Yesterday while Dan Savage one of the creator behind the “It Gets Better Project” was giving a Q&A at the University of Nike’s Ford Alumni Center in Eugene, Oregon for his MTV show Savage U when transactivist who called themselves the Dan Savage Welcoming Committee (DSWM) glitterbombed Savage in the middle of a Q&A.
During this session, a transactivist leapt to the stage and poured glitter over Dan’s head as they shouted, “Dan Savage is a transphobe!” As they turned tail, they added, “Glitterbomb courtesy of the Dan Savage Welcoming Committee,” and just before they got out the door, “He’s a racist and misogynist and a rape-apologist, too!”
This is the first glitterbombing by trans activists as well as the first LGBT-on-LGBT glitterbombing.
As soon as video is available it will be posted. Dan Savage Has Not Yet Commented.
What makes him transphobic (or racist or misogynist or a rape-apologist)?
Jon you should do some actual research and read about how Dan Savage has been frequently
biphobic and transphobic in the past, and still continues to be biphobic and transphobic.
If you want to worship him and pretend that he’s only done good things and has never been
transphobic or biphobic, you’re only revising and ignoring the bad parts about him of which
there are many.
It’s not surprising how the people who worship him are going to defend him and claim that he’s
not bigoted at all, and that he’s not biphobic or transphobic when he is, and the same people
also ignore his racist rant that blamed the passing of Prop 8 in the state of CA on black
voters.
Dan has called women like me “Trannies”, “Chicks with dicks”, and “Shemales” which are all akin
to calling a black person the n-word. He’s called Transmen “Guys with pies” and claimed that a
politician he did not like is FTM when the politician is a cisgender man. He even advised a
Transwoman who has a child living with her and who is just starting to transition to completely
stop transitioning and just wait until the young child is an adult and living away from home!
Dan can shout “It gets better” from the rooftops but when bisexual and trans people see how
he’s biphobic and transphobic and has been all along, it’s nothing but hypocrisy and bullying
from him-and the fact that he still does not believe in bisexual teens or young adults is
hypocritical and troubling.
Bisexual invisibility is not specifically related to the fact that people don’t know any
bisexuals. If Dan had spent more than a couple of minutes looking into what bisexual
invisibility actually refers to, and actually apologized for being biphobic and practicing
bisexual erasure for decades then perhaps I’d be more convinced that he somehow is not
biphobic.
Bi-invisibility refers to disregarding the clear evidence that bisexual people exist, that
bisexuality is a marked orientation that can be lifelong and stable and exists outside the
reputed hetero-/homosexual binary, and that despite misconceptions to the contrary bisexuals do
regularly and fervently contribute to LGBT efforts and to their wider communities.
Dan Savage completely supported the study that claimed that bisexuality does not exist in men
at all. Watch the documentary “Bi the way” where he says this on camera, and yes this is
biphobia and bisexual erasure. It’s just as hypocritical as Conservative politicians and
religious figures who say that men and women can’t be gay or lesbian at all.
Why is Dan so dismissive of bisexuals and bisexual issues?
It sounds like to me that in Dan Savage’s utopia, bisexuals really should be branded with a
Scarlet B so gays and lesbians can avoid us like lepers. Take a look at the advice he gives
this person with a bisexual girlfriend in February 2009.
Questioner: I’m a lesbian, and my girlfriend is bisexual and wants to have a three-way with
a man. This makes me nervous. What should I do?
DAN: Get yourself a refillable Xanax prescription, or get yourself an actual lesbian
girlfriend.
Dan seems to believe in bisexuals in the same way an 8-year-old believes in Santa Claus. That
is, he doesn’t really believe in them but it makes people happy to think he believes, so he
says the words when he’s really highly biphobic.
Case in point, he has said that he identified as bisexual when he was sixteen and it is his
belief that many gays and lesbians do the same only because they are not ready to come out. He
uses this fact as further reasoning that most anyone else claiming to be bisexual before they
are 30 is probably either confused or just a closet case.
In the 2008 documentary, Bi the Way, Dan said “I meet someone who’s 19-years-old who tells me
he’s bisexual and I’m like, ‘Yeah, right, I doubt it. I tell them come back when you’re like 29
and we’ll see.'”
Just recently in 2011 Dan acted all butthurt and blamed those horrible bisexual activists in a
column and then said this: “But I do know that a bi-identified 36-year-old is likelier to be
bisexual than a bi-identified 16-year-old”.
Really? So just based on age you’re more likely to believe someone’s self identified sexual
orientation. What if that 36 year old man identified as gay yesterday and realized he’s
bisexual today? Are you still going to believe him? I don’t care how much you resent having
to allow a teenager or anyone else the right to self identify, but that’s just tough. Get over
it and stop pretending to be the sexual identity gatekeeper.
Dan is also ignoring the fact that many bisexuals either first come out as gay or lesbian, or
do identify as gay or lesbian sometimes for years and decades before realizing that they’re
bisexual.
I don’t care how many gay and lesbian people transitioned through claiming that they’re
bisexual in order to let friends/family/whatever down easy. This does not give you or anyone
else the right to question the professed sexual identities of anyone, especially teenagers. As
the founder of the whole “It Gets Better” project, professing doubt over the identity of a
teenager or even young adult is horrid. Telling someone that you’re not convinced that they
are actually bisexual is biphobic. Just because you and some other people you know may have
used that term to let people down gently before announcing that you were gay, does not mean
that the teenagers of today are doing the same thing. Times change, people change, society
changes. I’d argue that it is far more acceptable for teenagers and young adults today and for
the past 10 years to out themselves as gay or lesbian over bisexual.
Dan has actually advised gay men and lesbian women not to date, get involved in relationships,
or have anything to do with bisexuals.
Meanwhile Dan is a professional victim and acts as though us bisexual and trans activists are
somehow persecuting him when we call him out on his transphobic and biphobia, but he wishes
that we’d remain invisible.
The degree of biphobia I experienced from age 34 – 40 somehow has really left me so hurt and exhausted I am still trying to recover. I am trying hard to recover and not take what has happened personally. I am lucky to have found a woman that loves me. Biphobia hurts deeper than people know. For me a man to have all my opposite sex relationships to be thought of as a denial mainly by gays and my same sex relationships as a gay experiment by straight people means a dismissle of the love I felt. To say I am “gay and in denial dismisses my many relationships including my current one. But this may help people understand.
In 1993 I worked for a gay man. His partner died. His partners family not only refused to acknowledge his partnership with my employer, only one person (a woman) fr that family came up my employer to tell him sorry for his loss. Sick right.
Well I have had gay men completely dismiss my heterosexual relationships as a “phase” or “dating a bitch again”. Or after words tell me I was in denial. Sick right.
Lots of bad things can happen to non existent people.