Dan Savage's blind spot, continued

Dan Savage just received, reprinted, and responded to an excellent letter from a reader. The reader notes, correctly, that Savage gets a lot of questions from straight women who want to be "GGG" ("good, giving, and game" - Savage's acronym for being an agreeable romantic partner by going along with things your partner wants, within reason, and by not being judgmental, again, within reason), but not a whole lot from straight men in the same predicament. The reader picks up on the fact that however progressive and noble Savage's concept of GGG might be, in practice, it ends up reinforcing some old-timey gender roles: the woman must play at being naive and free of her own desires, yet prepared to do this or that for the man she loves. It's not that women couldn't come up with out-of-the-ordinary requests. They're just not asking.

Savage admits that part of what's going on is that he's getting more letters from women, skewing the results. But then adds, bafflingly, "Men are likelier—far likelier—to be kinky. So kinky requests tend to be made by men. And most men have female partners."

I mean, maybe? Savage would know better than I would. But it would seem that if gender dynamics were taken into account, one would have to admit the possibility that men and women desire the unusual at comparable rates, but do not demand it of their partners at equal rates, because it's expected for men, but not women, to be "pigs." A woman who admits to desiring sex with a man in its least exotic variety is already pushing it. (Do we not remember the Limbaugh episode?)

It's the same as with the classic-for-Savage, mildly-risqué-for-family-audiences question of straight couples bringing in another partner. The default assumption - in popular culture,* and going by Savage, in the real lives of the couples who do this - is that the "third" will be a woman. Do we assume, as Savage does, that this is because women are more likely to be bisexual? Or might this have something to do with a) women being socialized to be agreeable, esp. when necessary to "keep a man," and b) it being socially unacceptable for women to request another dude, whereas it's presumed that straight men fantasize about being with two women, and are prepared to go ahead with that scenario at the drop of a hat?

Anyway. The reason Savage's blind spot when it comes to the straight female experience strikes me as such a big deal is that he's the best we-as-a-society have got in terms of defining a proper morality around sex that isn't based on shame or ignorance. We need something like this, and his heart is in the right place. It's like he almost gets it, and then... not.

*This is so thoroughly a part of our popular culture that if I were to add an "NSFW" disclaimer to this post, one would have to do the same with even the most staid and tired of sitcoms.