The Ethical Slut 2nd Edition (Pt 5): An Interview with Dossie Easton
Part 5 in this 90-minute interview with the legendary Dossie Easton, therapist and co-author of the book The Ethical Slut, now in it’s 2nd Edition! Full interview with audience Q&A available @ www.ReidAboutSex.com as well!
Dossie: My earliest slut practices were in, Betty Dodson used to have a commune here in San Francisco up on Caster 19 Street and that was the first place I went to informed play parties. They had taken out all the walls and the doors and had no large pieces of furniture so obviously there’s no privacy I probably couldn’t tolerate living in it. But I actually got partner, somebody who is living in that commune at the time and it was just gorgeous they had a deck when at Sundays and nude and nobody were closing the house and you walk in and there’s this huge loft and somebody would be juicing over here and some people would be sunbathing there, then 2 people would be playing chess over here and 2 people would be fucking over there and somebody else would be buzzing out with the vibrator because Benny’s always on the vibrators and it was just imbedding with this sketching somebody’s cunt. It was an amazing space to be in and a wonderful learning experience for me. Benny and another woman, Maggie Rubenstein, who was one of the founders of San Francisco Sex Information remind older women. They are both about 14 years old older than me so in their late 70’s pushing 80 at this point and fabulous, fabulous sluts, both of them.
Reid: So, Betty wrote a book called Sex for One and they’re writing a 2nd book with the male partner I think it’s called Sex for Two, something like that. I’m feeling horrible but I can’t remember the title of the book but Sex for One is all about female masturbation and Betty’s very much credited as a pioneer in getting women to use vibrators and talking about masturbation back when feminism was about taking the man down rather than pleasure. Betty and small [inaudible 00:02:11] of you started sweeping through the movement. The reason I bring up Betty is, when I go to New York, I get to hang out with Betty as much as I can and Betty is one of these women who, you have to pry the vibrator from your cold dead hand and I remember hanging out with her after she had hip surgery and she would just cast up a storm talking about how this was slowing her down and that she was not okay with this and being a slut. So, one of the questions I would like to ask you is any advice for the older sluts or the sluts that are going to be coming up through the ranks on how to be a fabulous open sexual being as they start to mature.
Dossie: Actually, all they have to do is to be fabulous open sexual being. I am astounded, I mean I had no face lifts obviously, I don’t, you know, I frankly look my age, I don’t pretend that some way I could put on make up to look like I’m 20 or 30 or 40 anymore and yet I find astounding things. I don’t expect it because I live within my community and I expected that if I just play with somebody in my community, no one’s going to ridicule me if I indicate my interest or something because these people who all know me and know who I am. But sometimes, outside, I can’t believe it. I have a friend who is a musician that I go to hear play like clubs in north beach and I’m sitting there and sitting by the bar and you know, happy because [inaudible 00:003:46] making wonderful music, people asked me to dance. I can’t believe it. I’m like, “What am I doing?” I’m completely [inaudible 3:56] because I have, for many years, dance is mostly a private priced words where it’s okay to be just sexy as you want to be and I’m like, now, what am I supposed to do? Okay, let me have a sexy music and dance the way I dance. I have found myself even amongst startling these great groups welcome completely both myself and my sexuality and among people who don’t know that I wrote these books. I am amazed.
See, you stay alive, you keep doing it. It doesn’t matter if you can’t get that extra 25 pounds off. It doesn’t matter if you can’t afford the facelift. That’s not the point. The point is that if your spirit is alive, people will see you and they will welcome you.
Reid: Any advice for the younger audience, for the people that are watching us in the internet and going, “Oh my gosh, there’s a book?”
Dossie: There’s a lot of people who believe that the reason we are monogamous is that jealousy is such a deeply imbedded, not cultural tradition, but instinct perhaps or emotion that it is inevitable and intolerable and impossible to work with. That’s what we are taught over and over again. It used to believe that it was a crime of passion you could get, use it as a defense if you killed someone for having sex you didn’t think they should have or with someone besides you or something like that. People thought this was so uncontrollable that you are supposed to do if your partner had sex with someone else. What you are supposed to is go holistic, right? I mean, that’s crazy, that is so crazy.
What I would say to young people is if you think you can’t do it, if you think you would be too jealous or too scared or feel too inferior, feel too bad about yourself or too insecure or not enough self-worth or any offense you think, please read the book because you can do it. You can deal with any of those issues and decide that you want to free yourself from jealousy or bad image or bad self-worth or whatever. Live the kind of expensive lifestyle that whatever you’re doing is, you could have it, really. That’s what I hope the book gives people is some avenues to learn to deal with any obstacles that get in the way and be who they want to be.
Reid: Because the sex education that I do and I have the privilege of being in the media a lot, talking to a lot of different groups and the approach that I take around relationship coaching with folks is all about trying to find your own self-expression. So, for me, I’m non-monogamous, I happen to be a slut, which to me the definition basically is that I like and prefer getting to know somebody for the first time through sensuality. That’s how it occurs to me. My friends were like ‘Oh, my gosh. I just met this person and we talked for an hour about politics and philosophy and spirituality. It was a deep meaningful conversation, it was awesome!” And they get all excited. I get the same way when I get to meet somebody who’s open with sensuality and we get to go deep in that.
But not everybody’s like that and I’ve met people whose self-expression in relationship is monogamy. That may appear conservative. With people who are monogamous and know they are, what advice or what do you think that they can get from the book that they can apply in their monogamy.
Dossie: First of all, I don’t think that people who are monogamous are necessarily more conservative. Watch out for those rankings and hierarchies, right? Monogamy is a perfectly valid choice and wonderful way to live. The problem is when no other choices are permitted. There is absolutely nothing wrong with monogamy and if that’s what you want to do, I say go do it. One of the things that is definitively true about people…