ETHICAL

Public Sex, Group Sex, and Orgies
falling in love, men learn that sex is a commodity that you get from a
woman, men may even learn that women themselves are commodities.
Group sex only works when everybody is acknowledged as a person.
Nobody likes being treated like a thing. To avoid such problems, most
group sex environments that include both men and women restrict the
number of single men who are invited or insist that no man is welcome
without a female escort. These requirements are a sad last resort for
dealing with an unpleasant reality, and we quite agree that it is unfair
that men of good will get penalized for the intrusive behavior of men
who evidently don't know any better. But that's how it is, and the only
way we are going to change it is to work on our own behavior and
teach our brothers and sisters what we learn. Pansexual environments
that make a point of including a variety of people-gay, straight, bi,
transgendered-tend to inspire more respect for all, and in such environments
we get to learn from a lot of people whose lives and sexualities
may be different from our own.
Cruising is different by gender, and those differences become very
visible when you compare gay men's environments to lesbian orgies
and see how they are similar to and different from hetero or bisexual
groups. Gay men seem to feel safer with anonymous sex, and gay male
cruising at baths or clubs is often nonverbal. One man might catch
another's eye, smile, walk across the room, touch a shoulder, and then
embrace, with little or no verbal communication. Lesbians are often
more cautious and tend to talk for a while before moving into the play
room and getting down.
Women in all group sex environments tend to be less open than
men to anonymous sex and to prefer some communication and personal
connection first. When a woman seeks to realize a fantasy of
anonymous sex with a number of people, often one of her friends or
lovers will act as emcee, doing traffic control and whispering into a
stranger's ear, "She doesn't like anything that tickles" or "I think she'd
like it if you fucked harder." The emcee takes the responsibility for
safety and limit setting so the star can feel utterly free. This respect for
caution is probably because women have had serious reasons to feel
less than safe around sex with strangers and need some support to feel
safe enough to let down their guard. There are no rights and wrongs
to this situation-or what wrong there is exists in our history, which
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