The authors define the term slut as "a person of any gender who has the courage to lead life according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you." The term is reclaimed from its usual use as a pejorative and as a simple label for a promiscuous person. Instead, it is used to signify a person who is accepting of their enjoyment of sex and the pleasure of physical intimacy with others, and chooses to engage and accept these in an ethical and open way—rather than as cheating. The Ethical Slut discusses how to live an active life with multiple concurrent sexual relationships in a fair and honest way. Discussion topics include how to deal with the practical difficulties and opportunities in finding and keeping partners, maintaining relationships with others, and strategies for personal growth. It contains chapters discussing how consensual non-monogamy is handled in different subcultures such as the gay and lesbian communities, information on handling scheduling, jealousy, communication, conflict in relationships, and etiquette for group sexual encounters.
Adaptation
An article in the January 31, 2007, issue of the East Bay Express reports that Moses Ma will be producing a movie adaptation of The Ethical Slut. As of 2014, that project had not come to fruition. In 2013, Ben Fritz raised funding privately and via Kickstarter to create an episodic web series inspired by the book with input from Easton and Hardy. By 2016, four seasons of The Ethical Slut, were released on YouTube despite struggles for funding after the first season. There are 50 episodes, ranging between 4 and 9 minutes. The series follows two female friends as they decide to explore open relationships with the aid of the helpful handbook, The Ethical Slut.
Play adaptation
Playwright John Sable's Multiple O, a play adaptation of The Ethical Slut, opened on May 2, 2008, at the Broom Street Theater.
Further editions
Co-author Dossie Easton reported in May 2007 that Easton and Liszt were working on a second edition of the book, including more communication exercises and information about polyamory communities on the Internet. It was published in March 2009 and is called The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures. A third edition was released in August 2017 entitled The Ethical Slut, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love. The third edition has been revised to include interviews with poly millennials, tributes to poly pioneers, and new sidebars on topics such as asexuality, sex workers, and ways polys can connect and thrive. The authors also include new content addressing nontraditional relationships beyond the polyamorous paradigm of "more than two": couples who don't live together, couples who don't have sex with each other, nonparallel arrangements, couples with widely divergent sex styles, power disparities, and cross-orientation relationships, while utilizing non-binary gender language and new terms that have come into common usage since the last edition.
Translations
The book has been translated and published in French in April 2013 under the title La Salope éthique: Guide pratique pour des relations libres sereines at Tabou Éditions. It was also translated in 2013 into Spanish under the name Ética promiscua at Editorial Melusina. In January 2014 an Italian translation was published by Odoya under the title La zoccola etica. Guida al poliamore, alle relazioni aperte e altre avventure. In May 2014 the German translation at mvg Verlag was published under the title Schlampen mit Moral. Eine praktische Anleitung für Polyamorie, offene Beziehungen und andere Abenteuer. In Russian the book has been translated and published in 2006 under the title Этика бл**ства.
