Will you play detective with me? There’s a 20-year-old mystery that needs solving…
The Mysterious Disappearance of
Rule #7:
NO DRY HUMPING!
Waaaaay back in 2004, the phrase, “Rule #7: NO DRY HUMPING!” was on the lips and tongues of thousands of morning radio DJs and news anchors across the world.
Why? Because a workshop called Cuddle Party became an international news story that thousands of media outlets wanted to cover.
Happy 20th Anniversary, Cuddle Party!
Cuddle Party turns 20 years old today… But the original Cuddle Party Rule #7 —NO DRY HUMPING!— hasn’t been seen in over 15 years!
Where did Rule #7 come from? Who killed it? Where did Rule #7 get buried? And why?
Let’s begin with the facts…
How Cuddle Party Began and the Origins of Rule #7…
I hosted the first Cuddle Party on February 29th, 2004, in my tiny, 250-square-foot, five-floor walk-up apartment on New York City’s Upper East Side (2nd Ave and East 70th to be exact).
The idea for this workshop came to me in a conversation a month earlier I was having with regulars of mine at MercBar where I was the fill-in bartender. And that night after work, sitting at the bar, I sat and wrote down the entire format, design, and rules for Cuddle Party in less than 45 minutes. The finished idea scared me so much it would take me a month to gather up enough courage to set a date and email my friends to come test out my new workshop idea.
On the fateful day, nervous and worried that no one would show up… Eleven of my friends and a few friends of theirs said yes to my wacky email invite, climbed the five flights of stairs to my apartment, changed into their pajamas and sweatpants, and sat down for the first-ever Cuddle Party Welcome Circle.
The Welcome Circle is the workshop part of the event where attendees are led through ice-breaking exercises, a conversation about consent, and we go over the Rules of Cuddling.
The Welcome Circle gives everyone time to relax, meet one another, start to feel safe, and get on the same page about the Cuddle Party Rules and why practicing consent and exploring the platonic touch and affection you want (even with strangers) can be such a nourishing, life-changing thing.
The Original Rules of Cuddle Party from 2004
- Pajamas stay on the whole time.
- No SEX. (Yep, you read that right.)
- Ask for permission to kiss or nuzzle anyone. Make sure you can handle getting a no before you invite or request anyone to cuddle or kiss.
- If you’re a yes, say yes. If you’re a no, say no.
- If you’re a maybe, say NO.
- You are encouraged to change your mind from a yes to a no, no to a yes anytime you want.
- NO DRY HUMPING!
- Communicate, communicate, communicate.
- If you’re in a relationship, communicate and set your boundaries and agreements BEFORE you go to the Cuddle Party. Don’t re-negotiate those agreements/boundaries during the Cuddle Party. (Trust us on this one.)
- Get your Cuddle Life Guard On Duty or Cuddle Caddy if there’s a concern, problem, or question or should you feel unsafe or need assistance with anything during the Cuddle Party.
- Crying and giggling are both welcomed and encouraged.
- Outside of your personal relationships, it’s nobody’s business who you cuddle, so please be respectful of other people’s privacy when sharing with the outside world about Cuddle Parties.
- Arrive on time.
- Be hygienically savvy.
- Clean up after yourself.
- Always say thank you and practice good Cuddle Manners.
[Today’s official Cuddle Party website lists 11 Rules —
and NO DRY HUMPING is nowhere to be found!]
The event was a HUGE success with folks asking me when the next one would be so they could tell their friends. I recall one attendee grabbing me by the shoulders before he left, saying, “You need to partner with someone to help you ASAP… You have no idea what you’ve just created, Reid!”
Cuddle Party Goes Viral
I hosted the 2nd Cuddle Party two weeks later and true to their word, friends told friends. If, all these years later, my recollection is correct, we had 16 or 20 people at the 2nd event. My friends Marcia Baczynski and Caryn Solly were in attendance. What I didn’t know was how much of a big deal that 2nd Cuddle Party and Marcia and Caryn were about to become to the trajectory of my life…
Marcia was so inspired by the Cuddle Party that, the next day, she came down to MercBar where I was working, and offered to partner with me to co-run all future Cuddle Parties. Truth be told, I thought that was a pretty bold ask, but Marcia had a card up her sleeve that I wouldn’t be able to resist… Marcia offered to build Cuddle Party its very own website!
[click HERE to see Website.Archive.Org’s captured version of
the first Cuddle Party website]
And just so you don’t think Marcia was only worth her weight in HTML, besides helping me schelp hundreds of pounds of blankets and pillows to future Cuddle Parties up and down the East Coast and appearing on a Tyra Banks episode that sadly never aired, Marcia was responsible for coming up with the idea that she and I needed to design a Cuddle Party Facilitators Certification Program and train people so Cuddle Parties could spread across the world. (Thank you for being the best and most cuddliest co-founder ever, Marcia! FYI, follow Marcia HERE and HERE.)
Meanwhile, my other friend, Caryn (an early adopter of blogging back in those days) blogged about kissing a cute guy at that 2nd Cuddle Party. And guess what? Her blog caught the attention of and got put on the home page of the hugely popular, media gossip website, GAWKER. All the other media outlets were watching GAWKER like a hawk to get a jump on what was “hot” and breaking news. Cuddle Party showing up on their homepage made it the quirky, viral, #1 “feel good” story everyone wanted to cover. Why? Because New Yorkers are paying money to cuddle strangers… And, wait! What?! There’s a No Dry Humping Rule!
Thank goodness, Marcia had coded us a kick-ass, professional-looking website to convince the media we weren’t a hoax (and Marcia made sure to make our contact info easy to find!)… The media inquiries started pouring in and kept on coming for years.
The press attention was A LOT, but luckily, Marcia had studied journalism & media in college and I had done spokesperson work and film production as an actor in New York. We quickly figured out we could funnel most of the press attention into Cuddle Party press events where attendees knew ahead of time there would be cameras and journalists present and wanted to be there — Informed consent for the win-win!
SO MANY thanks and such deep, deep gratitude to all our friends and the avid “Cuddle Monsters” who were more than happy to show up and snuggle for the cameras! Truly, I can’t thank those folks enough for their generosity over these last 20 years! THEY —maybe it was you, too?— became the true faces, entwined legs & hugging arms of the Cuddle Party movement!
From The Washington Post to the Montel Williams Show to People Magazine the flannel gospel spread… Cuddle Party even got a mention on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update and was written into a storyline on CSI: New York.
Who Murdered Rule #7?
As Cuddle Party grew in popularity, Marcia and I juggled running hundreds of Cuddle Parties while also training and certifying the dozens of amazing humans who felt called to wave the flannel flag and promote healthy, non-sexual touch in their home towns and countries. As the Cuddle Party Welcome Circle got translated and lead in various languages across the globe, Marcia and I continued our humorous yet serious battle with morning DJs and disbelieving email inquiries asking, “How is this NOT a front for an orgy?”
In the early days of Cuddle Party, the concept that a group of strangers could snuggle together AND control their sexual urges was unbelievable. Marcia, myself, and our growing team of Certified Cuddle Party Facilitators had to work constantly at rewriting the cultural assumption that spooning MUST lead to forking. It doesn’t, but that wasn’t so obvious back in 2004. And now, 20 years later, thanks to the tireless efforts of Cuddle Monsters and Certified CP Facilitators everywhere, the concept that cuddling can stay cuddling is finally taking hold.
Taking The Humping Out of Cuddle Party…
Around 2007 is when we noticed something happening around Rule #7: NO DRY HUMPING!
This tongue-in-cheek boundary was irresistible, yummy, tasty-tasty bait for any radio DJ or early YouTuber. They couldn’t wait to sink their teeth into it. Rule #7 was an easy, no-brainer hook to start any interview: “Tell me about the No Dry Humping rule…”
Rule #7 was intentionally designed to capture people’s attention, make folks laugh and shake their heads, AND it served to answer the questions that I imagined everyone would have on their minds: “Where do you draw the line? When does cuddling turn into sex?”
Rule #7 served as a memorable reminder of where platonic connection and sexual agenda start getting too cozy — Humping and grinding, A.K.A. frottage!
Having an outrageous rule standing out in ALL CAPS caught everyone’s eye, established where the line was, and did a great job generating memorable, word-of-mouth buzz that helped more and more people find out about Cuddle Party.
It was also a fun rule to slap on merchandise, and we got some hilarious photos sent to us back then!
But as Cuddle Party continued to grow and expand its reach across countries, cultures, and languages, Marcia and I began to notice a shift in the conversation around Rule #7.
While it was originally intended to be humorous and attention-grabbing, as the years passed we realized that for some potential attendees, Rule #7 was accidentally creating concerns and misconceptions about what actually happens at a Cuddle Party.
We started receiving feedback from people who were hesitant to attend their first Cuddle Party because of Rule #7.
“If they have a specific rule prohibiting dry humping,” some folks were thinking, “Cuddle Parties must have a dry humping problem!” 😬😬😬
A dry humping problem? It started to dawn on us that Rule #7, while well-intentioned, was inadvertently scaring some people away. We realized the things people needed to read or hear to feel safe participating in Cuddle Parties in 2004 weren’t the same things they needed to hear or see in 2007/2008 (and beyond).
Cuddle Party was established enough and the public conversation around consent and touch was evolving enough that it was time to shift the focus from what kinds of touch are prohibited to what kinds of touch participants actually desired (so long as it followed the Rules of Cuddling). Cuddle Party’s goal has always been to create a space where people feel empowered to practice & explore openly communicating their boundaries and desires. It was time to reevaluate Rule #7 and tweak/update things accordingly.
With this in mind, we (and by “we,” I mean the Cuddle Party Board because CP was now a non-profit being run by Marcia, The Wheel of Consent creator Betty Martin, myself, and Len Daley) decided to remove the specific rule about dry humping. While the prohibition against sexualized touch remained in place, the emphasis was shifting towards fostering a culture of enthusiastic consent, exploration & collaboration, and respectful communication.
It’s also important to note that, similar to Rule #7 needing to be reevaluated and then updated, all of us exist in a constantly changing and evolving world that benefits from all of us upgrading our skills and protocols. And it can help to remember that many of the concepts, tools, and awarenesses that seem self-evident today, didn’t exist in 2004 as they do now.
Take Cuddle Party Rule #3 for example: You must ask permission and receive a verbal YES before you touch anyone. (Be as specific in your request as you can).
Rule #3 is a great guideline for healthy interactions much like “Stop, drop, and roll” is great advice should one find themselves on fire. However, Rule #3 —updated more than a decade ago— doesn’t take into consideration the current distinctions, conversations, and contexts around consent.
Nuances and awarenesses around how power differentials impact one’s ability to give consent or questions surrounding how does someone know for sure if another person’s yes isn’t a fawning trauma response… Rule #3 couldn’t take those things into account ten years ago since those distinctions weren’t around then the way they are now.
This doesn’t mean folks shouldn’t take responsibility and do their best to show up and be accountable for past harms, but it can be helpful to have empathy for how, whenever we learn or discover a new, less harmful way of living life, we each are put retroactively into an impossible situation: We should have been doing better all along.
The conversations around consent, being trauma-informed, repair & accountability, as well as deeper understandings of how social power impacts consent… All of these ideas and awarenesses (and more as we evolve) will continue to shift, expand, and hopefully change for the better how we interact with one another as humans. Perhaps it’s time for Cuddle Party Rule #3 to be reevaluated and recalibrated… But I leave that up to the Powers That Be at Cuddle Party INC.
I eventually stepped away from being a Cuddle Party spokesperson and Board member in 2008/2009 when I decided I wanted to pursue more explicitly direct sex and relationship education projects. No need to muddle Cuddle Party’s platonic message by being a loud and proud professional sex nerd, so I folded up my pajamas and put on a Sex Geek t-shirt.
No matter how sex geeky I get, I will always credit Cuddle Party with launching my career and the careers of so many other talented educators and facilitators. And it felt fitting on Cuddle Party’s 20th birthday to write about and share with you some of Cuddle Party’s slowly fading history.
Please feel free to leave a comment if you want to share a bit of your own Cuddle Party history if you have any! I’d love to hear from you.
So Who Really Killed Rule #7?
As Cuddle Party and humanity continue to evolve, the original (sometimes forgotten) Rule #7 serves as a reminder of the importance of adapting to the needs of the times and the feedback of participants. What started as a humorous and attention-grabbing rule has now led to a deeper understanding of consent and a shift in focus towards creating a braver, less harmful, more inclusive, more empowering, and more welcoming environment for all.
In the end, Cuddle Party’s own growth and success killed Rule #7. And that’s exactly how it was supposed to be.
Cuddle Party, after all, is not about the specific rules themselves, but about the values they represent—respect, communication, and a commitment to creating safer and more consent-savvy spaces for connection, communication, and intimacy. And those are rules we can all cuddle up to.
Here’s to 20 MORE years of cuddling, Sex Geek!
Forever yours in flannel,
REiD
Ps. Please feel free to share this with any of your friends and loved ones, and, while you’re at it, Leave a Comment and let me know what resonated for you in this post!