AGR News - Janet Hardy
Slut Liberation:
- An interview with sex publisher Janet Hardy
- By Sachie Godwin [1]
- (in an article written: No. 198, Oct. 31)
Janet Hardy, founder of Greenery Press and a prolific author, might not be a household name. Her titles include Sex Disasters and How to Survive Them, The Topping Book (Getting Good at Being Bad), and When Someone You Love is Kinky - not to mention quite a few others.
One of Janet’s most acclaimed books is The Ethical Slut, co-authored with Dossie Easton, using the pen name Catherine Liszt. The Ethical Slut is about how to be a responsible and respectful lover - no matter what type of relationship you are in. Unlike recent books such as The 50 Mile Rule by Judith Brandt, which advocates deceitfulness, upholds gender stereotypes, and blames “cheating" on the male need to procreate, The Ethical Slut supports non-traditional relationships that embody love, respect, and mutual growth. The Ethical Slut, like many of Janet’s books, is non-judgmental and supportive with practical tips, examples from the authors’ own lives, and comprehensive subject coverage. The writing is compelling and engaging and can help you build trust, respect, and happiness in any relationship.
Janet is profiled here as a pioneer of radical relationships. Much of what is printed in Clamor involves individuals who are defining their own needs and lives - people like Janet remind us that we need to examine our personal relationships as well as our political and social lives.
Clamor: How did you start in writing about sex issues? Could you share some of the experiences you have had that led you to question sexual norms and relationship models (i.e. tell us a little about yourself)?
Janet: I spent the first part of my adult life living a very conventional sexual life - heterosexual, monogamous, married, with two children. As I neared 30, though, I began to feel that the life I’d chosen wasn’t enough - and wasn’t, in fact, even very consciously chosen. I’d simply assumed that marriage was what happened when you fell in love with someone.
At the same time, my interest in BDSM (bondage, discipline, and sado-masochism) - an interest that my husband didn’t share - was burgeoning. We spent several years trying to find a way of being together that would accommodate my need for exploration and his need for security, and couldn’t. We divorced but remain good friends. Our boys are now adults, but when they were younger we shared custody, even over the 90-mile distance between his home and mine.
I think I’ve always been a questioner of norms, though. I remember shocking my friends in eighth grade by telling them I thought people should live together before they got married. (This was in 1968 or so, in a conservative suburban community.) The group of friends I was closest to in high school has all turned out to be gay, bi, kinky, and/or transgendered, although few of us knew it at the time - but there was just this sense of some other way of relating that might work better for us than the one we’d been taught.
Why do you think it is important to question these norms and models and how do you think this relates to political activism?
It’s only by questioning the norms that we enable people to speak freely about their own experiences and desires. The more who speak, the lighter the burden of shame becomes. People who are ashamed tend to hide - and people who are hiding cannot demand their rights of free speech and privacy.
You co-authored a book a few years ago called The Ethical Slut, could you give a brief overview for readers that might not be familiar with it?
The Ethical Slut is an exploration of what sex and relationships look like when you remove the paradigm of ownership - the belief that loving someone gives us a right to control their behavior. We explore a lot of different ways of relating: celibacy, monogamy, long-term multi-partner relationships, primary/secondary type relationships, fuck buddy circles, casual sex, group sex, and a bunch more I’ve probably left out.
We try to give real-world, workable solutions for the actual issues that come up in such relationships - negotiations, communications, logistics, jealousy, raising kids, dealing with the outside world, etc.
Why did you choose the word slut to reclaim and how would you define who an ethical slut is and why do you think they are important to society?
Actually, my co-author Dossie Easton gets the credit for the reclamation of slut – she’s been working on it since the early ‘60s. Slut has been used for many years as a way to shame women out of their sexuality. We think sluts are adults of any gender or orientation who love sex and welcome it into their lives in whatever form feels best to them.
An ethical slut is a person who adds to that belief a commitment to honesty and to respecting and taking care of their partner(s). It’s that simple.
In The Ethical Slut, you put forth the notion that one lover does not have to fulfill all your desires. Most people would agree with this statement on one level (i.e., you can’t get all your emotional or social needs met from one person) but would have trouble accepting it on a sexual level. Why do you think that is?
Well, historically, of course, there’s the whole idea of a man needing to know that he’s the father of his children and thus controlling his wife’s sexuality.
But more than that, sex is a very powerful thing. I think some of the mystique we’ve built up around sex has its roots in that power - the ability to cement relationships, to open barriers, to achieve altered states. That’s strong stuff!
Unfortunately, in our culture, we have no models for love or sexual attraction except the monogamous one. It’s taken for granted (assuming you’re heterosexual) that when you fall in love with a suitable person, you’ll marry him or her, probably have kids, share property, and so on. Sexual contact is presumed to be a part of that process. So when someone hears that their spouse is having sex with someone else, their first fear is often that the spouse will leave with the new person. It’s a big adjustment to view intimacy and sex as an end in themselves, not as an audition for marriage.
Many activists challenge the rules and priorities handed down in our society; however, when it comes to relationships, far fewer question the monogamous model, including those who are not heterosexual. Why do you think challenging sexual norms is often the final frontier?
Oh, I don’t think it’s the final frontier; I don’t expect (or want) to live to see the final frontier, whatever it may be. However, monogamy is so deeply ingrained in our culture that it may never occur to people to question it, at least not seriously. We didn’t watch Ozzie & Harriet & Mary when we were kids, most of us grew up in at least outwardly monogamous households, almost everything we’ve seen and read is monogamy-based. It’s like the ground we stand on or the air we breathe; nobody thinks to question it.
Many people would say that a relationship including a primary couple and an outside lover will result in disaster. How would you challenge that notion? Could you talk a little about tribe vs. alienation?
Well, I could introduce such people to many, many, many successful arrangements of this type who would argue heartily against it. I’m personally not wild about the primary/secondary designation so many poly folk use, but I have been living with my life partner, Jay Wiseman, for nearly 13 years, and each of us has always during that time had at least one outside lover, sometimes more.
People who have never experienced ethical sluthood tend to assume that two people who love the same person must be competing for that person’s attention. In fact, what tends to happen is that affiliations form - you find yourself on the same side as your lover’s lover. And from there sometimes you go on to forming bonds with your lover’s lover’s lovers, and so on. Kinship networks spring up, loose groupings who serve many of the functions of family, who share values around sexuality and relationships.
You recently co-authored the book Sex Disasters with Charles Moser - could you give our readers an idea of what that book is about? What other projects have you worked on since The Ethical Slut? What are you working on now that we can look forward to in the future?
Sex Disasters ... And How To Survive Them is a humorous but accurate look at, well, sex disasters -- everything from an erection that won’t go away through lost condoms, hostile dogs, cops at the front door, and all the other small or large nasties that can happen to people who are having sex. Aside from Dr. Moser’s expertise in medical and sexual matters, we interviewed attorneys, therapists, police officers, locksmiths, and a veterinarian [!!]. The book is designed to be read in small chunks - a lot of readers say it’s perfect bathroom reading.
Dossie and I are working on editing the updated revised version of The Topping Book, called (with startling originality) The New Topping Book, which will probably be out in November or thereabouts. After that, we’re hoping to do a book about the role of energy, intuition, and transcendence in BDSM, but that one’s going to take some serious work and thought.
Source: Clamor Magazine (full interview available at www.clamormagazine.org)
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