Members of the Week -- Ivory Towers

[IvoryTowers]

Originally Posted by Hotwallabies

As a fellow idealist and do-gooder, I am interested as to which charities you guys would give the 100 million dollars? Why are those charities important to you?

(Hopefully I didn't make too many grammatical errors. Grammar is more the Mrs. field, as she is an English professor as well. I was always more of a history, theology, philosophy kind of guy so grammar can be a struggle.)

Mr. Ivory here. I imagine if we had that much money to donate we'd do a bit more research and find great new charities, but we'd also likely donate more money to charities we already support.

A few we like are Farm Sanctuary, the National Resources Defense Council, the American Anti-vivisection Society, Physicians for Responsible Medicine, and Lambda legal. Mrs. Ivory tends to prefer environmental and women's rights charities and I'm more concerned with politics and social justice (though we're both committed to both of those things--I'm just thinking about our current trends in individual giving). And of course we both support animal rights groups.

[IvoryTowers]

Originally Posted by Chicup

Unlike most people here, you are very upfront about your politics, so I have to wonder does the other couples politics play a part in your decision making process as to their compatibility with you?

It's certainly not feasible to "screen" for political affiliation when looking at Swing Lifestyle profiles or gazing across a smoke-filled club, but we've been turned off by things potential playmates have said in conversation. We have played with couples who we suspected were right of center, but we might not develop the chemistry necessary to play with a couple who was on the completely opposite side of the spectrum. After all, chemistry is more than just physical, no?

[SW_PA_Couple]

Do you believe that you have entered the lifestyle at about the right times in your lives and the right time in your relationship? Do you wish you have know about the lifestyle earlier or, having known about it, entered it earlier?

[two4youinswva]

Originally Posted by IvoryTowers

For Mr. Ivory, it's the apostrophe as well, especially people using possessives when it's just a simple plural.

I'm giving you a little gift. You can post this whenever there is an apostrophe infraction.



Now, for my usual question:

You get to host a dinner party. You can invite five guests from any period in history. Who makes the cut?

[IvoryTowers]

Originally Posted by NotSorry

What's your favorite cheesy pick up line?

Mrs. Ivory is not a big fan of pick up lines of any sort. Mr. Ivory, who loves puns, can appreciate the (vegan) cheese a bit more. He's always been partial to "if I told you you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?".

Have you heard of/do you use goodreads.com?

Well, we've heard of it now. Thanks for giving us another reason to while away endless hours on-line.

[IvoryTowers]

Originally Posted by SW_PA_Couple

Do you believe that you have entered the lifestyle at about the right times in your lives and the right time in your relationship? Do you wish you have know about the lifestyle earlier or, having known about it, entered it earlier?

Wow, what great questions you're all asking! We've always thought of our opening up of our relationship as a fairly organic process. We'd had threesomes off and on for most of our relationship. This led to discussions of relationship boundaries, fidelity, etc. Eventually we realized that one of us having sex outside of the relationship wouldn't be a deal-breaker. It was only a matter of time before we "tested" that hypothesis. Everything evolved fairly naturally. So we'd have to say that we came to swinging at exactly the right time.

[IvoryTowers]

Originally Posted by IvoryTowers

Wow, what great questions you're all asking! We've always thought of our opening up of our relationship as a fairly organic process. We'd had threesomes off and on for most of our relationship. This led to discussions of relationship boundaries, fidelity, etc. Eventually we realized that one of us having sex outside of the relationship wouldn't be a deal-breaker. It was only a matter of time before we "tested" that hypothesis. Everything evolved fairly naturally. So we'd have to say that we came to swinging at exactly the right time.

Mrs. Ivory here (currently in another state so we're responding separately to some of these questions). I just wanted to add that I was on the pill for 12 years and for the last 3 or so years, it really destroyed my sex drive. Getting off the pill (a year ago) made swinging possible. Now, if I'd gotten off the pill in 2005, maybe we would have started earlier because I would have been more interested in sex in general. Or maybe not. As Mr. Ivory said, everything did evolve naturally.

[IvoryTowers]

Originally Posted by two4youinswva

You get to host a dinner party. You can invite five guests from any period in history. Who makes the cut?

Mrs. Ivory here with my five choices (oh, you think you could get us to agree on 5 together? Bwhahahaha).

1. William Shakespeare--you all knew that was choice #1
2. the Dali Lama--as a Buddhist, he would be the ultimate dinner guest (or I could invite the actual Buddha, if he existed)
3.either Margaret Sanger or Betty Friedan (I can't decide)
4. Elizabeth I--I tried to make myself choose another ruler, but there are just so many questions I'd want to ask her
5. My stepmother. She's amazing and I never get to see her. Plus, she'd put all my other guests at ease.

[IvoryTowers]

Originally Posted by two4youinswva

You get to host a dinner party. You can invite five guests from any period in history. Who makes the cut?

Mr. Ivory here. Loved the cartoon, by the way. My five would be:

-Karl Marx: I was a hardcore Marxist from college until very recently. Now I'm an anarchist, which I think Karl could appreciate.

-Smedley Butler: prevented a coup that would have overthrown F.D.R. and wrote an incredible pamphlet about war profiteering, "War is a Racket." This man is a true American hero.

-Ingmar Bergman: the greatest film director of all time. Plus, he was an atheist, so he'd be pretty happy that I brought him back from the dead.

-Noam Chomsky: a steadfast critic of American imperialism and a towering intellectual.

-Ursula K. LeGuin: America's greatest living writer, plus she's a feminist and anarchist.

[PB&J]

Originally Posted by IvoryTowers

-Ursula K. LeGuin: America's greatest living writer, plus she's a feminist and anarchist.

Her two best books: The Dispossessed and Always Coming Home. Magnificent!

[NCfuncouple98]

Originally Posted by IvoryTowers

Getting off the pill (a year ago) made swinging possible.

What birth control option do you use now?

[IvoryTowers]

Originally Posted by NCfuncouple98

What birth control option do you use now?

Mrs. Ivory had a tubal ligation, so in our own lives we use no birth control at all. Of course, with playmates we use condoms (though we've been surprised to see that condom use is not universal in swinging).