Quote:
Originally Posted by PresentTense Pirate Penske
On the second, I don't think he has any particular clinical background that gives his advice, gay or straight, any special validity. He is a good writer, informed on current events, and depending on your tastes for humour, npi, nttawwt, witty.
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Agree, with the added observation that he was the first alt-weekly syndicated columnist who took the position that everybody has a basic moral duty to sexually satisfy the people they profess to love. It's a more mainstream view now, but imagine Ann Landers saying that if your partner said "Hon, I really need you to tie me up and spank me for me to get off" you have to make a real effort to learn to love it -- which is more practical advice than "You need to go to couples therapy -- if he won't go, go yourself" which is what Landers and Abby and their ilk always said when they didn't have an answer. I think the fact that he personally regularly has a kind of sex that forty years ago was understood to be a perversion meant that he was more than just a witty gay who gave advice -- he started from the twin assumptions that everybody needs to get off, and nobody really chooses what gets them off. In that sense, he's a cultural pioneer. I think a lot of people found his column and are now either less alone or less squicked out by the thought of helping someone get off in a way their mother hadn't exactly told them about.
The only time I've disagreed with him was when he said straights had a moral duty not to marry until marriage laws were reformed. I think everyone who followed that advice -- thankfully, no one -- would have put marriage "defenders" in a much better position and would have cut the centrists out of the marriage equality movement, making it the exclusive province of the citified horn-rimmed glasses set.
