Click here to see an interview with Dan Savage and footage from the event.
Ever wondered what a cock ring does, how common armpit fetishes are or what to do if you are “afraid of dick?”
Acclaimed sex columnist Dan Savage explained it all to a packed Grand Ballroom in Stamp Student Union last night, during which the author of an internationally syndicated advice column, “Savage Love,” answered questions from sexually curious students.
Throughout the night, Savage’s blunt and often graphic explanations left students laughing, whispering and groaning – the reaction, he said, he not only expects but aims for.
“For everyone who thinks I have come to this campus to violate your young minds, I promise, I have no such agenda,” Savage said. “Often, when you talk to young people about sex, it’s a diversionary tactic. Because we’re just going to talk about things that gross you out – like how your dad probably ate your mom’s pussy.”
Savage, who has been writing sex advise columns for as long as some audience members have been alive – about 18 years – said despite his often explicit responses, he is very conventional and private when it comes to his own sex life.
“I’m a very sexually repressed person,” he said in an interview before the event. “I’m not one of those people who sit down at the dining room table and talk about rimming. But people think I do. My fans, who are a particularly boundaryless group, will come up and ask me questions sometimes, and I just don’t want to have a conversation in an airport bathroom with you about your sex life.”
Despite being seen as an expert on both straight and LGBT relationships, sex and fetishes, Savage admitted that starting out, he had no writing experience and limited sexual knowledge.
“I had to learn things that, as an adult gay man, I’d never had to know,” Savage said. “Like where the clitoris is.”
But today, he said, people can look up definitions and locations on the Internet. Therefore, he is sought out, not for definitions but rather to provide more “situational” advice to his readers.
And situational advice is exactly what students came to hear at the Student Entertainment Events lecture.
“Some sex advice would be great,” junior journalism major Lauren White said. “But, you know, not that I need it.”
Students were invited to anonymously fill out blank index cards with questions for Savage as they entered the Grand Ballroom, or to be brave and ask for advice in front of the crowd – a risk Savage encouraged by promising a bag of chips to everyone who was willing to stand up and ask him a question.
“When you’re young, you should f— a lot and eat lots of chips,” Savage said to the audience while waving small bags of chips in the air. “Because one day you’re going to have to pick: f—ing or chips. But for now, you can have both.”
Audience questions varied from those about coming out to family and friends, to questions about Savage’s boyfriend or 10-year-old son, to taboo sex practices and the use of sex toys like cock rings and butt plugs – which, Savage said, men should not be afraid to try.
One student, who submitted a question on an index card, asked Savage what the policy should be regarding “friending someone on Facebook after they’ve already splooged all over you.”
“Always err on the side of being nice to the people [you’ve] had sex with,” he said.
Besides sex, Savage also talked about relationships, a particularly hot topic with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, students said.
“Monogamy is normal, but it’s not natural,” Savage said. “Everyone tells you that being in love means you don’t want to have sex with other people. That’s just not true. You will always have the desire to f— other people, but being in love means you don’t.”
SEE, who co-sponsored the event with The Campus Coalition for Sexual Literacy, Tau Epsilon Phi Fraternity and the Pride Alliance, hailed the event as a “big success.”
“I learned a little more than I originally wanted to,” SEE Lecture Director Carly Rubel said, laughing. “But he’s an awesome sex columnist and this was such a great event.”
Students expressed similar thoughts. After the talk was finished, a line stretching nearly all the way across the Grand Ballroom formed with students clutching copies of Savage’s books or columns for him to sign.
Savage said he enjoys lecturing college students because he gets them talking about sex, a topic he said everyone should discuss.
Ultimately, his advice for students is simple:
“Find people who dig what you dig and just do it!” Savage said. “Enjoy it, you’re in the thrall of your sexual prime.”
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