"Really Just a Swinger"

by Alexis Hazell

"Really just a swinger".

In many otherwise progressive communities, this dismissive comment is commonplace, implying that a given person is not truly interested in the theme of the community, but is merely involved because the person in question thinks they might get a bonk out of it.

Partly it's born of frustration, of course: many communities which were never intended to serve as "meat markets" often have to deal with many people trying to use them for just that purpose. However, to then assert that all those people are "really just swingers" is highly problematic for a number of reasons.

The first problem is that those who propagate this meme usually appear to have little real understanding of the principles of swinging. Take the example of those people who clearly think that 'polyamory' is just a 'polite', or 'PC', way of getting it on with whoever one wants. To claim that these people are "really just swingers" is both ignorant and insulting to the swing community. Swinging, like polyamory, is a form of consensual and ethical nonmonogamy; it's just that in swinging the emphasis is on sexual nonmonogamy rather than emotional nonmonogamy. And in my experience, the sort of people who are simply looking to get it on with whoever they want are often not behaving ethically or with the consent of all relevant parties. Thus, their behaviour is not about polyamory or swinging.

A second problem is that the propagators of this meme not only typically demonstrate a failure to understand the principles of swinging, but some of the practice as well. They seem to regard swinging as inevitably involving emotionless, soulless encounters in which participants mechanically use each other's bodies without connecting to each other on anything other than a physical level. Whilst this may certainly be true at least some of the time - because there are at least some people who get off on such sex - it's simply wrong to think that all swing sex is like that. Personally, good sex for me always involves a conection apart from the physical; and i have had lots of good sex through swinging. Sometimes the connection involved was very deeply emotional; sometimes it was one of 'mateship', friends having sex together in the same way friends have drinks together. Soulless swing sex was for me the occasional unpleasant exception, not the rule.

The third problem is the sex-negative tone that often accompanies the "really just a swinger" statement, a tone whose subtext suggests that seeking sex for its own sake is a dubious pursuit, and that sex only has value when 'lifted' via some other, 'higher', purpose. But of course, people who then go and attempt to 'lift' their sexual desires by seeking them in the context of another activity are then accused of being "really just swingers".

Finally, my experience is that a considerable amount of hypocrisy seems to surround this meme: the same people who decry swinging often seem to engage in a lot of recreational sex themselves, with people they meet via the communities they are trying to purge of people who are "really just swingers". They don't regard what they do as 'swinging', because as we all know, pop cultural portrayals of swinging are totally accurate, and 'swinging' is basically shorthand for "Dodgy men swapping their wives with each other as though they're lifeless sex dolls for men to get their rocks off with". Or maybe they've attended two or three swing events and made inferences about swinging in general that make as much sense as attending a couple of gay nightclubs and then making inferences about the queer community in general. Whatever the reason, they don't regard their recreational sex as being akin to swinging in any way whatsoever. Since, however, these people so strongly disagree with the notion of using communities as meat markets, and are uncomfortable about pursuing sex for its own sake, as per above, they present all sorts of façades which attempt to perpetuate the illusion that they're not engaged in the very sort of behaviours they vociferously oppose in others.

i've just turned 34. Of the five people i've ever considered myself to be in a Relationship with, the first one lasted only a couple of weeks; the second lasted almost 10 years, and i'm still close friends with the person in question; the third lasted only a few months; and i'm still in a relationship with the other two, with one of those relationships spanning a period of over 5 years, and the other spanning a period of almost 4 years. During that time i've had recreational sex with dozens of people (although usually with only a small subset of that group) - the overwhelming majority of whom i met via the swing community, and not via other communities i have interacted with, such as the pagan community, the poly community and the bisexual community. So when i refuse to let these latter communities 'other' sexuality and its expression, and attempt to dissociate themselves from it, it's not because i want recreational sex - i can openly and honestly pursue that via the swing community. It's because i refuse to separate my sexuality and its expression from other aspects of who i am, and because i strongly feel that the expectation that we should do so ultimately harms both ourselves individually and our society as a whole.

* * *