As some commenters pointed out, Grey's words in Newsweek, though unfairly slammed by Kathryn Jean Lopez, were actually kind of annoying. In response to the Mark Sanford scandal, she wrote,

Americans act so shocked when they hear about politicians, celebrities, and athletes having affairs, but I have to believe that many women who are married to men with power are aware of affairs, and accept it. Don't ask, don't tell; as long as they receive something in exchange from their husband-whether that exchange be children, money, material items, or sex. We create our own morals. It's once the affair goes public that morals change. The wife feels shame and humiliation because of public awareness, yet felt no desire to speak out prior. [...] Ideally, we should all openly have something extra on the side.

Commenter Old Jean Gallagher called this response "shockingly victim-blaming," which is pretty accurate. Grey criticizes political wives for making a public stink about their husbands' cheating, and sort of implies that they are all violating some previously agreed-upon quid pro quo. But while we may "create our own morals," when we're in relationships we need to agree on some of them, and it's unlikely that all wives of powerful men agree, even tacitly, to infidelity. As to her suggestion that we should all have something on the side, that's just as prescriptive as saying we should all be monogamous.

Grey seems much more thoughtful in her Dazed Digital interview with John-Paul Pryor. Pryor asks, "Do you think without prostitution and pornography there would be more instances of rape and so on? Or do you think that they actually allow for an arena where those kinds of abuses can take place?" The idea that porn and prostitutes act as a safety valve for men's natural desire to rape isn't new, but it is offensive — luckily, Grey handles it pretty well:

I think it depends. You have women on the street who are obviously being abused and they have pimps, I mean all you have to do is watch a few documentaries to see what that's like and how raw it is. That just perpetuates the negative stereotypes of prostitution, or pimping, or the johns. And then you have the women like Christine – they are like call girls, and they might not have a pimp; they are doing it on their own. I don't think that those necessarily perpetuate the abuse and the violence, but in the same vein, I don't think they help stop it at all. But the guys who are paying for the higher echelons don't beat the girls up – well, that's generally speaking from the research we did, maybe some politicians are going to go out there and beat some girls up, I don't know.

She makes the streetwalker-versus-call girl distinction that's been so much in the news lately, but she's careful to qualify it. She recognizes that just because she hasn't heard of violence against call girls doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Here's Grey on sex and communication:

Well, I just think it's 2009 and we're still so afraid to talk about sex. I think ignorance breeds fear and vice versa and the less you know the more negative things can happen, such as teenage pregnancy or the skyrocketing rate of STDs in young adults. It is about sexual freedom but it's about more than that, it's about communication and talking and learning. I think people are so afraid to do that; people are afraid of the truth – we'd rather hide inside a bubble.

And on acting:

I think the technical aspects and the people and the crews are all very similar but as far as performances go, I really hate it when people say, ‘Oh this is reality porn!" No. Because any time you put a camera in front of anybody, even if they have never been in front of a camera, they are going to act differently. For me, pornography is performing – it is what it is and I am an extension of myself, I am hyper me, whereas in a film like this, I am doing character research and I am stepping into the shoes of someone else, and I am thinking about my mannerisms.

It's nice to hear someone point out that pornography isn't real without denigrating it — Grey's words remind us that we can enjoy porn as a performance without expecting our actual sex lives to mimic it. Throughout the interview, she comes off as smart and appreciative of nuance — Kathryn Jean Lopez is missing out by dismissing her. However, Grey's also only 21 years old. While in most of the interview she sounds very mature and articulate, she occasionally makes statements like this one: "Before Christianity and Catholicism took over most people were in poly-amorous relationships."

I don't have the entire sexual history of the pre-Christian world at my fingertips, but I do know a little bit about Greece and Rome in the centuries immediately BCE, and I know that while upperclass men there often did have sex with multiple partners, the lives of their wives were pretty rigidly circumscribed. Of course, this doesn't mean women never had "something on the side," and it's frankly a little hard to tell who was screwing who thousands of years ago, especially among groups that didn't leave written records. But men were trying to control women's sexual behavior long before Christ, and the idea of a polyamorous pre-Christian golden age doesn't really hold water.

Maybe it's ageist of me to chalk up some of Grey's more sweeping statements to the fact that she's barely old enough to buy booze. I'm a half-decade older, and while I bet I could beat her in an ancient-history trivia contest, I may not actually know more about relationships. K. Lo's apparently 33, but being old enough to run for Senate hasn't taught her not to judge other people's personal choices. Grey can be judgmental too, but even in her short and very public life, she's managed to learn the value of "communication and talking and learning." A 21-year-old could do a lot worse.

Sasha Grey / The Girlfriend Experience [Dazed Digital]

Related: Governor Sanford's Appalachian Adventure

Earlier: Newsweek Too Hot For National Review Writer

The video above discusses a retreat called Sandstone, which began as a response to the baby boom of the 1950s, as a way of decoupling sex from procreation. And in today's baby-obsessed times, perhaps it makes sense that relationships that fall outside the nuclear family are viewed as shocking — and as ideal fodder for a trend piece.

Many polyamorists make a distinction between their lifestyle and swinging, but both do involve a rejection of the traditions of monogamy. Jessica Bennett profiles Terisa Greenan, her partners Larry and Scott, her boyfriend Matt, Matt's wife Vera, and Matt and Vera's six-year-old son. They all live in Seattle and identify as heterosexual polyamorists. Terisa and Scott started dating first, then added Larry, and later met Matt and Vera, who is now also dating Larry. Their relationship choices are accepted enough that Larry's polyamory club was once listed on Microsoft's internal website — but stigmatized enough that the Polyamory Society warns, "If your PolyFamily has children, please do not put your children and family at risk by coming out to the public or by being interviewed [by] the press!" At least one woman has lost custody of her child after outing herself as poly.

Bennett mentions Tilda Swinton as a celebrity proponent of the polyamorous lifestyle, but in a Double X interview, Swinton shies away from being a poster child for polyamory. She says,

I find it really interesting and slightly sad that it would be considered exotic to have children with one person, and remain very close friends with them, and to have a relationship with someone else. It has somehow morphed into some sort of polyamorous orgiastic experience. I mean, it's sad if it's exotic to be friends with someone one is so, so closely tied to and that he would be friends with, you know, my sweetheart. I mean, that seems to me really sad that people find it exotic. I think people are really into marriages these days.

Whether or not Swinton is truly poly, and whether or not "people are into marriages these days," many do seem to find polyamory "exotic" or even threatening. One reason is practical: Bennett writes, "Gay-marriage advocates have become leery of public association with the poly cause-lest it give their enemies ammunition." But another is more emotional. Allena Gabosch, the director of the Center for Sex Positive Culture, says, "Polyamory scares people-it shakes up their world view."

I always find myself simultaneously drawn to and disturbed by stories about polyamory. Drawn to them because polyamorists are doing something out of the ordinary and perhaps even feminist (Bennett points out that Terisa is the center of her particular group). But disturbed because of statements like the one Terisa's partner Scott makes: "I think if we were all given a choice, everyone would choose some form of open relationship." Polyamorists are usually careful to point out that their lifestyle isn't for everyone, but they and the people who write about them sometimes seem to be implying that polyamory is the wave of the future, the truly enlightened way to handle the restlessness and boredom that can creep into monogamous relationships. But while polyamorists say they have techniques for dealing with jealousy, I can't imagine those techniques ever working for me. So if polyamory is the true solution to the problems of monogamy, where does that leave people like me?

However, I'm starting to recognize this response as kind of a misguided one. At the end of the article, Scott softens his stance a bit. He says,

The people I feel sorry for are the ones who don't ever realize they have any other choices beyond the traditional options society presents. To look at an option like polyamory and say 'That's not for me' is fine. To look at it and not realize you can choose it is just sad.

Just as gay couples aren't forcing conservatives to become gay, polyamorists aren't trying to force me or anybody else to be poly. Nor are they necessarily saying it's more enlightened ("I like to call it polyagony," says polyamorist Ken Haslam). My negative reaction to the practice may be rooted more in outdated gender stereotypes (that women only open up their relationships to please variety-seeking men, for instance) and in my personal preferences than in anything actual polyamorists say or do. Of making her relationships work, Terisa says,

It's one of those things that sounds really basic, but I think a lot of people in conventional relationships don't take the time to actually tell their partner when they're feeling dissatisfied in some way. And sometimes it's as simple as saying, 'Hey, Larry,' or 'Hey, Scott, I really want to have dinner alone with you tonight-I'm feeling neglected.' We really don't let anything go unsaid.

Sounds like good advice, whether you're polyamorous or not.

Only You. And You. And You. [Newsweek]
The Feminist Roots Of Polyamory [Double X]

In an excerpt from his "memoir," Ménage, the author, a naive 22, "stumbles into" an arrangement with his bohemian landlords. He's an artist; she was his muse, he insults her by calling her "bourgeois"; you get the picture. Ewan and the discontented wife start an affair and, yup, it perks up the marriage!

[The husband] reported one day that he and "the bitch" had started having sex again after a period of many stale years. Their fights did not abate but now led to furious lovemaking. His smile secretly thanked me.

This is not, mind you, anything so above-board as "three in a bed." Rather, it's one partner taking a lover. He cites various successful (?) such menages: Henry Miller and Neal Casidy aren't really my ideal of stability - or feminist enlightenment - but then color me bourgeois. The trick, the author explains, is that everything has to be secret.

No, for a mènage to flourish, everything must remain unsaid, there must be secrets and deceptions, all conflicts must be kept alive, inflamed, eroticised. Flying in the face of our modern values, it is not self-expression but the constant suppression of truth that is empowering.

Open polyamory this is not: it's old-fashioned cheating teamed with classic male rationalization. I shudder to think how many guys like to imagine spouses and partners are giving unspoken permission with "secret smiles," and if it sounds like I speak from bitter experience, I do. He acknowledges that this sort of secret liberation is not for everyone:

The ménage is certainly not for everyone, its demands are taxing and there are victims. Many now claim that the affairs of Sartre and De Beauvoir were exploitative, that their "third parties" were abused. Their lovers were certainly not treated as equals (ironic, as they were both Gauchiste radicals). To the modern mind, which advocates equality, fairness, and the avoidance of all conflict, this must seem utterly undemocratic - a tyranny of the passions...Nonetheless, one must look at the many artists and radicals who were involved in ménages and acknowledge the power of the artworks and concepts that have been unleashed from living in such a way.

It should be noted that the author mentions at the end that he's never managed to succeed at "a monogamous union." Fancy that. Maybe hid girlfriends didn't understand that secret affairs, rather than trust and communication, are the way to stability.

The Magic Of A Ménage A Trois [TimesUK]

Polyamory is likely as old as time, love, censure, and certainly marriage. And now that same-sex marriage is gaining a legal foothold in more and more states, the World Polyamory Association, is, as the Daily Beast puts it, "pushing for the next frontier of less-traditional codified relationships." Says one member of the "triad" profiled (a married lesbian couple who recently committed themselves to a man), "I want to walk down the street hand in hand in hand in hand and live together openly and proclaim our relationship. But also to have all those survivor and visitation rights and tax breaks and everything like that." The concern, of course, is that they'll block the sidewalk for same-sex couples.

While polyamory as a concept can encompass any number of partners, WPA is seeking legalization, at this point, only for triads. As distinct from the fraught Jules et Jim-style menage a trois of popular imagination, triads are about stability:

Unlike open marriages and the swinger days of the 1960s and 1970s, these unions are not about sex with multiple outside partners. Nor are they relationships where one person is involved with two others, who are not involved with each other, a la actress Tilda Swinton. That's closer to bigamy. Instead, triads-"triangular triads," to use precise polyamorous jargon-demand that all three parties have full relationships, including sexual, with each other.

These are relationships which, if they are to succeed, demand a level of communication, clarity of expectation,organization, grasp of math, and maturity that few of us can aspire to - maybe a clue to why the vast majority of the community are, apparently, of the boomer generation. The truth is, while the notion of verboten "threesomes" still has a lurid grasp on the popular imagination, an untitillating adult version strikes the same people as weird. And yet, it's not hard to imagine that agitiating for legal acceptance of the three-way marriages would be prize ammunition for those anti-gay-marriage types who feared doomsday "floodgate" scenarios. While caution rarely changes much, would running in this case jeopardize the right to walk? (To use that metaphor, yes, again.)

Of course, it's hard to get a read on exactly how many triads would take advantage of legal marriage - although the nonprofit "Loving More" estimates that a quarter of "the estimated 50,000 self-identified polyamorists in the U.S" live together. That's not a big number, although one imagines a lessening of stigma would swell their ranks somewhat. In any case, the triad whom the author introduces as the "face" of would-be legal polyamory is, how shall we put it, far from mainstream: the most vocal of the three, Janet, claims on her website to "travel astrally," while all three "helm the school of tantra." In short, it's easy to dismiss them as crackpots, which, while it may do the movement a disservice, certainly makes the notion less scary to those who'd be alarmed. (The WPA website home page, it must be said, features a first-person account titled "More to Love!") Says Janet, <"We should have every right to inherit from each other and visit each other-I don't care what you call it, we're not second-class citizens! Any people who wish to form a marriage with all the rights and duties of a marriage should have the legal right to." But, the thing is, they, um, don't. And in legal terms, we're guessing this is very much a discussion for another day - if not another decade. Insert walking metaphor.

Threesome Marriages [Daily Beast]

If this guy's situation sounds like a (male) fantasy to you, you're not the only one. But according to the dude's Details piece, this sort of mid-Victorian kinda-open relationship is all the rage! "Call it negotiated wedlock, open fidelity, or monogamy 2.0. Call it every guy's fantasy. In my case it's a limited pass, authorization to tomcat without sacrificing my primary saucer of cream."

All the people (all men) quoted in the article say their open relationships have been the best thing that ever happened to their marriage: better sex, a richer connection, more trust. Although one guy says a girl he met was "pretty skeeved out" by the idea of sleeping with a married man, most of those quoted don't seem to have encountered any trouble. A couple of the cases cited are true open relationships, but in the others, it's just the man sleeping with other people, and while the author tries to make it all seem like one phenomenon, it's...not. One guy who sleeps around but doesn't want his wife to, puts it this way: "I'm a hypocrite...I admit it. I'm jealous."

And, as the author notes, it takes a "very secure" person to deal with letting your husband sleep around on you while you stay faithful. I'll admit right now to not measuring up. Because while true open relationships are one thing, and polyamory another, the gray area the author's describing seems....self-serving. And having been on the wrong end of a relationship that someone else thought was "open," this sort of thing raises my hackles. At the very least, I'd feel a lot better about the whole thing if a single one of these wives had actually been quoted, rather than our being told that it's their privilege to let their husbands get their manly, bestial urges out of the way while they wait happily at home. I present the author's conclusion with no comment:

Before my own mild foray to the dark side, my wife and I had become roommates, business partners, occasionally warring nations. But, after I fessed up to my outside activities, my wife seemed to see me in a new light-no longer the beleaguered husband but the swaggering player. And her incredibly selfless gesture reminded me why I'd fallen in love with her in the first place. Romance bloomed again...In fact, it's worked so well that my wife is now joking about playing the field herself. I will, of course, support her. With one caveat: Please, no bunny boilers.

Family Affair[Details]

First off, I know (and have known) many people in non-traditional relationships with non-vanilla sexual interests who have perfectly happy, loving relationships that incorporate each person's (usually complementary) fetishes in a supportive and open way. Sometimes, they have met through the Internet, sometimes through organizations designed to cater to their needs, sometimes through happy accident. But, as I have previously noted, for some fetishists, the fetish can serve as a pretty effective barrier to having an actual relationship with someone, which involves having to open yourself up to both positive and negative emotions. Walker lines up 4 examples of the latter type, with an asexual man and a charming older women who likes younger men (not a fetish!) seemingly the most well adjusted.

First up is "James," who loves his Real Doll like she's an actual person. He admits, like most serious Real Doll fetishists, to unspecified problems in having and maintaining relationships. Like his compatriots in this article, he hasn't told a soul about his fetish or the "woman" he loves and has sex with. He also prefers having sex with the doll to that with actual women, calling it "a lot easier and more pleasurable than the real thing," you know, where he'd have to take the needs of another person into account. But this, perhaps, is the money quote:

perhaps it's the power thing that appeals – being in control of every aspect of her.

Perhaps? I'd say that's exactly it.

Next up is the sex addict, "Simon," who cheats on his wife regularly with any NSA sex partner he can meet on a site designed to help spouses cheat. It's not that he doesn't love his wife, see, it's just he needs more sex than she can give him, and 12 years is a long time to fuck the same pussy! Of course, he could be single, or he could have an honest open relationship with his wife, but that's, of course, not the attraction. He only sleeps with married women, so they won't tell his wife, and says,

I know so many men who say things like, "Oh my wife wouldn't cheat on me," and I laugh and think, OK, whatever, mate – she probably already has, with someone just like me.

Except his wife, of course. She's the perfect wife. I don't know that Simon deserves to be categorized as a fetishists — if he and his wife had a legit open marriage, he might have been — but he's still a prick.

Onto "Gemma," who likes swinging and having sex with others watching. Having taken her last boyfriend to a sex party — where he watched her have sex with another dude (which is the point of a sex party) and didn't like it — she'll never tell a potential lover interest about her sexual interest out of fear that he'll leave. She will, of course, continue to go to sex parties and orgies and will never tell a soul about it because they'll think she's a slut. Naturally, she also doesn't think about dating anyone in the scene because, you know, they like to have sex with a lot of people.

Last on Walker's list of fetishists is "John," who has a fetish about playing at baby, which might (or might not) be related. But rather than continue to seek out relationships with women who fulfill his sexual fantasies and older-woman urges, he gets right on the Internet and orders himself up a wet-nurse and diaper-changer.

I realise that it sounds weird, but it gives me some sort of comfort at the same time as addressing my sexual needs. The fact that it's all done anonymously through the web provides me with extra privacy, too.

Basically, he went from having nominally-healthy relationships with older women that he cared about to having completely anonymous fetish sex with women he knows nothing about and ho know nothing about him.

Luckily, Walker interviews two people that really aren't technically fetishists — "Miriam" and "Mark" — who don't make all people with supposedly alternative lifestyles look like they are embarrassed about their life choices, selfish, controlling and/or sort of creepy. Miriam is a divorcée with grown children who dates younger men she meets on the Internet. That's about it. That's her "fetish." She thinks they're more fun in and out bed and, after a long marriage, ugly divorce and depression, she's just having a good time right now and isn't ashamed. Mark is an asexual, who just simply isn't interested in sex of any sort and never has been. He's open about it to at least some members of his family, has tried to find partners and belongs to an Internet of like-minded individuals who make him feel less alone in the world. He actually seems completely well-adjusted, and has an active social life with ongoing relationships with people, unlike the doll-guy or the diaperman.

Look, most people don't run around talking about their sex lives to a ton of people, which is totally fine (and a way to make holiday meals far less uncomfortable). But there's a difference between thrusting your sex life in people's faces and never having anyone that you're not sexually involved with (possibly anonymously) know who you really are. If a guy who likes to wear diapers and be breast-fed can't even tell the woman at whose teat he suckles his real name, he's not quietly living out his sexual fantasies in an emotionally healthy way, he's walling himself off from relationships that can fulfill him sexually and emotionally. And that sucks — for him and for the women who are potentially interested in both parts of him.

Modern Sex: Catherine Townsend Logs On To The New Revolution [The Independent]

Earlier: If You Always Like The Emotionally Unavailable, It's Because You Probably Are, Too
Why Am I Supposed To Date Older Men, Again?

First of all, there's sheer logistics. Since Vessel sees each of his girlfriends several times a week, he has to keep an overnight bag packed and is often away from home for four or five nights at a stretch. And he had difficulty explaining to his parents why he brought one girlfriend home to visit them but kept talking about another. The hardest work, though, is emotional. One of Vessel's girlfriends, Diana Adams, was jealous of another girlfriend's toothbrush — not because Vessel had purchased it, she claims, but because it was nicer than the one he'd purchased her. After they talked about it, Adams says, "I just decided that this was an example of a jealousy that is not warranted."

When you're in a monogamous relationship, jealousy is your prerogative. Excessive jealousy is, of course, a problem, and it can sometimes be hard to know where the line between reason and excess lies. But if your boyfriend buys another woman a toothbrush for her to use when she stays over at his house, you're allowed to be angry, and it's understood that you're angry because of something he did. But with polyamory, jealousy becomes something you just have to deal with. Even if you're open and honest with your partners, you still have to change your feelings — they don't have to change their actions.

Much like nations, relationships have to balance freedom and security. If you're polyamorous, you have the freedom to choose multiple partners — but not the security that your partner won't hurt you by loving someone else. Of course, you don't necessarily have that security in a monogamous relationship either — but you do get to ask for it. As Moe quoted in a post earlier this year, some polyamorists share "a cynical belief that the monogamous are stuck in a myth, one that leads to cheating, unhappiness or divorce court." And the monogamous, for their part, often take a dim view of polyamory. Sex researcher Edward O. Laumann callously told the Times that polyamorists are "just talking like that because they haven’t found somebody special." But like in so many aspects of sex and love, people probably fall along a spectrum, from those who crave security above all else, to those who are willing to put up with some heartache in order to love as many people as they want.

Hopelessly Devoted to You, You and You [NY Times]

Earlier: Is Polyamory Not Such A Retarded Idea After All?

• Love was in the air this week, especially for these gorillas who were doing it missionary. From now on, missionary sex will be referred to as "gorilla style."
  
• Maybe they should have bought condoms first, like the Golden Girls did. That Zbornak is always prepared!
  
• Another old broad, Jane Fonda, said cunt on the Today show.
  
• We pondered polyamory, which seems like something Jane would have been into in the 70s.
  
• Mariah Carey = Hello Kitty + Einstein. Think about it.
  
• Our favorite animated bleeding heart, Lisa Simpson, choo-choo-chooses Ralph Wiggum.
  
• Also involving choo-choos: the Darjeeling Limited-esque Free People catalog.
  
• Obama's campaign is like a runaway train! Hop on it!
  
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond inspired fantasies of dripping breeches.
  

• Butterfish gives a whole new meaning to dripping breeches.
  
• So watch out for anal leakage, get your rocks off, and watch some Cosby reruns. It's Friday!

Maybe so!

"Many of us tried to make monogamy work," Wagner says. But monogamy, she says, often seemed to throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. Its practitioners would break off "perfectly good relationships" just because of intellectual incompatibility, for example, or because one partner liked ballet and the other liked bowling. Doesn't it make more sense, polys ask, to keep the good parts of a relationship, and find another boyfriend who likes "Swan Lake"?

The compartmentalization of affection: It's completely at odds with today's Disney Princess/Coldplay-lyric view of marriage, in which your spouse is your lover, best friend, therapist and Wii buddy, and you also have identical taste in movies.

But as people are increasingly expected to self-actualize clear to the grave, what are the chances that they'll pair up with someone who is on the exact same path of discovery?

Thought: Maybe you can have it all. You just can't get it all from the same person.

It's the thought that illustrates a paradox in polyamory: Its practitioners have astonishing optimism for humans' endless capacity to love, to share, to forgive, to grow, to explore. But that optimism seems rooted in a cynical belief that the monogamous are stuck in a myth, one that leads to cheating, unhappiness or divorce court. They believe, as do some evolutionary biologists, that most humans do not have endless capacity to be faithful to just one person.

There's a vague aura of entitlement to polyamory. The concept that one deserves complete romantic fulfillment seems a decidedly Me Generation concept.

Nicole, James and Rebecca acknowledge that a group marriage requires work that a monogamous one does not. "At first, I felt interrupted all the time," says Rebecca. "We all have different communication styles."

"Sure, if I'm putting the baby to bed for two hours while they're having hot sex, I get annoyed," says Nicole. "But it's not because they're having sex without me. It's because I'm really tired and I've been putting a baby to bed for two hours."

Pairs With Spares

She didn't really provide much scientific evidence, but I think we both learned to respect our differences. Also, all the girls and the one gay I IM-ed pretty much said they were built for monogamy, though I didn't ask Tracie, and she'd probably disagree. Meanwhile, the only straight dude I asked, my ex-boyfriend, said he was not. Too bad I never sensed that from the pheromones he emitted!

MOE: Ok, so this interview you sent me is really interesting
MOE: But i was trying to determine who, the interviewer or the TIME guy, you took issue with
MOE: the interviewer irked me more

POLLYPOCKET: yeah they were both sort of swirling in a pool of awfulness
POLLYPOCKET: what i didn't like as I told Anna is the idea that they're still trying to talk about how marriage is some kind of baseline
POLLYPOCKET: as if the only real kind of "romance" we should worry about is marriage
POLLYPOCKET: even though all scientific evidence shows that we weren't built to marry or be monogamous
POLLYPOCKET: also the thing about women tricking men with birth control was heinous

MOE: well that was the interviewer

POLLYPOCKET: but I was really pissed about the time mag package in general
POLLYPOCKET: where they say "romance is this chemical illusion" but then use that as an excuse to basically say well so you just have to fight biology and stay married kids

MOE: Well, I see it as part of the whole "evolutionary biology is the new socialization" trend.

POLLYPOCKET: yeah
POLLYPOCKET: it is very much part of htat

MOE: But that's not what he said.
MOE: He said the chemistry of early romance was an unsustainable chemical state

POLLYPOCKET: exactly
POLLYPOCKET: but then he goes on to basically talk about how "dangerous" it is to try to find that state again
POLLYPOCKET: because it disrupts family, etc

MOE: Well, see
MOE: I think that's true
MOE: But I'm specifically thinking of men.

POLLYPOCKET: I think it's true if you build your whole society around the idea of monogamous marriage being the best way to raise kids
POLLYPOCKET: which it obviously isn't
POLLYPOCKET: nuclear family suxx

MOE: Hahaha what's your proposal?
MOE: BRING BACK THE ORPHANAGE

POLLYPOCKET: well we've only had this obsession with the nuke family in the US for about a century
POLLYPOCKET: I think extended families, kinship networks, more laxity in terms of being "faithful" — having an understanding that people can fuck around and have those happy chemicals without it having to undermine their family life
POLLYPOCKET: I mean, why not have a nice kinship network for your family/kids, but also have the chance to have little romances on the side?
POLLYPOCKET: that's truer to biology
POLLYPOCKET: and more fun
POLLYPOCKET: (c.f. Woman on the Edge of Time)
POLLYPOCKET: not that "being true to biology" is always a good thing . . .
POLLYPOCKET: /soapbos
POLLYPOCKET: box

MOE: See, I think the problems you're attributing to the "nuclear family" have more to do with poor urban planning.

POLLYPOCKET: Hmm

MOE: Not that we have discussed those problems
MOE: I also kind of hate falling in love though.
MOE: "Early romance" is not my bag.

POLLYPOCKET: Yeah it feels like taking a lot of speed
POLLYPOCKET: I hate it too

MOE: Hahahaha I take speed every day.

POLLYPOCKET: I mean, it's like the crawly awful part of the speed

MOE: to me it's like heroin.
MOE: Not that I would know

POLLYPOCKET: yeah I think heroin is actually supposed to be nice while it lasts
POLLYPOCKET: what I mean, is that you feel all crazed and tooth grindy and paranoid during that early love stuff
POLLYPOCKET: which makes sense it's the same chemicals that give you the meth high
POLLYPOCKET: anyway all I was saying was that I think it's weird that we have all this scientific evidence that humans are not really built for monogamous marriage
POLLYPOCKET: and it's weird that we keep insisting that's the way to go

MOE: So yeah, I don't know how much is socialization and how much is evolution and how much is just my particular set of genes, but I am very good at the middle stage of a relationship. And I really really want to find someone who agrees. But I had a happy childhood living in a city around lots of other kids etc. etc. so that's my narrative. But I definitely think I personally am built for monogamous marriage.

POLLYPOCKET: I think some people clearly are

MOE: However

POLLYPOCKET: But you might be an outlier

MOE: Hahaha I am on everything else
MOE: why not this

POLLYPOCKET: yeah, I think it's probably a spectrum (just like sexuality)

MOE: EXACTLY

POLLYPOCKET: some are totally mono, some are "sometimes mono," some are polyamorous freaks like me (I have 3 partners, I know gross)

MOE: Now, if only those same pheromones that attract you to a person with a different immune system
MOE: Could attract you to someone with the same views on monogamy.

POLLYPOCKET: yeah

MOE: So you have three partners
MOE: This is like Springer!
MOE: I kid

POLLYPOCKET: I do think that if our culture wasn't so obsessed with monogamy, it might be easier for a mono person and a poly person to be together without stigma
POLLYPOCKET: I know I am total springer material

MOE: OK so your partners

POLLYPOCKET: you don't know the half of it

MOE: are they poly?
MOE: Are they into each other?

POLLYPOCKET: they are NOT into each other that would be livejournal scary

MOE: hahaa
MOE: are they into others?

POLLYPOCKET: drama times four hundred
POLLYPOCKET: yeah they are poly too
POLLYPOCKET: well two of them are geeks, so they are poly when they can find others who crave Linux

MOE: hahaha
MOE: well you live in San Francisco right?

POLLYPOCKET: yup — home of sexual deviance
POLLYPOCKET: and Linux lvoers

MOE: SF is its own socialization

POLLYPOCKET: that's certainly true
POLLYPOCKET: though there is a giant poly network in Boston too for some reason
POLLYPOCKET: they all buy giant houses together
POLLYPOCKET: scary

MOE: Hahaha bc they're too cold to have the energy to go out and fuck around in Boston.

MOE: well i am a big believer in pheromones

POLLYPOCKET: me too
POLLYPOCKET: there are people I can't do because of how they smell (and I don't mean they smell bad or anything)

MOE: andwhat i do not understand is why some dudes just indiscriminately try to fuck girls that way

POLLYPOCKET: yeah I know several guys like that

MOE: it takes a very specific chemical mix to me

POLLYPOCKET: it's sort of like OCD — "try this one" "try this one"

MOE: ok, here's a question, poly gay lady!

POLLYPOCKET: hahah poly bi lady please
POLLYPOCKET: I want to sound as 70s as possible

MOE: with lesbians, are you ALSO attracted to pheromones of ppl with opposite immune systems?

POLLYPOCKET: I might be a bad person to ask about this because I prefer boys

MOE: oooh

POLLYPOCKET: And the girls I like are usually tomboys

MOE: ahhhhh

POLLYPOCKET: I loooooove tomboys holy shit
POLLYPOCKET: and I like girly guys who remind me of tomboys

MOE: me too i like tomboy girls like samantha ronson

At this point the conversation becomes ridiculous and somewhat unpublishable. But it ended well!

POLLYPOCKET: kthxbai