Dan Savage speaks on sex and freedom
Dan Savage’s column Savage Love taught me the phrase “sex-positive,” and his ideas are sex-positive in the best sense. In his “Straight Rights” updates, he shrewdly connects reproductive rights and gay rights — both movements are ultimately about freedom and equal protection under the laws. He gives an interview in The Onion AV Club this week, and I’m happy to reprint my favorite parts.
On straight rights and gay rights:
I’m confident that more and more straight people, especially younger straight people, the kind of straight people I hear from all the time for Savage Love, view sexual freedom as a continuum. And it touches their lives too—there isn’t a big difference between taking away a woman’s right to emergency contraception, and taking away a gay person’s right to be a gay person. A lot of young people regard a threat against one person’s sexual freedom as a threat against all of them, and that’s absolutely how they should regard it.
On guys:
I feel so sorry for straight guys. Because their sex lives are a terror, and are really circumscribed by straight guys policing the behavior of other straight guys—”Hey, you’re a fag”—and by gay guys policing their behavior, and straight women. Paradoxically, straight guys run the world, but sexually, they’re so imprisoned and it’s not just a prison of their own creation.
On gays and girls:
I actually think the solution to homophobia is eradicating misogyny. I think a lot of homophobia is hatred of women repackaged, ’cause gay men seem to preoccupy homophobes the most. It’s usually about anal sex, and gay men are perceived as taking on the woman’s role, and women are despised.
Thanks Dan.