Dan Savage zeros in on Trump's misogyny: 'If gay was a choice' -- Trump would choose sex with men

Dan Savage took a deep dive into the psyche of misogynist Donald Trump and wondered whether he hated female sexuality so much that he would choose sex with men, if homosexuality were a choice.

The sex advice columnist appeared on Slate's "The Gist" podcast with Mike Pesca, where they discussed Trump's views on women and LGBT people, and Savage revealed a theory he has about the Republican presidential nominee.

Listen to "The Gist" podcast here

"I've never really said this out loud before, so forgive me if I say this in an inarticulate way, but I've encountered over my life straight guys who hated women so much that you could almost sense that if gay was a choice, they would make it," Savage said.

These misogynist men hate the power female sexuality holds over them, Savage said.

"They're condemned to sit with both their hatred and disgust with women and their fear of women's bodies and their insecurity and their need for them, their desire for them, because they are who they are sexually attracted to, and the cognitive dissonance that can produce -- you see those guys who are much more comfortable in the company of men, but they need this thing," Savage said. "They need this woman, and they need her as an object, they can't see her as a human being, or see them as human beings."

Savage said he's known gay men who remind him of woman-hating Trump.

"Is Trump gay? I don't think Trump is gay, but Trump would be a messy, misogynistic gay man if he were a gay man," Savage said. "He might be happier, because then he wouldn't have to interact with women at all, ever."

Savage wondered whether Trump was projecting his own self-hatred onto women, like some self-hating gay men do to other homosexual men.

"We talk about internalized homophobia, maybe internalized heterophobia is also a thing," Savage said. "Guys with internalized homophobia, they don't just hate themselves. They hate other gay men. I imagine straight guys with internalized heterophobia don't just hate themselves or how weak they feel when they're interacting with women they're attracted to, but they hate those women, too."

Savage is horrified -- but not at all surprised -- that conservative voters backed Trump after Republican leaders had injected "insanity and the irrationality" into the electorate like a poison.

"For 25 years, I've sort of been working on talking straight guys off ledges around feelings of entitlement, around feelings of rage and anger about women, walking them back from that -- lots of them -- and then to have this monster flounce onto the stage and then consume, really, the last few weeks of the presidential campaign with this sexist, sex assault-y, horrifying, rage-y, insecure garbage, is just flabbergasting," Savage said.

But he's most horrified that Trump's boasts about grabbing women by the genitals against their will had now become an apparent part of the Republican Party platform.

"I'm more concerned, that like climate change, assault is now a partisan issue, and that's going to play out for 30 years," Savage said. "You've got the Giulianis and the Gingriches from their moral high grounds defending this. You've got rank-and-file Republican knuckle-draggers -- including Republican women -- defending this."