Polyamory is Better Than Monogamy (if you’re into that sort of thing)

Editorial Note: This post was written by Wes Fenza, long before the falling out of our previous quint household and the subsequent illumination of his abusive behavior, sexual assault of several women, and removal from the Polyamory Leadership Network and banning from at least one conference. I have left Wes’ posts here because I don’t believe it’s meaningful to simply remove them. You cannot remove the truth by hiding it; Wes and I used to collaborate, and his thoughts will remain here, with this notice attached.

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I think that polyamory is better than monogamy.* This assertion is qualified only by the fact that by “better” I mean “more closely aligned with my value system.” However, I don’t think my value system, when it comes to relationships, is all that different from the norm. My line of thinking can be summed up in a syllogism:

Premise #1: All other things being equal, the greater the mutual love in a relationship, the better the relationship;
Premise #2: Polyamory is inherently more compatible with mutual love than monogamy
Conclusion: Polyamory is better than monogamy.

Premise #1 is relatively uncontroversial, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it, except to say that if you disagree, polyamory is probably not for you. I don’t intend this as a moral judgment. I think that transactional relationships can be very happy and fulfilling for some people. They are just not what I prefer.

Likewise, it seems clear to me that the conclusion necessarily follows from the two premises. This leads me to believe that most popular disagreement is with Premise #2.

Polyamory is Inherently More Loving than Monogamy

Like any good lawyer, I’ll start by defining my terms:

Polyamory: a style of relationship involving two or more people which has no rule or agreement (implicit or explicit) against pursuing other loving and/or sexual relationships.

Monogamy: a style of relationship involving only two people which has a rule or agreement against outside sexual and/or romantic relationships.*

Love: a very strong concern for another conscious creature’s well-being such that one’s own well-being is dependent upon the well-being of the other.

Respect: an attitude of deference, admiration, or esteem.

Polyamory, as defined above, is more compatible with love and respect for one’s partner than monogamy. To say it another way, the relationship that is maximally loving and respectful will necessarily be polyamorous.

I’ve dealt with this before somewhat. The only point of a rule or agreement against outside sexual relationships (i.e. a monogamous relationship) is that you anticipate having outside sexual interests. It’s a contingency plan. The only time such an agreement would have any effect whatsoever is a situation in which one or both parties has the opportunity and desire to pursue an outside sexual relationship. Therefore, when crafting such an agreement, both parties consider this at least likely enough to necessitate an agreement.

The effect of the monogamy agreement is to put the brakes on such a thing. It’s saying “if I want to fuck someone else, I won’t.” Making that sort of sacrifice for a partner (assuming that’s what your partner wants) is definitely consistent with loving and respecting your partner. The disrespect comes in the next step: saying “in return, if you want to fuck someone else, please don’t.”

Imagine saying that about any other topic. “Honey, let’s agree that even though both of us really like cheddar cheese, neither of us will eat it ever again.” “Honey, in the event you’d ever like to go snorkeling, please don’t.” Etc. It sounds ridiculous, because it is.

This is not to say that monogamy serves no purpose. Firstly, monogamy is the best way to ensure sexual safety and lack of unwanted pregnancy. However, monogamy done for that reason would still allow a lot of safe sexual play, so couples that have rules against all sexual contact (i.e. the majority of monogamous couples) can’t be doing it for this reason.

Other justifications are emotional. Monogamy arguably** enhances the stability of relationships by preventing parties from exploring other options. However, demanding monogamy from you partner for this reason is basically saying “if you meet someone who makes you happier than me, stay with me anyway.” It’s a selfish justification, and in opposition to love and respect as defined above.

Another popular justification for monogamy is jealousy.*** One party feels that if hir partner hooked up outside of the relationship, it would be upsetting. But that begs the question: why would it be upsetting? Sex is fun! A loving partner should be happy that hir partner is having fun. Instead, jealousy encourages a person to feel bad when good things happen to other people. To be jealous of someone is to wish ill fortune on that person. Jealousy is, in effect, the opposite of love. If love is a symbiotic relationship, where one party’s happiness creates happiness for everyone, jealousy is a parasitic relationship, where one party’s happiness drains happiness from all other parties. In that sense, the more love in a relationship, the less jealousy. Therefore, if you buy into Premise #1 above, the less jealousy in a relationship, the better the relationship.

This is not to say that polyamorous people are any less jealous, more loving, or otherwise better than monogamous people. As in any group, there is great diversity within the polyamorous community, and not all people becomes polyamorous because they love their partners. Many people become polyamorous for reasons just as selfish (or more selfish) as the reasons that people choose monogamy. Many polyamorous relationships are unmitigated disasters.

However, the most loving and least jealous (i.e. “best”) relationships will necessarily be polyamorous. Loving partners want each other to have the things that make the other happy. A loving partner will encourage hir partner to pursue a relationship if ze wants one. People who love one another want each other to have the things that they want.

What do you think? Agree/disagree? Let’s hear it in the comments!

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*yes, I know that technically, “monogamy” refers to marriage. I’m using it in the way that most people do.

** this is not necessarily true. Nonmonogamy may do more to enhance stability by allowing parties more freedom within the relationship, and taking away a main reason for leaving a relationship.

*** the discussion of jealousy applies equally to possessiveness. Wanting to own a person is incompatible with loving and respecting that person.

The Transactional Model of Relationships

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Polyamorous people tend to think about relationships a lot. I’m no exception. What I want to talk about today is the transactional model of relationships.

A transactional relationship is a relationship where both (or all) parties are in it for themselves, and where partners do things for each other with the expectation of reciprocation. Almost all relationships start here. People tend to date a person because of what they get out of it. Doing otherwise would actually be kind of weird. Genuine concern for a partner’s well-being (some might call it “love”) is something that generally grows as the relationship progresses. But some relationships never get past the transactional stage. I suspect that many, if not the majority, of relationships never do. I’ve fallen victim to this myself. There are times when I’ve bought something for Gina, or done the dishes, or done her some other sort of favor, and expected something in return. But there’s a deeper foundation that some relationships reach, where people do things for each other just to make the other person happy for altruistic* reasons. I truly believe that some relationships transcend selfishness, and reach a place where both partners are happy in large part because the other partner is happy.

Some poly relationships work on the transactional model. You see this is relationships which involve a lot of rules (or ridiculous relationship agreements). The idea is that “I let my partner see other people, and in return, I’m allowed to see other people as well.” Side note: this is why I dislike the term “negotiation” in a relationship context. It’s adopting the language of business transactions.

This doesn’t work with the kind of polyamory I practice. As I’ve said before, polyamory isn’t all about you. My preferred style of polyamory is something people do for their partners, not for themselves. It’s based on a mutual desire not to deny each other the things that we each want. The transactional model doesn’t work there. If you try to do poly for yourself, you start worrying about things like who has more partners, counting date nights, money spent on partners, and keeping a running tally of who is benefiting more from the arrangement. You start worrying if things are “fair.” You start getting resentful if you feel like your partner is getting more goodies than you.

Granted, it’s a spectrum, and not a binary. Some relationships are entirely transactional, and some are entirely altruistic, but most fall somewhere in between. I think that the best relationships, or at least the ones that appeal to me, are much closer to the altruistic side of the spectrum than the transactional one.

What do you think? Can a transactional relationship be fulfilling? Are all relationships really transactional, and we just fool ourselves into thinking otherwise? Discuss in the comments.
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* I don’t actually believe in pure altruism, but that’s a discussion for another time. What I’m talking about if functional altruism

The Religious are All Psychotic (in a bad way)

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Last month, Jules Evans of Wired Magazine posted an article entitled The religious are all psychotic (in a good way) which argued that:

A new paper by Heriot-Maitland, Knight and Peters in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology (BJCP) estimates that 10-15 percent of the population encounter ‘out-of-the-ordinary experiences’ (OOEs) such as hearing voices. By automatically pathologising and hospitalising such people, we are sacrificing them to our own secular belief system, not unlike the Church burning witches.

First off, equating the diagnosis and treatment of people with mental illnesses to burning witches is just stupid. I’m not going to bother pointing out why.

Second, this is just the latest example of someone slapping the label “religion” onto something to legitimize it. As Evans himself says:

A western psychiatrist would nod and tick off the classic symptoms of psychosis: hearing voices, feeling guided by spirits, feeling singled out by the universe, believing you have magical abilities to save the world. Our psychiatric wards are full of people locked up for expressing such beliefs.

Those are the classic symptoms of psychosis for a reason! The reason is that they are evidence of psychosis! Evans goes on to argue that:

Perhaps we need to find a more pragmatic attitude to revelatory experiences, an attitude closer to that of William James, the pioneering American psychologist and pragmatic philosopher. James studied many different religious experiences, asking not “Are they true?” but rather “What do they lead to? Do they help you or cause you distress? Do they inspire you to valuable work or make you curl up into a ball?”

Really? We need to take an experience that, in any other context, is clearly a delusion and shows a dangerous disconnect from reality, and (because it’s “religious”) we need to evaluate them individually on a pragmatic level? I’m all for caution before locking people up, but it’s important to recognize such experiences for what they are: delusions.

Really, this is the same tired old “religion can be a force for good” argument. Of course it can! The problem is that it can also be a force for evil, and there is no way of knowing ahead of time which it will be. The same voice that tells you to donate to charity today could tell you to murder your children tomorrow. If we take a pragmatic approach to such things, as Evans urges, we will end up encouraging people (at least, the people whose visions we deem acceptable) to place greater and greater faith into their own delusions, with wildly unpredictable consequences. Instead of helping these people understand their mental illness and find treatment, we encourage them to adopt an arational worldview and entrench themselves into a belief in things that aren’t real.

Come to think of it, it’s unsurprising that such things are called “religious.”

Don’t be a Dick Stump!

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Yesterday, my friend Angie Tupelo posted a link that caused me to revisit a term that my partner Jessie and I came up with some time ago.

Dick Stump: verb. The act or behavior of responding to sexual rejection with aggression or hostility, especially by a man directed at a woman.

It can also be used as a noun (see title). The idea is that a woman has metaphorically castrated a man via sexual rejection, and the man responds by attempting to piss on her with the stump. I like the term because it (a) rightly makes the man in the circumstance an object of ridicule, (b) sort of sympathizes with him, in that it acknowledges that a bad rejection can feel like castration, but (c) illustrates how stupid and counterproductive the reaction is. It also brings up the image of pee getting shot everywhere in an uncontrolled splatter, hitting everyone in a 10ft radius, which is often how those sorts of reactions can be.

It looks an awful lot like this:

To all the women of the world,

If you’ve rejected me, I hate you. If we’re just friends, our friendship is over. If we don’t know each other, I will never offer you mere friendship. The friendship I’ve offered to your sex has been abused too much and for too long. I now spit at the concept. So I offer you two options and two options only: take this dick, or fuck off and die. Spread your legs, or go fall on a knife. Wet my prick, or eat a fucking bullet. In other words, if you don’t want to fuck me, then stay out of my life forever. If you don’t want to fuck me, I honestly couldn’t care less if you died. Those are the only options you get. Those are the only options you deserve.

Guys, don’t do that. Dick stumping is the main reason why honesty is hard for women in potentially sexual interactions. For every clear rejection a woman gives, she risks provoking a round of dick stumping, which is at best unpleasant, and at worst dangerous. I encourage everyone subject to a clear sexual rejection to take a deep breath and say “thank you for being honest.”

And remember: friends don’t let friends dick stump. Make it know that dick stumping will not be tolerated in your social circle, and things will get better for everyone.

Reasons and Excuses

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Wes here.

I don’t believe in either contra-causal free will or objective morality. I don’t know many skeptics who believe in either of those, but I do run into a lot of skeptics who seem to feel that bad behavior can be excused by explaining that the behavior was the result of forces outside of the control of the actor, such as mental illness or a history of oppression. I find these things to be in conflict.

First, without objective morality, calling an act or a person “better” or “worse” than a different act or person becomes merely a subjective judgment, based on the speaker’s preference. When I say, for instance, that being honest with your friends is better than lying to your friends, what I really mean is that I prefer to live in a world where people are honest with their friends, not that there is anything objectively superior about such behavior. When I say that “Sam is a better person than Pat,” what I mean is that Sam helps move the state of the world and/or my subjective experience of the world toward my preferred ideal more or better than Pat does.

Second, without contra-causal free will, all actions are caused by external forces, and nobody is truly responsible for hir own actions. The main implication of this view is that all evaluations* of someone’s behavior must be forward-looking. Traditionally, the morality of an action is judged in a backward-looking way. An act’s morality, and its associated blame or praise, has traditionally been based on an evaluation of what exactly the actor did what what hir motivation was at the time of the behavior. The focus is on the past. When you take contra-causal free will out of the equation, this approach makes no sense. Because all actions are caused by external factors, the only relevant inquiry into the myriad causes of a person’s behavior is the extent to which an understanding of such causes allows one to predict and/or influence that person’s future behavior.

Consider two parents who beats their children. Alex was abused as a child, and beat hir children because that is hir only understanding of the parent-child relationship.** Assuming that the statistic that 70% of abused children turn into abusive adults is true. Terry has lived a life of luxury and privilege, and beats hir children because ze has anger management issues. Which one is morally worse?

The intuitive answer is that Terry is worse, because Alex is a victim of circumstance, and Terry seems more in control of hir own behavior. However, without a belief in contra-causal free will, one must view everyone as a victim of circumstance. Terry has no more meaningful “choice” in hir behavior than Alex does.

The reasonable inquiry in such a circumstance is: what is each person likely to do in the future? How will each respond to efforts at rehabilitation? What sort of conditioning*** must each be given in order to prevent future instances of child abuse? It may very well turn out to be the case that Alex’s behavior is more ingrained, and thus Alex must be subject to stronger conditioning & stricter monitoring in order to prevent future abuse. While this is intuitively unjust, it is the only rational conclusion.

This is not entirely counter-intuitive. One of the reason that crimes of passion are punished less than crimes involving forethought is that crimes of passion are less likely to be repeated. It is also the reason that repeat offenders are punished more harshly than one-time offenders.

The idea that all evaluations of a person’s behavior must be forward-looking is equally applicable to all acts and personality traits. This comes into conflict with our natural sympathy for the oppressed. Skeptical communities tend to be liberal communities, which are sensitive to things like oppression, privilege, poverty, society’s influence, brain chemistry, and similar concepts. This is generally a strength of the community. Often, however, some members of the community (and a number of people that I know personally) make use of such concepts in order to excuse bad behavior.

Consider mental illness. Many people have diagnosed mental illnesses that cause them to behave in ways that I (and many others) see as unacceptable from healthy people. I do not think this is a controversial statement. Often, the behavior caused by such illness is exactly why it is classified as an illness in the first place. Mental illnesses can cause people to be excessively prone to anger and violence, to have poor social skills, to behave irrationally, to suffer delusions, and many other behaviors that I consider “bad.” This is not a moral judgment, as I do not believe in morality. I have tremendous sympathy for those who suffer from such things, often because they recognize the illness in themselves, and they find it much more objectionable than I do.

The same goes for victims of oppression. Oppression (especially of women and minority groups) is rampant in our society, and oppression can make it completely understandable why someone would be more suspicious, hostile, or quick to anger than someone more privileged. An understanding of oppression and privilege is critical for anyone who actually cares about other people and/or society. The skeptical community’s awareness of such is growing, and the community is much better for it.

However, mental illness and oppression are not excuses for bad behavior. They are merely reasons. The fact that such are out of the actor’s control does not differentiate them from any other explanation for a bad act. The biggest jerk in the world is a jerk for reasons outside of hir control. Any evaluation of the person’s behavior, to be at all useful, must be forward-looking. Some mental illnesses make a person completely intolerable, and I don’t think there’s any shame in saying so. Sometimes a person’s history of oppression can give hir a giant chip on hir shoulder such that ze is unpleasant to be around. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be sympathetic, but neither does it mean that we should view such behavior as any more (or less) forgivable or tolerable than someone who does the same thing for a different reason.

This is not to say that reasons for bad behavior are irrelevant. On the contrary, understanding of a person’s reasons for their behavior is critical to an understanding of how likely ze is to repeat such behavior. Often, a diagnosed mental illness is much easier to deal with than a standard personality flaw, because treatment is available. An understand of an oppressed person’s history makes it easier to predict what will trigger the objectionable behavior. These are all very relevant lines of reasoning.

However, understanding a person’s reasons for behaving the way that they do is only part of the inquiry. I think that the relevant inquiry when evaluating someone’s actions is an inquiry into that person’s future behavior. This is the inquiry which allows me to decide if I consider that person a force for good or bad (in the subjective sense, as I’ve defined them above).

Everyone has reasons for their behavior which are outside of hir control. A reason is not an excuse, and we shouldn’t treat it as such.

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Side note – this post has concentrated on explaining away a person’s bad behavior for what I consider bad reasons. I see these concepts as equally applicable to the excessive glorifying of a person’s good behavior. Just as all bad acts are the result of forces outside of a person’s control, so are all good acts.

* When I talk about evaluations of a person’s behavior, I mean the process by which we, as individuals, decide things like what role we want a person to have in or lives, how close we can/should be to someone, how often we want such person around, how attracted we are, how dangerous someone is to us, etc. Such decisions are reliant upon the ability to make accurate predictions of a person’s future behavior, which is why that’s where my focus is. Society also makes collective evaluations, through the legal system, to which I think these principles are equally valid. However, for purposes of this discussion, I’m concentrating on individual evaluations.

** Disclaimer: I know nothing about the psychology of child abuse. This may be a completely unrealistic hypothetical. Please consider it only for purposes of the point being illustrated.

*** I use “conditioning” in place of “punishment,” because I don’t think punishment is very effective at rehabiliting antisocial inclinations, notwithstanding that it is the only system that our society uses.
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Polyamory is Not a Sexual Orientation

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**WARNING! DISCUSSION OF SEMANTICS AHEAD!**

Yesterday, in response to my challenge, Alex wrote a post about polyamory and orientation. Shaun followed up with his own post. I disagree with both of them, as they both make use of the term “orientation” to describe polyamory.

What is Polyamory?

First, what is this polyamory thing? Polyamory is notoriously difficult to define:

Webster’s Dictionary defines polyamory as “the state or practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time.”

Wikapedia defines polyamory as “the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.”

The Loving More Nonprofit website, defines polyamory as “romantic love with more than one person, honestly, ethically, and with the full knowledge and consent of all concerned.”

However, there is some agreement in the community about what polyamory is, and what polyamory isn’t. The spectrum looks something like this:

1. A couple (or more) who each engage in multiple loving relationships with the knowledge and consent of all involved
2. A couple who are each open and looking for multiple loving relationship (with knowledge & consent of both), but are currently only seeing each other
3. A couple who are each open to multiple loving relationships, but are not actively looking
4. A single person who intends to have only polyamorous relationships in the future
5. A couple who have no rule against multiple loving relationships, but only desire each other.
6. A couple who have sexual relationships with others, but not emotional relationships (i.e. swingers)
7. A couple, one or both of which are cheating
8. A couple who agree to be monogamous, although one or both have sexual desires outside of the relationship.

Obviously, there are a lot more types of relationships that may or may not fit into the poly framework. I’m just using these for illustrative purposes. The community mostly agrees that #1 and #2 are polyamorous, and #6, #7, and #8 are not. 3-5 are a gray area, although I favor an understanding of the term which encompasses at least #3 and #4. However, I (and the vast majority of the poly community) disfavor any definition that includes #7 or #8.

Is Polyamory a Sexual Orientation?

The term sexual orientation, on the other hand, until recently was used almost exclusively to mean the sex and/or gender to whom a person is attracted. It occasionally gets used to describe a person’s kinks or some other aspect of their sexuality, but by and large it’s used to describe the direction (i.e. orientation) of a person’s sexual desire.

There are a few problems with describing polyamory as a sexual orientation. The first of which is that polyamory is not sexual. Polyamory is about relationships, honesty, and intimacy. Look back at the definitions given by Loving More. Not a single one mentions sex. Calling polyamory a sexual orientation is a joke.

Secondly, polyamory is not an orientation. Polyamory is not a physical desire or a feeling. While there is not complete agreement on what polyamory is, there is clear agreement about it isn’t. And it isn’t just an attraction to multiple people. As Shaun pointed out, if you define polyamory as a feeling or an inclination, then half of the country is polyamorous, which is an absurd result. Almost everyone feels attraction for multiple people at the same time. This does not make them polyamorous.

A third problem with describing poly as a sexual orientation is that being poly is nothing like being GLB. Being GLB is about the type of person to whom you are sexually attracted. Being polyamorous is about the amount of people you love. Describing polyamory as a sexual orientation suggests a false equivalence between the groups, and seems like an attempt to coopt the sympathy that the GLBT community has built up.

Why Does it Matter?

In short, because words matter. The term “polyamory” is important. It’s the only word we have to identify ourselves. Despite it’s less than clear definition, people generally know what I mean when I say it, in a way that they wouldn’t if I described myself as “nonmonogamous” or “open.” Polyamory is the best word we have to describe our “lovestyle,” as Alex put it. If we allow it to mean something else, we risk losing one of our best rhetorical tools, and making it even more difficult to explain to people what this whole thing is all about.

What do you think? Is polyamory a sexual orientation? Does it matter?

Religious Conversions Happen for Social Reasons

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Some of you may have heard of Lea Libresco’s recent conversion to Catholicism. A lot of people have been posting about it, but Chris Hallquist has the best take I’ve seen on the topic:

I was briefly puzzled when I heard about atheist blogger Leah Libresco’s conversion to Catholicism. But I was immediately un-puzzled when I read Dan Fincke’s post on it, which reminded me that “the very premise of Libresco’s blog was that she was romantically involved with a Catholic.” Oh yeah. Duh.

Honesty is Hard; Rudeness is Easy

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Wes here.

On Sunday, I wrote about how honesty is hard in a sexual/dating context. My previous post was an attempt to address what I see as a problem, where people hide their true intent in social interactions due to politeness, social expectation, fear of punishment, or maliciousness. Today, I’d like to highlight one of the misconceptions of that post, namely, that I advocate cold-propositioning in inappropriate situations. The previous post was meant to address what happens in social interactions, which is why the focus was on dishonest behavior.

A few people have suggested to me that the arguments that I make could be used to justify things like catcalling, interrupting, and other rude/unacceptable behaviors, all in the name of “I’m just honestly communicating.” I do not feel that I made any arguments advocating in favor of such things, but if anyone disagrees, I invite reasonable, calm discussion on the topic.

The difference between what I’m advocating and something like catcalling is that catcalling is rude for reasons other than the sexual content. Yelling “nice tits” at a woman on the street is rude because (a) it interrupts whatever she is doing, and she’s given no indication that she is interested in socializing, or that she is interested in your opinion; (b) it’s not designed to start a conversation; (c) it’s clearly meant to intimidate, not actually to compliment.* This behavior is rude because it involved showing nudity to a non-consenting person, and because it violated the conference’s policy on propositioning (but not for any of the other reasons set forth in the post).

Propositioning someone for sex is rude in any case where propositioning someone for any other activity is rude. If it’s rude to ask someone if ze’d like to go ice-skating, it’s rude to ask for sex. Conversely, if it is NOT rude to ask someone to go ice-skating, then I don’t believe it’s rude to ask hir to have sex (unless of course, that person has made clear that ze wishes not to be propositioned in that manner).

What is also rude is saying “wow, that’s really interesting” when you mean “you’re really hot.” It’s rude to say “I would love to, but I have plans” when you mean “I don’t want to.” It’s rude to pretend to care about someone’s problems when you really just want to get in hir pants. In short, it’s rude to communicate things that you don’t mean and/or take active steps to hide the way you really feel/think. They key, of course, is ACTIVE steps. There’s nothing rude about seeing an attractive person and NOT telling hir that you think ze’s hot (and, depending on context, it can be very rude to just go up to someone and announce that). It’s only rude if you’re actively concealing that fact.

When a woman says things like “I would love to, but I have a conflict” or “I wish I could,” (especially to a sexual invitation) these are generally understood by all parties as clear refusals. Some people have taken this to mean that there is no miscommunication involved in such a refusal. But the fact that it’s a refusal is as far as the clarity goes. All refusals are not created equal. Saying “no, I’m not attracted to you” sends a much clearer message than “I would, but I’m very tired.” The former sends the message that sex is not an option for the foreseeable future, the latter send the message the woman in question would like to have sex under other circumstances. Both are refusals, but both contain different information in addition to the refusal.

Couching a refusal in terms of being unable to do something as opposed to being unwilling is generally seen as polite. I do not see it this way. I see it as a lie, and a very unfriendly thing to do to someone. As I said in my last post, hurting someone’s feelings by telling them the truth is a brave and awesome thing to do.

There is, of course, a grey area in between catcalling on the street and admitting your intentions once conversation has been started. It’s hard to say exactly when it’s ok to approach a person, and when reasonable boundaries are being crossed. What I propose is that sexual desires are given the same treatment as any other desire to participate in an activity with someone. I’m serious about the ice skating thing. Interrupting someone reading a book to ask if ze’d like to go rock-climbing (or bike riding, or going for a walk in the park, or playing video games, etc.) with you is rude; just as doing the same thing with an invitation to sexual activity is rude. Asking someone you just met to go rock-climbing is not rude if you’re already engaged in mutual socializing. However, asking someone if ze’d like to have sex in such a situation is often considered rude, which I don’t agree with. It’s also considered rude to see a person as merely a means to partnered rock-climbing, and not as a human with independent desires of hir own, just as the same thing is rude with sex.

I’m not advocating unbridled communication of sexual desires. I’m just saying that if you’re going to communicate, communicate honestly and bluntly. If someone is going to be creeped out by your desire, hiding your desire is not the answer. Ze should be creeped out by your desire if you have creepy desires. Masking them in subtlety and politeness might make you appear less creepy, but really you’re just hiding them.

In conclusion, I’d like to highlight this comment from Ginny:

part of approaching people respectfully is making yourself the vulnerable one. I highly advocate beginning a sexual advance with, “I’m very attracted to you,” rather than putting the other person on the spot by asking if they’re interested. Stating your own attraction puts yourself in the vulnerable position, and doesn’t instantly demand something of the other person.

Good advice! I heartily agree.

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*this is a non-exhaustive list. There are probably a lot more reasons why such behavior is rude and/or unacceptable.

Poly Porch Swing!

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I made this porch swing a couple weeks ago, and Gina painted/stained it today! Someone insert a “swinger” joke…

Honesty is Hard

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For the past month or so, the skeptic blogosphere has been talk a lot about harassment at skeptic events. Throughout these conversations, I’ve made a few disturbing observations:

People (mostly women) are getting harassed at skeptic events. This doesn’t seem to be occuring at higher rates than at other events, but any harrassment is too much, and we can do better than that;
Many people (mostly men) in the skeptic community are not taking this problem seriously. This is also fucked up, and I’m glad it’s getting some attention.

These issues have been extensively documented by Stephanie Zvan at Almost Diamonds. Everything that I could say on the topic (and how disturbing it is) has been said much more eloquently elsewhere, and I have nothing new to add. Suffice it to say that yes, this is happening, and I hope atheist/skeptic conferences all adopt strong harassment policies, with an emphasis on enforcement.

What I’d like to discuss is a secondary issue (which is not nearly as important as the two identified above, but I think is worth discussing): the issue of harassment has led to a number of discussions about exactly where the line is between consensual flirting and harassment. These are important discussions to have, I think, but I’m bothered by two (somewhat related) themes I keep seeing crop up in these discussions:

1) It’s wrong to want sex from people without being interested in getting to know them

This is generally couched in reasonable-sounding language like this from PZ Myers:

I have a simple suggestion. Think of sex as something two or more friends do; but also keep in mind that most friends don’t have sex together. When you’re at a meeting, plan to make friends promiscuously, but remember: the purpose first and foremost is friendship, not sex partners.

At first glance, this seems like a reasonable suggestion. Most people prefer to get to know people before having sex with them, and most people would rather have sex with someone they like for nonsexual reasons also. But some people just want sex, and there is nothing wrong with that. It’s not up to us to tell people what their goals should be in a social interaction. Denigrating anonymous men for wanting to “bag a young hottie” (which is Jen McCreight’s paraphrase, not an actual quote from anyone) at each speaking gig sends the sexnegative message that desiring sex with a person you find attractive (which is how I would have phrased it) is WRONG and CREEPY. In addition, speaking about it as something that only men do contributes to the myth of men not being hot. McCreight puts desiring sex with attractive women in the same category as talking only to a woman’s chest, nonconsensual groping, and following a woman to her hotel room. I think that’s terribly unfair. There is nothing wrong with sexuality. There is nothing wrong with desiring sex for purely physical reasons. Resorting to slut shaming is not necessary to discuss harassment. It’s bullshit, and it should stop.

2) Dishonesty is expected, and even encouraged, where sexuality may be involved

This is related to Point 1 by virtue of the fact that if wanting sex is wrong, then people who want sex are going to be encouraged to hide that fact until the socially appropriate time. People who just come out and say they want sex (even in the least coercive and lowest pressure way I can think of) are disrespectful, objectifying, and should be ashamed of themselves. Fuck that. Asking for sex is not seeing a person “as your plaything.” It’s just asking for sex. Objecification only happens if you see the other person’s desires as irrelevant. As long as you are genuinely seeking enthusiastic consent, if you want sex, you ought to ask for it! Hiding your intentions is just being dishonest, not respectful. As one commenter on this blog put it:

I too find smart, interesting people who think about things quite sexy, yet am generally skittish of strangers. I’m also alternately oblivious to and skeeved out by the way flirting (in most mainstream venues) happens most times. Still, I’d far prefer for someone to tell me they think I have great boobs and would like to make out with me than to just hint at it, assuming they are respectful of my possible “no thank you.” I like transparent, respectful asks, and people who ask for consent frequently and sincerely.

In addition to those desiring of sex being encouraged to remain silent, women who are objects of such desire are also encouraged to be dishonest about their refusals. The (true) observation that rapists ignore refusals is used to suggest that women shouldn’t be encouraged to clearly communicate their own desires. The (also true) observation that women are socialized not to clearly communicate a refusal is used to suggest that we should not be encouraging women to break free of that socialization and be more honest about what they want. This is confusing the “is” and the “ought.” The undeniable state of mainstream heterosexual flirting is that men are expected to be the aggressors, that clearly communicating a desire to have sex is disfavored, and that a clear refusal is often met with hostility. None of this is an argument that the status quo is the way things ought to be. We should all be encouraged to be more open and honest about what we want from a social interaction, even if the we may be subject to negative social consequences.

The exception, of course, is when physical safety is in question. If anyone is in doubt about his/her physical safety in an interaction, all of these rules go out the window, and people should do whatever they need to in order to get to safety. That cannot be stressed enough, and it should never be forgotten.

Of course, the flipside of this is that we should stop punishing women for being blunt. A woman who clearly communicates a “no” is not being harsh, she’s being honest. A woman who says she’s not interested in someone (even if s/he hasn’t made any advances) is just being communicative. Hurting someone’s feelings through deception is a dick move. Hurting someone’s feelings by telling them the truth is a brave and awesome thing to do, and we should encourage people to do it.

However, the danger of social disapproval is not a good reason to be dishonest. If your friends will think of you as a bitch for giving a clear refusal, get some new friends. If the object of your affection will see you as creepy for being clear about your sexual interest, that’s not a reason to hide your interest. Honesty often has negative social consequences. It does not follow that dishonesty is justified. If flirting should be about creating intimacy, then it relies on both parties behaving in a trustworthy way (i.e. not lying to each other).
Jadehawk disagrees:

You can’t remove the social context because the social context is what determines how women will respond. they’re not flirting with you in a social vaccum, and pretending otherwise is just fucking stupid. We have to fix the social context first (i.e. not punish women for being above-average-assertive, and instead shut down those why try to punish women for blatantly and “rudely” setting boundaries and even taking initiative themselves), before you can seriously expect women to consistently “help” socially inept guys at flirting by being blunt with them.

I agree that it’s unrealistic to expect anyone to completely go against their socialization, but that doesn’t mean that we should not ask them to do so, or, when we’re discussing behavioral standards, to hold up an against-the-mainstream behavior as ideal. Society socializes us to do many things that we reject. Dishonesty could be one of them. Jadehawk’s view is that women are just brainless products of society’s conditioning, and have no choice in how to act. I think we all have a choice, regardless of what we’re told, or how we’re taught. I don’t think “the social context is what determines how women will respond.” I think women will respond based on their own individual choices, in light of the social context.

To be clear, I don’t think people are always (or even usually) obligated to express their sexual interest or lack thereof. It’s all about your intentions. If you intend to send the message for someone to back off, do it clearly. Don’t use subtle social cues that are open to interpretation. If you want to get to know someone, do that. If you intend to communicate sexual interest, do it clearly. Don’t do it by pretending you want to get to know someone. And don’t pretend you’re interested in sex if you’re only interested in getting to know someone. If you want to get to know someone, and also have sexual interest, then feel free to communicate either or both. My only problem here is dishonesty about one’s intentions.

This also shouldn’t be taken to mean that I think people always have clear intentions. It’s perfectly reasonable to be hours, days, weeks, or years into a social interaction, and still not really be sure what you want out of the interaction. That is actually, I would argue, the mainstream expectation. The problem occurs when people know what they want, and pretend that they don’t.

Flirting is not easy. But if we try, we could make it a little easier.