The Ethical Slut (5 page)

You could spend your life as a cultural anthropologist trying to describe the innumerable ways that human beings have chosen to be together sexually, romantically, and domestically—from the temple prostitutes of ancient Babylon to Mormon polygyny and far, far beyond. So, rather
than trying to list them all, we just want to note that the prevailing cultural values that twenty-first-century North America inherited from Europe seem to date back to the Roman empire, and to early Christianity, which recommended monogamous marriage only for those who couldn’t manage celibacy, the ideal state. Cultures without those influences have developed all sorts of ways for people to bond—polygyny (many wives), polyandry (many husbands), group marriage, arrangements in which marriage is fundamentally a domestic business relationship and sexual dalliance takes place elsewhere, ritual group sex, and pretty much any other configuration of human hearts and genitals that you can imagine.

History is dotted with experiments in creating intentional sexual utopias, often with a philosophical or religious basis: if you’re curious, read up on the Oneida community of nineteenth-century Ohio; Rajneeshpuram in India from the late 1960s and Oregon in the 1980s; and Kerista in New York, Belize, and San Francisco from the early 1960s through the 1990s … to name just a few. Such communities are usually built by one leader and may falter when the leader is no longer available. However, their philosophies live on, adding new visions and practices to the mainstream culture. Many practitioners of Western tantra today, for example, can trace their practice to the teachings of Osho, the guiding spirit behind Rajneeshpuram.

It’s easy to point to artists and writers who have built their lives around intentional exploration of alternative relationships. If you’re curious about the ways in which alternative relationships played out in times when there was even less support than there is now, you can read up on the Bloomsbury group in early twentieth-century England, and freethinkers like George Sand, H. G. Wells, Simone de Beauvoir, Alfred Kinsey, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. What we can’t know is how many
non
writers were also building the kind of sexually open lives that worked for them, because there are no records of such lives. We feel safe in supposing, though, that a significant minority of people have always gotten their needs met through ethical multipartner living.

Dossie came of age surrounded by the utopian concepts of the 1960s, and Janet shortly afterward; both of us have been influenced greatly in our thinking and our lives by those days of radical exploration. Many ideals of that era—nonconformity, exploration of altered states of consciousness, equality of race and gender, ecological awareness, political activism, openness about sexuality, and, yes, the possibility of ethical and loving nonmonogamy—have permeated the greater culture. We very much doubt that we could have written this book or published it in the 1950s, so if you’re reading and enjoying
The Ethical Slut
today, thank a hippie.

Sluts come in all the various forms and styles that humans come in: men and women in all cultures, from all parts of the world, of all religions and lifestyles, rich and poor, with formal and informal education.

Most of us today live in communities of nonsluts, with only occasional or limited contact with other people who share our values: some groups hold conferences and conventions to mitigate isolation and expand their members’ intimate circles. These conferences are very important in bringing sexual undergrounds into the view of those who are looking for them and building institutions aboveground that can better support their members. Other sluts drop out of mainstream culture to some extent to live in communities composed of people whose sexuality is like their own. San Francisco’s Castro district is a good example of a modern urban “ghetto” for sexual minorities.

A slut living in mainstream, monogamy-centrist culture in the twenty-first century can learn a great deal from studying other cultures, other places, and other times: you’re
not
the only one in the world who has ever tried this, it
can
work, others have done it without harming themselves, their lovers, their kids—without, in fact, doing anything except enjoying themselves and each other.

Pioneering sexual subcultures with extensive documented and undocumented histories include communities of gay men and of lesbian women, transgender groups, bisexuals, the leather communities, the swing communities, and some spiritually defined subcultures of pagans, modern primitives, and Radical Faeries. And that’s just in
the United States. Even if you don’t belong to any of these sexually oriented communities, it’s worth taking a look at them for what they can teach us about our own options as they develop ways of being sexual, ways of communicating about being sexual, and ways of living in social and family structures that are alternative to sex-negative traditions in America.

Dossie’s favorite dance club in 1970 was a remarkable miniculture of polymorphous perversity. She remembers:

Since we see some of the problems in attaining a free and open expression of our own individual sexuality as having to do with living in a sex-role-bound culture, we have found it useful to learn from people who have shifted the boundaries of what it means to be male
or female, or what it means to choose partners of the same or opposite sex. Thinking about different ways of living and loving can help us as we consider whether we want to change anything about how we go about living as men and women, or somewhere in between.

In the lesbian community, we get to look at what happens in a world consisting almost entirely of women. For women, relationship can get confused with their sense of identity, especially since our culture in its most traditional form hardly allows women any sense of identity at all. Thus, many women act as if they would lose their entire sense of themselves without their relationship. The most common relationship sequence, as we see it magnified in the lesbian community, is the form of nonmonogamy known as serial monogamy. Often the connection to the partner of the future precedes the breakup with the partner of the past, with accompanying drama that presumably feels safer than the vast, empty, unknown, and terrifying identity void of being a woman living as a single human being.

Younger lesbians are questioning these traditions, and often that questioning includes looking into nonmonogamy as a way to form less insular relationships. Lesbian polyamory is characterized by a lot of serious thoughtfulness and attention to consensuality, and thus to tremendous openness about processing feelings, an area in which the women’s community excels.

Our lesbian sisters also have a lot to teach us about new ways of developing a woman’s role as sexual initiator. In heterosexual culture, men have been assigned the job of initiator, and men are trained to be sexually aggressive, sometimes to a fault. In the world of women who relate sexually to other women, it rapidly becomes apparent that if we all see ourselves as Sleeping Beauties waiting for Princess Charming to come along and wake us up, we also might get to wait a hundred years. Or else we need to learn to do something new—to meet the eye, touch the shoulder, move in a little closer, or just plain blurt out, “I think you’re really attractive; would you like to talk?”

Women’s style of coming on—when shyness doesn’t get in the way—tends to be forthright, with respect for consent, and is unlikely to be intrusive or pushy, as many women have had a little too much experience
with being violated to want to go down that road. Women have strong concerns about safety and so tend to move slowly and announce their intentions. They may be shy in the seductive stages, and bolder once welcome has been secured. Women tend to want explicit permission for each specific act, so their communication could serve as an excellent role model for negotiated consensuality.

We would like to draw your attention to another illuminating difference about sex between women. A sexual encounter between two women rarely involves the expectation of simultaneous orgasm, as many people believe penis-vagina intercourse should, so women have become experts at taking turns. Lesbians are world-class experts on sensuality and outercourse, those wonderful forms of sexuality that do not rely on penile penetration. When penetration is desired, the focus is on what works for the recipient: we have yet to meet a dildo that got hung up on its own needs.

For those of you, female or male or gay or straight, who haven’t considered these options, think of all the fun you could have with never a worry about pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases!

The gay male community reflects some of the traditional images of male sexuality in intensified form. While some gay men are indeed interested in long-term relationships and settling down, many have set records as world-class sluts. The gay baths are the ultimate role model of friendly group sex environments and easy sexual connection for its own sake.

Dossie learned her group sex etiquette from gay men and is glad she did. We both, in fact, have always identified strongly with gay men: Dossie sees herself as a drag queen trapped in a woman’s body, and Janet calls herself a “girlfag,” a gay man who happens to have breasts and a vagina. This may not really be too surprising, since the gay male community has always modeled sluttery for the rest of us to admire and, perhaps, emulate.

Gay male sex, as a rule, starts from a presumption of equal power, without the dynamic of overpowerment and withholding that often pervades male/female interactions. Thus, men do not generally try to get consent from each other by manipulation and pressuring: connection
is more commonly made by a gentle approach, meeting a gentle response, and no need to ask three times. Gay men give each other a lot of credit for being able to say no, and for meaning it when they say it—this makes coming on very simple, since you are never trying to sneak up on anybody and you are not required to be subtle. It is always okay to ask as long as it is okay for the other person to say no. This straightforward and admirably simple approach to consensuality cannot be recommended too highly.

Men in general have had less reason to fear sexual violation than their sisters. Although it is true, and terrible, that boys do get molested and men do get raped, men seem to have more confidence than women in their power to protect themselves. Men also tend to get a lot of cultural support for being sexual. So although the forbiddenness of homosexuality may give many gay men a lot of questions about being okay, or having something wrong with them, or other forms of internalized homophobia, this is most often not reflected in sexual dysfunction. Gay men as a group are really good at exploring, and finding out, what feels good to them.

And it is gay men who have established most of our understanding of safer sex. In the face of the AIDS epidemic, where many people might have retreated into sex-negativism, the gay community held its ground and continued to create environments where hot, creative, safer sex could be learned and practiced.

Often stigmatized as “gays unwilling to relinquish heterosexual privilege” or “hets taking a walk on the wild side,” bisexuals have recently begun developing their own forceful voice and their own communities.

Looking at the theory and practice of bisexual lifestyles offers opportunities to explore our assumptions about the nature of sexual and romantic attraction and behaviors. Some folks have had sex only with members of one gender, but know that they have within themselves the ability to connect erotically or emotionally with both genders, and thus consider themselves bisexual—while others may be actively having sex with the gender opposite their usual choice, and still consider themselves heterosexual or gay. Some bisexuals prefer one type of interaction with men and another with women, while others
consider themselves gender-blind. Some can be sexual with either sex but romantic with only one, or vice versa. And so on, through all the spectrums of bisexual attractions and choices. Bisexuals challenge a lot of our assumptions about gender, and many bi’s can tell you what is different for them between sex with a woman and sex with a man. This interesting and privileged information can provide all of us with new stories about sex and gender.

The increasing visibility of bisexuality has led to some challenges to traditional definitions of sexual identity. Specifically, we are having to look at the fact that our sexual attractions may say one thing about us, while our sexual behaviors say another, and our sexual identity says yet a third. Questions like these are eating away at some of the traditional boundaries we place around sexual identity, much to the dismay of purists of all orientations. Your authors, sluts that we are, enjoy this kind of fluidity and appreciate the opportunity to play as we like with whoever looks good to us without relinquishing our fundamental sexual identities.