Customer Reviews

The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Like other reviewers, I've bought many copies of this and give or loan them out to friends, lovers, and people I'm interested in. Rather than duplicate other reviews in their glowing general praise (which would be easy), I'll go a step further and strongly suggest getting this book not because it will help you find multiple lovers or because it's a good read, or because it's full of helpful advice on relationships in general, but rather because without the advice and insight in this book polyamory is *really* hard to pull off. This book gives you many of the lessons you might not learn otherwise except by having dismal relationship failures and painful breakups. (These may still come anyway, but The Ethical Slut will help you avoid them, and cope if they happen). I can't recommend this highly enough. However, I would add the slight caveat that the somewhat hedonistic approach of Easton & Liszt can be balanced out fairly well by a follow-up reading of Anapol's Polyamory: The New 'Love Without Limits'. Anapol's work is not as "fun", and gets tediously naggy along "spirituality" lines that are very hippyish and and full of newage, but the message she conveys include a lot of responsibility and cooperation memes that are not as prevalent in Easton & Liszt's book. The two-book combo is really a must.

I've seen so many failed marriages due to infidelity that recently I began to wonder what I was in for if I ever took that big step. After all, I didn't seem any better than the couples I knew, and certainly I'd been attracted to many different people, both male and female. Thats when I found this book.

This is a great read for people with feelings like mine...it gives a great account of the guidelines you need if you ever choose to enter into polyamory. Several good points are emphasized: love and sex are not necessarily the same, one may be an expression of the other but they CAN be completely separate. Love, sex and pleasure are not limited qualities people have...you can love someone else and make love to them without depriving your "primary" partner of the same feelings and actions. Drawbacks are also discussed, including time constraints, jealousy, respecting privacy and property of all your lovers, and coming out to your kids about your relationship (most actually think its pretty cool because there's always someone to talk to).

I read this book aloud with my girlfriend because we had always been curious about poly-type relationships. We asked ourselves many questions, and when we finally attended our first party, we were able to talk more afterwards and decided we loved it...and yet we could still be committed to each other! And we're still going strong...thanks to this and other wonderful resources that provided a basis for us to try new things!

For years I have tried to explain many of the topices covered in this book to new couples testing the waters of the swinging lifestyle. Now I have a book that I can recommend that covers most of the areas extremely well. An additional benefit of this book is that is is written by two women in the lifestyle. Many other books written on the subject are written by men and are looked at by women readers as just another man trying to convince women to be more sexually promiscuios. The only area that I wish the authors would have spent more time on is the subject of nurturing your primary partner and relationship while introducing them to the new way of living. All in all, this is the very best book I've found concerning open relationships and swinging. I would recommend it to anyone.

I don't detect an anti-male bias at all in this book and find it fairly realistic. There are some things that won't suit everyone, but it presents the wide range of possibilities. Sticky issues like coming out, family, kids, etc. are addressed, which is refreshing. It's a whole life we're talking about here, not just Saturday night. I think mono/exclusive couples could learn a lot about handling jealousy, communication skills, and conflict resolution from this book, those chapters were excellent. The etiquette and respect the authors advocate need to be taken to heart because there are a lot of rude people out there! Rudeness is a definite unschwinggg. Anyway, this book is not about playing out fairy tale or porn flick roles, but being real with real people, with communication and respect and radical yet gentle honesty. Wish I had it when I was 18!

Not only does this book confirm that there are other people who don't believe that monogamy is the ideal, but it explains how they survive in a world that doesn't agree. It even offers helpful hints to consider, whether it is your first time or your fiftieth. It details how rational and happy alternative relationships can be in a way that is non-threatening.

I read it twice, with a highlighter! I even bought copies for all my friends who could never understand what I was talking about before. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is or knows someone who is involved in or curious about non-monogamy.

These women give practical and emotional advice about how to arrange your life to take care of your romantic, sexual, and emotional needs without hurting the people around you that you love. And they do it with humor and panache.

I'm coming back to buy my second copy. The first one got lent out and mysteriously never made its way back.

Although I appear to be in the minority among reviewers, I was greatly disppointed in this book. It starts out by addressing the idea that "ethical" and "slut" only appear to be contradictions and purports to guide people at reconciling the two terms--to be "polyamorous" while at the same time building a relationship of respect and caring. If it followed through on this premise, it would be a good book.

I thought it failed to deliver. It seemed to spend a lot of time patting itself on the back for being so open and for daring to suggest an alternative lifestyle. But I wouldn't have picked up the book in the first place if I weren't ready to consider (intellectually at least) alternatives to monagomy. Aside from offering fairly glib and superficial advice (don't have loud sex within hearing distance of your primary partner), it doesn't really grapple with the problems--physical, emotional, financial--that come with open relationships. I'm not saying that pursuing open relationships isn't possible. I'm saying that this book is not an honest look at the problems and difficulties that might come up in such relationships. It's less than honest, and that's a disappointment coming from someone who claims to care about ethics.

Needless to say, there is a lot of ignorance, guilt and shame associated with sexuality within our culture. This complicated by the fact that we are hard-wired to survive in a very different environment. In other words, our limbic (emotional) systems often have a very different agenda than our neocortex (thinking center). In modern relationships, this often leads to deceit, betrayal and more shame. In reality, the odds are 80% that at least ONE person in a marriage will be unfaithful and this statistic seems to point to the fact that despite good intentions, we are in general a promiscious species. At the same time, we are also hard-wired to bond, which makes being honest and open even more complicated.

This book seeks to address some of the problems of the modern landscape in terms of what ethical behavior looks like given what we know about evolutionary biology, sexual psychology and sociology. It attempts to define what ethical sexual behavior looks like in a world where people often weight until their mid-30s or even later to marry. It seeks to honor the body and our natural proclivities, while also taking into consideration what is in the best interest of other people.

For those of you looking for guidance in the area of sexual ethics, this is a simple, straightforward and unapologetic look at the modern landscape, the world of sexual possibilities and what acting ethically looks like from the author's perspective. It's tone is playful and fun and there is a lot of common sense wisdom between the pages which would serve as useful food for thought for anyone, but especially people who have a lot of guilt, confusion, shame or difficulty being sexually honest.

As some one who coaches both couples and individuals, I have seen the hurt that is caused by sexual dishonesty firsthand. I have also seen how shame and guilt drive people to a cycle of acting out, hiding their behavior and then feeling empty. This text offers an alternative to being dishonest and explores some of the cultural assumptions that underlie our often ambiguous relationship to our sexuality.

Similar to Frank Pittman who espouses honesty and openness. This author recommends being honest about what you want, need and being communicative about it. While this book is very practical, the book Private Lies: Infidelity and Betrayal of Intimacy by Pittman looks at the issues around betrayal and dishonesty more deeply. In fact, he is probably cited more than any other author in this area. I highly recommend this book as taking these kinds of questions to the next level.

Another potential area of confusion for a lot of people is how our evolutionary programming works. As primates, we have all kinds of attractions and tend to have sex for many different reasons. We all have all kinds of fantasies and this is a reality we can't avoid. Both sexes are also hardwired to pursue both a long and short term mating strategies. This had survival value in the distant past and it is very good for anyone to understand how this works. You can read more about this dimension of our sexuality in The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating.

While the ETHICAL SLUT touches on the nature of the erotic, I find that Jack Morin's book The Erotic Mind: Unlocking the Inner Sources of Passion and Fulfillment is the hands-down best book on this topic and will give you with a lot more insight to your fantasies and how emotions of various kinds such as guilt, shame, anger and anxiety could act as aphrodisiacs.

I personally believe that as a cultural we have a lot of religious and other baggage around our sexuality that does not serve us. As a society, we tend to hurt each other through infidelity, deception of various types and hiding our true desires from our partners. This tendency to withhold or lie, probably spells the downfall of more relationships than our sexual desires or even behaviors. This book attempts to provide some outlines for being in relationship in an authentic way, honoring your natural sexual tendencies (whatever they are) and acting responsibly. For those who want to read more on this area, I also recommend Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Committment and Journey of the Heart: Path of Conscious Love, The.

This book also discusses polyamory and casual sex which are both common, but not often openly discussed. I think this is a dialog that needs to take place and this book which appeals to a very wide audience in a simple, straightforward manner will speak to a lot of people's dilemmas in these areas. It also talks about homosexuality, bisexuality and many other topics that are often pushed back into a closet.

As a reviewer, I approach this review as someone who understands people's different development levels, proclivities and needs in terms of variety, orientation, etc. For me personally, a one-on-one, deep relationship is the highest expression of love. However, I recognize that other types of relationships are often workable and sometimes desirable. I think there is a continuum of sexual expression from flirting through highly committed love and I see many of these as ethical and legitimate under certain conditions which this book attempts to define from one particular point of view.

While this last section doesn't bear directly on the topic of this book, I think it useful for people to have a philosophical framework that works well in a modern environment. I also think it's wise for most people to free themselves from the sometimes oppressive religious baggage of the past while keeping what is useful and valuable from the various wisdom traditions. If this is an area that you struggle with, then perhaps you would benefit from reading A Brief History of Everything or even better listening to the recording Kosmic Consciousness.

I believe that healthy sexual expression is a very important dimension of human life that is often unnecessarily painful. If you are confused and looking for answers, this book may help you to see new possibilities and break free from shameful patterns that sap your energy, hide important truths from your partner, etc. I'm glad someone had the courage to take on what is often a difficult topic and discuss the issues openly and in a fun, but still thought provoking way.

The Ethical Slut is an astonishingly good book. In fact, I'm going to have to really work hard to find anything to criticize, so before I do, rush out and buy it! The basic message of the book is that love and sexual pleasure are Good Things, and that it is possible to ethically, sanely, increase the amount of love and pleasure in your life. To that end, the focus of the book is on polyamory/multiple consensual relationships/open marriage/swinging. However, the book is *so* good about how to fully open, express and enjoy your sexuality that I often found myself wishing that it *wasn't* a polyamory book -- its sex-positive message is more far-reaching than any particular lovestyle(s). Easton & Liszt offer common sense, experience, humor, how-to's, how-not-to's in a clear, no-nonsense style. Advise is practical, sane, fun and peppered with lots & lots of real life examples that are sometimes joyous, sometimes sad, and once in a while pretty darn hot. All the important stuff is covered: Communication, boundaries, negotiating "the rules," jealousy, sexual inhibitions, sexual orientation, group sex, privacy, etc. etc. And at *no* point did I shake my head in disgust! Okay, I said there was a criticism, and there is (just one). This is yet another Northern California Ecotopia book. I am so *sick* of all information about polyamory coming from there and there alone. I sometimes want to stand on a rooftop and scream "I'm a Nice Jewish Girl from New Jersey and I Mess Around!!" That's right folks, polyamory is *not* stopped at California's borders and driven back in. But, until *this* Nice Jewish Girl from New Jersey Who Messes Around writes a book on polyamory, The Ethical Slut is hands-down the best there is. Read it yourself, and give it to a friend. You could even buy the T-shirt and wear it in public.

Most books of this type tend to have some gender bias or are geared primarily towards one type of relationships style. Being sensitive to anti-male biases as a polyamorous bisexual male, I felt I should check it out. Not only is the book NOT anti-male, it had one of the most balanced presentations of the subject matter I've ever seen. I'd not hesitate to recommend it to anyone regardless of gender or orientation or relationship style. I don't find many books that I can say that without qualification and this is one of those. It is a valuable tool for explaining my relationship style to others as it presents nonmonogamy as an alternative to traditional relationship styles without passing judgement on those who prefer monogamy.