Polyamory Leadership Network

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.   

Poly Living Seattle Full Program Schedule - What a Lineup!

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

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From Theoretical Ideas to Practical Living:

Poly Living and Relationship Choice in the 21st Century

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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

REGISTER HERE

For more information, see the Poly Living Website or call

970-667-5683.

Love's New Frontier

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. 

Join Me for Reid's Day of Jealousy Teleclasses

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Amazon's "Cataloging Error" of Polyamory, LGBTs, Other Books

UPDATE: Amazon has restored the books I reference below to their normal searchable ranking status. We're still learning how the LGBTQ books have fared. It seems that others are still in limbo, with the authors still pleading with Amazon to do the right thing. An example is Mark Michaels and Patricia Johnson's tantra books in hardback and paperback - somehow the "glitch" never excluded books available on Kindle, Amazon's electronic reader.

Here's what the New York Times says Amazon has reported. Apparently whatever happened, it was genuinely inadvertent, an admittedly "embarrassing and ham-fishted cataloging error."
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In a highly disturbing attempt to make their searches more "family friendly" (not to mine, certainly) Amazon implemented over the weekend a new policy that uses its ranking system to derank and exclude from searches on the topics "polyamory" and "open relationship" just about every contemporary book on those subjects. In particular this includes the just released new edition of the Ethical Slut, Tristan Taormino's Opening Up, Jenny Block's Open, and Pete Benson's Polyamory Handbook, all published within the last year. Also affected are, of course, books with erotica, on sacred sexuality and tantra. And then there are all the LGBTQ books also affected. I am very concerned about this appallingly ham-handed attempt at being family friendly that is in effect censorship, especially considering that Amazon is the largest book vendor anywhere.

I have so many author friends who are seriously adversely effected by this, including but not by any means limited to those listed above. It is frightening to think that this can happen so easily, thus resulting in polyamorists being unable to find the most basic texts on polyamory on Amazon without knowing the name of the book they need. Ironically, apparently if you already have the URL for what you want to buy, it can be found and purchased that way. So Amazon will still gladly take our money. If Amazon were a realtime store, this is analogous to their selling our books from a back room only to customers who come in and ask for it by name.

As many people know, I frequently give workshops on various aspects of conducting polyamorous relationships, and Amazon has just deranked what amount to MY TEXTBOOKS. This is very serious, especially if it becomes a trend with other book vendors, both for our valued authors and for our community.

As of Sunday night Amazon's customer service people have been telling concerned authors who call them that there was a glitch they are going to fix in the next 48 hours. No public statement has been made as of yet, and it's looking less and less like a glitch is really responsible. See here for more on that, and also search for the hashtag #glitchmyass on Twitter.

In the meantime, there are no such issues at Barnes and Noble and Borders, who at least as of now are surely glad to take our money. Plus, you can usually order these texts directly from the authors on their websites or from other sources, as the links above demonstrate. If you do a Google search for these books by name and/or author, the Amazon links come up and you CAN still go there and buy the books, but I urge you not to and instead too patronize less abhorent vendors.

This event quickly went viral over the weekend. Social networking site Twitter saw the search term #amazonfail quickly rise to the number one topic of Easter Sunday tweets, even more than "Easter" and "Masters". The hashtag #amazonfail is being used as a form of protest. Twitterers who have an opinion or more at stake include #amazonfail in their tweets so a thread is created. Just put #amazonfail in the Twitter search field to find those tweets.

Excellent explanations and analyses of all this can be found here and here.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITIONS at Change.org here and on The Petition Site.

Let's hope that Amazon can be persuaded to come to its senses. No doubt LGBT activists are already making Amazon's management's life miserable. Especially if you ahve an Amazon account, please do all we can to help by, as I have, writing to Amazon expressing the unacceptable nature of their decision, the value of the materials being deranked, how long you've been a customer, how much you have spent with them (a guess is fine for these purposes) and how it is that you will be cancelling our account very soon if this problem is not solved to our satisfaction.

The Ethical Slut Redux

Great news! When I saw therapist and author Dossie Easton last year at an event, she announced that she and Janet Hardy (who previously wrote as Catherine Liszt) were in the process of writing a second edition of The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities. The original was published in 1997, and a lot has changed culturally since then.

I had a chance to talk with Dossie at Dark Odyssey this past weekend, and she told me that The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures will be out on March 3. Amazon is offering it for pre-order for $11.53. Mine is now on order.

Slut (as Dossie refers to it) was the best available handbook on polyamory for a very long time, and I have no doubt that with this update it will continue to be a valuable and trusted resource for everyone who wants to know more about options for responsible and ethical alternative non-monogamous relationships. No polyamory library will be complete without it.