(no subject)
"Love as eros and love as philia cannot be readily distinguished in any culture, or indeed in many social situations, as well today as in the eighteenth century; [...] it is too easy to eliminate the erotic when dealing with relations between men.
"[...]
"It would be a mistake to dismiss [male-male friendship expressions of] love as 'simple friendship,' not only because in certain cases [...] it is definitely more, but also because there is no such thing as the 'simple friendship' the phrase implies. Friendship can be animated by many things, including rivalry, jealousy, desire, and love."
-George Haggerty, on Noel Coward's Design for Living
"Twin Oaks has taken a firm stand in favor of sexual freedom and nonpossessiveness, and that brings problems with it. Problems notwithstanding, we did not have any real choice about taking this stand. Any group that settles on monogamy as a norm has to figure out how to defend it. Without a heavy Puritan religious bias this is very difficult. Philosophy isn't the only problem with monogamy, either. Sexual rules are hard to enforce in any society, and the more so among free-thinking communitarians. The closer people live together, the higher will be the opportunity for attraction. A commune has to take the choice between dealing with jealousy in an open way or dealing with complicated questions of sin, dalliance, adultery. I conjecture that a group norm of free choice in sexual matters is not only philosophically consistent by literally easier to manage than any compromises would be."
-Kathleen Kinkade
"[...]
"It would be a mistake to dismiss [male-male friendship expressions of] love as 'simple friendship,' not only because in certain cases [...] it is definitely more, but also because there is no such thing as the 'simple friendship' the phrase implies. Friendship can be animated by many things, including rivalry, jealousy, desire, and love."
-George Haggerty, on Noel Coward's Design for Living
"Twin Oaks has taken a firm stand in favor of sexual freedom and nonpossessiveness, and that brings problems with it. Problems notwithstanding, we did not have any real choice about taking this stand. Any group that settles on monogamy as a norm has to figure out how to defend it. Without a heavy Puritan religious bias this is very difficult. Philosophy isn't the only problem with monogamy, either. Sexual rules are hard to enforce in any society, and the more so among free-thinking communitarians. The closer people live together, the higher will be the opportunity for attraction. A commune has to take the choice between dealing with jealousy in an open way or dealing with complicated questions of sin, dalliance, adultery. I conjecture that a group norm of free choice in sexual matters is not only philosophically consistent by literally easier to manage than any compromises would be."
-Kathleen Kinkade