Dan Savage says don’t ride the third rail.
qI’m an 18-year-old straight female. Two nights
ago, I went to a party. My ex-boyfriend was present, but my current
boyfriend was not. I had several beers and while I wasn’t drunk, I was
tipsy. I had to go to my car to get my cellphone and my ex offered to
accompany me. When we got to the car, he pushed me against the car and
started making out with me. I tried to push him away and said, “No, I
can’t” several times. He kept trying to pull my pants down and every
time he did, I pulled them back up. He took his dick out and tried
again to pull down my pants. I know it sounds stupid, but all I could
get out were meek “nos” and “I can’ts.” I was afraid of a confrontation
because he and I have been friendly since we broke up. I eventually
discontinued my attempts to pull my pants back up because I figured the
easiest way to get out of this situation was to let him finish. He had
sex with me. I wanted to cry the whole time, but as much as I wanted to
scream, “Stop! Get the fuck off of me!” I couldn’t get the words
out.
I called my boyfriend when I got home and told him what happened. He
is angry because he thinks I had a part in it. I don’t know how to make
him understand how many times I said no and how at first I physically
stopped my ex from taking my clothes off. My boyfriend and I have been
through a lot together and we talked about getting married one day. I
never wanted to cheat on him and while I feel guilty about what
happened, I think he’s being harsh on me considering I succumbed to
force.
I’ve apologized again and again, but I don’t know how to make things
right. I still don’t want a confrontation with the ex. I just want to
forget about him and never see him or speak to him again. I just want
things to be OK again with my boyfriend. Is there anything I can do or
say to make him understand?
Date Rape Engenders Awful Depression
aUnderstand that you were raped,
DREAD—date-ish raped, acquaintance-ish raped, gray-area-ish raped,
blurry-booze-soaked-lines raped and raped under circumstances that
would make bringing charges a futile exercise. But raped. Your ex kept
coming at you and you were paralyzed by a set of inhibitions—a desire
to avoid confrontation at all costs (even the cost of your own
violation), a desire to avoid making your victimizer feel bad—that
are pounded into the heads of girls and young women. Your ex exploited
this vulnerability. Your ex may not think he raped you since you
finally “let him” and perhaps he interprets that as consent and so,
distressingly, does your boyfriend. But raped you were.
So what do you do now? I’d suggest a bit more contact with your ex.
You need to confront him—for your own sake, DREAD, but also for the
sake of all other women he’s going to encounter over the course of his
life. If you can’t face him, call him. If you can’t speak to him, write
him (a letter, not an email). Wherever he is right now, he’s
rationalizing away his responsibility for what happened. He may be
telling himself that he was drunk, that you were drunk and that, sure,
he may have been aggressive at first, but that you came around and
enjoyed it as much as he did. He needs to hear from you that you
regard—and, for what it’s worth, I regard—what happened as rape.
Tell him that he didn’t get away with it—that he raped you, you know
it and now he knows it. Then tell him that if the circumstances were
just a little less ambiguous, DREAD, that you would be going to the
police.
Hell, tell him you still might. Put the fear of god into him.
Then you need to confront the boyfriend: If your boyfriend can’t
take your side, DREAD, if he can’t see what really happened here, if he
insists on victimizing you, too, then you don’t need him in your life
any more than you need your ex in your life.
qI’m a 23-year-old gay dude from Vancouver. My
boyfriend and I have been together for four years. Thing is, he’s
seriously letting himself go—gaining weight, enjoying roomier pants.
I drop hints about working out or eating better—but he gets offended
and becomes self-conscious. I want to be supportive and not care, but I
do care and it’s killing me. Had I known at 19 that he would be
throwing away his hot body, I might have reconsidered his LTR
potential. Now, four years later, I’m stuck with a lovable fatty who
I’m having a hard time being intimate with.
Is this awful? Am I selfish? I love him, but I want to enjoy sex
again. I have NOTHING against fatties, Dan, I just don’t want to bed
one.
Really Eating At Me
aDrop the subtlety, REAM. No more faux-loving
hints about the importance of diet and exercise—he reacts negatively
to that shit because he’s picking up on your dishonesty. You’re not
concerned for his health, REAM, you’re concerned for your sex life and
what the death of your attraction to him means for this relationship.
So give it to him straight: You’re not attracted to fatties, which is
why you pursued him four years ago.His weight gain is killing your sex
life and threatening the survival of your relationship. If he values
this relationship, he’ll get his ass off the couch.
And now a note to the infuriated fatsophere: I’m not saying that
REAM’s boyfriend is unattractive because he’s heavier, or that heavy
people aren’t or can’t be attractive or that all must forever maintain
our “first-date weight” over the multi-decade course of
relationship/marriage/whatever. But to destroy a large part of what
attracted someone to you early in a relationship—whether actively or
through neglect—is to take your partner for granted in a way that’s
not OK. And that goes for a tight-bodied fag who parks his tight ass on
the couch because he’s got a boyfriend now and lets it turn into two
cottage-cheese garbage bags—so, hey, why bother with the gym?—and
the lovely cottage-cheesed BBW who wastes away to skin and bones after
she lands an admirer.
qA close gay friend recently seroconverted after
months of barebacking and meth use. He’s a successful professional with
years of AIDS peer-education experience. My immediate reaction was
shock and anger. He claims that I am not a true friend because I should
hide my feelings and shower him with empathy and understanding. Is
there something wrong with me for feeling mad at my friend for his
irresponsibility?
OldFashioned SafeSex Adherent
aLet’s say you’ve got two friends. One gets hit
by lightning, and the other plops his sopping-wet ass down on a third
rail. Do both friends—presuming both survive—deserve your empathy
and understanding, OFSSA? Of course. But one friend was electrocuted
while the other electrocuted his damn self. Friendship does not
obligate you to pretend your friend who sat his ass down on the third
rail wasn’t being idiotic and self-destructive. Friendship, in fact,
requires the opposite reaction.
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Email Dan your sexual woes at mail@savagelove.net.
This article appears in Jan 8-14, 2009.