they're both hoping to have it one more or one The first one before their 90 and I've said they're gone. I lost my virginity in a three way these poor motherfuckers these poor straight guys And let's pause to you know consider for a second why women won't do what? I was about to say you study very long time ago where they sent attractive young women out on a college campus Just to approach it random college guys and offer to have anonymous sex with them right that minute and 98% of the guys were like Okay, and then they said I'm attractive men out to ask women on the college candidate random And they were like no Yeah, and so what the researcher said was men are more promiscuous women are more you know family and monogamy oriented and they did that study again In Germany just a few years ago and controlled for violence slut shaming rape And they did it with computers and they sat women and men down and they showed them pictures and they told them these are attractive strangers They're telling the hall they would like to have sex with you right now No one will ever know you will not be harmed there will be no violence and women were as likely to say yes as men exactly Yeah, so all those straight guys out there and I've encountered so many in my life who are jealous that it's easier for gay guys to get laid Yeah, it is and if you want it to be easier for you to get laid make the world safer for women One little ask for a look at this slut shaming is a phenomenon that women are at least 50% responsible for driving I was just about to say that it's on everybody to change it's not just men not just men not just men women slut shame I would say almost more than men in a lot of ways. So it's on everybody Well, but but also I think it would be tempting to make it a binary option as well When I don't think any one of these topics is solely a genetic thing solely a cultural So you know it's impossible to separate those things out there really is because we do you and I have a poison coursing through our veins Called testosterone that is also a fax and women have it too and a reasonable dose.

Yeah So there's a lot of things yes because there is there's this you know I listen to how people talk to their daughters and basically if you have a son right it's like well tiger I hope you get laid son. Do you need to borrow your dad's car? You have a suit you got 20 bucks? You know it doesn't matter who you get laid with just get it in and the daughter's like you better make sure that he loves you Like how the fuck you know if someone loves you at 15, you know, they said it It's not it's not irrational though that over-protectiveness that parents show for their female children You have to factor in male violence women and girls are likely to be murdered by intimate partners than anybody else Uh-huh and so you know I often say to the parents of young gay boys treat that kid like a daughter Hover and be protective because in the same way that if your daughter was straight and going to go out into the world and have Male sex partners you would be a little bit more concerned for your daughter than for your son who's going out to love female sex partners Because your daughter's at greater risk of rape intimate partner violence murder and domestic violence Then your son is your son is likely to perpetrate those things.

Please talk with your son about that. Uh-huh. Yeah, you know men are Men are testosterone soaked dick monsters Yeah And so I think it's perfectly rational to be a little bit more overprotective of daughters I had this these conversations with our neighbors in the predominantly Catholic predominantly straight neighborhood where Terry and I live and raise our son together who felt you know as good lefty Percussive sea allies that they were being hypocritical and that they were more protective of their daughters And I was the gay guy going you should be more protective of your daughters. They're at greater risk because of male violence I'm not saying lock your daughters up.

I'm not saying prevent your daughters from having but you do believe in chastity boyfriends But only for fun only with something at all But you can also you can be protective and not put on the societal limitations like you got to be in love And you can still be prepared and say there are things to be aware of and also if you are horny and excited and confident Just the pressure of the experience being one out of a novel Fabio would be on the cover up is a lot to put on a 15 year old Yeah, he better bring you flowers. They're better be champagne. You know you like you should be dressed in the night All the questions do you want to fucking Yes, this is what you want. Yes, yes, yes, and there are And there are costumes along a continuum that may end if you you know I have a hierarchical push to sex and think fucking is like the ultimate act like we should be saying to kids adults do a lot of mutual masturbation A lot of rolling around a lot of heavy putting and for Taj and Games there are things you got reindeer games fantasy play there are things you can do that are less risky than penetrative PIV or PIA sex that are Yeah, you know Oh my god, but it's like he's so knowledgeable on this.

It's like he's like a military general speaking an acronym It was kind of like fast. Well, even like we learned this recently. I lost. Yeah, I do a lot of fast math I live to do fast math.

It's a PIV, but even I guess I'm not even gonna take credit for Kristen somehow learn this that even when you Explain sex to your kids which you invariably have to do way earlier than you're expecting So Kristen will say she learned this is like the woman takes the man's penis and puts it in her vagina Like just something that simple of like you're gonna decide if the penis in your vagina is like it's a weirdly like empowering Just explanation of it when we talk about educating our kids about sex having the top of their kids I always like to tell everybody out there that you're gonna screw it up because you can't not screw it up as the It will and and just confess it I screwed up that conversation with my own son Me of all people sex advice screw that up because you know We got to the point in his life where he wanted to know like where babies come from and you know kind of what sex is and then One day he came down and jumped up on the counter wrote about this among the books much to his consternation Jumped up on the kitchen counter and glared at me from across the room and I turned around I was like what and he went you and daddy have sex for no reason two men can't make a baby Oh Right I left out 99.99 percent of the sex people have which is for pleasure. Yeah, yeah, not for babies Yeah, it's a limit to how many kids you can have but that pleasure the intimacy the connection all the reasons straight people have sex Those are all the reasons gay people have sex and every once in a while you guys crank out a kid Yeah, we reproduce ourselves through your bodies primarily gays and lesbians are the product of heterosexual sex So I like to think there's just a lot of like defective models and then like the gays and lesbians Okay, we're the butterflies Stay tuned for more live show after this exciting commercial break Have you I mean obviously just said coming out about who you truly are is such a paramount declaration and requires so much courage that everything else Then pales by comparison, but even with that there must be something you can point to that has made you just not shy about this topic Well, my parents encouraged us to Speak up. They were both raised in children are to be seen in our herd homes and didn't like it Yeah, and so they encouraged their four children to argue with adults which appalled their parents and a lot of My aunts and uncles and so we were very sort of argumentative and my parents had a sense of humor that was understood that when it was just Family you talked this way Yeah, we're thinking you didn't say in front of grandparents I think you didn't say in front of the neighbors, but it was just us you could be not quite crude But a little blue like they had George Carlin's record I was listening to it when we were kids right the understanding We were smart enough to know that you didn't then shout that up and none who taught you at school Yes, yes, but I think would like set me up for it as you know Sort of semi-professionally where the arguments I had to have with my parents when I came out to them or with my mom specifically At what age 18 I was ready to come out to my mom when I was 16 and I gained it out with my older brother Billy But then my dad divorced my mother okay kind of surprisingly not a blue left got defrocked And I knew that if I went in and said I can take your mind off the divorce or ten minutes That it would kill her and so I waited another like year and a half although I was ready Can I quickly ask where your brothers you were close to them? You'd already told your brother I was close to my eldest brother and I told him so you had told him the age gap is what two years?

Oh, so you guys are like Irish triplets Irish quadruplets. Oh really four of us each lesson you're apart. Whoa Oh my god, oh and my mother started using birth control because the Catholic priest told her to That was right when they decided that could be used right the Catholics are still opposed birth control I I listen to a pot. Oh boy.

I don't even want to fight about this with you But I heard a podcast talking about the fact that the pill as we commonly use it the two or three days of sugar pill is completely pointless There's no reason to have the three days where you get your period and in fact right because the whole reason that three day Window is in there because they pitched it to the Catholic church is not a birth control device But a device that could align your menstrual cycle to be predictable and they the Catholic church had already agreed that you could Have sex without when when you were not fertile as a method and And withdraw the Catholic church would approve of but yeah They did try to make the pill something that would appeal to the Catholic church and then they would allow for it Allow for the former birth control the church rejected it and every sex act has to be open to procreation So no but sex no face sex and the Catholic church uses the same terms Intrinsically disordered inherently evil to describe a masturbation heterosexual having sex with birth control homosexuality So so we're all sodomites basically right? I would normally admit this but our second child my wife became pregnant from face sex. I just want to put that up It happened once in South Africa There's one documented case where a woman eat in a man It's a dark story performed oral sex and then was stabbed Oh, Jesus. Yeah, this demon made it from her stomach to her uterus and she got pregnant She was a virgin she's a her time from oral sex and a brutal assault.

I'm a great dinner party guy In fact and you wanted to talk about my mother Capture so she isn't what I relationship like when it was just us when I came out to her You know my this is a long time ago and my parents were operating with no information and believed that as many people believed That homosexuality was this thing your kids could drift toward and you were supposed to nudge them in the opposite direction If my parents had access to Google today, they would not have done instead the things that they've done instead my mother after I came out She said okay, I can deal with this you may never have a boyfriend I never want to meet anybody that you're dating they can never come to the house and I've put up with this for a little while And then you know my sister's boyfriend would come to the house eventually I was just like why can Laura's boyfriend be here and mine can't and my mother was just uncomfortable being around someone I was having sex with sure and I said Laura sucks her boyfriend's cock Laura gives her boyfriend blowjobs why can you pretend that you don't know that and you don't see it It doesn't like plague your imagination Why can't you extend my boyfriend the same like will full suspension of disbelief right and she looked at me and just like very You know coldly on the L platform at more street L station in Chicago said the blowjobs Laura gives can lead to marriage and family and children The blowjobs you give go nowhere And I said to her and whose fault is that? I didn't make those rules right you motherfuckers make those rules and this was the way we could talk to each other Privately we could be that sort of like stripped down and like we had that kind of relationship and then when I started giving sex advice It was just like I'm channeling me and my mom having an argument right and she came around She did because I insisted yeah I don't think she would have come around if I hadn't insisted Which is what I'm always encouraging young kids to do like your only leverage over your parents as an adult is your presence that yes Yes, they can't love you and treat you with respect and treat the people you love with respect don't be present for that mistreatment right Okay, now to walk through your life a little bit you obviously You leave that preparatory seminary school and you're no longer gonna pursue that and then you go to the University of Illinois Can I tell you a funny story? Absolutely Now we hate funny stories here We discourage them at all costs I would be in jail if I did now or some kid did now what I did then to get out of the seminary because I wanted to leave the seminary Three quarters of the way through my sophomore year and my parents wouldn't let me okay So I took two m eighties to school and put them in my locker and blew my locker up Uh-huh okay was funny then it was now I'd be yeah And I got a really blew up a typewriter to get out of typing class. Oh my god.

We're like yeah, you guys are like soul sisters Yeah, and I got expelled and then I got to go to a different school But I got expelled from the seminary so you leave there, but you make your way to University, Illinois in Champaign and you major in acting I love musical theater, and so I didn't know what else to go to college for I was sleeping with somebody was in the acting program at University, Illinois I just sort of followed his dick down there sure sure sure the yellow dick road. Yeah I did it for three through that for three years do you have aspirations of being an actor? Not really just the lifestyle to talk about this is so weird I went to you know university and learned how to fence but didn't learn when people did that uh-huh you know what I mean Like I graduated knowing how to juggle um, but because I went into the sophomore year of the program And then it in my senior year of college. I took all of my basics Oh interest because they put me into the sophomore year of the program So I took history your prerequisites your religion is a senior and I loved it and then at that moment It's like oh I should have majored in history because that's what I really have a passion for yeah I had a similar thing where I majored in anthropology, and then I'd finished all my stuff I know I know people make fun of me how often I say um you can't not say it I can't go I can't go an hour.

I think it's a drinking game on the podcast people So I had finished all my core stuff and then like the last year my senior year I got to kind of just take electives and I was always trying to be an actor I was like I'm gonna just take some film stuff and then I took like a film history class And I'm sitting there watching like a nitro print of Casablanca, and I'm like these motherfuckers have been doing this for three years I should have been doing this you can major in watching movies. What did I? Like I really was like I blew it right at the end I figured that out Yeah, I still wanted to do theater, but I wanted to direct by the time I got out of school I'm at the theater here in Seattle for about almost ten years called Greek active Yeah, and you did interesting so you kind of pre-Hamilton Hamilton in that right you would take classical stuff and right I wish I'd done something like Hamilton we would take plays like Shaw's Saint Joan or Shakespeare's King John and and do kind of queer Rips on them and it was the height of the AIDS epidemic and people were dying people in my shows were dying somebody died halfway through the run of a show And we did these kind of queer rip, you know my approach to theater This is really gonna bore people now is you know every there's no such thing as a tragedy There's only comedies that end sad suddenly like hamlets a really funny play people who like perform hamlet and like take it in our So-self serious and the production takes itself really serious It's unwatchable. It's tedious Uh-huh, but if you treat it like a comedy and like mind like find the humor in it and find a life in it Then you're sad when these people that you like spending time with at the end are all dead.

Yeah, if you perform hammer is a tragedy By the time they're dead you're like good. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, so you graduated you weren't like I'm moving to New York and I'm gonna Go to Broadway and I'm gonna be in place. Nothing like that No, I always wanted to live in New York, but I never did I moved to West Berlin in 1988 I was there for a year and a half there when the wall came down.

What what took you there? Why did you go there dick? Okay? I've read the yellow dick road led you to a different dick.

Okay on the same yellow dick road I broke up with the guy I went to college to be with and then met a different guy He got a fellowship with the West German government and they were so much more advanced than we were on gay rights Then the fact that they'd given a fellowship to this gay dude got a boyfriend. I got a residency permit. Oh, no shit It's a funny story I applied for a job with the US Army working in a school Uh-huh because there's a huge base in Salem, Dorf outside Berlin and they hired me to teach German Which is a language I didn't speak right because they assumed I spoke it because I had this residency permanent with the Berlin Yeah, and when they found out I didn't speak German they wouldn't fire me they made me teach German Oh, that's so military up now So I would prepare a lesson plan each day with my German-speaking boyfriend Uh-huh, but then I would teach to these second to sixth graders, but also teach to myself So I spent like a year in Berlin. Yeah, well, we called it sex in supermarket German because we could get groceries and get laid Okay, those are the essentials right yeah, people cost a time pooly She's a new stuff in voting.

Oh, okay We're flirting Bonanza d'en segabort stock you speak German No, I remember like nine things from my German class in high school and like you when you answered I don't know I asked how much your shirt was but I don't know if you said a million dollars or $70 or I Didn't understand what you said so I said Shizancy Nick often bone in which means don't shit on the floor and to be surprised often that comes in handy in a German gay bar Well Germany in particular. Yeah, you're there's a very fascinating vanity fair article about the German character and they're very obsessed with shit There's like 120 words for shitting like as commos have for snow much more open-gazing there in the 80s I would imagine yeah people were dying everywhere, but it was a desperate time. How about drugs drugs were very open there? Drugs were expensive and we were all poor okay expats so there wasn't a lot there's drinking there wasn't a lot of Drugs that I saw okay use I've always been sort of like around drugs, but never kind of succumb to them.

They didn't interest you It's weird. I have a very except for I guess an unaddicted personality And then try like I did ecstasy and I did cocaine in college a couple times Okay, I did acid once in college and like I did those things like well that was really fun. That's that that I don't need to do that again Or I'm gonna do that again someday and it's always seem to me that like you took ecstasy It was amazing euphoric experience So you want to like put that up on a shelf until you need that experience again because if you take ecstasy every weekend It's not gonna feel that you're finished returns right so you should want to jealously guard the power of that by not abusing it Yeah, using it all the time. Yes, and that was always my approach to drugs Like oh that's amazing.

I'll do that again in 15 years like I did acid in college This is horrible. Sorry did acid in college once and it was like the acid that kids in downstate Illinois could get real pure Right, you're like high-grade I was in a gay bar in Seattle in the 90s and somebody offered me acid I was like I remember acid from college it wasn't like too bad right right so I did hit a massive and then a little while later Somebody said you feeling and I was like no not really this you want another one I was like okay sure and the first one hadn't hit yet And nobody told me that the intervening nearly two decades the power of acid particularly here on the west coast as opposed to downstate Illinois had increased like a thousandfold sure sure I was destroyed I was in a gay bar in drag on Halloween Sitting on the bar holding the sides losing my mind for six hours and I was the host of the costume contest I was fucked up out of my mind on acid so everybody had to come fuck with me And I was just like yeah Again No Yeah, I had to go to the bathroom at one point and it's really hard when you're so fucked up on acid to make your bladder Release because you feel like oh you're gonna dissolve. I never want to do that. It sounds awful I'm not recommending acid for you never had I just want to be on record so when you got back from Berlin Did you guys break up as that would happen?

We got I followed him to Berlin he came back to Madison, Wisconsin We had an apartment in Berlin He was gonna get this arts degree and then we were gonna go back to Berlin Mm-hmm and then because George H. W. Bush was president We couldn't imagine worse Republican president after Reagan so we just couldn't deal and then he got a job on the road for a year with an Opera company in the States and that's right after I met Tim who's coming here to start the stranger And I said I'm gonna go write this advice column and after this year is up We'll go back to Berlin. I moved here We broke up and I got stranded in Seattle.

Okay, so what's really interesting is when you move back to Madison you happen to through Working at a video store you befriend Tim who was the co-founder of the onion right and Did you know immediately he was one of the co-founders of the onion? Yeah, well I met him I was introduced to him as the co-founder of the onion He just sold the onion and he was moving away to start this paper Okay, we met at a social event I was just like oh you're gonna have a newspaper and this sounds so disingenuous 30 years with a columns later He's telling me about his paper and I said I grew up reading and Landers Xavier Hollander in Penthouse magazine who wrote asked them Adam which is a terrific sex advice column and listening to my mother give advice to the neighbor ladies because I was a little like Sissy gay boy under the dining room table And so I just looked at Tim and I was like oh you should have an advice column because everybody reads those you see that QA format You can't not read it Yeah, and he looked at me and went excellent advice right the advice column and I wasn't angling for the gig And he has variations of being a writer at the mall. No, I wanted to do plays What did you do to make any decisions career oriented or was all just just sort of like K Which by the way is not a bad way to end up somewhere, you know, no It's not at all work has a long way and then it was 1991 or 90 and Tim and I just started talking like okay This is gonna be a straight paper, but you're a gay dude. You're gonna give sex advice You can't just write about k-sex.

I was like I don't want to write about gay sex at all It'd be really funny if I as a gay dude was giving sex advice to straight people and I treated straight people with the same contempt That heterosexual advice columnist had always treated gay people. I would like treat straight people like that like oh yuck I can't believe you would do something so disgusting your mother must be heartbroken. Here's the advice And we started writing this column as a joke thinking I do it for six months Uh-huh and straight people who'd never been treated like this in print before by a fag Who's in telling them they could call him a faggot? The salutation on the column for the birthday years was a faggot Loved it.

Yeah, and then it turned into a real advice column by accident like I started getting real questions and I didn't know anything Yeah, that's what I'm very curious about if you're on mission when you write a device column because you only print the questions you have answers for Yes, yes, and you know 1991 there's no Google there are libraries with books in them If you don't know something you got to look it up in a book the humiliation about and so I put the clitoris in the wrong place the first Time I talked about it in my sex advice column Gay dude who came out like as a teenager in high school like why I wouldn't know well I said even as a straight dude. It's a huge mystery for a long time I know where my first experience going down to gals pants Amy I'll leave her last name out behind Dan's garage. Um She said if you have her finger at anyone I said absolutely tons of times said great I love that let's do that and I was going down down down down down down. I was like I'm pretty soon.

I'm gonna strike Her butts gotta be coming up here pretty soon I was panic like I'm gonna hit her but it was much because I'm going on base off my anatomy I mean it's kind of up top on my pubis my own my mom's pubis I thought her whole would be at the apex of the mons pubis gang. It was at the nadier This is the plot point in book smart. You should go see book smart. Oh, it is down down down down.

Oh, it's terrifying You're like I'm gonna be on the buck right here pretty soon. It is terrifying and as I'm taking longer and longer and longer She goes you've done this before and I was my last push I was like fuck it hell or high water and I found it Hi mom And Breeze parents yeah poor breeze parents everyone's taking on the chin tonight So you had to find out where the clitoris was and you you turns out it's not on the soft palate And if it was now I just googled it but then I just assumed I Ended up getting a lot of angry letters from people with clitoris I learned a lot from my readers. Yeah I mean the writing advice comes changed a lot in the last 30 fucking years because there's the internet now There's Google and writing advice comes more difficult now because everything is situational ethics Yeah, you used to get questions like some straight person in a bar with friends somebody would say butt plug and they wouldn't know what that was And then they write me a letter on paper and put it on a little stamp on it mail it to me And I would write a column about what a butt plug is but plugs have a wiki page now. Yeah, you can email me You can like Google it right you're right.

I used to get to write these instructional columns about how to do a thing Uh-huh and you don't need those columns anymore. Don't get those questions anymore. Oh, I did this They did that if I tell them it'll be this will happen and this bad consequence will happen for me But also that consequences for them. What do I do?

Who's at the fault here and it's all you know half the mail is like there's nothing that you can do You've shot the bed and it can't be unshowed you screwed the pooch. It can't be unscrewed right you need a fireman a cop and a priest Yeah, and I miss writing those what's a butt plug columns because they were easy well objectively there was an answer and now you're Asked more or less to levy a verdict on whether the thing is moral or a moral Verdict I'm gonna remember that and use that that's what I do all day long is who's right? Who's wrong as opposed to just the moral absolute goodness of a butt plug? Yeah, any Trepidation about levying these verdicts because somebody writes to an advice on their asking to be told they are not what to do because it's not binding Arbitration if the conceit is you tell me what to do and then I get to make up my own mind I get to seek out other input often people write me in anger It's they thought what I told this person to do is the wrong thing to do and those letters those angry letters always assume that that person Did exactly what I told them to do yes And that's almost never the case yes the mail I get ten years later from people is I didn't do what you told me to do And I wish I had right right the measure of success from advice column is do people read it do people read it?

And do people send you questions that's the the gong I was just talking to Monica about this when I was younger and I was You know in my 20s in a comedian I was just starting to get in a position where I would get interviewed and do the stuff I went and did love line and I had doctor drew on the podcast and we were Talking about that episode and then someone tweeted a link to me of it And I got through about five seconds of it I was through up I'm like oh my god I used to be such a negative like my just impulse was to make fun of everything and everybody so much of the sex of I So terrible it's putting people down for being sexual in the first place and sneering at their sexual interests And it's really what sets have a part of versus I think whatever you want to do is great As long as you're doing what somebody wants to do it and so much of comedy around sex is look at that disgusting pervert We're all disgusting pervert. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah And you may have a thing that you're talking about it that you've been outed for being interested in and people are snickering or mocking you and Everybody snickering and mocking you is it's a fear response because they know that their shit got dragged out in public They would be mocking and maybe we could all just stop mocking each other in this way. Yeah, and there is a humor in it Like I think I think sex is funny. I don't like boring dry unfunny device columns like it's inherently ridiculous whatever you're interested in The brain our capacity for abstract thought or capacity for languages a lot of researchers believe also what makes our erotics so complicated And it was like drives us to fetishes and sort of this like these random associations Yeah, and the same language can be a random association and you know, it's it's so interesting and we're all in it together Yes, I love this study done in the UK huge sample size and they literally wanted to measure the prevalence of what's called a parafilia Which is a non-normative sexual desire a kink, okay?

The fancy medical researchers sciencey name is parafilia and they brought these thousands of people together to like try to figure out what Percentage of humans have a parafilia sure the majority the vast and overwhelming majority have a non-normative sexual interest Which makes it normative to be a kinky? Yeah, what is that is? Every one should read per the sexual deviant and all of us by Jesse bearing. I'm pro-perv Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm I'm not I'm not pro-making anyone for you all threatened or scared But if everyone's up for it, I'm gonna talk about fat namchees till the cows come home I'm gonna talk about pussy pack of dermis.

These are all topics. I'm not gonna get a mic is no. What's an icy mic? I can't tell you it's to grow okay You take a big turn and you put it in the freezer sure and then you use it as a dildo, okay?

You're welcome It never happens. It's like well. None of those actions. Nobody doesn't shit.

We were just talking about it at lunch What's it called the thing? What's it called you jack off into a oh? Oh, oh, yeah, hold on Robbie. What's it called?

So I'm gonna be a biscuit and again, this is regional Rob's also from Chicago So you might be familiar with you but again you are right. It's never happened on planet earth No, it's never happened. Oh, the blank seven billion humans is currently live. You're right everything probably didn't I see like one Yeah, you're right.

You're right. And now he's vice president Stay tuned for more live show after this exciting commercial break you have the great Pride of having you've invented several words that are now in the lexicon pegging pegging guys Dan Savage invented pegging you didn't invent the act But you named it yeah, well I named it in a self-serving way because in the early 90s of my concert It was when stores like Bay Bland and come as you are and good vibrations started to open and they were selling strap on dildos primarily to lesbian clientele and women who had stuck with other women They would sell strap on dildos and then straight couples started drifting in the straight guys wanted to get fucked in the ass by their wives Or girlfriends wearing strap on dildos and I started getting all these questions at my column and someone would say you know I'm a guy a straight guy and I want to get fucked in the ass with strap on dildo by a woman And then we would talk about it and that would take so much of my word count every time I had to say fucked in the ass Oh, yeah, sure sure it's a cumbersome description, right? Cut it down to work how you start taking out like single words here and there Uh-huh here was this phrase that was like 42 words long to describe an act right and so I put it out to my readers I didn't invent the term I put it out to my readers and like let's think of a name for this a Woman fucking man in the ass with strap on dildo And we took nominees and there were multiple and then my readers voted it's the same thing that happened with Santoram actually readers nominated Don't spoil that and much to my aunt pegs consternation peg So so so pegging and then also Santoram, right does everyone know what same time I don't even know that I want you to describe it But we already described my team like Santoram is the frothy mix of luban fecal matter that is sometimes product Yes, and it was a response to your dislike of Rick Santoram who had some very anti gay Yeah, some people have said that we you know ruined his name because he opposed gay marriage Barack Obama opposed gay marriage And I wrote him a $5,000 check and voted for him 2008 right wasn't about opposition to marriage equality Rick Santoram gave an interview to the AP in 2003 when she said that gay couples that wish to marry were basically the moral equivalent of people Who raped children and men who want to fuck dogs? And it was a reader who wrote in because the scandal sort of blew up and then it was blowing over to read a road in and said He should never be able to live this down We should redefine his name to mean something disgusting I put that out there and readers sent a whole bunch of different definitions and the readers voted and picked that one There's a chapter in my book American Savage about how Santoram happened And it was great about the reader who wrote in the original letter saying you should do this contest said he should never be able to live This down when he said it to the AP when Rick Santoram ran for president in 2008 and 2012 the very first stories written about him in all the major political papers and all the big Pave Wall Street Journal was about the 2003 interview in Rick Santoram's Google problem If you were the Google problem because when you googled his name Rick Santoram the first thing that came up was the frothy mix of You're like that first review that comes in on a product on Amazon.

It's just there Yeah, you're always gonna read that first one Santoram don't fuck with the queers motherfuck Like I wrote down the third you had a third really good word. Do you know what I'm talking about monogamish? Monogamish, well is monogamish yours? Yeah, it is right.

I love that term monogamish It appears from the outside that how much easier it is for men. I mean our friend who's on grinder We're perpetually fascinated by and I'm just gonna walk because if you don't if you're not privy to this stuff I find it to be the most interesting thing in the world. I said how do the hookups happen? He goes well, okay guy comes over the house.

It's customary to offer them a water in the foyer in the foyer Walk in the door. Hey, you want a water? I'm good. I brought one.

It's also polite to a brought one which I love this etiquette What happens next he goes well kiss for a minute. I yeah, I unbuttoned his pants I take a look if it looks good We go upstairs if not I just stand up and I go we're not a match and then the dude goes okay cool And then he bounces and I'm like if I were to have ever Pull down a woman's pants stared at it and then came up as I'm not a match And I would be the most evil man to live amongst her friendship not all gay guys do that right again I don't want to paint with two broader bunch. I'm only telling you about my one friend I want to be very clear about that it can be dehumanizing obviously that's very dehumanizing But if you're in the right frame of mind if you're not fucked up on drugs You know you can do anything for the wrong reasons drink too much eat too much But there are people with high libidos Uh-huh have thick skins who handle rejection people very well and can give rejection in a way that doesn't make somebody else feel destroyed or devastated Right and there's a lot of people who like that who do that kind of grinder hookup I'm roulette, but this is where my guess is where my Catholic thing comes in my friends when I first came out You know 17 18 years old my first boyfriend's 28 and it's Chicago It's pre-aids epidemic and he thought it was his responsibility to teach me how to have sex in a bath house to like have sex with 10 guys in a bath house One item 17 18 years old and I was just like I can't share a can of Coke with my sister because it was the cootiest thing I'm not gonna suck a dick that's been in 30 other mouths or butts in the last hour for all I know Yeah, so I've never done that like grinder instant hookup thing It's like eating a piece of gum off the subway. It is It's not to say like I have an one-night stand and I don't want to slouching people who can do that in or down Yeah, I have hang ups around that but with that said I do think there are different pressures on a male male relationship That is striving to be monogamous.

I think it would be denying reality to pretend that there aren't different temptations It's a minority pursuit for a male-male relationship to be monogamous Most gay male couples whether they tell their straight friends are not or not monogamous when you look at the research and the studies into Even gay male couples that identify as monogamous their monogamous and they have three ways but only together so that counts is monogamy Right monogamous, but they go to the bath house together occasionally. Yeah, a grinder hook up sometimes together and that's monogamous There's nothing on the side. It's all shared right Yeah, and Justin Lee Miller is a terrific sex researcher who did the study that showed that people in monogamous all people gay straight In monogamous relationships were as likely to get us actually transmitted infections as people in non monogamous relationships Mmm because people fucking cheat well, we just had Esther Pirellon. She was fantastic.

I love her Yeah, and she said that achieving is something that's been universally for been you Yes, which is such a profound truth And we tell people that monogamy comes naturally to us as a species that we're a monogamous species And then we have to threaten people with death if they commit adultery in the Old Testament And as Chris Ryan read second at dawn another terrific book said you don't have to threaten a species to do what comes naturally to it We don't have to go up to a purpose and go fucking swimmer I'll kill you and yet we tell we tell people I I sometimes get painted as an enemy of monogamy or I'm trying to like proselytize for Non monogamy everything I say about monogamy is to help monogamous people have more successful monogamous relationships It's about being realistic about what monogamy is and means literally the only thing that humans attempt where perfection is the only standard for success If you are with somebody 50 years they cheat on you once or twice They were good at monogamy not bad at it And if we tell people that somebody cheats on you just once in a multi-decade relationship that they never love This is what we tell people they never loved you your relationship was a lie Oh, yeah, your marriage was a lie otherwise they couldn't have done that it is such destructive bullshit and that destructive bullshit does not destroy the Relationships of non monogamous people it destroys the relationships of people who are trying to be monogamous Well, yes, I applaud that and I just want to say I don't have a position on whether anyone should or shouldn't be monogamous But what I have a very deep conviction on is you shouldn't feel like you're going to hell or a complete failure as a human being I think shame is the cancer that we all spread to one another and that should be attacked and fought, you know And the lies we're told about monogamy instill and create a lot of shame because we tell people that if you're in love You want to have sex with anybody else and then you do want to have sex with other people Right are attracted to other people Yeah And that is a problem you know people have it in their heads because we pounded into their heads that you're gonna grow up get married Phone love and never want to have sex with anybody else ever again except that one special person and then they meet somebody else They're attracted to and the story they tell themselves is I guess I'm not in love with my spouse anymore Otherwise this feeling would not be possible and so I'm gonna end this marriage because I'm not in love with my spouse anymore And the proof is I'm attracted perhaps in a very fleeting way perhaps I just a crush on this person Yeah, another important thing Esther says is the victim of the affair is not always the victim of the marriage If I say to somebody here's a married couple that are that one they're cheated. They're ones like that's a bastard That's a monster. They're the jerk and sometimes what happens is this person was emotionally physically abusive This person was neglectful or contemptuous. This couple hasn't had sex for 15 years Yeah, and this person had sex with somebody else after those 15 years of neglect and emotional abuse and they're the monster No, no, it's too simple.

It's too black and white to say to you know when a couple's in crisis because there's been an affair or an infidelity Well, who cheated there the bad guy not always the case as Esther proves in her work This is why I came up with the expression monogamish was I mean coined it because at a very perilous moment Terry and I came out as an anonymous the height of the marriage equality debate and repairance we talked about being An agamist in one of my books and they were saying that gay people shouldn't be allowed to be married because all the studies show that gay Male couples are the least likely of all to be monogamous lesbian couples are the most likely to be monogamous So if successful monogamy is a standard that only lesbians should be allowed to get married. Yeah, that's sad There are studies that show that the couples most likely to divorce lesbian couples less likely straight couples least likely gay couples Relationship instability correlates with monogamy, huh? But you're not pro ransing People who want to be monogamous should know what they're signing up for and an augamish helps people do that because we're not like some people He's not to say we're monogamous, but we both acknowledge that we're sometimes attracted to other people and that's not proof that we don't love each other Yeah, and if people can just accept that that you're married to me We have a monogamous commitment we don't have sex with other people we're both honoring that commitment You are sometimes attracted to other people people create so much grief in their relationships by policing each other for evidence of what they know to be true And she just accept think of that you were looking at porn you look at the barista You look at the waiter you're attracted to your personal trainer Of course, she's attracted to her personal trainer No one in the whole sort of history of personal trainers Because every employee to personal trainer who did not want to fuck your wife wants to fuck her personal trainer Don't give her grief or wanting to the question is did she and if she didn't stop bitching about the fact that she's attracted to her personal He probably cranks her up and makes her feel good and then she comes home and fucks you Yeah, I got to get my wife a personal trainer some people have an augamish means it's just like Let's see Chivers Amy music terrific sex research most of them work in Canada because you can actually get a grant in Canada to study sex realistically as opposed to here They also do fecal transplants there. Yeah, that's a place to be often find they have these case studies and they talk about you know The woman's in this marriage is no libido no desire.

They're not fucking she feels terrible about it wants to know There's a pill she can take they're in therapy there in sex counseling nothing works The marriage is on the line the guy's gonna leave her the couple ends up getting divorced suddenly her libido comes roaring back Why's that because now she gets to fuck someone else? What do we do with that now that we know that that's how female desire works in a long-term relationship? How do we control for that if monogamy is the only standard of success our relationships are set up for failure? Typically opposite sex relationships at the outset at their creation.

That's why we need so much Well, we don't need it. That's why I think the culture commits so much violence against women and sex shaming is because women are less Naturally monogamous than men likelier to wander off than men if left of their own devices Which is why women's bodies have been policed in a way that men's have not in a patriarchal culture It does seem like the underpinning of many of our big systemic issues is just the patriarchy's insecurities That's the fetishized when you think about people's sexual kinks. They're sort of fantasies and areas They're almost always eroticized fears It's really common for women to have ravishment which fantasies people prefer that term to rape fantasies because a ravishment fantasy is someone overpowers you that you Want to be overpowered by so it's not great so many get you think about like gay malarotic archetypes like the kinds of men that gay men fetishize Marines truckers cops firemen not notoriously Pro-homo types right like there to be the guy who beat the shit out of you You want to sleep with that guy you know this this fear of like somebody else sleeping with your partner your partner cheating that some people are now Successfully Arontizing that fear and can like live it out in this contained way Yeah, it actually makes their relationship more exciting and fun and mutually pleasurable it allows for this variety Yeah, that's awesome and we can say okay the power the fear the cultural shit that informs that kink that created that sexual desire That's really fucked up. Let's address that in the meantime you got this kink enjoy a consent Yeah, yeah, yeah, we should we should acknowledge that like women's ravishments fantasies come don't come from nowhere They come from a culture where women are not safe Yeah, that that for some women not all women that fear becomes eroticized where they can because in an erotic play sense You can take control of that experience and live out your worst fears And we have no problem when people want to live out their worst fears in film and television and watch disaster movies and slasher movies and horror movies At a bone or in an orgasm and people are like well, that's wrong But if you know I'm a jacneklecen quote was if you put a breast in your mouth It's NC 17 if you cut the breast off with a knife.

It's PG-13. He's like there's an issue here. There is an issue Yeah, yeah, very true. Can I say one more thing about monogamy and desire in a long-term relationship?

I would love it. I'm not saying everyone has to be an anonymous But if you're bored in your long-term relationship There are ways that you can address that that don't involve Cuckling fantasy scenarios and third parties when you think about what was exciting about the relationship at the start You were practically strangers to each other it felt risky and dangerous to get undressed in front of each other She could have been crazy. He could have been a psycho like the adrenaline is pumping again coming together And it's scary and you usually have to clear hurdles and you don't understand or know each other well and it's nerve-racking You can manipulate nerve-racking you can create new hurdles for yourself go have sex on the roof of a building somewhere You know I people come to me. You know we've married ten years.

We're hardly having sex What do we do and I'm like don't have sex in that bed in that room at that same time on that same day? What you should do is say to each other We're gonna have sex three times this week not in our house not in our bed And you are gonna surprise me and then we're gonna do this again next month I'm gonna surprise you and then basically you're gonna go through the day nervous because you know if your wife comes around the corner Yeah, in a leather out. Well, you're office. Yeah, usually doesn't drop by well That means you're gonna get fucked at work and might get fired You're gonna have to find a stairwell or bathroom single-seater or fuck quietly install at the end you have to do it I mean you can like bring back that adrenaline with that same person that was inherent in the interaction with this person at the start When they were stranger to you you can revive your committed monogamous long-term relationship sex.

Awesome That's great advice. Yeah, that's actually a venture together You gotta be hoarse for each other you'll be one of the only guess I could ask this to in hopes that you actually have some kind of statistical Information again and it go to Lee why in my observation is the amount of bottoms so disproportionate to the amount of tops If you're a top you've got the pick of the litter in LA you could be like fucking eye patch hook You're getting some ass tonight. Why do you suppose that it's so disproportionate? I don't know there's no kind of like study about that Okay, I'd love to enroll in that study though I'll try to get some grant money short up and you'll be the first person to come before I let you go You've been the most excellent guest now you've done something that is so profound you started something called the it gets better project And if you guys aren't familiar with it gets better project 50,000 user submitted testimonials about you getting better in the first year.

It's many many more now. It is I believe that 50 million views of kids Watching this I think it's the most beautiful thing that you could put out into the world of just hang in there and things change And how did you get the most valuable thing about the videos is so many of them? It's not just like you wait there It'll get better around you so many of the videos are people describing exactly what they did like me the arguments I used with my mother to bring her around there's one video that really Was one of my favorites in the first few weeks of the project where this kid who was still 18 17 years old Like I was looking at the camera saying I was really bullied in high school. I hated it I took my GRE or GDE whatever it is and I skipped senior year went to community college in college You don't have to shell up for senior year.

You can graduate early like I did do it like this Yeah, and so much advice was practical in that way. So much so help me stuff is a little bit vague, you know Hey, it's like your purpose. Oh, right. Yeah, it's good idea I think about all my mom we're gonna come from doing the project was really rewarding and Terry and I made one video and Tens of hundreds of thousands of other people participated in making other videos and it's almost a 10 years later 10 years this September I can't walk through an airport without some 25 26 year old Queer person approaching me to say that the project saved their life literally just happened in LA last week was more than good But the project saved her life not me not Terry like all of these voices together and When you think about it the project the religious right freak the fuck out because they knew that it was their kids specifically That we were trying to talk to because these videos are for kids who go to a school without a gay straight student alliance His parents would never allow them to go to a gay youth or queer youth support group And it was bringing the queer youth support group to these kids in their parents homes We got a letter a few months after the project launch and breaks my heart this letter still from a girl who come out to her parents in Texas Told them She was a lesbian and they forced her to take it back to change first during the reparative therapy at her church And so she did what so many queer kids have done myself included She told her parents under duress what she thought they needed to hear which was that she wasn't a lesbian She was just confused she took it back right and she wrote us to say I'm watching the videos in my bedroom in my parents house under the covers in the middle of the night and They're helping me and they were helping her because she was seeing Adult queer people whose parents are the exact same reaction her parents did when she told them whose parents are in their videos with them whose parents are apologizing to them in the videos that they made and she sees a future now and this is where it's really Fucking heartbreaking I'm crying in advance of sharing this she said the under her letter every day I get up and I go downstairs and I look at my mother and I look at my father and I love them for who they might be in ten years And they're being awful to her at this moment and she because of these videos is this capacity not just to imagine a future for herself Where she gets to escape her parents But if you should first off where her parents come around like so many other people's parents have because she saw it with her I shouldn't hear about it And that was the power of the it gets better project not because Terry and I made a hundred thousand videos herself because so many other people participated in made videos well, it's the most beautiful You you won't give yourself this compliment, but I will give it to you It's not too much to say that you've actually saved a ton of people's lives and I doubt many of us in this room can say that So I just want to applaud you.

Thank you. Thank you so much for coming. You're a beautiful beautiful person And I'm so proud to have to sit and talk with you. You're wonderful Hey everybody, I just want to say that our live Seattle experience featured music from a very beautiful band the head in the heart We got a little misty.

I can only watch them now You can catch the head in the heart on their living mirage tour this September through October and also before the fact check We're gonna include their song missed connections off their new album living mirage. It's so beautiful. So enjoy the head in the heart I Yeah Oh And now my favorite part of the show the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman Welcome to this back check. I'm very excited about this one.

I loved the ensemble I know you think Dan would be upset if I told the just tell it so we were backstage in and we didn't know Dan We're just getting to know Dan and somehow the topic came up that he spends a few months a year in Austria He's got a really good friend there and when the Austrian guy comes to the US He's always taken aback by how overly nice people are to folks in the service industry Oh, yeah, almost seems pandering to him And I was like so many civilities and and so nice city's pleasantries And so what Dan was suggesting in Austria they actually pay people they pay people a real way And they have real health care and they have nice housing and the waiter He's doing fine. He might live next door to an architect the observation was that people are walking on so much guilt Because people are getting paid eight dollars an hour and other people are getting paid 150 dollars an hour Yeah, you just naturally feel guilty about that so you're oh, oh how long have you worked here? You're almost like talking to a baby. Yeah, you're like you're really pandering and ever since he pointed that out as I've been moving through Like I've heard people pandering so much.

Yeah, it's just been very obvious. It's the baiter mine off I've been like oh my gosh, he's right. Do you know is when we were in Chicago? We were driving to Chicago.

There's a toll booth operator I feel fucking terrible that someone has to stay in that booth. Also. We should be over that told who's yes. Yes Well, I'm just fucking We don't like told this in general though.

This should be automated. I don't know why there has to be a person in there Okay, shouldn't even exist and if it exists it should be automated You know you should be bad about this people are gonna be mad that I want to take away somebody's job Oh, that's that's legit, but okay There's a lot of things on pack here one of them is we've got an interstate system that Eisenhower fucking greenlit back in the day That's whole thing is a bunch of who we in my opinion all through fucking I'm willing to take on this battle. Okay. Wow.

Okay This is gonna be your cause it is fuck down the gas tax. I don't have to stop we just stop like I know I need a way to line remember the thing we saw where someone was accidentally in the fast-pass lane and they clearly didn't have a fast Pass and there were people behind and they were stuck. Oh my god It was like people trying to watch people move a bed through a doorway sideways It was just it was agonizing to witness this whole thing and it was a huge cluster fuck behind And I was like what is going on we are paying taxes you need to hop on the interstate and just get to where you're going Yeah, oh, I agree. Okay.

Anyways when we talked to those toll booths Plaza employees I was like oh my god. Are they called plazas like the fancy place like the New York Hotel A plaza is like a fancy place. They've decided to call the toll station a plaza I think a plaza my home specific definition in that But when I pull up I feel terrible I would have a hard time standing at booth all day my feet would hurt Yeah, your gas fumes the whole thing exactly hi. How you doing?

You're gonna get to go somewhere for fourth. It's so patronizing I give up on talking. I'm done with this podcast. I can't say any fucking words correctly.

I know them So I understand this theory and I believe it and I think that's probably all true and Some people just are friendly and do want to talk or do one at least like make someone smile once during the day I don't think that's bad. Well, is it pity or is it kindness? Because if it's pity I don't think people should be pity and the reason they're easy to pity is because they're completely underpaid And it's not fair. So if you fix that problem now, you're just being friendly as opposed to there's pity underneath of it I don't know I'm on the bed Yeah, yes And some people are in horrible situation But you know here's the thing if you feel shitty instead of fucking forcing them to have this super over-the-top conversation of kindness Give them more money.

Don't pander to them Just fucking tip them way more or slide out 20 of them I personally am not nice to people like that like I'm not a nice person at the grocery store Like I'm not trying to make small talk or do any of this no one would think you were from the South one Maybe you never know I'm very cold No, I just like we don't need to do this like we do not need to do this I'm never gonna see you. I mean I might see you next week at this time But actually if that's the case it's like someone I'm gonna be seeing then I will be like how are you or you know I notice your people go away. Oh You look less heavy this week. Are you have you changed something?

Are you want to die? Oh, I see your diet No, no, what I guess I'd be nicer than like oh you went off your diet. Oh, that'd be bad. What if you went?

Oh Oopsies you went off your diet what you want to hear the definition of Plaza? Yeah, Palaza Plaza Plaza Plaza Plaza. No Plaza. Oh my god You heard Plaza no, I don't Plaza.

Hold on Plaza. Okay, Pazza. No, Jesus Plaza A public square marketplace or similar open space in a built-up area The Plaza is lively in the evenings when the pavement cafes are full. Yeah, this is a U.S.

Shopping Center. They bought fancy right away at the Plaza See fancy There's a connotation that plazas are fancy right me to strip well next to our house that was called not even Plaza Okay, well That's a situation like the toll booth where people are trying to make it fancy and it's not and that's a bummer that makes sense Why is a funeral parlor called parlor? I don't know it that makes me uncomfortable. I look at a saloon Look at parlor.

I am doing that. I am doing that. Let's listen to how it's used. Oh, I spelt it paler, which is skit not parlor You want to hear it?

Our show has unraveled parlor parlor, okay I don't think I can't interest anybody a sitting room in a private house I don't think the funeral parlor is a private house. Well, maybe just the parlor is the place you gather to look at the corpse Yeah, the parlor is the room where the corpse is. What's just the big building a funeral home? Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

Oh parlor in the home. Yeah, all right now I'm back in someone's probably on their way to a funeral parlor Oh, I'm sorry Or they went to a funeral home and sat in a parlor last week and they'd just stop thinking about it and now They're looking at Uncle Teddy at least now they know how to pronounce it. That's true and why it's called that Yeah, we were talking about kindness and that type of thing and you were saying she just paid them more money that is Definitely my ML because you know what? I don't think people that are equally low income do this whole Patronizing thing to them like where I grew up working-class area.

Yeah, Michigan people didn't talk to the servers like that. Oh, hey Yeah, oh, you know what we're gonna go with um, I'll have you know, I know but it's also it's nice to be polite Like you should be polite you don't have to ask them about their children and stuff But no, but there's just there is a certain gear that is I think pity and I think if I were a server I would recognize oh this person pitties me. That's why they're acting like I'm a long-lost cousin that just returns safely from war Okay, but that would also be your own thing. Yes, I have an insecurity I do I don't think I would ever I never felt like that when I worked at soul cycle.

You're also from the south We're just about to say yeah, I grew up in a completely different environment Everyone was doing that one of the gas station in the woman's like hey, sweetie Yeah, they come out right at you with sweetie Which I love because calling a woman sweetie can be very dismissive and I acknowledge that it is a tool that has been used Yeah, with misogynistic men. Yeah, and also sweetie's just a great thing to be called Yeah, I agree I don't mind that at all but Southern hospitality in general I have kind of a beef with sure because I do feel like okay You're being super nice to people's faces and then you're not being nice behind their back the same woman at the convenience store They called you sweetie comes home and she's like I saw that brown brown girl. I hate that monster or something monster cah Pad monster And she smelled like her she snunked to high heaven like curry she tracked Dairy Queen all over the store. It was sticky when she laughed Yes, he said the Catholics don't necessarily believe that the Bible is the word of God I mean he said that sort of impastings but maybe he meant like some people or whatever well He means some people think it's metaphorical right and some people think it's literal I know but they do I did check in with a Catholic I know okay, and they do think the Bible is a direct will of God delivered through a select group of men Mm-hmm.

So they do know that like you didn't take pen to write the Bible right that it is what God wants Most people following that religion. I would say probably yeah take a lot of it as metaphor I'm again. I'm not gonna bash anyone that likes it. I think it's great Yeah, the one funny analogy I really do like though I want to say is the Sam Harris pointed out it seems so normal that God wrote this book to everyone But when you position it as what if God had directed a movie?

Yeah, and that was the movie of God all of a sudden it seems completely preposterous Right although the movie in a book are the same thing there a story. Yeah one's written down one's film I guess they're just media. They're both media. Yeah, of course Yeah, and one media seems totally reasonable that God wrote and then another media seems absolutely preposter maybe because in that media form Mm-hmm.

You could do that solo you could not direct a book. Oh God could Well, that could absolutely be actors that he could make them Oh, well Yeah, but if you do the logic of it they wrote it down because they wanted the most amount of people to be able to consume it Yeah, right and so if there was a God currently who wanted to get his message straight once and for all a smart God would go well in this world way more people see movies way way more people are seeing Avengers than a red Any book that's in the marketplace so if I want the most amount of people to hear the direct message from my lips I'm directing a movie And you just imagine people 200 years from now debating whether or not that movie was really directed by God or not It's impossible to even imagine. Okay. God wanted to make a movie.

Yeah When he picked from the current cat like we like has like Julia Roberts and stuff as Eve like a hoo Leonardo DiCaprio for sure for Adam or who Brad Pitt. Yeah, it would be straight a audition for I would not make that cut we can tell a lot of characters in that basically Tarantino is God He's the closest thing that actors have to God Well, whoever he wants in his movies is gonna be in his movie Oh, that's true. Yeah in the fact that I've not been asked to be in his movies We can settle on what God would do as well. Well, he's not the only one a Scorsese Scorsese is a God.

No question, but he's had a cup. He's shit the better few times. Okay, you know I'm saying Yeah, you can't really point to Tarantino's shit in the bed I don't know that he can get anywhere if I'm being honest, especially now because there's like a lot of stuff with him Yeah, I don't know I think he could and all the and we're like there's like a lot with him Yeah, provocative filmmaker as most of the greats have been mm-hmm But I just mean not everyone is willing to be a part of that I just feel like this is infallible conversation where we're like say nobody and we can't say no, but no You're right. We cannot say nobody and we can also say both Brad Pittley or in his current movie So that's a lot of people right there God would probably put the rock in his movie again if we're gonna be like technical about it All those people Jesus and all the gang yeah, they're Jewish and they're Mediterranean like they have dark skin That's right.

Yeah, so I should audition for God's movie you would make a great Jesus I have the hair for it. I think your average height back then 2000 years ago was about five one for a man That's what'll be next some someday some audacious filmmaker playwright is gonna cast you as Jesus I'm like what the fuck Jesus got? Faches and then nine minutes later if you're you've climax you settle yourself down what who climax? You're faches that deal with that situation Okay, yeah people they'll hand up blankets The robes and everything When I'm walking down the street you don't like ducking into the bushes to Let's be fair about to release okay, sorry, it's only their perverted you you unless this new thing you're the new variable It's your fault.

It's all women's fault for being attractive. You know that God Times I have to re-educate you on this man's way this to you I hope whoever wanted to puke at the smelling conversation will want to puke at this This is worse than whatever stinky smell we were describing was that in last episode of this one? That was in the last yeah Anyways after people finish releasing sure the title wave of emotions is over and then they just settle into your performance people leave the theater What's the best rendition of Jesus Christ I've ever seen thank you? I'm gonna start out it was a woman with faturals Yeah, in fact you would be limiting the pool because even though they might go as far as to cast a woman is Jesus They're gonna be specific not to cast a woman with augmented breasts because they didn't have augmented breasts Two thousand years ago.

You're right stern was just the topic came up about James Bond being a female now You know this is what's happening. Oh right. Who is it? Is it Zendaya?

I don't know but our friend Phoebe's writing it Phoebe Waller bridge Yes, she's writing double seven and it's gonna be a female double seven Stern brought up which I agree with is it's fine if you hand over double seven to a female because double seven is just his Identifier with the Scotland Yard or whatever organization works for right But her name's gonna be James Bond is she gonna say bond James Bond and we're gonna be staring at a woman They might have messed it up. No my favorite name Dibs for a girl is James. Oh Would you call her Jimbo? Okay, a lot of James go by Jim and then then that evolves into Jimbo.

I'm not gonna allow that if your daughter is being called Jimbo That's a that's a rough. I bet she's gonna be spunky and I bet she'll be able to take on a name like that like Jimbo Yeah, here comes Jimbo. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right Yeah, so I love that name so you'd be fine with a female also being called named James Bond Yeah, not Jenny Bond.

No, no, I think that's almost worse like the name should either be like it needs like a separate thing Right like Elizabeth Pattiwack. Yes or James Bond. It can't be Jennifer Bond. That's so silly.

You're right. You gotta go all in or all out Yeah, right. Oh nothing if you give her a whole new name and then she goes to the barrel Elizabeth To the better okay than exactly not Stuart you'd be like what then I want it to be James Bond I'm glad is it gonna be I don't think they had all the details. Oh, they were like yeah, they were like Better get used to the name James for a girl.

I'm telling you I will if you make a little James Padman stupid white dress. I will be it's big. It's big. It's fan.

Well, you don't be it's big. It's fan Okay, that same topic birth control you think that they become for birth control Yeah, I think you're allowed to be on birth. Yeah, you're not but a lot of people are okay So a lot of people have just decided that was a matter of work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh This was crazy.

So he told us that there was one case where a girl in South Africa got pregnant from oral sex Hmm and then I would this up and that's true that happened so no 1988 a 15 year old living in a small southern African nation Came to local doctors with shoes and labor and they were confused because she didn't have a vagina No, no, no, no, no, it's true. Oh my goodness. She didn't have a vagina. She had a condition This is a new site.

I got this on okay, and I don't work it was not a dot org I think it was ABC news. Okay, and it was a specific condition that they talk about the condition and it's real very rare Obviously sounds vaginitis. She did not have pussy packet dermis. No, she had Puss's absidermis.

Yeah, that's right not to be Crude about this nice girl. Right anyway, so inspection of the vulva showed no vagina only a shallow skin dimple So they delivered this baby through a c-section. Okay, and everyone was very confused. She was confused She didn't understand how this could have happened and then they looked and she had been in the hospital 278 days earlier with a knife wound to her stomach.

Oh my good the average pregnancy lasts 280 days and just before she was stabbed in the abdomen she had practiced filletio with her new boyfriend and was caught in the act by her former lover in the fight with knives ensued. Oh, Wow, the girl arrived at the hospital with an empty stomach and therefore with little stomach acid around the doctors found two holes from stabbing that Opened her stomach up to her abdominal cavity the case reports as doctors wash her stomach out with salt solution and stitched her up A plausible explanation for this pregnancy is that the sperm gained access to the reproductive organs via the injured gastrointestinal tract Wow, isn't that crazy that is really crazy? No vagina and and even if you have a vagina to get pregnant from oral sex, there's really three amazing stories I mean one is she doesn't have a vagina. She didn't know she was pregnant.

She was in labor three How would you she was blown a dude and got in a knife fight that resulted in her being stabbed? These are all these are all once in a ten thousand lifetime stories. That's right Although the second one said she was pregnant didn't know it, but that's not crazy if you didn't have a vagina nine months pregnant She was in labor, but if you didn't have a vagina, you just be like something I am sick You know your belly would be to stand if you feel kicking you would you did not have a vagina Alright, you said not even a possum. I know you right so you would be like oh I have a tumor like it would be something else Well, would you think like when it was kicking you're like oh my god I have such bad indigestion that my stomach's popping out.

I think you would you're right? It's not an option. No, but I have to imagine I'd be more quick to believe that swallowing semen got me pregnant versus my Spicy burritos now pushing out of my stomach in a handshake like given those two options I think I would go with oh, I guess you can get pregnant swallowing sperm. They should have taught us that Anyway, the baby was healthy.

That's all that matters. Yeah. Yeah another miracle Okay, so you I don't know why you keep saying this you have said this a few times the Germans have a hundred and twenty words for Shitting but I'm making that yes I'm it's so big that I'm hoping you know that it's I don't know oh, okay. Yeah, I mean facetious intentionally you're being Ccs shisha I can't find how many words I have but in that article they talk about shisa, drach, missed arsh But that's manure ass dirt and shit so they have like some words for those things, but they don't have like an absurd amount Okay, it's not good as I want it to be it's not like the you know, it's in the snow.

It's not all right, but they still love shit I'm still gonna say it. Oh boy. I know you just can't spread false information I love Germans and I can you can say I'm critical of the left Like they're my people and I'm allowed to say that they have too many words for shit even though they're not your people nor do they have too Many yeah, yeah, and you can just say that they have an affinity for that for sure. Yeah, but they don't just have 120 words because they don't I'm never gonna stop correcting okay.

I'll stop saying I bet we have 120 words excrement, duty crap shit poop Do-do we probably have more well, I'm just saying that they must have I'm back. I'm back. I'm gonna say it more. No Okay, so he talks a little bit about paraphilias.

Oh, these are people like to have sex with people that legs What will paraplegic means like limbs? That's true a paraphilic sexual interest are defined as unusual or anomalous. Oh like paranormal Yeah, and he was saying but actually most people have them so then I looked this up Their actual occurrence in non-clinical samples is still unknown one study looked at desire for an experience of paraphilic behaviors and a sample of adult men And women in the general population a total of 1040 persons. This was Canada I think classified according to age gender education ethnic background religious beliefs area residency and corresponding to the norm for the province of Quebec were interviewed Nearly half of the sample expressed interest in at least one paraphilic category and approximately one third had an experience with such practice at least once voyeurism fetishism fraudarism and masochism interested both male and female respondents at levels above what is usually considered to be statistical unusual 15.9 percent for fraud.

I know I don't know what fraudarism is. That's f R O T T E U R I S M fraudarism. Yes fraudarism is a paraphilic interest in rubbing usually ones pelvic area or erect penis against a non consenting person for sexual pleasure Well, this is sexual assault. Yeah, well, so most of these like these are paraphilic sexual interests But normally when you hear about paraphelia, it's paraphilic disorders and that's always when it's affecting someone else negatively, right?

So interestingly levels of interest in fetishism and masochism were not significantly different for men and women Masochism was significantly linked with higher satisfaction with ones own sexual life These results call into question the current definition of normal versus anomalous sexual behaviors. Uh-huh. So that's interesting I think I could check off two of those boxes voyeurism Absolutely, what's the other one? I guess fetishism.

What was that? It's just liking something of fetish. I don't know. I don't think so.

I don't know any fetishes I'm trying to like body parts you like obsess about or I mean, I like certain body parts over other body parts But that doesn't seem like a fetish that just seems like I'm attracted to arms or like that But yeah, if you like if you searched in your porn site like broad shoulders You're gonna watch two people have sex purely for the aesthetic of it in the visual So you can refine what exactly the visual you want to see yeah, and that to me would then be kind of fetishizing I guess maybe it generally is a little more extreme like you like to like suck the toe cheese out of people's toes Well, right so tall fetishes of fame. Well, okay, but they do get like that. Yeah, they do they do they do yeah Yeah, and toe fetish this seems a beautiful popular one. Yeah, I wonder if they like the cheese Oh boy probably probably I think there's people that like buy people's use socks off the internet I just think that's I think it's a spectrum.

Maybe yeah, and then I've also heard it being kind of co-opted by different social justice movements Where it's like if you like let's say Southeast Asians. You're fetishizing them right? Specifically like them right and so they've kind of made it they've really definitely helped make it a majority of that Right, well, I think what they're saying is like you don't really care about the human you Generally we're trying to push right now basically I think or at least I am I don't know if you are is that people shouldn't feel weird that they have things that they fantasize about right? That's where we're generally going unless it's violent or yeah anytime is taking away some else's rights Yes, not an option But if you if you have certain proclivities, yeah, and probably we all do so it's not a typical behavior And on that point I actually think the people that were offended by what I said they're using the worst possible definition of fetish So that fetish is kinky and dirty and naughty like that.

That's naughty. So in that respect I see what they're saying right? But we're both operating now from two different definitions of fetish Totally, but I think fetish is put in this paraffiliative box So it is if you're putting a whole group of people as a fetish It shouldn't be a fetish. It's just like I like I like mm-hmm So it's not I see what they're saying about like why does that have to be something extra?

It's just like why can't you just like them? It doesn't have to be a fetish like saying my gay neighbor. Just say your neighbor right? Speaking of gay men.

Oh, yeah, why are there so many disproportionate bottoms? Yeah, so there's an article in vice a why are gay guys convinced the world is full of bottoms? Mmm, I'm gonna read a lot of it ask any gay man and he'll tell you the world is full of bottoms Really quick before you continue. I know this seems absolutely absurd to not to have to explain because we live in LA But in case you're in the middle of nowhere and have no gay friends a bottom is someone who generally Enduring anal sex is the one receiving the penis.

Yeah, the top is the one administering the penis or the dong exactly continue grinder added the option to list One's preferred position in their profile for the first time to September This is years ago since then six percent of daily users have identified themselves as tops and only four percent as bottoms according to a representative 28% of remaining men identify as versatile similarly on scruff a dating app more users identify as versatile than anything else according to chief Product officer Jason merchant 35% of us users identify as versatile while 21% identify as bottoms and 19% as tops Okay, that's flawed. Okay. Yeah, okay. It would seem then that more guys want to present themselves as liking at both ways and exclusively preferring one position over another But only 40% of grinder users and 44% of scruff users list any preference at all many prefer not to broadcast their bedroom preferences in the first place These statistics are skewed by a more obvious factor This is what guys say their preferred position is when they're putting that information out in the world That means a whole host of human behavior and social stigma comes into play guys will fib in order to get later because of what others might assume about them Previnces and they might be driving the anecdotal perception that the queer world is rife with bottoms in a 2011 paper published in the archives of sexual Behavior researchers Trevor Hart and David Moskowitz surveyed over 400 men recruited via Craigslist personal ad section to uncover factors that lead one to think of Themselves as a top-bottom or versatile they found a similar breakdown as grinder and scruff about half of those surveyed identified as versatile and a quarter each as tops or bottoms However, they also followed up to see what kinds of behavior guys reported engaging in during sex and discovered that while those who self reported as tops or bottoms Actually consistently topped and bottomed in bed only about half of versatile guys actually switched things up That means that when it gets down to getting down the versatile guys surveyed weren't nearly as open-minded as their claim preference would lead you to believe 48% of self reported versatile men were in fact bottoms well 52% were tops So all things being equal which these statistics would seem to bear out gay guys all told fall pretty evenly on the divide between top and bottom Oh, and then the other myth or maybe it's factual is that as men are in a relationship longer those roles tend to blur more Oh, they start that Men that have been together a while or you know they've been married for a while but they've been together a long time Apparently are more versatile.

Yeah, like just when you're on an app You're you're having to suss out if the person's act like when they're like The truth is bottom like the all the guys saying right if you're toppy just say your top because you have your pick of the letter Right, there's no incentive to say your versatile If you're actually a top if you're like you want to hook up with another top maybe yeah Or just like I'm down for anything like maybe your top But then you get some guy that's so hot that you're like fuck it I'll be a bottom just be with that guy. Yeah, that's like I could you know I might have a favorite sexual position, but I'm open any sexual positions that would get me in the rack with the person I want to be with Yeah, the whole top bottom thing is very Interesting to me like the fact that it's so rigid like that like cuz everyone has all the parts You know anal play is very polarizing topping a lot of people do not enjoy it at all Yeah, but I guess my point is like why wouldn't if you're in a relationship or you're seeing someone why wouldn't like you try one thing and then Reciprocate unless unless I guess as they tried it and they don't like that. Yeah, I mean everything is all cycle Are sexuality so psychological you're right if they don't like it then no, but I just think they're in these like rigid Concepts of themselves like it's like an identity thing as opposed to if they really like it or they don't yeah We'll have to ask more tops if they've tried getting fucking the ass and if they hated it or liked it right or it was more of an identity Thing, but how would they even know? No, no, there's no such thing.

Yeah, anyway, that's all we just say for the record damn Was one of my favorite guys. Oh, he was so so interesting. He was so interesting He's so smart and then so beautiful in an articulate way about so many things. Yeah a really beautiful person Yeah, I agree.

I enjoyed it, but what was funny is my ex father-in-law was in the audience. Yeah Yeah, Greg who I love so much. Yeah, he's dad mom and dad came and it was really fun He is in no way homophobe or anything. He's just also a vet who hangs out at the VFW Hall Yeah, and it's older man and it was a real crash course.

They want my podcast. Oh, yeah All right, well, I love you. Love you. I'm chat