Struggle Session: Don’t Hide the Balls

...looking for people who are single and will rightfully be “mad” if you are already partnered — and yes, lesbians even more so if that partner is a guy. But partnered bisexuals will find that a relief. Good luck! It’s tough out there! It’s tough out there for everybody — especially right now — so maybe everybody should err on the side of being a little nice to everybody else, lesbians included. But I gotta say… and not the for first time… I wish bisexual women — all of them, everywhere, all at once — could get it through their heads that they vastly outnumber lesbians. (And gay men!) Every letter from a bisexual woman makes it sound like she’s the only bisexual woman on the planet that her only options are pussy attached to a mean lesbian or no pussy at all. And while I’ve never been a woman on a queer dating app, the assumption that no lesbian wants anything to do with a bisexual woman doesn’t jibe with personal (and entirely platonic) experience with lesbians: of my married lesbian friends, half are married to bisexual women! And I wanna second BiDanFan’s point about the whole boyfriend/husband issue: If you’re a bisexual woman and you enter a lesbian space (bar, club, app) and hide the ball(s) — or, even worse, if you dance with a lesbian all night and then point out your boyfriend at the other end of the bar when the lights come up — you’re gonna make the women in that space mad. And not just the lesbians! Q10 in this week’s column was from a non-binary bisexual person — and they had haircut to prove it — and yet their family members were laughing off their preferred pronouns. Forgive me for double dipping BiDanFan this week, but this is an excellent point… LW10 has referred to family members as “my parent” and “my sibling.” It seems as if they are not respecting their relatives’ gender identities by referring to them using gender neutral language. If LW10 insists on referring not to themself but to everyone in their world in non-gendered language, that would explain the pushback and mockery. If they aren’t doing this, if in real life they would refer to these people as “my mother” and “my brother” and use their correct pronouns, then it’s the relatives who are just being douchy. I have noticed that some non-binary people insist on using gender-neutral language when referring to people who use and might strongly prefer gendered language in reference to themselves. So, if you’re non-binary and your mom and dad identify as mom or a dad but you only use “parent” when referring to them — or if you insist on calling your nieces and nephews “niblings” even as it makes them cringe — you can’t complain when they don’t respect your preferred pronouns and/or gender-neutral markers. Demand respect, show respect. Says Kendra Holliday… For the caller in Episode 1004 who wanted to learn how to top/please, look up Midori! I’ve taken a few of her classes, she’s amazing! Midori is amazing — she’s been a past guest — and I should’ve thought to recommend her. Follow her Instagram here, and there’s a list of her upcoming classes and seminars here. An excellent suggestion for the lonely gay man living — by choice — in a rural area from MarshLC… For the gay guy in the rural area who wants to meet someone: Do everything Dan suggests but also get involved in your community. Get on the library board or the rodeo committee or do a little ESL tutoring or play softball — anything that gets you meeting people in the community in a way they actually learn who you are. That nice librarian has a gay son who would love to move back home but doesn’t want to be lonely forever. In in my intro to this week’s Lovecast, I called out — excuse me: I called in — the kind of “woke scolds” who argue that sex scenes in film and television are consent violations in cases where the viewer wasn’t aware a show included a sex scene. Says NoCuteName… Dan, I implore you to stop using “woke” in the derogatory way that you did in your opening rant. I don’t disagree that there are a lot of finger-wagging, pearl-clutching puritans out there telling people that all movie sex scenes are consent violations and being all-around buzzkills. There are a lot of earnest and humorless zealots of all kinds, everywhere. But “woke” is a word that is pretty fraught at this particular political moment, and it pains me to have someone who the “red hate wearers” would definitely label as woke start using the word exactly as those MAGAts do. After all, to be woke, is to be awake — awake to systemic injustice and inequity, awake to racism, misogyny, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and other forms of bigotry. Personally, I can’t imagine bragging about being so metaphorically asleep that I was oblivious to acts of bigotry and intolerance at best, and actively perpetuating them at worst. Woke was our word — or it was the African American community’s word before the entire progressive left embraced/appropriated/colonized it — and then the right did to “woke” what they did to “liberal” decades before it: they turned “woke” into an insult. (There’s a fascinating piece on the term and its history here.) But I don’t think we should let Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have woke. I think we should take woke back. And since I think it’s important for lefties to be seen calling out the excesses of the left, I think we should distinguish between the woke and the woke scolds. I completely agree with NoCuteName: we should all be awake to injustice and bigotry. We should all be woke. But there’s a difference between the woke and the kind of “woke Gen Z incel scold” I was talking about in the intro. I wasn’t using “woke” as an insult — again: I don’t think “woke” is an insult — which is why qualified “woke” with “scolds.” (Similarly, I don’t think “faggot” is an insult, which is why I qualify “faggot” with “stupid” or “toxic” when I’m referring to dumb and shitty faggots like George Santos or Scott Bessent.) I took a call from a woman who was worried that she and her partner — exhibitionists, not swingers — wouldn’t be welcome at a sex club since they only wanted to have sex with each other. Says Middlepath… About the exhibitionist caller: Dan fielded a call about this a few months ago. He talked about how that couple who wanted to play only with each other at a sex club would have to set boundaries at the club. As Dan noted then, people will assume that because you’re there that you’re open to having sex with others, so you have to be more active in setting those boundaries. I’m not sure why Dan didn’t provide the same advice here. As someone else mentioned, sex clubs don’t have a “you must have sex with someone else” requirement. Pentatonic backs Middlepath up… Yeah, I think Dan missed the mark there. I think exhibitionists would be welcome at most, if not all, sex clubs, even those primarily for swingers. They can just introduce themselves as exhibitionists. And some clubs have ropes by the doors to the play rooms — hang the rope across the doorway to indicate to everyone else that you only want to be watched. Here’s this week’s letter for everyone to have a whack at… I’m a 26-year-old female from the Midwest. I’ve been in an amazing relationship with my partner, who is 29 and male, for a little over three years. Of course we’ve had our ups and downs but overall it’s an amazing relationship and I don’t have much to complain about. He’s the best partner I’ve ever had and he knows me better than I know myself. And our sex life is pretty amazing. However, I have always had a more hyper sex drive and I am more adventurous in the bedroom than he is. Which at first was complicated but we figured out how to work with it. I’m also considered a late bloomer. I didn’t have my first kiss until I was 18 and lost my virginity at 21. We got together when I was 23. Now that I’m starting to get older, I’m starting to get more curious about things. More specifically kinks. I’ve had a friend since I was 18 that was the only person I had ever even discussed CNC with, let alone thought of playing that out with. It’s never been romantic between us and I’ve never seen him as anything other than someone I trust to fulfill a fantasy. I’ve brought this kink up to my current partner — although I went extremely easy on the details and ways I had actually envisioned it. My partners great and always willing to try anything I suggest, but I’ve been very clear this is not one I would want to experience with him because I’m not sure how I’d actually react to it and I don’t want to damage our relationship. I don’t want my “safe space” (our relationship) to be a space where I suddenly feel unsafe. And I don’t think he would be able to be “mean” to me in the ways I long for. So, I have someone I already know and trust and I ’would like to try this kink with them. How do I tell my partner this is more about me reclaiming a situation and making it my own than sleeping with someone else? He tries to understand and listen when I shyly ask to speak about it. But I know the thought of me with someone else kills him. But I can’t get this fantasy out of my head. The more I think about it, the more I want to do it. What do I do? Am I being too greedy by wanting both? Am I justified to explore myself and my needs? Help. Knowing I’m Never Keeping Score I’ll leave the debate about the situational ethics and kinky particulars of KINKS’ question to the gang — I’m not gonna put my thumb on the scale like I did last week — but I am gonna say this to KINKS before I sign off: You’re not a late bloomer by your generation’s standards, KINKS, and while you’ve certainly gotten older — 26 is not 23 — you haven’t “gotten older” in the getting up there sense of “starting to get older.” You’re still a kid. Okay! Got some advice for KINKS? Drop it in the comments…