[stcredzero]

This sounds like something out of Eyes Wide Shut, but with social awkwardness, baggy dad jeans, and crocs and socks...

Orgies are fine. I've never been to one and have no desire to go to one. The real issue here is the power-asymmetry between the men and women involved

Heck, there are low-rent "eyes wide shut" style events in Houston which are distinctly lower middle class. Glowing bracelets to color code your availability. Mud-wrestling scale large amounts of home formulated glycerin lubricant. Not a VC in sight, not a whiff of money and power. Just a whole lot of ex-employees of ISPs and assorted lower middle class nerd/weirdo friends. One of the parties I know of is lesbians only. Another one of them is yearly and run by a woman in an open marriage.

There are only two things in the Bay Area I know of that might fall vaguely into this sensational category. One of them was some kind of brunch with a live sex show. (The other: furries, and I don't know much more than that and I don't want to know!)

People have been doing one variation or another of this bacchanal stuff since time immemorial. It's "Honest" John the Fox and Gideon the Cat from Pinocchio offering you the tickets to Pleasure Island. There's much better one can do with the strength of one's body, mind, and passions than that nonsense. For those of you still in your teens and early 20's -- it's your job to make it past your youth with your honor, your mind, and your optimism intact.

[azernik]

My honor, mind, and optimism are surviving the sex parties of the poly and BDSM scene just fine, thank you very much.

[stcredzero]

My honor, mind, and optimism are surviving the sex parties of the poly and BDSM scene just fine, thank you very much.

Thank you for that. I dated a poly woman at one point. Not all parties are the same. From my experience, there is a definite rationality and morality associated with the poly scene which is based on consent. I'm not saying that pleasure is bad. Nihilistic pleasure without regard to anything else is pessimistic and simply doesn't lead to good things in the long run. Even Orthodox Jewish teaching recognizes certain kinds of sexual pleasure as a mitzvah. (In fact, sex has been shown by researchers to encourage neurogenesis. One grows more brain when one has good sex.)