Yo! Dan Savage! September 8, 2010
Posted by Dev in Musings.Tags: chastity, chastity lifestyle, Dan Savage, women and chastity
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I have mentioned in a couple of different posts my reasons for staring this blog. One, I tend to be a slightly obsessive-compulsive, dive into everything with both feet sort of person, especially when I discover something new. So it is not terribly surprising that I decided to write a blog to share my innermost thoughts and feelings about my husband in chastity and our sex life. Doesn’t everybody do this? 😉
Two, as folks interested in chastity are well aware, out there on the Internet, the signal-to-noise ratio of information about male chastity is pretty high—high with a lot of noise, that is. While there are a few excellent blogs being written, there seemed to be enough room in the Interwebz for another sane, rational voice to join the fray. And why shouldn’t that person be me?
But I have a third reason I haven’t mentioned, and this is the one that really spurred me to action. I was googling around, delving deep into the male chastity archives, and found a letter written to Dan Savage (in 2008), about chastity. Dan basically called the letter bullshit (and the way it was written, it may have well been). You can read the whole thing here. What irked me wasn’t the way Dan called out the letter writer but his dismissive, contemptuous comment at the end. Dan directed the guy to an online forum and then wrote:
…[there] you’ll find guys whose ultimate fantasy is being with a woman so insecure, or so controlling, that she wants to keep his cock under lock and key.
Now that part irritated me. Dan is usually pretty accepting of most kinks and fetishes. Even for things Dan doesn’t want to do himself, he usually subscribes to the belief of “whatever floats your boat.” He does have limits (pedophilia, bestiality) but come on, male chastity is nowhere near either of those! (As I have mentioned several times, Sarah Jameson has identified it as a gateway kink.) So why was he writing off chastity as way-beyond-weird without a second thought?
Worse, though (to me) was the comment that the only women who would enjoy having their man locked up are women who are over-controlling or insecure. Um, misogynist much, Dan? I like to think of my self as independent, thoughtful, and confident; I don’t usually consider those words synonyms for “controlling” and certainly it’s not a description of a woman who is insecure!
Keep in mind, this letter and answer was written in 2008. Dan may have updated his thinking on this topic. I will say, I read Dan’s column weekly (you can find it here) and listen to his podcast when I have time. I don’t recall anything in recent memory on chastity—if there had been, it probably would have caught my attention. But, to his credit, Dan will revise an opinion on an issue, when presented with persuasive evidence.
With that in mind, I thought it was important to start a blog that would be filled with persuasive evidence about male chastity to help dispel some of the myths out there, especially regarding controlling, insecure women. So part of my modus operandi for starting this is to help educate Dan Savage, the tech-savvy at-risk youth (I suspect they do a lot of his legwork regarding finding said evidence) and anyone else who happens to drop by who is interested in the topic. In that way, consider this blog a public service.
If Dan does drop by (after googling his name, no doubt!), welcome…and please feel free to leave a comment. 🙂 And of course, my standing invitation to all readers to leave a comment is in place, as always. I look forward to hearing from you.
the key is on my nipple ring 
I have no idea who this Dan Savage is, but obviously he’s not someone important. Either way, his opinion is irrelevant. Good thing too, methinks.
Dan Savage is a sex advice columnist with a weekly Q&A and a podcast. He also blogs and gives lectures—he’s popular on college campuses. He’s very frank and down-to-earth. If Dan had been around when I was 16, I wouldn’t have waited a dozen years for my first orgasm, that’s for sure!
I think his advice is generally good and I usually agree with him—and even when I don’t agree with him, I can usually see where he’s coming from. Which is why his dismissive answer on the issue of chastity surprised me. It just doesn’t seem in character for him. I mean, he can be supportive and understanding of adult babies even though he’d never, ever do that in a zillion years. So why so down on chastity? His answer puzzled me.
D
I think that everyone is misreading the article. He is basically calling out this liar on writing a bogus letter in which he magically found some sadist of a wife who is keeping him chaste without his permission. I hope that for people who have found this site and sites like it, we’d know that this is almost comical; based on the amount of care and attention and communication that goes into an average relationship that chooses to play with chastity this guys letter is almost 100% fake. Dan called it what it is, a fantasy (a particularly well-represented one if you read chastity erotica).
The last line that we’re discussing is referring not the guy writing about chastity, but the letter previous written by the (in my opinion) controlling woman pissed about porn. He’s writing to her saying, listen if you’re so into controlling your partner find one of these guys who has this insane fantasy of being controlled (insane in the sense that any relationship would work without both parties being on board) and hook up with one of them. I don’t think that the comments he made were in any way directed to a consensual, loving couple engaged in chastity play or a chastity lifestyle; he’s making fun, duly, of that guy’s bogus letter and the controlling attitude of the previous letter. Using those comments as an indicator as to his opinions on chastity seems silly. He is a caustic guy, and his letters are often on the mean side of the average columnist but in this case the acerbic comments aren’t being directed at legit chastity couples but these two hooligans.
Granted, he could have thrown in a line about the fact that legitimate happy couples exist who engage in consensual chastity play, but as no one had addressed that in either letter I think that would have been out of place. I think if you reread his wording, its clear that if someone wrote in about an actual issue regarding a consensual chaste relationship, he’d treat it with the same respect that he gives to BDSM, Adult Babies, and every other damn thing that he deals with on a daily basis.
Hi Erin,
Thanks for your comment and thanks for posting. I appreciate it.
You may be absolutely correct. I think that the way the letter is posted is somewhat confusing in the way the answer goes on to the next page. The chastity letter writer is LOCKED and the previous letter (the porn one) is KTBC. If, in fact, Dan is speaking to KTBC in his response to LOCKED, then I think your interpretation is absolutely correct. On the other hand, being a long-time reader of Dan’s column, he doesn’t typically respond to a previous letter in the subsequent letter writer’s answer (I hope that makes sense). So, I sort of wondered if the KTBC in LOCKED’s answer was a typo. Who knows?
I searched through Dan’s archives trying to find if he had posted anything more recent than 2008 on chastity. I didn’t find much but I did find a few references (from 2009) that he was going to have a show on HBO. For the inaugural show he was supposedly looking for chastity couples to share their experiences. I have no idea if anything ever materialized from that (I don’t have HBO and I watch very little TV). Anyone else know?