Expert Interview: The Trials and Tribulations of Being a ‘Slut’-Ethical, Psychological, and Political Thoughts on Polyamory (original) (raw)

is a writer, therapist, poet, performer and feminist BDSM 1 activist. She is well known as the co-author of the book The Ethical Slut (1997), one of the most popular guide books on polyamory. Together with Janet W. Hardy (aka Catherine A. Liszt) she further wrote a range of advice books on BDSM and kinky sexuality, including the following titles When Someone you Love is Kinky (2000), The New Bottoming Book (2001) and The New Topping Book (2003, all published by Greenery Press, California). Dossie works as a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in relationship issues and queer sexualities in San Francisco, USA. She was invited to hold the opening speech at the International Conference on Polyamory and Mononormativity that was organized by the Research Centre for Feminist and Queer Studies on 4-6 November 2005 at the University of Hamburg in Germany. 2 She also organized a workshop on how to manage jealousy in polyamorous relationships as part of the conference programme. Christian Klesse met with Dossie on the day after the conference for an interview about her work and to discuss some of the issues that emerged form the conference debates over the weekend. In the following we present a shortened and edited version of the interview transcript. We think that Dossie's educational, professional and political work contains fruitful impulses for the development of progressive politics around non-monogamy and polyamory. In particular, we appreciate her commitment to encouraging people to explore their interest in non-mainstream sexual, erotic, and relational practices in spite of the hegemonic attempts to pathologize them. We are convinced that her writing and educational work contributes to the creation of alternative discourses that may help to come to terms with the attacks on people's sexual well-being

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