Dossie Easton on polyamory community, getting *The Ethical Slut* published, and more

Wag's Revue

Dossie Easton is 70 this year. She's a psychotherapist, co-author of The Ethical Slut and a variety of kink handbooks, and a delightful speaker at poly and other sex-positive gatherings. She just had a 13-page interview published in the quarterly online literary magazine Wag's Revue:

Dossie Easton, born in 1944 and a slut since 1969, is dedicated to exploring new paradigms of gender, sexuality, and relationships.... [She] chatted with contributor Abby Koski on the phone about how the Internet has shaped polyamory, modern marriages, radical publishing, the craft of co-authorship, and erotic art.

Easton: I learned to use the word “slut” in an approving manner when I was living with gay men for fifteen years, and you know, the baths were a big deal during that wonderful time in the 70s, and it’s still continuing now, but the opening of sexuality was just gorgeous, it was just amazing, and so we did a lot of reclaiming of language.

...Are there any big differences, or similarities, that you notice when you compare the open community today versus the open community when you became involved in it?

Oh, I laugh. Back in 1971, my daughter was two years old, and I had been non-monogamous since 1969. It was a decision I made three months after my daughter was born, and I found myself a single mother due to circumstances I had not planned, and it was the communal era, there was a lot of living communally and raising children communally. The biggest extended family I joined was in the Bay Area here, and it was a house in The Society for Creative Anachronism. I mean, this is one particular group of people who have established themselves as poly a long time ago, and their institutions continue to be very polyamorous, so it’s one place people can go and find peers who are interested in doing this stuff.

...There’s an enormous amount of prejudice when people open their relationships, still. And so if people don’t have some sort of community, it’s going to be really isolating, and they’ll have no one to talk to when things get difficult. And paying someone like me is only part of the solution.

Right, it’s a community learning process. It’s not about just one couple, or one person, figuring it all out.

Yeah! ...If a couple opens their relationship, is there someone else out there who is experienced and has knowledge about common problems one may run across? You can’t get it all from books!...

Here's page 1 of the interview; click the right arrow to flip the pages. (Spring 2014 issue).

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In other book news, Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert's More Than Two: A practical guide to ethical polyamory is all done but the publishing! Which will happen with fanfare on May 30th. I like the cover they chose, but I like the content even more — and not just because I edited it. All 480 pages of it, as the finished book will be.

Despite its size, and despite the fact that it's self-published (under their new Thorntree Press imprint), they managed to bring it in at an Amazon price of $17.75. You can pre-order here at that price.

Here's a Chapter 1 excerpt and the table of contents.

As I say on the back cover, this book is going to be an Event. As interest in ethical multi-relationships enters mainstream culture, the book sets a new standard for realistic, down-to-earth guidance on how to make them work.

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