Micro Extra! Sex & Politics #46

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_03] This episode is brought to you by VB Health, doctor-formulated supplements that work. To learn more about Load Boost, Drive Boost, and Soaking Wet, and to get 10% off, visit vb.health and use the code SAVAGE.

[00:00:18] [SPEAKER_00] You're listening to Sex and Politics at savage.love

[00:00:27] [SPEAKER_03] Hey, welcome to Sex and Politics, a bonus podcast we do around here for our Magnum subs. Now normally, I would say, right about now, if you can hear the sound of my voice, you are a Magnum sub and thank you for your support for the Savage Lovecast Cinematic Universe. That would be cinematic spelled with an S. But we're making my conversation with journalist and author Benoit Denezet-Lewis available for all of our listeners, micros and Magnums alike.

[00:00:51] [SPEAKER_03] Benoit Denezet-Lewis is an associate professor at Emerson College, a longtime contributing writer for New York Times Magazine, and the author, most recently, of the really fascinating new book, well, new-ish, it's been out for a minute, his new book, You've Changed, The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Benoit. Benoit, welcome to Sex and Politics. It's great to be with you, Dan. So I finished the book this weekend.

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_03] And your book covers and finds these fascinating links between all sorts of different kinds of change, spiritual, sexual, political, incremental, sudden or deeper mutations. I was honestly a little worried I wouldn't get into it because I am personally allergic to change. If I was going to write a book to sit on the shelf alongside yours, I would write a book about constancy, not changing, which is, in my opinion, an underrated virtue.

[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_03] But I gotta admit, like, there must be something about change that appeals to me because the man I married becomes an entirely new person every 24 months. We are currently in Terry's baseball fandom era. I did not see that one coming. So Benoit, it doesn't count. You don't write about this in the book. A lot of sexual issues, a lot of issues about gender, transformation change. You don't write about this thing specifically, but this is where change most often comes up on the Savage Lovecast.

[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_03] Somebody got cheated on, they're thinking about staying with the person who broke the monogamous commitment they made, and they ask, once a cheater, always a cheater, or can a person change? So just zooming out to 30,000 feet, you don't have to address that particular thing about monogamy and cheating, but is change possible?

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I mean, I wrote a whole book about it, so if I said no, that would be depressing. Yeah, I mean, the philosopher William James, at this sort of, well, people should read the book, but essentially, William James...

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_03] And people should read the book. Thank you, I appreciate it. I picked it up, and I really enjoyed it. Thank you, Dan. I appreciate that. It's so beautifully written. It looks a little intimidatingly thick, but there's a lot of footnotes and an index at the back. Yes. So don't be scared.

[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_02] There's this new trend with books to like skip out on indexes, which really frustrates me. Anyway, William James says, you can make great changes, but you cannot turn a Gothic church into a Doric temple. And I think that gets it fundamentally, this truth about change, which is people change all the time. They have spiritually transformative experiences. They have traumas that change them. They have psychedelics, which changes their perspectives.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_02] They go through aging, which changes them. So change can be both a positive and a negative. So people change all the time and in ways that I don't think we should discount. Like we wake up one morning or we have a kind of experience, often with psychedelics, and it switches what we decide to devote our life to. Like the way that we see the world, it opens things up for us or we think about it in new or different ways. So that's a real change.

[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_02] Though fundamentally, even people who go through these sort of massive changes or massive changes of identity, they swing from left to right politically or they have a gender transition. And through these seemingly big changes, oftentimes the core personality stays relatively the same.

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_02] So there's this big like cottage industry now saying, oh, you can change your personality and do these things. And if you make changing your personality your full time job, you can actually like many people are like, oh, I'm too neurotic. I would like to be less neurotic. And you actually can work on that a little bit. But the data is not that exciting.

[00:04:35] [SPEAKER_02] Like we see a little bit of change if you make that your full time job, but we're not transforming into entirely different people with their personality. We fall in love with someone. I've fallen. I fell in love with my husband, a version of him. But, you know, so I don't want him to change that much. But I do. There's these ways where I would love him to change. Right. But like fundamentally, I don't want him to change that much.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_02] And my partner had the same thing when I went to Esalen, which is kind of this woo-woo retreat center out in California. And, you know, I called him. I was in this how we change and why we don't workshop. And I called him and I told him about this man who was sitting in the front row. And I write about this in the book where he's sort of wearing this long robe and he's speaking in platitudes and a kind of a new age stereotype.

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_03] I would have walked into the ocean. Like that place is not for me.

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_02] Oh, yeah, maybe. I call my husband and he's like, you better not come back wearing a robe. And he's like, I like you the way you are. Like, I wish you would clean up after yourself more. There's these things that I wish you would do. But like fundamentally, so changing other people is really scary. And I think that we should acknowledge that we want people to change. We don't want them to change. We want them to change in the way that we want them to. So changing other people is incredibly scary.

[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_02] And it's obviously it can be scary and in ourselves, too. Around the around this idea. And you've spoken about this a lot over the years. I've heard you talk about that, like monogamous relationships is like the one place where we're demanding a kind of perfection. Right. That if someone cheats once that it is that that means the relationship never loved you. Yeah, he never loved you. It's not true. All of these things. When I hear people say like, oh, he cheated. Like once a cheater, always a cheater.

[00:06:26] [SPEAKER_02] Maybe. But no, actually. I mean, I think there are people who are like fundamentally cheaters who have a hard time stopping that. But I think many people who have a slip or if we want to call it that in a monogamous relationship, that doesn't mean some fundamental thing that they're always going to cheat. Especially if they're making that something that they're working on. Right. If they're in therapy and they're aware of their issues and all that kind of stuff.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_03] One of the things I thought was so interesting was when you wrote about a guy who was a bully in high school and everyone's afraid of him and he's changed. He now is sort of a Buddhist temple leader, if not quite a cult leader. Doesn't that like quite a cult? Maybe not a cult one day when it grows up. But the interesting thing about him, and I think that is really illustrative for people who are with people they want to change in some fundamental way or they hope to see change from, is it really this paradox at the heart of it.

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_03] Where people might change, but they're still fundamentally the same person. Right. They may be making different choices, resisting impulses they gave into in the past, but that same person is still there. And that core person doesn't change, even if how they move through the world might change. So changes in behavior possible?

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. It really depends on how you define personality, how you define like your core essence. Right. Like the bully turned Buddhist is an interesting case because he is so fundamentally honest about the question of like, well, how did I change and how much have I changed? And he's not making some claim of being a new person. He says, I have many of the same thoughts that I did when I was a terrible bully when I was 16 years old.

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_02] But I've learned to put some space between myself and my thoughts. I've learned to act in different ways. He said act, he used the word act a lot. So I found him refreshingly honest about this question of like, well, how much at my core have I changed? But I don't want to downplay. Like he went from being like this selfish bully who really terrorized people.

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_02] I mean the amount of people – I read about this teacher in the book who had him four decades ago and she goes, oh, you know, when he was like a nine-year-old, I knew that when he got to my class, I knew that he would be trouble forever. Right? Like she was contacted all these years later and she's like, I don't buy his change stuff one bit. And I just found that fascinating, right? The idea that first of all, she's like been holding a grudge against this nine-year-old for like decades.

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_02] But then also her belief that she can fundamentally tell who someone is going to be. And I remember my best friend in high school, he was really sweet to me and his friends, but he treated his mom – I thought he treated his mom so poorly. And like he was so mean to her and I was like – even then I think I was like, well, will this continue in adulthood? And no, he doesn't treat his wife like that and he's really – that part of him has changed. So I think there's all kinds of ways that we do change and we mature.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_02] But this bully-turned-Buddhist is one of these people that is trying to make sense of it and we're all trying to make sense of it. So many of the people that I write about in this book are like, we go through these things and we think we've changed or we experience what feels like a change. And then we have to like go back and try to narrate it in a way that makes sense. And oftentimes it doesn't make sense and it's very confusing.

[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_03] My favorite chapter is always the one where I get name-checked. Thanks for including me and one of my better jokes or jabs at someone on the right. But the chapter that really grabbed me by the throat, I was sitting outside reading it and I just read the entire section, it's a longer section of the book, was about men who've been sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, attempting to earn parole. What drew you to their stories?

[00:10:16] [SPEAKER_03] I found myself becoming really invested in these men as you wrote about them, particularly Hassan Karim's story. Yeah, Karim, yeah. And tell me how you found your way into that prism, that angle at looking at change. These men trying to earn parole who are all really fascinating.

[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_02] Let me say first that I'm so glad that chapter resonated with you because it's a chapter that I spent so long reporting and constructing. And so the fact that you just said, and there's people who've reacted to the book who really respond to that chapter. And so that means a lot. And so I think what interested me around that is this question. We see it in different ways, not only with people who are undergoing who are like, I mean, they literally have to prove transformation in order to be like for their freedom.

[00:11:06] [SPEAKER_02] They have to prove that they have changed and they have to prove this to parole board folks who they do not know. So they're having to convince strangers that they've changed. And we all have to do this. You know, if we get in trouble on the Internet, we have to convince the parole board of the Internet that we've changed. We have to convince our loved ones that we've changed if we're trying to be forgiven for some reason. But here the stakes are incredibly high. And I'll talk to friends about this chapter.

[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_02] And some of my more skeptical friends will be like, well, you know, they didn't really change, right? They're just doing a performance. And there's certainly a huge performative aspect of how do I perform my transformation? And I write about that. Like we have to perform transformation. And what performances do we believe? And what performances do we not believe? And how do we make those decisions? And that's a theme that I'm interested in throughout the book because transformation is a kind of performance.

[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_03] And we can never know whether somebody else has truly, truly changed or if they're just responding to an incentive to convince us they've changed. From the man trying to earn parole convinced his parole board that they've really, really changed. Or the partner who cheated who has a tremendous incentive to convince the partner that they want to forgive them and take them back, not blow up their life, not get a divorce. That they've changed. And it's just the essential unknowability of another human being.

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_03] Well, it's always, for me, madly humping away at the unknowability of the self. Like, it's not just that we doubt others. We also doubt ourselves.

[00:12:39] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Well, we have this idea that we have to change for ourselves. Otherwise, it's not real. And I try to poke holes in that because we're changing for other people all the time. Yeah. And we shouldn't discount that that kind of change can actually be real. And even if we don't think we're changing for other people, like, the identities that we take on, that we transform into, we're still picking them based on what's available on that season's identity menu.

[00:13:03] [SPEAKER_02] Like, we are still changing in reaction to expectations from other people. And so I think that's really important to remember. Even these things that can feel incredibly, like, personal and like, oh, this is my inner voyage. Yes. But we're also voyaging somewhere that's been laid out for us as an option. So I just want to say that. But I'll tell you, Dan, some of these men, there is something to be said.

[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_02] There are prisons in California, certainly not all, but there are prisons in California where you can work on yourself all day long for three decades. And something does transform for some of these men through that process. And I spoke to a lot of people who work with them and they're like, yeah, there's people that fake it. Usually the parole board can tell. And then there's people who are completely transformed. And I met some of those folks who seem to me, and I was able to talk to other people about that as well, who seem truly transformed.

[00:13:57] [SPEAKER_02] One guy writes in his memoir, he says the hardest part about being paroled for him, he had a hard time in the outside world finding people that were as invested in transforming themselves as the guys that he hung around with in prison. And I think there's something. So for some of these men with parole, there is true transformation. Now, you know, I also read a little bit about men who transform when there's no possibility of parole.

[00:14:27] [SPEAKER_02] And, you know, what do we make of people who are on death row or who have no possibility of parole? Do we allow for them to change? Do we, you know, obviously we've decided that the change is sort of irrelevant because they're not going to get out. So what do we make of their change? Do we roll their eyes at the possibility that someone that evil can change?

[00:14:49] [SPEAKER_02] I think we have a lot of skepticism, but there's a way in which folks who have no incentive to change, I think we should be celebrating their transformations even more instead of, you know, being as. And I caught myself rolling my eyes when I spoke to a woman who deals with this and she talked about going to see a man called the monster who had murdered several people. And she said, you know, he's really changed. And I caught myself mid eye roll to sort of say I had my instinctual thing and then I thought about it more.

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_02] Well, what does that mean? Changed how and what do we make of that? He's not going to get out of prison. So there's not that part of it. And do we make space for those kinds of changes? I found that interesting. But on some fundamental level, we are all having to convince other people that our change is real. We have to get buy in it. Dan, if I change in some way that I want you to believe I need to convince you that I've changed or you need to see it in my actions.

[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_02] There's a lot of convincing of other people that we have to do when we take on a new identity or when we claim a change.

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_03] So let's talk about Michael Glatz. Am I pronouncing his name correctly? Yes. Michael Glatz, you worked with him in the 90s at XY magazine. Before we get into Michael Glatz and his change, tell us about XY magazine for people who weren't around in the 90s and didn't see it.

[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_02] I think I started in 98, 99 and I have never worked for a man. Now, I was just out of college and I had I was just recently out of the closet and I want to be a writer and I want to work in magazines. And I get very lucky and I end up as an editor at XY. And this magazine, I have never worked for a place that meant more to its readers.

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_02] Right. Like in 1999, you could still think you were the only gay kid in a particular state, you know, in the Midwest or in the South. The Internet was just beginning to be a thing. And we would have a magazine for young gay men. Sorry. Yes. It's magazine for young gay and bisexual men. And, you know, we had teenagers who would write us every week and talk about how much the magazine they would go to Barnes and Noble and they would sort of read it inside another magazine. So they weren't many of them were in the closet.

[00:17:02] [SPEAKER_02] And and this magazine was a lifeline to so many young gay men at the time. And we took that responsibility. At least I took that responsibility quite seriously. I think Michael Glatz took that responsibility really seriously. What was so interesting about Michael, he started a few months after I did, was just how deeply political he was. He wanted to transform the world. He was incredibly gay. He was passionate, incredibly gay, incredibly gay, passionate.

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_02] But he was also he was inspiring. Like he he was much more political than I was. He we got a lot of arguments because he would say things like Christian fundamentalists should burn in hell. And we should put that in the magazine. And I was like, no, actually, we have a lot of teenagers, young men who read the magazine, who are comic who are part of fundamentals families. And we don't want to say that. And so we have a lot of these arguments. Right. But he was to me, he was the happiest gay person.

[00:17:58] [SPEAKER_02] I truly like most comfortable gay person that I had ever met. He was in a relationship. He like we'd go to raves together. And I just there was unless it was all a performance, there was a way in which he seemed so at ease. Now, I look back on it now and I question it. But, you know, then what happens fast forward six, seven years.

[00:18:19] [SPEAKER_02] And he announces in a column in World Net Daily, which is a far right website that he isn't gay anymore and is in fact going to work to like undo everything he advocated for at X, Y. And initially, I thought this was a joke. I could not. I went into denial. I was like, well, this is a joke. This is not possible. Then I thought that he went undercover. Oh, he's going undercover. And then it became clear he wrote additional pieces. And this, you know, you you ended up reacting to it as it happened.

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_02] It got a lot of news because.

[00:18:53] [SPEAKER_03] Well, the the the X gay thing, the political movement funded by the religious right to promote people who had walked away from homosexuality. Organizations like Exodus International efforts by the Family Research Council. Yeah. To put it into the heads of American voters and also the parents of young gay lesbian bi American teenagers that this was a choice and that we didn't have to have fights about gay rights or gay marriage.

[00:19:19] [SPEAKER_03] All of these people could just be encouraged to choose to be straight that we were just intransigent and trying. I don't know why we would choose it, but we chose it. My argument was always like, if it's a choice, you choose it. Go suck a deck. And right. Like, you got to be hard while you're sucking that deck. Like, if there's a switch, you can flip it. That's how you win this argument. Right. Right. I would write that and get in trouble for writing that.

[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. But there was this mix of, there was this mix of this political anger that folks had. And then there was also this like, oh honey, there's a kind of like, there was a dual thing going on as we were reacting to X gays. There was this anger and there was this mocking of that's was sort of combined in our reactions to X gays at the time. We had written a lot about the X gay movement and XY. We were fighting this and now to have Michael become this pawn.

[00:20:15] [SPEAKER_02] And it was incredibly surreal, Dan. I cannot tell you how surreal it was to have this. It was my first experience of watching someone claim a trifecta of identity changes around his sexual orientation, his politics, his spirituality. And, you know, immediately as a kind of both as a friend and a former friend and a journalist, I was like, well, let me see if I can go see what happened. Right.

[00:20:42] [SPEAKER_02] Like, how does he understand what happened to him? Can I figure that out?

[00:20:47] [SPEAKER_03] Some of the most riveting parts of the book where you and Michael meet and Michael's going to a Bible college. Right. He is now married to a woman. Yeah. But he had not yet married a woman when you went to see him. You actually had a friend who was concerned that going to meet with Michael might turn you into an X gay. I know. I was so depressed.

[00:21:07] [SPEAKER_02] I was so depressed. I had a relationship. I had just ended because of my behavior. And I was so, so, so depressed as I went to see him. And my friends were like, don't you dare let Michael turn you X gay. And, you know, and he didn't. But it was this interesting idea from a gay friend of mine that like, I was like, do you think I'm like that weak in a sense that I would, that this would. But it is interesting.

[00:21:32] [SPEAKER_02] You know, when we think about, we joked about this, like at XY, like if anyone was going to be X gay, they thought it would be me. Maybe because I was just less political. I don't know what it was. I liked sports. I'm not sure what the, what the kind of reasoning was.

[00:21:46] [SPEAKER_03] The thing I always identified in the X gays is like Jonathan Candy Polk, who you write about, who was an X gay featured on the cover of Newsweek, who then later got caught in a gay bar later came back out as gay, renounced his X gayness with not quite the same fervor or with the same financial incentives that he had renounced his gayness previously, but came around.

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_03] And when you would listen to these guys, they always talked about kind of disillusionment with not mainstream gay life, not gay life, but a kind of the sexual fast lane. And that was also part of what I think informed Michael Glatz's evolution. Like he had a lot of sex with a lot of people. He was like out and in an open relationship.

[00:22:31] [SPEAKER_02] He was, but he doesn't, he doesn't fit the exact narrative, which is the, usually the narrative is, and he switched a little bit. He talked about sort of being in the cave of the gay identity. Right. But I do not buy for a second that the reason that he switched was because he was often the X gay narrative is like, I was deep into drugs. I was deep into anonymous sex, all of it. Yes. And I identified that the problem was not those things for me. The problem was my sexual identity. Right.

[00:23:00] [SPEAKER_02] And so the gayness is the problem. So, but Michael did not go to like an X gay camp. He, he was, he was different. He, he had a sort of different trajectory, which I found interesting. And now the X gay movement is incredibly fascinating over the last five or 10 years because they have pivoted to gender.

[00:23:19] [SPEAKER_03] And which is, but you write about it. You write about it and unpack it in a brilliant way because what they argue is that no one is gay. And the proof that no one is gay, the gayness isn't real is that there are these X gay guys out there. And then they sort of hold up the X gay guys. They also hold up D transitioners to say, you know, gayness is a choice, but sex is not. And the proof that gayness is a choice is the X gays.

[00:23:48] [SPEAKER_03] The proof that sex is not a choice are the D transitioners. And there's sort of like conflicting concepts.

[00:23:57] [SPEAKER_02] Totally. But it's, yeah. And they've leaned in completely, completely to sexual fluidity. Basically, they're arguing that they're arguing what sort of sexologists have been saying for years, that they have all of these studies that are essentially saying people are fluid. All we're saying is that people are fluid. So they've sort of changed their, the way that they talk about it. They've leaned into sexual fluidity. They've leaned into gender and D transitioners. And, you know, we'll see.

[00:24:26] [SPEAKER_02] There was a moment about five years ago where I really thought, oh, this movement is dead or dying, very close to dead.

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_03] I kind of think it's dead and dying. And one of the things that drove it to the point of near extinction, if not extinction, was the mockery. So I don't think arguing with them and laughing at them was a problem. I think arguing them and laughing at them and making fun of them. Alan Chambers, who used to be the head of Exodus International, who just got in trouble for soliciting a minor online. And he shut that organization down and said it never worked.

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_03] And one of the early tells, and I think points to the sexual fluidity thing, and the crutch that is faith and spirituality when, and almost all ex-gays journeys. Alan Chambers, when he was still flogging, being able to walk away from the homosexual lifestyle, he said, and I quote, the opposite of homosexuality isn't heterosexuality. The opposite of homosexuality is holiness. Right. Which was not what they were selling.

[00:25:22] [SPEAKER_03] They were selling for decades that you could take a homosexual and lip a switch and fill them with desire to fucking eat pussy instead of ass or whatever. To have heterosexual sex instead of homosexual, to be physically and radically attracted to women and not men anymore. Yeah. And that wasn't what they were doing. Right.

[00:25:41] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. But I would caution you, there are some organizations that are still alive. A lot of this is happening under the radar. If we look at the recent polls that are finding that conservatives think less favorably than they did five years ago about sort of gay rights, I do worry that there is going, that I'm not convinced. In fact, I know it's not dead. And I worry about a resurgence of- I'm confident.

[00:26:07] [SPEAKER_03] We won this argument once. I'm confident we could win this argument again. But we'll do it again. Right. There are like queer people out there who think that it's a mistake to argue that you're born that way, that it isn't a choice. Right. Because some people might experience as a choice. I didn't experience being gay as a choice. I chose as hard as I could to be straight for as long as I could keep that up. Right. But, you know, Mormonism is a choice. We don't recruit. You motherfuckers recruit. You proselytize. That's your big fancy $10 word for recruitment.

[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_03] And of course, you project onto us recruiting that we're not doing. Right. Like you have to be talked into conversion. You don't have to be talked into sexual attraction. Right. And we defeated their argument with better arguments and facts and our lives, but also with humor and making fun of these motherfuckers.

[00:26:53] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:26:53] [SPEAKER_03] And I think Glatz is kind of a pathetic figure. Do you think there's a Jonathan Candy Polk in his future? Do you think that the way his pendulum swung, he'll swing back?

[00:27:04] [SPEAKER_02] I tried to find him for the book. He's gone off the radar. I reached out to his family members. No one would get back to me. I mean, we talk about a change for Michael. So we had these change and he's completely gone away from being political like he's disappeared. So that's a change. Right. He came out. He was he was incredibly political. You know, there was a movie made about him. And I think seeing that film, I am Michael and I was there at the premiere and he gave James Franco, who played him a hug.

[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_02] And he said, you really captured all the pain that I went through. And starting about after that, he stopped with the anti-gay stuff and just sort of decided to live his life privately. And that's what he's been doing. I don't know what's going to happen with Michael. I mean, probably what happened with Michael is Michael's probably bisexual.

[00:27:51] [SPEAKER_03] You might be bisexual according to a you took a test. Somebody measured your pupils.

[00:27:58] [SPEAKER_02] According to a Cornell psychologist, I am bisexual. According to a Northwestern psychologist, I am very, very gay. They both showed me pornography. They had different one was pupils. One was penile, how restrained gauge or whatever different ways of looking at that. But that was a surreal moment, right? Because I had just been told I was very gay at Northwestern.

[00:28:20] [SPEAKER_02] And then I get to Cornell and I'm told, well, your attraction pattern from your pupils and the pornography we showed you showed you that you're actually pretty bisexual. And it was this really fascinating moment where I was like, might I be bisexual? Did I take on my gay identity?

[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_03] I think the takeaway here is that your dick is gay, but your eyes are bi and you don't fuck with your eyes or get fucked in your eye sockets. You're gonna have to stick with gay. Right. There you go. All right. We've gone. We've got a long time. I wanted to tackle a question with you. Everybody who comes on the show has to answer one of my list of sex questions with me. So here we go. This episode is brought to you by load boost by VB health. This is going to be a TMI ad read. Come semen.

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[00:30:34] [SPEAKER_01] Hi, Dan. I'm a male in my 40s living in the Midwest. This year, I will be married 10 years to my wife. So for most of my 20s and the beginning part of my 30s, I identified as a bisexual man. I had experiences with both men and women. And really on the bisexual spectrum, for lack of a better word, I put myself right in the middle. I enjoyed having sex with men just as much as I enjoyed having sex with women. It was pretty much 50-50 for me.

[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_01] When I met my wife and then got married, I just kind of assumed that, okay, this is the person that I'm with now. She just happens to be female. And I'm going to devote all of my time to her. And basically, that bisexual feeling that I had, you know, that kind of will just go away over time. And this is just who I am now. First five or six years of our marriage were really good. We had a pretty healthy sex life. You know, everything was great.

[00:31:29] [SPEAKER_01] And then about four years ago, kind of before it was a mainstream thing, my wife started doing the Ozempics, the weight loss drugs. And she lost a lot of weight. She lost, I think all told, as of today, when she started four years ago, she's down like 130 pounds. Which is fantastic. She looks great. I'm super proud of her. But because of that weight loss, she has a lot of like extra loose skin. And that's made her very self-conscious. Like she doesn't like me to see her naked.

[00:31:59] [SPEAKER_01] She's just, she's very self-conscious about this loose skin. If you combine the fact that she's self-conscious about the loose skin and combine it with the fact that we're married for 10 years, our sex life is basically non-existent. So as a result of that, I have turned to the apps, specifically the gay apps. And I've been hooking up with men.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_01] And I've been engaging in some pretty risky behavior, like, you know, public play outdoors, like hooking up with guys in the Walmart bathroom. I know that it's wrong. And I feel guilty after I'm done doing it. But like in the moment, it's like the thrill of it is, is what's attributing to my arousal. I love my wife very much. I, I would be devastated if something happened to our life. And like I said, I know that what I'm doing is wrong.

[00:32:50] [SPEAKER_01] So I'm not looking for validation about what I'm doing, but I'm just looking for some guidance to see if there's anything else I could do other than just, you know, masturbation or self-play or toys or anything like that to help with my sexual needs that she obviously can't slash won't fulfill.

[00:33:08] [SPEAKER_03] Again, you write about two different kinds of change in the book, incremental, the slow process of working on it, and then kind of deeper mutations. Around coming out, you had a deep mutation at 20. You just flashed on, I'm gay, which is so different from my own coming out. Like at 12, 13, 14, it was the frog in the frying pan. And I had to go, okay, what am I masturbating about? I guess that has, that means something. Curious what you were masturbating about at 18. If at 20, you suddenly realized that you were gay.

[00:33:37] [SPEAKER_02] I was so compartmentalized. I mean, it's, it, people don't believe me, but I, I, I was doing gay stuff. I totally believe you. I believe you. Some people don't. They're like, but I was walking down the street listening to REM. It's the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine. And in one second, this voice inner outer, whatever said you're gay and it clicked. Absolutely. And so my, it was this fascinating moment where like, it's an epiphany or whatever we want to call it. But like my identity like changed in two seconds.

[00:34:04] [SPEAKER_02] And now there was probably a lot of stuff going on at a subconscious level, you know, for years around this stuff. But I was, as a teenager, I was so detached from my emotions and so compartmentalized that I had, I was not like many young gay kids who are teenagers who were like, oh, I have these attractions. What do I do? Am I gay? Am I not? Like, I never let myself think that. And I, yeah.

[00:34:29] [SPEAKER_03] I had this moment, I was listening to REM. I was looking at the album cover for Leif Garrett's first album in a record store in a mall in Des Plaines, Illinois. Anybody out there who wants to know why I like Muppet-based men and long hair on guys, it's Leif Garrett's fault from the 70s. And I was just like, oh, fuck. Uh-oh. Anyway, wanted to get to this call.

[00:34:54] [SPEAKER_03] One of the, your more incremental work around sexuality and your own lived experience, your own life experience was you describe yourself as maybe a sex addict, although it's a contested category. A lot of people who work in the field don't believe there's such a thing as sex addiction. And you use the sort of replacement phrase that means kind of the same thing, sexually compulsive. But you were sexually compulsive in a way that destroyed relationships, that did a lot of damage in your life.

[00:35:21] [SPEAKER_03] It seems to me that the caller is in that place right now where they're behaving in a sexually compulsive way. They're not entirely happy about it. It could, if his wife finds out or they do have sex occasionally and he's putting her at physical risk, really blow up his life. What would your advice to him be as someone who is out on the other side of that kind of sexually compulsive thing?

[00:35:42] [SPEAKER_02] Well, so first, you know, I don't know if you remember this, Dan, but we once debated whether sex addiction was real. You and I debated it on a show, which I tell friends because I think it was a fun moment. I'm like, I beat Dan Savage in a debate. You would think it differently. But anyway, so we debated that. I think it's really interesting that you've – because I listened to that tape of what he said and that you've put in that he's sexually compulsive. And I think that that's a possibility, but he doesn't use those words.

[00:36:11] [SPEAKER_02] I think we should pay attention to the words that he uses and the thing that I find so interesting, two things he says that are really interesting. He says that his bisexual feelings, he thought that when he got married, they will just go away in time. I thought that was very strange. Like, did he really believe that? And then secondly, he talks about, you know, hooking up outside of his marriage, sometimes in public places, Walmart bathroom. And then he says, I know that it's wrong.

[00:36:38] [SPEAKER_02] And I'm curious what – I wish we could ask him. I'm curious what he means by wrong. Is it wrong that he hasn't told his wife that he's bisexual? I don't know if he has. Is it wrong that he's cheating? Is it wrong that he's cheating in Walmart bathrooms? What is the wrong part of it? When I wrote about my own sexual compulsivity, sex addiction, I had gay men saying, oh, so you're saying that my behavior – you're somehow judging my behavior as addictive. And I'm like, I'm absolutely not doing that.

[00:37:07] [SPEAKER_02] I'm just saying that for me, it was compulsive and addictive in these ways. He doesn't use those words. And so I would be hesitant. Like, he might have compulsive sexual behavior. Maybe the I know it's wrong part is about – but I want to drill down on what that means. I know it's wrong. You can't.

[00:37:24] [SPEAKER_03] You just have the call here. I have a podcast. And you have to, like, make assumptions and leave. I think the fact that he's in conflict emotionally about it, that he knows it's wrong and he can't stop, kind of points toward compulsive behavior even if he doesn't use the word. And, yeah, it could be that he's not out to his wife. It could be that he's putting himself at physical risk. Walmart bathrooms, risk of arrest. Yeah. Like, part of the fun, I think, for a lot of people of that kind of sex is the risk and the danger. Yeah.

[00:37:52] [SPEAKER_03] And, like, if he gets arrested for getting his ass fucked in a Walmart bathroom. Right. That's going to make the news if he lives in a small town potentially. And that could blow up his marriage and his life, you know, like, especially if he's not just not out as bi to his wife but not out as bi to anybody.

[00:38:09] [SPEAKER_02] That's a terrible way to out yourself. I mean, he talked about having a bi identity in his 20s and 30s. And does that mean a bi identity to himself or to other people? I mean, this is a really important question, right? If he – I'd say step one would be to come out to your wife as bisexual.

[00:38:25] [SPEAKER_03] If he hasn't already.

[00:38:27] [SPEAKER_02] If he hasn't already. That's not an evidence. Because that – there might be a shame aspect a lot, you know, at least in my behavior, there was deep down underneath it all, there was a lot of shame that was, I think, for me, a big part of this. And so I'm always looking at ways to reduce shame.

[00:38:44] [SPEAKER_02] So if he's feeling like he's keeping not only the secret of his bisexuality but also the fact that he's hooking up with men outside of the relationship and also that he's doing this in a way that is risky or dangerous, those are all kinds of levels of shame that might be impacting him. So my first thing would be to lessen the shame.

[00:39:05] [SPEAKER_02] And if he thinks – if he does actually think of himself as compulsive and I cannot stop, then it becomes, okay, therapy, do you need to, you know, think about going to a group where you can talk about this? You know, but the first thing would be get honest if he hasn't as much as he can with his partner. I don't know if you would give different advice but I, you know, I think honesty –

[00:39:29] [SPEAKER_03] The first thing I would tell him is if he's not on prep to get on fucking prep. Sometimes people who are taking these kinds of risks who are in opposite-sex marriages, who are by men, who are closeted, they won't get on prep because they're afraid their spouse might find the bottle of pills and Google it if they don't know what the fuck it is and be outed that way. But call her, like Jesus fucking Christ, find a place to hide the pills if you're not already on prep. Get on prep. Protect yourself.

[00:39:54] [SPEAKER_03] And then if you do resume sexual activity with your wife, you're not out to her and you continue to have sex with men behind her back. Like the least you owe her is the consideration of the protection that prep would provide you and her. Yeah. But I agree with Benoit. You should come out to your wife if you're not out to your wife already. You should tackle the shame. But I got to say like hashtag team shame around here sometimes.

[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_03] Like people say I was behaving in this way because I was struggling with sexual shame. But wasn't shame in some way? Can you admit that shame was part of the turn on? Like I worry that we're like if we let go of shame entirely. I think shame is kind of hardwired into human sexuality in a way that can be destructive, but also in a way that can like enhance eroticism if you can contain it and channel it. And so when you were behaving in sexually compulsive ways, it wasn't just like, oh, I feel terrible about this.

[00:40:48] [SPEAKER_03] You were like, oh, I feel terrible about this. This is so wrong.

[00:40:52] [SPEAKER_02] Well, that's what I – well, that's not so much true from my experience. But when he said I know this is wrong, I really got to this question like is the wrongness of it a turn on for him? Is that part of the excitement? And I think I would just – I have a million questions for him. Like because –

[00:41:08] [SPEAKER_03] I think the wrongness is often a turn on for people and I don't know how quite to handle that because if I just could understand that it's wrong, I would stop. And I think sometimes understanding that part of the turn on for you is that it is wrong. You have to find ways to bring sexual transgression into your life in a safe, consensual way where you are adding the spice rather than the house burning down around you because you're not in control of it.

[00:41:36] [SPEAKER_03] And it's for many people I think the trick because if you say to somebody you're going to have a life without this kind of sort of adrenaline and cortisone and the eroticism of like – Right, right. The transgression against self and expectation. And I think that disincentivizes for some people walking away from sexually destructive behaviors because the pleasure is so great.

[00:42:02] [SPEAKER_03] The reward is so great that they think the risk is worth it until the wife finds out and your life burns down. Yes, until that happens. And then you realize, oh, maybe it wasn't worth it. Right. Benoit Denezet-Lewis, associate professor at Emerson College, contributing writer for New York Times Magazine, and author of the really terrific book, You've Changed, Promise and Price of Self-Transformation. Do not be intimidated by how thick this book is. A hundred pages of index that are optional reading. The breadth of the book is really fascinating.

[00:42:32] [SPEAKER_03] The stuff about Michael Glatz, the ex-gay movement, detransitioners, parolees. The whole book, the breadth of it, and how fascinating the stories and anecdotes are that you use to illustrate these broader concepts and the way you rope in philosophers and history. It was such a thrilling read.

[00:42:51] [SPEAKER_02] I so enjoyed it. I appreciate it. I really appreciate it, Dan. Thank you so much.

[00:42:54] [SPEAKER_03] Thank you for listening. If you're a Magnum sub, thank you for subscribing. If you are not yet a Magnum sub, I hope you'll think about becoming one of my subs. You'll get more Lovecast, more Savage Love, Sex and Politics, After Action Reports, and invites to Savage Love Live, which are exclusively for our Magnum subs. And you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that the tech savvy at-risk youth, thanks to you, had something warm to eat tonight and someplace warm to sleep. All right.

[00:43:18] [SPEAKER_03] We will have another episode of Sex and Politics for you at some point in the indeterminate future, but we will have new episodes of the Lovecast and After Action Report out for you every Tuesday and Friday. Thank you for listening.

[00:43:31] Bye.