Name: The Ethical Slut
ISBN: 9780399579660

Janet W. Hardy

Dossie Easton

The classic guide to love, sex, and intimacy beyond the limits of conventional monogamy has been fully updated to reflect today's modern attitudes and the latest information on nontraditional relationships. For 20 years The Ethical Slut has dispelled myths and showed curious readers how to maintain a successful polyamorous lifestyle through open communication, emotional honesty, and safer sex practices. The third edition of this timeless guide to communication and sex has been revised to include interviews with poly millennials (young people who have grown up without the prejudices their elders encountered regarding gender, orientation, sexuality, and relationships), tributes to poly pioneers, and new sidebars on topics such as asexuality, sex workers, and ways polys can connect and thrive. The authors also include new content addressing nontraditional relationships beyond the polyamorous paradigm of "more than two": couples who don't live together, couples who don't have sex with each other, nonparallel arrangements, couples with widely divergent sex styles, power disparities, and cross-orientation relationships, while utilizing nonbinary gender language and new terms that have come into common usage since the last edition.

A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love

The Ethical Slut

Catherine A. Liszt

A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities,Beyond the often unrealistic ideal of lifetime,monogamy lies an uncharted jungle of delightful,options - everything from committed multi-partner,relationships to friendly sex, casual sex, group,sex, and more. In this groundbreaking volume,""Bottoming Book"" and ""Topping Book"" authors,provide a road map fro exploring this sometimes,difficult, often rewarding territory. Warm,informative detials about how to get your needs,met, manage your jealousy, make agreements that...

A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities

Timeo Williams

The content ended up being quite repetitive, but the overall message was a challenge to the reader to relook at the definitions and judgements within our heads towards others and a challenge to look above that.

Kendall McClain

This took me forever to finish because polygamy is not something I personally could handle and therefore was not too interesting in learning about! I really only got this book because Phoebe Bridgers recommended it and yes it is informative and fun but not for me

Megan Cooper

A book that was lent to me and I breezed through it relatively quickly. Reading it was interesting, but I'm not sure what I learned from it. Poli - by definition - covers alot of territory and there are types of variations and permutations. This book offers a high level view without really getting into deep into details. It really seems to focus more on the authors's version of poli and, while reading, I kept getting the underlying impression that monogamy was prudish and just not fun. The constant use of sluts didn't really desensitive me to the word (empowering me to redefine it as a less than perjorative word), it just kept reinforcing that they were focusing more on their brand of poli that seems to focus more on sex than relationships. 

Some of the elements were interesting - ideas behind jealousy, agreements, communication that really apply to all relationships - monogomous or polyamorous and gave me some food for thought. I suspect that alot of those concepts are found in other books dealing with relationships or personal growth - so I'm not sure how much new ground is actually covered (I'm not one for self help type books).

Sophie Shrimpton

A lot of this was common sense, but in a society where the norm is to ignore your common sense and follow externally mandated expectations, it is a refreshing read. 

Though they explicitly state they have nothing against monogamy for those who choose it, they also advocate a philosophy that makes it near impossible to be a monogamist while holding their views. I imagine it as sexual libertarianism - every person is free to contract with (make "agreements" with) anyone they please, and set their individual boundaries. No institutionalised structures to dictate norms - simply living within yourself, as yourself, with minimal external impositions. You are free to associate with whoever you want to associate, in whatever way you want to associate, in the most radical meaning of the word "associate". You are an individual part of complex networks of other individuals - not an individual isolated by institutions. And in this world monogamy is weird - one person probably can not completely satisfy all of your sexual, romantic or emotional desires. 

I'm not sure how I feel about this argument. Being monogamous does not preclude you from having other fulfilling emotional relationships with friends and whānau. I guess it comes down to how hard it is to find someone who is sexually and logistically entirely compatible with you, and meets some of your emotional needs (the rest can be covered by others). But this line of argument is just buying into status quo monogamist norms without questioning that original assumption, and it's not interrogating why the argument isn't beginning from scratch (from some form of state of nature?)

I'm definitely interested in polyamory. I'm just not sure whether I'm ready and willing to bear the burden of challenging a norm to pursue it.

"A practical guide to practicing polyamory and open relationships in ways that are ethically and emotionally sustainable"--Provided by publisher.

The Ethical Slut A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love