I have written one Edger post on humanism and relationships before. I wrote it right after my wife had decided to divorce me, and essentially my conclusion was that in hindsight monogamy resembling marriage was probably a good idea.
That may seem like an obvious conclusion, but I argued then as I will argue now, that human sexual ethics from a naturalist perspective are not 100% cut and dry. For what its worth, however, my wife and I have reconciled.
What do I mean about sexual ethics not being 100% cut and dry?
I am willing to make a deontological commitment against rape and child molestation. Everything else is in terms of grey.
The standard in most of civilization seems to be mostly monogamy, in which one man and one woman cohabitate and have sex exclusively for the rest of their lives. In some societies the wealthiest of men could have more than one wife, but as far as I know, to say the reverse is rare is an understatement.
Yet there has always been infidelity. There has always been literature that occasionally apologizes for infidelity, even in the Bible. Prostitution is common enough to earn the cliche “the oldest profession.” In essence what I am saying, is that humanity by and large has never been able to commit wholeheartedly to monogamy.
Though, no doubt, many humans do.
In my Human Sexual Behavior course it was put that monogamy was in fashion but about 1/4 of men cheat and about 15% of women cheat. Those seem like poor enough odds that questioning the wisdom of monogamy is worthwhile.
I would venture a guess that nearly all secularists advocate for the civil rights of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. And we should since their oppression tends to be justified by religion exclusively.
Yet within the gay community it is widely accepted that sexuality is not a well behaved thing, not an easy to categorize thing, many of my gay and lesbian friends have enjoyed sex with members of the opposite sex. Its just not their preference, and they do not think bisexual accurately describes them. So let me be blunt I know gays that occasionally do women and still consider themselves gay. I know lesbians that occasionally do men and consider themselves lesbians. It is a wise observation that the greatest sexual organ resides between the ears.
When we started an Atheist club at the University of Texas at Dallas we did not quite know what to expect. I had a mental picture in my mind of about 10 overweight or underweight guys who got together and engaged in an uncomfortable nerd-off a few times a month. When our regular attendance fluctuated from 20-30 people a meeting, with lots of people not coming every time but still regularly, all of the officers were floored.
I have been getting to know some of the club members and I have met the most wonderful group of people, who are all currently engaged in a free love lifestyle, or have been in the past.
To protect there identities I will rename three of them who I have gotten to know best, we will call them Lo, Wolfgang, and Kent.
Lo is the boss, the relationships tend to be centered around her. Though everyone involved is welcome to be with other people. They boys tend to prefer Lo. Though Lo does have lovers who have other women, I just haven’t gotten to know them as well as the guys who are always around.
What impressed me most about Lo is that she has thought this through. She has undergone a process of “ethical inquiry” as the philosopher Paul Kurtz describes it. Ethical Inquiry meaning that she has decided to experiment with ethics to try to enrich her life.
Importantly Lo really cares for her paramours. She loves them. She forms deep personal bonds with them, each of them different and profound. Lo gets to know here lovers, and they get to know her. She connects with them deeply and they learn from each other, and grow as individuals. Lo tells me that this is her primary motive for her lifestyle. For the depth of connection she achieves, unhindered by conventional limitations. It is a lifestyle of depth, with poetry to each relationship.
Lo has a book which I am currently reading called The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherine A Listz. Having read several of Kurtz’s books and considering myself to be someone who has a humanist ethic deeply founded in naturalism, I find this book to be so far so good. The basic argument of the book so bad is, get this, “sex is nice, and pleasure is good for you.” If one accepts this basic and elegant premise, it is hard to condemn free love.
Lo is absolutely delightful and very knowledgeable about politics. Most importantly after speaking with her a great deal and getting to know her, I cannot deny that she is as well adjusted and healthy as anyone else in our club. Perhaps even more so. She has a brave Nietzschean embrace of living passionately and intensely. I have nothing but respect and admiration for her.
Wolfgang is how I got to know this group of young people (most of the crew is in its early 20s). He and I have become fast friends, as it was clear to me due to his behavior at meetings that he was intensely clever and that he had natural leadership skills. He was also the first to open up to me about the free love lifestyle. Wolfgang is for all intents and purposes Lo’s boyfriend. To those of us not in the free love lifestyle, we would all call it that way. People in the free love lifestyle are a little more in tune with subtlety and would call it slightly differently, they would merely point out that Wolfgang takes care of Lo, or that he is her best friend. Wolfgang lives with Lo, adores her constantly, and organizes their social life.
This is not very different from my relationship with my wife. The only difference is that Lo takes other lovers, often with Wolfgang. Wolfgang is very comfortable in a menage a trois, something I think most men would find to be a humbling experience. I can only imagine a very embarassing episode of performance anxiety.
My first impression of Wolfgang was that he couldn’t be happy. He had to be merely tolerating Lo’s crazy behavior and that his life had to be a miserable pool of jealousy. When he first said this was not true, I did not believe him. Then I spent more time with them, I was there as they organized their sexual behavior, as they accommodated each other, and I saw that a jealous man could not act as Wolfgang did. He later told me he occasionally feels jealousy but he just acknowledges its there and then puts it out of his mind. I find this to be admirable.
Wolfgang like Lo is adamant about the emotional side of the lifestyle. He feels connected as well to, not only Lo, but the people they share together. Wolfgang connects deeply, and is such a tender and understanding person I can understand why he makes people so comfortable. Wolfgang is greatly compassionate, and I find myself being able to connect with him regularly even without wording my thoughts, as many of us experience with our closest friends. It would seem that his free love lifestyle is a natural amplification of that side of him, Wolfgang loves people and yearns to connect with them. This is far more his motivation than pursue sexual gratification.
Finally we come to Kent. I also befriended Kent because he displayed natural leadership skills. Kent has a unique perspective. He is one of Lo’s guys who is not Woflgang. Now, I cannot stress enough that Wolfgang is welcome to take other lovers, but merely takes little initiative on the issue. I guess if menage a trois were the norm , one would be hard pressed to need more excitement. This is not Kent. Kent is almost like an innocent bystander, except for that he is a very willful person.
He had been friends with Wolfgang and Lo for a while, and eventually it became clear to him that he could pair up with Lo with no harm to his friendship with Wolfgang. Indeed, there has been no issues with his friendship with Wolfgang. Kent clashes with Lo more than he does Wolfgang. Kent is a strong minded young man who is a ferocious habitual reader. He is as comfortable discussing the political role of Cicero in ancient Rome as he is discussing ion behavior. I adore Kent, and quite frankly hope for the world that he becomes a powerful and influential man.
Kent has a very laissez fair attitude about his relationship with Lo. He is taking it all in stride, enjoying himself, but never being disrespectful or dishonest. Probably the most interesting thing which Kent shared with me is that he is not opposed to trying the free love lifestyle with his next lover. He has not decided against it. That tells me, that it cannot be as bad as it is made out to be.
So why did I write about this relationship on Edger?
Well for one, I stand in one of the most religious backwards parts of the U.S. and shout from a soapbox that there is no God. When you do that here, you might find yourself with a very diverse group of friends. It seems to me that for those who reject religious dogma, ethical inquiry comes as a natural precipitate.
I also write about this due to the fact that millions of years of evolution have made two things the most salient to all animals. Reproduction and death. From the ancient thoughts of our animal, and pre-animal ancestors arise all depths of human experience. The whole of psychiatric medicine is based on the simple fact that evolution predicts that by manipulating behavior in animal brains, it is generalizable to human mind and experience. This means that from our animal instincts come our romantic profundities. It seems to me to have honest ethical inquiry I strongly believe we must see our animal nature and our human potential as being on the same continuum.
No matter how wise we get, how perfect our equations, how marvelous our machines, how deep our poetry we are still animals. As animals we have very strong instincts towards sex, and I believe that our brains are hyper-plastic when sex is involved (this is my own speculation).
Researchers like Masters and Johnson, Kinsey, David M. Buss, and other great modern scientists have shown us consistently that our cultural prejudices about sex are predictably wrong in many areas.
I think as free thinkers and humanists we have a responsibility to defend and make a stand for ethical inquiry as it manifests in the free love lifestyle.
Now I am not advocating that all free thinkers should be free lovers.
That can only be for the individual to know, preferably through a process of ethical inquiry which involves reading, talking with a variety of people, and most importantly considering what will be a responsible way to be happy without doing harm to others.
All I advocate is that as free thinkers, humanists, and naturalists we are in the position to take a realistic look at sexual ethics, and that for that we must make a stand for those who do not conform to the status quo.
I think many of us have done this already with issues like gay marriage, but go to some gay rights activities in the gay community. It will not be long before you find yourself having to think about the transgendered, transexuals, and sexual orientations so diverse that I cannot even remember all the names.
Some of us may thoughtlessly align ourselves with gay rights, without ever going into the trenches with our gay brothers and sisters. Being in those trenches has done much to prime me to see that free lovers are part of that same continuum.
I believe that humanists are stewards of the incoming ethical future, I believe we have already played this role for much of the 20th century.
It is important that we think of these matters.
Comments
RSS
Digg!
Stumble
Tweet
More by Rodrigo Neely
Author Tweets
tweets loading 
great article. one thing. please don’t call Kinsey a “great modern scientist.”
Look him up. Not just his “results” but what he did to get them.
I know about Kinsey’s technical and ethical shortcomings in his research. I just tolerate them as a hazard of pioneering.
This is very true. I had thought about free loves years ago, but could never find an example until I met Lo and Wolfgang at the UTD ASH meeting. I’ll have to take a look at the book you mentioned…
spelling correction: “free loves” should be “free love”
I love the article and your observations on Lo and Wolfgang as an excellent example of the free love lifestyle. One thing in particular that I know sounded familiar to me was your reference to sexuality being a “not well behaved thing” and I started thinking on where I had seen something similar and then it dawned on me. A British television series, Doctor Who, in it’s most recent incarnation pictures a friend of the Doctor’s called Captain Jack Harkness. Jack is a time traveller from the 51st century where man has colonized the stars, and is now having immense fun pro-creating with all the species of those stars. To this end Jack certainly falls under the free love lifestyle and, according to the Doctor, “flirts just by saying hello”. I could never pin down a better explanation of Jack (especially better described in the spin-off series centered around him, Torchwood) but apparently the writer’s of that show certainly believe that a free love lifestyle and society is where mankind is headed in the future.
Again, excellent article and I know I’m the better for reading it. Thank you.
-the purring dork
Interesting article Rodrigo. One “ethical enquiry” that has puzzled me for a while and I’ve thought about posting on the edger also is that of cultural relativism. Like you said, we are all animals and are indistinctly tied to a sexual behavior programmed into us. But the same can be said for our communal and familial behavior that prevents us from a “free love” lifestyle. This freedom and those traditions are engendered in us by the same entity.
In tribal societies, polygamy is the norm, and it had been globally so before monotheism. And we also know that this was the case as an optimal strategy to sexual selection.
Maybe I should make this the topic of another post, but essentially my beef is with drawing the line between good and bad. Who are we as modern atheists to say in face of human history that we should live with more freedom and no-religion. Or at least who are we to preach our philosophy to other humans with different philosophies.
In the end, regardless of evidence, our argument is as relative as theirs. This is because as animals, they are busy in accomplishing the same goals as you and me, spreading genes. They are often more successful though.
Imagine a group of elephant seals going through the revolution we are suggesting here. That they should live with sexual egality and not form harems or fight over females. Sound nice, but as creatures it’s almost a backward step.
But on the other side, we as humans are not here to fulfill the goals of our genes, but the goals that our genes have programmed us to fulfill.
So I’m not saying that you are wrong in your suggestion, I just can’t solve this quandary of cultural relativism.
Bear in mind, I don’t let it dictate my personal life.
I like the article. I myself had an open marriage, a dynamic we discussed after one year of monogamy and one which was strongly rooted in the knowledge that most relationships end due to infidelity, so why not cut out the secrecy and be polyamorous, right? Also, we got married young (around 20) and I have always felt that someone should be with me to the extent that they want to be with me rather than because they feel some obligation of pressure to conform to a societal norm. I didn’t want either of us to wonder what we might be “missing”, so I figured an arrangement where we could have other lovers with full disclosure to each other was ideal. It started with “date nights”, and evolved as schedules couldn’t mesh and situations changed; basically, fewer and fewer rules worked better. I read the Ethical Slut about seven years ago, and found it to be an interesting handbook of sorts. However, I feel it fails to detail a lot of the common issues that can arise in an open relationship. If I may:
Jealousy: I know you touched on this, and I agree with the assessment of your friend. If one does feel a twinge of the green-eyed monster, best to simply acknowledge it, root it out, and dismiss it. Easier said than done for most. I can do it, but every single person I have ever met – let me repeat – Every Single Person I have met who has been in an open relationship or is in one now HAS jealousy issues. All of them. Many are in denial about it, but they’re there. Many people (especially guys) will pretend not to have jealousy in order to have their multiple lovers, but they grit their teeth when the girl goes out. Many girls will accept a polyamorous guy with the hidden intent of winning them slowly into monogamy, and go nuts when it doesn’t work. I have seen people pressure a significant other into accepting an open relationship they do not really want, but tolerate for fear of being alone. In short, I have seen the nasty side of polyamory.
Scheduling: It is difficult enough for a couple to carve out time to spend together with work schedules and childcare et al. Imagine trying to tack it down with four or even six schedules. Who gets Christmas? What about birthdays? (I speak from experience here; my ex-husband had a girlfriend with a birthday the day before mine. One year she had to work on her birthday, so he took her out for dinner and drinks on MY birthday, and left me at home with the baby. Fun stuff.) This ties in beautifully with my next topic…
Drama: It is easy enough for two people to have mis-communications and arguments; what about more? Ever tried to run a co-op out of your bedroom? He’s eating our food! She’s bumming my cigarettes! You took off work to take her out on that date and now we’re short on rent! You don’t respect my boundaries! You two had sex in OUR bed! etc… This is especially troublesome in situations where, like most, there is a “primary relationship”, as the Ethical Slut calls it. Who gets priority? Well, the primary, right? How do the “secondary” significant others feel about that? Ever see what happens when one of them tries to jump in on an argument between the primaries and gang up on the other partner? I know this isn’t as glamorous an idea as threesomes, but it’s what happens altogether too often. Besides, as a friend of mine said about menáge á trois: “Too many elbows, too many knees. Besides, I’m not thinking about enjoying myself when I’m altogether preoccupied with allocation of resources!” Classic.
Safety: I’m sorry, I have to say it: there are nasty diseases out there, and they run like wildfires around these communities. Not just polyamory; most often in the “serial monogamy” groups, too. You know what I mean…coffeehouse crowds, classmates, coworkers, those weird little in-groups where it seems like everyone has dated everyone else at some point in the past. If you’re too young to know what I mean now, just wait until you’re 30. Over the course of a decade, you’d be surprised at how many of your friends you’ve slept with if you haven’t been in a committed relationship all or most of that time. I know most polyamorous people are keen enough to use protection and minimize risks, but you’d also be amazed how many of them also slip up and get caught up in the moment. Especially when they do have that emotional connection with their multiple partners, as I did. All it takes is one misstep by one of the parts of the group to expose everyone to risk. My little group (comprised of me, my one boyfriend, my then-husband, and the four other girls he was dating) had a herpes scare that sent us all to the clinic in fits of hysteria, screaming at each other. Imagine our relief (and the giggle fits in retrospect) when it was discovered to have only been an ingrown hair on the girl who had initially alerted us to our possible infection. If it hadn’t been, that would have sucked in a very big way.
I’m not knockin’ free love. I think all people (with the exceptions of the ones Rodrigo mentioned) should be able to celebrate their love and sexuality as they see fit. I might even be able to see myself in another open relationship in the future, given the right people and circumstances. My only caveats are these: It is hard enough to find our match in one person, let alone three. Group dynamics are much more complex than one-on-one. Jealousy is more pervasive than people let on, and can lead to some truly heinous passive-aggression. Sex without fear of infection is nice, and gets harder to have as the number of people you have to trust increases. Some people are too quick to adopt the polyamory “lifestyle” to experiment and be “different” and more “free”, and in doing so alienate all those who are not comfortable with it, including their significant others. Love is something that happens to you, not something that you plan. All your framework and ideas about how a relationship should work will disintegrate before you; you really do have to live in the moment and let these things unfold in their own time. I’m not a big fan of labels, and this is just one more.
I thought I might present the side no one ever seems to mention. I’m no relationship guru, but I know it takes an incredible investment to have a successful open relationship, especially when there are emotional ties to multiple partners. You have to have the utmost tact and diplomacy, and always an open mind and available shoulder. You and your partners must understand love is not quantifiable, and sharing it does not detract from one or the other. Respect must be mutual between ALL members of the group.
Sorry that’s so long-winded! I just love your articles, and this post hit close to home.
I would love to hear more about people in long-term, successful open relationships. The only ones I’ve seen are like Menudo (the group) – members seem to come and go and circulate over time as they get older.
Thank you for that. It was very well said, some of it I even thought of putting in the article originally, like the issue of STDs, and it completely slipped my minds.
My polyamorous friends seem to be like the Planned Parenthood poster children, they always wear condoms, they get tested, the people they sleep with get tested. Lo has the HPV vaccine. Its very responsible.
But I have known of breakouts among my swinger friends. I know it happens, one has to be dogmatic about protection I imagine to avoid it.
Thank you for your comments Comter. It would not suprise me if polyamorous became the norm at some point in the future. I think if good methods for mastering the issues that Valerie pointed out below were developed and young people saw it work, then why the hell would anyone go into monogamy? At least thats my thinking,
Right now my only argument for monogamy is basically safety and stability. It seems to me the polyamorous lifestyle is more volatile (though it doesn’t have to be). Also one monogamous pair is ideal for avoiding STDs and one can forgo the condom use.
In polynesia there have historically been very sexually open societies with forms of ritual polyamorous behavior.
I think polygamy is more often than not a biproduct of sexism (and sexism itself, probably a scar of evolution). One man to many women, where the man has all privilege cannot really thrive in a world post women’s rights.
Remember we are dealing with the sexuality of both genders. There are things women want as well, and they are not necessarily the same man for a lifetime. We know empirically that with the level of education being higher both women and men become more sexually fetishistic. More willing to do many different things.
The bonobo who is a very close genetic relative of humans (far closer than the elephant seal) has a polyamorous bisexual society which is led by the females.
Biology is diversely yielding. I think we have more sexual potential in our programming than we do sexual constraints.
Same here. As early as highschool. I am kind of kicking myself for not having tried it.
Great article, Rodrigo. I really enjoyed it.
A related tangent. Through reading Daniel Quinn (an outstanding author whose work brings light many core illusions of our culture, including those which implicitly or explicitly claim that many of our core cultural memes are not memes but are simply basic human nature) and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, which clearly shows how members of the economic and political elite (i.e., those who have power; not what Republicans would call elites – e.g., people that, y’know, know something about something) can shape thought, values and behaviour by controlling what is presented and how it is presented in mass media, I’ve more actively interested in seeing rational, honest and thoughtful views that are alternative to the defaults of common culture. This was thus very pleasing.
When I get back to North America, we’ll have to set up a big Edger orgy. I want Shalini!
I would do it for the lulz and for great justice!
I dont do the coitus thing and I’m in South Africa, but I’ve seen the way you look at me Ron.
Yeah, I’ll merely be using ‘lini as my beard (gay cover-up). I’m still in the closet.