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.

Polyamory Research and CARAS

I recently agreed to serve as a member of an Institutional Review Board ("IRB") at CARAS - the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities. The polyamory IRB's role will be to review and approve research proposals applying NIH standards for researchers using human subjects. In doing so we can better assure that members of the polyamory community who are asked to participate in studies and provide research data can do so with confidence.

More specifically the polyamory IRB will be responsible for certifying that the proposed study will be conducted so as not to do any harm to the study participants. CARAS's goal is to be the important link between researchers and study groups made up of community volunteers so researchers can find the study participants they need and participants can be assured that there are adequate controls in place so they will be comfortable with what they are getting into.

I'm very excited about this. There is a lot of interest in this realm of research these days, and it's about time - we need to know a lot more about how our polyamorous relationships work and how they don't when they don't and why. We especially need more scientific evidence about how children do in poly families, since family courts tend to decide against poly parents absent concrete scientific evidence that children are not being put at risk.

CARAS has been working on putting the right people in place to launch itself into this vital work, and its directors are just about there. Approvals from NIH must be granted, i.e. proof that the various review boards for BDSM, swinging and polyamory are all suitably trained and qualified, and then we'll be up and running.

It is extremely gratifying to see that what was no more than a fond wish five years ago is coming to fruition, that there are both qualified researchers interested in studying our alternative sexuality communities, and that there are professionals out there who are putting together the approval apparatus to facilitate making it happen. In addition to CARAS and its work, as well as informal groups of researchers interested in studying swinging and BDSM, for at least a couple of years now there has been a very active yahoogroup focused on polyamory research where many academic researchers, student researchers, polyamory advocates and other interested persons continue to gather, network and share papers that they post to the files section of that group. You can find out about the poly researchers group here.

Poly Jealousy Survey Participants Needed

Rachel Clark is a final year Applied Psychology student at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and is conducting research concerning jealousy in polyamorous relationships. Her survey is limited to questions for people who use the primary/secondary relationship structure, I imagine for good reason, since polyamorous relationships take so many forms that the data would be difficult to quantify without such specifics.

If you are in a poly relationship and use the primary/secondary model, please take a few minutes and complete the survey - it's vitally important to learn more about jealousy in poly relationships, since this is understandably the highest hurdle to cross in making polyamory work for the average poly person. You can find the survey here.

This research is especially important to me as a poly educator who regularly presents programs on resolving jealousy in polyamorous relationships and who is making plans to write a book on the subject in 2008. If this subject interests you, feel free to download my handout and bibliography on it here.

Poly-Related "Giving Back" Activity: Volunteering for CARAS

I volunteer for and support several organizations whose mission involves serving the polyamory community. Thank you for considering the following about one of them, an exciting organization doing work essential to the wellbeing of the polyamory community, amongst others - the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities (CARAS). Note at the end there is a ringing endorsement from a local poly community organizer, Marly Davidson.

Thanks also for permitting me to post it here. I promise not to be a nuisance and appreciate everyone's patience.

This from CARAS board chair Jonathan Krall:

The Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities (CARAS) is dedicated to the support and promotion of excellence in the study of alternative sexualities, and the dissemination of research results to the alternative sexuality communities, the public, and the research community.

We hold monthly staff meetings in the Washington DC metro area and are in need of volunteers. This is an opportunity to work with a team of bright and dedicated volunteers who are helping to bring a community voice to research and to assist researchers with work that is important to the BDSM, swinger, and polyamory communities.

*** Media Expert ***

Work with staff to produce one news release each quarter and no more than one per month. Send out by fax, hardcopy, or e-mail as needed to major news outlets in North America.

*** Development Program Director ***

Keep track of volunteers, action items and produce reports for the ED (informal, monthly) and for the board approx quarterly). Attend monthly meetings in DC. Keep up with e-mail (average 1 messages per day).

*** Webmaster ***

Get our web page on track within the Expression Engine content managment system, set up paypal (or similar) for subscriptions and donations, and deal with SQL database info to securely handle donor and subscriber info.

*** Community Outreach ***

CARAS serves the swing, polyamory and BDSM communities, as well as subcultures, such as related queer or sexworker communities. We could use volunteers from all of these communities to come to our meetings, learn about CARAS, and spread the word about what we are doing.

Other volunteer opportunities are available in the DC area, especially for people with computer skills. If you can attend a monthly staff meeting, please come out and find out more about us.

Also: CARAS has its corporate headquarters in the San Francisco Bay area--volunteer opportunities are available there as well (Contact: richard.sprott@caras.ws)

Thanks kindly for your attention. :)

Yours,
Jonathan

---------

Jonathan Krall
Board Chair
Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities
jonathan.krall@caras.ws


Recommendation of CARAS volunteer Marly Davidson:

Good Poly People,

I recommend to you the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities (CARAS). I am on the east coast staff (it's national) and attend monthly meetings in the DC area, volunteering alongside academics and community leaders from the various alternative sexuality communities (BDSM, poly, and swing, and related subcultures). Jonathan Krall, PhD, a member of our DC-area poly organization, the Chesapeake Polyamory Network, is the board chairman.

You can read about CARAS, join, sign up for the listserv, participate on the forums, and volunteer as staff and/or as research subjects. There are several positions open for volunteers, especially if you have computer skills. I helped staff their booth at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in NYC a couple weeks ago and enjoyed hanging out with them and talking with graduate students and academics who are doing research on these communities.

The staff meetings are a blast, and since it's designed to support researchers of BDSM, poly, and swing communities and put them in touch with these communities, the subject matter is always interesting. CARAS is committed to involving community members so the research protocols ask the right questions. If you want more information, contact me at marlycharley@yahoo.com. Thanks for your interest!

Marly Davidson
Emeritus Board Member
Chesapeake Polyamory Network
www.chespoly.org
Washington DC metropolitan area