WHO IS AN ETHICAL SLUT? Many people dream of having an abundance of love and
sex and friendship. Some believe that such a life is impossible and settle for less than they want, feeling always a little lonely, a little frustrated. Others try to achieve their dream but are thwarted by outside social pressures or by their own emotions, and decide that such dreams must stay in the realm of fantasy. A few, though, persist and discover that being openly loving, intimate, and sexual with many people is not only possible but can be more rewarding than they ever imagined.
People have been succeeding at free love for many centuries—often quietly, without much fanfare. In this book, we will share the techniques, the skills, and the ideals that have made it work for them.
So who is an ethical
slut? We are. Many, many others are. Maybe you are too. If you dream of freedom, if you dream of intimacy both hot and profound, if you dream of an abundance of friends and flirtation and affection, of following your desires and seeing where they take you, then you’ve already taken the first step.
Why We Chose This Title
From the moment you saw or heard about this book, you probably guessed that some of the terms may not have the meanings you’re accustomed to.
What kind of people would revel in calling themselves sluts? And why would they insist on being recognized for their ethics?
In most of the world,
slut is a highly offensive term used to describe a woman whose sexuality is voracious, indiscriminate, and shameful. It’s interesting to note that the analogous words
stud or
player, used to describe a highly sexual man, are often terms of approval and envy. If you ask about a man’s morals, you will probably hear about his honesty, loyalty, integrity, and high principles. When you ask about a woman’s morals, you are more likely to hear about whom she shares sex with and under what conditions. We have a problem with this.
So we are proud to
reclaim the word
slut as a term of approval, even endearment. To us, a slut is a person of any
gender who celebrates sexuality according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you. Sluts may choose to have no sex at all or to get cozy with the Fifth Fleet. They may be heterosexual, homosexual,
asexual, or bisexual, radical activists or peaceful suburbanites.
As proud sluts, we believe that sex and sexual love are fundamental forces for good, activities with the potential to strengthen intimate bonds, enhance lives, open spiritual awareness, even change the world. Furthermore, we believe that every consensual intimate relationship has these potentials and that any erotic pathway, consciously chosen and mindfully followed, can be a positive, creative force in the lives of individuals and their communities.
Sluts share their sexuality the way philanthropists share their money: because they have a lot of it to share, because it makes them happy to share it, because sharing makes the world a better place. Sluts often find that the more love and sex they give away, the more they have: a loaves-and-fishes miracle in which greed and generosity go hand in hand to provide more for everybody. Imagine living in sexual abundance!
About You Maybe you dream of maintaining several long-term sexual and intimate relationships. Maybe your dream is of a lot of friendships that may or may not include sex. Maybe the idea of genital sex holds no interest for you but you still want to form a warm, loving partnership ... or two or three. Maybe you want monogamy but a kind of monogamy that you and your partner have created according to your own desires and not the blueprint handed down by the greater culture. Maybe you want to be single, connecting where and how you want without changing your fundamental independence. Maybe you want to be part of a couple that occasionally shares a bed with a mutually desirable third party or that takes a planned night away from monogamy every now and then. Maybe you dream of three-way or four-way or orgiastic connections. Maybe you cherish solitude and want to find ways to get your needs met all by yourself with the occasional help of a friend or lover.
Or maybe you want to explore different paths, to try a few things to see how they feel, to see how many kinds of relating you can fit into your busy and interesting life.
All these possibilities and a hundred more are legitimate ways of being an ethical slut. As you read this book, you’ll find that some of our ideas will be good fits for the way you want to live and others will not. Take what you want and leave the rest. As long as you and the people you care about are consenting, growing, and taking good care of yourselves and the people around you, you’re doing ethical sluthood right, so don’t let someone else’s opinions—including ours—tell you otherwise.
About Us Between us, we represent a fairly large slice of the pie that is sexual diversity.
Dossie is a therapist in private practice in San Francisco, specializing in alternative sexualities, nontraditional relationships, and therapy for trauma survivors. She has identified as queer for more than thirty years, informed by the women’s and the gay men’s communities and by her years of bisexuality before that. She committed to an open sexual lifestyle in 1969 when her daughter was a newborn and taught her first workshop on unlearning jealousy in 1973. She has spent about half of her adult life living single, sort of, with families of housemates, lovers, and other intimates. She makes her home in the mountains north of San Francisco.
Many of you may remember Janet from the first edition of this book as Catherine A. Liszt, a pen name she used back when her sons were still minors. Now that they’re grown and independent, she has gone back to using her real name. Janet lived as a teenaged slut in college but then essayed traditional monogamy in a heterosexual marriage for more than a decade. Since the end of that marriage, she has not considered monogamy an option for her. While most people would call her bisexual, she thinks of herself as gender-bent and can’t quite figure out how sexual
orientation is supposed to work when you’re sometimes male and sometimes female. She’s married to a bio-guy whose gender is as flexible as hers, which is less complicated than it sounds. She makes her living as a writer, publisher, and teacher, and lives in Eugene, Oregon.
Together, we have been lovers, dear friends, coauthors, and coconspirators for a quarter century, in and out of various other relationships, homes, and projects. We are both parents of grown children, both active in the
BDSM/leather/kink communities, and both creative writers. We think we’re a great example of what can happen if you don’t try to force all your relationships into the monogamous ’til-death-do-us-part model.
Copyright © 2017 by Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
