Damaged Love

The insensitive commentary that "Savage Love"' displays to the sexual needs of heterosexuals, transgenders, intersexes, and in fact everyone who is not a homosexual man has been going on for years. I can add only, first, that as an asexual, I find his insistence that asexuals do not exist particularly galling; and, second, that it is very queer (pun intended) behavior in a sex-advice columnist (and very queer behavior in a self-described queer) to even seem cavalier about the individuality of sexual experience. Isadora Altman, for all her faults (she's rather tame in her language, she's not especially exciting), shows more respect for that individuality, and for her questioners, and for her subject, in a month of columns than "Savage Love" has shown in years.

It puzzles me mightily: I love Dan Savage's books (especially Skipping Towards Gomorrah and The Commitment), and there he shows great respect for sexual individuality, for the complexity of human experience, and for people in general; where does that disappear to when he pens "Savage Love"? And why?

But I have a greater objection to your replacement of "Ask Isadora" with "Savage Love". I don't know what Dan Savage is trying to be in this column. Entertainer? Comedian? Pundit, perhaps a queer version of Bill Maher or Al Franken? I don't mind any of these things (we could use more queer pundits in the world), but whatever he is trying to be, he has clearly made genuine sex advice secondary to that. And that is the problem. In my opinion, Dan Savage needs to either be a sex-advice columnist or stop pretending to be one. Until he makes up his mind, please bring "Ask Isadora" back.

Kim Moon
Hartford

Two Cents

Alan Bisbort's article, "Root of All Evil, [Jan. 20]," was one of the most engaging Advocate articles I've read in quite some time. Mr. Bisbort sheds some interesting artificial light on one of humanity's most majestically contrived cul-de-sacs. [Bisbort makes] lucid sociological and philosophical musings on the absurd nature of money — namely, that "money" largely exists in the ephemeral netherworld of "numbers on a screen" and not in concrete physical reality (remember, banks are allowed to loan 10 times more money than actually exists in their vaults).

Todd Zack
New Haven