The Truth About Key Parties: Myth, History, and Consent

Transcript

Speaker1: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are, I hope you have blue skies and thank you for being here. Welcome to That Other Lifestyle Podcast. I'm your host, Jason. Take a listen and let's leave vanilla behind. Sometimes the universe speaks to us if we listen. These past two weeks for unexplained reasons, conversations about key parties have popped up. Either in my last episode of the podcast or live session I participated in last week or even talking with my friends. So, I'm listening to the universe today. The great wheel in the sky is telling me something. Let's talk about the myth of key parties, the history of key parties, and all the damn problems with key parties. And consent. That's a big one. Subscribing to the podcast is free and fun and a huge help to me. For little shows like mine, every like, subscriber, follower, and listen is very much appreciated. Every little bit helps me grow the show. You want a deeper toes into the lifestyle, you can find a link to sign up for a trial account of SDC on my website, thatofthelifestyle.com. I will be publishing a course later this summer for single men and the lifestyle. We need more lifestyle lions, and this course will help single men from joining the lifestyle, navigating it, and hopefully get laid. For instance, the course will tell single men how to ask for consent the right way and deal with rejections the right way. Please note this podcast is intended for adults only. It is not safe for work. We will talk about adult or sexual topics, and I will use salty language often. This content is for entertainment purposes only, and again, only for those over 18 years of age. I also try to be as inclusive with my language and terms as I can. It can be challenging to formulate and write and say all the inclusive terms in every instance. For simplicity's sake and time management, I may use terms like husband or wife or partner or spouse for the purpose of the narrative I'm sharing. This podcast is for everyone though, no matter your background, gender identity, gender expression, or whatever truth you may be living. Everyone is welcome, no matter how you personally experience a lifestyle and ethical non-monogamy. In a roundabout way, this episode is about consent. Key parties are the hook, but that topic opens up a much bigger discussion about consent. Consent in the lifestyle, consent before, during, and after an encounter, being a good consenter and asker. This connects back to key parties because the whole idea of a key party is super problematic in the modern lifestyle. I like the term modern lifestyle. It separates us, those in the lifestyle today, from any of the past hang-ups and bad vibes that may have existed in previous generations around swinging. We can articulate the rules we operate on. We can express the good and the bad size of the lifestyle to vanilla people. We have a different outlook on relationships and life than most other people. We need to be proud of how far our community has come in the past 50 years, which includes shedding outdated notions about what and how we have sex. One of the biggest and best evolutions of the lifestyle in the past 50 years is how we manage consent. Asking for consent, accepting consent, knowing we need to give consent. That's why the idea of key parties bothers me and my LS friends so much. That is why the prevalence of the myth of key parties happen now, even today, or even happened in the past bothers me. Education moment. Stick with me. A key party. The basic concept is this. This is a total fucking Hollywood cliche fabricated by vanilla people who assume we need some mysterious mechanism to initiate sex with people. The secret is out, y'all. We don't. We can use our words. Sex for us is not a board game that we leave up to chance. I see it from the vanilla world's perspective, though. Some, not all, but some vanilla couples have trouble initiating sex with their own partner, so they assume everyone else has the same problem. And swingers, we are people who are pretty fucking open about sex. Also, the vanilla world thinks that we need some bizarre mechanism like a fishbowl in order to initiate sex with another person. That's call projection, I think. If a husband can't figure out how to get his wife in the mood, then he damn sure can't figure out how to get someone else's wife in the mood. Key parties. Sorry, I diverted there into a rant. Basic concept. The cliche is that these always happen in a nice suburban neighborhood in the 1970s, so let's just run with that. You have five to ten couples attending a very swanky party. Everyone is dressed in cocktail attire, suits, and little black dresses. Based on the swingers I know personally, that is way too much clothing for a gathering or a party. You will give me shorts and a beach shirt over a suit and tie any day. When the couples arrive, the husband will put their keys into a fishbowl. At the designated time, a random woman will walk up to the fishbowl and fish out, see what I did there, a random set of keys. She is then expected to have sex with the man that those keys belong to. No arguing, no disagreement, you are fucking stuck fucking that dude. I want to deconstruct this myth of key parties and show how it does not play well with the modern lifestyle or modern ideas of consent. For our vanilla listeners, let me be the first one to tell you key parties are not real. They are not a thing in the modern lifestyle despite what the media may tell you. They do not happen. They did not happen. I have asked many people in the past week about key parties. I have asked people who have been in the lifestyle for 25 years and no one, absolutely no one has attended a key party nor heard of a key party happening. I have dug into the deep recesses of the internet and sifted through hundreds of comments on Reddit and elsewhere. No one said they have been to a key party. And we are a gossiping bunch of people, so yeah, we would hear about it. Yes, there may be sex at our lifestyle parties. It happens. It is not initiated nor constructed in the manner that key parties present. Full stop, period. Where did this idea come from though and why is it so prevalent in the vanilla world's perception of swingers? And I've seen it firsthand. When my wife and I share that we are in the lifestyle, we use that term, lifestyle, initially when we share our hobby with people and that term confuses them. People outside the lifestyle don't know what lifestyle means, probably because we have terrible marketing, unlike the polyamory world. So we have to pivot and say we are swingers. I am not a huge fan of labeling ourselves with that term to describe our activities, but you have to meet people where they are based on what they know and can process. When we say the word swingers, immediately it conjures images and questions about key parties. Why? The myth that key parties happen is so prevalent in our society, the vanilla brain makes that connection. Then we have to explain they don't actually happen. Vanilla people argue with me me about it. I ask for proof, and they can't even cite the movie or television show where they saw it happen. Yes, they argue with the guy who is in the lifestyle about something they think happens in the lifestyle. I found three specific references to key parties in the media. Not swinging, just key parties. One, there was a movie in the late 1990s called The Ice Storm that the primary characters attended a key party. I didn't watch it, I read the synopsis, and I can tell you we don't operate that way. They had the couples pulling keys, splitting up, and going back to their respective homes to do the fuckery. We don't do that. Most couples, barring any special set of rules a couple have said ahead of time, do the wango tango in the same room with another couple. It's called same room versus separate room swapping. Some people do separate room, but I've never heard of a couple separating, going back to different houses for doing the nasty. In the movie, they spent the night. The hell. Go home. I want to go to sleep. The next reference I found is in the 2000 movie live action, How the Gr grinch stole christmas all the who's are at a party at the start of the movie and there's a fishbowl with keys in it them who's be wild y'all all right the argument could be made and i could see this as an origin of the myth that when there's a party with alcohol the host may request people put their keys into a container like device like a fishbowl it's a safety mechanism that someone has too much to drink when they come to put their keys into a container-like device like a fishbowl. It's a safety mechanism. If someone has too much to drink, when they come to claim their keys from the host, the host can politely check them for intoxication and make other arrangements to get them home safely. It's not a bad idea, and it could be the origin of the key party. A vanilla person sees the bowl, misunderstands the purpose of collecting keys, made a wild assumption about the intention, and wham-bam, now we got a new urban legend. Third reference I found, The Simpsons did it. There was an episode from 2011 where Marge and Homer accidentally go to a key party. Those are three definitive references I could find in the media to key parties. The first instance of key parties being mentioned historically in documented records comes from 1965. From a San Francisco Weekly article dated March 15, 2018, I found this, quote, the earliest real-life key party reference SF Weekly found was a 1965 lecture on wife-swapping by psychotherapist Dr. Albert Ellis. Quote, whichever key you get, you get the wife. If you're the male that goes with this particular set of keys, Ellis explains, this is done on a chance, you might say, a raffle kind of basis. This is probably the rarest kind of mate switching today. End quote. So the concept was out there in 1965, and that suggests people may have tried it. Also from the article, a quote from Dr. Robert Lawrence, co-founder of the Center for Sex and Culture, Humans are Carnal Creatures. If you give them an interesting sex idea, they will try it out or talk about it. But it may be all talk. The 1970 Journal of Sex Research article, Comarital Sex and the Sexual Freedom Movement, labels the phenomenon a myth. Quote, our data suggest a number of other false myths, but we cannot deal with them all, co-authors James and Lynn Smith wrote. There is one, however, the rarest mention at this time, and that is the key party myth. To quote the authors, we were never able to find an individual who has attended one. They added in their 1967 study of hundreds of Bay Area sexual subculture participants. To quote the authors again, evidently they do occur, and we have unsubstantiated reports concerning them, but we suspect that the proliferation of the key party concept has been supported for the most part as a result of fear and fantasy. End quote. Look at that. I got some history for everybody. Based on the historical research of others, we cannot find proof that this happened. Like I said earlier, I have asked around and cannot find anyone I personally know that have attended a key party or any variation of it. This whole idea smacks of urban legend. There are a lot of secondhand and thirdhand accounts online, but again, no one directly saying, yes, I have attended a swinger party, a key party. I am happy under the swinging page on Wikipedia, the authors call it out as a probable urban legend as well. Talking to my lifestyle friends, they did say the idea sounds fun and it does have potential. The problem is that it is super duper hard to find five to ten couples where everyone shares mutual attraction, that no matter what keys you pull out of that fishbowl, you will be 100% on board with a fuckery with that person. It is very rare, very hard to organize on so many levels. Key parties smack on misogynistic ideals. Women are the property of men that can be traded and shared without their input, which is totally wrong. Women can be peer pressured into performing acts that may not be comfortable with. It shows a male-centered view of this hobby that is not true. I get it though. Key parties are an easy trope that Hollywood can use to say that a group of people on screen are swingers without explicitly saying it. They can put a fishbowl with keys in it on screen for a few seconds and everyone who knows knows. The joke can go right over the head of the younger viewers but the older crowd, yeah they know. This is an easy way to say that what is happening on screen is for adults only, or this gathering exists outside the norm. At its heart, it's lazy writing, and will probably be phased out in the next 10 years and replaced by upside-down pineapples, which I've already seen on a sitcom. One of the main characters takes note of a pineapple lamp at a garage sale, which piques the interest of the neighbor. And and oh hilarious hijinks ensue when the main characters accidentally stumble onto the neighbor sex party ha ha cue the laugh track ha ha i'm gonna blow the mind of any vanilla listeners out there women are in charge of the modern lifestyle for the most part this is a female woman feminine whatever you call it led hobby you want to find a segment of where women hold the power? It's the lifestyle. Women have the ultimate power in determining what happens, who we interact with, and have final veto power in relationships. The idea of key parties smacks a vanilla dominated fantasy, which is at odds in the modern lifestyle. That's a whole episode right there about women leading the lifestyle, but suffice it to say, for right now, yeah, women are in charge and make the decisions, not a random key ring. The second point is that we operate off is consent. Consent is one of the central pillars to the modern lifestyle, along with fun and safety, and it is necessary before any fuckery or touching will take place. And y'all will hear me talk about consent a lot on this show. I know I talk about consent more than sex on this podcast because of my experience. We deal with consent more than sex in the lifestyle. Consent is not sexy. Consent is necessary. Ha, that kind of rhymed. What is consent? I wrote at a multifaceted definition that I reserve the right to edit, addendum, complicate, simplify, and share as my experiences with the lifestyle evolves. Consent is agreeing to perform or participate in a requested action. Consent is given, not taken. Consent is enthusiastic and freely given with no external pressure. Consent is permission given to another person that should be respected and can be revoked at any time for any reason. Consent can be implied in some situations, but verbal, affirmative consent is the best choice and should be exercised in all situations. I just said a bunch of words. Let me break this down sentence by sentence. Consent, at the base level, is asking permission from another person to do something involving them, be it touching, sexually conversing, or engaging. Do you need consent before you talk to a person's spouse? Maybe. Can't hurt to ask. Remember, it is better to ask than assume. Asking for consent takes away assumptions, and assumptions can be dangerous. I know that all of us in this hobby may have, there may have been times we didn't ask for explicit consent. That's okay. This is one of those aspirational moments where you can all take a step back, check our behavior, and try to become better. Consent is given, not taken. A person can and will give consent to another person to do something. It could be as simple as a hug in some cases. The best rule is to ask before you touch another person. That's it. Anything past a handshake, hug, kiss, ass grab, ask first. Especially if you don't know that person very well, ask first. I dare say, you should ask for consent before you even share a nude with someone for the first time. In my mind, you're sharing your naked body with that person. They may or may not want it. They may or may not enjoy seeing it. This is especially true for dick pics. I know guys love showing Arthur Pecker to everyone. Stop it. Ask for consent to make sure the receiving party actually wants it. Consent should not be taken from another. You ever heard that phrase, better to ask for forgiveness than permission? You will fucking strike that from your brain right now if you're entering the lifestyle. Always ask for permission. By living by that motto, you're taking away another person's body autonomy. And that's the key word, take. Taking. It is not yours to take ever. If the lifestyle will evolve, we need to respect everyone's body autonomy. Just because that hot lady at the party is naked does not give you permission to touch her. By forcing yourself onto another person, either physically or with pictures, you're taking away their personal choice. I feel hot take coming on i know in the vanilla world there is a thought that people usually guys have that if a woman is naked she must want me to interact with her in some way or based on the way she's dressed she must want attention nope not true this applies in the vanilla world and the lifestyle so listen real fucking hard all people especially women are allowed to dress and behave however the fuck they want i can't do anything about the vanilla world that shit is a dumpster fire over there but here in the lifestyle we can do better in this lifestyle all people are allowed to dress and express themselves however they want as long as it does not cause physical or mental or emotional harm to themselves or another. Safety first. I know there are couples who are listening right now who are transitioning to the lifestyle. Y'all need to hear this. If a woman is naked around you, that is not an invitation to touch her. I have a friend in mine right now as I say this who is saying a silent thank you for it. She's a nudist. She gets naked a lot and she has to deal with people wanting to be handsy with her. So calling this out specifically for her her, nudity is not consent. If a man is naked around you, that is not an invitation to touch him either. Granted, familiarity may be a factor, and that's fine, but assume going forward, no one wants you to touch them without asking first. Keep your hands to yourself. Consent should be enthusiastic and freely given with no external pressure. This one has a bunch of layers. Consent should be enthusiastic. If you ask and there is a hint of hesitation, back off. They may give you consent. They may say yes, but you can still decide to accept it. And yes, I'm breaking all this down into some really woo-woo concepts, but this is how you cover your ass. So again, any hesitation, back off. They have the choice of giving consent Thank you. all this down into some really woo-woo concepts, but this is how you cover your ass. So again, any hesitation, back off. They have the choice of giving consent. You have the choice of accepting it, which you cannot accept if you want. And I know it's jackass to ask a question to physically interact with another person, and then they say yes, and then you back off. But if you're in a situation where those few seconds of talking makes you uncomfortable for any reason, back off. If you think someone may be pressuring someone else into giving consent, back off. That is one of the issues with the key party. It comes across that by pulling the keys out of the fishbowl, the woman has no ability to say no. She's being pressured into accepting whatever random dude she has now partnered with. So in that situation, there is external pressure for her to behave in a certain manner. The story of key parties, you never hear what happens if the woman says no. I know some women who will flat out say no and try to fish out a different set of keys. I imagine that situation with nine sets of eyes on you as you swirl around that glass bowl, there is an immense feeling of peer pressure to follow through with whatever you do. The word in there to note is peer pressure. No one should ever be peer pressured into an action in the lifestyle. The other people in the room, they need the presence of mind to pick up the hesitation and stop. The person pulling the keys needs to express their reluctance in that situation, and I can totally see a key party falling apart quickly over one bad pull of keys. Really, in any scenario, it could be the husband or the wife or the spouse or the partner pressuring one or the other into doing something they are not 100% on board with. If that is happening, it's shitty and you do not want to be a part of it, back off and walk away. Consent is permission given to another person that should be respected and can be revoked at any time. Okay, if a person consents that you can give them a hug, you do not have permission past that point to grab their ass or dick or try to kiss them. You respect the level they agree to. Do not push that point without further negotiations. Damn it, Jason, you're making all this sound complicated. You damn right it is. The modern lifestyle is going to shed the ill trappings of our past and create a new better image then this is where we need to go when a couple or person joins the lifestyle they need to learn about consent before anything else not the websites or the groups or sex or parties consent needs to be the highest priority if you're helping a couple transition into the lifestyle, make sure you bring up this conversation quickly and educate them. Consent can be revoked at any time. So let's say you're getting frisky with another couple. At any point, that can stop. At any point, one person can say stop. Even though you talked ahead of time and had the unfun conversation, consent to engage can be revoked and all action must stop. What about the kinds of consent? Consent can be implied in some situations, but again, verbal affirmative consent is the best option and should be exercised in all situations. So, I had a discussion with my friends about implied consent and affirmative consent as we called it, and yes, I have deep fucking discussions about the lifestyle with my friends because they give me excellent input on these scripts. What is implied consent? Implied consent is by being present in a given situation that you have been clearly outlined prior, you are giving implied consent that you want to be part of the action. Clearly outlined is the rub. You could stumble into an orgy in a hotel room. It totally happens and you have a choice to either stay or leave. Staying could be implied consent that you want to participate. Be aware of that. No one is going to stop the action to come over, talk to you about expectations for the encounter, walk you through it all. Nope. You will see 10 people getting frisky. Be aware that your presence could be a sign of wanting to participate. That's the danger of implied consent. Possibly no one is setting the rules ahead of time or expectations. Affirmative consent is directly asking another person a question and getting an answer. Taking it back to key parties, it could be argued. If all the couples involved knew they were attending a key party, all couples involved knew there was a possibility they could be having sex with any other person at the party and they're okay with that by putting their keys in the fishbowl the couple is acknowledging the situation and giving implied consent to participate do you have any fucking idea how hard it is to find three four five ten couples in this world who all know each other who are all okay with the thought of having sex with anyone else in that room and willing to meet at an agreed upon time. It is fucking hard. Yes, I have attended parties that the host said outright straight up, this is going to be an orgy. We knew what we were walking into. My wife and I discussed it ahead of time, looking at the guest list, and then made a conscious decision on whether to attend or not. This could be called implied consent, but even at the party, we still had to and needed to give verbal affirmative consent before we interact with anyone. Implied consent gets you in the room acknowledging what could happen. Affirmative consent is still necessary for any action to happen. There is a downside to implied consent too. It does not cover all situations. Let's say y'all go to a party and know full well that an orgy could happen. By being present in that environment, it is implied consent. But, big but here, what if there's someone in the room you just flat out are not attracted to physically or mentally? Just because you are there does not give that other person permission to touch you or assume they can touch you. That is where affirmative consent is still necessary. It is still necessary to ask first. Ask for permission first permission first they may say no and if you ever get a no be gracious say thank you and move on with your life collectively i feel as a community we need to evolve and use more affirmative consent not to say it doesn't happen at all i have seen people ask permission before touching or kissing or going further i've seen an action and it warms warms my little heart. Not to say we aren't doing this, but I know that for the lifestyle to shed its former reputation in the minds of vanilla people, we all need to be better at asking for affirmative consent. We can only change perceptions by our actions and sooner or later, our ideas of needing consent will trickle out into the greater zeitgeist and public perception of this hobby. What does affirmative consent look like? Doesn't do much good for me to throw out these concepts and without giving some concrete examples. Two sides to this, the asker and the consenter. I could not think of better terms for this, so that's what I got until I figured out better phrasing. When you ask for consent from another person, be direct and explicit. May I touch this? May I do this action? May I kiss you? May I hug you? Y'all see where I'm going? You need to let the other person know what you are asking. Do not be coy or tease. Do not lean in to kiss them, kiss them, and then ask for permission after. Always ask first. There are three possible answers to your direct question. Yes, no, not right now. If it's a yes, go for it. If it is a no, accept it and say I'll see you next time. first. There are three possible answers to your direct question. Yes, no, not right now. If it's a yes, go for it. If it is a no, accept it and say, okay, don't get butthurt or mopey or take out your rejection on them or other people. You might also get a not right now, which is fine too, means there's a chance later. If you are the consenter, give a firm direct answer either way. the brat thing is cute and all in small doses, but in the context of giving consent, shit doesn't fly well. A person needs to know if they want to do what they want to do is okay. And when someone decides to indulge in their brat tendencies or they want to be coy or tease little, the water gets murky. Consent gets murky and that is a bad thing. As the consentor, give a straight answer. Yes, no, not right now. Simple. Yes, the other person can do the action they requested. No, they cannot. Or again, not right now. And I get it. Asking for permission to do something is scary. What if the other person says no? What if they laugh? What if they're mean to me? You're going to feel embarrassed by asking, or there's a possibility you could be embarrassed. It could be hard, and it should be hard because it's important. Okay, granted, it is much easier to not ask for consent and just flow with the moment. And you know what happens then? Nothing. No one wants to make a move because they don't have clear lines of communication and consent, so everyone just ends up sitting around doing nothing. Everyone is scared to make a move since they think there's a possibility they could get rejected. They don't want to extend themselves outward. What if the other person rejects me? What if they don't want to participate? Yeah, what if? No one ever hit a home run by sitting in the stands. I can say it gets easier to ask for consent as you progress in the lifestyle. You become more comfortable in the act of asking and consenting. You learn how to ask. You learn when to ask. But y'all don't be scared. You get nowhere with anyone by doing nothing. For new couples, the number of times people may ask for your permission is going to be weird. It's going to be confusing. People are going to ask before they hug you, kiss you, or touch your outfit. Yes, it is different because the lifestyle is different. The vanilla world. People can and will touch others and usually in a not nice way. It happens. In the lifestyle, people are going to ask first. People should ask first. This is part of our culture. Adjust to the way we do things. Consent is a big deal. Making sure people are comfortable is a big deal. It may require a mental shift for newbies to accept the number of questions they receive, which is not a bad thing. Our need for consent is only a positive and y'all may have to adjust your mental brain workings to accommodate it. I always appreciate hearing your feedback and comments on episodes or suggestions for topics, so feel free to reach out to me. Go take a look at my friend's website, www.gentlemans-almanac.com. He wrote a really good book about the lifestyle for gentlemen.