The Ethical Slut 2nd Edition (Pt 9): An Interview with Dossie Easton
Part 9 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!
Reid: Other questions? Yes.
Audience 5: So, I’m going to a biggest community and you talked about consent and we have the safe, sane and consensual and to me that safe, sane and consensual is anything that is done two, on four or around you. So, you have to take your environment so you can’t spanking on the street. People casually see it have to be consenting to what you’re doing.
So, for myself, I need a very, very kind of public sexual life. I document my sex and sexuality online pretty thoroughly. One of the things that I’ve found in dealing with the consent part is that in relationships, as you know it’s hard enough not to find somebody that you love and you want to be with. But then, when you feel like you need to narrow your community, to around the people you assume would have consents towards what you do then it becomes increasingly more difficult. You find yourself isolating within your community as supposed to going to the bars, meeting people, free willing kind of thing.
So, I found myself not dating outside of my community- I live in DC- with outside of my BDSM community. At what point do you have to get consent from someone you just met randomly? Like by the way, you know, if you twitter my name or Google my name and there’s 10 thousand photos…
Reid: So, the question is, when is it ethically responsible to be transparent with the people you’re meeting?
Audience 5: Specific to the [inaudible 00:02:03] associations especially I live in DC and people have jobs like somewhat, you know, they really can’t be associated with me if ever I was ever be out of my job.
Reid: Do you get…
Dossie: Yeah, I don’t have trouble with this. I supervise interns and my legal name is actually Dorothy and so, they can actually use a name that’s… there are a lot of Dorothy Eastons, you have to dig in a few pages before you find Dossie. You’ll find me but it takes a little bit. But I’ve been called by interns who evidently have not heard about my books, who haven’t heard of what I did and I just said, “Google me.” I may be on the phone right now if I forgot your advices but your computer all the time now. I don’t know. He did, “Oh, you have your own Wiki, look at that.” And it was like ‘bam’ he turned out he was one of the producers courting me.
But, you know, if somebody shows up in my life I think he’s not going to understand, I’d do the same thing you would do. I’d say, “Google me, you’ll find me out there.” With children, it’s somewhat difficult because if you don’t [inaudible 00:03:21] school were they… my daughter spent a month every summer with her grandmother and I like that part because I go to vacation and partly because my mother was just great and partly because she had experience in middle class mainstream living that she could… because I was living in such a queer household that I was concerned that she had no way to survive in mainstream filter. She needed those skills to come from somewhere. I, too, live very much within my community and I have her many, many years, decades, decades. And, it is partly because what we do is very powerful and many people who might like us and think it’s real nifty to get knocked over by the power of it and that’s a little scary. I do play with much Tantra people outside in BDSM community but on the other hand, Tantra people are used to play with powerful energies too so that works just fine. I don’t maintain a lot of friendships outside of the extremely queer communities. Even though people may want to be friendly and open minded but I don’t feel comfortable talking about my life.
Audience 5: Can I ask to follow on that then?
Dossie: Yeah, sure.
Audience 5: Having been in the community for so long in your age, do you have a regret about that like somebody that you may haven’t met or that you somehow limited your life through being involve with your community but not really opening yourself up to everybody?
Reid: Through the specialization of her in a way?
Audience 5: Yeah.
Dossie: I actually not terrifically interested in conventional people. I have met some people where I have some regrets. I have certainly met individuals where I felt distract connection and where I was sitting there saying, “Oh, this person likes me she can have my lifestyle. Okay, I need to let that go.” But most of the time, I tell you the truth, people that I really like are the people who are living very explored lifestyles, where the scriptures are being written and living a very edgy lifestyles and growing and changing a lot. I don’t find that outside of our communities very much. So, I’m really happy to be here where everybody is edgy and excited and fascinating in doing wonderful stuff.
Reid: We’ll do one more question because we are almost out of time.
Audience 5: Hi! Hi Dossie.
Dossie: Hi!
Audience 5: A conversation has been coming up a lot in my life as the connection between sex and social change and I’m curious in your observations over the last couple of decades that as people become more transparent in their sexuality and they’re wired to sit with the cold emotions like jealousy if that, have you seen any kind of intersection between that and social change on other issues and other kind of social [inaudible 00:06:35] that we want to have more desirable results in?
Reid: Co-relations between exploratory or edgy sex and social change.
Dossie: Wilhelm Reich, the grandfather of bodywork, speaking to the young communist in Berlin in 1936 during the rise of the Third Reich in people who refugee in Germany said that, “Without the suppression of sexuality in particularly in conspiracy of silence to prevent children from learning about sexuality, you could not have an authoritarian or totalitarian state.” Because he claimed that the authoritarian state was based on everybody feeling guilty about something and so if you tell them that masturbation is bad for them then you don’t have anybody left who doesn’t feel guilty, right? There you are, there’s something wrong with all of you…