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> "So the community encouraged polygamy, orgies and generally engaging in as much sexual activity as possible. Needless to say, the Oneida members were a happy

> "So the community encouraged polygamy, orgies and generally engaging in as much sexual activity as possible. Needless to say, the Oneida members were a happy bunch, and the commune lasted more than three decades." Actually, Oneida had a commitmee of elder woman. You applied to the committee to have sex with someone one time, and they could approve or deny you. (This was designed to prevent forming couples, slow down the amount of sex, eugenics to make perfect humans, and make sure the founder got all he wanted). Oneida, while not monogamous, was pretty far from a sex fest (unless you were the cult leader). Given how wrong the article is on Oneida, and that's the only one I know about, I'm suspicious of the rest of it. Here's a great (long) article on Oneida: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-polyamorous-christian-socialist-utopia-that-made-silverware-for-proper-americans/ http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-polyamorous-chr...

narrator 9y ago
So earlier on HN I was wondering how two willing co-workers could proposition each other for casual sex without creating sexual harassment problems for themselves or the company. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14854649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14854649 The Oneida cult was basically a business where everyone worked but also had lots of casual sex and they had a solution. Elder women served as the go-between. Men would not ask women directly for sex. This is a bit like Tinder with a trusted person to tally swipe rights and swipe lefts. From the article: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-polyamorous-christian-socialist-utopia-that-made-silverware-for-proper-americans/ http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-polyamorous-chr... "“The word ‘interview’ was the Oneidans’ euphemism for a sexual rendezvous,” Wayland-Smith says. “It was mostly men who requested the interviews, but they would never ask a woman directly. A couple of older, respected women of the Community acted as go-betweens. A man would say, ‘I want to have an interview with so-and-so,’ and he would ask this go-between to speak to the woman. In theory, a woman could decline without being embarrassed. In practice, the group was small enough that there was definitely social pressure like, ‘It will be good for you to sleep with this person.’" There would be less social pressure in this cross between LinkedIn, Legal Zoom and Tinder because it would be a SAAS app and not a person being the go-between, but it still would probably be a problem if the office started getting gossipy, which would inevitably happen.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  This is great parody! People always misunderestimate the difficulty of formalizing things that are easy for people being people to deal with into legible systems that an institution (like law or a company HR team) can deal with. People tend to know what harassment is. There would be some disagreement if you ask a group of people, especially in ambiguous case. People's opinions will be culturally informed, informed by bias...etc. But, groups of people have an instinctive knack for this. People do not have a knack for creating institutions that can work with this sort of efficiency at determining truth, or justice... Institutions need formal rulesets, absolutes.. like machines made of people. Anyway, since harassment is very relevant in the context of the quasi-litigative, something like this could actually happen. The precoital consent form is a cliche already. But, some sort of formalized policy for hitting on co-workers in a harassment-safe way... That could actually happen.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
emodendroket 9y ago
Frankly, completely flubbing the specifics of events they reference is a big problem with works that have sweeping subjects (in terms of time and place) like "the history of salt" or "religions that worshiped electricity."

narrator 9y ago

So earlier on HN I was wondering how two willing co-workers could proposition each other for casual sex without creating sexual harassment problems for themselves or the company. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14854649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14854649 The Oneida cult was basically a business where everyone worked but also had lots of casual sex and they had a solution. Elder women served as the go-between. Men would not ask women directly for sex. This is a bit like Tinder with a trusted person to tally swipe rights and swipe lefts. From the article: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-polyamorous-christian-socialist-utopia-that-made-silverware-for-proper-americans/ http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-polyamorous-chr... "“The word ‘interview’ was the Oneidans’ euphemism for a sexual rendezvous,” Wayland-Smith says. “It was mostly men who requested the interviews, but they would never ask a woman directly. A couple of older, respected women of the Community acted as go-betweens. A man would say, ‘I want to have an interview with so-and-so,’ and he would ask this go-between to speak to the woman. In theory, a woman could decline without being embarrassed. In practice, the group was small enough that there was definitely social pressure like, ‘It will be good for you to sleep with this person.’" There would be less social pressure in this cross between LinkedIn, Legal Zoom and Tinder because it would be a SAAS app and not a person being the go-between, but it still would probably be a problem if the office started getting gossipy, which would inevitably happen.

dalbasal 9y ago
This is great parody! People always misunderestimate the difficulty of formalizing things that are easy for people being people to deal with into legible systems that an institution (like law or a company HR team) can deal with. People tend to know what harassment is. There would be some disagreement if you ask a group of people, especially in ambiguous case. People's opinions will be culturally informed, informed by bias...etc. But, groups of people have an instinctive knack for this. People do not have a knack for creating institutions that can work with this sort of efficiency at determining truth, or justice... Institutions need formal rulesets, absolutes.. like machines made of people. Anyway, since harassment is very relevant in the context of the quasi-litigative, something like this could actually happen. The precoital consent form is a cliche already. But, some sort of formalized policy for hitting on co-workers in a harassment-safe way... That could actually happen.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

emodendroket 9y ago

Frankly, completely flubbing the specifics of events they reference is a big problem with works that have sweeping subjects (in terms of time and place) like "the history of salt" or "religions that worshiped electricity."