Main Menu
Resources
Projects
© Intersex Initiative
Unless otherwise indicated, you may copy, reprint, distribute, and even modify contents of this web site under the Creative Commons license.
Controversial sex advice columnist Dan Savage responds to an intersex reader's letter in this week's Savage Love. The reader is "a twentysomething legal female" who feels like a bisexual man in a woman's body, who found out recently that he had been born intersexed and was operated on to be raised as a girl. He feels fine about being intersex, but he is frustrated that gay and bisexual men view him as female--hence the letter to the advice columnist. Before answering the question about how to approach gay and bisexual men, Savage gives a three-paragraph Introduction To Intersex speech in case any reader is not aware of what it is. Citing the positions posted on the website of Intersex Society of North America (some of which was written by Intersex Initiative director Emi while she was an intern at ISNA), Savage writes: "ISNA's absolutely right. I agree 100 percent. You go, girls. And boys."
The rest of his response, however, were classic Dan Savage: depicting trans (and now intersex) people as unreasonable and easily offended, insisting that "most gay men want to be with other men, not with trannies, bois, the intersexed, or legal women who can pass for bi males," and telling the reader that gay and bisexual men are unlikely to find him attractive. Hmmm, you mean bisexual men are only attracted to people who have standard male body? He is, of course, merely expressing his own sexual preference--must have a non-surgical penis--and applying it not just to all gay men, but also to bisexual men. It's somewhat understandable, although not right or correct or anything, that he, a gay man, would generalize his preference to other gay men; but where did he get the idea that he and bisexual men like the same thing? Sure, some bisexual men might find the reader attractive "as a woman" and that would not be a good relationship for him to be in; but many bisexual people identify as bisexual because what matters to them is the personality, not the shape of their genitalia.
Savage's final advice for the reader is to go to a place like San Francisco, where "FTMs (female-to-male transsexuals), the intersexed, and the men who love them are more vocal and visible." In other words, he is admitting that the problem is not that gay and bisexual men simply don't like them; the problem is the lack of voice and visibility in most part of the country. Skip closed-minded gay men like Savage (and here, I'm not blaming him for not being turned on by something that doesn't turn him on; I'm blaming him for making unwarranted generalizations that deny the existence of people who are different from him); we should make some noise to increase our voices and visibility everywhere so that more people will respect who we are and stop being afraid of our queer bodies.
Posted by Emi on Apr 13, 2004