On Tuesday night the Women’s Studies Club co-sponsored an
event to have guest, Dan Savage, creator of the Emmy winning “It Gets Better
Project”. His career as a sex-advice columnist
began much earlier than the project though, in the early 90’s and provides a
subjectively humorous and crude outlook on sex.
We were offered the opportunity to ask anything we wanted prior to the
show, but that being said we were unaware until late in the game that this
would be a completely Q&A style presentation. So while the actual content of his appearance
was primarily based upon our questions, perhaps a bit of preparation on his end
would have helped guide a better discussion.
Savage received questions such as how to maintain good
relationships and have good sex.
Surprised when, ‘Love’ was not only missing from his initial response,
but also the rest thereafter, he generated subpar relationship advice in which
sex remains the most central component. According
to Savage, if one was to orgasm at least
twice a week by the same partner, your brain will biologically begin to realize
the association of orgasm (sex) with that partner, and this will strengthen
your feeling of love and make up for all the other frustrations. This sounds more like sexual manipulation,
than hidden secrets of successful relationships. Affirming his views on the stereotypical hyper sexual tendencies of
gay men primarily and heterosexual men in addition, he justified many sexual
misnomers by yet again making sex the most important component of relationships
for men.
Even when asked how he knew that he was gay, Savage
explained that to know you are gay you must essentially ‘listen to your dick’
rather than any other part of your mind or soul, seemingly forgetting that gay
and sex are not synonymous with ‘male’. His opinions were incongruous and an obvious
role of male authority plays part in the content of his answers. During a preface to a question he claimed to
not being partial to generalizations about males and females as a whole, which threw
the audience for a loop once he then began making one after the other gender
based stereotypes. Examples of this being
that, men also have it coded in them to want to fall asleep directly after sex,
and also if, ‘you are the one getting fucked’, if you are a girl, actually
being the one ‘getting pounded’ then that is why females are less inclined to
consent to sex than males. Much of this about women was to further prove his
earlier point that every sexual act should be considered ‘sex’, because, ‘the
more that is considered sex the more sex you will be having!’. All in all Savage seemed to be biased towards
justification of men wanting to have sex all the time, including and especially
gay men.
Savage disagrees with the mistreatment of gay people, but
obviously is blinded by his position as a male, and lacks little concern for
the mistreatment of women. Many
questions were answered in a light of unawareness of the social implications to
the audience in which he was speaking; such as when he explained that
“objectification is sexy” to create another source of socialization. He often times addressed issues concerning
gay men, and straight couples, very rarely did he mention or accommodate,
lesbian or transgendered people, or women really at all not in terms of a male,
in his presentation. (Oh except for that comment about ‘big girls’ and ‘skinny
bitches’, that was nice for the women.)
An overall underlying offensiveness was unveiled which had me wanting to
stand up and either speak up or leave multiple times throughout the event.
Unfortunately he did not cover what I thought to be the
point of the night until the very last question, in which he explained the
purpose of the “It Gets Better Project”. The “It Gets Better Project” is an LGBT
oriented initiative to help struggling LGBT teens in developing realistic
outlooks on their future lives, once they have worked through the coming out
process. The project showcases many user
created videos of inspiration, hope and real life experiences which demonstrate
that life is worth living, and success and happiness is on the way. It was only
discussed in brevity but the success of this project is inspirational and you
can still be a part of this great act of support through backing our LGBT
youth, and future LGBT generations by joining the movement @ www.itgetsbetter.org .
-Olivia
Thompson