Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [136]
Orientation: Usually used to mean gay, lesbian, bisexual, or heterosexual. Many people engage in sex, romance, and/or intimacy outside the boundaries of their chosen orientation, without feeling the need to change that orientation—it is quite possible that “orientation” has at least as much to do with culture as it does with sex.
Outercourse: Non-penetrative sex, including sex toys, mutual masturbation, phone sex, roleplaying, and such … just for fun, or as a safer-sex strategy, or both.
Pansexual: Inclusive of all genders and orientations.
Pathologize: To treat a functional sexual or relationship pattern as a disease, usually because it’s unfamiliar.
Polyamory (often shortened to “poly”): A new word that has gained a great deal of currency in recent years. We like it because, unlike “nonmonogamy,” it does not assume monogamy as a norm. On the other hand, its meaning is still a bit vague—some feel that polyamory includes all forms of sexual relationships other than monogamy, while others restrict it to committed love relationships (thereby excluding swinging, casual sexual contact, and other forms of intimacy).
Polyfidelity: A subset of polyamory in which more than two people, possibly two or more couples, form a sexually exclusive group. Sometimes used as a safer-sex strategy.
Promiscuity: One of several words used to pathologize those who like to have a lot of sex. Mainstream culture tips its hand about its underlying paradigm of sex-as-commodity when it refers to such people as “cheap.”
Public sex: Sex in an environment containing many consenting people, such as a sex party.
Queer: A recently reclaimed word, originally an insult aimed at homosexual people. In some communities this word means specifically “gay or lesbian.” However, it is used increasingly as a political/sexual self-definition by anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into mainstream sexual expectations. Often combined with a description of what makes you queer, as in “genderqueer” or “leatherqueer.”
Reclaiming: If someone uses a word about you in an attempt to insult or offend you, you can either get angry, or you can defuse the word by using it yourself so it’s no longer an insult. Words that have been reclaimed in this way include “queer,” “dyke,” “fag,” and, yes, “slut.”
Sex: Frankly, it doesn’t matter what definition we use; sex is whatever you and your partners think it is. Whatever you think sex is, we approve of it—because all forms of consensual sex are wonderful.
Sex addiction: The subject of heated debate in sex therapy communities, this phrase refers to compulsive sexual behavior that takes over a person’s life to the extent that it interferes with healthy functioning in relationships, work, or other aspects of life. Far too often used as a way of pathologizing happy sluts.
Sex-negative: Sex is dangerous. Sexual desire is wrong. Female sexuality is destructive and evil. Male sexuality is predatory and uncontrollable. It is the task of every civilized human being to confine sexuality within very narrow limits. Sex is the work of the devil. God hates sex. Got the picture?
Sex-positive: The belief that sex is a healthy force in our lives. This phrase was created by sex educators at the National Sex Forum in the late 1960s. It describes a person or group that maintains an optimistic, open-minded, nonjudgmental attitude toward all forms of consensual sexuality.
Slut: A person who celebrates sexuality with an open mind and an open heart.
Transsexual (“transman,” “transwoman,” etc.): Someone who identifies as a gender different from the one that their chromosomes and/or genitals dictate. Transfolk may or may not decide to take hormones and/or have surgery to change their physical appearance. Some transfolk are reclaiming the formerly derogatory term “tranny.”
Resource Guide
The following is a list of books, websites, networks, and other resources for polyamory and other sexually