Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [90]
Most of these gathering places and events are made possible by a lot of hard-working volunteers, so the absolute number one best way to get to know people in a group you like is to volunteer to do something useful: greet folks at the door, help with refreshments, join the clean-up crew. You will meet a ton of people and they will be grateful to you. Both of your authors have become valued members of many communities by helping out and by offering our living rooms as meeting places to support groups and social functions. Generally, we get a friendly crew to help us set up and to clean up afterward. Then we don’t even have to leave home to attend.
PERSONAL ADS
Sluts have been finding each other through personal ads for many decades, and personal-ad partner finding has expanded enormously in the last decade or two, fueled by the widespread availability of Internet access.
One couple who recently celebrated their eighth anniversary says,
We would never have found each other if we’d met face-to-face in the first place. Anthea is tall and girly and a single mom and an agnostic; Bev is short and energetic and resolutely child-free and Jewish. Neither of us is anything like the people either of us has chosen before. But since we met through the personals, we had a chance to get to know each other at a deeper level, before we had to confront all the surface stuff that would have turned us off if we’d seen that first.
Those seeking nontraditional relationships may, however, find themselves addressing some problems of categorization. One well-known international free advertising site, for example, offers two types of relationship ads, the regular partner-seeking ones and “casual encounters”; people explicitly seeking nonmonogamous longer-term relationships sometimes find that their ads in the partner-seeking section have been removed. We don’t have an answer for this, except to hope that this site will consider adding an “alternative relationships” category soon.
There are also paid sites, usually sponsored by magazines and newspapers, that cost a few dollars a month and offer a bit more flexibility in how you describe yourself and what kind of relationship you’re seeking; Janet and her spouse E found each other on one of these. At this time, many online matchmaking services do not support nonmonogamous lifestyles, and some will even take down ads that mention poly, but we’re sure that will change as polyfolk become more visible. However, the website PolyMatchMaker.com offers space for all sorts of poly and alternative personal ads for people of all genders and orientations. And OkCupid.com offers an ethical slut test that will help you match your values with other participants. Dossie and her partner recently took this test and are happy to report that they both qualified, although Dossie was a bit miffed to discover that her partner got a higher score than she did. On the test, that is.
When you meet people through a personal ad, it is customary to get to know them in stages, starting with email correspondence, then perhaps a phone conversation, and then a no-strings get-together in a public place for coffee or a meal, so that you can get to know the other person slowly and with as little pressure as possible. Be aware that you know nothing about this person beyond words on a screen, and take the same precautions you would take in meeting any other stranger.
A special case: What if you fall in love with a person who wants monogamy? This situation is going to be tough. We know that this is a valid disagreement, and also a very basic difference. In our more thoughtless moments, we have blithely assumed that once this delightful person who has won our heart discovers that ethical sluttery is possible, he or she will instantly want to join in—but that is not always the case. Please remember that nobody is right and nobody is wrong; this is about two different ways of structuring a relationship, and both, or all, choices are valid. You may choose for the present to continue exploring this relationship