Transgender Day of Visibility 2019

Transgender people are everywhere. If you think you've never met a transgender person or shared a restroom with someone who is transgender, you're almost certainly wrong. You just didn't realize.

We want transgender people to know: You are welcome here. We care. We will continue to speak up for your rights.

Pennsylvania Still Arresting Consenting Adults

Here we go yet again. As reported at altoonamirror.com...

State police arrested a Tyrone woman Wednesday for a felony charge of incest. 

Amanda Michel Zindel, 31, of 1376 Bell-Tip Road, is behind bars for allegedly having sex with a family member, who is not being named since he has not been arrested or charged. 

State police at Hollidays­burg first received a complaint May 29 about the discovery of a video of Zindel and an adult male family member having sex that had been recorded on Zindel’s computer tablet.

These are consenting adults. There is no victim. (If May 29 is not an error, this must have been a very long investigation.)

Book Burning Is Bad

Dear Reader,

What do you do when you're online and you find something that is not your cup of tea, maybe even disgusts you?

If you're well-adjusted and healthy, you shrug and move on to something that interests or entertains you. Or you divert your gaze from the screen entirely and tend to things around you.

There's a fellow who decided to spend his spring break, according to him, pouring through media that upset him. Oh, it upset him so much that he kept pouring through it. And then he decided to write a couple of essays about it. But only because he disliked it so much. A whole lot. Really. That's why he decided to focus on it so much. It's a sacrifice he was willing to make for... power, apparently.

Both essays are preceded by a claim of having evidence of really, really bad stuff that someone can ask for privately. There's no reason why such evidence couldn't be described in the essays, unless the intention was to get the reader to think the absolute worst case scenarios since very few readers will actually bother to ask.

Hacienda Villa in Brooklyn Sounds Very Interesting

Niki Davis brings us this look at Hacienda Villa at bushwickdaily.com...

The Hacienda Villa is Bushwick’s intentional, sex-positive, polyamorous community. Polyamory involves the practice of consensual non-monogamy. People in the community are open to having multiple romantic and/or sexual relationships concurrently. Except, rather than lying about it like many married couples do, for poly folks, all partners are in the know about what’s going down. As their website states, “Hacienda is a social experiment designed to celebrate sex, educate the curious, and dispel shame.”

Sounds good.

Some practice relationship anarchy, where they don’t believe in labels or structure. Some have primary and secondary partners and make explicit rules regarding how to allocate time in each relationship. Many practice something in-between.

There are many ways to be ethically nonmonogamous.

BUSHWICK DAILY: What experiences led you to realize that you might be poly? 

KENNETH PLAY: I struggled with relationship structures for most of my 20s. I would have serial monogamous relationships, but I would find myself getting bored because my novelty drive is so high. It’s not because I don't still love this person, but I go through the infatuation phase, and then experience such a big dip. I kept thinking to myself that something must be wrong, it’s supposed to be magical and feel good forever. Later in life, when I discovered this community, I felt so much less alone. Also, working with Dr. Zhana provided sex science that helped me navigate it, understanding that after the infatuation phase this chemical drive transitions into something else. I learned to navigate how my biology works. Being in a non-monogamous relationship allows me to have enough novelty.

There are many reasons why some for of ethical nonmonogamy might be better for someone than monogamy.

After speaking with Play he gave me a tour of the villa. There was recently a sex party downstairs, so there were lots of mattresses set up. He then let me take a ride on unicorn Sybian, while attempting to take a coherent Instastory and thanked me for my time.

There are other intentional communities, temporary (perhaps annually) and permanent, where people live outside of the strict and narrow restrictions so often presented as ideal. There always have been. You may know of some out of history that have been presented as failures, but most today do not draw attention to themselves and are doing fine.

Same-Gender Marriage and Consanguinamory in the US

Gay marriage (or same-sex marriage, or most accurately same-gender marriage) and consanguinamory (romantic and/or erotic love between close relatives) are usually (but not always) two different things.

As of this posting, there are people fretting that allowing more consenting adults their freedom to marry is going to result in... even more consenting adults having the freedom to marry! Oh, the horror! Because the limited monogamous same-gender freedom to marry is now legal nationwide in the US, some people are asking if people in consanguineous relationships (or adult consensual incest) are going to have their rights and be treated like, you know, people.

Please note everything we're discussing here is about consensual sex and relationships between adults. We're not talking about rape or molestation.


In the US, the bigotry against marriage equality is rapidly losing out. We recently had the Supreme Court decide for the nationwide limited monogamous same-gender freedom to marry. The denial of marriage equality still currently extends to preventing first cousins from marrying in a little over half of the states. If you consider cousin marriage incestuous, then the remaining states, which allow marriages between first cousins (some with ridiculous restrictions) are where same-gender first cousins can enter into monogamous same-gender "incestuous" marriage.

Here's Some Research, More is Needed

Gerald Schoenewolf, Ph.D., has an essay at psychcentral.com titled "The Rise of Brother-Sister Incest." Let's take a look.

What was once a taboo has now become, to many brothers and sisters, a cool pastime and an even cooler way to make money online.

Or, you know, a deep and lasting love.

Brother-sister incest seems to be on the rise, at least according to my unofficial survey of incest websites.

It seems to be. It sibling consanguinamory always existed wherever there have been people, in every demographic. People are being more open in general about sex now, and they are also following the money.

In perusing websites that feature incest, I found two types of brother-sister incest clips. Both were more prevalent than in previous years. One kind was the fake kind in which porn stars pretend to be brother and sister or brother and step-sister.

Suffering for science, are we? Let's not forget brothers with each other, and sisters with each other.

How To Raise Awareness of Consanguinamory

There was a question asked of this blog's sister Tumblr. Read the question and answer.

Support the Rights of All Women

Have you been observing International Women's Day?

All women should be free to be themselves, to have their basic human and civil rights, whether they are cisgender, transgender, or noncomforming or fluid; whether they are asexual, heterosexual, lesbian, bisexual, polysexual, or pansexual; whether they are aromantic, celibate, monogamous, or ethically nonmonogamous. Whether their relationships are exogamous, endogamous, or consanguineous. Whether they are questioning or they are certain. Whether they are raising children or have raised children or not. Whether they are a married or partnered or single.

A woman, regardless of her birth, sexual orientation, relationship orientation, race, or religion, should be free to share love, sex, residence, and marriage (and any of those without the others) with ANY and ALL consenting adults, without fear of prosecution, bullying, shaming, or discrimination.

(Same goes for any other adults, too.)

Utah Needs Full Marriage Equality

And so does every other state. For now, we'll address the discrimination in Utah.

Caitlin O'Kane reports at cbsnews.com...

Two cousins who say they are in love with each other have created an online petition calling for the state of Utah to allow them to get legally married. "My first cousin and I have been in love with each other our whole lives but we are prohibited from marrying in the state of Utah where we live," Angela Peang writes in the petition. "We believe that the law is outdated and it needs to be changed so that we can socially legitimize our love."

Of course! There is a fundamental right to marry. An adult should be free to marry any and all consenting adults.

The couple's goal is to get 1,000 signatures; as of Wednesday morning, about 75 have signed on. Peang told CBS News she's loved her cousin, Michael Lee, since she was in second grade. Peang's father is the oldest of 12 children; his sister, the fifth child in that family, is Lee's mother. 

"We just always played a lot," Peang remembered of her childhood interactions with Lee. "We went into a closet and we were kissing and dancing together. It just felt really natural."

I think they've proven their love. There is no good reason to continue to deny them, or any other adults seeking to marry, their rights.

"He told my mom he was going to marry me," Peang said. Her mom told Michael they couldn't get married but they could be friends. Each time they saw each other at family functions the connection between them stayed strong. The cousins were caught kissing once by family members, Peang remembered. "We got in trouble," she said. "After that we were kind of kept apart."

It's sad how bigotry causes even family members to do stupid things.