Practical Polyamory™

Poly Advice for Newbies on Polyamory Weekly Podcast

2011-10-17T12:55:00.000-04:00

I recently posted a review here of the awesome time I had at Polycamp NW in August. While I was there, I got an invitation from Cunning Minx to sit down and record some of what I contributed to the discussion in a workshop she had done earlier in the afternoon. It was a thoroughly gorgeous day, bright, warm sunshine and the glories of the Pacific Northwest all around us. We found a picnic table under a tree away from the crowd and had a very easy and natural conversation, which you can listen to here.

September 23 is Sexual Freedom Day!

2011-09-22T13:55:00.006-04:00

Tomorrow is Sexual Freedom Day, established as such by the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance, September 23 being its namesake Victoria Woodhull's birthday. I thought I'd take a minute and let you know that I will be attending and participating in tomorrow's activities as a recognized member of the polyamory leadership community. I did this last year as well. Woodhull is based here in DC and does excellent work on behalf of all of us. In case you aren't familiar with them, their mission is, in part: "... to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right, working towards a world that fulfills the words of the United States Supreme Court that

“…our laws and tradition afford constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. In explaining the respect the Constitution demands for the autonomy of the person in making these choices, we (the court) stated as follows:

‘These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.” Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992) quoted in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)"

Pretty awesome, huh? Woodhull Executive Director Ricci Levy (right) is a member of the Polyamory Leadership Network and very well connected to the polyamory community. As such, all of we polyamorists have a connection with Woodhull, so it seems doubly appropriate to call your attention to tomorrow's festivities.

Another poly leader also participating in tomorrow's Sexual Freedom Day activities is New York City poly community organizer and attorney Diana Adams, Esq., (left) who will be one of six panelists to speak tomorrow afternoon to the topic "Sexual Outlaws: The Prohibition of Pleasure." Tomorrow evening I am attending a VIP reception hosted by Woodhull board members sex educator Nina Hartley (yes, THAT Nina Hartley, below left) and author Carol Queen (below right) of San Francisco's Center for Sex and Culture. After that there will be dinner and the presenting of the "Vicki" Sexual Freedom Awards to three deserving individuals whose work has substantially furthered the cause of sexual freedom. It promises to be a great day.

In 2010 Woodhull published the 163 page report, "State of Sexual Freedom in the United States" to which Deborah Anapol contributed and which is definitely worth the read. You can download the pdf of it for a (small if necessary) donation here .

Lest anyone wonder whether there will actually be any examples of sexual freedom associated with this event, a local friend is having a play party this weekend at which Nina Hartley will be a special guest, and all the proceeds go to support Woodhull. Nina is a friend and an awesome sex educator these days, and it will be fun to see her in, um, action, doing something that she does best - raising awareness of the importance of the mission of the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance.

I know times are tough and budgets are tight for a lot of people, but every donation, even a small one that you wish could be larger, will be greatly appreciated and put to good use on behalf of sexual freedom for everyone. Please think about supporting The Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance with whatever treasure you have to share. You can do this here.

My Excellent Summer Vacation, Part I - Polycamp NW

2011-09-09T16:55:00.009-04:00

So it's back to school time, and I'm here to answer that time-honored question asked of students returning from summer break - what did you do on your summer vacation? Somehow I doubt anyone answered quite like this. Well, except for the kids who were at Polycamp NW, and there were a lot of those.

Last October at the Poly Living conference I met Quintus, the organizer of Polycamp NW, a family-friendly camp event held at the Environmental Learning Center (ELC) in Millersylvania State Park near Olympia, WA. The ELC is a wonderful private area nested under old growth cedar and fir trees near Deep Lake - breathtakingly beautiful! Quintus invited me to present poly programs, I agreed, and I'm so glad I did.

Seattle is one of my most favorite places with it's rocking poly/alternative community, it's natural beauty, and its rep as US studioglass mecca. Usually looking at art glass is a must do activity for me when I visit Seattle, but this time I didn't buy any glass but instead spent my time with the wonderfully warm and loving local poly community, as well as many who came from Western Canada, Portland, Oregon, and other parts of the region. The sun shone brightly and the weather was spectacular during my entire visit.

Quintus's charming and handsome house mate Lydia (pronounced "li-DAY-uh", above right) picked me up at SEATAC, and we took the ferry across the sound to west Seattle. There we found Quintus, his beautiful wife, Francisca, (above left) and his extended poly family in the final throes of preparing food and loading a van and two trucks with supplies and a huge abundance of fresh foods to feed the 195 people who would be in attendance. And feed us they did. His friend Doug did an awesome job as chef, he and the volunteers cooked up delicious, nutritious meals all weekend long.

The weather was perfect and the drive south to Olympia spectacular! I had a hard time focusing on my community organizing conversation with Quintus with a sweeping expanse of water on our right and Mount Ranier in all it's magesty floating on the horizon to our left.

Anyway, we arrived early Friday afternoon and immediately started unloading and helping set up the large and well-equipped lodge kitchen.

The program for the weekend was quite eclectic, partly on poly topics and partly on fun classes for families with kids. It was so good to see so many families there and to know that the older kids had a place to be where their family was more similar to those of the other kids than is often so in the mainstream world. The ever beautiful Cunning Minx gave a workshop on poly dating, and then she interviewed me for her latest Poly Weekly Podcast on advice for poly newbies. I gave two workshops, one I call Emotional Edge Play: Polyamory for BDSM/Leather/Fetish Folks, and a second on Poly/Mono relationships that got huge attendance.

There was an adult cabin section that was set well apart from the cabins and camping area for families with kids, and that gave those interested in adult activities a place in which to pursue them. There was a class on rope bondage and a good discussion on the latest in safer sex practices. There were also activities at night for everone, including a talent show and a blues dance at which someone taught the adults how to do a very sexy, sultery dance to blues music. Very hot stuff.

It was SO lovely to reconnect with friends I hadn't seen in a while, like Minx, the Erosong family, Teresa Greenan, and Sue Tinney and Christopher Bingham of The Bone Poets Orchestra (formerly Gaia Consort). Sue and I shared a ride back to Seattle, and I admit to developing a bit of a girl crush on her as we got to know each other better.

I had such a great time at Polycamp NW. Quintus and his dedicated team created a very happy space for 195 poly people and their kids to get together and revel in what it is that we all have in common. It was worth the money and travel time, and this definitely won't be my last time at Polycamp NW. Join me there next year, won't you?

FetFest Poly Village

2011-08-17T13:10:00.003-04:00

I am delighted to be hosting the Poly Village at the first ever FetFest. This event is shaping up to be amazingly unique. Every village has it's own activities planned, plus there will be many, many event-wide activities. Fell free to click on the blue ad to the left here to register, easy breezy.

The poly village theme is Free Love 2.0, i.e. Free Love all grown up where we know better how to make it work while holding on to the spirit of non-judgmental love and sexuality freely shared.

FRIDAY

Free Love 2.0 party - We'll kick off the poly village activities Friday night with a Free Love 2.0 party/open house, so get out your hippie gear (there will be groovy prizes for the most authentically dressed hippies), bring a bottle of Boones Farm, share some munchies and feel the love. We'll be playing Hendrix, Joplin, Crosby Stills Nash, Led Zeppelin. There will be black lights and posters, and with your the participation it will be the Summer of Love all over again.

SATURDAY

Workshop: The Green Eyed Monster - Lolita Wolf will present a workshop on dealing with jealousy tentatively scheduled for Saturday morning from 10AM to 11:30AM. (See program to verify time and for location.)

Workshop: Emotional Edge Play, Polyamory for BDSM/Leather/Fetish Folk Yours truly will present a workshop that will give you what you need to know to create or enhance your kinky Free Love 2.0 experience, tentatively scheduled for Saturday afternoon from 2:30PM to 4PM. (See program to verify time and for location.)

Animal House Toga Party FOOD FIGHT! The Poly Village will sponsor this not-to-be missed and essential element of any Animal House Toga Party. Sploshers welcome!

SUNDAY

The Free Love Guru is in! Bummed out because somebody harshed your Free Love buzz? The Free Love Guru (um, that would be me, Anita) says "Lay it on me!” Sunday between 2PM and 4PM and get some sound poly advice. (Also known as “Office Hours”)

ALL WEEKEND

Poly Cocktails - We tend to gather for BYOB cocktails (though some have been known to mix up batches of fun stuff to share) about 5PM each day and sit in a big circle chatting, drinking, having a hell of a good time. We've done this at other events and it's great fun with a lot of camaraderie.

Poly Community Kitchen - Why buy the food plan when you can join the village denizens for a delicious, moderately priced meal prepared by our own excellent cooks? And where better to fulfill your two hour work commitment (if you don't buy it out) than by making a contribution to community meals by assisting with meal prep and cleanup? Dinners will be served Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings. Bring your own breakfast and lunch (though there might be leftover dinner food for lunch, not guaranteed.) Or buy breakfast and lunch elsewhere onsite.

Lucky Gentlemen’s and Ladies’ Club - We are fortunate to have poly village denizens and veteran amateur strip club operators Tasty Tina and Pagan Paul, with the able assistance of Joester23 running the ever popular Lucky Gentlemen’s and Ladies’ Club, which is sponsored by the Poly Village. The Club will be open every night - be sure to bring some $$$ for the dancers, all contributions will go to NCSF.

Poly Lyrics in Contemporary Hip-Hop/Rap

2011-08-08T12:40:00.001-04:00

Looks like the most powerful artists in hip-hop today are including poly concepts in their writing. I'm speaking of Kanye West's & Jay-Z's No Church In The Wild featuring Frank Ocean (From the album Watch The Throne 2011)

The following is the second verse of the first track on the new album The song is called "No Church in the Wild" and was written by Kanye West:

We formed a new religion
No sins as long as there’s permission’
And deception is the only felony
So never f-ck nobody wit’out tellin’ me

Sunglasses and Advil
Last night was mad real
Sun comin’ up, 5 a.m.
I wonder if they got cabs still

Thinkin’ ’bout the girl in all-leopard
Who was rubbin’ the wood like Kiki Shepard
Two tattoos, one read “No Apologies”
The other said “Love is cursed by monogamy”

That’s somethin’ that the pastor don’t preach
That’s somethin’ that a teacher can’t teach

CARAS Con Addresses Polyamory Community Needs

2011-08-04T18:41:00.009-04:00

Yesterday was a great day. I had the privilege of mixing and mingling with about 50 people, a great mixture of academics, students, researchers and community advocates, who gathered together in Washington, DC, to learn about and discuss issues and methods around meeting the therapeutic and informational needs of alternative sexuality communities, including polyamorists, at the 5th annual conference of the Community-Academic Research Consortium for Alternative Sexualities.

The day started with a plenary address by author and sex therapist Gloria Brame who spoke about many things, including the need to correct misunderstandings about what constitutes sex addiction and the continuing effects of sex negativity in the United States. Gloria is a well known and highly respected champion of the BDSM community, and after our having become friends on Facebook, it was delightful to finally have an opportunity to meet her in person. I am very much looking forward to reading her new book, The Truth About Sex, A Sex Primer for the 21st Century Volume I: Sex and the Self.

Some of the poly-related programs included the presentation of research results around polyamory and bisexuality, and about polyamory in the context of personal freedom. I facilitated a discussion at lunch time about what alt sex communities need from researchers. There were many good suggestions, including emphasis by three attendees who were college students who spoke about the lack of options to gather with other non-monogamous and/or kinky people on their campuses. NCSF's Judy Guerin spoke on behalf of that organization, and we both encouraged others to establish their own groups but to also reach out to those of us who can advise them along the way.

Programming continued in the afternoon with great choices for an advocate like myself - I had no problem deciding what to take in, there was always at least one session I wanted to attend.

Networking opportunities abound at this conference. I connected with people I hadn't seen in many years who had traveled to Washington to attend the conference. It was great to have the opportunity to see and meet CARAS board members who live elsewhere. I was delighted to see the awesome Catherine Gross, and to finally meet Kink-Aware Professionals founder Race Bannon.

It is CARAS's tradition to present a case study as it's closing plenary, and my partner, who is a recovering sex addict, and I were the case, with a focus on healing sex addiction/compulsion and sexual sobriety in a polyamorous context. We told our story of closing and then rebuilding our relationship after my partner revealed his addiction to me about nine months ago, our journey in therapy both together and separately, and how it was necessary to find our own path to wholeness again since the traditional prescription for sex addicts/compulsives and their partners doesn't work for us, at least not for me as a sex-positive advocate. A local employed psychiatrist (whose name I can't use for fear of career repercussions for him) answered questions from the audience from a clinical perspective.

We were told that it is highly unusual to have a case presented where more than one partner participates. That my partner and I were both there to tell our story together is a credit to my partner, who has made serving others who struggle with sexual addiction/compulsion and serving those who help them a part of his own recovery journey. Today we are doing well together, and I couldn't be prouder of him.

I'm hoping that the CARAS conference will be a longer one in the future. This one day meeting was scheduled the day before the American Psychological Association conference that is now going on in Washington, D.C., and the polyamory and bisexuality program I reference above will be presented there as well. I learned that this is the second year that polyamory appeared somewhere on the APA conference program, and that is a big development indeed. For years we couldn't get any mainstream organization that serves the psychology community to touch the topic. The times, they are a'changing, and CARAS gets a good sized piece of the credit.

Calling All Therapists! CARAS Alternative Sexualities Conference August 3, 2011

2011-07-06T13:08:00.016-04:00

I'm excited! The Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities ("CARAS") is holding it's "4th Annual Alternative Sexualities Conference: Cultural Competencies, Clinical Issues, Research" here in DC on Wednesday, August 3, 2011, 9AM to 6PM. My partner and I will be presenting as a case our experiences and challenges with sexual addiction/compulsion in a polyamorous relationship context, and psychiatrist Dr. Gary Wynn will provide a clinical perspective, and facilitate the conversation. Of course, the conference is about a lot more than that.

In my polyamory advocacy and educational work, I frequently encounter people who have had a bad experience when seeking therapy from a counselor who is not savvy about alternative relationships. Some are so unaware as to be biased against nonmonogamy and are convinced that monogamy is the only healthy way. Not so! So if you are sick of having to bring a therapist up to speed in order to get the help you and yours need, please pass this information along to any therapist you know who could benefit by attending.

For more details, click the flyer and read on. Registration link and continuing education credits follow below.

The registration form is here.

Lunch is provided .

California MFT and LCSW Relicensure:
Course meets the qualifications for 8 hours of continuing education credit
for MFTs and/or LCSWs as required by the California Board of
Behavioral Sciences. CARAS’s PCE # is 4789.

Psychologists: CARAS is approved by the American Psychological
Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists.
CARAS maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

The Conference Schedule and Instructor credentials, including
relevant professional degree and discipline, current professional
position, and expertise in program content will be provided on the
CARAS website or by email request by July 21, 2011.

Polyamory Leadership Network

2011-06-12T11:40:00.001-04:00

Over the last three years, the Polyamory Leadership Network has evolved into a very active entity, however loosely organized. It includes people from around the world who make some kind of contribution toward raising awareness of polyamory and supporting those who live poly lives. Basically its members make whatever contribution they wish to make without red tape approval processes. There is no board of directors, because we poly people are an independent, ornery bunch, don'tchaknow, none of us being especially inclined to answer to authority. :)

But seriously, check out the PLN website, and if you are someone who makes a contribution to the poly world or has a burning desire to do so, consider becoming a member. PLN members collaborate via a very active google group. We hold summits once or twice a year, so far mostly following Loving More's Poly Living conferences, where the picture above was taken in October 2010 following Poly Living in Seattle. That's me in the second row, last person on the right, sitting next to the awesome Dossie Easton, she of The Ethical Slut co-authorship fame. All I would need is Janet Hardy on my left to make my day. Make that make my year.

Hope to see you at the next PLN summit, which is yet to be scheduled, and in the meantime, on the PLN Google group.

Maria's Pride and Arnold's Dog House

2011-05-19T12:11:00.001-04:00

I posted this political cartoon to Facebook today, remarking "Would that the public drew a more realistic conclusion from this than this "trend" being due merely to powerful, wealthy men being immoral. (Not that they aren't, but there's more to the story, say Sex at Dawn authors Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha.)

A poly friend of mine remarked, "I don't see why they have to necessarily split over this.... Just acknowledge it and be open."

Of course that's what he and I would say and for good reason. But betrayal is still betrayal, especially when a long-time commitment has been betrayed in such a spectacular fashion. Arnold Schwarzenegger's love child's mother reported directly to his wife, Maria, as a member of her personal household staff for 20 years. Having this long-time member of her household *and* her husband both betray her by hiding this huge secret for ten years may just be more than Maria can tolerate, at least right now. A cuckolded spouse almost always imagines that others, i.e. friends and maybe family members, knew about this situation and kept it from them as well. I've had that feeling myself when I was cuckolded years ago, and it's a very miserable feeling indeed, very hard on one's pride.

Even a lot of poly people are hard pressed to stick around if a partner betrays their trust in such a devastating way - not everyone is willing to deal with doing the long-term work it takes to restore trust and emotional order to the relationship. For some the betrayal destroys the love, which they don't want to recapture, at least not any time soon, all things considered. And Maria has the additional burden of public humiliation on a massive scale to cope with, plus four children she wants to protect from shame, pain and chaos. I think we have to give the lady some time, though surely she's being told by a lot of people that he's an irredeemable untrustworthy bastard. He may very well be so, but she needs to decide that for herself.

I feel compassion for the entire family and wish them love and peace of mind and heart. Enlightenment as to other ways of arranging relationships that facilitate healing and unity is probably a bit too much to hope for in the short term for Schwarzenegger and Shriver, but one never knows as to the long term, especially when it comes to Hollywood marriages. Still, betrayal isn't an especially healthy place from which to create a more functional framework.

Staying Out of our Heads

2011-04-25T16:21:00.002-04:00

This is this week's "Living Compassion" tip from Nonviolent Communication author Marshall Rosenberg, something I signed up to get via email. It very much resonates for me and says:

----------------------------------------

For most of us, learning to communicate has meant staying as Rosenberg puts it, "up in our head" rather than in our heart. "Feelings are simply not important. We are trained to be 'other-directed' rather than be in contact with ourselves," says Dr. Rosenberg

We have more words for calling people names in our everyday vocabulary then we have for clearly expressing our emotional state. It's easier to call someone a name than to stop and connect with our own feelings and needs.

We are taught to approach a problem in an analytical way. Finding the "right way to think" will serve us better every time, we're told.

But what we really need for guiding our way and finding a solution that best serves all involved is to keep our head out of our heart. This means checking in with how we feel in the situation first and then using our head to develop strategies for dealing with the present challenge.

It's important to use both our ability to think AND to feel.
-------------------------------------------

This is most excellent advice, even for me, and I'm very much a feelings kind of person. It's especially good for people contemplating polyamory. It's all too easy to plunge in based on a thoroughly rational assessment of the concept and in so doing being completely unprepared for the emotional aspects of taking this big step. So if you are working on some challenge related to an alternative relationship, please be sure to give your heart equal time and consider how you feel about it as much as what you think about it. Notice what words you use when discussing it. Do you begin sentences with "I feel ....." or with "I think ...."? It's a big tipoff as to whether you are presently speaking from your head or heart. By doing both, you are much more likely to find happiness.

Beltane is Almost Here!

2011-04-25T13:17:00.001-04:00

So spring has finally arrived, and come Thursday I'll be heading to NE Maryland for that exceedingly adult rite of spring, Free Spirit Beltane. Registration has closed and it is sold out, and no wonder considering what a great job Turtlehill Events does at organizing this event. Every year there are new opportunities to explore sacred sexuality, along with learning practices and skills to utlize to heighten and enhance these experiences.

I suppose my workshops fall into the latter category. In other workshops attendees might learn how to experience physical pain as an ordeal and rite of passage, but my work is more about learning to manage, resolve or avoid pain of the relationship-related emotional kind. I'll be presenting three workshops:

Emotional Edge Play: Polyamory for BDSM/Leather/Fetish Folks
Safe Enough and Free Enough: Communication and Boundaries in Alternative Relationshipland
The Shadow Side of Eros: Sex Addiction

This year's Beltane theme is Feast for the Senses, and one thing I'm really looking forward to is the first ever Sensual Feast described as, "Continuing this Beltane’s “Feast for the Senses,” we come to the celebration of Taste. You are invited to experience a sensuous garden of decadent delights as a divine banquet of sweet, savory, and spicy selections are laid before you, offering up seductive scents and heavenly flavors. Lights sparkle like stars and music murmurs erotic promises; all around you are smoky eyes and sly smiles. In this lush paradise, the only rule is that you must feed others and allow yourself to be fed. Whose fingers will your lips caress tonight? What aphrodisiacs will fan the flames of your desire? In the garden of sensual delights, the Divine Beloved nourishes us with Love and intoxicates us with Beauty."

Dinner will lead directly into the Fires of Venus ritual, described as "Tonight we begin a Sacred Love Spell. A spell that will touch our lives, open our hearts, and change the way we move through the world." And, of course, somewhere along the way we'll dance the maypole (phallic design complete with Prince Albert piercing) and add a fourth or so layer of interwoven ribbon that takes on layer and layer of energy and meaning with every passing Beltane celebration.

I'll be staying with all my friends from Sandbox Explorations, and as usual, we have a community kitchen planned. My job is to set up the coffee station and make sure we all have hot, immediately available, good quality coffee each morning.

Now, if only the Gods and Goddesses will smile upon us and gift our senses with warmth and sunshine!

Sustaining the Momentum

2011-04-08T16:40:00.008-04:00

Friends, I am still feeling the Momentum. By that I mean I still feel the incredible energy, passion and intelligence that everyone concerned with last weekend's Momentum conference held in the DC suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland contributed to it. Of course, there is never enough time to meet everyone, see everything, and catch up with friends while spending several hours videotaping programs for KinkAcademy.com and PassionateU.com, as well as sitting on two panels and giving a workshop, but I did my best. Our task was to talk and collaborate about how to advance the cause of feminist sex-positivity and support alternative relationships, all via the use of new media. This served to inspire a wide range of amazing and thought provoking programs.

Probably the best and most impressive aspect of this event for me was the keynote panel on Friday night. It was such a thrill to see so many of my favorite sex geeks on one panel and speaking brilliantly as to the challenges we still face in achieving a more sex positive world. The panel was moderated by Las Vegas professor and media comentator Dr. Lynn Comella (on the right), and participants continuing right to left were sexologist and author Dr. Carol Queen, sex educator Reid Mihalko, sex educator and author Tristan Taormino, and author Jenny Block. Though I had never met Lynn before, I am friends with the others, and considering how infrequently I get to actually see them, with us being spread out all over the country, it was quite a thrill to see and hear them put their collective heads together - very powerful! These really are a substantial portion of the U.S. sex positive brain trust, if you will.

I absolutely must give a shout out to Tess Danesi and Diva, a/k/a producers of the New York Sex Bloggers Calendar, for putting on an inspiring, intriguing and affordable conference. This was the first MomentumCon, but we are assured that it will not be the last.

About 30 of us spent Saturday night in Baltimore at Baltimore adult toy shop Sugar's Red and Black Ball, an excursion arranged by ball emcee Reid Mihalko, who got us all there on the sex geek bus. (Here I am in a picture with fabulous sex educator and Babeland sex toy reviewer Dr. Ruthie as we gathered to board the bus.) And I would be remiss not to include the picture to the right of the ever fabulous Cunning Minx of the Poly Weekly Podcast, looking absolutely regal in her red and black costume. And I mustn't forget to give a shout out to Sugar owner Jacq Jones, who has a lot to be proud of and who put on a fabulous celebration of what I believe is Sugar's fourth anniversary supplying quality adult toys to the people. That's me with that gorgeous goddess of a woman below to the left.

Considering the focus on new media, it was great fun to read all the live blogging and tweeting that went on from the conference. Those who couldn't be in attendance can still see all the tweets, many of which were instantaneous quotes from presenters, panelists and audience members, via the hashtag #mcon. Such brilliance!

And this barely scratches the surface of all that is and was Momentum. Though this was it's inaugural event, it sold out, as I suspect it will every year considering all the positive buzz it's getting so don't get left out - buy your ticket early in 2012.

Presenting at MOMENTUM: The Shadow Side of the Internet and Its Role in Sexual Compulsion

2011-03-18T11:15:00.002-04:00

The phenomenal growth of online communication has given rise to an amazing amount of sharing, learning and experimenting with different expressions of sexuality, relationships and feminism. MOMENTUM provides a safe place to listen, discuss and learn about the ways the web has impacted our sexuality without the fear of reprisal or shaming. It is a space for acceptance and appreciation of diversity, including for those in the LGBTQ, sex-work, BDSM and non-monogamous communities.

Along those same lines, in addition to the two panels I'll participate in (for more about those see here and here) the organizers have just added my newest workshop to their lineup, The Shadow Side of the Internet and Its Role in Sexual Compulsion, which will happen Sunday, April 3 at 1:30 p.m. Here's the description, hope to see you there!

The internet offers every sort of sexual resource and service imaginable. As it applies to consenting adults, this has significantly improved the quality of and led to the healthy expansion of the sex lives of millions. It also makes it more and more possible to share ideas and earn a living supporting and advancing the cause of sex positivity.

Unfortunately this trend has it’s shadow side. The numbers of individuals, couples and moresomes seeking counseling for problems with sexual compulsion/addiction are steadily increasing in both sex-positive culture and the mainstream.

What is sex addiction/compulsion?

Does it really exist?

What does it look like?

What does the internet have to do with it?

What are the challenges for sufferers and their partners, especially those who live within sex-positive culture fueled by the internet?

In this session you will learn about the challenges presented by easy access to the internet’s sexual content that is for some a dark shadow that it is important that they avoid. Come hear a polyamorous, sex-positive community leader tell her and her partner’s story of how together they are challenging the conventional wisdom of the addictions treatment industry and finding their own path to healing while refusing to give up their sex-positive life. Learn more about this highly controversial and misunderstood topic as she brings it out into the light.

MOMENTUM CON - Featuring New Media Roundtable – Tips and Tools for Social Change

2011-03-03T12:39:00.003-05:00

Hi all - Here's info on the second of my panels at Momentum. In case you haven't heard, it's amazingly affordable to attend this event, well under $100 ($55 as I write this.)

New Media Roundtable – Tips and Tools for Social Change (will be presented on Saturday, April 2nd, from 9:00 a.m. until 1:10 p.m.)

New media provides a wide variety of optons for individuals and groups to create an online presence. Publishers can choose to blog, podcast, vidcast, or collaborate through wiki-based platforms. In addition, there are numerous resources for promoting your content. How do you choose which tools to get your message across and to build awareness about your cause?

This discussion is for those who have considered publishing new media content, or who want to use tools like Facebook or Twitter to build an audience and community, Hear from our panel of experienced educators and activists on how they used (or built upon) existing tools in order to engage their respective audiences.

New Media Roundtable is a panel discussion moderated by Cunning Minx aided and abetted by panelists Avory, Jenny Block, Jessica Karels and Anita Wagner.

MOMENTUM CON - Featuring Defining Non-Monogamy: Bridging the Gap in the Community

2011-03-03T11:55:00.008-05:00

Hi all - Here's info on one of my panels at Momentum. In case you haven't heard, it's amazingly affordable to attend this event, well under $100 ($55 as I write this.)

Defining Non-Monogamy: Bridging the Gap in the Community (will be presented on Saturday, April 2nd, from noon until 1:10.)

Today we shine a light on another sector that has to deal with intolerance, prejudice and judgement, often from within the very community that should ideally be nurturing and supportive. This session is moderated by Brian Ballard with panelists Mia Martina, Cunning Minx, and Anita Wagner.

The various faces of non-monogamy, from swinging to polyamory to open relationships are often individually defined, meaning very different things to different people.

Too often there is judgement and prejudice by practitioners of non-monogamy, the very same people who seek tolerance in the mono world for their choices, who condemn and vilify people in their own community who may not operate the same way they do. We believe that non-monogamists have the capability to create a much needed shift in social attitudes surrounding relationships, one that is more accepting of alternative lifestyle choices that are custom designed to fit the people who choose them. Building a focused community and determining how to create a harmonious and tolerant mindset that bridges all of these different ways of approaching and experiencing responsible non-monogamy is something to strive for.

Topics -

• The many faces of non-mongamy – swinging, poly, kink, open, et al
• The subgroups’ non-productive attitudes towards each other
• The marginalization of non-monogamists by mainstream groups and organizations
• Why it’s important to build a harmonious community

Brian Ballard

Brian Ballard has been actively pursuing a life of honest and ethical non-monogamy for nearly 7 years. He is passionate in encouraging and inspiring others to find their ideal relationship and life style, and to own and project them completely. Through his work and association with The Martini Society, freedomcommunity and through organizing special events welcoming positive self-expression, play and exploration, he has had the pleasure of watching many people open themselves to new possibilities and new ways of being.

Brian is also founder and artistic director of The New York Rock Opera Company (NYROC), which will open its inaugural season in Fall 2011, presenting a full slate of rock-based musicals and operas with the intention of moving and inspiring audience members to consider new possibilities for themselves and their communities.

He is thrilled to be a part of the first MomentumCon… and to be a part of a loving and successful triad. Jasmine and Lisa inspire Brian to learn and grow every single day.

Mia Martina

Mia Martina is a writer and smut podcaster. Mia’s podcast – I Want Your Sex – is told in the form of a serialized narrative about her adventures at sex parties, her experiences with open relationships, and her tales of modern urban sexuality. As one listener raves, “Mia walks the listener through the door and into a bedroom of complex physical bliss and intense emotion.”

Mia looks to inspire people to explore their sexuality and be open to new experiences. She has taught workshops on non-monogamy and is excited to be a co-host of an erotica reading series in her new home of Austin, Texas. In closing out her ten-year chapter in the big apple, Mia was featured in the 2010 New York Sex Blogger calendar. Aside from the Library of Congress indexing her tweets, Mia’s writing can be found on Nerve, Ravenous Romance and Paper Bag Press.

Cunning Minx

Cunning Minx has been the tireless producer and host of the Polyamory Weekly podcast (www.polyweekly.com) since the spring of 2005, now with over 230 episodes in production. A kinky boobiesexual, Minx founded the show as a resource for the poly and poly-curious to form a community, share experiences and help guide each other on their journeys of poly exploration. And hopefully, also guide each other away from common relationship land mines–or at least share sympathy when they step on one!

Poly Weekly has received accolades from the likes of ErosZine, Fleshbot and the Chicago Sun-Times, and Minx has spoken on poly, kinky and Web 2.0 community-building topics at the Heartland Polyamory Conference, Leather Leadership Conference, Dragon*Con, Galleria Domain 2 and New York’s Poly Pride Day. Join the conversation at www.facebook.com/polyweekly or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/polyweekly

Anita Wagner

Anita Wagner is a passionate polyamory coach, blogger, spokesperson, educator, and sexual freedom activist. She advocates for the interests of polyamorists with enthusiasm and determination, and loves to help them find their poly bliss. She does this via her website and blog at practicalpolyamory.com by providing helpful information in her educational programs, and on her website and blog, on subjects like polyamory and spirituality, jealousy and other pitfalls, poly/mono relationships, and poly for kinky people.

As a veteran community organizer Anita co-founded Chesapeake Polyamory Network, as well as The Institute for 21st Century Relationships, which is the foundation of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, where she also served on the board of directors. She has presented educational programs on polyamory at Good Vibrations, Sex 2.0, Dark Odyssey, Transcending Boundaries, Poly Living, The Floating World, Black Rose, Loving More® Retreat, Primal Arts Festival, Free Spirit Alliances’ Beltane Gathering and Fires of Venus, Florida Poly Retreat, and Washington Area Secular Humanists.

Anita is a faculty member at KinkAcademy.com, a member of the Polyamory Leadership Network and serves as poly community advisor to CARAS – the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Loving More® and Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness.

Taormino says to 'be proud of who you are' - News

2011-03-02T16:54:00.000-05:00

Taormino says to 'be proud of who you are' - News

This is a victory over the slut shaming Oregon State University Administration's cancelling Tristan Taormino's keynote speech only a week or so before a conference on sex being held there due to her website content and that she is a porn producer. I am so proud of Tristan. No matter how many lemons life hands her, she always makes kickass lemonade.

Oregon State Uninvites Tristan Taormino as Keynote Speaker

2011-01-20T15:54:00.007-05:00

As many if not most of you know, Tristan Taormino is known in the poly world for authoring the book Opening Up. Tristan is a prolific writer, a passionate sex educator, and a dynamic speaker, especially on issues having to do with sexual freedom. Despite her amazing credentials, she has just been done a great injustice. Oregon Statue University, which recruited her as keynote speaker months ago, has now gone back on its commitment, citing as the reason Tristan's "resume and website."

Now one would think that an institution of higher learning like this one would make sure to do due diligence on its keynote speaker BEFORE sealing the deal to be sure the speaker is right for their conference. But not so with OSU - go figure.

If you support free speech and Tristan Taormino's mission of sexual empowerment, please voice your opinion to the people listed below about OSU’s last minute decision to cancel her appearance as keynote speaker at it's Modern Sex conference next month and not reimburse her for travel expenses - see press release below for details.

Thanks for your supporting Tristan and her work.

-------------------------------

Write to the following (Press Release with details below.)

Larry Roper

Vice Provost for Student Affairs
632 Kerr Administration Building
Corvallis, OR 97331-2154
541-737-3626 (phone)
541-737-3033 (fax)
email: larry.roper@oregonstate.edu

Dr. Mamta Motwani Accapadi

Dean of Student Life
A200 Kerr Administration Building
Corvallis, OR 97331-2133
541-737-8748 (phone)
541-737-9160 (fax)
email: deanofstudents@oregonstate.edu
twitter: @deanmamta

Dr. Edward J. Ray
President
600 Kerr Administration Building
Corvallis, OR 97331-2128
541-737-4133 (phone)
541-737-3033 (fax) email: pres.office@oregonstate.edu

PRESS RELEASE:
SEX EDUCATOR AND SPEAKER TRISTAN TAORMINO, SET TO GIVE CONFERENCE KEYNOTE, UNINVITED BY OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY BECAUSE OF HER ‘RESUME AND WEBSITE’

January 19, 2011

Contact:
Tristan Taormino
tristan@puckerup.com

Award-winning author, columnist, sex educator, and filmmaker Tristan Taormino was set to be the keynote speaker at Oregon State University’s Modern Sex conference, scheduled for February 15-16, 2011. Yesterday, she was uninvited by a university representative, who cited her resume and website as the reason.

On October 28, 2010, organizers of the OSU Modern Sex conference booked Taormino to give the keynote talk; they confirmed the date and agreed to fees, and Tristan’s management received a first draft of the contract on November 1. That contract was incomplete and sent back to OSU for revisions. As with many negotiations, the contract was pending as all the paperwork got done, but in late December, OSU again confirmed Tristan’s appearance and conference organizers told her manager to purchase airline tickets, for which OSU would be reimburse her.

On Tuesday, January 18, 2011, Steven Leider, Director of the Office of LGBT Outreach and Services contacted Colten Tognazzini, Tristan Taormino’s manager, to say that the conference had come up short on funding. Tognazzini told him that since the travel was booked and the time reserved, they could work with whatever budget they did have. Leider said that would not be possible: “We have to cancel Ms. Taormino’s appearance due to a lack of funding. It has been decided that OSU cannot pay Ms. Taormino with general fee dollars, because of the content of her resume and website.” At OSU, ‘general fee dollars’ include taxpayer dollars given to the University by the Oregon State Legislature to defray various costs. They differ from ‘student activity dollars,’ which are part of every student’s tuition and help fund student groups and activities.

Taormino’s resume includes her seven books on sex and relationships, the 18 anthologies she has edited, numerous television appearances from CNN to The Discovery Channel, and her award-winning adult films. She was a columnist for The Village Voice for nearly ten years and has given more than 75 lectures at top colleges and universities including Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Brown, NYU and Columbia. Her website, http://www.puckerup.com/, includes sex education information, advice, and information about the films she directs for Vivid Entertainment, one of the largest adult companies in the country.

“In my ten years of booking Tristan at colleges and universities, of course there has been some controversy. But I have never had a university cancel like this last minute,” says Colten Tognazzini, Taormino’s manager. “It’s not unusual for contract negotiations to drag on. Once they confirmed we should book her travel, I felt comfortable the event was a done deal. I continued to work with them in good faith that a signed contract would be forthcoming. I believe that the conference organizers’ hands are tied, and this decision came from much higher up. They have cancelled with less than a month’s notice during Tristan’s busiest season. She gave up other opportunities to go to Oregon. Without a signed contract, we may have no recourse, and were told we will not be reimbursed for her travel.”

Tognazzini spoke to a source at OSU who speculated that the University feared that when it went before the legislature in regards to future funding, legislators would use OSU’s funding of a “pornographer” on campus as ammunition to further cut budgets. This source, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Tognazzini, “I think they’re uninviting Tristan because they don’t want to have to defend her appearance to conservative legislators.”

“I’m extremely disappointed that OSU has decided to cancel my appearance. I’ve been protested before, but never uninvited. I have never misrepresented who I am or what I do. I am proud of all the work I do, including the sex education films and feminist pornography I make,” says Taormino. “The talk I planned to give at this conference, titled “Claiming Your Sexual Power” has nothing to do with porn, but the porn is such an easy target for anti-sex conservatives and censors. I find it ironic that one of the missions of the conference is to understand diverse perspectives of sexuality. Apparently, my perspective—one of educating and empowering people around their sexuality—isn’t welcome at OSU.”

If OSU students and others still want to hear Taormino speak, she will be teaching two workshops at She Bop (sheboptheshop.com) in Portland on February 13 and 14. “She Bop supports a healthy perspective on sex and sexuality and we are proud to have Tristan Taormino present two years in a row at our shop in Portland. Tristan is a leading educator paving the way for others to help break down the stigma around sex in this country. It is part of our mission as a female friendly adult shop to support sexual empowerment and growth,” say co-owners Jeneen Doumitt and Evy Cowan.

More on Sex Addiction in Sex-positive Culture

2011-01-06T17:41:00.004-05:00

I've been talking about this subject online in several different forums, and wow, does it make some people cranky - not only that, but some also outright reject the idea that sex addiction even exists. If only.

As irritating as it is to know how much criticism and false accusations are made toward we in the sex-positive world, it's easy to question the concept of sex addiction. But it's a very real emotional illness for a lot of people that eventually turns their world upside down. Many desperately wish they could stop but find that they can't. Instead they compulsively take greater and greater amounts of risk to get a very temporary sense of satisfaction that soon turns to guilt and shame. There is a general sense that if people *really* knew who they were, they would be rejected and ostracized.

This is not just true of vanilla mainstreamers but is also just as true for some in the sex-positive world. In many cases our more open attitudes is what draws sex addicts to the BDSM, swing and polyamory communities. It's a cycle that keeps repeating itself as feelings of shame cause anxiety to build which acts as a trigger to act out again. And around and around it goes.

The risks are significant:

• Getting STIs and bringing them home to unsuspecting partners;

• Being arrested having public sex or hiring a pro off the street;

• Getting caught surfing porn and masturbating at work and losing one's job;

• The financial drain on the family by paying for pros, porn, phone sex, etc.;

• Loss of time spent acting out needed for maintaining healthy relationships;

• Humiliation at having one's addiction publicly exposed - you don't have to be Tiger Woods or David Duchovny to have that problem - and to friends and family; and

• Risk of losing intimate partners who feel betrayed about what has been going on without their knowledge or consent.

Sex addiction is growing at a rapid pace due to the easy availability of sexual goods, services and hookups via the internet. Yes, we all know that these can be used in healthy ways. If you do any of this and it doesn't cause you problems, they you aren't a sex addict. You're sex positive - good for you!

Still, this affliction most definitely exists in our own communities, likely in much larger numbers than any of us suspect. It doesn't get talked about by the addicts because of fear of being ostracized. Their partners don't talk about it due to the shame and self-doubt it raises for them about their own desirability. Codependence is rampant, just as much as with any other kind of addiction.

This is not to raise fear but instead awareness and compassion for those who suffer from feeling out of control around their sexuality, and for their partners who must find a way to deal with betrayal and doubt about themselves and about their partner's love and commitment. If you are an SA or the partner of one and would like to talk, confidentiality is assured, just drop me a line at anita.wagner@practicalpolyamory.com

Polyamory and Sex Addiction

2010-12-31T04:56:00.002-05:00

I have recently developed an interest in learning more about the subject of sex addiction/compulsion in the context of a poly, sex-positive existence. If you have experience with this and would be interested in sharing your experience with me, please contact me at anita.wagner@practicalpolyamory.com Your story will be kept confidential. Hopefully together we can develop resources to serve those who find themselves in this difficult situation.

For the record, I am well aware of the controversy surrounding sex addiction - some call it sexual compulsion instead and believe that it should not be pathologized as its own DSM diagnosis when it is really likely a form of obsessive/compulsive disorder. They also worry that SA having its own diagnosis will lead to its being misapplied, especially by therapists trying to make a buck off the health insurance industry, which often requires a specific DSM diagnosis before it will pay claims for SAs in treatment.

It has come to my attention that there are those amongst us who suffer mightily from this affliction, be they the addict or the addict's partner(s), and usually in secrecy due to shame. There is a lot of shame and secrecy around it for all SAs and their partners. And traditional means of treating sex addiction require a sexual diet that consists only on sex with one's primary partner in private, no porn watching, and no masturbation. Certainly no sex parties or sex-positive events.

Even sex-positive, poly-friendly therapists are known to give this status quo edict, though SA's are also in some 12 step programs encouraged to create the sexual and relationship scenario that works for them and is stable and manageable, rather than shame-laden and unmanageable. And the poly partners of SAs are sometimes not well received in support groups for partners of SAs, most of whom have/had an expectation of monogamy and are even traumatized in some cases by their discovery that their SA partner acts out by viewing porn and masturbating. It's not common for mono partners of SAs to approve of this and perceive it to be about some failure on their part. This cultural dichotomy leaves the poly SA and their partners feeling further isolated and alone and in need of support, as well as misunderstood.

So if you have experience in this area or know someone who does and can refer me to them or them to me, would love to hear from you and/or them - thanks!

Rebuilding Blog Links - Should Yours Be Listed?

2010-12-28T18:37:00.003-05:00

Unfortunately the blog service Blogrolling has gone dark for good, and that's where my blogroll came from, so I lost all my links. I'm working on creating a new blogroll using blogger's gadget. If you have a polyamory blog you update reasonably regularly, please post a comment here with a link and I'll check it out. Thanks!

I ♥ (Polyamorous) Nina Hartley - Let's Send Her Some Love!

2010-12-17T16:29:00.002-05:00

I have been a big fan of former porn star and sex educator Nina Hartley for a long time. I'm pretty sure it was her girl/girl work in the 1980s that raised my awareness of my own bisexuality. Fast forward 25 years, and today I can call Nina friend, having met and gotten to know her as a sex/relationship ed colleague at Dark Odyssey Summer Camp.

Nina lives in Los Angeles, is in a polyamorous relationship with her husband, Ernest, and she is just as beautiful and lively and passionate in person as na educator as she is on film. She has the tremendous knack of putting people at ease about their qualms about their own sexuality. I've attended several of her workshops and always leave with information I use to enhance my sex life in some way.

As a testament to her sex education work, I recently hosted in my home a group of bisexual women for a monthly gathering, and we watched "Nina Hartley's Guide to Sex for the Bi-Curious Woman" on the big screen. Everyone loved it and left feeling much more confident about how to please the woman of their dreams.

So, when I learned that Nina is having surgery soon and that she is going to lose a lot of the income she needs to survive during her recovery, I knew I had to step up and make a donation to the fundraiser currently being conducted in her honor and for her benefit. Won't you make one, too? No amount is too small, and you can make it anonymously if you are shy. You will be supporting sex-positive sex education and sending some love and gratitude to Nina for all she does to help others have satisfying sex lives.

The Etymology of Compersion

2010-11-29T18:25:00.001-05:00

Yes, I took a break from blogging, but I'm back. Today a college student working on a paper on polyamory wrote and asked me if I know what the etymology of the word Compersion is. I knew its meaning, of course, and where it originated, but try as I might, I couldn't find anything more than that. I even developed a workshop with handout on the subject which includes an article on the subject published by MyTango online, yet this particular question hadn't come up.

We know that the word originated at the Kerista commune in Berkley, CA, which practiced polyfidelity and disbanded in the early 1990s. Franklin Veaux, a/k/a Tacit, gives the following definition in his Polyamory Glossary:

"COMPERSION: A feeling of joy when a partner invests in and takes pleasure from another romantic or sexual relationship. Commentary: Compersion can be thought of as the opposite of 'jealousy;' it is a positive emotional reaction to a lover's other relationship. The term was coined by the Kerista Commune."

About Kerista, he comments: "The Kerista Commune was an early advocate of polyamory, coining terms now common in the polyamorous community such as compersion and polyfidelity. The group eventually failed for a number of reasons, among them personality conflicts within the group, problems with financial management, an emphasis on fixed and inflexible sleeping schedules, and hostile attitudes toward bisexuality and homosexuality on the part of some members."

So we know what and where, but not the how of it. Not being a language expert myself, the best I could come up with to answer this question is this. I suspect that the "comp" part refers to compassion. "Per," according to the online etymology dictionary, means "through, across, beyond," and the suffix "sion" means "the condition or state of being" according to Wiki.Answers.com.

So that gives us compersion - compassion beyond, across or through what is normally a block to positive emotion about such circumstances as a condition or state of being. In this case the compassion is felt for our love and their love, i.e. the ability to feel a partner's joy across or through our relationship with that partner and be happy for it. Wordsmiths are welcome to refine or correct as desired.

My Personal Journey: Long Term Effects of Sex Negative Teen Sex Education

2010-10-19T16:19:00.006-04:00

When I was recently asked to write a blog post for the Scarleteen blogathon, I had no hesitation about agreeing. I had the pleasure of meeting and having lunch with Scarleteen founder and comprehensive teen sex ed resource Heather Corinna during a trip to the northwest in summer 2009. Let there be no doubt, Heather is one of my all time heroes for the work she does to make sure teens get comprehensive sex education information. I care about this subject very deeply, as the following story will illustrate.

I grew up in an area that is pretty much to this day an exceedingly conservative part of the United States. When I came of age, good parents zealously guarded their daughters' virtue by attempting to control the what, where, when, and most importantly, who, of their daughters' social lives. Sex ed, after a fashion, was taught in health and hygiene class in about the 7th grade, but this was largely limited to "the birds and the bees," i.e. reproductive system ed geared toward gender, with boys and girls taking separate classes. Certainly there was no mention of sexual anatomy or sexually transmitted infections, and information about birth control would be unthinkable, including how to use a condom.

But this was also the 1960s, and though I was too young and too well guarded to find my wait to the Haight, I knew what was going on around me on college campuses and that free love was very much in vogue. When I was about 15, I got the only information about sex that I would get from either of my parents, and that was when my dad said, "Anita Karen, some day some boy is going to try to put his hand in your pants, and you'd better not let him."

My parents and my strict religious upbringing were effective, at least to a point, as my virtue remained intact until the summer of my 17th year, when my older leading man in a community playhouse Neil Simon play swept me off my feet and into his bed.

A very few years later, my boyfriend and I quit college and got married to get out from under my mother's micromanaging my life. That's not a good reason to get married, as our divorce seven years later demonstrated, though one of the significant problems in that marriage had to do with my tendency to push my husband away when he wanted sex. Though I liked sex, I was always suspicious that all men were predators out to use me without any thought to love and real intimacy. Because of the early messaging from my dad, who was a wonderful dad otherwise and was surely doing what he thought was best, even in marriage my subconscious mind was still minding my virtue. It also effectively bifurcated love and sex so that I had no idea what it was like to truly make love. In my mind love and sex had nothing to do with each other.

A couple of years after the divorce, I met a wonderful guy, and we got married. At first we couldn't keep our hands off each other, but sure enough, after some time I started resenting his advances and pushing him away. The poor guy had to be totally confused, especially since he was raised in more liberal turf by open-minded nudist parents who were academics. Eventually that marriage bit the dust as well.

By this point I knew that I simply had to figure out what was happening in my head that caused me to react to my husbands' desire in such an unhealthy way, so I went into therapy and figured it all out. It took some time, and some work on body image issues, too. I am proud to say that I managed to cast off and heal all that old sex negative conditioning. Today I am able to enjoy healthy relationships where I both love and make love in ways that enhance intimacy and the bonds of partnership. I also enjoy my sexuality at certain adult events, something I never, ever imagined I'd be doing. And most importantly, instead of seeing men as predators, I see them as healthy adults expressing themselves as nature intends and am enthusiastically in support of both male and female sexual expression in all its wonderful forms.

Today my male primary partner and I are both Unitarian Universalists, and he is proud to have raised two children who got their sex education via the Unitarian Universalist Association's highly successful Our Whole Lives ("OWL") sex ed program. They are well-adjusted, well-informed young adults who are amazingly comfortable talking with their parents about sex.

As far as I know, Scarleteen is the only comprehensive sex education resource for teens other than the UU OWL program. Heather Corrina does an amazing job and has no doubt saved countless teens from the pain and turmoil and failed relationship scenarios I experienced. She deserves all our support. Please give as you can and help sustain Heather's work and Scarleteen, and let's all hope to see sex negativity eradicated and replaced with more healthy attitudes toward sex and sexuality, no matter what our age or cultural perspective.

Poly Living Seattle Full Program Schedule - What a Lineup!

2010-10-04T15:27:00.000-04:00

Hope you are already making plans to join us in Seattle October 22-24 for Poly Living. This is an especially strong program with an awesome lineup of speakers and presenters (if I do say so myself.) Kudos to Robyn Trask for assembling what promises to be a true immersion in poly living joy.

Keynote speaker is Ethical Slut co-author Dossie Easton, and our special guest speaker is Sex at Dawn co-author Christopher Ryan. And that's just for starters.

Check out the complete info and register now.

Note that the hotel block is filling up fast and that the deadline for reserving your room is this coming Sunday, October 8.

Hope I'll see you there.

Fascinating! Poly Living Con in Seattle October 22-24

2010-09-23T18:22:00.043-04:00

====================================================================

From Theoretical Ideas to Practical Living:

Poly Living and Relationship Choice in the 21st Century

====================================================================

In its Seattle debut, Loving More's Poly Living West Coast Conference offers:

TWO DAYS OF AMAZING RELATIONSHIP WORKSHOPS

Special Guest Speaker CHRISTOPHER RYAN, PH.D., Co-author of the sensational new book Sex at Dawn: the Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality

A Keynote Speech by DOSSIE EASTON, M.A. of The Ethical Slut

A Concert by

About Special Guest Speaker Christopher Ryan, Ph.D.

Dan Savage calls Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality "the most important book on human sexuality since since Alfred Kinsey unleashed Sexual Behavior in the Human Male on the American public in 1948." This new bestseller is overturning common wisdom on the anthropology of monogamy and human nature and remaking the future of the polyamory movement.

Join Christopher as he speaks about his book, the waves it is making, and how it applies to poly living today.

About Dossie Easton, M.A.

The Ethical Slut has been a cornerstone of the polyamory movement since its first edition in 1997. Join us for our opening address Friday night by Dossie Easton, longtime poly and sexual-freedom activist and a treasure of community wisdom.

There will be a presentation and book signing with Mim Chapman, Ph.D., author the book of What Does Polyamory Look Like? This lively and informative new book, by Loving More's own board member, Mim Chapman, categorizes the vast diversity of polyamorous relationships. It's a lighthearted tour through the poly world, good for educating friends, family, therapists, and professionals (and yourself) about our community.

There will also be a presentation and book signing by Curt Bergstrand, Ph.D., author of Swinging in America; Love, Sex and Marriage in the 21st Century, which is based on years of research into the swing world and other forms of nonmonogamy in American culture. This seminal book examines monogamy's functionality,failures, and whether it is healthy for our culture at large.

Opening Concert Friday Night

Bone Poets Orchestra (formerly Gaia Consort) plays psychedelic steampunk in the tradition of Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and other hallucinogenic masters. The band is well known in the West Coast poly world for its soulful, funny, original music with many appropriately themed songs.

Opening for Bone Poets is the renowned Ben Silver. A singer and instrumentalist from New York, Ben has led poly workshops and performed at Loving More conferences since the mid-1990s. Whether in singer/songwriter mode or doing McFerrinesque vocal improvisations, Ben slides through folk, R&B, funk, jazz and back again.

Loving More wishes to thank for their support:

Allena Gabosh, Executive Director, Seattle's Center for Sex Positive Culture
The good people at the Sharma Center
Cunning Minx of the Polyamory Weekly Podcast; and

HOTEL INFORMATION

For more information, see the Poly Living Website or call

970-667-5683.

Cheating and Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality

2010-08-13T17:28:00.002-04:00

I've witnessed or experienced cheating from just about every perspective over the years, and those experiences are the main reason I'm a polyamorist. I saw how much pain was caused by cheating, whether when my dad cheated on my mom, my friend on her husband, my second husband on me or me on my first husband. The betrayal of trust is devastating and very difficult to repair. I learned this lesson the hard way, as do so many of us.

This is why in my workshops when this issue comes up I like to take what I call a loving "come to Jesus" approach to people who are in cheating situations, i.e. convince them of the importance of being ethical, which demands honesty, even if there is a lot to lose, i.e. the marriage, money, and child custody. I tell them that it will surely be even worse if they get caught cheating.

So many people think they can cheat and get away with it, but they are rationalizing in order to achieve an end result. In reality chances are good that the longer the secret behavior goes on, the greater the chances they will get caught. And when they do, trust, that essential ingredient for healthy relationships, is so destroyed that it takes long, hard work to repair it, if it's even feasible. Sometimes the hurt the cuckolded spouse/partner feels makes it just too tough to summon up the good will, love, and forgiveness necessary to make the needed repairs.

I think it's also worth examining the culture we live in and the role cultural influences play as to the huge percentage of people who have affairs. We are told that finding our one true love and living happily ever after is a reasonable expectation. Little do we realize that this is not a likely end result - over the long term it's pretty much a crap shoot. And "till death do us part" is a LOT longer than it used to be. 100 years or so ago the average life expectancy was 49 years. Today it's 78 years - that's a LONG time for one partner and one relationship to meet all our important needs, especially considering how fast needs and the world change these days. I'm not saying it can't be done or even that it isn't a valid choice - it is - but instead I'm recognizing the extent of the challenge.

There is lots of scientific evidence to support that humans evolved biologically to pair bond in order to conceive and protect children, but non-exclusively. For prehistoric humans the desire to spread around reproductive resources meant a better chance of survival of the species, not that any of this was by conscious choice.

In the beginning of new love, brain chemistry creates limerence, that electric attraction a/k/a falling in love or NRE - new relationship energy, as we poly people call it. Early on we humans have sex like bunny rabbits, can't keep our hands off each other, and until the advent of reliable birth control, that sort of reproductive behavior was indeed successful. But it's also known that after a few years of this, brain chemistry changes, and that hot attraction cools. Almost all of us have been there. Yet instead of being attracted to no one by that time, we find we are still attracted, but more to others who are shiny and new.

The new book Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan, Ph.D. and Cacilda Jethá, M.D., who are married to each other, is getting tons of attention for revealing the truth about why it is that we stray. Others have written about this as well (Anthropologists David Barash and Eve Lipton, as well as Helen Fisher) but have tended to say that none of it should be used to support behavior that is not monogamous, since we have free will. I think that's a big cop out designed to dodge taking heat for being the messenger. Ryan and Jethá resist the urge to spin the information in favor of monogamy, which is a huge step forward for we polyamorists, having had little if anything to point to to illustrate the validity of open and honest responsible non-monogamy as an alternative to traditional monogamy.

There's an old saying: "Mommy's baby, Daddy's maybe." And again, the statistics bear it out. DNA testing proves that the father of a baby isn't the one listed on the birth certificate something like an average of 30% of the time across cultures.

I'm not excusing cheating, not at all, but I think we do have to realize that our culture puts us in a hell of a tight spot, one that demands that we resist some very real human urges. A person who is feeling the need for variety or to get their kink on or whatever it is that is missing is told, natural urges notwithstanding, that their only ethical choice is to give up what may well be otherwise a perfectly good relationship in order to fulfill those needs. They are told they must throw it all away and start over, with all the pain and suffering and expense that entails, or they have to make do with what they have. Never can they have it all, both the companionship of a life partnership and pair bond plus the variety they also desire. It's the perfect setup for cheating. Being the natural rationalizers we are, we tell ourselves that if we're careful we won't get caught and proceed to try to have it all but on the down low. It's a rotten deal, and organized religion has a lot of responsibility for it.

I will never again live monogamously, at least not without maintaining polyamory as a legitimate option should I desire it. It took some grappling with fear of loss for a while, but today I see that embracing my partners' desire to have the freedom to love and/or experience intimacy with others is a gift of love that they return with love and appreciation. This secures my place in their hearts in a way that no amount of cultural imperative via monogamy ever shall.

Oprah Seeks a Triad!

2010-07-27T16:02:00.006-04:00

We've known for a long time that the Oprah Winfrey Show was going to feature true polyamory at some point, and it looks like they've finally decided to give it a go. Below is their call for interview subjects. If you decide to respond, please, please go to the Polyamory Media Association website for valuable resources in preparing for the interview. PMA is run by knowledgeable volunteers who will not tell you what to say but instead help you maximize the benefit of what you do say so it is more likely to be a pleasant, positive experience.

This is a very exciting development considering the size of Oprah's audience, and, therefore, the number of people who we have a chance to influence in a positive way. So from a polyamory activism point, this could be huge!

********************************************************

Are You in a 3 Person Relationship?

Are you CURRENTLY in a successful romantic relationship with two other people? Are you living in the same home, have children, go to work, but you come home to two partners?

Your triad (sometimes called a "thruple") could be:

1 man, 2 women

1 woman, 2 men

3 men or 3 women

The Oprah Show is looking for three people living under the same roof, in a romantic relationship, to come on national television and talk about how they work as a threesome.

We want to know: How did you all three meet? How long have you been together? How does it work? Like? Dislike? Is there jealousy? Do you sleep in the same bed? Does sex always have to include the three partners?

Please fill out the form on this web page and an Oprah producer may be calling you.

My Videos on Poly/Mono Relationships and Resolving Jealousy on KinkAcademy.com

2010-07-23T13:25:00.008-04:00

Earlier this year I had the pleasure and privilege of making educational videos based on two of the workshops I give for the webside KinkAcademy.com which is the brainchild of the lovely Princess Kali. As of today all three segments of the poly/mono relationships program are now available for viewing, as well as the first segment of the jealousy program. You can browse them from a link on my faculty page. It costs about $10 per month to join the website and get access, but don't be shy about visiting, there's some great free content, too. Still, considering how much even better information that joining up gives you access to, it's a real bargain.

There are other teachers who speak about non-monogamous relationships as well, like Sarah Sloane, Dan and Dawn Williams, and M. Makael Newby. And, of course, there is a huge, amazing amount of content from some of the best educators in kinky practices anywhere.

Cheating: It's Not the Sex, It's the Lying - Jenny Block on FOXNews.com

2010-07-06T13:32:00.012-04:00

The last two years for Jenny Block must have surely been an exhiliarating ride. Jenny is the author of Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage, published summer 2008, her courageous memoir of being a mainstream wife, mom and writer who, with the full knowledge and cooperation of her husband and with his and their daughter's best interests at heart, opened her marriage. Ultimately she added a long-term relationship with her girlfriend who is considered a part of their family.

Since that time Jenny has been busy. She's made the rounds doing readings from her book and being interviewed on the topic of open relationships and polyamory. She won a Lambda Literary Award in the bisexual category. She's appeared on national TV talk shows (for example, Fox's Mornings with Mike and Juliet) and TV news magazines (ABC's 20/20, defending responsible non-monogamy in a seventh Commandment debate on adultery with evangelical Christian ministers in the presence of a very large evangelical Christian audience), syndicated radio programs, in print newspapers and in online venues. Along the way she's blogged on sex and relationships for Huffington Post and - what a pleasant surprise - now writes FoxNews.com's weekly sexual health column, Fox on Sex. Her latest column is Cheating: It's Not the Sex, It's the Lying, and it is fantastic. Jenny offers excellent advice on why, whether monogamous or otherwise, it's necessary to communicate clearly with our partner(s) and come to an understanding as to what specific behaviors with others are permitted and which ones are to be off limits.

Those who attend my workshops know how often I emphasize the importance of trust as key to building healthy, happy, functional polyamorous relationships, and as Jenny points out, this is important in ALL intimate relationships. Our monogamy-focused society creates expectations in us that few really think about, much less discuss with the people they love and are committed to.

Some people may not be phased by their love engaging in a bit of flirtation at a cocktail party, while another may be livid about it - who is to know for sure where the line is that shouldn't be crossed if this isn't thought about and discussed? I'm not talking about angry accusations and blaming, that's not effective communication. But I am saying that discussing it before it happens is going to be a lot less difficult than doing so after it does. For one thing, even if it's an uncomfortable discussion, the trust you share is intact and more likely to stay intact if boundaries and expectations are clearly acknowledged between you.

Obviously it's less likely that people in stable polyamorous relationships are going to object to a partner's flirtation with others, but I've known plenty to end up in conflict for having failed to establish a clear understanding of each other's expectations.

For example, conflicts have been known to arise between poly partners due to differing views over what constitutes "sex." If:

Poly partner A agrees to tell poly partner B if they have sex with someone new,
Poly partner A's definition of "sex" requires penitration to qualify, while
Poly partner B's definition also includes making out and manual stimulation/foreplay,
It is easy to predict that it's merely a matter of time before the drama begins.

So whether you are in a monogamous relationship or an open or polyamorous one, talk to your partner(s) and be gently direct about your feelings and point of view. The more you are honest with each other, the better your agreements will hold up and serve your purposes, especially when it really counts, and the more solid the trust you share will be. Jenny rightly says that it's not the sex, it's the lying. But it's also about the omissions. Either way, honesty and transparency will go a long way toward preventing damage to the trust that is vital to keep any relationship sound and happy.

To put it more bluntly, don't be stupid. Never, ever secretly rationalize breaking an agreement and crossing an established boundary as a means to have who you desire while expecting to avoid a potential confrontation with a partner. You are playing with a fire that in the blink of an eye will destroy the trust required for your relationship to be happy. Before you know it you are in deep relationship trouble, a kind of trouble that will require hard work for a long time to repair the damage done. Erase from your memory forever that old saw about it being easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. It's a lie, especially in this case. For the vast majority of people it will not be worth it. Trust me, I've been there.

MTV Returns for Follow Up with Gay Quad in Charlotte

2010-05-30T12:54:00.002-04:00

What an interesting development! Last year MTV's True Life episode on polyamory profiled an MFF poly vee relationship in NYC and a poly quad in Charlotte, NC. You can read about it in more detail here. Now there is news that True Life has returned to Charlotte a year later to see what's up these days with Jeremy Eudy, Thomas Freyre, Jim Messaros and Chris Morgan.

Last time around this was a triad - looks like Thomas, Jim and Christ added their fourth partner, Jeremy, in the interim. The triad was struggling to find their way in dealing with conflicts that commonly arise in new poly relationships, what I call riding the poly rollercoaster (with attendant highs and lows). I'm crossing my fingers for them and hoping that they were able to sort things out and make it work. Time (and apparently MTV) will tell, and I very much look forward to watching this follow-up episode of True Life. No word yet on when it will be broadcast.

Hooray! Another Lambda Literary Award for Polyamory

2010-05-28T12:29:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Australian researcher and author Dr. Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli for winning the Lambda Literary Award in a tie for her bisexual and polyamory themed fictional book, Love You Two. I've read this book and enjoyed it immensely. It is about a teenage girl who accidentally discovers that her mother is polyamorous - she has a boyfriend in addition to her husband, and all three partners are open and honest about the situation . . . . This book deals with issues such as teenage sex, date rape, bisexuality, homosexuality, polyamory, and rainbow families in a sensitive and subtle way. Despite its themes, it is suitable for reading by teenagers and possibly younger children if their parents feel they are mature enough.

The book tied for the award in Bisexual Fiction with Holy Communion by Mykola Dementiuk.

For those in the NYC area the celebration of the arts in the bisexual community continues with 'Bi Lines III: a Celebration of Bisexual Writing in Reading, Music & Culture tonight at 7:30PM at NYC's LGBT Community Services Center, 208 West 13th Street in NYC's West Village

This is the second Lambda Literary win for books with polyamory themes, the first being Jenny Block's win in the bisexual non-fiction category for her book Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage in 2008.

Polyamory on Starz Series Party Down

2010-05-20T17:02:00.005-04:00

So lately I've been getting into a new ensemble comedy series on the Starz premium cable network called Party Down, about a group of people who work for a catering company by that name. It stars, amongst others, the awesome Megan Mullally (sans that awful nasally voice she did on Will & Grace) and rising star Lizzy Caplan who played Jason Stackhouse's hippie girlfriend, Amy Burley, in Season 1 of True Blood. Each episode of Party Down is the story of what happens at an event they are catering. In this week's episode #204, they are catering a wake given by the family of a prominent, newly-deceased African American businessman.

SPOILER ALERT - If you think you may see this show and don't want to know ahead of time what happens in episode 204, read no further. If you want to know more or just don't care either way, scroll down a bit....

Down....

Down....

Down....

Down....

SO! Present at the wake is, of course, the deceased's widow and his daughter. The daughter hired and is the liaison to the Party Down staff. We learn fairly early on that these ladies have an expectation that representatives from "the Phoenix office" of the deceased's employer would attend to pay their respects, and there's resentment when it seems no one has been sent to honor their dead executive who over the years spent a lot of time away from home working in that office.

A pretty blonde woman with a mixed race teenaged son arrives, and someone assumes she is the rep of a homeless shelter who is expected to pick up extra food being donated to the shelter. But she is distraught, and it is soon obvious that she is not from the homeless shelter and knew the deceased VERY well. The hostess/daughter figures this out and orders the caterers to do something to keep the deceased's paramour from encountering the widow and tipping her off that her dead husband had had another family stashed away.

Daughter and staff cook up a scheme where the mistress is introduced to the widow as a representative from the Phoenix office. The mistress manages to play it cool until she walks up to the casket and starts bawling. She recovers somewhat and just as she is introduced to the widow as being from the Phoenix office, someone who is REALLY from the Phoenix office shows up and says to the widow something like, "We wanted to convey our condolences. Though we only saw him a few times a year, your husband was well respected ...." Yadee yadee yadee....

At this point a look of realization comes over the widow's face, and naturally everyone thinks the sh*t is about to hit the fan. But instead of the widow freaking out, imagine my surprise and delight when she says very pleasantly something along the lines of "Oh, you must be her! Well, I'm so glad you could come by. This must be your son. What a fine looking boy. You know I always thought you'd be Asian, he always liked the Asian girls. Anyway, we so appreciate your being here." At this point she turns to her daughter and the catering staffers and says with a smile:

"Thank goodness he and I had an open marriage. We never would have lasted if we hadn't!"

Of course, everyone is left standing with their mouths agape, not believing what they've just heard (while I'm sitting at home clapping and cheering), as the widow strolls away chatting with another guest. As awesome as that all is, there's still more - the episode closes with the arrival of a pretty Asian woman and HER racially mixed teenaged son.

You can see a couple of clips from episode 204 here, though none of them references this part of the story line. Otherwise, all I can say to this is THANK YOU MO' NIQUE!

The Pinky Song by Alicyn Packard

2010-05-17T11:25:00.007-04:00

Healthy sexuality comes in many forms, and everything I post here happens with an underlying sex-positive pansexual context. Once in a while I will post something here purely for its entertainment value.

I sometimes present workshops to kinky people, many, many of whom are polyamorous, and there are many who read this blog. Role play afficionados will especially like this. Thanks to my friend Lisa Vandever, awesome director of the Cinekink Film Festival, for the tip on this hilarious video - enjoy!

Polygarol!

2010-05-14T18:13:00.004-04:00

Just came across this and love it! Fourth wife indeed. Love the imagery of the football through the THREE tires.

Polygarol | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com

Personal Stories on Polyamory and Compersion on Radio Netherlands Worldwide

2010-05-14T12:29:00.009-04:00

This just in. Executive Director Robyn Trask and her partner, Managing IT Director Jesus Garcia, both of Loving More, give a great polyamory interview in this radio piece in which they are interviewed by Radio Netherlands Worldwide (in English, never fear) in partnership with WAMU public radio here in Washington, DC. The radio show is The State We're In, and this episode is titled Flirtation, Love, Romance and Polyamory.

Robyn and Jesus talk about their poly relationship and their relationships with other lovers, both their own and each other's. Robyn's sweetie, guitarist and singer Ben Silver, is also interviewed about his relationships with both Robyn as his sweetie and Jesus as Robyn's primary partner. Ben also sings some of his lovely polyamory- focused music. Though she doesn't use the word, Robyn speaks at length about how compersion works for her in her relationships. (For more info on compersion, see also the handout from my compersion workshop.)

You will listen through or skip over a brief news interlude, and the poly segment is first up and concludes at 22 minutes in. Be sure to listen to that point - Ben's lovely vocals and harmonies on the song "More Love" are not to be missed!

The group picture I've used above was taken at last fall's Loving More Retreat, and a happier bunch of people you'll never see. We were all feeling our bliss by the time pictures were taken on Sunday. Please consider joining us for this year's retreat September 10-12 on 175 acres in the beautiful, rural, clothing-optional setting of Easton Mountain Retreat in upstate New York. The beds are comfortable, the food organic and fresh out of the garden, the company fabulous and the opportunities for learning, growing and connecting truly awesome. Hope to see you there!

Woody Allen Does Polyamory Again in Whatever Works

2010-05-12T12:55:00.001-04:00

After Woody Allen's 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona created a sensation in the poly community due to the poly elements in its story line, I am surprised that I didn't hear anything about his 2009 movie, Whatever Works. I just happened upon it on Netflix. Though polyamory isn't the main story line, there is definitely a lovely example of functional polyamory present. Of course, it's portrayed in the context of bohemian life in Greenwich Village and not as taking place in some mainstream middle class suburban setting, but still, we'll take a healthy portral of polyamory whereever we can get it.

Apparently Allen is enthralled with polyamory, or so it would seem if two movies in a row with poly elements form a pattern. But unlike VCB, this one never had a wide release in theaters. It was first shown as the premiere film at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2009 and stars Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and Evan Rachel Wood (Sophie-Ann Leclerq, the vampire queen of Louisiana, on True Blood), as well as Michael McKean, Ed Begley, Jr., and the awesome Patricia Clarkson (also in VCB), who plays a blissed-out newby poly person.

In addition to it's polyamory aspect, this film also appeals to me because it juxtaposes in romantic relationships God-fearing NRA-member traditional southerners with denizens of Greenwich Village and demonstrates how bohemian culture can open eyes and minds.

So this is definitely a film worth seeing so long as you don't mind Larry David's character Boris's ascerbic, angst-ridden, narcissistic, hypochondriacal, anti-social, suicidal carrying on. Of course, it wouldn't be a Woody Allen film without some of that. And it's definitely interesting to see what happens when Allen introduces Boris's new love interest , Melody, played by Wood, who is a sweet, smart, inquisitive, enthusiastic and independent young southern woman. Only Allen could make that scenario seem plausible, which he does and masterfully, master that he is.

Some favorite quotes:

Boris: Can you believe this cracker, this red state Neanderthal, this mindless zombie of the National Rifle Association?

John (Ed Begley, Jr.): My shrink says that the guns were all a manifestation of my sexual inadequacy.

Boris: Yeah, if it wasn't for sexual inadequacy the National Rifle Association would go broke!

and

Boris: ... I can't say enough times, whatever love you can get and give, whatever happiness you can filch or provide, every temporary measure of grace, whatever works.

(That last one's not such a bad point of view when it comes to arranging one's love life as one will instead of doing what others expect of us.)

Poly Living and Loving More Coming to Seattle this Fall!

2010-05-10T18:10:00.002-04:00

Loving More is thrilled to announce that for the first time it will be holding a major polyamory relationship conference in Seattle and is excited to bring this wonderful conference to an equally wonderful part of the country. The Poly Living Conference, being held October 22-24, 2010, features a range of informative workshops from basic to advanced and intellectual to experiential, covering topics both fun and serious. Poly Living, orginally founded by the late George Marvil, is a place to learn relationship skills that support healthy polyamorous realationships.

• Friday night Keynote,Concert and Reception

• Saturday to Sunday- 18 Amazing workshops by nationally known polyamory facilitators and presenters

• Saturday Luncheon

Click here for pricing and details

Featuring in Concert Friday Night - Bone Poets Orchestra

Bone Poets Orchestra (formally known as Gaia Consort) will be performing in concert Friday following the keynote address. Bone Poets Orchestra describes itself as psychedelic Steampunk in the tradition of Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and other hallucinogenic masters. Listen to Bone Poets Music here.

Hope to see you there!

Deborah Anapol and Polyamory Get Their Own Blog on PsychologyToday.com

2010-05-06T18:26:00.008-04:00

Dr. Deborah Anapol, co-founder with Ryam Nearing in the early 1990s of Loving More and author of Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits (now out of print) has just announced the following:

"...in case you’re still wondering whether polyamory has gone mainstream, I’ve just been asked to blog about polyamory for Psychology Today. My new blog, Love Without Limits: Reports from the Relationship Frontier will be up soon. Please visit me there, offer your own views in the 'comments' section, and share this link with your friends."

No wondering on my part, other poly leaders and I have been discussing and writing about the mainstreaming of polyamory for more than three years now. It's gratifying to see that the polyamory movement has now reached a place where mainstream psychology is taking note and recognizes that this trend is important and substantial enough to warrant regular, high visibility commentary.

Anapol must have a good publicist to land such a plum writing opportunity. Her re-entry into the world of polyamory is also being fueled by publication next month of her new book, Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy with Multiple Partners, about which I've heard good things and will post a review here once I've purchased and read it. She asked me to write a piece for it on recent polyamory leadership initiatives, which I did. It will be interesting to hear what she has to say about the current state of the practice of polyamory, especially since she dropped out of polyamory circles and remained pretty much silent on the subject for the last several years, seemingly focusing on other things. Younger poly leaders, used to the fast pace of the flow of information via the internet and social networking sites, seem to barely know who she is, if at all. Still, for ten years or so Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits and The Ethical Slut (1st ed) by Dossie Easton and Catherine Liszt/Janet Hardy, were the only books available by which to navigate the waters of polyamory. For their existence I will always be grateful, especially Anapol's section on jealousy. We'll see whether this new book has the chops to rate up there with Tristan Taormino's Opening Up and the vastly expanded and improved 2nd edition of The Ethical Slut as a staple reference resource on polyamorists' book shelves. If you are one of those polyamorists who knows little or nothing about Anapol and would like to know more, visit her website.

Open Marriage on the Fox Medical Drama, House

2010-04-27T12:25:00.009-04:00

The concept of open marriage is gaining mainstream traction largely via Mo'Nique's recent admission about her open marriage to Barbara Walters. It seems that the default assumption is that an open marriage is designed to allow sexual flings without romance or commitment, so I'm just as glad the word polyamory wasn't used in last night's episode of the Fox medical drama, House. Here's the preview FYI.

You can also watch the episode here. In the opening scene a woman is having sex with her lover when a knock comes at the hotel room door and it is her husband.  She had forgotten to sign a paper needed for one of their children that day. But instead of all hell breaking loose, the husband is invited in, obviously feels awkward and says he's not sure how to behave under those circumstances. Nevertheless, he introduced himself to the lover and they shook hands very politely. As soon as the husband leaves, the wife develops severe abdominal pain and sends her lover after her husband. So far so good as to the open marriage story line.

Lots of conversation happened throughout the episode, so much that it seemed that the woman's mysterious illness was a subplot line. It was strange that the medical staff kept asking their patient questions that were pretty rude and not necessary to make a diagnosis, but they did facilitate discussion about the problems with monogamy, even going so far as to one character saying it's unreasonable to expect our partner to meet all our needs forever.

Certainly the medical staff was curious, and one doctor named Taub who had apparently had repeated affairs (I don't watch this show normally) was inspired to bring the subject up with his wife, though in the ill-advised setting of a restaurant in public. This resulted in his wife reluctantly granting him Thursday nights with the woman he works with whom he fancies, only later to withdraw her permission out of fear. Instead of asking her to work on the reason for the fear, the husband immediate caves in and says he only wants her, only the next day to head off to his new love interest's apartment.

When the subject of open marriage first came up between Taub and his colleagues, he was the first one to condemn it, saying "A functional open marriage is like a unicorn. It's a mythical creature that doesn't exist." Fail!  I'll have to hand it to the writers on that part of the story, apparently they know there are many hypocrits out there who are a lot more comfortable with cheating than with toughing out the transition to conducting their multiple relationships openly, honestly and ethically.

I felt very sorry for the patient's lover when he showed up at the hospital, flowers in hand, out of concern for his lover only to be greeted with hostility and orders by the husband to leave because he was intruding on their family. Even his lover/the patient told him he should leave. It said loudly and clearly that his relationship with her was to remain superficial and a low priority for her. Add in that the lover was referred to at one point by one of the medical staff as the patient's "boy toy," and it became clear that it was OK to treat the extracurricular sexual liasson as cheap, tawdry, and not worthy of respect.

I liked that the subject matter sparked a lot of conversation between a lot of different characters and that we heard a lot of the same discussions that poly people have, especially when starting to explore.  On the other hand, it seems that the writers decided to take the safe course and ultimately demonize open relationships, especially anyone who would have a sexual relationship with someone who is married, even if the married partner has permission.

I think we can ultimately consider this a win due to it's power to reach millions and the likelihood that it will spark discussion amongst the viewers. Still, I look forward to the day when everyone gets to live happily ever after in the relationship structure that is best for them.

Polyamory Leaders Meet for Third Summit Meeting

2010-04-18T14:30:00.001-04:00

At long last I've written up a report on the Polyamory Leadership Network's summit held in February. The Network (hereafter referred to as “PLN”) held its third summit February 21-22, 2010 in the Philadelphia area. Thirty-five leaders from across the U.S. attended, and the summit was facilitated by workshop facilitator and sex educator Reid Mihalko.

PLN is a loosely-formed group of community leaders formed in October, 2008 at the 2008 Poly Pride Celebration in New York City. Its purpose is to educate the general public about polyamory as a legal, natural, ethical, practical, and joyous way of life; to provide education and support for members of the polyamory community and others interested in or touched by this relationship choice; and to foster a public climate in which all forms of consensual adult relationship choices are respected and honored. This is achieved through publications, media outreach, creative and scholarly projects, support for local/regional allies, and by providing opportunities and venues for collaboration and information-sharing.

After general introductions, Sarah Taub and I presented a recap of the prior summit held a year earlier. Projects that originated at the 2009 summit were reviewed and include providing more volunteer support and funding for the Loving More Non-Profit; a national coming out project; outreach projects to legal professionals, poly/mono partners, Principle Voices (a pro-religious polygamy organization), therapists, and polyamorists under 35; the formation of the Polyamory Media Association to better manage and leverage opportunities arising from media coverage of polyamory; a poly history timeline; and, of course, research collaboration with CARAS, on which Sarah Taub reported on the CARAS Polyamory Community Study currently in development.

Then we discussed and determined what skills and resources we offer each other. Each person spoke to what they are passionate about, love doing, and are great at, which was recorded and distributed for finding project collaborators that share our passion for a specific project. We all agreed to commit only to what we know how to do, are good at, and love doing.

Next we were asked to report what projects we are doing as individuals, and/or are fired up about doing. These included creating more events to build connections and communities; improving poly community diversity; helping with the CARAS poly community survey; developing and presenting more relationship skills workshops; creating a website that teaches good relationship skills; organizing a poly convention; creating poly leadership resources; organizing events for disseminating information on STIs; researching and writing scholarly articles; expanding offerings of presentations to relevant professional audiences; creating a virtual intentional poly community; co-producing a sex and relationships expo marketed to the general public; creating a "Faces of Polyamory" video; and presenting on polyamory to LGBT youth and at LGBT conferences.

The focus of the wrap-up part of the summit was the next PLN summit, and it was determined that the next PLN summit will be held October 24-25, 2010 in the Seattle area hotel where Loving More’s Poly Living west coast conference will take place the same weekend.

As the meeting closed, everyone reported feeling inspired, excited and having renewed energy for their work on behalf of polyamory and the polyamory community.

Dear Margo Makes a Prediction About Mainstream Polyamory Acceptance

2010-04-01T13:30:00.003-04:00

Today's "Dear Margo" addresses polyamory once again. Somewhere in the Heartland's intelligently-written letter questioning monogamy ostensibly from the point of view of a monogamous partner with a poly partner lobbies for the poly partner's right to be who they are. Though there is no real question, Margo offers her very brief opinion without condemnation .

(One of my principle focuses in providing polyamory educational resources is poly/mono relationships. I give a workshop on the subject and make the handout available on my website).

I must say, SITH's letter sounds for all the world like it was written by the poly partner instead of the mono partner, but if that is not the case, then this mono man's poly wife is a lucky person indeed. It's a challenge for many mono partners to take such a fair-minded stance, and understandably so.

SITH makes the point that it is bad for closeted gay people to deny who they are and uses that as an analogy to justify the importance of permitting a poly partner to live a poly life. Interestingly, this time Margo's response is to basically say that when it comes to monogamy, some feel one way and some another, but regardless .....

I believe the gay community will clear all the cultural and societal hurdles and prejudices long before the open marriage or polyamory crowds.

After which she signs off "Margo, psychically." Time will tell whether Margo has it right. The truth in that statement will largely depend on how much polyamorists are willing to support advocacy organizations like Loving More.

Margo Howard (daughter of Ann Landers) writes a syndicated advice column in which in the past she has (a) made erroneous statements about polyamory, (b) retracted them after the community wrote to correct her misstatements, and (c) more than a year later responded to someone in an MFM triad looking for a fourth a bit ascerbically but generally much better than the first time she addressed the subject. Today's letter is the fourth time she's addressed the subject of polyamory, and she certainly seems to be applying what she's learned, for which we can all be grateful. If you're willing, it would be good to write to her and say as much, as I am going to do.

Loving More is Officially a 501(c)3 Charitable Organization

2010-03-30T10:52:00.000-04:00

Loving More Executive Director Robyn Trask writes:

I am overjoyed to announce that Loving More's pending 501(c)3 non-profit status has been approved and the status is retroactive to May 2006. This means we are officially a tax deductible charitable organization dating back to May 2006. The non-profit status allows us to apply for both public and private grants, receive tax deductible donations and exempts us from most sales tax requirements. Loving More now has to apply for Colorado State Tax Exemption which will simply be submitting the 501(c)3.

Tax deductible donations can only be taken for the year in which the donations were made. For those who may have contributed over $1,000 and who itemize your tax return, it may be worth filing an amended return for previous years donations. Contact your accountant or the IRS directly to find out what your options are.

In addition to this great news, Loving More has moved into its new office. The office is a shared space with room to teach classes and workshops. The space serves as both an office and a center for workshops on polyamorous relationships. We will hold our first discussion group in the new class space for the Colorado poly community on Tuesday, March 30, at 7:00pm. We will also have a Grand Opening on April 10 at 1:30pm.

This is a really big step forward for Loving More and for the poly community. Now more than ever we need your help in meeting our financial goal of raising $30,000 in donations. We have raised thus far this year $8,075 but we have a long way to go.

We are also seeking help from people who have experience in applying for grants. Please contact us at 970-667-5683 if you have knowledge of grant writing or finding suitable grants.
Help Us Out by Donating!

My Afternoon with the Washington Area Secular Humanists

2010-03-25T15:06:00.000-04:00

On this past Sunday afternoon I had the privilege of presenting a program on polyamory to the Washington Area Secular Humanists. One of their organizers reached out to me a couple of months ago, said that a fair number of members were interested in hearing more about polyamory, and invited me to speak at an upcoming monthly gathering.

Though I knew that some attendees probably weren't going to be entirely comfortable with this idea, I felt it important to take advantage of this opportunity to raise awareness of polyamory, especially with a group that rejects the oppressiveness of organized religion and dogma. Their values make them potential allies.

About 40 people turned out. They were polite, respectful, and asked good questions. My basic poly 101 presentation was enhanced so as to include some detail on the ethics of polyamory. Secular Humanists highly value ethical behavior, so it was important to demonstrate how it is that polyamory is an ethical manner in which to conduct one's intimate relationships.

The WASH representatives very kindly permitted me to briefly introduce Michael Rios and Sarah Taub of Network for a New Culture and Ricci Levi of The Woodhull Freedom Foundation, very different organizations that nevertheless both welcome and support polyamorous people. They also announced the event on the Chesapeake Polyamory Network yahoogroup and invited people to attend, which I especially appreciated. It was nice to see some local poly community members and CPN representatives there, some of whom very kindly volunteered to help me field questions during the break and after the program ended.

Thanks to Don, Shelley, and everyone with WASH for their kindness and support!.

A Moving Letter from a Woman Polyamorist in Bulgaria

2010-03-16T17:39:00.002-04:00

One of the most exciting things happening in the world of polyamory today is it's rapid growth in new locations around the world. Though the growth of interest in and the practice of polyamory in the United States has increased so there are many fewer polyamorists isolated with no real local community, such people still exist. So, too, do they exist in other countries. (See my post about my delightful connection with Leonie Linssen in the Netherlands who is pretty much single-handedly organizing poly community in that country.)

I received this week two compelling messages from a very isolated polyamorist in Bulgaria named Violeta Stoykova-Jakobson, and she has given me her permission to share them with all of you. She is an excellent example of how it is that no matter what our race, our nationality, or our religious background, some of us just know that we were never meant to live a life of monogamy. And it is messages like these that inspire me to continue my advocacy work for polyamorists everywhere, especially those who can't advocate for themselves in their own home town. While I appreciate her kind words, they truly apply to all the wonderful polyamory advocates I know who are working to make things better for all of us who consider ourselves polyamorous.

Vili, as she signs her messages, writes:

Dear Anita,

Thank you for the work that you are doing. Depending on the perspective, in 21st century the world might look smaller or greater, crowded with loving, amicable people or with alienated ones.

To be born and to grow up in your little corner of that world (Bulgaria in my case) is not easy. In my life I never saw working, mutually rewarding monogamous relationship between straight individuals. I didn't have positive role models. So,when I identified myself as bisexual and polyamorous I felt both open to the experience and shocked by it!

"Why me? Why it has to happen exactly to me?", was my initial reaction. Because of Internet (providing me the necessary information I can learn from) and due to the important job people like you do, I have hope for my future, the future I am not willing to spend as an outcasted victim - weak, silent, invisible.

I intend to relocate to California pretty soon, to live with my husband and see what America can offer me...and what I can give to myself and my beloved ones.

I certainly intend to help her connect with local poly community when she has relocated. Vili continues in her second message:

I have always felt like an old soul, like someone who, in the past, was imprisoned in the vulnerable body of a child but bore in it the insights of timeless wisdom.

You might (reasonably) want to ask me do I believe my heart is unbreakable now. No, I came to the realization that a heart can be "broken" only in the context of someone else"owning" it. You know the patern- "I'll come and hurt you by creating a chaos inside you or by telling you what you should feel in your heart because I've been hurt in the past and that's the only way of 'living' I know!"

Well, my person grew up enough for a shift of the paradigm, I opened myself up to the new ways in which I perceive life at present. Why am I so dauntless? I am full of surprises. I am a member of the LDS church, usually called the mormons. I joined it at the age of 19, completely oblivious about my sexual, spiritual,and relationship orientation, so to say.

When I came to terms with the truth about myself more than three years ago, I wanted to resign from it because I couldn't reconcile the church's policy about its GLBT members (and alternative lifestyles in general) with the unconditional love of Christ, with the same love I felt to be the core of my being.

.... after eight years in the church I met two young men, serving their mission in my hometown, who turned my world upside down. One of them became my husband (though not in law yet - for political/practical reasons), the other one I call "my smallest bit of paradise". They "introduced" me to the reality of polyamory and I'll never regret that!

...My husband's ex-girlfriend turned [out] to be someone with serious mental issues. Being unable to accept the fact that he no longer wishes to be with her, she drove us crazy. She wrote nasty,malicious handwritten letters and e-mails to both of us. She bothered me on Facebook - I had to delete my profile because even though I blocked her she continued the harassment by sending her aquaintances to abuse me. They pretended to be potemtial friends of mine, but after I opened the door to my universe all I heard was how I am sinful/will burn in hell or abandon my beloved one for another woman(since I am openly bisexual). She even googled my name!

I resisted all attacks. I know what love is. I am sure how it feels for me - not limited by gender or number. My husband (he's much more than the institutionalized word for me; he's my sweet accomplice in life's adventures) loves my strength, courage and openness. In a kind of society where everyone is masking everything he loves my nature, my real face. He still has a lot of work to do to catch up with me.

My letter already became long,so I want to say only one more thing. Honesty is my policy. Being bisexual and polyamorous doesn't necessary mean that I will be engaged in multiple, parallel relationships with both men and women. They might happen to me, they might not. I may crave for them, I may not. Love comes to us when we are ready to decide whether to follow it or to stay the miserable grey mice in the corner. Who I am is the fastest way to freedom.

Best regards,

Vili

P.S. Please stay in touch with me. The desert of loneliness is unbearable.

So much of what Vili writes resonates for me, especially her comment in the last paragraph about when love comes to us and about being who we really are being the fastest way to freedom. And the religious harrassment she endured via her husband's ex is an all-too common story for those who identify as polyamorous and/or bisexual. But the most compelling of all is what she says in her postscript. It can indeed be lonely to be the only poly-identified person you know. But she is surely not alone. If you would be willing to be Vili's polyamorous pen pal, please send me your name and email address and a little about yourself and I'll send it to her.

Mo'Nique's Open Marriage Admission Spawns Wider Coverage

2010-03-09T01:30:00.002-05:00

It's very exciting to see what is happening in the media and online as a result of Mo'Nique's admission that she and husband Sidney have an open relationship. Here's my friend Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage, in a Dallas TV interview on the subject which was just posted to the Dallas CW affiliate's website. (The CW network serves younger adults.) And of course included is requisite marriage and family therapist expert, in this case Dr. Ross Stewart, who typically claims that since the marriages of all in open relationships he's counseled have failed, then open marriage is proven not to work. Why does it never occur to these people that theirs is a biased sample?? He doesn't see the people whose open marriages are working well for them. Duh.

If you are reading this on Facebook, you can see the video here.

Mo'Nique Tells It Like It Is About Her Open Marriage

2010-03-08T15:47:00.011-05:00

Here's the clip where you will hear exactly what Mo'Nique had to say about her open marriage in her interview with Barbara Walters aired last night. You can mouse-over the bottom portion of the video and use the slider bar to move ahead to the pertinent part, which is between 7:30 and 9:15 if you aren't interested in the entire interview.

If you're reading this on Facebook, you can see the video here after a short commercial.

2010 Oscar Winner Mo'Nique Declares Hers an Open Marriage

2010-03-06T09:16:00.014-05:00

3/7/10 UPDATE: I wrote this post before Mo'Nique's interview with Barbara Walters aired on Sunday night just before the Academy Awards program. Now that I've seen it I must make a correction. Sidney and Mo'Nique have been married a few years amd have been best friends for over 25 years. Sidney is Mo'Nique's third husband.

Congratulations to Mo'Nique for winning the Oscar for best supporting actress! - AW
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks to Practical Polyamory reader Renee for this tip. Actress Mo'Nique, who is nominated to win an academy award Sunday evening for her role as an abusive mother in the oscar-nominated film Precious, has said in her segment of Barbara Walters' oscar special that she and her husband of 25 years, Sidney Hicks, have an open marriage.

This is remarkable on two fronts. First, it's remarkable that she has said this in such a visible media event - the few celebrities who have acknowledged their open relationships, most notably oscar winner Tilda Swinton and action hero Will Smith and actress wife Jada Pinkett Smith, have said as much, but not in anything close to such a high profile interview as this. Second, and more important, is what she says in this quote from the MSNBC article reported on by Entertainment Tonight about her interview with Walters:

“What if [your husband has sex with another] 20 times?” [Walters] asked, to which Mo'Nique replies, "So what? We’ve been best friends for over 25 years, and we truly know who we are. Oftentimes, people get into marriages and they don’t know who they’re laying next to. I’m very comfortable and secure with my husband.”

And there you have it. This relationship has lasted 25 years and appears to still be strong. It's pretty clear that one of the reasons is that Mo'Nique and Sidney know and trust each other and are wise enough not to use marriage as an emotional and sexual prison. Mo'Nique goes on to say that she herself hasn't engaged in affairs with anyone but her husband. She is surely a strong woman who understands what I call The Secret of Polyamory, or so I like to think. And still, advocates for traditional marriage continue to cling to and aggressively promote a paradigm that clearly doesn't bring long-term happiness to many people and, in fact, poses significant risks to a marriage's long-term prospects by attempting to cage human romantic love and sexuality.

We advocates for polyamory and open relationships have believed for quite a while now that there are surely many celebrities in such marriages who have not seen fit to make it public, but it would come as a considerable surprise if this turns out not to be the case. Considering how much celebrities travel, how often they are separated from their spouses for fairly lengthy periods of time, how lonely that must be for them and how many other attractive people they interact with, open relationships would seem a logical choice, so long as the marriage/relationship in question is as strong and intentionally well defined as those of Swinton, the Smiths, and my new heroine, Mo'Nique.

Poly Presentation March 21, Washington Area Secular Humanists, Tyson's Corner, VA

2010-03-05T11:57:00.000-05:00

I'm looking forward to talking polyamory with the Washington Area Secular Humanists on March 21, 2010 at from 2:00 - 5:00 p.m. at the Tyson's-Pimmitt Public Library. Hope you can join us! Here are the details of the program, which will especially focus on the ethics of polyamory and using rational thinking in evaluating polyamory as a personal path. - Anita

------------------------------------------------------

Topic: “Polyamory - America's Next Romantic Revolution?”

Description: Suppose we hear about a closeted gay man who, because of societal pressure to fit in and abide by tradition, marries a woman who is not aware he is gay. Most of us would say that this is sad because such people have few to no ethical alternatives to traditional marriage, depending on whether gay marriage is legal in their state.

Consider the case of Tiger Woods and his extra-marital affairs. Not as many of us would think this to be a sad case because he certainly has ethical alternatives. The obvious alternative would be to abide by the monogamous commitment he made when he and his wife, Elin, married. Less obvious but equally ethical, if both agreed to it, would be the practice of polyamory, also known to some as responsible non-monogamy. Some may and do argue against such arrangements as both irresponsible and unethical, but this is because they lack a compassionate and informed understanding of this alternative to traditional monogamy.

* What is polyamory?
* How does it work?
* What are the pitfalls?
* How do people deal with jealousy?
* What is compersion?
* What are the ethics of polyamory?
* What are the legal issues?
* What are the outcomes for children?
* What does science have to say about how monogamous or polyamorous we are as a species?
* What are the most common misunderstandings about polyamory?

Presenter Anita Wagner regularly speaks to groups where she answers these and other questions for the polyamory community. She is a highly-regarded community leader, organizer, advocate and media spokesperson and is the author of the very popular Practical Polyamory blog. Both her blog and website (practicalpolyamory dot com) are considered among the best internet resources available on the subject of polyamory.

WHERE: Tyson-Pimmit Library, 7584 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22043

Directions: We will be in the meeting room of the Tysons-Pimmit library from 2 - 4 PM. It is 1.3 miles from the West Falls Church Metro on the Orange Line... so if you feel up to it, it is feasible to walk. There's also a bus. Driving directions and information on public transportation is available here. Parking is free.

Finding our Own Edge and Setting Personal Boundaries

2010-03-04T11:33:00.003-05:00

This is by no means a full treatment of this subject, only a few thoughts to share.

This past weekend I taught a new class on Compersion during which I said that when it comes to determining our own boundaries in the context of polyamorous relationships, most of us don't have a societal model to guide us. So sometimes the only means of knowing how much of a kind of involvement or activity suits us and how much is too much is by intentionally pushing our boundaries past our comfort level. That's not always a bad thing, and in this case it's pretty much a necessary thing.

To take this boundary-setting concept a step further, there are plenty of polyamorous people (who to me are also spiritual warriors) who hold the philosophy that pushing our own boundaries is part of the experience, the adventure, and the fun of living a polyamorous life. Many of us, especially when fairly new to polyamory, do just that as we reach beyond our societally programmed beliefs and assumptions around freedom (or lack thereof) of sexual relationship choice.

What prompted me to make this post is the following Hunter S. Thompson quote, which came to me via anthropologist Kate Frank, and which captures well what I am saying:

"The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over." Hunter S Thompson

Calling all Polyamorous Spokespeople, Activists, Community Leaders, and Out & Proud Polys!

2010-03-01T18:09:00.001-05:00

Ever more news reports, articles, and television shows are highlighting poly families, and a surprisingly large number of them are showing us very favorably!

Ever wondered how those people got chosen when, perhaps, your family would have been perfect?

Ever been interviewed yourself and watched or read it later and thought, "Hey, that's not what I said/meant!"?

Ever seen Terisa Greenan or Jenny Block on television and wished you could sound and look that polished, that you could get your message across that clearly?

Introducing the Polyamory Media Association! We’re a volunteer project of the Polyamory Leadership Network, collaborating with Loving More. Our goal is to bridge the gulf between the media and the polyamorous community.

We offer media training to help you polish your own message and develop those skills necessary for navigating the waters of the media and entertainment industry.

We will not tell you what to say. You create your own message; we'll teach you how to say it. Our training is good for radio, television, and print interviews, for public speaking, for letter-writing, and for other proactive polyactivism.

Plus, we offer our free services as media screeners. We can help you vet reporters and shows so you can avoid problematic ones, negotiate with the rest on a more even basis, and make sure you're treated fairly. But the final decision is left up to you -- we will not filter or make decisions for you.

The Polyamory Media Association will also seek out the media to help them find you if you wish. By bringing together the polyamorous community and the media, we hope to foster a mutually beneficial relationship between the two parties -- when they share common goals.

So sign up today and take advantage of the training materials and experience collected by those trailblazing polyamorists before you! Shortly after you sign up (completely free, and all information will remain confidential), you'll be given access to the Members portion of the website with all the benefits we have to offer.

We look forward to seeing you at the Polyamory Media Association!

For more information contact Joreth InnKeeper, Director, PMA

Seeking FMF "Vee" for Mainstream Women's Magazine Article

2010-02-23T17:07:00.001-05:00

I have been contacted by a journalist who is researching an alternative relationships idea for a highly-visible women's magazine that involves what's been called "Man-Sharing." Since the magazine has already done a piece fairly recently on women who love women, in this case she is specifically seeking two heterosexual women who are sharing a man to be interviewed for the article. I've spoken with the journalist at length about the article and feel good about the likelihood that she will treat the subject fairly.

If you and your poly family fit this description and you'd like to know more, please drop me a note ASAP at anita.wagner@practicalpolyamory

Thanks!

Seeking a Poly Family for High Profile TV Program

2010-02-12T19:15:00.001-05:00

I was recently contacted by Jessica Bennett, the author of the July 2009 Newsweek polyamory article, who is now working with several dynamic, veteran TV women to produce a TV documentary on the subject. The details of the family she seeks and all other project information she has to share is below.

Jessica has proven herself to be a trustworthy ally to the polyamory movement by writing a high profile article that treated the subject fairly. That said, everyone is cautioned to think carefully about becoming involved if there are potential child custody risks or employment implications by being outed. We hope you will make a rational assessment and decide for yourself to participate if you think it in your and our movement's best interests, but we don't want anyone to suffer negative consequences.

With that said, here is Jessica's letter - please feel free to contact me for referral to people who can offer training in dealing with the media and prepare you so you'll enjoy the experience and maximize the benefit to the community of your participation.

Hi there-

I'm the author of the Newsweek feature on polyamory, in search of a poly family to profile for a documentary television program presently in development. We're seeking families with 3+ partners, between the ages of late 20s-50s, who are committed to the lifestyle (ie not just "experimenting") and may be able to help debunk the stereotype of the poly community as an outlier. We are very open, but the biggest requirement is that the group must be willing to talk openly about their relationship, and is comfortable putting themselves out there for what could potentially be a very large audience. Location is flexible, though families living in Seattle or the East Coast would be a plus. There would be compensation for the project, depending on the commitment (ie whether the program ends up being a single segment or a documentary television series). We would film on location at your home/city.

About me: I'm an award-winning journalist for Newsweek, originally from Seattle, covering cultural trends, women and sexuality. My co-producer is Jennifer Molina, an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker with more than a decade of experience--at the Sundance Channel, the United Nations, Newsweek and elsewhere. (Jenn produced the two videos that were featured with the Newsweek article.) Together, we are working with a New York-based production company called Myriad Entertainment, which is run by Veronique Bernard and Lisa Zeff, two industry vets (and generally wonderful women) who are highly regarded in the field and have decades of experience funding and producing documentaries. Myriad has an abundance of contacts in the field, with the goal being to produce the project for a major television network.

If you're interested, we'd love to hear about you and your family. Please feel free to contact me directly, at jessben@gmail.com, and you can check out my portfolio and reel at www.jessbennett.net. Jennifer Molina's reel can be accessed at www.rinkdproductions.com and the Newsweek story, if you haven't seen it, is viewable at http://www.newsweek.com/id/209164. Please note that this project is not affiliated with Newsweek in any way.

Jessica Bennett

Polyamory, Pathologizing Sex, and the DSM-V

2010-02-11T12:24:00.007-05:00

The American Psychiatric Association has announced its proposed addition to the DSM-V that addresses the highly controversial subject of sex addiction, whether it exists, and how it should be diagnosed.

The DSM-V is the next (fifth) edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), commonly called DSM-V. It is currently in consultation, planning and preparation and is due for publication in May 2013, when it will supersede the DSM-IV which was last revised in 2000.

Many of us in the sex-positive movement have been very concerned about this issue because we envision great potential for misdiagnosis based on a desire for multi-partner relationships. Adding sex addiction to the DSM-V as a distinct disorder separate from obsessive-compulsive disorder is highly controversial and the subject of much heated debate.

We polyamorists have a vested interest in this issue because biased and/or uninformed mental health care professionals have been known to pathologize our desire for more than one partner - hence the great demand for poly-friendly therapists. So the criteria for diagnosis matters - a lot. Poly people with misgivings about their choices are particularly vulnerable to misdiagnosis.

For example, I found this advertisement in a google search on sex addiction. Admittedly most polyamorists aren't likely to consult a "CCSAS" - Certified Christian Sexual Addiction Specialist. Still, if they are new to polyamory, are conflicted about it from a religious perspective, are having guilty feelings about it, (it happens!) and decide to seek out a therapist, someone claiming to be a "CSAT", a Certified Sexual Addicition Therapist, might be their choice if the therapist's religion isn't of any great concern.

Oh, and since APA criteria for diagnosing sex addiction doesn't officially exist yet, who is doing the certifying here? There are lots of people out there claiming to be certified therapists who aren't. And the last thing we polyamorists need is a bunch of religious extremists pointing to the DSM-V and telling us we are sick and can be cured of our "illness" as has been the case with regard to homosexuality. (Of course, a little thing like homosexuality having been removed from the DSM years ago doesn't change anything in their view.)

So below is the proposed addition to the DSM-V, Hypersexual Disorder. It's better than it could have been, and it's still under discussion, but this is an important step in that it reveals the direction the APA is taking. Note that "Sexual Behavior with Consenting Adults" is listed as one of the behaviors that should be specified in a diagnosis if it exists.

Much more remains to be seen on this. The good news is that this proposal doesn't classify hypersexual behavior as an addiction per se. Were that the case, then poly relationships could be further stygmatized simply because one's partnerships aren't working and the resulting drama is making them unmanageable. (The basic determining factor as to whether one is an addict is whether one's life has become unmanageable as a result of the addictive behavior.)

Hypersexual Disorder [14]

A. Over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense sexual fantasies, sexual urges, and sexual behavior in association with four or more of the following five criteria:

(1) A great deal of time is consumed by sexual fantasies and urges, and by planning for and engaging in sexual behavior. [15]

(2) Repetitively engaging in these sexual fantasies, urges, and behavior in response to dysphoric mood states (e.g., anxiety, depression, boredom, irritability). [16]

(3) Repetitively engaging in sexual fantasies, urges, and behavior in response to stressful life events. [17]

(4) Repetitive but unsuccessful efforts to control or significantly reduce these sexual fantasies, urges, and behavior. [18]

(5) Repetitively engaging in sexual behavior while disregarding the risk for physical or emotional harm to self or others. [19]

B. There is clinically significant personal distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning associated with the frequency and intensity of these sexual fantasies, urges, and behavior. [20]

C. These sexual fantasies, urges, and behavior are not due to the direct physiological effect of an exogenous substance (e.g., a drug of abuse or a medication). [21]

Specify if: [22]

Masturbation

Pornography

Sexual Behavior With Consenting Adults

Cybersex

Telephone Sex

Strip Clubs

Calling All Poly Leaders - Poly Leadership Summit February 21-22, 2010

2010-02-04T18:30:00.000-05:00

On February 21-22, 2010 an informal polyamory leadership summit will be held following the Poly Living conference at the Ft. Washington Holiday Inn and Conference Center in the Philadelphia metro area. Whether you can be there or not, if you are not already a member of the Polyamory Leadership Network and wish to become one and get notices of future summits, please download, carefully read and complete this survey form to tell us about you and your activism work and e-mail it to the address shown at the end of the form.

For full details and to sign up for the summit, go here.

Countdown to Poly Living Conference

2010-02-04T14:48:00.005-05:00

Just 15 days left until Poly Living 2010
Ft. Washington Holiday Inn
Ft. Washington, PA (Metro Philadelphia area)

Now is the time to register!

Check out a taste of the presentations coming to you!

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Cuddle Party Co-Founder Reid Mihalko on

What Happens When Polyamory Becomes Mainstream?

For the activists among us, progress for the poly movement has never been fast enough. For those who've been "poly for years," shows like Big Love and the occasional Oprah episode on open marriages -whether "poly" is used or not- reassure us that things are shifting. For the newly poly, posting "In an open relationship" on our Facebook profile reminds us that we are no longer the only stranger in a strange land. And for the monogamous person choosing into a poly relationship, today, more than ever, there are books, workshops and DVDs to help you get your black belt in relationships and increase your odds of survival... No matter where you are on the poly spectrum of experience, what we all have in common is that polyamory is not yet mainstream... Has anyone thought about what happens when it does?

Curtis Bergstrand, PhD
The Rise and Decline of Monogamy in America

Using data from a study of 1100 swingers, anecdotal evidence from the poly community, and accumulated research on the family in the U.S. over the past 40 years this presentation argues that the challenges facing our society in the future can only be met through the legal and social acceptance of non-monogamy in constructing relationships and building families.

Mim Chapman PhD
Poly Etiquette Within Poly diverse Forms of Poly Relationships

Poly etiquette isn’t about curving your pinky – it’s about way tougher things like how to bring in new loves, how to behave when you return from a date with "shiny new love object," how to share with a potential partner what you’re talking about when you say “I’m poly.” Just what do poly relationships LOOK like? And how does one figure out how to act within the wide variety of types of relationships that we call “poly?” Sure, poly relationships are all designer relationships, but some patterns and types of relationships seem to be emerging within the poly world....

Michael Rios and Sarah Taub
Intimate Exposure

A key skill for living a powerful life is the ability to “show up,” to communicate your truth to others. Using a format called ZEGG Forum (not related to Landmark Forum), the facilitators create a safe, loving container where participants may step in front of the group and share what is going on for them. Profound shifts in consciousness can occur as we reveal or witness what had been hidden.

Anita Wagner and Alan M.
Polyamory in Media's Spotlight

Over the last few years much has happened on the public stage that has the power to affect poly lives in ways both good and bad. More than 200 media events that focus on polyamory or are polyamory-related have been documented. Their sources range from prime-time TV plot lines to articles in campus newspapers. Come see a live demo including websites and video, ask questions and learn more.

Group Discounts

Discount of 10% when three people register together, use coupon code PL103. Recieve 15% when four or more register together, use coupon code PL104.

Student discount is available (requires current student ID). Call 970-667-5683 for details.

All these fantastic speakers, workshops, connections and many many more.

More information here
Loving More • PO BOX 1658 • Loveland, CO 80539

Kudos to Advice Columnist Bianca Phillips

2010-01-19T17:31:00.003-05:00

Today Memphis Flyer advice columnist Bianca Phillips answered a poly coming out question from a member of a polyamorous triad and did an excellent job. This is especially encouraging considering how advice columnists vary widely as to their knowledge about and treatment of the subject of polyamory. Some can be downright snarky and disapproving, but there are also those like Bianca who wear no blinders and treat polyamorous advice seekers respectfully and fairly. I especially appreciate that she congratulated the triad for their relationship lasting so long, nine years.

Coming out to family and friends is a big deal to polyamorists. In my experience, it can be very difficult to predict how others, even others who love us and we know to be generally open minded, will react. I think Bianca's recommendations as to a good strategy for coming out to family are excellent. See what you think.

Happy Poly Moment on The Daily Show

2010-01-15T17:18:00.008-05:00

Thanks to my friend Nicholas for the tip about a happy poly moment on last night's The Daily Show. This whole clip is pretty funny, at least it is if you enjoy the kind of editing that goes on where the questioner's questions aren't always what the interviewee was asked.

The poly part comes in at about 3:10. Joy and George Reagan and George's unnamed girlfriend, the people being interviewed by comedian Jason Jones, appear to be the real deal. They also apparently agreed to get partly unclothed and climb under the sheets for a little three way kissing after Jason sets up the scene by dimming the lights, putting on some shagging music, "accidentally" pulling extra large condoms out of his suit pocket while looking for a pen, and then standing over the three while waving around a rabbit sex toy and saying something along the lines of "now this is what a great marriage really is."

Normally we activists cringe when we see a sex-play setup in a poly piece since it sensationalizes the sex while ignoring all the other important aspects of poly relationships. In this case it's all so, er, tongue-in-cheek (pun intended) that I think it works OK. The word polyamory isn't used, but it's clear what they are referring to when you consider the context of the earlier part of the clip where a fundamentalist minister is adamantly denigrating homosexuality and same-sex marriage as not legitimate marriage. Slippery slope parody, anyone?

Another positive is that when asked about the secret to marriage, Joy right up front uses the "c" word - communication.

Enjoy! (And if you are reading this via Facebook, you can see the video here.)

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Kaye Scholer Wins Asylum for Transgendered Client

2010-01-13T12:49:00.000-05:00

I've bragged here about my former law firm employer, WilmerHale, for their excellent pro bono work. As it happens, I changed megafirms in November 2009 and am now employed at Kaye Scholer, a NYC-based firm, in their Washington office. They, too, have a great pro bono program. In the course of my work I work closely with a female African American attorney who focuses on pro bono cases involving discrimination, which feels very good.

Big law definitely does give back, as is evidenced by the following. Recently an immigration court granted asylum to one of the firm's pro bono clients who is transgendered. In this client's native country, transgenders are social outcasts who are routinely attacked by the police and other armed groups. Because of the violence, the client fled in order to transition to the opposite gender in the United States. The immigration court's decision ensures that our client will be more protected from homophobic violence and more able to lead a normal life here.

Transgendered people are by far the most harrassed and discrminated against of all sexual minority groups, including the United States. It takes tremendous courage and not a little risk to be who you really are when you are a trans person. As a sexual freedom advocate, I support the rights of all transgendered people to live their lives as they choose without fear as consenting adults, and this is why I am especially pleased just now to say I am a Kaye Scholer employee.

Jenny Block on Richmond's Virginia This Morning

2010-01-12T14:21:00.001-05:00

Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage, is still going strong with media events since the publication of her book about 18 months ago. Her latest appearance was yesterday, January 11, 2010, where she was interviewed by the hosts of Richmond's Virginia This Morning morning show. See video below. All the media experience she's had as a result of the book has lead to a poised and polished delivery of her (and our, i.e. we polyamorists') message. She's certainly braved some daunting challenges, including facing off with Bill O'Reilly and several thousand born again Christians on ABC's Nightline - both trial by fire without question. This latest interview is more friendly, and she looks fabulous.

Jenny's success has also led to her being the Sex Talk columnist for Dallas-Ft. Worth's free weekly entertainment newspaper, QuickDFW.com

Go Jenny!

Love's New Frontier

2010-01-07T23:32:00.002-05:00

It's so delightful to know that media interest in polyamory has grown to the point that we can pretty much expect to see at least four even-handed articles on the subject in major publications every year, plus dozens more lower profile articles and broadcast media events.

The latest example of this trend appeared in Sunday's Boston Globe Magazine, a thoroughly researched and accurately written article entitled Love's New Frontier complete with video of Alan and Michelle Wexelblat, long-time fixtures in the Boston Poly group and community. I had the pleasure of sitting on a Poly 101 panel at November's Transcending Boundaries conference in Worcester, Massachusetts, with Michelle, a social worker and experienced polywoman who really knows her stuff.

Other members of the Boston poly community, including my good friend Valerie White of the the Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education Fund, paint an entirely accurate picture of what it's like to be polyamorous. It was also wonderful to see a quote from Atlanta-based Elizabeth Sheff, one of the leaders of the growing community of researchers who are studying polyamorists and poly families.

If I have any nits to pick, it's that I could have done without the erroneous speculation of women's studies prof. Valerie Sperling that poly women tend to be more closeted because of fear of being considered slutty, whereas a man wouldn't be judged so harshly and have to fear being socially castigated. That's an old societal double standard, no doubt, but there are way too many out poly women for that to hold much water. I just don't see it happening, and it's highly unlikely that it had anything to do with a shortage of women who were willing to be quoted for the article. I'm surprised it was that difficult, though admittedly it's easier if you aren't confining the search to one particular area.

In reality the most visible leaders of the polyamory movement are women, something about which I am most definitely delighted. In fact, it is generally believed by some male poly activists that they will not be taken seriously and will instead be dismissed as horn dogs using polyamory as a get-out-of-jail free card to cheat on their partners - open and honest relating being still considered cheating by those who see anything other than monogamy as cheating, including open, consensual outside relationships. I've heard this knee-jerk assertion made about poly men many times, largely by people who feel threatened by the concept of polyamory and compelled to try to discredit it.

Also quoted in the article is Boston area clinical psychologist and poly-friendly therapist Randi Kaufman, who clearly knows what she's talking about. I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with her at Transcending Boundaries as well. I also loved sex therapist Gina Ogden's quote, whom I met when she presented workshops at Building Bridges, the ITCR conference I co-produced that was held in the Boston area in 2005. What a wonderful abundance of knowledge about and experience with polyamory there is to be had in the Boston area!

Kudos to journalist Sandra A. Miller for casting a broad net and writing an article that is rich in credibility and authenticity. She even made sure to speak to Ethical Slut co-author Dossie Easton.

Reflections on Impact of July 2009 Newsweek Polyamory Article on Opposition

2009-12-29T18:09:00.004-05:00

The July 29, 2009 Newsweek article on polyamory got a lot of attention, including that of many defenders of traditional marriage. As one might imagine, they were none too pleased. It went quite viral and was blogged about and reported on far and wide both by those who are neutral on the subject and by those who are anything but. The article includes this anemic quote from Glenn Stanton, the director of family studies for Focus on the Family:

"This group is really rising up from the underground, emboldened by the success of the gay-marriage movement."

In some instances it has been rather entertaining to witness reactions from staunch defenders of traditional marriage. The Reverend Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said about the article:

"Perhaps the best way to understand this new movement is to understand it as a natural consequence of subverting marriage. We have largely normalized adultery, serialized marriage, separated marriage from reproduction and childbearing, and accepted divorce as a mechanism for liberation. Once this happens, boundary after boundary falls as sexual regulation virtually disappears among those defined as 'consenting adults.'

The ultimate sign of our moral confusion becomes evident when virtually no one appears ready to condemn polyamory as immoral. The only arguments mustered against this new movement focus on matters of practicality. Polyamory is certainly not new, but this new movement is yet another reminder that virtually all the fences are now down when it comes to sex and sexual relationships. What comes next?"

What comes next? Hopefully freedom from societal condemnation and being fairly treated on the job and by family courts and child services agencies!

The best other spokespeople from the opposition could do to discredit poly families was to refer to studies commissioned by and conducted by advocates for traditional families and marriage (about same sex marriage, not polyamory, the 2004 Heritage Foundation Study) as flimsy proof that what we do is harmful for children. It's as though their only hope for taking the wind out of our sails is to hope that poly relationships aren't stable enough to offer a stable home environment for children, a sardonic approach if there ever was one.

The article did manage to strike a nerve in commenter Baring-G, when the entire article appeared on the conservative Christian website Virtue Online:

"Please pardon me as I run to the bathroom to throw up! If Polyamory is where our Western Society is heading (and logic dictates that it is),then our society is collapsing. LORD HAVE MERCY! Lord, bring us a spiritual restoration before it is too late. 'Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." Let us pray that the people of the West repent and turn back to God.'"

What we who have embraced our polyness see as entirely reasonable and healthy can indeed look like the sky is falling to others. The truth can hurt when these folks realize that their perspective on the issue doesn't match reality. In this case the truth is that the opposition is pretty much impotent when it comes to denying us our right to live a life of romantic sexual relationship freedom. May it ever be so. As the oft-seen bumper sticker says:

Newsweek Names "Family" Poly Video One of Its 2009 Top Ten

2009-12-29T15:41:00.001-05:00

What great news!! Terisa Greenan, creator of the Family webseries, and the video about her and her real-life poly family that accompanied Newsweek online's July 29, 2009 polyamory article has been named an editor's choice of the top 10 NEWSWEEK videos in 2009! To them I send a big "HUZZAH!" along with many thanks for taking risks (privacy, livelihood, child custody) that most would quite justifiably refrain from taking. It takes great courage to invite the media into your life and family when you're a poly person. It can have unintended consequences, but this family handled themselves admirably, and the article turned out very well indeed.

So what does this recognition say about the growth of interest in polyamory in 2009? Quite a lot, actually. The Newsweek article is probably the most widely-read mainstream article ever written on the subject. It was referenced far and wide over the internet by mainstream journalists and religious conservatives (who were none too pleased, of course), and it sparked no fewer than 727 comments on the article on the Newsweek website. It has certainly helped raise awareness of polyamory, in great part due to the positive example set by Terisa, Larry, Scott, Matt, and Vera. We owe them our thanks.

If you've never seen the "Family" web series, you can see it in its uncensored entirety here. After concluding its first season on October 31 it's on haitus just now but is to return in 2010. Stay tuned.

Questioning Monogamy

2009-12-10T16:04:00.001-05:00

I'm really loving how Tiger Woods's extramarital affairs have inspired a variety of writers to write columns that question monogamy. (For your very own "Question Monogamy" t-shirt, go here.) For example, two online articles published today make some especially interesting points. Huffington Post brings us Jay Michaelson's It's Not Just Tiger: Monogamous Marriage Is An Anomaly , and Newsweek Online just published my girl Jenny Block's The Case Against Monogamy - Why is everyone so surprised about Tiger Woods? When it comes down to it, monogamy doesn't always work.

What I love about all this is that it is drawing attention to the notion that because monogamy is so difficult for many to make work over the long term, everyone needs to wise up to the fact that monogamy should be an intentional choice, not something people do just because they think they're supposed to.

Other polyamory advocates and I have been saying this very thing for a long time. None of us contends that monogamy is wrong, or bad, or uncool, or especially inferior. We just want people to know that they have another legitimate option, and that for some polyamory may work better and be more ethical than monogamy.

Whatever way people arrange their intimate lives, committing to monogamy by rote because it's what we are "supposed" to do is clearly a bigger risk than most people realize and can result in tremendous heartbreak for those who find it more difficult to stick with than they anticipated. It's also a mistake for those who hope they can give it lip service while sneaking around behind their monogamous partner's back, which appears to be Tiger Woods's bankrupt strategy.

Though we polyamorists are often villified for our choices, I am proud to say that I will never cheat on a partner, and neither are any partners likely to cheat on me, because none of us has to. We make relationship agreements we can stick to, and if we find we no longer can, then we talk with our partners and renegotiate the rules of the relationship. In this way trust is maintained. Jenny gets it SO right when she say of her partnerships ....

"We love each other and want to be together, but monogamy is not the cornerstone of our partnership—trust is."

May it some day be so for everyone, no matter what their relationship choice.

Tiger Woods's Affairs and the Latest Episode of Celebrity Infidelity

2009-12-08T15:53:00.002-05:00

Of course, Tiger Woods's extramarital relationships are THE big news right now. I came across this cartoon just as I was musing about the similarities with the South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford affair that broke in June of this year. Though not identical in that Sanford appears to have genuinely fallen in love with his mistress, while Woods seems to have connections that are more sex-based, couples can and do negotiate agreements that permit either or both. (Another of my posts on the Sanford story can be found here.  This one includes political cartoons.)

And of course, we have no idea what agreement may exist between Tiger and Elin Woods, or how she as a European views infidelity. They are said to be in counseling together, though today's news is that Elin may have purchased a home in Sweden on an island reachable only by ferry and gone there with the children. If so, Tiger's situation may sadly mirror Governor Sanford's even more closely, i.e. resulting in the breakup of the family. It seems pretty clear that Tiger's sexual relationships weren't conducted openly with Elin Woods's knowledge. Still, wouldn't it be better if they had some sort of agreement that permitted connecting with others so long as trust isn't broken?  Trouble is that I doubt there's any wife who'd not be outraged by being subjected to the media frenzy surrounding this story and very concerned about protecting her children from prying eyes and hurtful comments.

It would seem that even the most talented, successful and wealthy among us share the same relationship challenges as we regular people.  When it comes to faith and trust in marital relationships, the playing field is even for all of us. No one is exempt from having to be accountable for breaking relationship agreements.  A lot of pain and difficulty could be avoided if the Woodses, like Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, agreed that sexual flings were OK so long as commitment to the marriage is genuine and not undermined by intimacy with others.

Support Scarleteen and Comprehensive Sex Ed for Teens

2009-11-14T23:28:00.004-05:00

One of the causes I consider very important is comprehensive sex education for minors, and putting an end to abstinence-only sex ed, which is both irresponsible and ineffective. I'm passionate on this subject because I don't want to see any of today's youth be led down the f***ed up road I was led down, where I was given zero positive messaging about sex and some very damaging sex-negative messaging that it took many years to correct so that I could have a healthy sex life and happy relationships.

My friend Heather Corinna founded and runs the Scarleteen website which furnishes comprehensive sex education and related resources to thousands of kids who would otherwise get their sex ed the old fashioned way - either from their ill-informed friends or from elders who are too uncomfortable or too blinded by their own skewed values to manage to do more good than harm.

Like so many sex-related non-profit groups, Scarleteen is run pretty much completely by the passionate commitment of one or more people to whom the subject means a great deal, and in this case that person is Heather. Scarleteen's budget is meager and doesn't provide much in the way of financial support necessary for someone like Heather to be able to devote the huge amounts of time and effort it takes to provide the services she provides. If it were better supported, it would be able to do even more to help today's teens. Without Scarleteen, they would be left pretty much in the dark, abandoned by our society to ignorance and having risky sex and all the dangers that implies.

So I urge you to please join me in supporting Scarleteen. I'm sending in a $100 donation now - won't you do what you can, too?

Thanks!

Call for Intervenors - Canadian Polyamorists Set to Challenge Anti-Polygamy Law

2009-11-14T11:06:00.004-05:00

We US poly activists will surely be watching this case very closely. If you are poly and Canadian, please consider responding to this call - you have an opportunity to make history here both legally and socially and help ensure relationship freedom for yourself and your brother and sister Canadian polyamorists. And though this won't set a legal precident here in the US, its success will surely be helpful in working toward global acceptance of our kind of relationships.

Although this is no laughing matter, I couldn't resist including this campy picture and a link to the Onionesque article that describes it. These three are Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and his supposed second and third brides.

But back to business. Here's a hearty "huzzah!" to the Canadian poly activists who are undertaking this important effort.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Call for Intervenors

November 13, 2009

Court case: Upcoming BC Government’s Court Reference on the Criminalization of Polygamy and Group Marriages

The BC government will shortly put a question to the Court to test the constitutionality of section 293 of the Criminal Code of Canada which criminalizes people who practice polygamy or enter into any kind of “conjugal union” (i.e. a common-law marriage) with more than one person at the same time. Intervenors will have as little as 3 weeks to respond with court applications and affidavits.

It is important that polyamorists who are interested in being married to more than one person, or are living with more than one person, make the court aware of their interests and the legal arguments that the law is unconstitutional, because it infringes their Canadian Charter rights of association, religion (i.e. Wiccan or Pagan), equality, and the life, liberty and security of the person. It is not appropriate for a law which criminalizes loving, committed, consensual relationships to remain on the books, even if it is not presently being enforced. The more polyamorous interveners there are, the more strongly the court will hear this position.

PLEASE ENSURE THAT THIS CALL IS PLACED ASAP TO ALL CANADIAN POLYAMOROUS GROUPS AND LISTS TO WHICH YOU BELONG.

Who are we?

We are individual members of the Vancouver polyamory community and are active members or coordinators in Vanpoly (www.vanpoly. ca), who have joined together to coordinate an intervention by polyamorists so that the court can hear our stories and arguments. We have experience in organizing politically and legally. One of our members has offered to act as pro bono legal counsel and has successful experience in mounting constitutional challenges to Canada’s criminal code. We are also liaising with other civil and legal rights groups who are also following the BC government closely in this matter.

What are the steps in the process?

First, and as soon as possible, we need to identify potential intervenors and get their stories. When the government asks the court about the legality of this legislation, we want to be ready to finalize the sworn statements of intervenors and apply to the court within the 3 week period. If our application to the court is accepted, we will then prepare legal arguments in support of the above position, that it is not appropriate for a law which criminalizes loving, committed, consensual relationships to remain on the books. It is expected that this process will need to go very quickly.

Qualifications of an Intervenor

We are in immediate need of identifying as many potential intervenors as possible so that polyamory can be properly represented.

If you are a Canadian Resident:

1) currently living with multiple partners in a conjugal (marital or marital-like) relationships, or

2) have engaged in polyamorous relationships either in the past or currently AND have a desire to live with multiple partners in a conjugal (marital or marital-like) relationships in the future

then we ask you to email us.
While we are interested in hearing from ALL people who fit the above criteria, we are especially interested in having at least one female in a MFF (male-female- female) grouping.

What would it mean to be an intervenor?

1. You would need to give legal counsel some facts as to your polyamorous lifestyle which would be written up in a statement, which you will be asked to swear on oath is true. This statement would be filed in court. Your name and your address along with the statements in your affidavit would then be public. However, you would NOT need to name your partners.

2. You may find that your name and other information in your affidavit is in the news. You would NOT need to speak to media or answer their questions as you could refuse to respond to any media enquiries.

3. You would NOT need to incur court costs. You would need to pay for the affidavit to be sworn if you are in a city other than Vancouver. (If this is a concern, please advise and we will look for donations toward the cost.)

Who do I contact for more information or to offer to be an intervenor?

Please email Melly at ms.mellyn@gmail. com.

Thank you for your attention to this.

Monogamy vs. Polyamory Debated on CNN.com Live

2009-11-01T23:31:00.002-05:00

Within the last week CNN.com Live hosted an excellent debate on monogamy, polyamory, and human instinct. Representing the polyamorous viewpoint by telephone were Family web series creator Terisa Greenan and one of her partners, Scott Campbell. Terisa and Scott did an excellent job of answering questions and clearing up some common misconceptions about polyamory.

By the way, you can see the most excellent season finale of "Family" at the link I just provided complete with de rigueur cliffhanger ending. Fun seeing Chris Bingham of Bone Poets Orchestra and Gaia Consort before that, who with his partner in love and music, Sue Tinney, write and perform the fine Family soundtrack.

Back to the CNN piece. Also in the clip is Nisa Muhammad of the Wedded Bliss Foundation. I must say that though some of her statements are fairly accurate, much of it is, at least from my experience and personal perspective, total crap. But I admit that I'm biased. Still, she almost by rote makes all the BS claims put forth by the marriage movement, i.e, those determined to perpetuate the fairy tale that does so much damage by creating false expectations about marriage and monogamy, that is that traditional monogamous marriage, preferably between one man and one woman, is the only legitimate option, the only way to find sexual and emotional fulfillment in a relationship.

Also interviewed but sadly not included in this clip other than their images are Drs. David Barash and Judith Eve Lipton, a married couple, researchers and authors of books that include The Myth of Monogamy. What they had to say went a long way toward debunking the notion that monogamy is "natural." I appreciate their candidness and their willingness to take the risk of saying what is true but also controversial. I particularly appreciated their affirming that monogamy and polyamory are both choices, neither perfect but both legitimate.

According to Barash's Wikipedia page, he "has been named one of the country's '101 Most Dangerous Professors,' by right-wing writer David Horowitz." Sounds like my kind of guy.

Here's the clip CNN.com is making available - enjoy!

Polyamorous Personal Development Guru Steve Pavlina and Wife Separate

2009-10-29T14:12:00.001-04:00

After posting very candidly to their very popular personal development website early this year about their decision to open their marriage, I'm sorry to say that author and personal development guru Steve Pavlina and his wife, Erin, have decided to divorce. Steve cites polyamory as part of the reason in his recent blog post entitled Separation.

Steve says that the communication demands were too much for them to handle. Yes, there is a big investment of time and energy up front when a married couple transitions to an open marriage. I imagine both are very busy people from what I see of their work, and they are raising two young children, so maybe they underestimated how much time and emotional energy would be required to accomplish what they intended. It's easy to do.

But that's not all of it. Steve writes that the poly path and the emotional intimacy and self-examination required along the way revealed truths that pointed them toward separating as the best course. So it sounds like polyamory didn't kill the marriage, it just revealed flaws and truths that now point them in different directions.

This is one of those situations that makes a good example of why I say that polyamory isn't for sissies. Not that the Pavlinas are sissies, certainly not. I mean that it's not for the faint of heart because growth does indeed happen, and sometimes with it, change that is unpredictable. Still, theirs is a good example of how polyamory can serve to further us on our paths to living an authentic life, even when that involves the pain of ending relationships in order to establish new relationships more suitable to who we are.

In any case, I wish Steve and Erin well as they continue to pursue their own paths to fulfillment and happiness.

Army Disciminates Against Bereaved Poly Family, ACLU Saves the Day

2009-10-16T14:45:00.004-04:00

I was dismayed but not surprised to have learned just yesterday, via an alert subscriber to a poly email list focused on poly southerners, about the following story reported there. It well illustrates that Don't Ask Don't Tell is not the only discriminatory military law that needs to be put out of our misery.

Apparently a long-term M/F/M/F poly quad with several children was doing what I've believed for a long time could be an entirely sensible solution to the burden of extended isolation and loneliness partners of deployed servicemen and servicewomen regularly have to endure. Both men were in the Army stationed at Ft. Campbell, KY, which straddles the Tennessee/Kentucky state line.

Tragically, one of the men has been killed in combat. As if this grieving family hadn't already been through enough, in the process of assigning survivor benefits the Army learned about the quad arrangement, decided to deny benefits to the widow and insisted on paternity testing to find out which man fathered the children - AND, the surviving husband in the quad faced a dishonorable discharge and loss of his career.

In the civilian world, it is my understanding that legally the father of a child is whomever is legally married to the woman who gave birth to the child. Of course, the Army operates under a different code, specifically the Uniform Code of Military (In)Justice ("UCMJ"), and it was unwilling to pay benefits to a soldier's legal child if he was not the biological father of the child. It was reported that the widow admitted that the quad was never really sure which man is the biological father of which children because they never worried about such things.

It was also said that the Judge Advocate General office declined to get involved in defending this family. However, the good news is that the ACLU was very happy to step in and quite effectively resolved the problem, partly by threatening national media attention. Due to the ACLU's efforts the widow will get her full benefits as will all of the fallen soldier's children. Hooray! The status of the surviving husband's threatened discharge was not mentioned, but hopefully the ACLU was able to prevent that as well. .

Of course, this was a difficult story to keep quiet, and the remaining triad continues to experience various kinds of oppression from locals bigots so is planning to move out of the area.

I don't know whether the soldiers in question were enlisted or officers. It's long been my understanding that the UCMJ's morality laws against adultery were much more aggressively enforced as to the behavior of officers than they ever were as to that of enlisted soldiers. Someone I know who knows about such things told me within the last year that the Army is no longer prosecuting adultery, having higher priorities for which to use its resources, yet here this story is. It may be that once the family configuration was disclosed, the Army believed it was compelled to enforce it's laws.

As the practice of polyamory continues to gain popularity, more such situations may well arise. The ACLU has many more resources than does the polyamory community, so we can only hope that it will continue to step up and help out. As for the rest of we polyamorists, it would be a good idea to write the ACLU a check for as much as we can afford and make it clear the reason for the donation.

I'm sending them $100 right now. How about you?

Abstinence Only Sex Ed Funding Rears It's Irresponsible Head Again

2009-10-13T12:55:00.002-04:00

If you, as I, oppose taxpayer-funded abstinence-only sex education, you'll be disappointed to learn that on last Tuesday night, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) pushed through an amendment in the Senate Finance Committee authorizing $50 million in funding for abstinence-only programs as part of Health Care Reform - despite over 10 years of evidence that these programs do not work.

By a razor-thin vote of 12-11, the Senators on the Finance Committee gave conservative ideology a victory over science and common sense.

Please take a moment to tell your Senators it's time to stop these programs once and for all!

In fact, Advocates for Youth worked with coalition partners around the country, and October was launched as National Sex Ed Month of Action. Their hope was - and is - to build support in Congress for the REAL Act and comprehensive sex education.

It's been a 10-year fight to end funding for these harmful and ineffective programs. President Obama has called for their elimination. Democrats in the House and Senate have held firm through budget negotiations.

This fight has been long, but - with the end in sight - it is more important than ever that we all make our voices heard.

Ask your Senators to strip the Hatch Amendment from Health Care Reform. It's easy to do, just fill in your info and click send, the letter is already written for you. Don't let 12 Senators undermine sex education in the United States!

Practical Polyamory is one of The Daily Reviewer's Top 100 Sex Blogs

2009-09-29T13:43:00.003-04:00

Top sex Blogs

I am pleased today to learn that this blog has been recognized by The Daily Reviewer as one of it's Top 100 Sex Blogs based on reader votes. I don't consider this blog a sex blog, but it's certainly sex-positive, and I'm happy for the award regardless. I am also honored to be included in the fine company of Cunning Minx's Polyamory Weekly, Heather Corinna's Scarleteen (sex ed info for teens), Ask Dan and Jennifer, Susie Bright's Journal, and the Savage Love Podcast. (Click the award above to see all of the winners.) Interestingly, there only seem to be 40 blogs listed in this category - maybe they're still soliciting suggestions.

The Daily Reviewer reviews and rates blogs on a huge variety of subjects, not just sex, and since the award can only be had via reader votes, I'm now going to impersonate an American Idol contestant and thank all my fans for the honor of this award. (A trip or a cash prize some day maybe??? - Naah, forget it, such a suggestion might seem ungrateful...)

Joking aside, I really do appreciate the readers who went to the trouble of making the recommendation and pledge to continue to bring you the best social commentary and polyamory information available.

Primetime Polyamory on NBC's Parks and Recreation

2009-09-17T11:27:00.004-04:00

And so the mainstreaming of polyamory continues. According to a review in today's LA Times, last night's season premiere of Saturday Night Live alum Amy Poehler's NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation includes the revelation of a character in a poly family. The reviewer says:

Intern April (Aubrey Plaza) ... introduces Leslie (Amy Poehler) to her boyfriend, who also has a boyfriend, perhaps the first functioning polyamory on network prime time.

The only issue I have so far is that when April introduces Leslie to Derek and Ben and explains their relationship, Leslie says she hates Ben. It's probably the script writers' attempt to be funny but certainly no joke to those who know what works for poly relationships and what doesn't, and in this case the latter would be outright hatred for a partner's partner.

Here's the clip with the oh-so-fitting name "It's not that complicated!" Keep watching to see this threesome at the gay bar Bulge where they honor Poehler's character, Leslie, for something that's made her the gay community's reluctant hero.

So stay tuned, boys and girls! And the full episode will probably become available on the show's website at some point.

Woodhull Explains Position on Controversial Abercrombie T-shirts

2009-09-17T01:42:00.002-04:00

A few days ago I posted a blog entry about a "buycott" call from the Woodhull Freedom Foundation to buy a certain group of rather silly sex-focused Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirts, or at least let the company know it has the support of the sex-positive community, as a result of conservative/religious extremist attacks on the product. After doing so I received comments both here and on my facebook entry where the blog entry also appeared that expressed strong opinions that the shirts were tacky, sexist, and generally objectionable, this time from within the sex-positive community instead of religious conservatives.

Woodhull has posted an explanation on carnalnation.com, which says in part:

Like our past BuyCott efforts, our A&F BuyCott stirred a lot of emotion. Some of our constituents were quick to write (thank you!) and call to my attention the history of A&F, including successful lawsuits against them pressing charges of racism and sexism. This will remind me to keep a closer eye on A&F and other companies to detect such unacceptable behavior.

At the same time the issue on this occasion wasn’t the t-shirts or the retailer. The issue is that, popular or not, offensive or not, appropriate or not, the t-shirts are about sex and sexuality. Are they tasteless? Probably! Certainly a lot of people including many sexual freedom advocates think so. But does A&F have the right to market them? Woodhull says YES!

And that’s what the alert was about.

The attack on sex that fueled the assault on A&F was not stupid. It came from a well-oiled, well-researched, thoroughly entrenched message machine. It knew where to strike. It knew that there’s not much point in waving the hysteria flag around a shirt with pictures of flowers on it ...

You can read the entire commentary on carnalnation here.

MTV's True Life: I'm Polyamorous

2009-09-17T01:15:00.004-04:00

The poly world is all abuzz about the latest episode of MTV's True Life reality show, which features New York poly activist and attorney Diana Adams, her partners Ed and Kerry, and Jim, Chris and Thomas, a gay male triad living in Charlotte, NC. To hear from Diana about the experience of opening her love life to the world, see her recent blog entries.

MTV, as well as the polyamorists featured, has done a good job of representing not only what polyamory is, but also some of the common issues that arise and must be resolved, like jealousy, time management, fear of loss, untruthfulness, etc.

What makes this particular broadcast media event so special is it's reach - literally millions of young adults watch this series, with women age 18-25 being its primary audience.

As for Jim, Chris and Thomas, these guys live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a local news station did a feature on their poly relationship recently. And woo hoo! It even includes a reference to Loving More.

It's particularly noteworthy that instead of condemnation from local Christian conservatives, the condemnation they experience comes from the gay community itself for what apparently some see as a misrepresentation of gay relationships. More and more we are seeing media events that tell the stories of gay polyfolk, and I have to wonder just how much longer the same-sex marriage movement leaders will be able to get away with continually dismissing (and dissing) polyamory as irrelevant. Slippery slope or not, we are here, we are everywhere, (sound familiar?) and our numbers are increasing.

True Life - MTV Shows

For more commentary on this program, see Alan's indepth analysis on the Polyamory-in-the-News blog.

In Dallas? Support Jenny Block This Thursday in Nightline Face-Off!

2009-09-15T16:08:00.002-04:00

The following is a plea for support from author Jenny Block as she prepares for a live taping of a high profile debate with those who oppose polyamory and open marriages. Please pass it along to anyone you know who may be able to show up and cheer her on.

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Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I've been invited to participate in a debate about adultery and the Ten Commandments for an episode of Nightline, airing on September 24.

The best news is that you're invited to be a part of the studio audience.

The taping is being held this Thursday, September 17 at 6:30 p.m. at:

Fellowship Church
2450 N Highway 121
Grapevine, TX 76051-2002
(972) 471-5700

Also on the panel are Pastor Ed Young of Fellowship Church, Noel Biderman of ashleymadison.com, and Jonathan Daugherty of Be Broken Ministries.

I sure would love to have your support and to see your smiling faces in the audience. Plus, you can ask questions and appear on the show too!

Looking forward to seeing you there!

All the best,

Jenny

Love and Light at Loving More Annual Retreat

2009-09-15T15:42:00.006-04:00

Once again we had a delightful weekend celebrating and learning and loving at the Loving More National Conference Retreat at Easton Mountain Resort in Greenwich, NY. It was wonderful to spend time with old friends and meet many new ones, including many people from countries outside the US. This was our fourth year at this beautiful location, and it now feels like a home away from home. As always, the food was healthy and delicious and the freshest of fresh, since much of the produce is grown in the garden out back.

I especially enjoyed meeting the beautiful Leonie Linssen, a poly educator and community organizer from Holland, who attended her first polyamory conference there. It is delightful to know that interest in polyamory isn't only growing in the US but also in many countries around the world. Leonie and I have much in common, and I look forward to continuing the friendship we established at the conference.

The programming was terrific and covered many common subjects important to happy and healthy polyamorous relationships. I had the pleasure of presenting a program called Polyamory in Media's Spotlight with Alan M of the Polyamory-in-the-News blog. Alan backed me up with additional commentary and many live displays of internet pages featuring articles and videos under discussion.

As always, Robyn Trask and Jesus Garcia, along with the excellent assistance of Robyn's sister, Ginni Trask, and Robyn's son, David, did a fabulous job. It was a well-run event. These folks put their hearts and souls into their conferences, and the participants are the lucky beneficiaries of the professionalism that keeps Loving More conferences running smoothly. If you'd like to see Robyn's own comments as well as a picture of some of the attendees, check out her latest Loving More blog entry. (That's me in the picture wearing a black t-shirt and a big smile just a bit right of center.)

The next Loving More polyamory conference is Poly Living February 19-21, 2010 in Philadelphia. Plan now to join us and help me celebrate my birthday. It's rumoured there may be chances to administer a good birthday spanking in exchange for a modest donation to Loving More. Wow, is there anything I won't do for my cause!?!?

WilmerHale Earns HRC Foundation Corporate Equality Index Perfect Score

2009-09-14T13:03:00.003-04:00

Many of my friends have heard me rave about WilmerHale, the law firm where I am employed. In addition to it's preeminent pro bono program, one of the reasons I love it is it's commitment to workplace equality. It also manages to combine both those focuses by devoting the time and energy of some of the best legal talent in the country to helping advance marriage equality and repeal the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy that discriminates against LGBTs who are serving our country in the military.

Today it was announced that for the second year in a row the firm has received a perfect score of 100 in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's annual Corporate Equality Index (CEI) survey for 2010 and labeled it amongst it's "Best Places to work." "Legal work in this country is deeply rooted in our nation's core values of equality and justice for all, and law firms continue to set the gold standard for treating their LGBT employees fairly" said HRC Foundation President Joe Solmonese in a recent press release.

It seems that law firms in general are strong leaders in creating environments that are welcoming to LGBT employees. As an out bisexual woman, in the ten years I've been employed at WilmerHale I have never had the slightest concern about my job security due to my sexual orientation. I'm also out at work as polyamorous, and likewise, I've come under no pressure or scrutiny for being so.

So if you're LGBT and seeking work in a law firm where you'll feel welcome, check us out, and if you apply, please let them know that I proudly referred you. For even a lifelong employer you can't go wrong. Openly gay WilmerHale paralegal Brian Boyer, who passed away a week ago from cancer, worked for the firm for 36 years.

Abercrombie & Fitch Pitches New Silly T-Shirts To America's Youth Angering Religious Right

2009-09-10T15:43:00.001-04:00

UPDATE: After a variety of comments on this post both here and over on my facebook profile where it was cross-posted, I'm now convinced that this is a far from ideal set of circumstances to choose for a buycott on behalf of sex positivity. Many thanks to all those who have offered sound and important observations.

Woodhull's work is generally very good and worth supporting. On rare occasions we activists can and do miss the mark, usually, or at least in my own case, due to haste to get a story out and move on to other pressing matters. - Anita

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Thanks to the Woodhull Freedom Foundation for the heads-up on this one.

Join the BuyCott! Call Abercrombie & Fitch at 614-283-6500 (press "0" for a live person) and let them know you support their right to sell and their customers' right to buy their "sex can be fun" tee shirts.

Abercrombie & Fitch is being attacked by the religious right for selling these three tee shirts as part of its "New College" line of T-shirts.

Abercrombie & Fitch does not merely sell a popular line of clothing - they sell a lifestyle. And because A&F clothing is popular among teens and college kids, the influence of their sex-as-recreation lifestyle is widespread. If you feel like encouraging this lighter side of sex and showing the religious right that this is a free country help the BuyCott--buy one or more of these shirts.

FACTS!

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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention reports that Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) remain a major public health challenge in the United States. CDC estimates that approximately 19 million new infections occur each year- almost half of them among young people 15 to 24 years of age.

In the past decade more than one billion dollars in federal funding has been doled out for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. In contrast, there has been no federal funding at all for comprehensive sex education. Thus the raging STDs?

Whether you buy a tee shirt or not drop a note to your local school board, state legislators, and your Congress member and Senators, encourage them to fund comprehensive sex education!