Category: Culture Critique

Bullshit hypnotic manipulation imposes sexual beliefs

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hypnotic manipulation

Monogamy is a possessive ideology. It presumes to predict the future and often fails. Monogamy becomes a prison for affections and often kills the love that it hoped to protect. In many cases, monogamy is a maladaptation imposed by culturally redundant hypnotic manipulations. When we are actually living in a world where many people live outside of monogamy (honestly or not,) then let’s meet that fact truthfully and adapt to the world the way it is. Polyamory and other forms of ethical non-monogamy exemplify our… Read More

Dispute monogamy for 5 more reasons

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dispute monogamy

I dispute monogamy and I hope that my monogamous brothers and sisters understand that it is not just the failures of monogamy that provoke the contempt, ever perceptible in my writing. The world is imperfect and I accept the imperfections of society, yet I do not condone bad ideals or a society that refuses to realize the good ideals it possesses. We are always free to choose monogamy. Elsewhere I’ve published five very different reasons to question monogamy. I state plainly here that monogamy is a… Read More

Sex Education | Video with John Oliver

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Sex Education

Once again the inimitable John Oliver exposes the weakness of American abstinance sex eduducation and with humor at the end, offers his own sex education video. Watch and enjoy.       Photo of John Oliver By TechCrunch – The 7th Annual Crunchies Awards on February 10, 2014 in San Francisco, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45899540 Read More

One sexually daring woman degraded by custom

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sexually daring

I want to respect the trial and error of a sexually daring woman who is now dead, and expose the all too common error for the sake of others. This writing is not merely a eulogy for a sexually daring woman whom I will refer to by her first name, these words are more than a remembrance for a sexual rebel. Her life touched me deeply and offers a lesson, a gift for those people still living. I speak of the unnecessary degradation of a… Read More

Sex Power – Media Offering Vicarious Pleasure

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What is sex power? It’s no trivial fact that almost every human being you meet  longs for sexual joy, and those who understand that fact have power. Unfortunately, shame, possessive-ness, questionable beliefs and the tendency to use people as a means place sex power in the hands of advertisers, religion, and people who are willing to take advantage or deceive. Our instinctive joy gets repeatedly associated with products like food or deodorant. To take back the usurped sex power requires more than talk, it requires risking an innovation, an… Read More

Sex degraded by deceit

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The cheating liar may or may not believe in monogamy, but they have the merit of seeing possibilities beyond monogamy. Their desire exists beyond the boundaries of their beliefs or pretense. The cheaters lip service to monogamy becomes a degradation of sexual affection outside of monogamy. Someone who lies for the sake of having lovers tries to manage other people’s affections. A lie may produce many results far beyond what we wanted or imagined. A momentary gain may bring a terrible loss. Deceit is a… Read More

Reform socially NOT politically

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By Todd Vickers Politics and sex can exist apart but those interested in sex should heed the 2016 election results. Since we shouldn’t rely on reforms in a conservative political environment, any change becomes a social not a political responsibility. The reasoning offered here also applies to issues beyond sexuality. Before talking about conscious social change let’s take a broad overview. Any minority existing outside the status quo is stifled in a conservative environment. I’ll mention some relevant sexual issues, if you are interested in sex education, polyamory, LGBTQ, sex… Read More

Non monogamy, when prejudice hides envy

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If we deny opportunities to love because we can’t conceive living  beyond monogamy, we may, among other things, be suffering envy. The idea that we cannot have something tempts us to say it’s ‘not worth having.’ This is often envy hiding behind a prejudice. Nobody but the person themself can confirm such envy and that takes a great deal of honesty. Life by chance offers us opportunities to love. The idea that we must sacrifice one love to love another is foolish and worse when… Read More

Sexual deprivation and deceitful seduction

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How many of our sexual beliefs result from conforming to or rebelling against arbitrary, indirect and unrelated suggestions? Things like a belief or a product that our sexuality could easily exist without. Let’s consider letting go of sexual ideals as a compass and let morality be guided by joy and love rendered harmless through reason. How much sexual discovery exists beyond the things we habitually associate with sexuality?  Do we allow sexuality to be a life affirmation? Do we want sex as a delightful, living impulse? Most of us… Read More

What Desires Are Politically Important?

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What Desires Are Politically Important? Bertrand Russell – Nobel Lecture Your Royal Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have chosen this subject for my lecture tonight because I think that most current discussions of politics and political theory take insufficient account of psychology… Read more or listen to audio of the speech at nobelprize.org Tonight I will be posting a new piece about how our sexuality becomes associated with unrelated things. Todd Vickers Read More

A monogamous irony

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Would you like to see some different views that challenge beliefs about sex? We’ve got articles, videos, slide shows and memes you can peruse, contemplate, share and comment about. Consider a four part series discussing jealousy, or read about cathartic orgasms. What about going beyond rules in polyamory or how different non-monogamous people hold different views? We link to articles of interest and shine a light on controversial questions. The majority of the content is free. Come check it out!   Read More

Stop admiring hypocrites

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We risk losing some opportunities telling the truth. Regardless, the growth of a seed in a consciously sewn garden is not retarded by noxious weeds and briers overtaking the blossoms and choking them with shadow. “When we attempt to live consciously without monogamy we don’t solve possessiveness as a problem by adding more lovers to possess. Imposing the expectations left over from monogamy on non-monogamous circumstances seems to me a mistake. If our ideas do not adapt to new circumstances, let’s modify our ideas, not people.” How do we know if monogamy doesn’t suit… Read More

Facing facts, sex and climate change

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What do sex and climate change have in common? Both involve facts we sometimes feel tempted to ignore or alter them to suit our existing ideas. Here is an excerpt from the Elephant Journal article Accepting Polyamory as Natural might help us to Accept Climate Change. {Adult} Sometimes an experience outside of what we know changes our beliefs forever. At the age of 24, my beliefs about sex were upended. In a safe, free-love community experiment, a group of blindfolded men and women met each other silently by touch only. Body to body, I noticed vast… Read More

Slut shaming – How men can stop it

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Author Todd Vickers writes at Elephant Journal and looks critically at slut shaming. The good things around sex often become mixed with a variety of useless pains. My heart weeps at the double messages spoon fed to all of us, especially women. We cannot be reminded too often what culture imposes on our lovers, mothers, sisters, daughters and friends. These maddening attitudes toward sex persist in a mix of admiration and shame, desire blended with disdain. Read More… Read More

Controlling crowds with sex

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Those with influence and interest will try to deny access to rainwater and then either sell it back to us or use it for their own purposes. Sex controlling crowds is an old game through societal norms often born of religion, try to deny or restrict access to sex and then create alternate paths to get access. We become consumers purchasing access in one form or another, directly or vicariously. As with rainwater, the question becomes how to claim harmless sexual joys when we were… Read More

Three reasons sex is confusing

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Sex doesn’t oppose truth. Delusion opposes truth. Delusion is different than having or not having sex. People often withhold the truth and blankly lie about their sexuality. These faults blend with truths, some truth we speak plainly and others we say as a joke.  A smokescreen allows us to stay two-faced e.g. ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.’ Our beliefs around sexuality may be contrary to our body impulses and even our behaviors without us questioning if the belief is false or flawed. This leads to shame as well as confusion. Popular culture… Read More

Cheating and Honest Non-Monogamy

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I recently shared food with two women who both cheated on past lovers and felt pain about their conduct. Both now live candidly in non-monogamous circumstances and feel better for the change. I know non-monogamous men who feel the same way. These people made moral judgements. Let’s not fear making such judgements, after all, we make them constantly when we weigh choices in terms of better or worse. Let any such judgement consciously invite criticism if some contrary fact or reason eludes us in our… Read More

Is Monogamy Over? A Reply

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The headline ‘Is monogamy over?’ emblazoned TIME Magazine’s September 21, 2015 issue. Feeling skeptical, I bought it. Its brevity trifled with the subject. Biologist David Barash has suggested that monogamy conflicts with our biology. However, he also states that child care recommends monogamy: “It’s very rare for any species to engage in bi-parental care unless the males are guaranteed that they are genetically related to the offspring – confidence only monogamy can provide.” (1) I must correct Barash, confidence in paternity ONLY comes from a paternity… Read More

5 Reasons to Question Monogamy at Elephant Journal

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Let’s look at both monogamy and commitment with fresh eyes and consider five reasons to question both cultural ideas. Let’s not oversimplify the deceit exemplified by Ashley Madison. Widespread cheating suggests sexual impulses exist beyond monogamy. Many arguments against freer sexuality provoke fear and even persecution exemplified in slut shaming, honor killings and LGBT harassment. The discovery of trial and error expands our choices. Discovery also exposes our mistakes. For example, discovering what sex will not do liberates us from our imagination. I treat lovers… Read More