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Notities

Dit is een goed geschreven en kritisch boek - in 2017 verscheen de derde editie - over andere relatievormen dan de bekende 'exclusieve relatie'. Easton en Hardy hebben alle mogelijke ervaringen op seksueel en relationeel gebied en schrijven / adviseren erover. Ze zijn tegenstander van monogamie, ook al leven ze wel met een partner.

Het boek bestrijdt alle mogelijke vooroordelen over exclusieve en nonexclusieve relaties, natuurlijk vooral over de laatste. Het boek geeft tips voor het aanpakken van allerlei bijkomende emoties in vrije relaties (zoals jaloezie, ruzie, etc.) en is op allerlei manieren een goede steun in de rug voor iedereen die niet gelooft in exclusieve relaties.

Het enige bezwaar dat ik er wel eens bij voel is dit: het in de praktijk brengen van polyamorie is bepaald niet gemakkelijk, omdat je het nodige zelfvertrouwen moet hebben en je communicatieve vaardigheden op orde hebben, en wie is in die gelukkige positie? Van de andere kant: is dat wel zo anders bij monogame / exclusieve relaties? Want ook daar gaat het vaak fout omdat betrokkenen geen zelfvertrouwen hebben en er niet in slagen om met elkaar te communiceren.

Voorkant Easton-Hardy 'The ethical slut - A practical guide to polyamory, open relationships, and other adventure' Dossie EASTON / Janet W. HARDY
The ethical slut - A practical guide to polyamory, open relationships, and other adventure
Berkeley: Celestial Arts, 2017/3, 2009/2, 1997/1, ; 296 blzn.; ISBN-13: 978 15 8761 3371

(8) Part One - Welcome

(9) Chapter One - 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, the ideals that have made it work for them." [mijn nadruk] (9)

Maar waarom gebruiken de auteurs de term 'ethical slut'?

[Vertaal je dat als 'morele slet' of als 'ethische slet'?]

"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 word 'stud', used to describe a highly sexual man, is often a term of approval and envy. (...) 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 solo sex or to get cozy with the Fifth Fleet. They may be heterosexual, homosexual, 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 sexual 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." [mijn nadruk] (9-10)

"The world generally views sluts as debased, degraded, promiscuous, indiscriminate, jaded, immoral adventurers — destructive, out of control, and driven by some form of psychopathology that prevents them from entering into a healthy monogamous relationship. Oh, yes — and definitely not ethical.
We see ourselves as people who are committed to finding a place of sanity with sex and relationships, and to freeing ourselves to enjoy sex and sexual love in as many ways as may fit for each of us. We may not always know what fits without trying it on, so we tend to be curious and adventurous."(10-11)

"The word 'adventurer' is sometimes used pejoratively, suggesting that the adventurous person is immature or inauthentic, not really willing to 'grow up' and 'settle down' into a presumably monogamous lifestyle. We wonder: what’s wrong with having adventures? Can’t we have adventures and still raise children, buy houses, and do the work that’s important to us? Of course we can; sluts qualify for mortgages just like everybody else."(11)

Taal vormt een groot probleem wanneer je over seks schrijft, omdat zo veel woorden een negatieve gevoelswaarde hebben gekregen. Hier wordt positief gebruik gemaakt van woorden als 'fuck', 'cock', cunt' naar hun oorspronkelijke betekenis. Een ander probleem is dat woorden als 'niet-monogaam' of 'buitenechtelijk' zeggen wat ze niet zijn, dat ze afwijken van wat mensen als 'normaal' zien (namelijk exclusieve en monogame relaties). Op die manier worden impliciete waardeoordelen gegeven. Daarom is het goed dat het woord 'polyamorie' in de wereld is gekomen: een positief en eigenstandig woord voor het liefhebben van meer mensen.

(14) Chapter Two - Myths and realities

"Those who set off down the path of exploring new kinds of relationships and new lifestyles often find themselves blocked by beliefs — about the way society should be, the way relationships should be, the way people should be — that are both deeply rooted and unexamined.
We have all been taught that one way of relating — lifelong monogamous heterosexual marriage — is the only right way. We are told that monogamy is 'normal' and 'natural'; if our desires do not fit into that constraint, we are morally deficient, psychologically disturbed, and going against nature. Many of us feel instinctively that something is wrong with this picture. But how can you dig up and examine a belief that you don’t even know you hold? The ideal of lifelong monogamy as the only proper goal for relationships is so deeply buried in our culture that it’s almost invisible: we operate on these beliefs without even knowing we believe them. They’re under our feet all the time, the foundation for our assumptions, our values, our desires, our myths, our expectations. We don’t notice them until we trip over them. Where did these beliefs get started? Often, they evolved to meet conditions that no longer exist." [mijn nadruk] (14)

"Curiously, controlling sexual behavior didn’t seem to be that important outside the propertied classes until the Industrial Revolution, which launched a whole new era of sex-negativity, perhaps because of the rising middle class and the limited space for children in urban cultures. Doctors and ministers in the late eighteenth century began to claim that masturbation was unhealthy and sinful, that this most innocent of sexual outlets was dangerous to society nineteenth-century childrearing manuals show devices to prevent babies from touching their genitals in their sleep. So any desire for sex, even with yourself, became a shameful secret."(14)

Zo gauw je op zoek gaat naar seksuele vrijheid loop je tegen allerlei oordelen aan waarvan termen als 'promiscu', 'amoreel', 'onverschillig', 'zondig', 'pathologisch', 'gemakkelijk' vaak deel uit maken.

"One of the challenges facing the ethical slut is our culture’s insistence that, simply because 'everybody knows' something, it must obviously be true. We urge you to regard with great skepticism any sentence that begins 'Everybody knows that ...' or 'Common sense tells us that ...' or 'It’s common knowledge that ...' Often, these phrases are signposts for cultural belief systems that may be antisexual, monogamy-centrist, and/or codependent. Questioning 'what everybody does' can be difficult and disorienting, but we have found it to be rewarding: questioning is the first step toward generating a new paradigm, your own paradigm of how you ought to be." [mijn nadruk] (17-18)

[Ik ben het daar helemaal mee eens. ]

De mythen over relaties en seks die voortdurend naar voren gebracht worden:

"Myth #1: Long-term monogamous relationships are the only real relationships"(18)

"Lifetime monogamy as an ideal is a relatively new concept in human history and makes us unique among primates. There is nothing that can be achieved within a long-term monogamous relationship that cannot be achieved without one. Business partnership, deep attachment, stable parenting, personal growth, care and companionship in old age are all well within the abilities of the slut." [mijn nadruk] (18)

"A subset of this myth is the belief that if you’re really in love, you will automatically lose all interest in others; thus, if you’re having sexual or romantic feelings toward anyone but your partner, you’re not really in love. This belief has cost many people a great deal of happiness through the centuries yet is untrue to the point of absurdity: a ring around the finger does not cause a nerve block to the genitals." [mijn nadruk] (18)

"Myth #2: Romantic love is the only real love "(18)

"Myth #3: Sexual desire is a destructive force"(19)

"Myth #4: Loving someone makes it okay to control his or her behavior "(19)

"The old 'awww, she’s jealous — she must really care about me' reasoning, or the scene in which the girl falls in love with the boy when he punches out a rival suitor, are symptomatic of a very disturbed set of personal boundaries that can lead to a great deal of unhappiness."(19)

"Myth #5: Jealousy is inevitable and impossible to overcome"(20)

"On the contrary, we have found that jealousy is an emotion like any other: it feels bad (sometimes very bad), but it is not intolerable. We have also found that many of the 'oughta-be’s' that lead to jealousy can be unlearned and that unlearning them is often a useful process."(20)

"Myth #6: Outside involvements reduce intimacy in the primary relationship"(20)

"Myth #7: Love conquers all"(21)

(22) Chapter three - Our beliefs

"First and foremost, ethical sluts value consent. When we use this word — and we will, often, throughout this book — we mean an active collaboration for the benefit, well-being, and pleasure of all persons concerned. If someone is being coerced, bullied, blackmailed, manipulated, lied to, or ignored, what is happening is not consensual. And sex that is not consensual is not ethical period.
Ethical sluts are honest — with ourselves and others. We take time with ourselves, to figure out our own emotions and motivations and to untangle them for greater clarity when necessary. Then we openly share that information with those who need it. We do our best not to let our fears and bashfulness be an obstacle to our honesty — we trust that our partners will go on respecting and loving us, warts and all.
Ethical sluts recognize the ramifications of our sexual choices. We see that our emotions, our upbringing, and the standards of our culture often conflict with our sexual desires. And we make a conscious commitment to supporting ourselves and our partners as we deal with those conflicts honestly and honorably.
We do not allow our sexual choices to have an unnecessary impact on those who have not consented to participate. We are respectful of others’ feelings, and when we aren’t sure how someone feels, we ask.
Ethical sluts recognize the difference between things they can and should control, and things they can’t. While we sometimes may feel jealous or territorial, we own those feelings, doing our best not to blame or control, but asking for the support we need to help ourselves feel safe and cared for. " [mijn nadruk] (22)

"Dossie’s bachelor’s thesis was called 'Sex Is Nice and Pleasure Is Good for You'. That idea is as radical now, in the twenty-first century, as it was back in the 1970s when Dossie first wrote it.
Our culture places a very high value on self-denial, which is fine when there is hard work to be done. But all too often, those who unapologetically satisfy their desire for pleasure in their utterly free time are seen as immature, disgusting, even sinful. Since we all have desires, puritanical values lead inevitably to self loathing, hatred of our bodies and our turn-ons, and fear and guilt over our sexual urges. " [mijn nadruk] (24)

"Even people who consider themselves sex positive and sexually liberated often fall into a different trap — the trap of rationalizing sex. Releasing physical tension, relieving menstrual cramps, maintaining mental health, preventing prostate problems, making babies, cementing relationships, and so on are all admirable goals, and wonderful side benefits of sex. But they are not what sex is for. Sex is for pleasure, a complete and worthwhile goal in and of itself. People have sex because it feels very good, and then they feel good about themselves. The worthiness of pleasure is one of the core values of ethical sluthood." [mijn nadruk] (25)

Chapter four - Slut styles

Er zijn vele manieren om seksuele openheid te realiseren; 'ethical sluthood' is een huis met vele kamers. Dit hoofdstuk geeft allerlei voorbeelden die dat illustreren.

"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. "(29)

Chapter five - Battling sex negativity

"From the slut’s point of view, the world is sometimes a dangerous place. Lots of people seem to think it is okay to go to any lengths to stop us from being sexual.
Some antisex crusaders try to make loving dangerous for women by outlawing birth control and abortion, leading to unwanted pregnancies and back-alley medical care. Others would outlaw access to sex information, in schools or on the Internet, so that our children cannot learn to care for their health and well being and have no access to safer-sex training that would teach them how to avoid spreading AIDS. In an appalling development since the first edition of this book, a vaccine that helps prevent cervical cancer in women is being met with resistance from puritans who believe that inoculating a young woman against cancer somehow encourages her to have sex. Some people purporting to have the word from God preach on the public airwaves that AIDS is divine punishment for any sexuality that deviates from what they believe to be normal. We find such preaching far more obscene than any possible form of sex.
There are places where some people believe that being a slut makes you fair game for violence. Why were you walking down that street at night in a short dress or tight pants? No wonder you got raped or assaulted. It must be the victim’s fault. And you look so queer — no wonder that gang decided to beat you up.
We are also considered fair game for other forms of oppression. Multiple sexual partners can be seen as a good reason to take all your property, your children, and your future income in a punitive divorce settlement. You could lose your job, or your promise for advancement, or your professional reputation, if the wrong people find out about your personal life." [mijn nadruk] (39)

[Een beetje gekleurd door de Amerikaanse achtergrond van het boek, maar toch ... Afwijken op het punt van relaties en seks is in ontzettend veel landen nog steeds een reden om je op te sluiten.]

"Ex-spouses, parents, in-laws, and others who don’t share your values about the potential for inclusive relationships may be hostile. Your friendly neighborhood pastor may not be sympathetic, either. Bringing both of your partners to the company picnic is not a good way to ensure your continued ascent through the corporate hierarchy. We recommend extreme caution in choosing who to come out to: yes, we know you’re blissfully happy and want to share your joy with the world, but remember, you can’t untell. We know people who have lost jobs, child custody, and more because the wrong people have become aware of their sexual choices." [mijn nadruk] (40)

"If you and your partner(s) are living in a somewhat marriage-like structure, with the expectation of sharing property, providing for one another in the event of illness or death, raising children, or running a business together, we strongly recommend official legal documentation of your status and intentions. Terrifying stories of lover kept from lover when one of them is hospitalized, a longtime partner left penniless and homeless after someone’s unexpected death, individuals who have been parents in all ways but blood losing an orphaned child to a partner’s parents or ex-spouse, and so on should be enough to convince you that it’s time to get official about all this. "(40-41)

(42) Chapter six - Infinite possibilities

"We do not see 'celibate slut' or 'asexual slut' as in any way a contradiction in terms. There are infinite ways of relating to other people — romantically, intimately, domestically, and more — and if you’ve opened your life and heart to as many of those ways as possible, you’re one of us. "(42)

"The cultural ban on having sex with your friends is an inevitable offshoot of a societal belief that the only acceptable reason to have sex is to lead to a monogamous marriagelike relationship. We believe, on the other hand, that friendship is an excellent reason to have sex and that sex is an excellent way to maintain a friendship." [mijn nadruk] (43)

[Ik denk dat dat waar is. Het ligt voor de hand als je er over nadenkt.]

"How do you learn to share intimacy without falling in love? We would propose that we do love our friends, and particularly those we share sex with: these individuals are our family, often more permanent in our lives than marriages. With practice, we can develop an intimacy based on warmth and mutual respect, much freer than desperation, neediness, or the blind insanity of falling in love — that’s why the relationships between 'friends with benefits' are so immensely valuable. When we acknowledge the love and respect and appreciation that we share with lovers we would never marry, sexual friendships can become not only possible but preferred."(43)

"It is axiomatic that open relationships work best when a couple takes care of each other and their relationship first, before they include others in their dynamic. So the slut couple needs to be willing to do the work we will describe later in this book to communicate well and to handle jealousy, insecurity, and territoriality with the highest consciousness. Couples need to know and communicate their boundaries, to make and keep agreements, and to respect their own and each other’s needs. Couples also need to make sure to nourish their own connection to keep it happy, healthy, and fulfilling." [mijn nadruk] (45)

(49) Part two - The practice of sluthood

(50) Chapter seven - Abundance

"Many traditional attitudes about sexuality are based on the unspoken belief that there isn’t enough of something — love, sex, friendship, commitment — to go around. If you believe this, if you think that there’s a limited amount of what you want, it can seem very important to stake your claim to your share of it. You may believe that you have to take your share away from somebody else, since if it’s such a very good thing, someone else is probably competing with you for it (how could they!). Or you may believe that if someone else gets something, that means there must be less of it for you. "(50)

"In contrast to starvation economies, some of the things we want really are limited. There are only twenty-four hours in the day, for example — so trying to find enough time to do all the wonderfully slutty things we enjoy, with all the people we care about, can be a real challenge, and sometimes impossible. Time is the biggest real-world limit we encounter in trying to live and love as we like. This problem is hardly exclusive to sluts; monogamous folks also run into problems finding the time for sex, companionship, and communication. Careful planning can help — if you don’t already keep a fairly detailed datebook or computerized calendar, now is a good time to start. Respecting oneanother’s realities, and staying flexible, is important. Crises happen: a sick child, a work emergency, or even another partner who needs companionship and reassurance during a particularly bad time. You might also want to do some thinking about how much time you need to get your needs met: do you really have to stay over and have breakfast together the next day, or would an hour or two of cuddling and talk be just as nice?" [mijn nadruk] (52)

"Space is another real-world limit for many people. Few of us are fortunate enough to live in multiroom mansions with rooms dedicated exclusively to sex. If you’re in your bedroom with your friend, and your live-in partner is sleepy and wants to go to bed, you’ve got a problem. Crashing on a narrow couch in one’s own apartment while one’s partner disports with someone else in one’s bed may be beyond the limits of even the most advanced slut. When you share your bedroom or other play space with a partner or lover(s), we suggest making clear agreements well in advance of any date and sticking strictly to them. This problem may be solved by separate bedrooms or personal spaces if you can afford them."()

(55) Chapter eight - Slut Skills

"Self-examination, in our opinion, is always a good idea — when you are journeying without a map, having a clear picture of your internal landscape becomes essential. Ask yourself: What do you expect from this way of living your life? What rewards can you foresee that will compensate you for doing the hard work of learning to be secure in a world of shifting relationships? "(55)

De bedoelde vaardigheden zijn: communicatieve vaardigheden van spreken en luisteren; emotionele eerlijkheid; warmte geven; emotionele trouw; grenzen stellen, nee-zeggen tegen sommige dingen; kunnen plannen; jezelf kennen; begrijpen dat je de eigenaar bent van je eigen gevoelens; respect hebben voor jezelf; eerlijk zijn tegenover jezelf en anderen.

" If you can’t tell your partners that you love them, or give them a heartfelt compliment, or tell them what you think is so wonderful about them, it may be optimistic to assume that they’ll be able to remain secure enough to accommodate your other relationships."(57)

"Our friend Richard says, "A lot of people describe having sex with only one person as ‘being faithful.’ It seems to me that faithfulness has very little to do with who you have sex with." Faithfulness is about honoring your commitments and respecting your friends and lovers, about caring for their well-being as well as your own. "(57)

"A basic precept of intimate communication is that each person owns her own feelings. No one 'makes' you feel jealous or insecure — the person who makes you feel that way is you. No matter what the other person is doing, what you feel in response is determined inside you. Even when somebody deliberately tries to hurt you, you make a choice about how you feel. You might feel angry, or hurt, or frightened, or guilty (one of your authors was raised Catholic, so she was trained to feel guilty about astonishing stuff). The choice, not usually conscious, happens inside you. "(59)

"Knowing, loving, and respecting yourself is an absolute prerequisite to knowing, loving, and respecting someone else. " [mijn nadruk] (59)

[Daar zit denk ik voor veel mensen het grootste probleem: je moet een bepaalde mate van zelfvertrouwen hebben om vertrouwen te kunnen hebben in een ander, zeker op het vlak van relaties.]

(61) Chapter nine - Boundaries

"Many people believe that to be a slut is to be indiscriminate, to not care about who you make love with, and thus to not care about yourself. They believe that we live in excessively wide open spaces, with no discrimination, no fences, no boundaries. Nothing could be further from the truth. To be an ethical slut you need to have very good boundaries that are clear, strong, flexible, and, above all, conscious. " [mijn nadruk] (61)

(66) Interlude - The Unethical Slut (A Rant)

"Such people often approach open sexual lifestyles as if keeping score. Set collectors and trophy fuckers treat their partners like prizes in a contest they have set out to win — only what happens after the prize is collected? Is it time to go after the next one? "(66)

"Someone who has a history of nonconsensual nonmonogamy may get attached to the sense of secrecy, of getting away with something. These folks may have a very hard time adapting to the idea of consensual sluthood they’re so used to concealing their activities from their partners that they may even have built that furtive feeling into their erotic life, hooked on the adrenaline rush they get from forbidden fruit. "(66)

"Refusing to deal with the realities of viruses and bacteria because of embarrassment is unethical: a good slut speaks the truth even if blushing furiously. "(67)

"Ethical sluts do not make promises they can’t keep. If you are attracted to someone who is looking for a life partnership and what you want is a lighthearted affair (or vice versa), you need to be honest about that, even if that means saying "no, thank you" to sex until your feelings for each other are more on a par. "(67)

"Which brings us to revenge fucking. It is truly nasty to arrange to have sex with one person to get back at another. To arouse one person’s insecurities, jealousy, and other painful feelings on purpose is dishonorable, and to use another person as a puppet in your play is disrespectful and most often downright abusive. " [mijn nadruk] (67)

"All these difficult scripts are about somebody not being honest and are also about somebody having sex while avoiding intimacy and emotional connection. When you are not telling the truth you cannot be present, and when you are not present you can’t be connected to anyone else, and when you are not connected how can you feel anything at all?"(68)

Chapter ten - Flirting and cruising

"Sex roles can complicate both flirting and cruising. Men in this culture are taught to push, to insist, never to take 'no' for an answer; women are taught to be coy, to refuse, never to offer an outright 'yes'. The more polarized we get in this silly equation, the further we push one another away — with results that range from hurt feelings to date rape.
The good news, though, is that both sets of behaviors can be unlearned and that the more we unlearn them, the less there is to unlearn. When all genders feel free to answer 'yes' or 'no' with no concern for anything but their own desires, a truer understanding and a more positive sexuality become possible." [mijn nadruk] (69)

[Dat - de dominante rolpatronen - lijkt me inderdaad een andere belangrijke factor die polyamorie in allerlei situaties onmogelijk maakt.]

"Most women are not very good at saying 'yes', and not very good at saying 'no' — your authors aren’t, and we’ve been practicing both for a long time. We’re not sure how things got to this state, where a woman is just supposed to stand there looking adorable until some big strong hunk comes and makes her decision for her, but we don’t like it much.
Many women, both gay and straight, can benefit greatly from learning to be more assertive in asking for what they want, both during the meeting process and afterward. If you’re used to sipping your drink and waiting for someone to make a move on you, initiating contact yourself may seem terribly awkward, pushy — yes, even slutty — at first. It’s also scary as hell to risk rejection like that. It does get easier ... particularly if you do get rejected a time or two and get a chance to find out that it isn’t the end of the world. After all, we’re not asking you to do anything that men haven’t been doing for centuries, and you’ll discover, as they have, the many joys of asking for what you want and getting it."(72-73)

Chapter eleven - Keeping sex safe

"Given that sex is never completely safe, ethical sluts put time, effort, and commitment into getting as much sex as they want at the least risk possible. Dedicated sluts have developed a plethora of risk-reduction strategies that can minimize the chances of infection and/or unwanted pregnancy. "(76)

Chapter twelve - Childrearing

"Still, even though divorce and single parenting are now acceptable topics, our culture is slow to catch up to the other realities of our lives: media images of multipartner relationships, same-sex relationships, and other nontraditional constellations are still rare."(82)

"We have never had problems creating consistency and security for our children in a sexually interconnected extended family. While you might assume that inclusive relationships might generate massive inconsistency, our experience is just the opposite. Our connections tend to form sprawling extended families that have plenty of energy to welcome all the children, and the children readily learn their way around the tribe."(82)

"As you’ve surmised, we think an abundance of relationships can be highly beneficial to family life and that children gain in role models, attention, and support in the polyamorous extended family. Clearly, children should not be included in adult sexual behavior, and many adults who have been wounded by sexual abuse as children can testify to the damages. Education, however, is not abuse, and children need enough information to make sense out of what the adults are doing, so they can grow up to their own healthy understanding of sexuality." [mijn nadruk] (83)

"One word of warning: if you are living in a community that does not share your standards about sex education, your desire to educate needs to be balanced against the need for the child to learn what is and is not okay to share with the outside world. When you teach your kids, you will need to talk with them about how other people’s standards operate and about what information should and should not be shared.
There are still many places in this country where living a nontraditional sexual lifestyle is considered a justification for legally removing your children from your custody." [mijn nadruk] (84)

"Nudity is a gray area. We certainly don’t think kids are harmed by growing up in households where casual nudity is the norm. But children who have never been around nude adults may be upset if nudity is suddenly introduced into their living room. Kids can be very sensitive to issues like sexual display, and flashing is clearly a violation of boundaries. Certainly, if a child expresses discomfort with being around your or your friends’ nudity, his or her desires should be respected. And we hope it goes without saying that no child should ever be required to be nude in front of others — many children go through phases of extreme modesty as they struggle to cope with their changing bodies, and that, too, deserves scrupulous respect."(84-85)

[Hm, dat snap ik, maar ouders houden op allerlei andere terreinen ook niet (altijd) rekening met de gevoeligheden van hun kinderen, waarom hier dan ineens wel? Bovendien hebben ouders hun eigen wensen op dat vlak. Waarom zouden ze die helemaal opzij zetten? Denk aan nudistengezinnen. En ik weet ook nog steeds niet of kinderen zich 'van nature' schamen voor hun naaktheid als hun lichaam verandert. Zo lang we zeggen dat dat zo is, bestaat het ook.]

"It is illegal and immoral to allow your kids to engage in any form of sexual behavior with any adult, or to allow your partners to be sexual or seductive with your kids. Many children go through one or more sexually explorative and/or flirtatious periods in their lives — this is natural and common. But it’s important that you and your friends maintain especially good boundaries during such periods; learning polite and friendly ways of acknowledging a child’s changing needs without engaging sexually is a critical skill for ethical sluts who spend time around their own or their partners’ kids. (...) The best way to teach your child good boundaries is to be clear about your own and to respect the child’s right to grow up free from violation."(85)

[Mooi geformuleerd, maar ook hier kun je je afvragen of zo'n standpunt niet meer voorkomt uit het illegale van dat soort contacten als uit wat kinderen willen of niet willen. 'Violation' - we zouden tegenwoordig zeggen: het overschrijden van grenzen - is hier de kritieke term. ]

(86) Part three - Navigating challenges

(87) Chapter thirteen - Roadmaps through jealousy

"Many people believe that sexual territoriality is a natural part of individual and social evolution. If you believe that, it’s easy to use jealousy as justification to go berserk and stop being a sane, responsible, and ethical human being. Threatened with feeling jealous, we allow our brains to turn to static with the excuse that we are acting on instinct. Your authors don’t think it matters if jealousy derives from nature or nurture or both. What matters is that we know from experience that we can change it. " [mijn nadruk] (89)

"Jealousy is not an emotion. It can show up as grief or rage, hatred or self-loathing — jealousy is an umbrella word that covers the wide range of emotions we might feel when our partners make sexual connection with somebody else.
Jealousy may be an expression of insecurity, fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, feeling left out, feeling not good enough, feeling inadequate, feeling awful. Your jealousy may be based in territoriality, or in competitiveness, or in some other emotion that’s clamoring to be heard under the jealous racket in your brain. Sometimes it may show up as blind screaming rage — and being blind can make it very difficult to see."(91)

"Sometimes what we perceive as jealousy is actually something else. Think through the details of how jealousy works in you. What bothers you the most? Is it that you don’t want your partner to do those things with someone else or that you do want your partner to do them with you? Jealousy might actually be envy, and envy is often very easy to fix: why not make a date with your lover to do what you have just discovered you are missing?
Sometimes jealousy is rooted in feelings of grief and loss, which can be harder to interpret. We have been taught by our culture that when our partner has sex with another, we have lost something. Not to sound dumb, but we are confused. What have we lost? When our partners come home from hot dates, often they are excited and turned on and have some new ideas they would like to try out at home. We fail to see what we lose in this situation.
Or the sense of loss you feel might be the loss of an ideal, a picture you have been holding in your head of what a perfect, monogamous relationship might look like. It may be helpful to remember that all relationships change through time: people’s needs and desires shift according to age and circumstance, and the most successful long-term relationships are the ones with enough flexibility to redefine themselves over and over again through the years.
Occasionally, our discomfort means that we are becoming aware on an intuitive level that our partner is moving away from us, and it might be true that we are losing the relationship we cherish. That does happen. The fact that supposedly monogamous people everywhere often leave one partner for what they perceive as greener grass with another is not much consolation when it happens to you.(...)
) Jealousy might also be associated with feelings of competitiveness and wanting to be number one. There’s a reason there is no Olympics of sex: sexual achievement is not measurable. We cannot rank each and every one of us on some hierarchical ladder of who is or is not the most desirable or the better fuck. What a horrid idea! Your authors want to live in a world where each person’s sexuality is valued for its own sake, not for how it measures up to any standard beyond our own pleasure. If you find out about something that you would like to add to your own repertoire, you can certainly learn to do it without wasting time trashing yourself for not already having known how. "(93)

"Jealousy is an emotion that arises inside you; no person and no behavior can 'make' you jealous. Like it or not, the only person who can make that jealousy hurt less or go away is you. "(96)

(106) Interlude - Clean love

"Clean love: love without expectations."(106)

(108) Chapter fourteen - Embracing conflict

"Nothing builds intimacy like shared vulnerability. We’ll never discount all the wonderful things that we get from sharing love — laughter and happiness and sex — but nothing deepens intimacy like the experiences that we share when we feel flayed, with our skins off, scared and vulnerable, and our partner is there with us, willing to share in the scary stuff. These are the times that bring us the closest together."(108)

"Fights between partners appear to be a universal experience; not many people actually enjoy them, but they seem to be necessary, a constructive element in the building of solid relationships, like the fires that make new growth possible in old forests. Only by fighting can partners struggle with their disagreements, express their most heartfelt feelings, and negotiate change and growth in their relationship.
There has to be a way to communicate anger in a long-term relationship, and there has to be a way to struggle with disagreements. How many times have you had a bitter argument with your partner, and when it was over, felt closer than you had before?
So the problem, as we see it, is not to avoid fighting, but to learn to fight in ways that are not destructive, physically, morally, or emotionally. A good fight is very different from abuse: in a good clean fight, there is respect for safety and mutuality so that both people get to express their feelings at full volume and come out the other end stronger and closer than before: bonded by f ire, as it were." [mijn nadruk] (109)

(119) Chapter fifteen - Making agreements

"Most successful relationships, from casual acquaintanceship through lifetime monogamy, are based on assumptions that are really unstated agreements about behavior: you don’t kiss your mailman, you don’t tip your mother. These are the unspoken rules we learn very early in our lives, from our parents, our playmates, and our cultures. People who break these unspoken rules are often considered odd, sometimes even crazy, because the values and judgments behind the social agreements about how we relate to one another are so deeply ingrained that we are usually not even aware that we have made any agreement at all.
In many day-to-day relationships, like your relationships with neighbors and coworkers, it’s probably fine to rely on those implicit, built-in agreements. But when you’re trying something as complicated and unprecedented as ethical sluthood, we think it’s very important to take nothing for granted. Talk with the people in your life about your agreements, and negotiate the conditions, environments, and behaviors that will get your own needs met and respect everybody’s boundaries. "(119)

"Blaming, manipulation, bullying, and moral condemnation do not belong in the agreement-making process. The process of making a good agreement must include a commitment from all concerned to listen to one another’s concerns and feelings in an open-minded and unprejudiced way. If you are waiting for your partner to reveal a weakness so that you can exploit it into ammunition to 'win' your argument, you are not ready to make a satisfactory agreement. " [mijn nadruk] (121)

Chapter sixteen - Opening an existing relationship

"If you and your lover are beginning this work with equal agreement that you both want to create this expansiveness in your lives, then congratulations, and welcome to the path. You will probably encounter some unexpected disagreements about the way this new life will look — so you still don’t get to skip this chapter.
In our experience, though, it’s much more common that one person wants to open the door to outside connections and the other hasn’t ever even considered it and is appalled by the idea. This situation is definitely more difficult, especially when the third member of the triangle, the outside partner potential or actual, open or secret — is waiting in the wings and probably cares a lot about the outcome of this process. A lot of people don’t really think about monogamy until they make a connection with someone who feels important to them and they don’t want to give up their beloved life partner, or get a divorce, or split up the kids. You could be in any of these roles in the triangle: the one with the lust for adventure, the new love who is not a partner, and the sometimes stunned partner to the would-be adventurer." [mijn nadruk] (128)

"What do we see when we look at cheating with an open mind and with compassion toward everyone involved? Our culture would like to have it that cheating happens rarely, that it’s an anomaly. Kinsey discovered otherwise more than half a century ago: slightly more than half of theoretically monogamous marriages back then actually were not. So cheating is not unusual and is not perpetrated only by heartless sex addicts.
Conventional therapeutic wisdom is that cheating is a symptom of something wrong in the marriage and that working on the marriage will make the cheating go away. Sometimes this is indeed true. But cheating is not necessarily about some failure in your connection, and it is cruel to tell people that something is wrong with a perfectly good relationship just because sexual desire has a way of squirming out of bounds."(131)

(143) Part four - Sluts in love

(144)Chapter seventeen - Making connection

Over allerlei manieren om mensen te vinden met wie je je goed kunt voelen, van contactadvertenties tot clubs.

(149) Chapter eighteen - Couples

"The commonest form of relationship in our culture, and many others, is the couple: two people who have chosen to share intimacy, time, and perhaps space and possessions for now and the foreseeable future. While couplehood has a great deal to be said for it — it’s a lot of work building a life, and many hands make light work — it also offers some special challenges. The ideas in this section are written for two-person couples for the sake of simplicity, but most of them apply to threesomes and moresomes as well. "(155)

(162) Chapter nineteen - The single slut

"What are the rights and responsibilities of the single sexual partner? Start with rights; you have them, and you will need to assert them. Too often our culture sees the single partner as 'secondary', 'outside', 'an affair', a 'home wrecker', and your place in the ecology of any life or relationship or community is dismissed as inconsequential at best. What does a single person have to do to get taken seriously, in this community or any other?" [mijn nadruk] (164)

(172) Chapter twenty - The ebb and flow of relationships

"While breakups are very hard for all concerned, and while we understand that you may feel very angry, sad, abandoned, or ill-treated for a while, we implore you to remember that your soon-to-be-ex-partner is still the same terrific person you used to love, and to burn no bridges."(176)

"Smart sluts know, even if they sometimes forget in the heat of conflict, that a breakup need not mean the end of a relationship — it may be, instead, a shift to a different kind of relationship, possibly a relationship between courteous acquaintances, or friends, or maybe even lovers. "(176)

(178) Chapter twenty-one - Sex and pleasure

" In a culture that teaches that sex is sleazy, nasty, dirty, and dangerous, a path to a free sexuality can be hard to find and fraught with perils while you walk it. If you choose to walk this path, we congratulate you and offer you support, encouragement, and — most important of all — information." [mijn nadruk] (178)

"So sex covers a much larger territory than genital stimulation leading to orgasm. Sex that’s limited to perfunctory foreplay and then a race down the express track to orgasm is an insult to the human capacity for pleasure. "(179)

"When we expand our concept of what sex is, and let that be whatever pleases us today, we free ourselves from the tyranny of his hydraulics, the chore of getting her off, perhaps even birth control and barriers, if we decide that outercourse is perfectly good sex in and of itself. "(179)

"The mythology has it that once you start having sex, it will all come naturally and if it doesn’t, then you must have some deep-seated psychological problem, right? We’re not sure why sex stands alone in this regard. If you want to get good at anything else, from cooking to tennis to astrophysics, you’re going to have to put some effort and time into learning how. If you want to enjoy sex and to make sure your partners enjoy it too, you’re going to have todo the same thing. " [mijn nadruk] (184-185)

(197) Chapter twenty-two - Public sex, group sex, and orgies

"We believe that it is a fundamentally radical political act to deprivatize sex. So much oppression in our culture is based on shame about sex: the oppression of women, cultural minorities, and sexual minorities. All these kinds of oppression are instituted in the name of the (presumably asexual) family. We are all oppressed. We have all been taught, one way or another, that our desires, our bodies, our sexualities are shameful. What better way to defeat oppression than to get together in communities and celebrate the wonders of sex? "(197)

(211) Conclusion - A slut utopia