4

SLUT STYLES

Ethical sluthood is a house with a lot of rooms: it shelters everyone from happy celibates to ecstatic orgiasts and beyond. In this chapter, we’ll talk about the many styles of sluthood that have worked for us, for the people we know, and for happy sluts throughout history. Whether or not any of these scenarios fits you, we hope they will offer you some ideas about where to start your exploration or perhaps the validation of knowing that there are others like you out there.

Relationship Pioneers

Although the phrase “ethical slut” is relatively new—Dossie coined it in 1995—the practice is not. Cultural acceptance of practices outside monogamy has roller-coastered up and down from acceptance to stern rejection, but regardless of the opinions of church and state, there have always been those who have found happiness and growth in sexual openness.

ANCIENT CULTURES

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.

UTOPIAN SEXUAL COMMUNITIES

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 (or see the sidebar ); 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 Oshō, the guiding spirit behind Rajneeshpuram.

ARTISTS AND FREETHINKERS

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 these 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 about freethinkers like Vita Sackville-West, Harold Nicholson, George Sand, H. G. Wells, Simone de Beauvoir, Alfred Kinsey, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. What we can’t know is how many nonwriters 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.

THE LOVE GENERATION

Dossie came of age surrounded by the utopian concepts of the 1960s, and Janet did shortly afterward; both of us have been greatly influenced 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 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.

Sluthood Today

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

“We 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.”

Most of us today live in communities of nonsluts, with only occasional or limited contact with other people who share our values: some groups host conferences, meetups, munches , conventions, and parties, all of which can mitigate isolation, facilitate the exchange of information and support, 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 live in communities composed of people whose values are like their own.

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, and others have done it without harming themselves, their lovers, their kids—without, in fact, doing anything except enjoying themselves and each other. If you go online and search for “polyamory” plus the name of your city, you’ll be surprised how much shows up, even if you live in what you thought was a conservative community.

Pioneering sexual subcultures with extensive documented and undocumented histories include communities of gay men and of lesbian women, trans groups, bisexuals, asexuals, the leather communities, the swing communities, and some spiritually defined subcultures of pagans, modern primitives, tantra temples, 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 through the ways they have developed of being sexual, of communicating about being sexual, and of living in social and family structures that are alternatives to sex-negative traditions in America.

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

The Omni, short for “omnisexual,” was a small North Beach bar whose patrons were men and women, straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and often transgender. The sexual values were very open, from hippie free love freaks to sex industry professionals, and most of us came there to dance like wild women and cruise like crazy.

Thanks to the large transgender faction, there was no way of pigeonholing a person into your categories of desire. You might dance with someone you found very attractive and not know if they were chromosomally male or female. It’s difficult to get attached to preferences like lesbian or straight when you don’t know the gender of the person you are flirting with.

The results were surprising: I patronized the Omni because it was the safest environment available to me. Because there was no way to make assumptions, people had to treat each other with respect. And if you were, as I was, a young woman in your twenties, to be approached with respect was a most welcome relief from straight social environments where it was customary for men to prove their manhood by coming on too strong.

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 or with ways of approaching sex that go beyond the genital. 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, women, and/or somewhere in between.

LESBIAN WOMEN

In the lesbian community, we get to look at what happens in a world consisting almost entirely of those who identify as women. For women, relationships can get confused with their sense of identity, especially because our culture in its most tradition-bound form hardly allows women any independent sense of identity at all. Thus, many women, who may have been raised to believe that their identity depends on their partnered status, 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 consent and thus by 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 trained to be sexually aggressive. 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, we might indeed have to wait a hundred years.

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 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 often want explicit permission for each specific act, so their communication could serve as an excellent role model for negotiated consent.

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 partners: we have yet to meet a dildo that got hung up on its own needs. And you get to choose whatever size and shape you want!

GAY MEN

The gay male community reflects some of the traditional images of male sexuality in intensified form. While some gay men are interested in long-term relationships and settling down, others 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.

Gay male sex, as a rule, starts from a presumption of equal power, without the dynamic of overpowering and withholding that often pervades male/female interactions. Thus, men do not generally try to get consent from each other by manipulation and pressuring: a straightforward approach meets an easy 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, because 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 admirably simple approach to consent 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 having other forms of internalized homophobia), this is less often reflected in sexual dysfunction. Gay men as a group are really good at finding out what feels good to them.

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

BISEXUALS/ PANSEXUALS

Often stigmatized as “gays unwilling to relinquish heterosexual privilege” or “hets taking a walk on the wild side,” bisexuals and pansexuals, starting back in the 1970s, have developed their own forceful voice and their own communities.

Some people prefer the term pansexual to bisexual because they’re uncomfortable with the etymology of “bisexual,” with its implication of only two genders. We like bi activist Robin Ochs’s definition: “I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted—romantically and/or sexually—to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.” Use whichever term you feel more comfortable with, but be prepared to hear from others who have made different choices than yours.

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 more than one gender and thus consider themselves bisexual. Others may be actively having sex with someone of a gender that is not their usual choice and still consider themselves heterosexual or gay. Some bisexuals prefer different types of interaction with different genders, while others consider themselves gender-blind. Some can be sexual with any gender but romantic with only one, or vice versa, and so on, throughout the universe of bisexual attractions and choices. Bisexuals challenge a lot of our assumptions about gender, and many bisexuals can tell you what is different for them between sex and relationships with one gender and with another. 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 gender 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 sense of who we are.

Janet’s path toward her current identity as a bisexual has been a confusing one: it was nearly a decade after she began having sex with women before she started to feel comfortable using the term to describe herself:

I felt turned off by the trendiness of “bisexual chic.” And at the same time, I was hearing some genuinely cruel and ignorant judgments from both heterosexuals and homosexuals about bi’s.

As a result, it wasn’t until I knew for sure that I was capable of having both sexual and romantic feelings for both men and women—and until I felt strong enough to claim the identity in the face of all those negative judgments—that I finally began calling myself “bisexual.”

I look back on my life now and see that I’ve generally expressed my domestic urges toward men but that my romantic and sexual feelings are about equally likely to be inspired by a man, a woman, or someone in between. The bisexual community also offers more support than either straight-land or gay-land for my rather ambiguous gender presentation: some days I like to wear red lipstick and jewelry and other days men’s trousers and oxfords. So “bisexual” is the identity that fits me best and where I intend to stay.

HETEROSEXUALS

In bygone decades, there were few role models for heterosexual interaction in mainstream culture: an Ozzie and Harriet household, monogamous, patriarchal, and focused on conformity and childrearing, was presented to us all as our sexual and romantic ideal. Your authors are very glad to have outlived this era.

Modern heterosexuality offers a plethora of options for happy sluthood, from long-term “vee” triads, where two partners are both sexual with one “hub” partner but not with each other, to orgiastic recreational sex—with lots of possibilities in between, including open relationships, triads and quads, poly pods, and intimate extended families we sometimes call polycules or constellations . (Janet implores you, by the way, not to assume that any couple that appears to be a man and a woman is in fact a heterosexual couple. One or both of them may be bisexual, trans, or queer in any number of other ways. As always, if you wanna know, you gotta ask.)

There has been a major change in the culture since the last edition of this book: now people of all genders can marry the person they love and raise a family together if that’s what they want. What this means is that many people are now looking to the accumulated wisdom of heterosexual sluts to figure out how to reconcile their parenting obligations with their goals for their sexuality and relationships.

It’s also worth noting that heterosexuals are perhaps subject to even more gender-role-based pressure than the rest of us. So those hetero folk who somehow manage to break through those confining roles—who have succeeded in building lives in which the man stays at home with the kids while the woman is the breadwinner, or the woman cuts her hair short and stomps around in heavy-soled boots while the man struts his stuff in colorful silks and velvets, or who have formed ranks to protect kids whose gender presentation is atypical but who still need to function in an otherwise conventional life—have much wisdom to share.

TRANS AND GENDERQUEER FOLKS

Trans and genderqueer people form a variety of communities, all of which have much to teach to those who are interested in transcending their gender-role programming. Dossie, in the early years of her feminism, found friends and lovers among trans women who became her wonderful role models for how to be female, indeed often ultra-feminine, and still be assertive and powerful.

What we can all learn from our trans friends is that gender is malleable. From people who take hormones to express male or female gender, we learn about how some behaviors and emotional states may be hormone-related. People who have lived parts of their lives in different gender modes, physiologically and culturally, have a great deal to teach us about what changes according to hormones and what does not, and what gender characteristics remain a matter of choice no matter what your endocrine system says. Genderqueer and nonbinary people—those who choose to live their lives somewhere between the usual gender roles—are softening the boundaries of gender and demonstrating what life without binary gender might look like.

“What we can all learn from our trans friends is that gender is malleable.”

If you think this doesn’t apply to you, that you are certain of your gender and that it’s immutable, please consider that a great many people are born with characteristics of both genders: depending on whose definition you use, anywhere from two to seventeen babies out of a thousand are born with chromosomes and/or genitalia that place them somewhere between the extremes of the gender continuum. These conditions are collectively called intersex . Intersex support organizations have arisen with the goals of preventing surgeries on infants to make sure they conform to some gender or other, condemning them to a long series of surgeries and hormone treatments. It appears that Mother (Father?) Nature doesn’t believe in only two genders and neither do your authors.

Moreover, a great many people whose genitals and chromosomes are all lined up with biological norms nonetheless feel strongly that they would live more happily and appropriately when presenting as a different gender than the one the doctor assigned to them at birth; you may have such people among your friends and family without knowing it, unless they choose to tell you.

Trans folks can tell us a lot about how differently other people treat you when they see you as a man or as a woman. Perforce, they become experts at living in a very hostile world. It takes a strong-minded person to stand up to our culture’s rigidity about “real men” and “real women.” No other sexual minority is more likely to suffer direct physical oppression in the form of queer-bashing. It was mostly genderqueer people—butch women and drag queens—who rebelled against police brutality in the famous Stonewall riots of 1969 that initiated the gay liberation movement.

Since our last edition, there has been a lot of media coverage of transgender people and enormous progress in acceptance of gender variance. Important transgender legal rights are increasingly considered human rights. With the support of mainstream pediatricians, in many places, children are allowed to attend school in the gender they feel themselves to be. Famous people may transition publicly, and a rich library of films and television shows are presenting fascinating stories about lives that transcend gender. Trans people can teach us a lot about the determination to be free.

TANTRA AND SPIRITUAL SEX PRACTITIONERS

Celibacy is not the only sexual practice of the spiritually inclined. Early examples of religious communities based on nonmonogamy included the Mormon Church, the Oneida community (see sidebar ), the practices of maithuna in tantric yoga, and the temple whores of the early Mediterranean goddess worshipers. Tantra as we know it today is actually a Westernized form of classical tantric practice, which uses breath, eye contact, and physical movement to attain altered states of high erotic consciousness; it is taught in workshops in most major cities and in many excellent books and videos. Other classical spiritual/sexual traditions have been updated for Western consumption in practices like Healing Tao and Quodoushka. Pagans and Radical Faeries come together for festivals and gatherings to celebrate ancient sexual rites such as Beltane, or to make up their own rituals that are appropriate to current lifestyles, like the open sexuality of Faerie gatherings or the more subtle eroticism of sacred dance and drumming.

These practitioners understand that sex is connected to the spiritual. As we said in The New Bottoming Book , “Every orgasm is a spiritual experience. Think of a moment of perfect wholeness, of yourself in perfect unity, of expanded awareness that transcends the split between mind and body and integrates all the parts of you in ecstatic consciousness….When you bring spiritual awareness to your sexual practice, you can become directly conscious of—connected to—that divinity that always flows through you….For us, sex is already an opportunity to see God.”

KINK, LEATHER, AND BDSM

Many cultural anthropologists believe that contemporary leather culture got its start in the wake of World War II, brought home by soldiers who came back from war with a taste for power and authority exerted by and for men. We note, however, that many forms of kinky play predate this phenomenon by centuries or even millennia: the Greek philosopher Aristotle is known to have enjoyed being ridden like a pony by his female acquaintances, and sexual bondage is the subject of Japanese art dating back to the seventeenth century.

Today’s kinksters offer tremendous knowledge of how eroticism can be awakened with or without going for the genital, as well as ways to play with the outward appearance of inequality while staying well within the boundaries of negotiated consent. Polyamory and open relationships are very common in most kink communities, as the chances are slim of finding one partner who is open to all your fantasies and whose company you can tolerate on an ongoing basis. Both of your authors learned many of their sexual values and behaviors within the kink/leather/BDSM communities.

SEX WORKERS

Despite what you might have learned from the TV or the tabloids, sex workers really are not all desperate drug addicts, debased victims, or predatory gold diggers. Many healthy and happy people work in the sex industry, doing essential and positive work healing the wounds inflicted by our sex-negative culture. We know them as friends, lovers, colleagues, writers, therapists, and educators, as well as performers and artists. These folks have a great deal to teach us about boundaries, limit setting, communication, sexual negotiation, and ways to achieve growth, connection, and fulfillment outside a traditional monogamous relationship.

Sex workers may be people who exchange genital sex for money, but professional dominants, porn performers, erotic dancers, phone sex and webcam providers, sacred intimates, sexual surrogates, and many other erotic professionals are also considered sex workers. Do not imagine that connections between sex workers and clients are necessarily cold, impersonal, or degrading, or that only losers frequent these businesses. Many client/sex worker relationships become a source of tremendous connection, warmth, and affection for both parties and last many years.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY

While we are looking at sexual diversity, let’s remember that we live in a multicultural society and that every culture in our world, every subculture, every ethnic culture, has its own ways of creating relationship, connecting in sex, and building families. All are valid and valuable.

One of the great joys of living as a slut is the opportunity to make intimate connections with people whose background is unlike your own. When you do that, you will find yourself tripping, with some embarrassment, over a lot of differences. This process can feel awkward, but every time it happens, you’ve learned something new about how people go about being human—perhaps just the thing that was lacking in your own culture.

It’s also worth remembering that many people, particularly those whose differences are visible, feel safest in the communities they grew up in and may be taking considerable risk by coming into a less diverse sexual environment. If becoming an out-of-the-closet slut would shock your community of origin, you might wind up sacrificing the safety and acceptance of home to join a community where most people don’t look like you.

Boundaries in communication, connection, and relationship vary from culture to culture. Personal distance differs enormously—they say you can recognize the European Americans at a Latin American cocktail party; they’re the ones who are backing away from everyone who wants to talk to them because the Latin Americans keep stepping too close. Volume varies too: some cultures value being subdued and quiet, while others are dramatically expressive and, well, loud.

We recommend that you look for these differences and question your judgments. Is that person who seems too loud actually able to be more expressive than you? Does that quiet person notice more? What’s the intelligence of a person who hasn’t read a lot of books but understands how your car or your computer works? Who are these friendly people who make sexual propositions openly and enthusiastically and get really confused when you accuse them of coming on too strong? Maybe they’re counting on you to say no if you don’t want to. Maybe they have some ways of making connection that you could learn from.

“We recommend that when you are in the company of the unfamiliar, you look for unfamiliar wisdom.”

It is tragic that so many of our sexual communities fail to welcome people from the whole world of cultures, races, genders, orientations, and sexualities. Those of us who grew up in a European-descended culture too often expect our friends to deal with cultural differences by conforming to us. When you look at the people around you and dismiss them—or, worse yet, assume you know all there is to know about them—because of their skin color, gender, orientation, way of speaking, mode of dress, religion, or country of origin, you’ll never get to hear any of the new and fascinating things those people might have to say.

We recommend that when you are in the company of the unfamiliar, you look for unfamiliar wisdom. You’ll find lots of it, and it will make you richer.

What Can You Learn?

If thinking about all this makes you kind of nervous, what you are experiencing is how threatening it feels when the customary boundaries you take for granted, and believe apply to all social and sexual situations, may no longer apply in some environs. There are no universally accepted boundaries of gender or attraction among consenting adults, and the limits of sexual exploration are not handed down on stone tablets by some higher authority.

When you look at people who meet your standards of happiness and success without buying into the world’s standards of lifetime heterosexual monogamous pair-bonding, you begin to see how such things can be possible for you, too—even if these people aren’t doing it the same way you want to. Recognizing other sexual cultures offers an opportunity to become aware of your own preconceptions and uncertainties.

Listen to your fears: they have a lot to teach you about yourself. Not knowing what’s what can feel scary—but think of it as a chance to scrap all your preconceptions and start from scratch. It’s only by recognizing all the possibilities out there that you can choose the ones that work for you. Then you can be free to figure out where you want the boundaries in your life, what your personal limits are, and whether you ever want to expand those limits. Accomplishing this amazing task will set you free to explore beyond your wildest dreams.

“Listen to your fears: they have a lot to teach you about yourself.”

Black and Poly

Here are some thoughts about poly and the way it plays out in Black communities—from our friends Ron and Lisa Young, cofounders of the international support group Black & Poly (blackandpoly.org ), who have graciously allowed us to use this excerpt from their upcoming book, Love: A Black Love Revolution .

“Many of us are not just looking for that ‘extra someone’ for casual sex and occasional affection; we may see the freedom and openness of poly as key to our survival. For many people of color, though, surface-level connection is easy, yet complex bonding and romantic love is a motherfucker. Here’s why.

“Imagine trying to love someone when everything around you is set up to systematically pull you apart. For Blacks, first there was slavery, then Jim Crow, then the welfare system, and now mass incarceration—we haven’t had time to concentrate on love. We haven’t had time to comfortably settle into each other. Sure, we have love, family, and community within our homes, but moving those feelings out into the world can be a very big problem.

“We’ve been taught that in order to get by in this world, we need to be strong…but that doesn’t work in terms of dealing with each other. Our culture has asked us to maintain strong boundaries that protect us from harm: from being broken down, taken advantage of, robbed of basic human necessities, and stripped of our dignity. This fear often leads us to reject anything that places us in vulnerable positions, redirecting our attention away from the fact that only through vulnerability can we find true strength, growth, beauty, and most of all love.

“As Blacks, we were sent here as objects. Through polyamory, we receive the unique and joyous opportunity to define ourselves. We don’t want to be your ‘Mandingo Warriors’ or ‘Nubian Princesses,’ or just to attend your play parties. We want to be respected as equals when it comes to building something real, polyamorous, and tangible. We see the love that is abundant within the community, and sometimes we feel that love reaching out to include us.

“But there’s a still a huge divide between us and the white poly communities. How will we bridge the gap?”