Up late talking games & writing? You're...

Just a short one tonight, I've got a new story in the works and I've found about 42 million ways to put off working on it today.



Sex: The wife and I are huge fans of the Savage Lovecast (follow the link on the left side of this blog and you can find it for yourself if you're not already a listener) and we agree with the advice given out by carnal guru Dan Savage about 99.99% of the time. The man definitely knows his stuff, and he's got a good head on his shoulders. That said, nobody is right all the time, and the last installment we listened to was a perfect case in point.

he's only right 99.99% of the time

If you've never tuned into the Lovecast, what basically happens is that people call in to Dan, a nationally-syndicated sex advice columnist (and Seattle resident, yay for the home team), they ask him bizarre questions that they'd probably be too embarrassed to ask anybody else, and then he gives them the answer with healthy doses of blunt honesty and sarcasm.

Anyway, one of the callers who phoned in was a woman who said that she had gotten piss-ass drunk and taken a guy home with her who she didn't know well. They get back to her place, and then the guy allegedly did some stuff in bed that she wasn't cool with. (They go into very explicit detail on the Lovecast, but I’ll skip it here.) After the night was over, she started feeling bad about what had happened and then took it upon herself to tell every person she met from that point forward that the guy she took home was some sort of abusive asshole, and that any woman thinking about going out with him should stay away. Her question was, was she right for doing this?

The answer Dan gave basically boiled down to something like “you're entitled to your experiences and to share what you know, but now it's time to move on.”

Now, ordinarily I'd be fine with this, but I was thrown for a loop because at no point in the call did Dan ever really call her out for being responsible for herself. For example, if you don't want to be subjected to weird sexual acts that you're not comfortable with, don't bring people home when you're drunk, don't have sex with strangers, and don't have sex with strangers when you're drunk. Beyond that, he didn't really call her out for being quiet and not voicing any objection when the sexual acts in question were being done. She didn't push the guy off, she didn't tell him “no”, she didn't really say anything… she just sat there in bed with him until the whole thing was over, and then decided that it would be a good thing to do to go out and start smearing this guy's name when she didn't say boo about it to him during or afterwards.

Quite frankly, it sounded to me like she was just embarrassed that she had done something stupid and was possibly even disgusted with herself for what happened, but instead of owning up to the fact that she was drunk and not thinking clearly, it's easier to put the blame on this guy and turn him into the villain—and before I start getting e-mail calling me a sexist or a chauvinist, let me just say that the wife and I were of the same mind on the topic. Hell, if anything, she was even more incensed than I was.

Gotta admit, I was pretty disappointed in Dan, someone who I have a great deal of respect for. Still love him, still a fan, but listening to that piece of toothlessly delivered advice was sort of like realizing that Superman isn't totally bulletproof, after all.



Books: Totally off the topic, but here's the cover to the first book in Ann Aguirre’s Corine Solomon series, Blue Diablo. It wasn't available at the time that Ann did her interview, so here it is now. Enjoy!