Sex parties are fun!

I’m in the “embrace sex, skip the shame” boat. In the Bay Area there’s a really solid polyamory community. I’ve been reading the books and working on my own communication issues and anxieties for a good 15 years now and at this point things flow so smoothly. I have so many people in my life I’m on a kissing basis with. It’s so lovely! I’m surrounded by genuine connection and affection. Me and my community have good communication. No one ever gets jealous as we’re all consensually dating a bunch of people. (I’m mostly “solo poly” these days.) I have some regular partners I share more structured, intentional loving and intimate connection with. I have cute friends I go on bike rides with and then kiss and cuddle while taking a break at the waterfront. I get invited to all kinds of functions. Sex is a source of genuine joy for me. I get tested once every two or three months and I have a clear communication protocol and safer sex practice I use with new people.

Amongst all this, porn is just a way to get my motor running. An arousing way to engage in self play and to build energy for what weekend adventures await. Or, if I’m so inclined, a way to ease my own stress and experience some physical release of energy and ease stress.

I’ve heard this notion before - that people who suffer from “porn addiction” often have an unhealthy relationship with sex, often coming from Christian puritanical views and shame of the self and the body. Drop the shame! Learn to love yourself. Learn to communicate your needs and desires. Be with your community. Have fun! I am. :)

Ah, so true.

I'm sure you're reading some of the other comments to me.

For example, I am married. And my partner has similar views as me. And there's nothing at all like looking at a man or woman, looking at my partner and a sly grin and nod, and we both go ask together!

But the most bile and hatred I see come from the puritanical groups of Christianity. They cannot only fail to understand, but I get moralized the whole time as well. Like, try it before you knock it?

And I'm even getting flack for recommending STD testing. Some diseases can hide, like herpes and HIV. I'd rather know for me and my lovers, rather than hurt them. And, its not much different than a covid test - keep the people around you safe.

There is nothing wrong with your point of view. But does it scale? We got here after thousands of years of societies shaped by religion and its various concepts of family.

Can your alternative produce a strong society that can survive external threats? Maybe it can, but intuitively I think it can't. And what would happen, then, is that a society based on polyamory would be destroyed and/or conquered by others who believe in traditional families.

I'm not saying that societies that preach traditional families are good or bad, just that they have a long history of surviving.

There are so many inbuilt assumptions in your comment it’s hard to even formulate a reply. Should the way I relate to other people be based on predictions of what makes a “strong society” or does a strong society flow from well adjusted people? Is a society of shame filled serial monogamists stronger than one of sexually liberated polyamorists? Is it healthier to expect one person to provide all of your romantic and sexual needs while suppressing urges to engage emotionally and sexually with others, or is a focus on identifying our individual needs, communicating those to others, and operating with informed consent and mutually agreed upon relationships better?

There’s so many things I think monogamous culture could learn from polyamorous people. Even if you’re only dating one person at a time, learning to deeply understand your own needs, set boundaries, and communicate clearly with others (mandatory skills in functional polyamory) are super useful skills for monogamous people.

Also who is to say that society lives and dies by who were kissing and sleeping over with and fucking? We also have a society that is obsessed with selfish consumption while an increasing number of people are excluded from our economic abundance, suffering at the outskirts. To me that’s way more likely to destroy society than who I’m sleeping with.

Our views are so far apart, I think we can't have a productive discussion in an online forum. Suffice to say, I don't have a problem with you living your life as you please.

I just intuitively believe that if enough people think like you, there will no longer be a society that can support the existence of people like you. I can't prove this hypothesis.

I hear that. What I can say is that on the ground, this community I am in is thriving and struggling just like everyone else. We have jobs and worries and families. We buy stuff and pay taxes. We’re a mixed group of techies and poor artists and we help each other out and try to be good citizens and help out our broader community.

From my lived experience in this community, absolutely nothing says to me this is some unstable condition. Everyone who is in this community is in it because they are happier this way, and there’s a lot of happy people in this community. Depending on how you slice it our community isn’t for everyone but that’s okay.

So I hear that you have that hypothesis. I can report from the ground people are happy and productive.

If you think there’s something specific that would lead to some sort of societal problem I would be interested to hear about it.

You're right, but I don't think "just go to a sex party" scales up. There is simply way more male interest in such things. (Though yes, a lot of men would chicken-out last minute too.)

A gestalt of 3rd wave feminisism is "maybe if women are liberated, they will be hornier like men", and there was a huge amount of cultural messaging in this direction. It does not work, and as the interview entails, there is a lot of resentment from the women feeling like they were being propagandized to enjoy a hookup culture that didn't not fulfill their needs.

Either

1. men need to get less sociosexual 2. women need to get more sociosexual 3. wayyy more men need to come out as bi 4. or money needs to change hands.

We've already more or less tried and failed at 2 per the above, no one has a clear proposal for 1, 3 would be great but unclear how high the ceiling is, and then there's 4.

I would love to avoid 4 if anyone could actually come up with a serious proposal on how to massively increase sex party attendance / polyamory / etc. without money changing hands, but I am not seeing it.

If women are not happy with the hookup culture, then maybe you need to add one more option to your "either" list: marriage. I know that sounds quaint, but look around this thread and see that marriage need not mean monogamy, for a lot of people anyways, but stability (emotional, financial, familial, sexual).

Besides, your list comes across as very male-centered[0]: how do we provide men with all the sex they neeEeEeddd?? And oddly enough one answer to _that_ question is also marriage.

Now, there are unhappy sex-less married couples, so of course one question is how to address that. But at least in my and -as far as I can tell- my friends' experience marriage does provide men and women with the level of sexual activity that they need/want.

BTW, your (1) is probably happening as testosterone levels go down. Or at least one would expect that to be the case. If it is then you're getting your wish.

None of this is judging anyone.

[0] If your list is not male-centered, then it is still centered on this idea that sex parties are the bomb, but that's almost certainly not what most people think. I've a ton of close friends from all walks, many of them coupled, many not, and not one has ever even hinted that sex parties are a thing they care about, let alone come right out and said so.

I think it is really important to take societal pressure on woman into account here. Which you kinda touch on, but not fully.

If a woman is a slut, they are shamed. If a man is a slut, they are cheered on.

Or put another way, a woman has to play "hard to get" and can't be "easy". When was the last time you heard a man called "easy"?

There is a lot more shame put on woman for having a healthy sexuality that often leads to not exploring their desires.

Absolutely that exists, and I used to be more optimistic that with enough cultural shift that would go away and the problem would be solved, but now I am skeptical.

There's just tons of writing on women against frustration with changing cultural norms around casual sex that doesn't mention stigma at all, and I just can't hand-wave all that away as "subliminated stigma", as convenient as that would be!

> Their view of sex is as a sin

Interesting perspective. But this is actually what Protestant Christians believe: https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/columns/ad-fontes/5-surpri...

Right, there's a popular idea that Christianity is somehow anti-sex, but that's not really accurate if you look closely at the tradition itself. The Bible doesn't condemn sex, in fact, books like Song of Songs celebrate it in pretty vivid terms (just to name an example though one could dig up much more..).

What Christianity actually critiques is sex outside of marriage. The reasoning is that sex is viewed as the most complete form of love between two people, and so it belongs within the lifelong commitment of marriage. Even then, it's worth noting that sex isn't at the center of Christian moral teaching. "Sins of the flesh" are taken seriously, but they're considered less grave than sins like pride or cruelty, something C. S. Lewis explains very clearly.

It's less about being "anti-sex" and more about believing that something so powerful deserves a proper framework.

We can argue about the moral framework of Christian values, of course and many have, thoughtfully, but it's important to at least critique what Christianity actually teaches, rather than a caricature of it.

Christianity is against superficial fast-sex surrogates. It is against any superficiality in general and calls for true devotion in everything you do.

(There is a movie I like, “Old-fashioned” (2004), that has a moment where the hero talks about “a perfect honeymoon”.)

> What Christianity actually critiques is sex outside of marriage.

You were on a good track, until that sentence.

There are multiple sects of Christianity that criticize sex for many other contexts. You may be somehow unaware of this, but homosexual pleasures are disapproved by some churches.

Historically, that's still quite wrong. The Church consistently taught (at least in the West, since circa 400 A.D.) that total abstention was required of their holy leaders.

Yes, this.

Bizarre that I was downvoted for simply providing evidence. HN readers sure can be a strange bunch!

Even more interesting is that when shown irrefutable evidence of what Protestant Christians believe I am downvoted multiple times for showing it.

> The bigger issue here is outmoded predominant protestant christian views of 'morality'. And that percolates all through the rest of USA culture, including into advertisements and commercialism. Their view of sex is as a sin, so its shamed, hidden, and secretly desired.

Total strawman argument.

However, the bigger issue here is the demographic bomb detonating in slow motion. Demoting sexuality to a video game at your Bacchanal appears to be slow-motion suicide.

Possibly you could explain how your approach perpetuates the society, please?

> And really, everybody should at least try a sex party (Bacchanal) once. Have to do some std checks ahead of time, but its just so liberating and freeing for everyone. It gets money, possessiveness, prudishness, and all those distorting things out of the way. And puts sex into perspective. And well, its fun.

https://xkcd.com/592/

Sex parties are liberating for some people. Not for others. People who go to sex parties are not healthier or unhealthier in my experience.

pseudalopes says>" People who go to sex parties are not healthier or unhealthier in my experience."<

There is no doubt whatsoever that people who go to sex parties or who have more sex partners are more likely to be diseased. It's just germ theory and simple numbers: the more sexual contacts you have the more diseases you will carry.

Anyone desirous of having children someday would probably want their offspring to be free of disease. Ergo, steer clear of disease and seek a partner who has done the same.

yeah "possessiveness" has absolutely no basis in anything reasonable, let's villainize it too while we're pretending not to alienate anything about ourselves lol

I should have expected that my general attack on protestant Christianity's views on sex would get a sarcastic response.

And no, possessiveness in regards to other humans is honestly really bad. It may every so often feel good for a moment, in a 'they want me' sort of feel. But that has a really bad tendency to go off the rails and turn violent quickly.

There's ways to do sexuality and relationships healthy. Possessiveness, jealousy, shame, and other similar emotions aren't healthy for anyone involved.

Who cares about my tone, how about actually understanding the argument itself, which is based on science instead of your attempt to externalize your own religiosity?

I suppose you think you know better than thousands of psychologists who have explained the difference between adaptive and maladaptive. or perhaps you know better than billions of years of evolution. just because you don't understand how to bond with someone adaptively doesn't mean that there is no way to bond with someone adaptively. There's a reason why we want to make sure that our partners are actually bonded with us and trustworthy. It doesn't have anything to do with oppression. But your externalization and automatic presumption of pathology tells me a lot about what you must have experienced and what you never got to experience.