"When people see an age gap, they tend to imagine there is something intrinsically unequal about it — that the older partner wants someone they can control..."

"... and the younger partner has daddy issues or is just out for money.... And even if the older partner is calling all the shots, or some of them, that isn’t necessarily abuse. While Me Too made us all too aware of the way power dynamics can be and have been exploited, it didn’t do away with the fact that desire for these dynamics continues to exist. (Daddy, for instance, was the most-searched term on the porn site xHamster among women in America in 2018.) Sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, who is seven years older than his husband and 22 years older than his boyfriend, has found much of the conversation about age gaps to be fundamentally unrealistic about what human relationships are. 'We are status-obsessed, power-obsessed primates always jockeying for control — socially and also in our interpersonal relationships,' he said. 'There’s no interpersonal relationship without power differentials, without advantages or disadvantages on both sides. And if you want to correct for that, or eliminate that, you have to eliminate human relationships.'" 

From "The Age Gappers/They say they’re happy. Why is it so hard to believe them?" (New York Magazine).

Team Josh Hawley is getting over-aggressive about restricting the number of genders.

One gender to rule them all. https://t.co/NtPzq0hR9I

— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) September 22, 2022

"Supplied with Cruz’s address by a knowledgeable friend, I drove the fifteen minutes from my Houston apartment to the uber-rich River Oaks neighborhood where Cruz lives."

"From the street, Cruz’s white, Colonial Revival-style mansion looked dark and uninhabited.... [T]hen I heard barking and noticed a small, white dog looking out the bottom right pane of glass in the senator’s front door.... As I approached to knock, a man stepped out of the Suburban parked in Cruz’s driveway. 'Is this Senator Cruz’s house?' I asked. He said it was, that Cruz wasn’t home, and identified himself as a security guard. When asked who was taking care of the dog, the guard volunteered that he was.... I took a photo.... Some on Twitter have questioned whether the dog is in fact a poodle, suggesting alternative breeds such as a Bichon Frise. I couldn’t get close enough to tell, and I’m no canine expert, but 'Ted Cruz’s poodle' just sounds funny. As soon as I posted the photo on Twitter, noting that Cruz 'appears to have left behind the family poodle,' all hell broke loose...."

From "Ted Cruz Abandons Millions of Freezing Texans and His Poodle, Snowflake" (NY Magazine).

It's creepy going to someone's house like that, and the dog is clearly better off at home with a trusted person taking care of him, but Ted Cruz's trip to Cancún at this time when his state is in crisis has been deemed the top story of the day, and everybody always wants to hear about dogs. 

Dogs are at the top of the list of things deemed newsworthy that are not in fact newsworthy. Get dogs in your story and you'll have masses of readers. It's especially good if a dog saves a child, but the very best is when a Republican does something that can be presented as hurting a dog, like when Mitt Romney strapped his dog to the roof of his car and when mean old Trump offended all of dogdom by failing to own a dog. 

Now, we have Ted Cruz not bothering his dog with needless plane trips and confinement in hotel rooms. The heartless wretch!

ADDD: "'Ted Cruz’s poodle' just sounds funny." That is a microaggression! It is an old stereotype that a gay man would have a poodle. "'Ted Cruz’s poodle' just sounds funny" is a homophobic microaggression. 

Here's a 2014 article in the Village Voice, "Fifi or Fido? New York’s Gay Men Defy Worn-Out Canine Stereotypes": "The old stereotype held that like attracts like: the prissy hairdresser with a pampered, manicured poodle or Chihuahua; the growly muscle bear controlling a giant, ultra-butch Great Dane or mastiff...."

And years ago, Dan Savage, who is gay, told a story on "This American Life" about his anxiety about being seen with a poodle:

The OkCupid notification said "About me... I’m a feminist. I respect women while simultaneously enjoy dominating them," and she thought "Great... I was appalled, of course..."

"... so I kept reading. 'Favorite things: Sending you to work with marks, the fragrance of your hair lingering on my hands, photography and Dan Savage.' I slammed shut my laptop. I was, well, turned on.... One week and dozens of emails later, Dan and I agreed to meet... His aura of calm control was a revelation for me... Though Dan wouldn’t admit it, he was a sadist. He would leave me with bite marks and bruises that lasted for weeks. And I was not a masochist. I hated the pain but found catharsis in how undeterred Dan was by my outbursts... I had found a strange liberation in submitting to Dan, but it was only a first step. I wanted the domination, but I needed lazy Sundays and walks in the park, too. I wasn’t sure what that kind of relationship would look like... So I went back on OkCupid and created a new profile. 'I’m looking for a monogamous long-term partner whose natural dominant qualities complement my submissive,' I wrote...."

From "I Wanted to Be Dominated. But Not Quite Like That" (NYT).

"Everyone is friendly enough and there’s the right amount of perversion. So what’s the problem? The host."

"He’s loud and annoying. He insists on putting classical music on. (I don’t have a problem with the music, but it doesn’t set the mood very well.) He tells the same lame jokes every time he’s pissing on someone. He will complain that people say they're coming and don’t show. If you are having a moment with someone, he will invariably interrupt and say, 'What’s going on here!?' while he horns in on the action.... It’s his party, and props to him for hosting it... Do you have any suggestions?"

A question for Dan Savage. I'm not interested in the answer to the question, by the way, even though this gets my "etiquette" tag and I've been interested in etiquette over the years. (There are 436 posts with that tag!) I'm just amused by the question, especially the classical music detail.

CNN finds one more way to say conservatives are wrong.

"In our current political climate, the term 'cuck' -- short for 'cuckservative' -- has become an insult of the so-called alt-right, aimed at men they view as spineless and emasculated. The slur has its roots in the concept of cuckolding, or having an adulterous partner. But, according to a recent study by David Ley, Justin Lehmiller and the writer Dan Savage, acting on cuckolding fantasies can be a largely positive experience for many couples, and hardly a sign of weakness...."

So beings "Cuckolding can be positive for some couples, study says."

"Join the GOP?"

Dan Savage's 3-word answer to a terrible sex question.

"He Said It Like There's Something Wrong With Masturbating to Anime."

Said Dan Savage, writing about GOP strategist Rick Wilson — we were talking about it yesterday — saying that Trump supporters are mostly "childless single men who masturbate to anime."

He also said it like there's something wrong with being childless, like there's something wrong with being single, and like there's something wrong with being male, but I take it that observation is already implied in Savage's line and is what makes it especially funny.

There must be one of those Greek words for rhetoric, something for the device of creating an expectation that you are talking about one thing, then surprising us by going somewhere else.

"All those crazy labels — bi, gay, lesbian, straight, pansexual, asexual, etc. — are there to help us communicate who we are and what we want."

"Once upon a time, NNFS, you wanted heterosexual sex, you had heterosexual sex, and you identified as heterosexual. That label was correct for you then. If the asexual label is a better fit for you now, if it more accurately communicates who you are (now) and what you want (now), you have none other than David Jay’s permission to use it."

That's sex-advice columnist Dan Savage answering a question from a lady who's trying to figure out if she's asexual. David Jay is the founder of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network.

Jay's comment was: "If you’re not drawn to be sexual with anyone, then you have a lot in common with a lot of people in the asexual community. That being said, there’s no such thing as a ‘true’ asexual. If the word seems useful, use it. At the end of the day, what matters is how well we understand ourselves, not how well we match some Platonic ideal of our sexual orientation, and words like ‘asexual’ are just tools to help us understand ourselves."

"What we see from the religious right is constantly is this projection, this shifting of responsibility..."

"You know... gay couples who want to marry present a threat to the institution of marriage. It's not straight couples committing adultery or telling each other lies about adultery... or divorcing that are a threat to the institution of marriage. It's same-sex couples who wish to marry that are the threat. And it absolves straight couples... of responsibility for what they're doing to marriage. In the same way, we see most abuse — most sexual molestation and abuse — happens within families...."

"Population-based studies... indicate that bisexuality is in fact more common than exclusively same-sex attraction..."

"... and that female libido is particularly open-ended," writes Michael Shulman in the NYT.

In a recent Modern Love essay in The New York Times revealing her relationship with another woman, the actress Maria Bello wrote, “My feelings about attachment and partnership have always been that they are fluid and evolving.” Before marrying Bill de Blasio, Chirlane McCray identified as a lesbian, which has become part of the progressive credentials of New York’s first family.

Male bisexuality, by contrast, is more vexed,

"A lad is good friends with a woman who admitted she has a crush on him. He doesn't feel the same way about her..."

"...but knows she would make a great life partner. Should he suggest a companionate marriage from the get-go?"

The link goes to a podcast, and this part begins at 13:36. Unfortunately, there's no transcript. Also, the question-answerer is Dan Savage, and I already know some of you resist the charms of Dan Savage. Let's not get distracted by the difficulty of sitting through audio. (I recommend listening to podcasts when doing things — like putting on your makeup and making your coffee.) And let's not bother with the usual taking shots at Dan Savage. (We know about Dan Savage and the doorknobs, and I could lick a doorknob at night.) Let's get right onto the topic, which I will summarize for your convenience.

A heterosexual man and woman are true friends and get along great, and he's in his 30s and thinking he'd like someone to settle down and grow old with, but he has no sexual interest in her. He's had plenty of women sexually, but none of them are suitable life partners, and he doesn't think he'll ever meet another woman who'll feel like such a great wife. He thinks this woman might be up for any sort of proposal he'll make to her, so could/should he offer to marry her in a "companionate marriage," meaning he has no sexual interest in her and she should never expect to have sex with him, but he's committed to everything else about the life partnership?

You might want to know how much does she desire sex from him? Maybe there's some way he could first find out how interested in sex she is. Would a sex-free marriage in fact be a positive thing for her too? It seems unlikely, but that's a moving part in the analysis that he could try to pin down first. Also, would he give up sex for rest of his life? I think this particular man wanted to propose a marriage where he had freedom to seek out sex with other women, so the idea would be that she'd be agreeing to this arrangement, which would include his conducting these outside liaisons with discretion and respect and disease-prevention precautions. He'd grant her corresponding freedoms if that's what she wanted.

Note that this model for a marriage would enable gay people to marry someone of the opposite sex. It would also enable sexually unappealing persons to form life partnerships.

Savage's actual answer has a lot to do with the age of the man asking the question. He's in his 30s, but he contemplates the value of having this woman keeping him company when he's in his 80s and he imagines sex won't matter at all in half a century.

The term "companionate marriage" has been used to mean different things over the years. Searching the term in the NYT archive, I see that it was a big topic in the 1920s, and Bertrand Russell's name keeps coming up. Here's his 1928 article, "Is Companionate Marriage Moral?"

Russell defines the term to include a 3-fold legal aspect: 1. Recognition of unions in which the production of children will be avoided (at least at first) by using birth control, 2. Allowing divorce by mutual consent as long as there are no children, and 3. No alimony upon divorce where there are no children. The idea is obviously avoiding children, not avoiding sex.

In addition to the legal aspect, there is, Russell says, a "social" aspect. Conventionally, a married man and woman are expected to live together, with the man providing her economic support. But that's because children are supposed to arrive. If children are avoided, these expectations are not present, he says.

[T]here is no reason why the wife should not earn her living, and every reason why she should. There will be no interference with each other's work, none of the fuss and flummery which at present make marriage disgusting to young people of spirit, none of the foolish pretense of protection by the male and dependence on the part of the female. 

The moral topic here is whether a man without the means to start a family should be allowed to marry a woman so he can have sex. The "sexual instinct does not wait" until the man is economically ready to support a wife and children. Yes, a man could go to prostitutes, but:

Nowadays, young women, for the most part, no longer feel bound to abstain from extramarital intercourse, with the result that unmarried men can have decent relations with women with whom they have much in common mentally — relations not founded on a cash nexus, but upon mutual affection.

Companionate marriage, then, was a way for a young couple, sexually attracted to each other, to live together openly. This was recommended over the alternative, which was "surreptitious," and tended to be "frivolous, promiscuous, and unduly exciting."

But our "lad" in the Dan Savage question wasn't fretting about "unduly exciting" sex. He was talking about no sexual interest at all. And the "fuss and flummery" of marriage seemed not "disgusting" at all, but the best part, desirable without any sex at all.

But that's what the term "companionate marriage" has come to mean these days. These notions evolve, and no one seems to wonder anymore about how to deal with raging sexual passions. Today's problem is lack of passion or lack of passion for anyone you'd want to live with along with a desire for long-term, committed companionship.

"I’m pro-choice... Sometimes in my darker moments, I’m anti-choice. I think abortion should be mandatory for about 30 years."

Said Dan Savage, when invited to express a "dangerous idea" that might "change the world for the better."

So, obviously, he's kidding, but what springs to a person's mind upon a particular prompting says something about that mind. You can't know exactly what, and, in fact, even when a person wants to be taken seriously and literally, you can't know that he's conveyed precisely what's in his mind.

We can only speculate what lies behind the outburst "abortion should be mandatory for about 30 years." I'd speculate that Savage isn't just pro-choice, he's pro-abortion. Not that he would require women to get abortions.

Mandatory abortions, of the sort done in China, are terrible impositions on a woman's bodily integrity. I doubt if Savage likes that idea  — although it's possible that he gets a kick out picturing a forced abortions performed on socially conservative women whose offspring are too likely to grow up to be socially conservative voters.

"When I become mayor, you know what I’m going to spend my first year doing?" asked Anthony Weiner.

I know what you're thinking, but — and this is from March 2011, when Weiner was still a Congressman and while in the presence of Mayor Bloomberg — he said: "I’m going to have a bunch of ribbon-cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes."

I got there this morning via Dan Savage, because I wanted to react to the current denouncements of Weiner, and I knew Savage had written in support of Weiner. On his podcast, he'd said something like: All your kids are already sexting constantly, and you'd better adjust, the sooner the better, to a future in which everybody's going to have pictures like that out there. Here's some relevant Savage writing (from before Weiner resigned):

While I hope Weiner comes clean, I hope [he] comes out swinging: He didn't do anything wrong, he didn't do anything millions of other Americans aren't also doing, he didn't break any laws. His privacy has been invaded. He's being attacked. He is the victim here. And if doing what Weiner has done disqualifies a person from public life, there won't be anyone qualified to be [in] public life in ten years time save the Amish.

"A few months ago, my husband uncovered an affair I was having with an old flame."

"He moved out and initiated divorce proceedings, but in the time since, I was able to convince him that I am truly repentant and to give our marriage another chance for the sake of our children. The problem I have now is that he says that if we are to stay married, he wants it to be an open marriage. I've tried to tell him that I've gotten that out of my system and I don't want to be with anybody other than him, but he says there just isn't any way he can ever trust me again, he doesn't feel an obligation to be faithful to me anymore, and at least this way we're being honest about it."

Letter to advice columnist "Prudie" from a woman who "just want[s] things to go back to how they used to be."

Who's more wrong, the wife or the husband? It's easy to say the wife, but the husband is also wrong, because the idea of open marriage should be founded on trust, not mistrust. He's punishing her, deliberately, not pursuing what he believes is a positive way of life. (I'm not recommending polyamory, but if you're doing it as an expression of hostility to your primary partner, you're not doing it the way the prominent proponents say you should. I know... should... why speak of shoulds in the realm of transgression? I do get that. But I'm not one of the promoters of polyamory. I'm just someone who's listened to my share of Dan Savage podcasts.)

"I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife."

I wonder if "the latest thing" was a new expression back in 1922 when F. Scott Fitzgerald started writing "The Great Gatsby." Was "the latest thing" the latest thing, that is, new slang? If so, it's even funnier to see it used sarcastically like this. What a crazy trend it would be — a fashionable sex kink?

But then maybe there actually is such a trend these days. The "cuckold fetish" is a routine subject in Dan Savage's sex advice column, e.g., "Fuck My Wife, Please!"

Anyway, the sarcasm in today's "Gatsby" sentence is sublime. There's "the latest thing" and "sit back and let" and the marvelous "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere" — all of which only become funny — painfully funny — when you get to the tragically pedestrian phrase "make love to your wife."

It's also amusing that the problem is less that somebody is fucking his wife than that a nobody is fucking his wife. Mr. Nobody from Nowhere, who — if you violated the rules of the Gatsby project and go beyond the sentence — is the (supposedly) great Mr. Gatsby.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bill Harshaw uses The Great Google to show that "the latest thing" was, in fact, a well-established expression. The casual use of the word "thing" seems like modern slang. There are a lot of common phrases like "the thing to do," "a [fill in the blank] thing," "it's my thing," and "the real thing" that seem like things people would have said 100 years ago.

ALSO IN THE COMMENTS: Much discussion about how far Mr. Nobody really got: What did "make love" mean in the 1920s?

"Is 'God, guns, and gays' losing its peril for Democrats?"

A strange way to phrase a question, in this Greg Sargent column. What does this stunning lack of parallelism reveal about the Mind of Sargent?

Indeed, I’m cautiously hopeful that this time around, Democrats will overcome their typical skittishness on guns. ... [T]he politics of this issue have changed: Democrats are less reliant on conservative, rural, gun-owning voters than at any time in the history of the party, due to Dem gains among socially moderate suburbanites, and ongoing demographic shifts that continue to boost the vote share among minorities and young voters  — all voter groups who may not see “gun rights” as a potent issue.

You know those "rural" folk, who cling to their guns and religion. Maybe they can be ignored by Democrats who have other blocs out of which to build victories. But to throw "gays" on the list... well, that's not something those horrible peasants cling to like guns and religion. It's something they're supposedly repelled by, perhaps something like the way those socially moderate suburbanites are imagined to have an aversion to God and guns.

I guess Sargent might love alliteration. GGG. But someone ought to tell him that — coming from a very conspicuous gay guy — GGG stands for "good, giving, and game":  ("good in bed," "giving equal time and equal pleasure," and "game for anything — within reason'").

And some people think "Guns, God and Government" — the work of a not-quite-earless guy with a lady's name.

What does GGG mean to you? I'm thinking, for me, grammar, graphomania, and...

"Embrace and celebrate" "Hetero-een."

An interesting Dan Savage rant about Halloween. Sorry there's no transcript, but click to listen and begin at 0:59. He takes on those who complain about the sexy costume for females (and females only) and argues that heterosexuals need a day to bust loose from all their usual inhibitions.

"3 Interesting Moments From Dan Savage's Debate With a Gay Marriage Opponent."

Conor Friedersdorf selects some morsels (and has embedded video of the entire 1-hour debate). I've listened to the whole thing and found Savage's opening statement quite well done. The same-sex marriage opponent, Brian Brown, mostly fails to address Savage's presentation and goes on about the importance of civility (which had more to do with an earlier incident in which Savage called some students "pansies" for walking out on him after he said the Bible contained some "bullshit"). Savage has apologized for the "bullshit"/"pansies" incident, and Brown had accepted Savage's invitation to talk about same-sex marriage after dinner at Savage's house, moderated by journalist Mark Oppenheimer.

Here's Oppenheimer's write-up in The New York Times. He begins:

The ancient Greek symposium, which combined drinking with elevated discussion, was often held in a private house; at Parisian salons, conversation frequently took place in the bedroom. Once upon a time, intellectuals knew they could do their best thinking at home, not in a public venue, and that debate would be helped along by food and drink.

But Oppenheimer was actually not hoping for vigorous, deep debate. He imagined home (and drink) creating an atmosphere of warmth and affinity:

It was my hope, of course, that Mr. Brown might witness a sane, functional, happy family in a bourgeois home, and consider it as another piece of evidence, something more for reason to operate on.

Savage himself thought the home setting made him to "solicitous and considerate" — since it was his home, and he was therefore the host. And it's not surprising that Brown didn't cave on his principles when confronted with the reality of gay partnership in a nice home. So that was that.

By the way, Savage's newest podcast, #304 (downloadable in the sidebar here), begins with a discussion of the shooting at the Family Research Center, which he condemns while standing by the characterization of the FRC as a "hate group." In the course of making the argument — too bad there's no transcript — he quotes this quote:

"I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix...."

He mocks that, but says that's not enough to count as hate. He then stuns us with the revelation that the speaker of the quote is...

"Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage..."

"with straight people who want to do the same,"  says David Blankenhorn (formerly a conspicuous opponent of gay marriage).

For example, once we accept gay marriage, might we also agree that marrying before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace? Can we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation? Can we discuss whether both gays and straight people should think twice before denying children born through artificial reproductive technology the right to know and be known by their biological parents?

I don't know what that last question has to do with the rest of it. Putting that aside, he's talking about generic conservative values relating to marriage. I suppose it's easy to "agree" that these things are better than the alternative. It's harder to give up all that sex outside of marriage.

And let's not forget that one of the leading gay-rights voices, Dan Savage, has used his position to push adultery acceptance. 

[Savage] does not believe in promiscuity; indeed, his attacks on the anonymous-sex, gay-bathhouse culture were once taken as proof of a secret conservative agenda. And he does not believe that monogamy is wrong for all couples or even for most couples. Rather, he says that a more realistic sexual ethic would prize honesty, a little flexibility and, when necessary, forgiveness over absolute monogamy. And he believes nostalgically, like any good conservative, that we might look to the past for some clues.

“The mistake that straight people made,” Savage told me, “was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitar­ian and fairsey.” In the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women “the same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,” we extended to men the confines women had always endured. “And it’s been a disaster for marriage.”

See? Straight people make the "mistake" of not structuring sexual norms around the male. That's the message from one man who's only interested in sex with men. What about women? Well, let them "enjoy" the sexuality that man take to naturally. Liberation, baby. The man who has no desire whatsoever to have sex with bodies like yours says so.

I can't imagine that people like Savage will tone it down because Blankenhorn is now offering to form a coalition. Wouldn't he — as I do — write off Blankenhorn as a guy who's trying to re-leverage his importance? Who needs him?