The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities by Dossie Easton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was recommended to me by a friend as being the only book out there that talked sensibly about polyamory. It’s geared as a how-to guide, for the most part, and also as ‘there are a lot of us out here’ manifesto.
Not surprisingly, the book reads like it was written by and for and about hippies. The authors are long-time lovers who also have had relationships and marriages with other people. I consider myself not easily shocked or offended, but the descriptions of, say, the social etiquette of attending a lesbian orgy contained details that fell outside my comfort zone.
The authors take special care to include every possible manifestation of non-monogamy into this book, which is both its strength and its weakness. It’s a strength because no one is going to feel that the authors didn’t take their special circumstances into account. It’s a weakness because, with such a broad spectrum of possibilities, the advice basically boiled down to “communicate with your partner(s)” and “treat everyone kindly and respectfully, including yourself.”
As you might expect from a book that seeks to reclaim “slut” as a positive term, this book is very liberal, very feminist, and aggressively non-judgmental. Reading it made me feel like I was at WisCon, as if I had turned into the farthest right, red-meat-eating, bible-thumping, gun-toting middle American in the country (even though my political opinions hadn’t changed). If you’re interested in a book that will convince your right-wing family member that polyamory is normal and okay and that even ordinary people are doing it, this is not the book for you.
