FetFest Poly Village

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

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

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.