4 of 9: Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving – Preview

“Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving”


BiReCon: Selected Proceedings from the 2010 Int’l Bisexual Research Conference

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD, Keynote Speaker
Part 1 – Preamble: Manifesting Bisexuality, Cont’d
Attending BiReCon put me in touch with research projects funded by the American Institute of Bisexuality.  AIB has been in action on this count.  Its current emphasis on bi men is a way to put the accent where it’s needed.  I tend to date bisexual men because their potential for love is expanded.  They are more likely to enjoy their own erotic receptivity in the arts of loving and to be more adept in feeling the pleasure of the other.  For me that’s the mark of an artist.  I was overjoyed to see my hunch confirmed by research on bi men’s brain function.  Apparently, when given a chance to feel comfortable with their amorous practices, bi men are every bit as healthy, happy, and sound as anybody else.  The only difference is a plus: When it comes to bi men, we find erotophilia in abundance![1] 
 
I also know of course how difficult it is for bi men to be out in their professional lives and as public figures.  Most men tend to rely on their own income for social status and self-definition.  More erotophobic stigma accrues on men based on the myth that women’s sexual capacity is inferior.[2]  Poverty and the economic crisis round up the picture, with special effects on bi men in poor countries and minority groups.[3]  I would have liked to see more of the work of Lisa Diamond on female sexual fluidity and the combination of heritable and circumstantial factors that result in one’s sexual behavior and amorous practices.  Yet, by Diamond’s own admission, that of some of the women she surveyed in the longitudinal study, and from other research accounts, in our time, bisexuality in women is not as publicly stigmatized as it is in men (2008 passim, and Fahs, 2009).  The need to design separate research projects for men and women seemed a result of the different situations faced by the two groups.  Hopefully, AIB will soon develop a parallel research focus on bi women.  Given the high incidence of transgender people in bi communities, it might be wise at some point to design research projects also for this group.  Meanwhile, of course, research in the arts that extol the virtues of bisexual Eros is good too.  At BiReCon 2010, the emphasis on bi men helped to focus on the most deeply seated fears in the way of imagining a world beyond the homo/hetero divide.  Proactive research presented therein shows that, where secular values prevail, young men are less affected by the bi stigma (Ripley and Anderson, in this volume).  Once we wade through these fears, the magic and fun of being bi begins to appear.  Could sexuality be nothing but the sum total of the arts of loving in all their imaginative creativity?
The conference connected me with multiple new aspects of bisexuality in relation to activism, community, and research; aspects I could not have considered so well outside of the context the conference offered.  I refer to the combination of social, local, political, theoretical, global, and intergenerational energies and dynamics brought together by the location, the combination of national, international, and research-focused events, the venue, and the teams of organizers, participants, and presenters.  As that connection became more articulate, I became aware of how utopian, perhaps dystopian, and in any event unrealistic, my original intention was, at least in an immediate range and on a planetary horizon.  As a participant, I was privileged to brush against a whole new generation of bisexuals who grew up while people in my age group were struggling with the early impact of AIDS on sex-positive cultures.  Delegates came from many different countries and world regions.  Bisexuality coexists with homosexuality in all these areas.  However, in some cultures, homosexuality is illegal as in India; or worse, it is relentlessly persecuted, as in Uganda.  In other cultures, a fast forward movement has made strides toward equality for gays and lesbians, as in Spain and the cluster of Latin American countries affiliated with the Iberian peninsula by language and colonial legacy.  Obviously, regimes of coexistence vary with different versions of the homo/hetero divide.  Picking up the aural energies in the context of these discussions opened up my ears.  I became present to the malaise, obstacles, difficulties in the way of reaching out for that portal. 

Read the article as it continues to continues to appear in Poly Planet GAIA.  Section will be posted every three or four days.  Become a follower of the blog and be notified every time a new posting appears. 
Acknowledgment: This piece is pre-published here with permission of Routledge, New York, a division of Taylor and Francis.  

BiReCon | 28 BiCon | 10 ICB

Bisexuality Research Conference, 28th Bisexuality Conference, 10th International Conference on Bisexuality, London, UK, August 26-30, 2010


BiReCon Proceedings: A forthcoming issue of The Journal of Bisexuality

[1] This point was made in the presentation by John Sylla, from work in progress that did not make it in this volume. 
[2] Sources on women’s sexual capacity and its expanded multiplicity include Winston 2010, Ley 2009, and Ryan and Jetha 2010. 
[3] My main source is Scott (2007), another useful source is Dworkin (2002).
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3 of 9: Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving – Preview

“Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving”

BiReCon: Selected Proceedings from the 2010 Int’l Bisexual Research Conference

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD, Keynote Speaker

Pert 1 – Preamble: Manifesting Bisexuality, Cont’d
The idea of a portal is useful to allude to the socially transformative potential of a certain subcultural group or community.  In my view, bisexuality is strong with this potential when it comes in conjunction with other healthy, fun, cheerful styles of erotic expression that enhance imaginativeness and creativity.  In many ways the conference confirmed this for me.  The Renaissance festive tradition was mentioned in relation to bisexual readings of Shakespeare.[1]  Styles of erotic expression one could observe at BiCon included cross-dressing, gothic, naturism, gender-queer, polyamory, mild BDSM, and others.  Research presented alluded to the need to define styles of love beyond merely functional sexual activity, especially among young people.[2]  In these and many other similar contexts bisexuality is liberating because it makes erotic expression more artistic. 
When I claim that love is an art, I don’t mean to deny its other aspects.[3]  Of course love is a need and an instinct.  In that respect, like sex, it is also an appetite and a drive.  The problem is with a culture that considers it primarily as such.  What I propose is infusing new value in love’s artistic quality.  As a bona-fide Italian, it behooves me to compare appetites.  Another well-known human instinct is hunger.  Food is what notoriously satisfies it.  In relation to this appetite, I’d like to call attention to the fact that most people appreciate the art of satisfying one’s hunger in ways that are healthy, sophisticated, diverse, creative, artistic, and respectful of one’s inclinations.  We ask for menus when we eat out.  When cooking is good, we consider it an art.  We call it cuisine!  More to the point, we tend to respect various styles of eating, including gourmet, country, nouvelle cuisine, fusion, ethnic, healthy, macrobiotic, vegetarian, vegan, locavore (for locally grown foods), and many others.  We value sampling various styles and combining them to meet the pleasure and health needs of those involved.  As an advocate of bisexuality, let me offer here the following food for thought.  If we only did the same with the arts of loving, the result would be a society where Eros, the force of love, is considered amicable.  It would be a society where erotophilia is abundant, erotophobia scarce.[4]  It would be, in short, a more loving, fun, and healthier society. 
By comparison, one can easily get a measure of the damage incurred when the artistic aspect of love is neglected.  Let’s pretend for a moment to apply to hunger the same monosexual, monogamous rules currently in use for sexuality.  What if “experts” about that particular appetite prescribed the same food, cooked in the same style, every time one eats, “until death does one part” from life?  How healthy, how loving, would that prescription be?  And, would anybody even mind “parting”?  Yet, when exclusivity is expected of sexual partners in both gender and number, that’s exactly what’s being asked!  Take “fast food” for example.  The “fast food” industry can be described as a response to hunger notoriously devoid of art.  Fast food tends to encourage what may be termed “monovore” behavior because it is purely functional.  Its dangers to the health and happiness of anyone have been recently documented in Super Size Me, a testimonial film about how one can gain 25 pounds in a month from an exclusive diet of Big Macs, plus various conditions leading to obesity, depression, and heart attacks.  Let me propose for a moment that exclusivity in the practice of love could be just as damaging.  If we can entertain that hypothesis, there is a big role to play for bisexuality.  As a portal to a world beyond the homo/hetero divide, bisexuality can produce a culture that breaks away from gender binaries and welcomes erotic love again as a positive energy in human life. 
The challenge is proving this in the current erotophobic cultural climate.  A quick survey of the kind of research on bisexuality that has taken hold in academe in the AIDS era shows that male bisexuality appears mainly in relation to some impending danger, and often in the context of staving off criminalizing attitudes in the medical and other service professions.[5]  Despite good intentions, the results are dubious.  They seem to perpetuate prevailing myths.  One title sounds especially lurid “Secret Encounters: Black Men, Bisexuality, and AIDS in Alabama” (Lichtenstein 1993).  The Journal of Bisexuality has countervailed this, but have its voices been heard outside of bi circles?[6]  Academe tends to provide a secular counterpoint to illiberal impulses from less culturally aware sectors of society, in a mainstream that can be easily manipulated through the media.  A bevy of more current sources on sex-positive cultures is now available from respected scholars who, by their own admission, appreciate these cultures.  They concur in indicating that early third-millennium societies are deeply divided about what sex is, what should be known about it, who should have it, where, when, and with whom.[7]  The rift seems to be between circles where secular values prevail, and social groups organized around institutionalized styles of religion where fundamentalist fears have had their way. 
Secular people today are much more familiar with styles of erotic expression beyond heteronormativity than when I was a kid, in the early 1960s.  In many secular communities, erotophilia has expanded to embrace gay, lesbian, bi, trans, poly, pan, omni, gothic, BDSM, metro, eco, and many other labels people use to describe their styles of sexual expression.  Free form spirituality, tantra, naturism, paganism, and swinging are also fairly erotophilic.  However, erotophobia has also become extreme (Klein 2006).  While in secular circles the AIDS crisis has promoted more awareness of sexual diversity, the same crisis has been manipulated by conservative political forces to wage what civil rights activist Marty Klein calls a full-fledged “war on sex” (Klein 2006).  Can this war be won?  Not as long as “Eros,” the energy of love, is what makes our hostess planet Gaia alive.  Yet the rift is serious and bisexuality seems to fall through the cracks.  When bisexuality becomes the location of aberrant desire in both mainstream public discourse and LGBT institutions, the artistic quality of love becomes invisible and the homo/hetero divide reigns supreme.  If proactive research can undo this positioning, we can get a sense of how practicing love beyond gender can promote health in human communities.  With renewed attention to the artistic quality of love, a holistic notion of sexual health can be articulated too.

[1] McLelland, in this volume.
[2] Ripley, and Anderson, in this volume. 
[3] The idea that love is an art is not new.  My main sources are Ovid (1957), from antiquity, and Fromm (1956), from the Frankfurt School.  It’s a subtext in many other works too.  The good thing about this idea is that it implies that love can be taught and one’s talents make one a good student. 
[4] My main source on erotophobia is Ince, 2003.  Erotophilia was discussed at the conference in relation to in-progress AIB research.  The word comes from Eros, the name of the Greek god of love. 
[5] Examples include Lever and Kanouse 1992, Lichtenstein 2000, Stokes and McKirnan 1993. 
[6] My main sources are Worth (2003) and Miller (2002).
[7] My sources on this rift include Druckerman 2007, Ley 2009, Barash and Lipton 2001, Ince 2003, and Levine 2003.
Read the article as it continues to appear in Poly Planet GAIA.  Section will be posted every three or four days.  Become a follower of the blog and be notified every time a new posting appears. 
Acknowledgment: This piece is pre-published here with permission of Routledge, New York, a division of Taylor and Francis.   


BiReCon | 28 BiCon | 10 ICB

Bisexuality Research Conference, 28th Bisexuality Conference, 10th International Conference on Bisexuality, London, UK, August 26-30, 2010


BiReCon Proceedings: A forthcoming issue of The Journal of Bisexuality

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

2 of 9: Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving

“Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving”

BiReCon: Selected Proceedings from the 2010 Int’l Bisexual Research Conference

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD, Keynote Speaker
Part 1 – Preamble: Manifesting Bisexuality
It was a pleasure and a privilege to be invited to give a keynote address at BiReCon.  As a scholar of bisexuality who comes from the arts and humanities, and as an author who, admittedly, lives her life as an experiment in traversing sexual cultures, I had been waiting for this conference to happen.  I had been wishing and rooting for it.  I had been wondering what was keeping it from happening–was anything wrong in the Bi movement?  When the invitation came I was overjoyed.  It took me a while to secure travel funds and confirm acceptance.  Thanks to Meg Barker, Christina Richards, Regina Reinhardt and others at the American Institute of Bisexuality for making that trip possible.  I prepared to speak of bisexuality as a portal to a world where Eros, the energy of love, is recognized as the force that makes Gaia, the third planet, alive.[1]  My summer plans got organized around the BiReCon/BiCon appointment in London, UK, beginning August 26th, 2010.
As I said, my intention in giving the address was that of presenting bisexuality as a portal to a world of amorous sensibilities beyond the homo/hetero divide.  I consider sexuality the cultural construct of Western modernity that organizes love as a need or an instinct.  I find this to be reductionist.  Love is of course a need and an instinct.  But it’s also, and perhaps most importantly at this time, an art.  The art of loving is what makes all styles of amorous expression fun, playful, and amusing, including hugging, cuddling, spooning, playing with toys, leather and Jacuzzis, gender-bending, sporting sexy outfits, swinging, threesomes, tantric breathing, and a bunch of other activities that are consensual, inventive, spontaneous, romantic, exciting, intimate, and humorous.  These activities keep artists of love in balance with the amorous communities in which they participate.  The art of loving, in my view, is inspired by the energy of Eros that infuses Gaia with life.  Hence my title: “Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a BI Planet,” which almost coincides with the title of my latest book.  Gaia, for the web of life that sustains our species on the third planet; the New Politics of Love, that places love, the source of life, at the new center of the political stage; all of which bodes well for a Planet that’s getting BI, with useful Notes provided toward that process. 
According to Gaia science, the web of life that sustains our species on the third planet is interconnected.  Our first ancestors, bacteria, are four billion years old.  They have sex with their neighbors to rejuvenate themselves–regardless of gender or reproduction—and to exchange genes.  As artists of love, their behavior is—to say the least—orgiastic.  Yet it has been evolutionarily rewarded!  We humans, the “new kids on the block” among earthly species, have been at war with Gaia now for quite a while–which has resulted in climate change and other assorted environmental disasters.  We could be extinct tomorrow while bacteria are still around.[2]  Why?  There is one simple explanation: Unlike humans, bacteria, our most resilient ancestors, allow the energy of Eros to circulate among them free of needless fears.  Gaia is blue, and green, and white.  It teems with life.  Without our ancestors, it would be as brownish as its neighbors Mars and Venus: A rock where nothing moves.  Given this scientific perspective, there is no reason why human bisexuality should not be the most natural, the healthiest thing on the planet. 

So the idea of a portal seemed fine.  It would open new horizons.  It would resonate with the work of Robyn Ochs, another keynote speaker, whose book, Getting Bi, registers voices of bi people across the planet.  Yet it felt a bit off and perhaps not quite in tune with what was out there in the melee of early third-millennium bisexual life.  After all, I came out in the early 1990s, I’ve organized my personal and professional life largely around bisexuality, and I’ve had plenty of time to select extraneous influxes out of it.  Attendance in BiReCon and BiCon combined provided a unique standpoint to get the pulse of where bisexuality is at in a variety of geo-cultural locations and from the multiple perspectives of research, scholarship, theory, creative expression, advocacy, and community building.  (For insights on those dynamics I refer readers to “BiReCon,” in this volume, a contribution by the organizers.)  The context was perfect for producing knowledge in action.  At the time of this writing, I’ve had a chance to reflect on my own keynote remarks, on the experience of participating in the two events combined, and the process of creating the present volume from contributions thereof.  I choose this as an opportunity to offer the wisdom of what I learned in the process, along with a written elaboration of my keynote remarks.

[1] Gaia is the ancient Greek name for the Earth/fertility goddess central to the matrifocal civilizations of the Neolithic (Gimbutas 1989, 2001).  Thanks to James Lovelock and Gore Vidal, it is now also used in science (1979, 1988). 
[2] My sources in Gaia science are Margulis and Sagan, 1991 and 1997.  Their work as a team shines a significant light on the connections between sexuality, symbiosis, and the evolution of life from bacteria to humans.  It falls within the aegis of Gaia theory, respected yet still controversial in many scientific circles.  I also refer to my own work (2009), and to Lovelock’s classics (1979, 1988, 2001, 2006).

  

Read the article as it continues to appear in Poly Planet GAIA.  Section will be posted every three or four days.  Become a follower of the blog and be notified every time a new posting appears. 
Acknowledgment: This piece is pre-published here with permission of Routledge, New York, a division of Taylor and Francis.   

BiReCon | 28 BiCon | 10 ICB

Bisexuality Research Conference, 28th Bisexuality Conference, 10th International Conference on Bisexuality, London, UK, August 26-30, 2010


BiReCon Proceedings: A forthcoming issue of The Journal of Bisexuality

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

1 of 9: Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving

“Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving”

BiReCon: Selected Proceedings from the 2010 Int’l Bisexual Research Conference

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD, Keynote Speaker
Abstract
This article presents bisexuality as a portal to the arts of loving where Eros, the energy of love, is recognized as what makes Gaia, the third planet Earth, alive.  It is a reflection on the author’s experience as a keynote speaker at BiReCon, and as a participant in both BiReCon and BiCon.[1]  The article is organized into three sections.  The “Preamble” muses about how bisexuality manifests today, the current status of the bisexual movement, and how bisexuals (bis) are positioned within LGBT communities, their institutions, and in mainstream society.  In this first section the author reflects upon her experience at the events.  “Addressing the Audience” is a rendition of her actual keynote address.  This second section focuses on why it’s key at this time to see bisexuality as a portal to a world that is more eco-friendly and erotophile.  By way of Annie Sprinkle’s evolving work, the section establishes continuity between bisexuality and ecosexuality.  The author also uses her own experience of bisexual erasure at the French libertine resort of Cap d’Agde in order to encourage more research and education about bisexuality and the multiple contexts where it manifests.  The address also invites readers to imagine the world behind this portal, where a paradigm shift has already occurred.  Love is considered an art, Gaia is recognized as the “gay” planet, the homo/hetero divide has disappeared, and the energy of Eros circulates beyond socially constructed binaries.  The third section or “Conclusion” suggests ways to initiate this shift by considering “organic bisexuality” and “holistic sexual health.” 
Keywords
Eros, Gaia, bisexuality, ecosexuality, erotophilia, gay planet, art of love, Annie Sprinkle, Cap d’Agde, bisexual men and women, organic bisexuality, holistic sexual health
Read the article as it appears in Poly Planet GAIA.  Section will be posted every three or four days.  Become a follower of the blog and be notified every time a new posting appears. 

Acknowledgement: This piece is pre-published here with permission of Routledge, New York, a division of Taylor and Francis.   

BiReCon | 28 BiCon | 10 ICB

Bisexuality Research Conference, 28th Bisexuality Conference, 10th International Conference on Bisexuality, London, UK, August 26-30, 2010


BiReCon Proceedings: A forthcoming issue of The Journal of Bisexuality

[1] BiReCon: Bisexuality Research Conference, BiCon: Bisexuality Conference: 10 ICB: Tenth International Conference about Bisexuality.  These three events took place at the University of East London, Dockland Campus, on August 26-30, 2010, in a coordinated, almost simultaneous way, with BiReCon on opening day, the 26th.  
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

Finally, GAIA on Kindle: Start reading in less than a minute! Ecosexual Gift if you buy on Sept 26th!

We at 3WayKiss wish to sincerely thank you for your attention to this.  We are delighted to offer Gaia on Kindle, the recently released digital edition of Gaia and the New Politics of Love. Regarded as an avatar of ecosexual theory, this controversial book is a Silver Winner in
Click now to get Gaia on KindleCosmology and New Science for the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  Now you can start reading it in less than a minute, and without the waste of a single twig!  If that weren’t ecosexual enough, you can also get a fabulous Gift when you make your purchase on September 26th.  This Sunday has been announced world wide as the push-up date to bring the title up into the digital best-seller list. 

When people like you decide what a best seller looks, feels, reads like, we can transform the publishing industry into one that really reflects the creative intelligence of readers.  When you decide to participate in this push, you also create better book-contract opportunities for writers whose creative intelligence resonates with your ideas, ideals. This book has been described both as a ‘disgrace’ and as a ‘masterpiece.’  It has made waves of differing opinions in its own niche communities.  The author has issued a ‘clarification statement’ in response to these.  Don’t you wish to know what this is all about immediately?  Well . . . . yes, you do, but please mark your calendar for the 26th and on that day click on the  book-cover image.

We at 3WayKiss wish to thank you from a deep place in our heart.  We are a non-profit based in Puerto Rico devoted to the mission of “educating the public world wide about the arts of loving and their infinite forms of expression that our species make piece with our gracious hostess, the third planet Gaia.”  We could not be more thrilled to reach out with this special offer to you!

If you are not familiar with digital book reading, this is a good time to start.  Download the free software Kindle for PC, or another free software for mobile devices.  What a great, ‘right livelihood’ way to read.  No more paper, no more trees!  No more storing, dusting, shipping, logging around those heavy, expensive print books.  All the intensity, complexity, reliability, in-depth knowledge a book can offer, for the feather weight of a digital file stored on your hard disk!

Teaching Gaia in Greece
With Regina Reinhardt and Robyn Ochs in London for BiReCon
Annie Sprinkle – Wedding to the Moon

What a relief for those of us aspiring to a light footprint.  And how consonant with the whole idea of Gaia as the basis for a new, ecosexual politics of love! Start building your digital library on the 26th!

The author’s summer has been fabulous with new travels and experiences, including seminars on The Wisdom of Love in the San Francisco Bay Area with such avatars of Polyamory as Deborah Taj Anapol and Dossie Easton; teaching compersion, polyamory, and Gaia theory in Washington State and Greece; coaching participants ready to design the amorous life of their dreams; visiting oracle shrines in Greece and naturist villages in France, and keynoting at BiReCon the Bisexuality Research Conference in England. 

Now she’s ready for more, with participation in Annie and Beth’s Wedding to the Moon ecosexual performance and symposium in LA, October 23-24, with workshops and readings planned for the 16 and the 19, more workshops on Managing Jealousy in November in Puerto Rico, and more events to be announced.


As a reward for participating in the push-up day for Gaia on Kindle, you get a fabulous ecosexual Gift:  Bring your proof of purchase to any of her events and you’ll get a discount of up to $ 20 on the door charge. That’s more than double the purchase price for Gaia on Kindle!More details on events will be announced soon.  Stay tuned for the Newsletter with Calendar of Events. You can also follow us on our blog, PolyPlanetGAIA, and learn a lot more about Gaia and ecosexual theories, practices, possibilities.  Become a follower here. You can follow us on Facebook, become a fan of Gaia here,or simply friend Serena Anderlini

With deep appreciation for your interest and business, we at 3WayKiss remain yours truly, in devotion and ecosexual friendship.

Namaste,
Serena Anderlini @ 3WayKiss
author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love, a Silver Winner for Cosmology and New Science for the 2010 Nautilus Book Awards, and many other fabulous books
Professor of Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

 

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

Vivien Leigh: A Savvy, Healthy Collaborator who Spent Time Having Fun with her Boss

Of the many comments about the recent book that criminalizes Vivien Leigh’s sexual behavior, i found one to be quite interesting: it critiques the book for its sensationalism and criminalization, and emphasizes the idea that Vivien, as an employee who went to the brother with her boss, must have been brave, a person with good self esteem!
the author is one Svutlana, who writes a very interesting English, which seems to have a simplified grammar from another language, and has an uncanny resemblance to the kind of street talk one hears in certain parts of town. the form may be funny, but it reveals an interesting content.  Kudos!
you can find Svutana’s blog here
you can get the book from Amazon.com, even though yours truly cannot really recommend it, seems too sensational! 
yours truly posted a comment to Svutlana’s brave blog, and she copies it here:
“Svutlana, i completely agree with you, the whole thing, the way it’s presented, tends to criminalize Vivien Leigh, which is really unfair since Lawrence Olivier, George Cukor, and others in that generation of Hollywood stars had similar, somewhat excessive behaviors, partly due to the fact that cinema was new, star status unprecedented (to the extent that cinema could generate world wide) and that their personal lives, their privacy, fell thru the cracks. It’s unfair to single out Vivien Leigh as a woman, it presumes that different standards would apply to her than to the men who accompanied her. And your point that she did ‘rough trade’ with her boss is very important, perhaps a sign of her being a healthy, savvy collaborator (Cukor was a closet gay, and maybe she helped defuse the attention and provide some safety for him). Some of the criminalization also results from the implication that she was something of a ‘fake,’ as in fake British who was actually born in India. again, nationalist and racial stereotypes behind the criminalization of women’s sexual freedom!
Oh, and i just wanted to add, for more in the ways of POSITIVE perspectives on bisexuality, polyamory, and other styles of amorous expression that promote women’s freedom and equality, all are invited to visit my blog, http://polyplanet.blogspot.com, and to join my Facebook Fan Page, Gaia and the New Politics of Love.”
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

Is Monogamy Unnatural? Book Argues It Isn’t and CNN Talks About This!

When yours truly read about this on Facebook, she rushed to read the article and fund out is is a review of the book, Sex at Dawn, abut the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality.  The authors are Cacilda Jetha and Christopher Ryan.  The argument does not seem very new, and is still quite interesting.
  
Foraging societies did not have a sense of personal property and this applied to people as well as things. Groups of humans moved around with personal possessions reduced to a minimum, and no one really bothered to find out who belonged to whom. Women breastfed children regardless of who delivered them, and men helped parent them regardless of who sired them.  This was normal for humans before agriculture became prevalent, before, in other words, we knew about seeds, and wombs, before the concept of paternity was part of human knowledge systems.  

This argument started with Bachofen, in the late 19th-early20th century, who, in Myth, Religion and Mother Right, argued that matriarchal social organizations were prevalent throughout the Neolithic for that precise reason: that paternity was not a concept yet, and so men did not think they should know who put the seed in.  Women were more revered and also more free: they had sex with multiple partners, especially in the fertile period, to make sure someone would make them pregnant. 

This line of thought developed further with feminist philosophers and theorists of the ‘second wave,’ including, to my knowledge, Adriana Cavarero, who, in In Spite of Plato (translated by yours truly), argues that this ignorance of paternity was a good thing, because it empowered women with sovereignty over our bodies, and the decision to be hostesses to the reproductive process necessary for the species was ours and ours alone.  Two other theorists on this topic are of course Riane Eisler and Marija Gimbutas.  Eisler links the social practice of competition to the social construct of paternity and the ensuing practice of controlling the female body that hosts the seed to ensue its authenticity, the fact that the resulting child is sired by the man who parents it.  This, Eisler observes, not only disempowers women, but also preempts the possibility of a society organized on partnership.  Because partnership requires trust and equality, and these are impossible when men’s self esteem is predicated on their ability to certify paternity. Matrifocal societies are better candidates for partnership systems.  The Romans, who learned a lot from the Greeks, and the matrifocal cultures that preceded them, put this very simply: “maternity is always certain, paternity never is.”  So, if it isn’t, let’s shift our focus away from it, argues Gimbutas, who studies the matrifocal cultures of the Neolithic in the pre-Indoeuropean Mediterranean, to find out that they indeed were organized around the sacred feminine, myths of fertility, the management of waters, the practice of sharing resources, including amorous, sexual,and reproductive resources, the commons, and social peace.  social peace.  

Obviously, with us humans having been around for about a million years now, monogamy and paternity, which came about as social constructs only about 10 thousand years ago, it follows that our species is not monogamous from an evolutionary viewpoint: indeed, our bodies, our biology are not programmed for sexual exclusivity.  How could they be?
Many will say that neither is our biology programmed for sitting hour after hour at the computer, like yours truly and many other bloggers and other social media people do.  Obviously, we don’t need to be biologically programmed for something to enjoy doing it.  We can enjoy sexual exclusivity when we choose it.  That’s why yours truly often claims that monogamy is a version of polyamory: it’s a spontaneous occurrence which is good as long as it is not enthroned as a social rule or billed as ‘superior’ because, supposedly, it represent the endpoint of evolution for our species and the biota as a whole.  
Reclaiming that polyamory is ‘natural,’ as Ryan and Jetha do, is a very good thing.  It helps to reconfigure ‘nature’ in the human mind as something quite closer to what it is: an ecosystem of interconnected life forms that is, per se, quite queer, namely odd, irregular, diverse, interconnected, happy, gay, and cheerful.  Able to heal itself because it does not follow mechanical rules.  Alive per se because it enjoys the pleasure of being.  Yet claiming that non-monogamy is ‘natural’ as opposed to monogamy not being so is deceptive too.  It is extremely important to bring back polyamory within the range of what is natural, spontaneous, and healthy for humans to do, but not at the expense of, or in bipolar opposition to, what is commonly known as monogamy or sexual/amorous/romantic exclusivity.  

More to the point, this new acquaintance with polyamory as a natural, biologically-programmed, and long-standing prevalent tradition that goes back all the way to pre-history is a way to revisit the past to invent a new future.  If something was done in pre-historical times we often consider it bad, backward, ‘primitive.’  But what is ‘bad’ about primitivism?  What we often call ‘history’ is actually a very short period in the life of our species.  A well documented one, for sure!  But a ‘good’ one?  The past ten thousand years have been filled with wars, empires, exterminations, genocides, tortures, competitions, extinctions and other forms of destructive behavior that we humans have inflicted on fellow creatures and a whole bunch of other species, not to mention entire habitats, climate and ecosystems, based on ever more powerful weapons and domination systems that have, ultimately, had the effect to make us, the inventor species, also a rather unhappy species, with very few individuals still able to connect with the magic of nature, the ability to contemplate existence in the present as a state of pure bliss.  

Maybe those matrifocal ‘primitives’ who knew nothing about paternity, and were ‘naturally’ polyamorous because they loved nature in all its manifestations, including several people, were happier than today’s average person.  So, by finding out how these poly primitives lived, by looking at the origins of sexuality in the long-standing life of our species, we can also come to a better understanding of a different time in our ‘history,’ a time when ‘history’ was actually more of a ‘herstory,’ as fellow second-wave feminists Susan Griffin and others would put it.  

This will help us also dispell another myth: that women naturally ‘suffer’ polyamory while men are the ones who want it.  Really?  How come today’s women would ‘naturally’ demand monogamy when historically the times when polyamory was natural are times when women were revered, sovereign, and free?  If paternity, the cultural construct of male insemination as ’cause’ of female fertility, is what caused dominant societies where women lost that sovereignty and that freedom, then perhaps sexual exclusivity is a result of patriarchal social organizations too? 

In any event, all reflections on these topics are very significant at this time.  Sexuality, in itself an invention of modernity and its wish to study the expression of erotic love in view of general laws to be considered ‘scientific,’ is now being re-envisioned as mainly a way to revitalize our species and the biota that hosts it, not necessarily as a way to reproduce it.  The mandate to ‘go and populate the earth’ has been fulfilled.  We need forms of erotic expression that are about pleasure, connectedness, health, holism, not about possession or release.  We need ecosexual people, people whose erotic inclinations are ecological too.  That’s the only way to invent a new future. And of course the potential and ability to express these inclination respectfully with multiple people of various genders is a bonus to this future too.  

An ecosexual future is also a Gaian future, a future when the fact that our planet Gaia is gay will finally be recognized by our sad and ingeniously destructive and self-destructive species and when we will decide to use our ingenuity to finally keep Gaia gay too.       

Christopher Ryan is a psychologist, teacher and the co-author, along with Cacilda Jethá, of “Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality,” published by Harper Collins.
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

Gaia and Amorous Resources: What’s Holistic about Poly?

Hi everyone!

This is Serena, a.k.a. Gaia, writing from Kalikalos, a holistic community in Kissos, on Mount Pelion, Greece.

This is a stop in my journey for two main reasons: wanting to become acquainted with the mythologies of my childhood, and wanting to bring the ideas and practices of poly-amory, multiple loves, to people and communities already attuned to holistic styles of living.

Here’s a quick report from part one, an introduction to the relation between Gaia, the concept of a living planet, and amorous resources, resources of love that we can share amorously if we learn a little bit about what poly people do.

We had scheduled this intro for the Wednesday morning slot, on August 4, 2010, during the Family Experience Week, for participants in two campuses, Kalikalos, where I am staying, and Anilio, a nearby village in the same area.

It was announced the previous evening at a wonderful taverna dinner, where people responded with a certain enthusiasm. Parallel activities for children and teen-agers were arranged, even though we also opened the option for their participation too.

The next day almost the whole community showed up. We had prepared the Round House, a pretty summer building made of pine, canvas, and bamboo. Over twenty people showed up, everyone with their own dosage of curiosity and enthusiasm.

The conversation went very smoothly, with everyone responding eagerly. “When people mention Gaia, what comes up for you? What comes up when you hear polyamory? And, last but not least, the million dollar question: jealousy?” The presentation unfolded from the diverse responses the group generated. And at the end it was decided to offer another session, with bioenergetic exercises that help people experience ‘compersion,’ in little increments. It was amazing how quickly this group got the idea of what compersion is. It was a new word for them, initially proposed as ‘the opposite of jealousy.’ They came up with a parallel definition that compares it to the Buddhist concept of Maddhitta, or the joy of rejoicing in someone else’s joy.

Individual coaching sessions were also offered, and one was scheduled right after the meeting. It was a joy to share my knowledge and experience with this brave woman from the UK, a gift to listen to her story and empathize with her situation and predicament. Often, the internalized idea that monogamy is superior is the real obstacle to the unfolding of a happy and free amorous life. I do hope that obstacle was at least temporarily removed from her mind, at least for the time being . . . . so that her path of personal and spiritual growth can naturally unfold.

So this group really gave me a sense of wider possibility: I do feel that it is my mission on this planet to open up all kinds of holistic communities to the ideas and practices of poly love styles. One of my two purposes for being here in Greece is now very tangible and real. As for the other one, well . . . it was so magical to mention Gea, or Gaia, on the very land where this concept was created, in times so ancient that it is sometimes difficult to find their traces on the land that hosted them about three thousand years ago. Greece has been colonized and culturally reorganized various times since, by the Orthodox Christians, the Ottoman Turks, and more.

Still . . . there was one participant in the group who is originally from Greece. She often functions as an interpreter for the English-speaking group with local people. When I mentioned the Titans, or first generation of Greek deities, that were not people but forces of nature that one would interpret, second, and revere rather than control, it was clear that she knew what I was talking about. She even gave us the name of Gea spelled and prononuced in Greek! I wish I could reproduce it here, but it will have to be for some other time, since I’m too ignorant to remember the letters of the Greek alphabet she used!

In any event, it was great to see that what I came up with in relation to Greek mythology made sense to a person who was educated in modern Greece. It must be real then, and not just a fantasy of yours truly. The day unfolded with people silently metabolizing the new ideas. Facilitator extraordinaire Dorota Owen showed great enthusiasm. One could observe the afterglow on people’s faces at dinner.


And on this note, my blog entry will come to a conclusion. I definitely will come back to Kalikalos for more summers and more groups. I also highly recommend these vacations. The cool air of a mid-mountain village, a nice residence, a cozy holistic community, access to fabulous beaches, moderate prices and the option of offering services, a sense of family, and healthy vegetarian food. What else could one expect from a vacation in Greece?!

For anyone reading this blog, and interested in knowing more about polyamory and holism, I recommend my latest book, Gaia and the New Politics of Love. Discount buy here.

For those interested in my life as Gaia, the experiment that lead to the Gaian awareness I have today, I recommend Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves. Discount buy here.

Fianally, for those interested in fabulous holistic vacations in Greece, I recommend the Kalikalos Blog, http://kalikalos.blogspot.com, and Website http://www.kalikalos.com. Make sure you stay up to date on what’s coming up and what they are doing!

Namaste,

Gaia,

a.k.a. Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD
author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love, a Silver Winner for the 2010 Nautilus Award in Cosmology and New Science, and of
Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves, a Lambda finalist for Bisexuality in 2007
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

Is Polyamory Revolutionary? by Micah White via Adbusters

My comment and critique to this piece.  Why bi, ecosex, tantra, and fluidity make what we mean by ‘poly’ and ‘orgy’ different today from what they meant in the 1960s.
Interesting article. 
Emphasizes importance of love revolutions, or ‘lovolutions.’
Argues that the ‘orgy’ was your staple way of being sexually revolutionary in the 1960s, ‘polyamory’ is today’s way.  But what is polyamory and what is an orgy?  The very concepts of polyamory and of sex with multiple partners have changed since then.
Here’s how Micah puts it:
“Polyamory is an outgrowth of the free love movement but instead of looking to the orgy as the model for rebellion it is the notion of a tribe that excites their imagination. There are many visions of polyamory, but the one that many find intriguing is a world where partners are not exchangeable, relationships are stable and promiscuity is often frowned on.”
I’d like to comment and expand on this.  I would object to the idea that today’s polyamory and the ‘orgy’ or group sex don’t get along.  Perhaps it’s the very sense of what group sex is or can be that has changed, because we are more aware of the arts of loving via tantric practices and teachings, and because we have reactivated more sophisticated ways to be erotic, and affectionate, and sensual.  This is probably due to safety and health and the awareness that a free exchange of fluid is not always healthy for people, especially when partners are multiple.  
We are also more familiar with queer sexualities, and everyone is more in tune with being a bit bi and fluid.  This has resulted in a sexuality or practice of the arts of loving that is more energetic and nurturing, with more emphasis on pleasure and less on release, and in general more attuned to the yoni, the ying, and what women typically enjoy.
We are a bit more ecosexual, to put it simply, we are more aware of our bodies as ecosystems, and of how they synergize with those of our partners too. I’d say that’s party the result of a general sense of fluidity in the cultural notions of what sexual orientation is, and that fluidity, I would argue, is largely the result of the ecofriendly intentions of the bisexual movement: the idea that we love people for who they are and not based on their gender, and that this love finds it own level of erotic expression too, if you let it.
For those interested in more on this, the new collection Bisexuality and Queer Theory, edited by Jonathan Alexander and yours truly, is now available from Routledge/Taylor and Francis.  Also, of course, this is discussed in Gaia and the New Politics of Love. Finally, I am going to talk about it at BiReCon, the research session of BiCon, the 10th International Conference on Bisexuality, in London, August 26-30. 
 — Serena Anderlini
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

How the Wisdom of Love Transforms Gaia: Modeling Choice for Children and Grandchildren

In talking about poly lovestyles, the question of ‘children’ often comes up. “It’s ok as long as only adults are involved, but what about children? Can they be ‘exposed’ to such things and still grow up to be sane and happy people?” Find out all about this and more in this clip. Hear the wisdom of poly grandmothers with two generations of descendants who are happy to have them be part of the family and respect them for who they are!
Here’s another clip from the Double Book Launch on 6/22.  Enjoy and let us know what you think.  And for more info on it all, don’t forget to order your copy of Gaia and the New Politics of Love!

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com