LOGAN URY: So before
we start I just
wanted to thank you all very
much for coming in person.
I thought a lot about
this event and the fact
that "The Ethical
Slut" is a title
that some people may
not be familiar with
or comfortable with.
And we are in a
corporate environment,
so I think it's so cool
you all came in person.
And I'm just so happy
to see your faces
and to have you here.
And we're really lucky to
have Dossie Easton with us,
so this is our third event in
this series on modern romance.
And for those of
you who haven't met,
my name is Logan Ury I
help lead a team here
called the "Irrational Lab" and
we're a behavioral economics
unit.
And it's my pleasure to host
this modern romance series.
So a little bit
more about Dossie,
she is a psychotherapist,
relationship counselor,
educator, and author.
Along with Janet Hardy, she
has co-authored several books,
including "The
Ethical Slut," a guide
to infinite sexual
possibilities.
"Radical Ecstasy," SM
journeys to transcendence.
"When Someone You Love is
Kinky," "The New Topping Book,"
and "The New Bottoming Book."
And I'd like to give her an
award for best book titles.
And since 1969, she
has lived and worked
in sexual minority
cultures, she is
dedicated to feminist,
polyamorous, BDSM, spiritual,
gender diverse, and LGBTQ
individuals and communities.
She also offers authentic,
respectful, and compassionate
psychotherapy and
relationship counseling
to people exploring
nontraditional lifestyles.
Dossie, thank you so
much for joining us.
DOSSIE EASTON: Thank
you for inviting me,
I'm really glad to be here.
LOGAN URY: Great to have you.
So I'll ask some
questions, and then we'll
save about 20 or 25 minutes
at the end for questions
from the audience.
So first, let's start
at the beginning.
What is polyamory, and
what is an ethical slut?
Why is that the name of
your most famous book?
DOSSIE EASTON: OK, we could get
really argumentative about what
is polyamory.
To my mind, it has
become the umbrella word.
And people ask me
questions like,
what's the difference between
polyamory and non-monogamy?
And I say I don't know.
Because inside
that umbrella there
should be the freedom
for everyone--
and that means each
and every one of you--
to decide how they want
their relationship to be,
and how they want it to be at
any given time in their life,
because those things
also change over time.
So it's that freedom to
decide that I think polyamory
is about for me.
It was originally coined by
Morning Glory Ravenheart-Zell--
great name-- to refer to
her lifelong lifestyle
of culturing and developing
and nurturing group marriages.
And so it meant something
a little bit smaller,
but what it opened the door, I
think, for a lot of people to
is to say, our
relationships, whatever
commitments we make in terms
of home finances or mortgages
or children or whatever,
whatever level of that
kind of life partnership we
enjoy with any given partner,
but all of our relationships
are indeed partnerships,
and all of them are not only
about sex but also about love,
and about connection, and
about emotional connection,
and I really do believe that.
At the time, because the
definition was kind of
in question-- and we're
very proud, actually,
that the OED actually
called Morning Glory
and asked her for a
definition of polyamory.
So we're very proud of that.
The only person I ever knew
that was called up by the OED
to investigate a word she
invented, a good word.
This started out
as kind of a joke,
we had written "The Bottoming
Book" and "The Topping Book,"
and we were at a MENSA
conference in Sylmar,
and we had been talking
about negotiation in BDSM.
And Janet and I had done
some flirting on the stage.
And our partners were
there, which everybody knew
because we had introduced them.
And we came into the
room, and instead
of talking about all of
the interesting stuff
that we had talked about,
this woman was saying,
did you see her?
She was flirting
with that woman,
and her husband was
sitting right there.
That was all she could see.
It was all she could see.
And I mean, I've been
consciously non-monogamous
since 1969.
It's like a vow I took
as part of my feminism.
I'm serious.
I'm serious.
I didn't want to spend my
life looking for a spouse
to complete me.
That wasn't what I was doing.
And so this became
kind of a joke.
We were writing it.
People would say, what
are you writing now?
We'd say, "The Ethical Slut."
And they all knew
what that meant,
because they were all sluts.
And then when it came time to
make a name for the book, when
we finished the book
and it needed a title,
and we explored "Polyamory
for the New Millennium,"
and all that kind of stuff.
And it just didn't ring.
So it became "The Ethical Slut,"
it remains "The Ethical Slut,"
and I'm very proud of it
because I have a lifelong career
of laundering dirty words.
LOGAN URY: So what does it
mean to be an ethical slut?
DOSSIE EASTON: It means to have
a celebratory and adventurous
approach to sexuality, to
own your own sexuality,
to share it, as Janet wrote.
I love this.
"A slut shares her sexuality as
a philanthropist shares money."
That we go out there,
men and women alike,
and we proudly grasp our
sexuality and adventure in it.
And at the same time, we
do that with due respect
to all the people
who are affected by,
that we connect with,
and their people,
and anybody else who's
affected by what we do.
So we have a high
set of ethics, which
is how we manage to
make this sustainable.
Does that makes sense?
Because the culture had it
that if you went out to a club
and you picked somebody
up and you went home
and you fucked, and
then the next morning,
if you weren't
going to marry them,
you could never
speak to them again.
And it was all
like, then that was
all what I call sport fucking,
that was supposed to be really
distant and armored.
And that wasn't
what I meant at all.
I meant people
actually connecting
with each other,
which means that we
have to keep ethics in mind.
LOGAN URY: So as I
was doing my research,
I read about a lot
of misconceptions
around polyamory,
especially the difference
between polyamory and
polygamy, and between polyamory
and cheating.
Can you talk a bit about some of
those common misunderstandings?
DOSSIE EASTON: Yeah.
Polygamy, by the way,
is a strange word,
because usually
they mean polygyny--
which is like misogyny-- which
means one man, many women.
But this has been the culture.
I had a reporter
from "Salon" call me
up to ask me about three-ways.
And it turned out
that it had never
occurred to him that a three-way
could happen in any way
except for one
man and two women.
LOGAN URY: I'm sure you gave
him an education on that.
DOSSIE EASTON: He
was quite shocked.
He was horrified.
[LAUGHTER]
LOGAN URY: That's great.
DOSSIE EASTON: So
that is one aspect.
And the other aspect that
differentiates us from cheating
is that we are transparent.
And we make a big-- be
very careful about consent.
In this, I kind of agree
with work Morning Glory.
Ideally, our partners,
or at least any
of them we go on to
date longitudinally,
meet our other partners,
because, frankly,
if I get a new lover and
they come home with me
and they can't be
respectful toward my partner
that I live with-- or my
baby, because my baby was
three months old when I
decided this in '69-- then
that's not going to be real
sustainable in the long run.
So my thoughts are that
it works a lot better,
and everyone's happier, and
feels more secure and more
together if everybody
knows everybody,
and everybody's
there, and we all
get it that we're
all on the same side.
Nobody's competing
with anybody, ideally.
LOGAN URY: So, I read an
interview with you online
where you said, "I spent a
great deal of my life feeling
like this completely
isolated weirdo nut."
How did you find your
people, and how did you
come to do the work that you do?
DOSSIE EASTON: Well,
I was very lucky
that I made this
decision in San Francisco
two years after the Summer
of Love, which did help.
[LAUGHTER]
LOGAN URY: Right
place, right time.
DOSSIE EASTON: And
living communally
as a single mom,
that worked too,
because there were
a lot of post-Summer
of Love single moms.
[LAUGHTER]
But to pick up children
was our statement
about saying that
our culture was not
something we were going to
outgrow but something that we
were going to bring on
into the future, which
makes me very exciting about.
How many of you
go to Burning Man?
Yeah right, OK.
You think that has
some resemblance
to the Summer of Love?
I think it does.
So that part, I had
friends and stuff.
But what really got me
going, a lover of mine
named Maggi Rubenstein
was one of three women who
founded an institution--
that still exists--
called San Francisco
Sex Information.
And Maggi said, oh, you've
got to come volunteer.
So I came and volunteered.
I thought I knew everything,
so the volunteer training
was a revelation to me.
I learned so much.
It was just wonderful.
And I got to join a community
of people who talk about sex
all the time, especially around
a sex information switchboard,
where you can call up and
ask a question if something's
on your mind.
And somebody who is
trained as a peer counselor
will talk with you and
help you out with that.
And so talking about sex at a
time when there was very, very
limited language, OK?
SFSI is actually one
of the major agencies
in developing sex positive
language, because we were
talking to people on the phone.
You couldn't wave
your arms around.
So that gave me a core
of like 1,500 people who
wanted to radically
explore sexuality
and to take all the
oddities that we had
heard from the culture
and question them
and put them up for question
and see what it took to-- I
think of it as
outgrow, but maybe it's
grow beyond what we were taught
as children we were supposed
to be and do around sex.
Does that answer--
LOGAN URY: Yeah, it does.
And it also leads right
into my next question,
which is that one of my
favorite parts of the book
is when you talk about all
these common romantic myths.
And it made me realize all
these socialized beliefs
that I had around,
oh, you should
look for one long-term
partner, and all these things.
Can you talk a little bit
more about relationship myths
and how people can
recognize and confront them?
DOSSIE EASTON: Well, we
started out in a culture--
depending on where you
grew up in this country,
because we now have second
and even third generation
sluts growing up.
I love it.
But we started out
in a culture that
said that there was one gold
standard of relationships.
And that was somebody that
you got together with,
and you stayed
together with, and you
celebrated your 50th
anniversary, and so on.
And that's all fine and good,
but that's not the culture
that we actually live in.
That's a very agrarian model of
what a relationship should be,
and it is not the
only successful way
to connect and relate
to other people.
There are tons and tons of ways.
Most of us here in
this room can expect
to move through
several relationships,
major relationships,
in a lifetime.
And if we are indeed
open to it, that's
a whole lot of
other relationships
that are valuable
for whatever they're
valuable for, because
we're not actually
trying to cement a
relationship to work
the farm so the
children don't starve.
I mean, that's where
those values come from,
this idea that we have
an invested survival
interest in stable families.
And you live in a world
where you don't think a lot
about changing jobs and so on.
People I've worked
with who work here
think about not working
here, even though it's
a very wonderful place to work.
They think about what they want
to do, and where they'll fit.
And so the same is true of your
relationships, and the people
that you love and who love you.
They can be fabulous
profound relationships,
in a lot of different forms.
I loved it when
people started talking
about friends with benefits.
That doesn't sound cold with me.
Because through SFSI,
I wound up sharing sex
with a lot of my
friends, because we
would go to parties, whatever.
We were just there
and available.
And so friends, and
the concept that I
got from the gay men of fuck
buddies, because, to me,
that's like a partner
in exploration.
We're going to
climb this mountain.
We're going to delve
into this forest.
We're going to take care of each
other while we go spelunking.
[LAUGHTER]
As it were.
To me, that is another aspect
of the many different ways
our relationships can
become very profound,
in not necessarily
being romantic,
not necessarily
being one and only,
not necessarily even being
what we call falling in love.
Interesting that we call it
falling, sort of stumble,
I think, but also because we
can love a lot more people.
And why should we not include
sex in those connections?
LOGAN URY: Can you talk a
little bit more about that?
I thought that was one of
the most interesting parts
of the book, that there isn't
a starvation economy for love,
that you can love
more than one person,
and that doesn't mean you
love any one person less.
DOSSIE EASTON: Yeah.
We are not taught
that there's supposed
to be sexual abundance.
We're taught that
men are supposed
to seek for sexual
abundance, and women
are supposed to be
the brakes and go,
oh no, oh no, I don't want to,
not until that ring, and so on.
I mean, it's a really dumb
system, if you think about it.
But a lot of what we
have in our culture
prevents us from thinking
outside that system.
And I think it's
a trap, frankly,
that they don't want us to think
outside of that system anymore
than they wanted
slaves in slavery era,
where it was illegal to
teach a slave how to read.
It's a form of
oppression, I believe.
We trap people by
belief systems.
This doesn't mean that
you shouldn't fall in love
and celebrate a
50th anniversary.
That's just fine and dandy.
If your life goes that
way, that's just great.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But if your life is
different from that,
there should be
room for that, too.
Does that answer the question?
LOGAN URY: Yeah, it does.
I'm really curious
to know, do you
think monogamy is
realistic for most people?
DOSSIE EASTON: If you really
want to investigate this,
read a book by my friends
Judith Lipton and David Barash
called "The Myth of Monogamy."
They are evolutionary
researchers,
and they did things
like do DNA testing
on all the chicks in a
bird nest to find out
that it's a wise bird who
knows their own father.
They found nests, for
instance-- and this reminded me
of something.
They found nests where the
male bird in the nest-- and you
have to have two birds if you
have a nest full of hatchlings
in bird land.
You can't feed them
unless you have two birds.
One bird can't do it.
It's too much work.
They will starve.
So there has to be two birds.
But sometimes they would
find that the male bird
in the partnership, or the
other bird in the partnership--
because there are
Amazon birds-- that they
weren't related to any of
the chicks biologically.
And yeah, you laugh.
And they actually
use the word cuckold,
but I thought that
was really stupid.
My closest life partner,
my longest life partnership
who raised my daughter with me
for eight years, was a gay man.
And we were great at homemaking.
I think during that
period of time,
we had sex three times,
always involving other people,
because our relationship
wasn't primarily sexual.
It was primarily a
relationship between people
who are making home, and we were
very active as sex educators,
so we held all the meetings in
our living room, and you know,
it was wonderful.
LOGAN URY: So is
your answer to that
question is that the book is
called "The Myth of Monogamy"?
DOSSIE EASTON: Yeah, I'm sorry.
I didn't say that part?
LOGAN URY: No, you did,
but that answers it.
DOSSIE EASTON: Yeah,
"The Myth of Monogamy."
That's what they
call it, and that's
because they didn't
find a lot of monogamy.
LOGAN URY: So this is a
question that somebody
submitted to me before hand.
She said, "I'm
interested to hear
what you think the role
of gender and sexuality
is in poly relationships.
My experience has
always been that there
tends to be more fluid
sexuality in poly couples,
and I would love to know
what you think about that."
DOSSIE EASTON: Well, I think
I would go back a step,
if that makes sense.
Because I think people
who are attracted to poly
have already looked
at their gender roles.
I really do think that's
true, and maybe it's
particularly true of women,
because the world was supposed
to operate on the
fact that women
weren't really interested in
sex and only did it for England.
[LAUGHTER]
But that's not true either.
But the truth is that poly
doesn't work very well
with people who have not checked
out what they were taught
men women were supposed to be.
And that doesn't
matter if you're
a man or woman, or
trans, or non-binary,
or any other category of gender.
But of course, people
who are not binary,
or people who trans, have
already asked those questions.
Many people grew up in
parts of the United States
where nobody questions
that men do this.
I worked with a person who was
raised as a Jehovah's Witness,
and she had left that and
built a wonderful life,
but she wondered questions
so far behind in her career.
And I said, well,
did they educate you
for working outside the home?
Oh no, no, you
weren't supposed to.
Women weren't
supposed to do that.
Did they send you to college?
No, they didn't send
women to college.
So this still exists
in the United States,
often with the
interesting threat,
maybe, that this is
the way God wants it.
It's tremendously limited.
So it works better if people
have thought through what
it means to be a man, what
it means to be a woman,
and how they want
to be in that area,
and what work they need to
do to claim that territory.
If you were raised
to believe that
you were always in some
kind of competition or race,
for instance, whether
a man in his career
or a woman with other
women for desirable men.
Looking at the world as if it's
not a race can be a revelation.
And then how do you have
to change yourself in order
to not constantly be
wondering if you are ahead
of or behind the person
you're talking to.
Hierarchies kind of get
thrown out the window in here.
LOGAN URY: Well, that's
a good transition
to my next question, which is
around when we first talked.
You said you have
a lot of clients
who either work at Google or
work in the tech industry,
and I'd love to hear more
about that, and maybe
the relationship between tech
and open relationships or tech
and polyamory and what you
think the connection is.
DOSSIE EASTON:
Well, first of all,
you are all very
intelligent people,
or you wouldn't be here.
And that's the first
thing on the list,
that you think about things,
and you wonder about things,
and you question things.
And this is good stuff.
You are people
who would be bored
to tears working on an assembly
line or something like that,
in the factory.
Even if they payed you
more than they did here,
you would still
be bored to tears
and not tolerate it very well.
So this is an interesting
population of people.
I find it interesting
because, when I was young,
there was no built-in
employment for smart kids.
There wasn't any place
you went that you
could avoid being bored.
The corporate ladder
was kind of it,
unless you went to medical
school or something like that.
And so this idea
that there's now
a playground for bright
kids makes me very happy.
And my understanding
is that Google
is very actively pursuing
diversity in the population
here.
I know there's a lot of
activity and women in tech,
and that there's outreach
to high school and even
younger middle school
students to see
the kids from all over the
place get access, whether it's
by gender or by social
strata, or whatever,
get access to computers
and can learn about them.
So you live in a
very privileged world
here, and at the same time,
It's a very high pressure world.
You work really, really hard.
And some of you
are in the position
that a friend of mine
who's a medical doctor
told me he was told
in medical school.
When he went to
medical school, they
told them-- this was
when very few women went
to medical school-- get married
right away because you're not
going to have time to socialize.
Well, particularly
those of you who've
worked in the game industry,
you could easily be in a job
where you don't have
time to socialize.
Polyamory requires
an investment.
And you're investing,
and I don't
like to see people look
at marriage as sort
of a convenience.
My socks get washed, make
sure it's getting picked up
at the dry cleaner, so
I work and I come home
and expect to be taken care of.
And who are those
people at home that
are doing the taking care
of, and how do they count.
Anyway, so that
is something that
is I think another question.
A lot of you also as bright
kids in school were as I was.
Kind of social outcasts.
They did a research
project in a gifted program
in fourth and fifth
graders in California
when the gifted program
still existed in our schools.
And they had a bunch
of grad students
looking at kids in recess
and checking out the high IQ
kids that have been
identified, and seeing
how much time in recess they
spent as leaders, followers,
or outcasts.
Believe it or not,
these researchers
were surprised to discover
that the bright kids were
almost never the
leaders in grade school.
You all know that.
And so one of the
things that happens
when you have an assembly
of very bright people,
is that a lot of us were
not able to figure out
how to socialize in middle
school and high school.
And we found a home
for you, I didn't
because this didn't exist when
I was young, so many of you
now found a home in front
of a computer screen.
Where you could be respected,
where people could know you
by your handle or whatever
name you were using,
and you could win respect
being outrageous, blogging,
or doing something very
clever with computer games
or something like that.
And so a lot of people, a
lot of very bright people
get bullied in schools
and get kind of obstacles
to learning how they
want to socialize,
and figuring out how
we want to socialize.
So sometimes it's hard.
A lot of us are kind
of shy and awkward.
LOGAN URY: So I heard Dan
Savage speak last week,
and he said the most
common question he gets
is, am I normal?
DOSSIE EASTON: My
question is, do you
want to be normal, really?
Normal, it may
interest you to know,
is 1.75 minutes of fucking.
That's normal, OK?
Do you want to be normal?
I don't think so.
You're way too smart for that.
I throw that up.
It's important when
looking at research
because statistical research
has taken normal as right.
Now, normal is an IQ of 100,
and actually that's-- in terms
of here-- that would be way low.
Normal doesn't
actually include people
who are explorers,
who are looking out
of the box, who are creative
thinkers, who do something
well.
You're not normal if you
do anything well, you see.
You all, in intelligence, are
a couple standard deviations
above normal, three
or four, maybe.
So normal is kind of deceptive.
And when you think of normal in
sexuality and sexual behavior,
it's taken in a
culture with a history
of tremendous sexual oppression.
Using that word normal,
say, oh no, it's not normal.
When I started as
a sex educator,
it was considered
pathological to masturbate.
We have changed the
world on that one.
And that's crazy.
LOGAN URY: That's true.
It's interesting to
see what's normal now,
what was normal, what will
be normal in the future.
DOSSIE EASTON: Well,
people still jack off.
They were ashamed of
themselves for doing it,
which is really bad.
LOGAN URY: So I'd
love to hear you talk
a little bit about jealousy.
I think that's something that
people often wonder about.
How do people manage jealousy,
and what are the expectations
around jealousy?
Does it not exist in a
polyamorous relationship?
Or do people just
handle it differently?
DOSSIE EASTON: People handle
it differently, of course.
After all these years,
I still get jealous.
And I have been consciously
poly for more than 50 years now.
Jealousy is not one thing.
If we were to ask around this
room, we would find out--
I don't have my whiteboard here.
This was the white
board question.
We would find out that for
one person here, when they
get jealous, they get angry.
Another person gets insecure.
Another person feels
very territorial.
Another person
fears abandonment.
Another person
goes, oh my god, I
should have lost
those 20 pounds.
And they're very, very
different experiences.
Jealousy is interesting in that
it's not really an emotion,
it's a word we use
for a stimulus that
may cause strong emotions
and may frighten us.
We've been taught
that we are supposed
to take our security from
our life partnerships,
from our marriages,
from our relationships.
And that security is
supposed to include--
this is one of the biggest
myths of all-- the idea
that our partner
is not attracted
to anybody else but us, which
is really probably not true.
[LAUGHTER]
Matter of fact, if
you look at this,
people think people who watch
porn-- I always was very amused
by these things
about the statistics
of these terrible
people who watch porn,
and they all turn into serial
killers-- you start by saying
this is a multi-billion
dollar industry of criminals,
and we must stop.
Well, who do you
think is providing
those multi-billion dollars
if it isn't all of us?
So there's a lot
of what is normal.
You were asking about normal.
I'm sorry I got off track.
What I look at with
jealousy is, we
start with the sort of
axiom in this society
that jealousy is an
intolerable emotion.
I recall one of my clients
coming into the office
one day to say she had
talked to her girlfriend
about her boyfriend's
behavior, and her boyfriend
was indeed being a jerk.
And her girlfriend said,
well, he just gave you
a license to go ballistic.
Ballistic?
I thought about that.
Do you actually own a gun?
And she didn't,
so we could relax.
But you think about
that, hey, Joe,
where you going with
that gun in your hand?
I'd rather see you
dead, little girl,
than see you with another man.
And there's equivalent
stuff for women
as well, that the
world comes to an end
if you find that your
partner has had sex
or wants to have sex
with somebody else.
And so we've taught ourselves
that jealousy is its own kind
of emotional tyrant.
Because the belief
system is that jealousy
is intolerable, that
it is inevitable,
and that it is unchangeable.
Interestingly
enough, brain science
has given us-- all those
wonderful functional MRI
research-- a different story.
And the story is that when
people get jealous, often
we are triggered.
An emotional
triggering is something
that, if you get upset
really fast about something,
you feel very overwhelmed.
You start flooding, and it
feels like a big emergency.
I gotta run away, or I got to
freeze, or I have to fight,
or something like that.
That's what triggering is.
It's actually a
physiological function
of organs called the
amygdalas in our brains
that are there to teach us
to run away from tigers.
LOGAN URY: The amygdala hijacks.
DOSSIE EASTON: Yep, hijacks
the whole nervous system.
So when that happens, we're
all flooding with adrenaline
and norepinephrine, and
all the sugar in your cells
goes into your bloodstream
so you can run better.
You become able to ignore
your insulin, which
is why some people in stressful
childhoods, it's now identified
as a cause of diabetes, because
it messes up the sugar system
so badly.
That stuff is what
seems intolerable,
but the interesting truth
is that if you accept
that your system's
been hijacked,
and you're now no
longer able to,
you can't do conflict resolution
in this state of mind.
Forget it.
All we want is for
that other person
to be wrong and you
to be proved right.
It's a very blinding
kind of state.
But if you manage to
take care of yourself
without re stimulating whatever
it was that set you off,
whatever that trigger was,
for as little as 15 minutes,
your physiology will
return to its normal state.
And if you're having a
fight with your partner,
standard couples
therapy says that what
you do separate for 15
minutes, to take a timeout,
do whatever it takes
to occupy yourself
in a positive and
supportive way.
Go hug a tree, whatever.
Why is that a bad thing to do?
Tree huggers.
It's weird.
And then if you come back
and look at what's happening
and you will see
it more clearly.
And this will get
you through a lot
of problems in partnerships.
Really, just stop, go occupy
your mind in some positive way.
I am a meditator, but I
don't find meditation-- maybe
I'm not good enough at it, but
I don't find it an easy thing
to do in moments like that,
because I need something that
occupies my verbal thought train
while I'm starting up going,
you just want me in the
corner crying, don't you?
That kind of thinking
is hard to ignore.
Crossword puzzles help.
But what happens when
you calm yourself down,
every time you do that,
every time you self sooth,
integrating fibers grow
into the amygdala that
deliver gabapentin, which
is endogenous valium.
And you get to keep the fibers.
So every time you succeed
in soothing yourself
when you're triggered, you
gain in physiological resources
for calming yourself down.
This makes sense.
So the goal with jealousy
is not that it goes away,
but that it is
changed from a typhoon
to kind of a gentle
summer shower.
You go, oh well,
I'm feeling jeaous.
How shall I take care of myself?
Matter of fact, it's even
affirming just to say,
every time I feel jealous,
I go be nice to myself.
I mean, it's interesting.
It's not necessarily
logical, but it works.
LOGAN URY: That's
really helpful.
I'm going to go take
a timeout next time.
Yeah.
So I wanted to share
a story with you.
My friend told me
this story few years
ago, that she's in
an open relationship,
and her therapist is
really supportive.
But then one, day
she brought out
the idea of having a
child with her primary,
and the therapist
sort of freaked out.
And you've talked a bit
about having a child.
I'd like to hear your
thoughts on childbearing
in nontraditional environments.
DOSSIE EASTON: I was very lucky
that this came to me right
after I had my daughter,
who is now in her '40s,
and we are very close,
and that's a good thing.
And it all worked.
But she was only
three months old then.
And I wound up connecting
with a lot of other parents,
a lot of extended families
of sluts that were often,
let's say, society for creating
an anachronism, Renaissance
Faire, science fiction,
computer people?
Is that familiar by any means?
[LAUGHTER]
Oh, I forgot pagan.
We all had kids.
And what that meant was that we
were doing our initial lessons
in having polyamorous extended
family in a way in which we
could not compartmentalize
our relationships.
Everybody knew
everybody, our children
played with everybody
else's children.
We could go to sex
parties because somebody
would stay home with and throw
a pajama party for the kids.
These were our children's
brothers and sisters,
which took care of the
problem that many of us
were having in a one or two
child family, because that's
what middle class
modern people do.
And so our kids didn't
have as many siblings
as they might have had.
So if I was dating somebody
and then we came to a bad thing
and we didn't want to do that
anymore, we wanted to change,
we couldn't go hunt.
Because we'd have to rip our
children out of their family to
do it.
So much like the serial
monogamy of people who get
divorced and remarried.
When you have children,
there's a lot of reason
to say, well, we
should all decide
that we're on the same
side, because we're
raising this child.
And we need to figure out
what our best behavior is,
and what kind of role model we
want to present for children.
And that gave us
a lot of impetus
and a lot of desire to not
act like idiots and go,
I'll never speak
to you again, you
know, because I was going to
have to speak to that person
again, or lose my
entire support system.
And so we learned to
speak to each other,
even after troubled breakups
and painful misconnections.
I thought that was a very good
thing, our kids just benefit.
Kids are designed to grow up
in little villages of maybe 40
people, in tribes.
Babies are like puppies.
If you've ever had a
friend who had a puppy
and you played with the puppy
and came back six months later,
it seemed like the
puppy recognized you?
Babies are like that.
They can register about
40 people, possibly more.
I don't know, that
was about what we had.
And they love each other.
They're just happy.
They recognize people.
They know what it is.
And this means the child has
a lot of adult resources,
and the parents have
a lot of resources,
because that minimizes the
time we spend losing sleep
with screaming babies and
feeling like we're exhausted
or taken beyond our resources.
Children are very challenging.
It's very hard raising
young children.
It's a lot of work,
and if you have
plenty of adults around
to share the burden,
it becomes more of a
joy and a lot easier.
LOGAN URY: If you're
comfortable speaking about it,
I'd love to hear how
your daughter reflects
on her childhood.
DOSSIE EASTON: You will all
understand this, my daughter
Bea, my daughter
with me, we have
an agreement that I do not
speak in any specific way
about her life.
[LAUGHTER]
LOGAN URY: I figured
that might be the case.
DOSSIE EASTON: You might
figure out if I were your mom,
you might want it that way too.
[LAUGHTER]
LOGAN URY: Makes sense, yeah.
So what's your relationship
between polyamory and feminism?
DOSSIE EASTON: Well,
when I started out,
that was the beginning
of my feminism.
I was determined to, I
decided in that day--
and I was coming out of a
very scary relationship that
had really everything to do with
sexism and then nothing to do
with it.
Because my partner,
my daughter's father,
had his first psychotic
episode after we
decided to have a
child, and became
a paranoid schizophrenic,
which happens sometimes.
Some forms of mental
illness occur in adulthood.
We were both 25.
And he became dangerous
and violent and scary,
so I was quite traumatized
when I got there.
But I was also very angry.
I was really aware that he was
taking out his frustrations
by hitting me, and
threatening to kill me
and chasing me around, the lies,
all kinds of horrible stuff.
I had to leave.
I mean, it's like I can't
raise a child in this.
This isn't possible.
And so it was a big
lesson, because what
is it in the culture that says
that if you're feeling small,
one way to go about feeling
big and feeling more powerful,
if you're feeling
powerless, is to take
someone smaller
than you and make
them feel even smaller yet.
This is one of the basic
difficulties of sexism,
and of how we look at sexuality.
Prison sex is like this.
The person who penetrates
is believed to gain power.
The person who is
penetrated is believed
to lose power, become
lower in the hierarchy.
Janet said this, quoted
me on this to somebody
who answered, oh yeah,
but that's true, isn't it?
And she said, oh
you mean sort of
like plugging in an electrical
cord to the circuit.
I like that metaphor.
Where is the power?
Where is the power?
So it was a big part
of my feminism, both
to grasp my sexuality the
way I wanted to grasp it,
and I decided not to be
a partner for five years
so that I could find out who
I was when I wasn't trying
to be somebody's wife.
That was really important to me.
I vowed to take my relationships
with women seriously,
and wound up in
relationships with women,
and even identifying as a dyke.
And all of that was part of
me finding out who I was,
and starting to value the parts
of me that I had been taught
were not valuable because
they were unwomanly,
like, for instance,
being intelligent.
We'll get back to that one.
So it was a great voyage
of exploration for me,
I consider myself a
reformed clinging vine.
But what's interesting
in polyamory,
when you're looking at
what kind of a grownup
you're going to be, whatever
you were told you should be,
is that every
relationship you have
to decide what you want the
boundaries of that relationship
to be.
You have create it.
You have to be aware of what
it's limits are going to be.
And this is very strengthening
because the power belongs
to each of us to make
those decisions about how
we want to regard any given
relationship in our lives,
instead of trying to be
somebody else's version of what
a relationship is
supposed to look like.
LOGAN URY: Thank you for
sharing that with us.
So the first edition of "The
Ethical Slut" came out in 1999,
is that right?
DOSSIE EASTON: 1997,
actually, but yes.
LOGAN URY: 1997, and
then the second version
came out in 2009, I'd love
to hear what changes you
made over that period of time.
And then what changes
you might hope or expect
to see 10 years from now.
DOSSIE EASTON: First, I want to
give a total vote of confidence
and thanks, thanks to
Janet, my co-author,
thanks to my lovers
and my lover's lovers,
and all those people.
But also particularly
thanks for my clients,
because the difference
between those two books
was, however many years it
was, 12 years or something,
me seeing people
in my office who
maybe came from
parts of the culture
that I would not
normally have met them.
Maybe they were more
conservative than me.
That's pretty easy.
So I got to learn
a lot, and a lot
of that learning--
what happened was,
because of the first edition
was popular and got around
to a lot of places, I learned
how a lot of different people
do poly.
And that was something
that is reflected in here.
There's a lot more
diversity in here, I think.
The other case was that I
had been doing a lot of work
so I had exercises
that I did as homework.
And we included those
exercises in here.
So there's an aspect
of the second edition
that you use like a
workbook, and try things
and find out, that might guide
your exploration into who
you want to be as a slut.
And how you want your life to
be, and what kind of agreements
you might want to make with
your various partners and so on.
So that's new.
We have some stuff, but not an
awful lot about internet sex.
Because neither
of us are-- well,
maybe I don't notice it
because she wrote it,
because I don't do it.
Somebody else needs
to write that book.
We are not millennials.
We didn't grow up
with computers.
So that's not so much in
there, but there is also
just some expansion.
There's new chapters.
There's a chapter on
being a single slut.
And a nice long discussion of
the rights and responsibilities
that become sort of like saying,
well, if I'm a single slut,
and I'm an outsider to
somebody's marriage,
but I'm a member that family by
virtue of fucking someone who's
in it, then what are my rights?
What are my responsibilities?
And the rights
part is important,
because if you look
at these people who
say they're going to cure your
marriage of having affairs,
the first thing they talk about
is who they're going to dump.
And they think
that other person,
they treat them like
they're not human.
That other person doesn't count.
Get rid of them.
They're a home wrecker,
or some such thing.
They don't count.
And in fact, everybody
counts in poly.
So if I don't honor my
lovers' other relationships,
I'm failing as a poly person.
If they don't honor my
presence there, than they
are feeling me.
And so that part I think
is really important,
and it's in here.
And the other thing
that's in here
is a chapter called opening
a poly relationship.
And curiously enough
that one wound up
having a big
section on cheating.
The reason being, that a lot
of people came into my office
where in fact wanting to
open a relationship that
in fact was already open only
one partner didn't know that.
[LAUGHTER]
Sometimes both partners
didn't know that.
So I began to realize
that a lot of people
come to thinking about poly
and thinking maybe this
is an answer for me because
they have been cheating.
And I started looking at
that kind of differently.
I also see a lot of sex
workers, and I haven't ever
seen this thing, but one
of my sex worker friends
who is a sex worker activist,
was writing her master's degree
or master's thesis
on family structures,
including the sex workers
as members of the family.
Not maybe known to most of
the members of the family,
but they're there and
they're part of the ecology
of the whole system.
They're providing an
important sustenance of sorts.
And so I also got a lot
sex workers' clients.
And in fact if you're
cheating, seeing a sex worker
is a more honorable
way to cheat,
because to be honorable
and cheat your partner's
never supposed to know.
That's the honorable
way of cheating.
I know that sounds crazy
but there's an ethics to it.
For people who felt that
their partners would never
allow them, for
instance, to explore SM,
or to explore gender,
or to explore whatever
it is, who had husbands and
wives and children and houses
and families that they valued.
And they didn't want to have to
leave their families in order
to explore more completely
who they are by trying
on these various roles.
Sex work becomes a way with
good boundaries that is about as
honorable so you can get.
Because the other thing in
poly is that we do take it
that desire is important.
That when I have
a desire, when I
have a fantasy
that calls to me, I
can benefit from
listening to that call.
If I'm free, if I've set up my
life so I'm free, that I can go
and just answer that call.
Because one of
things poly gives you
is that you can have
relationships with people
that you would not dream of
sharing your checkbook with.
[LAUGHTER]
But you can find out what
that call is, you can find out
who that attractive person is.
And presuming that you respect
them and they respect you,
you're in business.
And you don't have to be
prepared to share a mortgage
or raise a child
with that person.
LOGAN URY: Well, this
has been fascinating,
and definitely the most times
I've heard the word fuck
use in a talk to Google.
[LAUGHTER]
DOSSIE EASTON: Yeah.
LOGAN URY: We're
going to open it up
to questions from the audience.
I see a lot of
interested faces here.
DOSSIE EASTON: I do
want to say something
while we're getting the mic
organized, about the word fuck.
There's no other active verb
to describe that activity.
We have sex, we get nooky,
we get lucky, we cop a feel,
we often steal.
But the language
is all about sex
as something, a
thing that you get,
and so fucking is the only verb
that says this is something
that you do.
AUDIENCE: Screw.
Mate.
Copulate.
DOSSIE EASTON: That's
why I use it so much.
AUDIENCE: Copulate.
DOSSIE EASTON: Screw, copulate.
Well, copulate is another way.
It's like saying the
only clean words are
ones that are multi-syllabic
and in dead languages.
[LAUGHTER]
It's true that copulate
and fornicate are fine.
They are there.
They sound like diseases.
LOGAN URY: OK, let's start
with a question over here.
AUDIENCE: Not to dis
the word polyamory,
but it is a multi-syllabic
word in a dead language.
[LAUGHTER]
So I have like 60
questions I could ask.
But I think the one that
probably hit me most
is, you're delightfully
pandering to this audience.
I appreciate that.
We're all smart people
yadda, yadda, yadda.
We're all privileged to
be in this environment.
In my circles, I have had often
the sort of accusation, maybe,
levied that poly is something
for rich white people,
or some flavor of that.
That you have to be in a certain
economic class or situation
in order for it to be OK.
My own experience differs,
greatly, from that.
But I'm wondering how
much you've heard that,
and what your response to
that sort of framing is.
DOSSIE EASTON: Well,
I think that there's
a certain amount of truth to
it, in the sense that we have
to recognize-- I talked
about agrarian families,
where they get together so
the children don't starve.
Well, we have families
in this country,
often farming families.
I'm a first generation American.
My family came over
to this country.
My grandparents were
domestic servants.
So I come from a very
working class background.
My parents worked, crawled their
way up to white collar jobs,
and were very dedicated to
getting education for us.
So that kind of
cemented family has
been very important for
people who are getting
a toehold in this world.
Especially people
immigrate from elsewhere.
People coming into this
country from Syria,
the great debate now, are
going to need to their families
the way most of the
people in this room don't.
Most of you could leave
your blood families,
and could leave a partner,
without putting yourself
in danger of starving or
having no job or no life.
That doesn't mean you can
easily come out of the closet
everywhere, not even here,
but you have that freedom.
And many people in
the culture don't.
So I think there is
a kind of, there's
a certain privilege
associated with this.
Now many, many young people
of families like my family
immigrant families
that worked really
hard to get a foothold
in the culture,
including those who had a
harder job than my family.
Because my family was Northern
European, so I'm white,
so I have an advantage in
that, that's a privilege.
We're seeing a lot more people
from immigrant families,
and from poor families, and
so on in this generation.
In places like here
and in the sex world.
It has been largely
a very white world,
the world of sex
parties and sex clubs
and all that kind of stuff, and
a very middle class, educated
world.
So sometimes we have to
realize, and how do we
welcome people who come from
the world that I grew up in.
This world, when
my parents lived
through two world
wars and a depression,
they were in danger of starving.
And so their values
I came to realize
were different from
mine, because they've
been endangered.
And the way that they raised
me I was never in danger.
So there's a lot of
privilege in there.
I agree.
That doesn't mean
we shouldn't do it.
It just means that
there's a lot of privilege
and we should acknowledge that.
LOGAN URY: Another
question out there.
AUDIENCE: So you
mentioned earlier,
when you talked about
educated people,
you talked about video game
culture, and the being outcast,
et cetera.
In recent years, it's very clear
that this video game culture
has actually been very
toxic do anti feminist, very
sexist and male centric people,
even though supposedly we
are out.
So can you say anything
about that point?
DOSSIE EASTON: Yeah, I think
that Mortal Combat, Black Ops,
is not really the best
thing to feed your children.
So I really don't think
it's the best thing at all.
And I think it's an
unfortunate part of our culture
that we get, we decide
that the way we're
going to get adrenaline
raisers in this world
is not going and doing something
exciting with our friends,
which we could do, by pretending
to kill lots of people.
I remember running
across a little boy
was about 10 years
old who was playing
a video game many years ago,
the first time I'd ever seen it.
I looked at the game, and I
said does anything ever pop up
you're not supposed to shoot?
And he said, no,
that's interesting.
[LAUGHTER]
So yeah I think there's a big
question about these, about
this culture.
And yet again, I mean
these are ways that people
develop computer skills.
They really do,
and so they are now
a part of our learning
experience for everybody.
I think that the idea that
it so much about combat,
and that there's a whole
bunch of very, very
sexist with
occasional woman hero
you know, but that's been
happening for awhile.
I recently had a
big surgery and had
to figure out how to rest a
lot, and I did 132 episodes
of Xena Warrior Princess.
[LAUGHTER]
LOGAN URY: Question over there.
AUDIENCE: So on the
topic of jealousy,
we were talking about
how, with experience, you
develop kind of an
emotional maturity,
a physiological
maturity, but have you
in your experience
had clients in therapy
or elsewhere that are
younger, but have found ways
to handle jealousy
in a mature way?
DOSSIE EASTON: Of
course, absolutely.
People grow up in
different circumstances.
For instance, the triggers
from the amygdala,
I am a survivor of a violent
childhood so I know this.
In people who are
trauma survivors,
there is a lot more,
the triggers are bigger,
they are a lot
harder to deal with.
They're more work.
So in people who have had
very unsafe childhoods,
were very triggered,
I've had people
who had a incredibly hard
time because a father
left the family with no
resources whatsoever.
They were homeless and
whatever, terrible traumas
that can be associated
with this sort of thing.
And so some people
have a much harder job
to do if they want to
overcome the triggers,
and there you have
another question.
Because it's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work
for people who
haven't been so
traumatized, but it's
a lot of work to learn to
operate your own triggers.
Now there's a
benefit, obviously,
because that means that
your triggers don't own you
in any situation.
So if you work on
them because you
want the freedom to fuck
around, here you go again
but that's what I do.
Slut, one syllable
word in English.
Then you want to do
that work because you
want to claim your
freedom, and one
of the places where this becomes
difficult with some people that
come into my office are people
who actually have no desire
whatsoever to do the work.
And if they were
going to do it, it
would only be to please or
perhaps hold onto a spouse.
And that's not enough
motivation for a lot of people,
because it's painful.
There is no way around jealousy.
You have to go
through it, you have
to be willing to experience
it, and start to work with it
and take care of yourself
and nurture yourself
while you're having it.
You can't just count
on avoiding it.
And so for the person
who never wanted
to do this in the
first place, it
can become something
that they do not
have the resources to conquer.
I take great pride
that some of the people
in these situations
who've come to my office
decide to be monogamous.
Because I don't want
to be a therapist who's
shoving my agenda
down people's throats.
I'm willing to be
there, but I'm not
willing to say that
they ought to be
different from how they are.
I'm willing to say, this is
the work that needs to be done,
and it's hard
because X, Y, Z. You
have to decide if it's
worth doing for you,
or if you'd rather wait 10 years
til the children are older.
What is it, whatever
is real in your life.
Thank you for that question,
it's a good question.
AUDIENCE: Really appreciate
you sharing your perspective
from the late '60s all
the way through now
in terms of seeing the
tremendous social change that's
happened around how we perceive
and think about the sexuality.
I want to revisit actually
the question from before,
so between the first and second
edition, and then maybe down
the road what kinds of
changes you might anticipate
or what kinds of
developments or trends
would you see between now
and maybe the third edition,
or in the decades ahead?
DOSSIE EASTON: Yeah, we're
actually sort of getting it.
They want you to do another
addition every 10 years or so,
it's like publicity and so on.
I'm not really sure.
I think that we would
have to look at,
I kind of learned in
the process of doing it.
And I don't have a clear
vision about what I could add.
The one thing,
there is some stuff,
the brain science
I quoted to you,
is also quoted in this book.
In this addition.
It's not in the first
edition because the research
hadn't happened yet.
And so I'm going
to assume there's
going to be more research
about emotions and about states
of consciousness by then.
That's what my interest
is, I'm working
on a book called Shadow Play.
About journeys into
shadow, and why
we find "Little Red Riding
and The Big Bad Wolf"
a big sexy story.
And what happens if we
decide to do a role play,
and where do we get to go and
journey, and what happens?
So that's what I'm kind of
interested in exploring right
now, the intersection
of eros and kind
of Jungian shadow stuff.
And that's what's
interesting me.
I don't know what the
next book would bring
it's kind of an adventure.
We go to write it.
We kind of live with them
when we're writing it.
This book brought many
surprises as well.
AUDIENCE: One of the
things when I was first
exploring the sort of
expressions of polyamory
in society, I'd always felt
something along these lines.
But by learning about how people
talk about polyamory, there
was a great deal of distinction
between rules based poly
and this idea of hierarchy,
where you're primarily
and secondary, versus
other people who
have sort of
something some people
are calling relationship
anarchy, where everything
is consistently negotiated.
And there's all sorts of
different formulations.
I guess I'm not interested in a
historical examination of that.
But as a psychologist,
where do you
find people best
make use of rules,
best make use of flexibility?
Like, how does that play out
in your experience with clients
and in your own experience?
DOSSIE EASTON: Well,
you'll see in the book
that I don't talk about rules.
I talk about agreements.
And sometimes I get
snarky with my clients.
"She broke an agreement."
I guess she didn't
agree about that.
[LAUGHTER]
There we are.
And sometimes that's
something that I come down on.
If it's safer sex, I
care about that a lot.
Sometimes it's like
something that you go, well,
how are you guys
going to negotiate?
Why don't we talk about
what the emotional cost is
of both of your positions?
Relationship anarchy is
an interesting notion.
And I hear it in
two different ways.
I have always been
a person who I
guess would be described as
a relationship anarchist.
But I've never used that
language, because I don't like,
in general, the kind
of dualism that's
about rankings and hierarchies.
I'm wandering around
snarkily saying,
you know, how many
Olympic athletes can you
name that won bronze medals?
We only count the people
at the top of the ladder,
and that means nobody counts,
or very few people count,
and that's a drag.
My understanding is
that we need agreements.
And some degree-- and
this varies enormously
by people-- some degree of
predictability is important.
Almost no one could
tolerate simply
being blindsided constantly.
So if anarchist just means
I won't make agreements,
that's a problem.
If anarchist means we negotiate
agreements as they fit,
and if we are-- I have
a wonderful poly family
in my practice who are
currently pregnant.
There's an originating couple
who are married legally,
and then they each are married
to someone else in a way that
is not legal but pagan.
They are planning
to have children
in all these combinations.
And I have a friend who's
a family lawyer who loves
this challenge of, like, OK.
You go visit Dylan, and have
him make whatever agreements you
guys can figure out how to
make and about how you're
going to deal with
the college fund,
and so on, if you're
having children
between all these different
sets of parents in one family.
And they are doing a
beautiful job of it.
It's amazing.
They support each other
when people have hard times.
They all get in
there and help out
the person who's feeling
bad, even if they start out
by expressing it by being
very angry about something
or whatever.
So it could be a very
nice thing, in that sense.
It's interesting because
talking about adrenalin raisers
in the games, there's
a relationship
between structure
and risk that has
to do with how awake we get.
There's actually an ideal,
in any situation there's
kind of an ideal balance between
structure, which is safety,
and risk, which is expansive
and maybe challenging.
Because if it's too
structured, it feels too safe.
It's boring.
And people get restless.
And if it's too unstructured,
too anarchist, if you will,
then people get scared because
they can't find their place.
This comes from
research into groups.
Where people work the
best and function the best
is in some balance in between.
LOGAN URY: State of flow.
DOSSIE EASTON: Yeah.
Does that answer your question?
It's a little abstract
AUDIENCE: Yeah, kind of.
I would quibble with some of
the ways you used the word
anarchist, but I
get what you mean.
DOSSIE EASTON: Yeah.
You nodded to me--
by the way, he
nodded when I said
if anarchist just
means that you don't
make agreements,
you shook your head.
And I agree.
That's quite true.
LOGAN URY: I think
we should continue
that conversation over lunch.
But I feel so grateful that you
came and that I work in a place
where we could have
this conversation.
And it's really been eye
opening to have you here.
So thank you so
much for joining us.
DOSSIE EASTON: No, thank
you for inviting me.
[APPLAUSE]
