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The Ethical Slut
Author	Dossie Easton, Catherine A. Liszt
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Greenery Press
Publication date	1997
Pages	288
ISBN	1-890159-01-8
OCLC Number	37969365
Dewey Decimal	306.73 22
LC Classification	HQ980.5.U5 E27 1997

The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities (ISBN 1-890159-01-8) is an English language non-fiction narrative written by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt (a pseudonym of Janet Hardy). The book discusses consensual non-monogamy as a lifestyle, and provides practical guidance on how such long-term relationships work and are put into practice.

Content

The authors define the term slut as "a person of any gender who has the courage to lead life according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you." The term is reclaimed from its usual use as a pejorative and as a simple label for a promiscuous person. Instead, it is used to signify a person who is accepting of their enjoyment of sex and the pleasure of intimacy with others, and chooses to engage and accept these in an ethical and open way — rather than as cheating.

The Ethical Slut discusses how to live an active life with multiple concurrent sexual relationships in a fair and honest way. Discussion topics include how to deal with the practical difficulties and opportunities in finding and keeping partners, maintaining relationships with others, and strategies for personal growth.

It contains chapters discussing how consensual nonmonogamy is handled in different subcultures such as the gay and lesbian communities, information on handling scheduling, jealousy, communication, conflict in relationships, and etiquette for group sexual encounters.

Film adaptation

An article in the January 31, 2007, issue of the East Bay Express reports that Moses Ma will be producing a movie adaptation of The Ethical Slut.^[1]

Play adaptation

Playwright John Sable's Multiple O, a play adaptation of The Ethical Slut, opened on May 2, 2008, at the Broom Street Theater.^[2]

Further editions

Co-author Dossie Easton reported in May 2007 that Easton and Liszt were working on a second edition of the book, including more communication exercises and information about polyamory communities on the Internet.^[3] It was published in March 2009 and is called The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures.^[4]

References

External links

• Greenery Press, homepage of the publishers of The Ethical Slut
• A positive review of The Ethical Slut
• Summary on Qwantz Dinosaur Comics

From Wikiquote

The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities, by Dossie Easton and Catherine Liszt (pen name of Janet Hardy).

Sourced

• We are particularly in favor of multiple partners having a chance to meet each other, or at least hear about each other, to dispel our self-created mythology that the other person is younger, thinner, sexier, etc. You might be surprised, when you meet your lover's lover, to find the experience downright reassuring.
  • chapter on "Jealousy"

• We believe that it is fundamentally a radical political act to deprivatize sex. So much oppression in our culture is based on shame about sex: the oppression of women, of cultural minorities, oppression in the name of the (presumably asexual) family, oppression of sexual minorities. 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?
  • chapter on "Group Sex, Public Sex, Orgies..."

• A ring around the finger does not cause a nerve block to the genitals.

• A slut shares her sexuality the way a philanthropist shares his money — because they have a lot to share, because it makes them happy to share it, because sharing makes the world a better place.

• "Easy": Is there, we wonder, some value in being difficult?

• It is amazing to us to think ... that most people in our culture have never had a chance to watch another person enjoy sex. No wonder we worry so much about our appearance.

• Joe was very possessive. I was perfectly faithful. He would beat me, screaming imprecations, 'You slut!' when another man looked at me. After I left, I decided he was right — I am a slut, I want to be a slut, I will never promise monogamy again. After all, why would any care who I fucked? I will never be a piece of property again, no matter how valuable that property is considered. Joe made a feminist of me. A feminist slut.

• Myth #3: Loving someone makes it OK to control his behavior.

• 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.

• 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 has the courage to lead life according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you.

• Some people consider any form of sex education to be child abuse, and many do not feel that children should have any information at all about adult sexual activities. ...How are we to teach our children to say 'no' to an abusive adult if we are not frank about what it is that they should say no to?

• To believe that God doesn't like sex is like believing that God doesn't like you: we all wind up carrying a secret shame for our own perfectly natural sexual desires and fulfillments. We prefer the beliefs of a woman we met who is a devoted churchgoer. She told us that when she was about five years old, she discovered the joys of masturbation in the back seat of the family car, tucked under a warm blanket on a long trip. It felt so wonderful that she concluded that the existence of her clitoris was proof positive that God loved her.

• 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?

• We measure the ethics of a good slut not by the number of his partners, but by the respect and care with which he treats them.

• We see ourselves surrounded by the 'walking wounded' — by people who have been deeply, if not irrevocably, injured by fear, shame, and hatred of their own sexual selves. We believe that happy connected sex is the cure for these wounds, that it is important, possibly even essential, to most people's sense of self-worth, to their belief that life is good. We have never met anyone who had low self-esteem at the moment of orgasm.

• We've ... been called "indiscriminate" in our sexuality, which we resent: we can always tell our lovers apart.

• When both 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, can be achieved. Dossie tells the story of a woman friend of hers back in the '70s who, as an experiment, sat patiently in a singles' bar one night, being approached by many men, until finally one to whom she felt attracted came along and began to flirt. She asked him nicely if he would like to come back to her place and fuck. He swallowed his ice. It took the poor fellow a couple of minutes before he could talk coherently again, and when they actually got to her place he found himself impotent. That's how deeply ingrained some of these cultural stereotypes can be.

• [Wilhelm] Reich theorized that without the suppression of sexuality and the imposition of anti-sexual morality, you could not have an authoritarian government, because people would be free from shame, and would trust their own sense of right and wrong. Such people are unlikely to march to war against their wishes, and we would like to think they would be unlikely to agree to operate the death camps too.

References

• Easton, Dossie, and Liszt, Catherine. 1997. The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities. ISBN 1890159018.

See also

• Sex

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

The Ethical Slut