Whilst the above argument focuses on the ability of economic change to release sexuality in the average household due to previous economic boundaries, and allow for alternate forms of sexual lifestyles to emerge, this argument can be spun around with the establishing that most swinging couples found online are married or long term committed couples that maintain a comfortable lifestyle and have finished raising their children, or have actively decided not to have any. Swingers leverage the current economic conditions to allow themselves to explore their sexuality with the sole intention to increase personal pleasure and satisfaction. A trend emerges that tends to indicate that once the constraints of raising a family and starting out in life are overcome, couples actively seek out ways to gay hookup near me seek sexual gratification, with one of the more practical ways being the swingers lifestyle.
Whilst Swinging does not seem to fit in to evolutionary or biological models, there does seem to be a compelling argument for the swinging lifestyle to make sense on in a cultural context. The fact that swinging emerged from our present culture seems to pass most people by, many sociologists seek to draw parallels from previous cultures where swinging and partner swapping was popular and acceptable for couples. Swinging has become so popular as a lifestyle for the simple reason that modern day freedoms, liberal attitude and tolerant allowances of our society, facilitated by our capitalistic, economically sound society allows couples to have the peace of mind to explore the limits for their sexual personas at their leisure with other couples in the lifestyle.
As most Swinging couples belong to the upper, middle class, are married men and women that tend to occupy professional jobs, and, would swinging aside, represent the ideal model of community members; their devious sexual preferences reside in the most conforming of communities
The irony that the same society that, for most part, looks down on and condemns the swinging lifestyle is the same society that allowed it to flourish is lost on most. A salient point that is not lost on most is the tacit agreement by most of the ‘silent majority couples’ that whatever happens in a couple’s bedroom is private, and that despite the swinging lifestyle going against current social conceptions about sex and relationships, the option to swing within the privacy of ones house is sacrosanct to such couples.
“In like manner, silence and secrecy are a shelter for power, anchoring its prohibitions; but they also loosen its hold and provide for relatively obscure areas of tolerance (Foucault).”
As happened in the above case in Arizona, once the public condemnation for swinging clubs and swingers parties died down, the swinger couples sexuality become private again, and the mist of silent tolerance returned the status-quo.
Whilst swingers are indeed nonconforming to western sexual norms, there is a tacit acknowledgement by swingers that their relationships will do their best to mirror these, so as to be as unobtrusive to the public as possible
“(Personal choices about how to live and adapt – far from being reducible to the effects of rational and seemingly spontaneous exertions of an enlightened free will – are informed by powerful, culturally and historically inscribed subjectivities and desires, which form and transform over the course of development. (Herdt and Hostetler).” Whilst in the current times, swingers belong to two major catagories; ‘married couples’ or ‘committed couples’ and ‘heterosexual’.
“In other cultures, particularly, taxonomies of sexuality and gender are embedded in a framework of personhood that creates powerful incentives for conformity, but which may also provide for divergent lifestyle, socially permitted or even sanctioned, at least among certain elements of the community (Herdt and Hostetler).”