* Edge play goes over the edge: Gunplay sex fantasy game ends with wife dead. (nydailynews.com)
* Kinsey Confidential published the third part of their interview with TinyNibbles friend Dan Savage, and in part three he says some extremely controversial things about monogamy. You might find yourself taking a side. (kinseyconfidential.org)
* Hustler demanded that Time Warner Cable hand over the names and info on 4,000 alleged porn filesharers so Hustler’s lawyers could proceed with the shakedown – Time Warner said no. Hustler has given up. IMO: great news for any innocent people who would have been harmed by this. (news.cnet.com)
* This has been giving me LOLs: a CNN affiliate made up a news story about the Microsoft Kinect delivering porn to children – and I’m still seeing it passed around low-level news content farms as fact. (escapistmagazine.com)
* What Turkey’s military does to gay men is so fucked up and crazy, I think it is very much a human rights issue. “… gays also report that they were asked to produce photographs showing them as participants in anal intercourse. (…) “The man should be in the passive position, receiving from behind,” L. explains, “and looking at the camera. Preferably while smiling.” Read more in Do Ask, Must Tell. (foreignpolicy.com)
* Watch free sex ed videos on very kinky activities made by sex educators and sex professionals (kinkacademy.com)
Image from Abbey Lee Kershaw & Edita Vilkeviciute by Mario Sorrenti for Interview December 2010.
I respect these opinions, but let’s not forget, that is all they are. Monogamy, in MY opinion, is no more evil or aberrant than, say, homosexuality or people who prefer leather over lace. Monogamy works great for me, and straying from it can, from my observations, for lots of people, lead to emotional confusion over the level of one’s commitment to one’s partner. Let’s not go around establishing rules for everyone based on what we think works for us.
Conflicted, I don’t see the roles as reversed, as much as they are moved further in one direction along a continuum. You are spot on in your assertion that whereas conservative ideology may seem to prize the Rayndian notion that “to the victor go the spoils”, in reality conservatives are more monogamous minded. However, I see the non-monogamous lifestyle as less the opposite of that, and more the community spirit of left-wing ideology taken to the next level. After all, it’s not like they’re advocating that every man and woman be allocated one life-partner of his or her choice, but rather that we share with each other as much as we’d like. In other words, it’s not your wife/ husband… it’s the community’s wife/ husband.
ZOMG… SWINGERS AND POLYAMOROUS PEOPLE ARE COMMUNISTS!!! NOOOO!!!!! Just kidding. Yay open relationships!
I don’t necessarily take issue with the assertion that monogamy is hard or unnatural, but I would definitely disagree with Dan’s characterization of the history of monogamy vs non-monogamy. A society which is polygynous (wherein men may have multiple wives) is not necessarily a paradise for men. In fact what such as society *actually* creates is an upper class wherein the men with the most resources and power may take the most wives, leaving few to none for the already indegent serfs.
In a monogamous society, while there may in fact be infidelity, and there may still be a certain amount of harem-building that those with wealth and power can hope to achieve, there is the general expectation that even if a man isn’t necessarily high on the totem pole of status and power the numbers of “available” women increase, possibly dramatically and thus he may some day marry or otherwise hope to have some form of sexual outlet aside from turning to the comforts of other low-status men.
So from this perspective, one might surmise that non-monogamy is the most compatible worldview for the right-wing “every man sinks or swims on his own, and to the victor go the spoils” mentality while monogamy is the more natural extension of the left-wing worldview of creating a pool of plenty for the good of the commons. Funny then, that in the “real world” that this is completely reversed.
Yeah, I don’t get that. It would seem to me that if you were already cool with non-monogamy, then the more secure you are about your relationship, the more secure you’d be about some (safe, honest, harmless) screwing around on the side.
I’d guess it’s one of two things; succumbing to some deeply, culturally ingrained concepts about what a relationship is “supposed” to be now that it’s serious, or succumbing to some deeply, culturally ingrained ideas about love coming with some sort of ownership and inciting unwanted feelings of jealousy.
I’m glad someone else is finally pointing out how badly monogamy doesn’t work, and much more eloquently than I ever could. I’m also glad he pointed out that monogamy != commitment. Thanks, Violet, for posting that link.
I like Dan Savage, I like SavageLove, and I more or less agree with him. However, I don’t really appreciate the tone he takes when talking about his army of “flying monkeys.”
We may hear of relevant stories through Savage’s site or some other means, but we’ve always been motivated by the causes, not by the heralds.
This concept that he can command his winged monkeys to attack is both a naive misrepresentation of the way the web and social media work, and an underhanded jab at the autonomy of his readers.
I understand the comment was likely made tongue-in-cheek, but as Savage derives his relevance from his readers he ought to give them credit rather than claim ownership of them.
Dan also brought up interesting points on monogamy and non-monogamy in his column this week:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=6064090
I wonder how many of us go from being cool with non-monogamy to find that it hurts after we fall in love. I really, really don’t fucking understand this.
Quoted for truth; “We have put a lie at the heart of all of our long-term romantic relationships and then we wonder why they fall apart. Two people are looking at each other and lying to each other every day about something very important, and they both know that the other is lying every day. Then they don’t trust each other, oddly enough, after all that lying back and forth.”
“Because we value monogamy over commitment.”
I think that last part is really at the center of the issue. Monogamy and commitment are two separate concepts that are NOT mutually inclusive, contrary to popular opinion. My husband and I would lie down on train tracks for each other. I helped him go to the bathroom after he broke four ribs, and he spent every minute of every day for a week in my hospital room when I had brain surgery. What the fuck could it possibly matter if one of us had sex with another person? What would that even have to do with our level of love and commitment to one another?