Dan Savage Offers Bi Women to Straight Dudes

Now that I got your attention with a click bait headline (sorry!) let’s talk about Savage. He’s probably best known for his column of terrible advice and his campaign to turn a politician’s name into a product of sodomy. Savage has a history of bi erasure, asexual erasure,  transphobia, transmisogyny, general misogyny, and ableism.  He’s also a popular and successful gay man so he gets invited to do things like be a Grand Marshal of NYC Pride. 

So when I saw that Dan Savage had written out advice for straight guys wanting to attend Pride marches, I knew it was gonna be bad. I just didn’t know it was gonna be this bad.

“Don’t eat the pussy at Pride, it’s not for you…unless it’s bi pussy, in which case, go crazy.”

My how charming.  I wonder if Savage will pay the women he’s selling to shitty allies. Somehow I think not. And goodness knows he’s helped straight men feel entitled to bisexual women’s bodies; he just said bi pussy IS for straight guys. 

Savage goes on to completely miss the history and purpose of pride. He says

I think the message in Pride for straight people–and why I think straight people should go–is that there should be more than one way to be a straight person too. 

Here I thought Pride started with three trans women of color who’d had enough and started the Stonewall Riots. I thought Pride was about demanding our right to live, not about teaching straight people how to be more quirky. 

In summary,  Pride is not for straight people.  It is definitely not a place for straight guys to pick up queer women. It’s a march,  a protest,  an insistence that our lives are worth living authentically,  no matter the cost from straight society. Somehow in the corporate sponsorships and commercialization of Pride that focus got lost, and now Dan Savage is forgetting how Pride even started.