Would You Be The 4th Female?

[joreth]

www.quora.com/For-women-would-you-move-into-a-house-with-a-couple-that-share-a-3rd-female-and-that-would-make-you-the-4th-female-All-share-a-bed-and-have-sex-with-each-other-Why-or-why-not/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. For women, would you move into a house with a couple that share a 3rd female and that would make you the 4th female? All share a bed and have sex with each other. Why or why not?

A.

1. I could not live with people who “share” other human beings like they’re a milkshake to be shared on a date.  I could not trust them to treat *me* as a human being, because they have clearly shown they are willing to dehumanize people for their own gratification.
    
2. I could not live with people who call women “females”.  There’s a whole body of literature on what’s wrong with that term.
    
3. I could not live with people who assume that cohabiting automatically means “would make you the 4th female”.  The question assumes that “move into a house” necessarily implies a polyfidelitious arrangement.  I’m not sure what kind of houses y’all have been living in, but I’ve had a number of roommates and housemates, some of whom were also romantically involved with each other, and never was simply “move into a house” defined as “would make you the 4th female”.  In order for that to happen, there would have to be an invitation to join their polyfidelitious relationship, not just live under their roof.
    
4. I am straight.  I am not sexually attracted to women.
    
5. I have autonomy.  To require me to have sex with anyone, even if they were the gender of my orientation, is coercive.  Even when I do enter into a romantic and sexual relationship, I still retain the ability to give and revoke consent at any time.  Sex is never a *requirement*.  If, at any time, someone is required to have sex with anyone in order to maintain their housing, that is deeply coercive indeed.  Certainly I would never get into a relationship with someone where sex with *other people* is required in order to maintain the relationships I want.  That’s really fucked up.
    
6. Even though I do enjoy group sex, I do not enjoy it all the time.  Every relationship needs to be nurtured on its own, which means that each of the 4 people in that house needs to be able to explore their individual relationships with each other person independently and each of those relationships needs to be able to grow in whatever ways that relationship wants to grow.  Forcing all of the relationships to be the “same” is also coercive and codependent.  So even assuming my orientation matched *and* I was interested in a sexual relationship with each person, I still wouldn’t join a group that expected group sex all the time.
   
   I was actually in a relationship that did that in a defacto way.  It was quite toxic and insidious.  They never said that group sex was expected or required, but they all insisted on spending so much group time together that nobody ever really got any alone-time with each other, and every time someone had sex without the others present, somebody would have some kind of emotional crisis about being “left out” or “abandoned” and it took weeks of tears and arguments to make everyone feel better again.  It was so bad that I eventually lost interest in sex completely because it was a minefield.
    
7. I have several sleep disorders.  I do not co-sleep well.  I always have my own bedroom for my own health and sanity.

In short, there is absolutely nothing about that scenario that is appealing and everything about it is a red flag for an abusive situation.  And I say this as someone who has a spouse that is a straight man who has (at least) 2 other partners where the 4 of us get together and have some kind of kinky group sex.

The difference is that there is no cohabitation, no expectations or requirements of co-sleeping, definitely no coercion where everyone is required to all have sex together (the 3 of us women are not actually in direct sexual relationships with each other, we are just all in a relationship with him), and none of us are treated as objects to be “shared”.  We all respect each other’s autonomy and see each other as human beings, not “female” animals, sex objects, need fulfillment machines, nannies, bang-maids, harem members, or possessions.

Every word in this question drips with entitlement, assumptions, misogyny, and co-dependence.  I wouldn’t enter into a scenario like this if I was homeless and desperately needed a place to stay for survival.