7.3.12

Hi, Dan Savage

Dear Dan,

I've been an admirer of yours since I discovered that the AV Club carried your column, back, let's say, early aughts. I was younger and more of a newbie into what I desired back then, and while I was titillated by the questions you answered, I equally appreciated the safe and sane and OPEN answers you gave to so many questions.

I bought your books. I recommended them to others, in the hope that more people would recognize what I saw in you, that there is value to every person, despite his kink, her desire, their compatibility. You opened my eyes and I wanted all eyes open.

(Can you imagine the conversations I had to have with my Reagan-era-Republican mother about gay marriage and adoption - you probably can - and more recently, the long conversations I've had to have with an aunt who truly didn't understand why straight men find two women kissing hot?) I carried you on my sword and your published resources as a guide, and I tried to listen, be open, and in turn, perhaps ask others to consider a more forgiving existence.

But I saw you introduce Hump in 2010, and things started to change. I heard your jokes about waist/body size. And now I see the cracks in your armor a bit more, as evidenced by this. I know that it's easier to make fun of the rounder people. It's an obvious flaw, out in the open, causing everyone else to move just a bit more aside for the benefit of another. It's a sigh, a look, a comment - hell, it's the energy on which YouTube feeds itself!

Has it occurred to you, though, that maybe, just maybe (and this is my theory) that excess weight is pain carried on the outside? I would certainly think so, as I think you to be an intelligent, well-read man. So would you read a little more, please, for people who hurt in ways that don't yet have words, for those trying to reform but for whom the gaping maw still hungers? Would you consider that maybe the fat joke is the equivalent joke to slurs from the past?

Maybe just consider that being overweight isn't a character flaw. Y'know, like finding your own path isn't.

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