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23. I'm Blue (Da Ba Dee Da Ba Di)
5 Plays2 years ago
DARK HISTORY: The Blue Fugates of Kentucky
cw: incest, childhood sexual abuse, rape, abortion
After a few months off, we’re back y’all! And this time Shaena takes us down to another small town to learn about a family of blue people. Yes, you read that right - Blue People. Join us as we wander down to Troublesome Creek, Kentucky and learn about the Fugates: aka The Blue Fugates, aka ‘The Blue People of Kentucky’. Why are they blue? Listen to find out. Spoiler alert: it has to do with a lot of inbreeding. This episode, Shaena explores the history of this family, asking the question “Why the Fuck Are They Blue?”, and takes us on a few wild and uncomfortable tangents about incest. Buckle Up!
SOURCES
Outro last updated April 2023
FYI: we've recently unpublished older episodes as we are in process of re-editing for a smoother flow & audio experience. they will be available again as we finish.
Thank you for listening to our passion project <3 You can find us on social media here! We're a team of 2 people & have always been ad-free. If you are enjoying, please consider supporting our sustainability on Patreon or by making a one-time contribution via CashApp $unpacktheeerie.
- your grateful hosts
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Transcript
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Anyways.
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You can find all of this on Wikipedia.
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Look up legality of incest in the United States.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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You're welcome.
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Don't you want to know?
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All of this information.
Introduction to 'Unpacking the Eerie'
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Hi, I'm Akshi.
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And I'm Shayna.
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And you're listening to Unpacking the Eerie.
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A podcast that explores the intersections of our dark and morbid curiosities through a social justice lens.
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You're welcome.
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Before we get started, we want to offer our usual content warning.
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This episode includes conversations about incest, child sexual abuse, rape, and abortion.
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Hello.
Return from Hiatus
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Hello.
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We're back.
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We are back.
00:00:55
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It's been, what, four months?
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Four months since we last recorded.
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I don't know when the episode came out, but I guess it'll be, yeah, it's been four months.
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Yeah.
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Had to take a break, but we're ready to come back.
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Yes.
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There was a lot that happened.
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I moved.
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Yeah.
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So we're recording in a.
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Brand new location.
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Yes.
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Our fourth location for recording.
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You're right.
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Yep.
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Wow.
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Okay.
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Yeah, I was out of the country for a little bit.
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Yes, and I had a second job.
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It just wasn't tenable.
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Yeah, yeah.
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We were busy.
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But we're back now.
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Not with a vengeance.
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No.
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But with some more capacity, though.
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Yep, yep.
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Okay.
00:01:42
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So, our last...
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episode, the Malaysian Airlines one, was supposed to be a mini-sode, but it turned out not to be a mini-sode.
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It was a fucking-sode.
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It was a full-sode.
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Yeah, so this go is gonna be something similar.
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Typically when we split up the mini-sodes, we kind of cover our own stories, and then one of us is chiming in as a soundboard slash commentary slash conversationalist.
Listener Acknowledgements
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So that's gonna be the setup for today, but before we get started...
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We want to do some Patreon shoutouts that are really long overdue because we've been out our bad.
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And then we have a review from Apple Podcasts that we wanted to share because it's very sweet.
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So thank you to our new patrons, Meredith, R., Alyssa, and Journey.
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We appreciate your support as always.
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And to Luz,
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Aaron, who wrote this wonderful review for us on Apple Podcasts that we would love to share.
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Mesmerizing, nuanced, brilliant, needed.
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My favorite podcast of all time.
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Wow.
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Yep.
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This series is a true gift to all listeners.
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It's eminently bingeable and full of wisdom.
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The hosts pour their time, energy, creativity, brilliance, and collective enormity of knowledge to tell captivating stories.
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By listening, we learn how applying nuance and attention can
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to the roots of violence and trauma, give us the critical lens to bring true healing to community.
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This show contributes beautifully to witnessing and upholding survivors who we silence when we try to ignore the violent shadow side of human existence on this planet.
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Never gratuitous, never for a moment boring, this is the podcast to accompany us on the wild journey that is living.
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Wow.
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How beautiful.
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Collective enormity of knowledge.
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Yeah.
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I'm like, dang.
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Thank you for that beautiful review, Aaron.
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Yes.
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We got to put it on our website.
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Oh, yeah.
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Okay.
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It's going to go up there.
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It was like a whole Rotten Tomatoes style kind of review.
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Totally.
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Wow.
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Well, what are we talking about today?
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Oh, God.
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Okay.
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So buckle fucking
The Blue People of Kentucky
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up.
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Okay.
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This story, actually, I looked into it because our friend April, hey, said you have to cover the blue people.
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And I was like, who are the blue people?
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And then I learned.
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And you're going to learn about the blue people of Kentucky, of Troublesome Creek, Kentucky.
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That's where they're from?
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Troublesome Creek.
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Wow.
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I mean, it's a very specific name.
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That's true.
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Troublesome Creek.
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Troublesome story, troublesome area.
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I guess before jumping in, I was curious about the history of Troublesome Creek, like why it's called that.
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And I haven't really found anything, but I did find, I don't know if I just didn't dig far enough.
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I gave myself a time cap in looking into it, but I did find some history about Kentucky that I felt, you know, sets the stage.
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So,
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Kentucky was granted statehood in 1792, history.com says, becoming the first U.S. state west of the Appalachian Mountains.
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Oh my gosh, we really gotta cover the Appalachian Mountains because there's some wild shit.
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I saw TikTok where this person was like, I have a theory why there are so many really creepy things going on there.
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And she was like, look at Pangaea.
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This area here is the Appalachian Mountains.
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Every time...
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the land kind of split into different areas and moved.
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The Appalachian Mountains stayed there.
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So she was like, what if there's all of this stuff, like weird, I don't know, creatures?
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Yeah, sure.
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Whatever, the folklore there.
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What if it's because it never really shifted?
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It's just really old and has thrived there for a long time.
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Interesting.
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Yeah, so I was like, that's an interesting theory.
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I'll take it.
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Anyway, so Daniel Boone was one of Kentucky's, they said most prominent explorers.
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That man was a white settler.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And then people kind of followed his path.
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his lead.
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And then apparently the state remained officially neutral during the Civil War.
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I didn't know that.
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Its population was... I didn't know that either.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I'm pretty sure slavery was present in Kentucky.
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Yeah, yeah.
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But apparently the population was very divided in that.
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So they were Switzerland, I guess.
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Yeah.
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And then soldiers from Kentucky served in both the Union and Confederate armies.
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Interesting.
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Yeah.
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Didn't know that.
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I didn't know that either.
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It's known as a major U.S. coal producer.
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It's a site of...
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like a bunch of military bases, Fort Knox and Fort Campbell.
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And it's known as the home of the Kentucky Derby horse race and bluegrass music.
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And probably people know Kentucky for their whiskey and bourbon.
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Yeah.
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And there's also the Waverly Hills sanatoriums in Kentucky.
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Sanatorium is like place where they held people that were sick with tuberculosis, but it's one of the haunted places.
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They have a Buzzfeed unsolved on it.
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Yikes.
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Sanatoriums always remind me of Linda.
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Yeah.
00:07:20
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Yeah.
00:07:21
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Yes.
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For those of you who don't know, Linda Hazard, we covered her in our first.
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Episode one.
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Very first.
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Pilot.
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Yes, the pilot, the very green episode, the I don't know what the fuck's going on, what we're doing episode.
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But we did.
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It's still an interesting story.
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It's true.
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She starved people to death.
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Yes, she did.
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She did.
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Anyways.
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But I also found out some history about the first people of Kentucky, which is obviously not these settler people.
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Not Daniel.
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For 200 years, most historians said that Native Americans didn't live in the area known as Kentucky.
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Oh, interesting.
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And instead used the land sporadically for hunting and trapping.
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Okay.
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But...
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There's a lot of evidence that shows that there's tools and other archaeological evidence that indigenous people, of course, lived on the land for more than 12,000 years.
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And this is a myth that was perpetrated by people who probably wanted to deny or erase the history of their own colonial violence.
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And this myth was popularized by a book that was published in the late 1700s, written by a land speculator, an entrepreneur who
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wanted to encourage new settlements in Kentucky.
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So essentially this was propaganda.
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And if you can erase that, then you can be like, oh, well, I'm settling here and I'm not taking it from anyone technically.
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But before Europeans came and did their thing that they always do, Kentucky was home to many tribes.
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They spoke a variety of languages, including Algonquin,
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Iroquian, Muskegon, and when Kentucky joined the Union in 1792, there were over 20 tribes who legally claimed land in Kentucky, including Cherokee, Chickasaw, Chippewa, Delaware, Eel River, Haudenosaunee?
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I hope I'm saying that right.
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Yeah.
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Kaskaskia, Kickapoo, Miami, Ottawa, Piyankasha, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Way, and the Wyandotte.
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Shout out to Olivia.
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She's part Chickasaw.
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That's true.
00:09:36
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Wow.
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People are like, what?
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What?
00:09:41
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Actually, you can go to our episode on Jim Jones.
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Yes.
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And our friend Olivia, who is part Chickasaw, was on there and shared a bit about.
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And she has a podcast with some other indigenous folks.
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It's called Inchunwa.
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And yeah, they talk about traditional tattooing and related stories.
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So check that out.
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Yeah, like the Southeastern revitalization of Indigenous tattooing.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Check it out.
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And then apparently the Mingo, Yamakura, and Yuchi also called Kentucky home.
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So clearly, it's not just the erasure of a small group of people.
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There's over 20 tribes that were living there, and they just decided that
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No one was living there.
00:10:37
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Yeah?
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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Just a rewriting of history.
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One of the largest groups was said to be the Cherokee, and they first came in contact with Spanish explorers in the mid-1500s.
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Why do they call them explorers in here?
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Yeah.
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I mean, it's history.com.
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That's true.
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It's true.
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It's like I have to translate history.com.
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In the mid-1500s, and then the British in Virginia developed a trading relationship with the Cherokee starting in the 1600s.
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I don't know what that actually looked like, but, you know, they also came and they brought smallpox.
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It wiped out half of the Cherokee population in the 1700s.
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Half.
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And then in the Seven Years' War, the Cherokee fought against the French, apparently with the British, and
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probably a forced choice, right?
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And then, I guess, England won in 1763, won in quotes, and then the British said that Kentucky was Indian territory and could not be purchased or taken from the Cherokee without their permission.
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Okay.
00:11:43
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That's what they said.
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But, you know, probably just leverage, right?
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They were like, well, we want it, so you can't have it.
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So, really, probably not about them.
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Yeah, yeah.
00:11:56
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Probably all about the British wanting to eventually be able to encroach on that and take it.
00:12:02
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There was also the Indian Removal Act, which led the government to take over Native American lands in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, which, like I'm sure, rippled out in a lot of really violent ways into this area of Kentucky.
History and Genetics of the Fugate Family
00:12:17
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And then some natives voluntarily moved, in quotes, to quote-unquote Indian Territory or modern-day Oklahoma.
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And those who resisted were forcibly removed by the military on the Trail of Tears through Kentucky and several other states.
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Today, some Cherokees still live in Kentucky, but the state has no federally or state-recognized Native American tribes, which is just really wild.
00:12:38
Speaker
Wow.
00:12:39
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Yeah, especially given how many...
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different tribes were living there prior.
00:12:45
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Yeah.
00:12:46
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Kentucky also was a site of slavery.
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It was there since its inception, and it was written into the state's original constitution.
00:12:54
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By 1830, Black people made up 24% of Kentucky's population.
00:12:59
Speaker
Wow.
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24%.
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Yeah, it's like one in four.
00:13:02
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Yeah.
00:13:03
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And then, apparently in 1833, there is a law that banned the importation and sale of enslaved people.
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but was overturned in 1849.
00:13:15
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And at the same time, there was a movement to ban slavery, and that was unsuccessful.
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And then this is where they kind of lead into talking about how Kentucky remained a neutral state.
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And then there was about 100,000 troops that fought for the North, 40,000 troops that fought for the South, which is... Yeah.
00:13:33
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I didn't expect that, but almost 24,000 of those troops were African-American soldiers.
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Mm-hmm.
00:13:42
Speaker
And then after the Civil War ended, apparently Kentucky didn't ratify the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
00:13:51
Speaker
Which, you know, is the- That's the prison exception, isn't it?
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's the amendment that technically is- Yeah.
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Like people say it ended slavery.
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Yeah.
00:14:00
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But- Oh, okay.
00:14:02
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Got it.
00:14:02
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Got it.
00:14:02
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Got it.
00:14:03
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Yeah, yeah.
00:14:04
Speaker
But it has an exception for incarcerated people.
00:14:07
Speaker
Well, I mean, they don't call it that, right?
00:14:10
Speaker
Or that was like the new Jim Crow's point was that actually slavery didn't go away.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, yeah.
00:14:16
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And then I guess through Reconstruction until the mid-1950s, Black people in Kentucky fought for the right to vote in other equal treatment under the law.
00:14:25
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And then there were civil rights movements that were really prominent through the state of Kentucky because there were very intense segregation laws in that area and surrounding areas.
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And the state only officially ratified the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution in 1978.
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Oh, wow.
00:14:42
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Which is more than 100 years after they were enacted.
00:14:46
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And then provisions for segregation and a poll tax were removed from the state constitution in 1996.
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That's so recent.
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Yes.
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So that's the backdrop.
00:14:58
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That's Kentucky.
00:14:58
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That's Kentucky, you know?
00:15:00
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I feel like people talk about Kentucky and they're like bourbon, horse racing, bluegrass music, which is, you know, there.
00:15:05
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But underneath that is a lot of, just like the rest of the United States, white supremacist history.
00:15:13
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So it felt relevant considering that I feel like I attribute white supremacy to
00:15:21
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The story.
00:15:22
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I mean.
00:15:23
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It's part of it.
00:15:24
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Yes.
00:15:24
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Yes.
00:15:25
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Yes.
00:15:25
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Which we'll get into.
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So that's Kentucky zooming into Troublesome Creek.
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I'm going to tell you about a family, a blue family.
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I'm blue.
00:15:38
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Exactly.
00:15:39
Speaker
So in 1820, which falls into part of this timeline that I just described to you, right?
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This dude, Martin Fugate.
00:15:47
Speaker
I don't think that's how you say it because he's from France, but.
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Since, is what everyone calls.
00:15:51
Speaker
It's like La Croix, you know?
00:15:54
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I learned about... La Croix.
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I learned that it's a double colonized name and that's why.
00:16:00
Speaker
So the French, I guess, settled by a river that they named La Croix.
00:16:06
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And then I think the British, or whatever, I'm pretty sure the British came over and they were like, no, mine.
00:16:12
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And then called it La Croix.
00:16:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:15
Speaker
And now it's LaCroix.
00:16:16
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Yeah.
00:16:17
Speaker
Oh, that's so... But it's not LaCroix.
00:16:19
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Yeah.
00:16:19
Speaker
It's like... Oh my gosh.
00:16:20
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Yes.
00:16:21
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Double colonization.
00:16:22
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So I feel like the Fugate thing... Yeah.
00:16:25
Speaker
It's probably changed over time.
00:16:27
Speaker
It's changed over time because they've been here.
00:16:29
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Yeah.
00:16:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:31
Speaker
And as we know, white people abandoned their cultures to assimilate into whiteness so that they could have proximity to power.
00:16:37
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:16:39
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Yes.
00:16:39
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Anyway, 1820, Martin Fugate immigrated to Kentucky...
00:16:44
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to claim a land grant on the banks of this place called Troublesome Creek.
00:16:48
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If anyone knows the history of Troublesome Creek and why it's named that, because I was so curious, let me know.
00:16:53
Speaker
It's what's in now Perry County.
00:16:56
Speaker
He was a French orphan, and he was said to have blue skin.
00:17:00
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Just already?
00:17:01
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Already.
00:17:01
Speaker
Okay, okay.
00:17:02
Speaker
He had blue skin.
00:17:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:04
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He got married to a woman named Elizabeth Smart.
00:17:07
Speaker
They both happened to be carriers of a particular gene.
00:17:11
Speaker
So when they had children, four out of seven of those children, they had blue skin.
00:17:15
Speaker
It was like this blue family.
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:17
Speaker
And because of the geographic isolation in the Appalachian Mountains at the time, you know, there's not really roads or what have you.
00:17:25
Speaker
They settled there, and I don't know that they put much thought into anything else.
00:17:28
Speaker
Sure.
00:17:28
Speaker
They settled there.
00:17:29
Speaker
Sure.
00:17:29
Speaker
They just started marrying each other, mostly cousins.
00:17:32
Speaker
And when I read that, I was like... So most of the time when they were reporting on this family, it has like a lightness to it.
00:17:41
Speaker
It's like a, oh my gosh, this happened.
00:17:43
Speaker
Wow.
00:17:43
Speaker
And then because they didn't really have access to other people, they just started fucking each other.
00:17:48
Speaker
And I was just like, there's so much underneath that, though.
00:17:51
Speaker
I'm thinking a lot about...
00:17:53
Speaker
the obsession with the nuclear family.
00:17:55
Speaker
This pressure to, you have to get married and you have to have kids and you have to do this by a certain time.
00:18:03
Speaker
So much so that you're down to marry your fucking cousin.
00:18:08
Speaker
Which I know was a common practice back in the day.
00:18:10
Speaker
Well, there's also... I was just listening to this book.
00:18:15
Speaker
It's called The Trauma of Caste by Thayne Marie Soundarajan, who is a feminist activist.
00:18:21
Speaker
And she was talking about endogamy, which is the practice of marrying only within the limits of your local community.
00:18:28
Speaker
And it is something that happens within caste as well, where people are...
00:18:32
Speaker
only trying.
00:18:33
Speaker
And there's a lot of genetic mutations that come from that too, because the more and more you're marrying within your local community, the more and more likely those people are to be your relatives.
00:18:48
Speaker
And here, it's like, they're so isolated.
00:18:50
Speaker
And I mean, they did that in Europe as well, when the royal families would marry within each other to
00:18:59
Speaker
maintain purity, I guess.
00:19:01
Speaker
That's the purpose of endogamy.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yes.
00:19:04
Speaker
I do have some tangents about incest in general.
00:19:06
Speaker
I don't know if I want to go on them now.
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah, we'll get to it.
00:19:10
Speaker
Maybe get to it.
00:19:12
Speaker
Because I'm sure the question is, why the fuck are they blue?
00:19:15
Speaker
Which I have an answer for.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:17
Speaker
But I am thinking a lot about what is up with that, and I'm also thinking about racism.
00:19:22
Speaker
How often is it that white people would rather marry their family members than marry outside of their race?
00:19:28
Speaker
You know?
00:19:29
Speaker
There's this family in the Appalachian Mountains.
00:19:32
Speaker
There really is a legacy of incest in the Appalachian Mountains.
00:19:35
Speaker
I'm sure for similar reasons today, including the fact that they just stay local and they don't really leave.
00:19:41
Speaker
But there's like an incredibly inbred family and they're like known for it.
00:19:47
Speaker
I forget their last name, but they have been featured on like documentaries and there's some photos of them and they really look
00:19:58
Speaker
A certain way.
00:19:58
Speaker
A certain fucking way, man.
00:20:01
Speaker
And I saw this video.
00:20:03
Speaker
This guy went to, I think the project was called Soft White Underbelly.
00:20:08
Speaker
And it was like covering stories in that area.
00:20:14
Speaker
But this family are so inbred that their cognitive capacities are just noticeably just not there.
00:20:22
Speaker
Wow.
00:20:23
Speaker
Like, feels like some of them are at a toddler state.
00:20:27
Speaker
Like, one person doesn't even talk.
00:20:29
Speaker
He just kind of makes grunting noises.
00:20:32
Speaker
And they all had a hard time answering really basic questions.
00:20:35
Speaker
And they all live together.
00:20:36
Speaker
There's like six or seven of them in this house.
00:20:39
Speaker
I don't know if any of them have had children.
00:20:41
Speaker
They looked like they were older.
00:20:43
Speaker
And I didn't see.
00:20:45
Speaker
any children.
00:20:47
Speaker
But also, you know, I know that that incest is not legal and punishable by law.
00:20:53
Speaker
So I think maybe at this point in time, if they had children, maybe they would have been taken away.
00:20:58
Speaker
I'm not sure.
00:21:00
Speaker
But it's really striking.
00:21:01
Speaker
And then
00:21:02
Speaker
the neighbors nearby are so protective of this family.
00:21:06
Speaker
They're, like, so protective of this family, like, bringing out their shotguns, being, like, who's coming to harass this family.
00:21:12
Speaker
And I was like, I bet you these people are also very racist.
00:21:15
Speaker
And it is really striking to me the way that these people are being all gung-ho for this incest family, but then in the same breath be deeply, deeply anti-black.
00:21:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:27
Speaker
Well, they're people that they see as part of their community.
00:21:31
Speaker
Exactly.
00:21:32
Speaker
Yes.
00:21:33
Speaker
They said this is our in-group.
00:21:35
Speaker
But also I think that because incest was so prominent there for so long, there probably really is a sense of like, oh, this could be my family members.
00:21:44
Speaker
Sure, sure.
00:21:45
Speaker
That's true.
00:21:46
Speaker
Right?
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:47
Speaker
Like, and they see themselves in them in that way.
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:50
Speaker
But I was just like... Yeah, very normalized.
00:21:53
Speaker
Anyways, so the Blue Fugates, eventually they really started, like, creating a community.
00:21:58
Speaker
Like, not many people were moving into the area.
00:22:01
Speaker
They were just dating each other.
00:22:03
Speaker
So the Fugates married out a little bit, and the Blue family turned into the Fugates, the Combs, the Richies, the Smiths, and the Stacys.
00:22:12
Speaker
Those were, like, the Blue families.
00:22:15
Speaker
And to different degrees, too.
00:22:17
Speaker
One of the sons, Zachariah, married his aunt.
00:22:22
Speaker
Their sons married a cousin.
00:22:24
Speaker
What?
00:22:25
Speaker
And I'm also wondering, like, how old is Zachariah when he married his aunt and his aunt grooming him?
00:22:30
Speaker
You know, Luna Fugate is said to be the bluest family member recorded.
00:22:36
Speaker
Her lips are dark like a bruise, they said.
00:22:39
Speaker
And she married John Stacy in the late 19th century and had 13 fucking children.
00:22:46
Speaker
The family expanded beyond Troublesome Creek.
00:22:49
Speaker
There was migration to a place called Ball Creek in the 20th century.
00:22:54
Speaker
And both places just became sites of blue people.
00:22:58
Speaker
It's what they were known for.
00:23:00
Speaker
It wasn't until the 1960s that this was discovered by mainstream medical practice because people, they were like pretty isolated and it's not like you have access to media or whatever.
00:23:15
Speaker
Their photos aren't being shared.
00:23:17
Speaker
They probably don't even have cameras for a lot of this time.
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:21
Speaker
Small, rural community.
00:23:24
Speaker
Madison Kaysen, a hematologist at the University of Lexington's Medical Clinic, and Ruth Pendergrass, who was based at the American Heart Association's Clinic in Hazard, Kentucky,
00:23:37
Speaker
went to these places that were highly saturated with these blue-skinned people because they were interested in what was going on.
00:23:44
Speaker
And they took blood samples, didn't give them any info.
00:23:47
Speaker
But then they came across a report from the Arctic Research Center in Anchorage, Alaska, and they found that there was these studies with Alaska natives with a condition called methemoglobinemia.
00:24:00
Speaker
Methemoglobinemia.
00:24:02
Speaker
What a name.
00:24:03
Speaker
And I guess that the presence in Alaska natives was relatively high, and they were trying to figure out what was going on there.
00:24:09
Speaker
The condition is caused by a loss of function of a function mutation in the cytochrome B5 reductase enzyme.
00:24:18
Speaker
So apparently there's an enzyme, and this enzyme is usually responsible for reducing methamoglobin
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:50
Speaker
So when you see high rates of them, it's most likely due to incest.
00:24:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:54
Speaker
Or dating very, very close within your community.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:58
Speaker
So apparently Dr. Cowan responded by prescribing methylene blue to the blood sample donors.
00:25:04
Speaker
And actually that worked to fade their skin from blue to pinkish almost immediately.
00:25:09
Speaker
And so they were able to prescribe daily methylene tablets.
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:13
Speaker
I didn't go deeply into this, like the presence of this in Alaska natives.
00:25:17
Speaker
I'm wondering where it comes from, why that was a thing and like what the response was, you know, like where did, so if anyone has information about that, I'm curious.
00:25:26
Speaker
I just didn't have time to really go on all the tangents that I was thinking of.
00:25:32
Speaker
And they said, unfortunately, their blue skin has become a stigma associated with generations of incest.
00:25:38
Speaker
I'm like,
00:25:39
Speaker
But that's what it is.
00:25:40
Speaker
Okay, that's what it is.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:42
Speaker
Some became recluse and avoided doctors for this reason.
00:25:45
Speaker
The way that there's more empathy for these people who are fucking their cousins than there is for... I bet you these people were simultaneously racist as fuck.
00:25:57
Speaker
I'm sure.
00:25:58
Speaker
I'm fucking sure.
00:26:00
Speaker
It's just really the cognitive dissonance is so wild.
00:26:03
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
00:26:05
Speaker
You know, and like the language is kind of around like, well, they couldn't help what they were born with.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:09
Speaker
I'm like, yeah, it's almost like no one.
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:12
Speaker
Can.
00:26:17
Speaker
Wild.
00:26:17
Speaker
Okay.
00:26:18
Speaker
Anyway, so Dr. Cowan published this case in a medical journal and the public started targeting the fugates because they were like, wow, what's going on here?
00:26:27
Speaker
And Hilda Stacey was one of them.
00:26:30
Speaker
Journalists came, like, with film crews from Hollywood.
00:26:33
Speaker
They bought cameras for a documentary.
00:26:35
Speaker
They really wanted to cover these people.
00:26:37
Speaker
Very few photos of them can be found.
00:26:39
Speaker
The Wikipedia page for this family is very short, probably for this reason, because they wanted to, like, hide out.
00:26:46
Speaker
Shortly after, maybe, like...
00:26:49
Speaker
late 60s-ish timeframe, local roads were finally created, which increased the number of blue fugates leaving the area marrying outsiders.
00:26:58
Speaker
And so the prevalence
00:27:00
Speaker
slowly decreased.
00:27:01
Speaker
I was noticing there's a lot of protectiveness for them, too.
00:27:05
Speaker
In the same way that these neighbors in the Appalachian Mountains were protecting this family.
00:27:10
Speaker
It's like that.
00:27:12
Speaker
Most recent person, or the most recent descendant who had the blue skin, or at least the most recently recorded person.
00:27:20
Speaker
I'm sure descendants exist, but the presence of the gene.
00:27:23
Speaker
The gene is recessive, so it's not likely to show up unless they're
00:27:28
Speaker
you know yeah but i guess there's like a lot of a lot of them i guess that exist that's true i guess so this 13 children will have a lot of descendants that's so true and people probably wouldn't even know yeah for sure yeah so there was this dude benjamin benji stacy who was born in 1975 and he was born completely blue
00:27:53
Speaker
when he was born and doctors were like freaking out.
00:27:55
Speaker
They were like ordering a blood transfusion.
00:27:58
Speaker
They were like, is this baby gonna die?
00:28:01
Speaker
And the grandmother actually was like, had to explain that the family had this condition.
00:28:06
Speaker
And then he eventually grew out of his blue skin, but still experienced cyanosis of the lips and fingertips in the cold or when he was angry.
00:28:13
Speaker
Oh, interesting.
00:28:14
Speaker
Apparently.
00:28:15
Speaker
So that's the only remnants of it.
00:28:17
Speaker
It reminds me of like how there are so many people who were born with blue eyes and then they slowly...
00:28:44
Speaker
date anyone outside of their race.
00:28:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:47
Speaker
Or even date anyone outside of their particular, like, blonde hair, blue eyes are both recessive.
Incest and Eugenics Narratives
00:28:53
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:55
Speaker
And in theory, you would think that it shouldn't be so prominent anymore because brown eyes and brown hair always take over.
00:29:01
Speaker
The fact that there's so many fucking people who have, like, this phenotype, I'm like, your ancestors had to try so fucking hard to keep that present.
00:29:13
Speaker
True.
00:29:14
Speaker
And there's some, I don't know, you know, there's like those studies about blue eyes being a mutation from incest, right?
00:29:22
Speaker
That makes sense to me.
00:29:23
Speaker
I haven't heard of them.
00:29:24
Speaker
Yes.
00:29:25
Speaker
Let me see.
00:29:25
Speaker
Let me see.
00:29:27
Speaker
Genetic research indicates that the mutation that caused blue eyes probably occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago with one individual in Northern Europe.
00:29:37
Speaker
Wow.
00:29:37
Speaker
The mutation turns off the iris's ability to produce melanin.
00:29:41
Speaker
And then, yes.
00:29:44
Speaker
So it's supposed to be very rare.
00:29:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:47
Speaker
And there's research that shows that blue eyes have a single common ancestor.
00:29:52
Speaker
Blue eye people are all related to each other in some degree, I guess.
00:29:55
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:29:56
Speaker
But there are some people who think that because of this...
00:30:01
Speaker
that the prominence of blue eyes is a product of inbreeding.
00:30:06
Speaker
And I've said that before in a bar setting with white people and they got very mad.
00:30:10
Speaker
And I was like, it's just a fact.
00:30:13
Speaker
It's okay.
00:30:15
Speaker
You should not be questioning me.
00:30:17
Speaker
You should be questioning why it is that this is what's going on and why it is that we think to this day, blue eyes and blonde hair are the pinnacle of all beauty.
00:30:26
Speaker
Like, maybe you should be thinking about all of that instead of getting angry with me for naming facts.
00:30:31
Speaker
Sure, you're just the messenger.
00:30:33
Speaker
And you know what?
00:30:34
Speaker
The whites are in me, too.
00:30:35
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:30:36
Speaker
If I had a baby with a white person, they could come out.
00:30:39
Speaker
And have blonde hair, blue eyes.
00:30:41
Speaker
It would be possible.
00:30:42
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:30:43
Speaker
The likelihood not high, but the possibility still there.
00:30:46
Speaker
For sure.
00:30:48
Speaker
For sure.
00:30:48
Speaker
So, you know...
00:30:50
Speaker
Relax.
00:30:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:53
Speaker
And I mean, you know, incest in the history is present in a lot of communities.
00:31:00
Speaker
Yes.
00:31:01
Speaker
It's just a historical fact.
00:31:03
Speaker
Yes.
00:31:05
Speaker
It is a historical fact.
00:31:07
Speaker
It comes back to the endogamy thing.
00:31:10
Speaker
Right.
00:31:10
Speaker
You know.
00:31:12
Speaker
Anyways.
00:31:14
Speaker
So, Benji's mom, Hilda, but her response is it's common, it's nothing.
00:31:19
Speaker
So, you know.
00:31:21
Speaker
Interestingly enough, they lived for a really long time, all of them.
00:31:23
Speaker
They lived into their 80s and 90s without reported severe illnesses associated with the medical condition, which apparently can cause developmental disorders, heart abnormalities and seizures in some people.
00:31:34
Speaker
But methamoglobin in the blood, the amount changes the rate at which you might develop severe health risks due to it.
00:31:43
Speaker
So apparently people who have over 20% of methamoglobin
00:31:48
Speaker
in the blood, then their risks really increase.
00:31:52
Speaker
But levels between 10 and 20% can cause blue skin with no other symptoms.
00:31:56
Speaker
And Luna lived, the bluest one, lived until she was 84.
00:31:59
Speaker
Wow.
00:32:00
Speaker
Okay.
00:32:01
Speaker
So, which kind of brought me to a lot of stuff about incest.
00:32:06
Speaker
Okay, let's hear it.
00:32:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:32:08
Speaker
So I guess like on the medical standpoint, I was like listening to Stuff You Should Know, that podcast.
00:32:16
Speaker
And they were talking about how the preconception is that incest in and of itself causes mutations or like creates health issues for people.
00:32:27
Speaker
and the more accurate description is that there are recessive genes that over time, when there's genetic variability, kind of phase out in some degree or become a lot less likely.
00:32:40
Speaker
But the presence of incest increases the chance that you might be birthing people with a medical condition that's from that recessive gene and keeping that recessive gene prominent in your gene pool.
00:32:54
Speaker
And then I also learned from that Stuff You Should Know podcast about, I guess, a eugenics narrative is that incest is better for the population.
00:33:08
Speaker
What?
00:33:08
Speaker
Yes, because even though it increases risk of infant mortality and severe disability, a lot of those people die very young.
00:33:21
Speaker
And apparently they think that
00:33:24
Speaker
The people who are able to survive and quote-unquote thrive, despite the incest, carry superior genes.
00:33:35
Speaker
And it supports the population in creating communities of people who have superior genes.
00:33:44
Speaker
genes is the eugenics.
00:33:47
Speaker
That doesn't make any sense.
00:33:49
Speaker
Neither does white supremacy.
00:33:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:50
Speaker
But here we are.
00:33:51
Speaker
That doesn't make any sense.
00:33:54
Speaker
But I guess it speaks to, I guess for me, I was like, oh, this, it makes sense why...
00:34:02
Speaker
Incest is so prominent in more conservative white environments in the United States for a lot of other reasons.
00:34:10
Speaker
But like, I'm like, oh, there's this underlying narrative that maybe people are not accessing readily, but that was propaganda that was being.
00:34:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:18
Speaker
shared.
00:34:18
Speaker
And so it wasn't discouraged until more recently.
00:34:22
Speaker
You know?
00:34:23
Speaker
And in some cases, maybe they're not discouraged.
00:34:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:26
Speaker
Who knows?
00:34:27
Speaker
I kind of like was consolidating all these reasons why it exists, right?
00:34:32
Speaker
There's power.
00:34:34
Speaker
normalizing and encouraging it within the ruling class of most monarchy-based societies, consolidating power and resources, continuing the family mind, all that stuff, especially when it's tied to religion, being like, you know, this is our divine right to, like, continue being the ruling family, and that belongs to us and only us.
00:34:54
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:34:55
Speaker
And then there's like some messaging specifically, like they were pulling a lot from Europe.
00:34:59
Speaker
They're talking about how marrying within the family keeps your blood pure and
00:35:04
Speaker
And keeps the intentions honest or earnest because there's also this deep distrust of people outside of your family, which makes me think a lot about individualism and how we just operate normally with or without incest, but over-prioritizing what we think is our in-group, including family members and really like...
00:35:29
Speaker
shunning or rejecting or being violent towards people that are not considered as part of yeah yeah i mean same is present in india when it comes with caste and you know and then it's like uh codified into laws as well with like
00:35:50
Speaker
I don't know, actually.
00:35:52
Speaker
I think it probably like differs place to place, but it's totally like not something that's like socially acceptable across the board.
00:36:00
Speaker
now to marry outside of your cast and it's definitely still like if you watch that Indian matchmaking show on Netflix they definitely still perpetuate that and when like people are seeking kind of arranged marriages or arranged like introductions when you're like sharing your information with someone you share your cast as well and not even not even just like your cast but like your sub
00:36:23
Speaker
which is like an even more specific than a generalized thing and people are very untrusting of people who are even outside of their subcast even and that's a way to perpetuate caste supremacy wow I hate that yeah how much of this do you feel was a colonial project I it's not that's actually like a myth that is often um
00:36:47
Speaker
propagated by people who are in upper caste families to like deny accountability that their ancestors did perpetuate a lot of violence prior to colonizations against caste oppressed people because it's um it written into a lot of hindu scriptures i see yeah it was just so it was just fertile ground for yeah exactly and then people who did have caste privilege a lot of times aligned with
00:37:12
Speaker
colonizers.
00:37:15
Speaker
They were like, oh, this is great because you already have this society that's set up
00:37:19
Speaker
in a way where we can separate and oppress people through the system that already exists further.
00:37:25
Speaker
A lot of the stuff I'm learning from reading the trauma of caste, which I had no idea that there was all of these really fucked up parts of certain Hindu scriptures that pretty much make it okay for upper caste people to be violent in many ways towards oppressed caste.
00:37:43
Speaker
and they'll let people there's so much there yeah humans have a violent history humans have a violent history or particularly like very small groups of humans who are obsessed with consolidating power yeah having that be the social contract for everybody else like exactly they are very small groups of people actually when it's
00:38:05
Speaker
statistically in comparison to everyone else.
00:38:08
Speaker
Right.
00:38:08
Speaker
But yeah, they have consolidated a lot of power.
00:38:11
Speaker
That's what I think when I read that like certain scriptures and stuff have things like this written into them.
00:38:16
Speaker
I'm just like, well, clearly, whoever it was that wrote this did not have spirituality in mind, but had power and control in mind when they were writing this because this doesn't
00:38:30
Speaker
you know, make any sense.
00:38:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:32
Speaker
When it comes to action.
00:38:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:33
Speaker
And I mean, a lot of religions have that as well.
00:38:36
Speaker
I also wonder, like, I know, like, religious texts are so old, but how many times were they taken and rewritten?
00:38:43
Speaker
And there's really no way to trace.
00:38:44
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:46
Speaker
And, you know, a lot of things have been lost over time with natural disasters and also, you know,
00:38:56
Speaker
maybe human intervention, things have been destroyed.
00:38:59
Speaker
So we don't know.
00:39:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:00
Speaker
People can very easily say something is like, you know, a message from the gods, how much of that can be believed a lot of the times.
00:39:07
Speaker
So you have to practice some discernment when engaging, just keep in mind, you know, there's no like one culture or community that's like inherently better or more peaceful than others.
00:39:20
Speaker
And like,
00:39:22
Speaker
It's easy to oversimplify.
00:39:24
Speaker
Or it feels, it's tempting to oversimplify because you can pick, like, one thing to blame.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:33
Speaker
Exactly.
00:39:33
Speaker
But, like, considering that many things can be true at the same time requires a lot of energy and challenging...
00:39:40
Speaker
Yeah, and our, you know, sometimes our brains like things to be simple and not nuanced, but everything tends to have a lot of complexity associated with it.
00:39:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:51
Speaker
I'm also thinking, though, like, I feel like I firmly believe that there was one point in time in history where most of the world was engaging in accordance with nature and with the land, and...
00:40:05
Speaker
not without violence, but maybe without domination in the same way.
00:40:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:11
Speaker
Like, because I just don't think we would be alive.
00:40:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:15
Speaker
I don't think we would be alive.
00:40:17
Speaker
It's not a sustainable way to be.
00:40:19
Speaker
No.
00:40:19
Speaker
The way that the power is so, so severely unbalanced.
00:40:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:25
Speaker
It almost feels like conquest is younger than we also think.
00:40:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:31
Speaker
We're left guessing.
00:40:33
Speaker
We're left guessing.
00:40:34
Speaker
And also, like, I just think that we could all have... I don't like it when people say, oh, well, violence is just, like, inherently part of human nature.
00:40:45
Speaker
Because I don't think that it is.
00:40:47
Speaker
I don't believe that either.
00:40:48
Speaker
I don't think that it's true.
00:40:49
Speaker
I think it's part of our human nature to be a collective, collectivist society.
00:40:55
Speaker
Because we're not meant to exist in isolation or separation.
00:40:59
Speaker
It's just been, like, centuries of us engaging.
00:41:03
Speaker
in this way with each other, so that's why it feels like it's part of our nature, because it's just been so present.
00:41:10
Speaker
But, you know, we can be creative in the ways that we can think about our future.
00:41:15
Speaker
And I think, like, even just reframing from inherently violent to we all have the capacity for extreme violence, in the same way that we have the extreme capacity for extreme love, like, I think... One more thing I'm thinking about is, like...
00:41:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:50
Speaker
I feel like we have tried so hard to maintain the systems of violence that have been created.
00:41:56
Speaker
And violence is a lot of work.
00:41:58
Speaker
Abuse is a lot of work.
00:41:59
Speaker
Oppression is a lot of work.
00:42:01
Speaker
And creating all this propaganda and all this shit, everything that goes into maintaining what we have is so laborious.
00:42:12
Speaker
And I just, I don't think that
00:42:15
Speaker
if something were natural, that it would be this hard.
00:42:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:20
Speaker
To sustain.
00:42:21
Speaker
And like, why are you trying so hard to maintain life?
00:42:23
Speaker
You know, there's a lot.
00:42:26
Speaker
There's a lot.
00:42:27
Speaker
There's a lot.
00:42:28
Speaker
And also, I feel like we give away our power when we just acquiesce to the idea that we are inherently bad.
00:42:35
Speaker
And that the only thing keeping us good is all of the things that, you know?
00:42:40
Speaker
I grew up in a really religious environment.
00:42:42
Speaker
Not at home, but I grew up in a white conservative space.
00:42:45
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:42:47
Speaker
And there was a lot of, I think, internalization around everybody is inherently full of sin.
00:42:51
Speaker
They're inherently bad.
00:42:53
Speaker
And so you have to do all these things in the name of God to absolve yourself of that bad.
00:42:58
Speaker
And if you don't do that, you're going straight to hell.
00:43:01
Speaker
So there's this fear-mongering that keeps people behaving in superficial ways.
00:43:05
Speaker
Because simultaneously, these people who are like, I volunteered the soup kitchen, and I'm a person of God, would be the cruelest, most hateful people I've ever met.
00:43:17
Speaker
The cognitive dissonance is really wild.
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, clearly, like, people just, like, you know, they end up, if you think about, like, internal family systems, like, forcing yourself to be who you're not just, like, is, like, so fracturing that you then have, like, you know, really vastly different parts of you acting at different moments of time.
Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Incest
00:43:39
Speaker
Okay, so other notes that I have on incest and the prominence and, like, its practices, there's obviously the proximity piece.
00:43:48
Speaker
There are periods of time where...
00:43:50
Speaker
groups of people, including these blue fugates, really only had access to themselves.
00:43:54
Speaker
So incest, I feel like, is a natural byproduct to some degree in environments like that.
00:44:01
Speaker
Apparently, okay, so on the Stuff You Should Know podcast, they were talking about a Persian ritual that existed a long, long, long time ago where people would intentionally choose
00:44:15
Speaker
to, like, fuck their sibling as a spiritual experience.
00:44:20
Speaker
Oh, gosh.
00:44:21
Speaker
Like, it was supposed to open up something.
00:44:24
Speaker
And the goal wasn't to procreate.
00:44:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:26
Speaker
The goal was to have a sexual experience with your sibling.
00:44:32
Speaker
I didn't look too much into this, so, you know, open to more information on that.
00:44:38
Speaker
I also don't want to be incomplete and disrespectful because of that, but I assumed that they were...
00:44:43
Speaker
well-researched because they typically they're they sound like a couple of white guys but it seems like they go in depth yeah to think sure sure but that was um i was like wow i've not not considered that not heard of that do you want to learn about which states have the most incest and the legality of incest in the united states i mean i guess legality it's interesting okay i i really went on like 10 000 rabbit holes
00:45:09
Speaker
So apparently, not all states prohibit incest.
00:45:14
Speaker
And all of them have different views about what incest is.
00:45:18
Speaker
Like, Ohio only targets parental figures, for example.
00:45:24
Speaker
In Alabama, there's prohibited acts.
00:45:27
Speaker
And then the penalties are different.
00:45:29
Speaker
Usually the penalties are a prison sentence or a fine.
00:45:34
Speaker
And the fines range from $5,000 to $50,000.
00:45:35
Speaker
Right.
00:45:39
Speaker
Oh, or $750,000 in some places.
00:45:43
Speaker
In some places.
00:45:44
Speaker
Colorado is that.
00:45:46
Speaker
But I'm also just like, what do we hope to accomplish by... Fining people.
00:45:51
Speaker
I'm not sure.
00:45:52
Speaker
Well, there's two camps, right?
00:45:53
Speaker
Like, what's not being said in this table of, like, what's legal, what's not legal...
00:45:59
Speaker
Most of the time, incest is happening between an adult and a child.
00:46:05
Speaker
And in that case, that's just abuse.
00:46:07
Speaker
That's just sexual abuse.
00:46:08
Speaker
And so in the law, it's notable that they're kind of listed as separate things.
00:46:16
Speaker
I think that consensual incest is a lot less common, actually.
00:46:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:46:21
Speaker
But in Alabama, they prohibit marriage.
00:46:24
Speaker
They prohibit intercourse.
00:46:26
Speaker
his ancestor or descendant by blood or adoption, or his brother or sister of the whole or half-blood by adoption, or I don't know why it's always like hee hee hee.
00:46:35
Speaker
Clearly there's an acknowledgement that usually it's like adult men abusing children.
00:46:42
Speaker
Right?
00:46:43
Speaker
Right, right, right.
00:46:44
Speaker
Even if that's not what they're saying out loud.
00:46:46
Speaker
In Alaska, similar.
00:46:49
Speaker
An ancestor or descendant of the whole or half-blood.
00:46:52
Speaker
A brother or sister of the whole or half blood, or an uncle, an aunt, nephew, or niece by blood.
00:46:57
Speaker
In Arizona, incestuous marriage is void between parents and children, including grandparents and grandchildren of every degree.
00:47:05
Speaker
Between brothers and sister, one half as well as whole blood.
00:47:09
Speaker
between uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, between first cousins.
00:47:13
Speaker
There's an exception that first cousins can marry if both are 65 years of age or older and can prove to be to the superior court in the state that one of the cousins is unable to reproduce.
00:47:24
Speaker
So clearly Arizona is taking the stance that it's not our business if family members fuck if they're not reproducing incestuous children into the world.
00:47:35
Speaker
The other things that Arizona decides to police...
00:47:39
Speaker
I have questions.
00:47:40
Speaker
Interesting.
00:47:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:41
Speaker
About where they're choosing to be.
00:47:43
Speaker
Like, that's your life?
00:47:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:45
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:45
Speaker
So in Arkansas, marriage, sexual intercourse, or quote-unquote deviate sexual activity with a prohibited person is considered incest.
00:47:55
Speaker
The person committing the act being at least 16 years of age knowingly and without regard to legitimacy, including blood relationships, ancestor to descendant, stepchild, adopted child, a brother, sister...
00:48:08
Speaker
Uncle, aunt, nephew, or niece.
00:48:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:10
Speaker
Or step-grandchild or adopted grandchild.
00:48:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:48:13
Speaker
So in Arkansas, it specifies adoption.
00:48:15
Speaker
Some others do not.
00:48:16
Speaker
I mean, some places are like life in prison for incest.
00:48:20
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:48:20
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:48:21
Speaker
I don't know.
00:48:22
Speaker
I'm just like, hmm.
00:48:25
Speaker
The way that this is listed so broadly and not explicitly naming that, like,
00:48:29
Speaker
that incest is actually sexual violence versus between two weirdo cousins, you know?
00:48:35
Speaker
Well, I think that just, you know, just ties to people's, like, discomfort with naming that sexual violence and child sexual violence is something that is very common.
00:48:46
Speaker
and it helps create a separation even if there isn't actually a separation yeah that's real in colorado you can you get put on the sex offender list again i'm just like there's such a giant gap between those two situations yeah and let's not even like talk about how like sometimes being in public gets people yeah put on that yeah yeah in connecticut
00:49:08
Speaker
They do include sexual assault as part of this.
00:49:12
Speaker
Meaning that they're making the close connection that incest is usually sexual assault.
00:49:16
Speaker
So they're putting them together.
00:49:18
Speaker
In Washington, D.C., they have a really long list of very specific instances.
00:49:25
Speaker
Any persons related to another person, not including to the fourth degree of consanguinity, marriage void between man with his grandmother, grandfather's wife, wife's grandmother, father's sister, mother's sister, mother's stepmother, wife's mother, daughter's wife's daughter, son's wife, sister's son's daughter, daughter's daughter, son's son's wife,
00:49:47
Speaker
Daughter's son's wife.
00:49:48
Speaker
Wife's son's daughter.
00:49:49
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:49:50
Speaker
Wife's daughter's daughter.
00:49:51
Speaker
Brother's daughter.
00:49:52
Speaker
Sister's daughter.
00:49:53
Speaker
Between woman with her grandfather.
00:49:54
Speaker
Grandmother's husband.
00:49:55
Speaker
Husband's grandfather.
00:49:57
Speaker
Father's brother.
00:49:57
Speaker
Mother's brother.
00:49:58
Speaker
Father's stepfather.
00:49:59
Speaker
Husband's father's son.
00:50:01
Speaker
Husband's son.
00:50:02
Speaker
Daughter's husband.
00:50:03
Speaker
Oh my god.
00:50:03
Speaker
Brother.
00:50:04
Speaker
Son's son.
00:50:05
Speaker
Daughter's son.
00:50:06
Speaker
Son's daughter's husband.
00:50:08
Speaker
Daughter's daughter's husband.
00:50:10
Speaker
Husband's son's son.
00:50:11
Speaker
Husband's daughter's son.
00:50:13
Speaker
Brother's son.
00:50:13
Speaker
Sister's son.
00:50:14
Speaker
Sounds like a slam poem.
00:50:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:16
Speaker
Jesus.
00:50:18
Speaker
And this includes marriage, cohabitation, and sexual intercourse.
00:50:22
Speaker
And I imagine it's like intimate cohabitation.
00:50:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:50:24
Speaker
I'm like, cohabitation?
00:50:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:50:26
Speaker
I don't know how you prove it.
00:50:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:29
Speaker
And their penalty is up to 12 years in prison or a $37,500 fine, which is very specific.
00:50:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:36
Speaker
Oh, in Maryland, it's only vaginal intercourse.
00:50:38
Speaker
So apparently it's not incest if it's... Anything else?
00:50:41
Speaker
Anything else?
00:50:42
Speaker
Okay.
00:50:42
Speaker
Okay.
00:50:43
Speaker
Wow.
00:50:44
Speaker
In Massachusetts, they have a really long list of things that are considered incest.
00:50:51
Speaker
They include marriage, sexual intercourse, sexual activities, including but not limited to oral anal intercourse, fellatio cunnilingus, or penetration of a part of a person's body, insertion of an object into the genital or anal opening of another person's body, or the manual manipulation of the genitalia of another person's body.
00:51:10
Speaker
Up to 20 years in prison.
00:51:11
Speaker
There's no fine to get out of that.
00:51:13
Speaker
I'm curious about, like, who decided.
00:51:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:15
Speaker
And how they decided.
00:51:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:16
Speaker
It's not something I'd want to spend time on.
00:51:18
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:51:18
Speaker
That's a lot.
00:51:20
Speaker
Carnal intercourse.
00:51:21
Speaker
What the fuck does that mean, South Carolina?
00:51:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:24
Speaker
What does carnal intercourse mean?
00:51:25
Speaker
What does that mean?
00:51:26
Speaker
You mean passionate?
00:51:26
Speaker
Like, you're doing it for funsies?
00:51:29
Speaker
I'm confused.
00:51:30
Speaker
I don't know what that means.
00:51:31
Speaker
I don't know what that means either.
00:51:33
Speaker
And some specify, like, knowingly versus unknowingly, which that shit happens.
00:51:38
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen that before.
00:51:41
Speaker
Okay, Washington.
00:51:42
Speaker
Persons known to be related to him or her, either legitimately or illegitimately, as an ancestor, descendant, brother, or sister of either the whole or the half-blood.
00:51:53
Speaker
First degree of incest.
00:51:57
Speaker
sexual intercourse.
00:51:58
Speaker
Second degree of incest, sexual contact.
00:52:01
Speaker
And first degree of incest is up to 10 years and up to $20,000 fine.
00:52:05
Speaker
Second degree incest is up to five years and up to a $10,000 fine.
00:52:08
Speaker
Anyways.
00:52:09
Speaker
You can find all of this on Wikipedia.
00:52:11
Speaker
Look up legality of incest in the United States.
00:52:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:15
Speaker
Okay.
00:52:15
Speaker
Okay.
00:52:16
Speaker
You're welcome.
00:52:17
Speaker
Did you want to know?
00:52:19
Speaker
I don't know.
00:52:20
Speaker
Everybody wanted to know.
00:52:22
Speaker
Someone was like, you know what, Shana, I just feel like you pick topics and you're like, since I have to be traumatized by the information that I found, everyone who's listening has to.
00:52:31
Speaker
You can also listen to this.
00:52:33
Speaker
As well.
00:52:34
Speaker
You heard the content warning.
00:52:35
Speaker
But, you know, the highest rates of incest are still in the south.
00:52:41
Speaker
I think Kentucky was at the top.
00:52:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:43
Speaker
This place with the blue fugates.
00:52:45
Speaker
I'm curious about the connection there.
00:52:48
Speaker
Apparently the most inbred family lives in Australia.
00:52:52
Speaker
It's like tied into some cultish behavior.
00:52:54
Speaker
But Australia is a wild place.
00:52:57
Speaker
It is.
00:52:58
Speaker
I was like, wow.
00:52:59
Speaker
My gosh.
00:53:00
Speaker
And then I...
00:53:03
Speaker
I learned about genetic sexual attraction.
00:53:07
Speaker
There is a document, a government document from Cumbria County in the UK, all about genetic sexual attraction.
00:53:17
Speaker
And they give this to people who, the families that have adopted someone, or maybe it's people who've been adopted and are looking for their biological family members.
00:53:28
Speaker
And I...
00:53:29
Speaker
I guess there's just a really high occurrence of people being reunited with family members that they've never met, their mom, their siblings, and experiencing attraction to them.
00:53:44
Speaker
Oh, interesting.
00:53:45
Speaker
And it is so common that genetic sexual attraction is a term that has been coined.
00:53:52
Speaker
I have the PDF open, then I have the Wikipedia page.
00:53:54
Speaker
So I guess it was popularized in the United States in the late 1980s by someone named Barbara Gagnon, who's the founder of Truth Seekers in Adoption, which is a Chicago-based support group for adoptees and their newfound relatives.
00:54:11
Speaker
And they first heard the term used during an American Adoption Congress conference in the early 1980s.
00:54:19
Speaker
She developed sexual feelings for her son when she met him after he was adopted away, but he did not want to be a part of any such contact.
00:54:29
Speaker
Does that mean she came on to her son?
00:54:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:32
Speaker
And I'm also curious about how often is it one directional?
00:54:36
Speaker
Like, and how often it's the parent to the child versus the other way around?
00:54:42
Speaker
I don't know.
00:54:43
Speaker
Yeah, it really made me feel weird.
00:54:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:45
Speaker
It really made me feel...
00:54:47
Speaker
But clearly it is a common thing.
00:54:49
Speaker
Yes.
00:54:49
Speaker
So I guess all of this should be contextualized by the fact that the term was coined by someone who developed sexual feelings for her son.
00:54:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:58
Speaker
And in some ways having pathology makes it easier to deal with that probably.
00:55:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:03
Speaker
Because they also know that there's little scientific evidence for this being like a real thing, like something you can consider a condition.
00:55:10
Speaker
Sure.
00:55:11
Speaker
And they call it pseudoscience.
00:55:12
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:55:13
Speaker
A lot of people do.
00:55:15
Speaker
But it is common enough of a phenomenon that separated family develop some kind of feeling for their missing family member.
00:55:25
Speaker
The stuff you should know, people were talking about how psychologists or whatever theorize that people are miscalculating the feeling.
00:55:35
Speaker
Like they experience an intense connection or emotion or longing.
00:55:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:39
Speaker
Desire for closeness.
00:55:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:41
Speaker
Emotional closeness.
00:55:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:43
Speaker
that they then confuse for sexual attraction and that seems to be- that feels probably more likely than the predisposition to be attracted to family.
00:55:54
Speaker
Family member, yeah.
00:55:55
Speaker
Although I did watch this documentary, The Science of Attraction, and they did this study where they superimposed family members on some
00:56:02
Speaker
like, people's faces.
00:56:04
Speaker
And obviously, you know, you don't tell the people who are participating about what's going on.
00:56:07
Speaker
So they were just asked to rate their attractiveness levels.
00:56:11
Speaker
And the group that had looked at photos...
00:56:18
Speaker
with their family members superimposed to those faces, but, like, not in a detectable way, overwhelmingly found them more attractive.
00:56:26
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:56:27
Speaker
But they also theorized in that study that, like, maybe what they're noting as attractiveness isn't necessarily, like, attractive as in, I want them.
00:56:36
Speaker
It's attractive as in, I'm drawn to it because I'm familiar, which feels different.
00:56:41
Speaker
But, you know, I'm just thinking, like, in a society that is so...
00:56:47
Speaker
That creates such conditions of deprivation, of emotional closeness and belonging and care, whatever.
00:56:56
Speaker
Kind of makes sense to me that people would develop deep feelings and then confuse those feelings because they don't have access to that in their everyday life.
00:57:05
Speaker
Anyway, that's a thing.
00:57:08
Speaker
Some psychologists theorize that the phenomenon of attraction to biological relatives separated at a young age
00:57:16
Speaker
happens because the separation forecloses the Westermark effect, which normally desensitizes biologically related persons to later sexual attraction.
00:57:27
Speaker
The Westermark effect is known as reverse sexual imprinting, which is the psychological hypothesis that states that people tend not to be attracted to peers whom they've lived
00:57:36
Speaker
siblings before the age of six.
00:57:38
Speaker
Okay.
00:57:39
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:57:39
Speaker
And it was provided as one explanation for why incest is taboo.
00:57:45
Speaker
Like, naturally taboo.
00:57:46
Speaker
Sure, sure.
00:57:46
Speaker
Because there's so many historical records that date way back that some normalized some form of incest, usually to consolidate power.
00:57:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:56
Speaker
But in general, it's been also a prominent taboo for a really long time before there was any scientific
00:58:04
Speaker
considerations around mutations or what have you.
00:58:07
Speaker
And like, to me, naturally, I'm like, ugh, disgusting, you know?
00:58:10
Speaker
But I don't really have an explanation exactly for why.
00:58:15
Speaker
Sure, yeah.
00:58:16
Speaker
Like, can you name it exactly?
00:58:19
Speaker
Besides that it's just fucking gross?
00:58:22
Speaker
Probably not.
00:58:23
Speaker
Probably not.
00:58:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:24
Speaker
Anyways, another set of psychologists suggests that the phenomenon is possible narcissism.
00:58:31
Speaker
So the phenomenon of finding family members attractive is that you find yourself attractive.
00:58:37
Speaker
Yeah, okay.
00:58:38
Speaker
Or you have an elevated sense of importance for your own features, which seems possible.
00:58:44
Speaker
Seems possible.
00:58:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:46
Speaker
And although this is like a frequent thing that happens in, you know...
00:58:51
Speaker
It's a frequent anecdote in the field of psychology, but there's no studies that show that people are sexually attracted to those genetically similar to them.
00:58:59
Speaker
Studies of MHC genes, which I guess is like a large cluster on the vertebrae DNA.
00:59:06
Speaker
that code for some shit.
00:59:08
Speaker
It shows that unrelated people are less attracted to those genetically similar to them.
00:59:12
Speaker
There was one study in particular in that documentary on the science of attraction where there are these women who are smelling dirty shirts.
00:59:20
Speaker
Like, there are these men running on treadmills, right?
00:59:23
Speaker
And they're smelling their sweat and, like, had to rate what they thought of the smell.
00:59:28
Speaker
And they found that people were repulsed by...
00:59:32
Speaker
t-shirts that happen to belong to their family members.
00:59:35
Speaker
Oh, okay, okay.
00:59:36
Speaker
So it's like your body knows.
00:59:37
Speaker
Okay, interesting.
00:59:39
Speaker
And that sexual attraction can occur in related individuals and in rare cases.
00:59:44
Speaker
So like, proposes that it's actually really not that common to naturally have an attraction like that.
00:59:49
Speaker
Sure, sure.
00:59:50
Speaker
We also don't know like, who's documenting that and why they're saying that because I have some ideas on why Barbara
00:59:59
Speaker
is suggesting that genetic sexual attraction is a prominent phenomenon that could be noted as a condition.
01:00:06
Speaker
Critics of the hypothesis have said that it's nothing but an attempt to sound scientific while trying to minimize the taboo of incest.
01:00:13
Speaker
And this person who said that, Amanda, who writes for Salon, she said that many news outlets have handled reports of the subject poorly by repeating what the defenders of the hypothesis have said.
01:00:25
Speaker
as opposed to actually looking at the research on the supposed phenomenon, and says that most of the publications which have chosen to run stories of couples speaking out about genetic sexual attraction are not legitimate news sources.
01:00:38
Speaker
She names as an example, there is a New York Magazine's Science of Us blog, which published an interview with a woman in an incestuous relationship that simply reads like a story of a young girl who's been groomed by her father.
01:00:50
Speaker
Oh, gosh.
01:00:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:52
Speaker
And the use of genetic sexual attraction as an initialism has been criticized because it gives the notion that the phenomenon is an actual diagnosable condition.
01:01:03
Speaker
Where is the onus if someone can write it off as just a pathology as opposed to a conscious choice to abuse a child, really?
01:01:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:12
Speaker
Connects really well to my next thing.
01:01:15
Speaker
So I read this article from The Atlantic, written by Mia Fontaine in 2013.
01:01:21
Speaker
It's entitled, America Has an Incest Problem.
01:01:24
Speaker
Oh.
01:01:25
Speaker
Oh.
01:01:26
Speaker
She opens with child sexual abuse impacts more Americans annually than cancer, AIDS, gun violence, LGBTQ inequality, and the mortgage crisis combined, which she says, you know, at the time that Obama covered all of those things.
01:01:38
Speaker
But there is like an overwhelming silence around child sexual abuse.
01:01:41
Speaker
Yes.
01:01:41
Speaker
Which is rampant and says, how do you mention this issue?
01:01:44
Speaker
He would have been the first president to acknowledge the abuse that occurs in the institution that predates all others, the family.
01:01:51
Speaker
Incest was the first form of institutional abuse, and it remains by far the most widespread.
01:01:56
Speaker
So I think also, like, when we're talking about child sexual abuse, there's some serious cognitive dissonance because we know that CSA happens in the family first and foremost, not by strangers or neighbors or whatever, even though that's a possibility.
01:02:10
Speaker
It happens between family members, by older, usually older male family members, against young girls and on occasion young boys.
01:02:18
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:02:19
Speaker
I was reading that the rate of child sexual abuse between boys and girls are actually fairly comparable under a certain age.
01:02:27
Speaker
An age at which we feminize young boys until we don't.
01:02:33
Speaker
And then it kind of splits off as they age.
01:02:36
Speaker
But also I want to note that it's probably really, really, really, really underreported because if family members are the dominant aggressors, people are not going out of their way to...
01:02:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:09
Speaker
And I'm curious about whether or not they actually want to see their parent imprisoned.
01:03:14
Speaker
And if that would provide any type of solace because the pain already exists, the violence already happened.
01:03:19
Speaker
And still that parent is probably not owning what it is that they've done.
01:03:22
Speaker
And then she continues, here are some statistics that should be familiar to all of us but aren't.
01:03:28
Speaker
Either because they're too mind-boggling to be absorbed or because they're not publicized enough.
01:03:32
Speaker
One in three to four girls and one to five to seven boys are sexually abused before they turn 18.
01:03:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:00
Speaker
or fatherly figures, some in a more literal sense than others, from institutions close to home, but not actual fathers, stepfathers, uncles, grandfathers, brothers, or cousins, or mothers and female relatives, for that matter.
01:04:12
Speaker
While all abuse is traumatizing people outside of a child's home and family, the Sanduskys, the teachers, and the priests account for fewer cases of child sexual abuse, which were prominent cases that were in the
01:04:24
Speaker
in the public eye during this time.
01:04:25
Speaker
Got it, got it.
01:04:26
Speaker
Intentionally or not, children are protecting adults, many for their entire lives.
01:04:30
Speaker
Millions of Americans of both sexes choke down food at family dinners year after year while seated at the same table as people who violated them.
01:04:39
Speaker
Mothers and other family members are often complicit.
01:04:41
Speaker
Grownups playing pretend because they're more invested in the preservation of the family and often the family's finances.
01:04:48
Speaker
than the psychological, emotional, and physical well-being of the abused.
01:04:52
Speaker
Woof!
01:04:53
Speaker
Yeah, woof.
01:04:54
Speaker
Which I think just, like, it ties in well to the conversation we were having earlier about, like, the violence of being so obsessed with the idea of nuclear family.
01:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:05:03
Speaker
And being so hyper-obsessed with the in-group, our own, our kin.
01:05:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:05:10
Speaker
Ours, ours, ours.
01:05:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:11
Speaker
And then just, like, the consolidation of resource also.
01:05:15
Speaker
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
01:05:16
Speaker
People don't want to come forward because they don't want to lose power, control, finances.
01:05:23
Speaker
And then, like, what happens when people don't have access to heal from that?
01:05:30
Speaker
No one wants to talk about child sexual abuse.
01:05:32
Speaker
And no one wants to work with people who commit child sexual abuse.
01:05:36
Speaker
Even though it's so fucking common.
01:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, true.
01:05:38
Speaker
I'm just curious about, like, how many people have pedophilic fantasies and don't act on them.
01:05:44
Speaker
It's kind of a scary idea to me, but also, like, I remember sitting in a psychology class talking about this.
01:05:50
Speaker
It was, like, a controversial issues in psychology class.
01:05:53
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:05:54
Speaker
And they were talking about, okay, but like clearly the people who have the problem are the people who are doing the violence.
01:05:59
Speaker
And then by the time they're caught, they're thrown in prison and then probably re-violated.
01:06:03
Speaker
And it's not like they're changing anything for them.
01:06:05
Speaker
Sure, sure.
01:06:06
Speaker
But no one really wants to touch...
01:06:09
Speaker
And also it's like under mandated reporting laws, there's probably a lot of impetus to report these people before they have a chance to, you know what I mean?
01:06:20
Speaker
What to do with that because the thoughts are probably there.
01:06:24
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:06:44
Speaker
And it's not to say that being less survivor of sexual abuse throws you into that trajectory.
01:06:49
Speaker
It's just that of the people who are doing that are enacting the same violence that was done unto them.
01:06:56
Speaker
And should we have systems to support people in the moment?
01:07:01
Speaker
As it's happening or right after or even before it has the chance to happen.
01:07:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:07
Speaker
How different things would look.
01:07:09
Speaker
Look, yeah.
01:07:10
Speaker
So there's that.
01:07:11
Speaker
I pulled out other stuff about like... So apparently there's a blog...
01:07:16
Speaker
Where people are advocating for the rights of people who want to be incestuous.
01:07:24
Speaker
Have you heard about this?
01:07:25
Speaker
No, but that doesn't surprise me.
01:07:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:28
Speaker
They're using it.
01:07:30
Speaker
They're using the language of marriage equality.
01:07:33
Speaker
Like, gay rights language.
01:07:36
Speaker
And they start with, do any of these statements describe you as someone you love?
01:07:41
Speaker
They start off with attraction to multiple genders, what have you.
01:07:47
Speaker
I don't fit traditional gender roles.
01:07:50
Speaker
And then it moves into...
01:07:52
Speaker
not wanting to get married, only wanting casual relationships and not intimate, close long-term ones, enjoying casual sex, enjoying swinging, swapping, threesomes, group sex, polyamory, and then it goes into polygamy, which, you know what?
01:08:09
Speaker
Polygamy is an extension of patriarchal violence and it is not the same as polyamory.
01:08:15
Speaker
Why this is in the same sentence?
01:08:17
Speaker
I don't know what the fuck.
01:08:18
Speaker
Get out.
01:08:19
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:21
Speaker
Get the fuck out.
01:08:22
Speaker
Oh my goodness.
01:08:23
Speaker
And then it jumps into at the end, I'm attracted to or want to have sex with a family member or close relative.
01:08:28
Speaker
I'm in a sexual relationship with or want a sexual relationship with a family member or close relative.
01:08:34
Speaker
I want to marry a family member or close relative or have an existing marriage legally recognized.
01:08:40
Speaker
They include I have experienced genetic sexual attraction or a strong attraction to close genetic relative that I was not raised with.
01:08:49
Speaker
Or I didn't raise or who didn't raise me.
01:08:52
Speaker
I am in or I want a consensual incestuous relationship with another adult.
01:08:56
Speaker
If so, this blog exists for you.
01:08:59
Speaker
This blog exists to promote rights for all adults regardless of their gender orientation, sexual or relationship diversities.
01:09:05
Speaker
It says you are not alone.
01:09:07
Speaker
Your feelings, your experiences and what you want are not necessarily wrong.
01:09:11
Speaker
Or impossible.
01:09:11
Speaker
You have a future.
01:09:13
Speaker
It gets better.
01:09:13
Speaker
Change is happening.
01:09:14
Speaker
This blog really is advocating for quote unquote full marriage equality.
01:09:21
Speaker
Meaning we want to see incestuous relationships embraced, normalized, decriminalized.
01:09:29
Speaker
And then there's an FAQ.
01:09:31
Speaker
on consensual incest, it's a lot.
01:09:33
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
01:09:33
Speaker
It's a lot.
01:09:34
Speaker
There has to be enough people who really... Clearly, there are.
01:09:39
Speaker
And then they try making the differentiation, they're like,
01:09:42
Speaker
rape and sexual assault molestation by a close family member or relative is not the same thing as consensual sex or marriage between close family members or relatives.
01:09:50
Speaker
And sure, that's true.
01:09:52
Speaker
And they're like, either way, case is closed.
01:09:53
Speaker
It's not the same everywhere.
01:09:55
Speaker
Sometimes first cousins are included or step relations are included, sometimes not.
01:09:59
Speaker
I refer to the second definition as consanguinamory.
01:10:03
Speaker
Get the fuck out of here if it actually involves...
01:10:07
Speaker
Genetic relatives.
01:10:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:10:09
Speaker
These answers below are in reference to consensual incest.
01:10:12
Speaker
They start talking about genetic sexual attraction.
01:10:15
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:10:16
Speaker
You know what?
01:10:17
Speaker
I was reading about these cousins online.
01:10:20
Speaker
Not just one set of cousins.
01:10:21
Speaker
Who were like, we used to see each other at family gatherings and we both just had like a...
01:10:26
Speaker
feelings for each other from the start and then finally we just gave in and we're really advocating for the right for us to marry and have our relationship validated and respected.
01:10:38
Speaker
Or there's like half siblings who ended up dating each other but then after they found out they were still like, you know what, we love each other.
01:10:47
Speaker
Okay, so they're using like talking about how animals are polyamorous.
01:10:52
Speaker
Animals are not always heterosexual and make the case that because of all of this there's evidence to show that it's not an unnatural thing to be wanting to fuck your family members.
01:11:06
Speaker
Apparently there are some animals that fuck each other that are related.
01:11:10
Speaker
And there are all these comments.
01:11:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's true.
01:11:12
Speaker
Yeah, that is true.
01:11:14
Speaker
That's the thing.
01:11:15
Speaker
This vlog is like, it's not not true.
01:11:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's not not true.
01:11:19
Speaker
But you know what?
01:11:20
Speaker
Richard Ramirez said some shit that I was like, that's not not true.
01:11:23
Speaker
But are we out here vying for what Richard Ramirez is saying?
01:11:26
Speaker
No.
01:11:27
Speaker
I mean, these people are clearly not the same as him, but you know.
01:11:30
Speaker
No, but the idea that like, is that true?
01:11:33
Speaker
Sure.
01:11:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:11:35
Speaker
Are we in alignment with Richard?
01:11:36
Speaker
No.
01:11:37
Speaker
And this feels similar.
01:11:38
Speaker
Yes.
01:11:39
Speaker
Are these things untrue?
01:11:41
Speaker
No.
01:11:41
Speaker
Are we in alignment?
01:11:42
Speaker
Also no.
01:11:43
Speaker
Probably not.
01:11:44
Speaker
Alex B says, my cat's engaged in consanguineous sex.
01:11:47
Speaker
And although I found it a bit strange at the time...
01:11:50
Speaker
The kittens are perfectly healthy and normal.
01:11:53
Speaker
I realize my experiences may be anecdotal, but I have never seen any reason why consanguinamory should be branded as illegal because of a moderately increased chance of genetic defects.
01:12:04
Speaker
The risk, although increased, still remains minimal.
01:12:07
Speaker
Secondly, we wouldn't try to deny the right to procreate if they had a disability or an increased chance of getting cancer, for example.
01:12:14
Speaker
Largely, birth defects within inbred individuals tend to be lower over time as natural selection calls these
01:12:20
Speaker
characteristics.
01:12:22
Speaker
Which feels very much like an offshoot of the eugenics argument.
01:12:28
Speaker
Definitely also seen or heard the argument before of how people should be able to engage in consensual incestuous relationships if the goal is not to have children either.
01:12:42
Speaker
Honestly, I'm so curious about what people are thinking.
01:12:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:48
Speaker
Like, if you have opinions on the ethics of consensual incest, I really want to know.
01:12:57
Speaker
Because a lot of people kind of start and stop with the likelihood of genetic mutation and health issues is much higher.
01:13:09
Speaker
Sure.
01:13:10
Speaker
Therefore, incest bad.
01:13:13
Speaker
But there's all these, like, people who are like, but, da-da-da-da-da, about the genetics piece.
01:13:20
Speaker
And I just feel like it's incomplete.
01:13:22
Speaker
And to me and my body, it's just not right.
01:13:24
Speaker
It's not it.
01:13:25
Speaker
It's just not it.
01:13:27
Speaker
But I am curious to be like, okay, unpack for me the ethics of incest, though.
01:13:33
Speaker
If you cannot or are not going to, quote-unquote, procreate.
01:13:36
Speaker
And that piece of the argument is removed.
01:13:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:40
Speaker
Or it's like, or that factor is removed and it's not a grooming or like power dynamic situation.
01:13:48
Speaker
And that factor is removed.
01:13:50
Speaker
I want a deep analysis on if it's like really not harming anyone.
01:13:55
Speaker
Because I'm also just like, where's the harm?
01:13:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:57
Speaker
And I'm not, I'm not totally seeing where the harm is if those things are removed.
01:14:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:02
Speaker
I also just in general, there's like a lot of things that are criminalized and codified into law, which I just am like,
01:14:09
Speaker
Who is it helping for this to be codified into law?
01:14:12
Speaker
Because even when it comes to child sexual abuse, like I think the reason why a lot of people don't report is because they don't actually want their family members to go to prison and, you know, things like that.
01:14:24
Speaker
So...
01:14:25
Speaker
Like, yes, these two things are, like, separate for sure.
01:14:28
Speaker
But, you know, I just think that we need better systems in place to support survivors who have experienced child sexual abuse and are experiencing it.
01:14:40
Speaker
And I also, I don't know the answer to the...
01:14:42
Speaker
to the second one because it is not something that I experienced, but clearly there's a large group of people who experience this and want the freedom to do so without experiencing stigma or isolation.
01:14:55
Speaker
Or criminalization.
01:14:56
Speaker
Or criminalization.
01:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:14:58
Speaker
And I'm curious what other people's views on it are.
01:15:01
Speaker
But I mean, yeah, it's like a complex subject and also it's...
01:15:05
Speaker
A lot more common than people think cousins and second cousins get married in other places in the world, especially.
01:15:13
Speaker
But it's not something that is unheard of.
01:15:16
Speaker
You know, I'm not like, whoa, I've never heard of that before.
01:15:19
Speaker
So.
01:15:20
Speaker
Mm hmm.
01:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, in no way am I like, yeah, incest.
01:15:26
Speaker
But I've really never put much thought into it.
01:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, we're just exploring all the perspectives that are present.
01:15:31
Speaker
And so I'm just like, what's my analysis really?
01:15:36
Speaker
Beyond it feels fucked.
01:15:38
Speaker
Beyond I'm like, I'm not feeling that.
01:15:41
Speaker
Sure, sure.
01:15:43
Speaker
And I'm also just wondering.
01:15:44
Speaker
Yeah, like a personal, like, yeah, that doesn't feel right to me.
01:15:47
Speaker
Which, you know, I'm with you there.
01:15:50
Speaker
The stuff you should know, people have an opinion on it.
01:15:53
Speaker
I mean, they don't really.
01:15:54
Speaker
They don't share their personal opinions.
01:15:56
Speaker
No, they just kind of share the information.
01:15:58
Speaker
Sure, sure.
01:15:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:59
Speaker
I'm also wondering, like, what is the route to engaging in that?
01:16:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:03
Speaker
What's at the root of it?
01:16:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:05
Speaker
Because, like, you have all these people that you could be attracted to and want to date.
01:16:10
Speaker
Potentially.
01:16:10
Speaker
Sure.
01:16:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:11
Speaker
So, like, what is really the driving force behind you wanting to do that?
01:16:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:15
Speaker
Where is it coming from?
01:16:17
Speaker
What societal messages are kind of behind that, too?
01:16:19
Speaker
Like, is there a eugenics undercurrent to your behavior?
01:16:23
Speaker
Because in that regard, it's, like, an easy thing for me to pull out and be, like...
01:16:29
Speaker
Well, this is why it feels so fucking weird, you know, because it's an extension of something I'm seeing as rooted in violence, right?
01:16:37
Speaker
Like if the connection is really about subconsciously consolidating power as seen all over the world for a really long time, like that being a habit.
01:16:47
Speaker
of that category of people who are like ruling class and want to keep all of that and hoard it all and then also assuming that like people who are within your family are inherently better and inherently more pure or more deserving is that part of the attraction you know because like if that's the driving force then it begs the question about what is it that people are internalizing and how is that how is it impacting the way they're showing up in the world yeah
01:17:11
Speaker
So I don't know.
01:17:12
Speaker
I'm really... Yes.
01:17:14
Speaker
If you are someone who's like, have thoughts.
01:17:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:17
Speaker
Send a voice memo.
01:17:19
Speaker
Share some thoughts.
01:17:20
Speaker
Some email.
01:17:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:21
Speaker
Unpackingtheeria at gmail.com.
01:17:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:24
Speaker
Yes.
01:17:24
Speaker
And permission to share.
01:17:26
Speaker
Now I'm really like, what are people... What's the gears that are turning?
01:17:29
Speaker
My guess is most people don't think about it.
01:17:34
Speaker
No.
01:17:34
Speaker
And...
01:17:35
Speaker
Don't want to talk about it.
01:17:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's fucking gross.
01:17:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:39
Speaker
As far as I'm concerned.
01:17:41
Speaker
So I'm sure that most people, you know, don't have fully fledged thoughts or opinions about it because it's not really something that's discussed in most ways.
01:17:57
Speaker
But clearly there are people out there who have thought about it more in depth as well.
01:18:00
Speaker
Clearly.
01:18:01
Speaker
I'm like, there are think pieces.
01:18:03
Speaker
It's wild.
01:18:04
Speaker
Most of the people who have been thinking about it are really connecting it to the idea that it's really most of incest is rooted in sexual abuse of children, which is also true.
01:18:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:14
Speaker
Wow, people are really getting into it in the comments.
01:18:16
Speaker
MT Gunfighter has this long thing about purebred animals being at higher rates for cancer and live more lives and all of that's very true.
01:18:25
Speaker
That's very true.
01:18:27
Speaker
Well, also, have you watched the movie Barbarian?
01:18:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:32
Speaker
Well, I don't like spoil it for people, but there's...
01:18:35
Speaker
There's a relevant thread.
01:18:36
Speaker
There's a lot there.
01:18:38
Speaker
In that.
01:18:39
Speaker
It's very upsetting.
01:18:40
Speaker
Oh my god, there's such a relevant thread in there.
01:18:43
Speaker
Yeah, I just, I don't want to go into it because it like spoils a lot of the movie if you do.
01:18:48
Speaker
Yes.
01:18:48
Speaker
Check it out and then find the relevant thread.
01:18:53
Speaker
provide an analysis for that too while you're- Honestly, I think there's so much there.
01:18:57
Speaker
I don't know if the writer slash director intended for there to be so much social commentary in like- Yeah.
01:19:03
Speaker
Ways that I think are- that have a lot of depth.
01:19:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:06
Speaker
But like, I think that- I don't know.
01:19:08
Speaker
Just because someone didn't intend doesn't mean that this- It's not there, yeah.
01:19:11
Speaker
It's not there because the narratives are being pulled.
01:19:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:13
Speaker
From real shit.
01:19:15
Speaker
Okay.
01:19:16
Speaker
So- Okay.
01:19:18
Speaker
If anyone wants to look into this movement-
01:19:23
Speaker
to embrace... Full marriage equality.
01:19:26
Speaker
Yes, it's marriage-equality.blogspot.com which very much feels like a perversion of some very... Actually, it's fucking insulting, to be honest.
01:19:38
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
01:19:39
Speaker
And I mean, it's just appropriating the queer flag and stuff.
01:19:44
Speaker
It's appropriating all of that.
01:19:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's a different thing.
01:19:47
Speaker
People who were engaging in incest weren't fucking hunted down, told that.
01:19:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:52
Speaker
You know, are not victims of hate crimes.
01:19:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:54
Speaker
Harassed in the only places that they could convene and have a good time, like Stonewall.
01:20:00
Speaker
And even still, you know, murdered at clubs.
01:20:04
Speaker
Yes.
01:20:04
Speaker
And there's shootings that happen.
01:20:07
Speaker
And I mean, aren't not, you know, having their rights taken away for existing.
Sexual Violence, Incest, and Reproductive Rights
01:20:12
Speaker
For existing.
01:20:12
Speaker
And these anti-trans bills all over the country are terrifying.
01:20:16
Speaker
Like, the way that there's no comparison at all.
01:20:19
Speaker
And then to co-opt it is really insulting, disrespectful.
01:20:23
Speaker
Find something else for this energy.
01:20:26
Speaker
I mean, you don't need to connect the two things because they're...
01:20:29
Speaker
They're not the fucking same, bro.
01:20:30
Speaker
They're not the same at all.
01:20:31
Speaker
The last thing I wanted to note is just to make the connection that, like, because we know that sexual violence and incest are so deeply intertwined and movements like this kind of wash over the fact that it is just true that abuse is usually the pathway in which incest is enacted.
01:20:52
Speaker
And I'm thinking about all of the reproductive rights that have been attacked in the last...
01:20:59
Speaker
year alone and how many states have near total bans and some states don't explicitly include incest or rape as an exception to get an abortion.
01:21:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:13
Speaker
But also we were talking about earlier how rape and incest are often underreported and it's really hard to prove
01:21:21
Speaker
And that, yeah, the onus falls on the pregnant person to have to prove that that is something that occurred.
01:21:27
Speaker
Right.
01:21:28
Speaker
Or else, like, they're the one that are being criminalized.
01:21:30
Speaker
There's also places in the world where, you know...
01:21:34
Speaker
rape survivors are forced to marry their rapist.
01:21:39
Speaker
Yes.
01:21:39
Speaker
I haven't really kept tabs on which states are banning abortion because it's overwhelming.
01:21:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:47
Speaker
And the number of bills is just incredible.
01:21:49
Speaker
But this was published July 28th, 2022.
01:21:53
Speaker
And, you know.
01:21:54
Speaker
Was that pre or post Roe Weeb Wade being overturned?
01:21:58
Speaker
It was overturned June 2022.
01:22:01
Speaker
Okay, so very soon after.
01:22:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:22:04
Speaker
So this was one month later, and at that time, more than two-thirds of the states had already banned or were moving to ban abortion, and 15 would have ruled out abortions after rape, and 16 would rule out abortions after incest.
01:22:21
Speaker
No exceptions.
01:22:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:23
Speaker
Well, I mean, I saw a horrifying video recently of, like, some politician woman saying,
01:22:28
Speaker
talking about how her child, who's like 10, likes to play with dolls and is always asking about wanting a younger sibling.
01:22:37
Speaker
And this was the argument to say that kids who get pregnant because of rape should be forced to carry their children to term.
01:22:48
Speaker
I saw that.
01:22:49
Speaker
I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
01:22:50
Speaker
What's going on?
01:22:52
Speaker
Also, there's people who definitely experience rape that choose...
01:22:58
Speaker
to like have children because of that.
01:23:00
Speaker
But at the end of the day, it's like a person's choice to do that.
01:23:03
Speaker
What she was saying was just like so fucked up.
01:23:06
Speaker
You cannot be comparing a child who wants to play with dolls and who wants basically a peer to play with.
01:23:13
Speaker
That child does not want to be raped and then...
01:23:15
Speaker
have a child that they then have to what, raise?
01:23:18
Speaker
Like, what the fuck are you talking about?
01:23:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:20
Speaker
Yes.
01:23:21
Speaker
Yes.
01:23:21
Speaker
I think I, I think I see the connection you're making with like, that's not, that's not analogous to somebody making the conscious choice as an adult to keep a child that was the product of rape on their own terms.
01:23:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:34
Speaker
I mean, the idea that somebody's bodily autonomy would be so forcefully removed from someone and then to further take away
01:23:42
Speaker
the right to abortion and then force that person to live with the consequence
01:23:51
Speaker
Or really the punishment of having... It's just like a reminder every fucking day that
Political Cases and Legislative Risks
01:23:58
Speaker
that happened to you.
01:23:58
Speaker
And then to kind of condemn this child into this existence in which at some point in time they'll probably learn that they are the product of violence.
01:24:07
Speaker
And then to understand that they have a father who is harmful, actively harmful, and who can never, ever, ever be what they need them to be.
01:24:16
Speaker
Like what?
01:24:18
Speaker
Pro-life.
01:24:19
Speaker
Pro-life bullshit.
01:24:21
Speaker
But yeah, these states were Idaho, Utah, North Dakota, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Wyoming, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, West Virginia, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Ohio.
01:24:36
Speaker
All places that comparatively have higher rates of incest, actually, than other states in the United States.
01:24:42
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:43
Speaker
So those connections, they are there.
01:24:47
Speaker
And then you have instances of just this last year, there was a former South Dakota Senate member, a Republican, Joel Koskin, who pled guilty to incest of his adopted daughter, who was native, which is a whole other...
01:25:02
Speaker
We should also say that ICWA is at risk of being overturned, and that's really scary.
01:25:07
Speaker
The Indian Child Welfare Act, if you didn't know.
01:25:11
Speaker
We can find a petition and then some calls to action if that would be helpful.
01:25:16
Speaker
And this feels very, very tied to all of this.
01:25:19
Speaker
But he adopted a Native girl and then revealed that he had raped her for years and continued to force himself on her sexually and controlling her in other ways after she left home for college,
01:25:30
Speaker
And she found it very difficult, obviously, to speak about the assaults.
01:25:34
Speaker
This person was like, because it feels unspeakable.
01:25:37
Speaker
And then also the Koskin family, including his wife, Sally, pressured her to not stand up because they said it was disrespectful.
01:25:47
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
01:25:49
Speaker
what?
01:25:50
Speaker
That is fucking horrible.
01:25:51
Speaker
And these are, these are the people who preach traditional Christian values.
01:25:56
Speaker
I'm just like, what the actual fuck?
01:25:58
Speaker
So anyways.
01:25:59
Speaker
Well, so one thing that I wanted to say that tied to just like all of those states planning to not have exceptions for, and, and I just want to say that I believe that anyone should have, be able to have an abortion in
01:26:13
Speaker
regardless of the way that they got pregnant.
01:26:15
Speaker
But that very much is, like, totally rooted in the belief that people who are born assigned female at birth's only purpose to existing on this planet is to reproduce children, and that is a patriarchal, disgusting belief that has existed in our world for a very long time and is the cause of so much generational trauma.
01:26:39
Speaker
Fuck that.
01:26:40
Speaker
You know, people's only purpose is not...
01:26:43
Speaker
to reproduce.
01:26:44
Speaker
Or to be pleasure domes for disgusting old men.
01:26:48
Speaker
Anyways, I hate to leave it there, but what we can do...
01:26:55
Speaker
Because that is what I had.
01:26:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:57
Speaker
What we can do is promote organizations in the show notes that are advocating for reproductive justice, especially in the South where the reproductive rights are at most risk.
01:27:10
Speaker
There are states that have doctors who are moving away because they can't provide abortions in their state or they're scared that they won't be able to, which means that people can't even leave the state into a neighboring state.
01:27:23
Speaker
to access abortion care.
01:27:25
Speaker
Yeah, and it actually also leads to the fact that there are not enough doctors present in states who can actually help birthing people.
01:27:34
Speaker
Yes.
01:27:34
Speaker
Because the doctors that are leaving are gynecologists a lot of the time.
01:27:39
Speaker
And so now people who are needing to give birth are having to travel to
01:27:45
Speaker
so much further and it's likely that probably there will be many deaths related to people who are in the process of giving birth either themselves or their children because of that.
01:27:56
Speaker
Right, right.
01:27:57
Speaker
It has other kinds of impacts as well which are obviously not rooted in being pro-life at all.
01:28:04
Speaker
No.
01:28:06
Speaker
I mean people are getting arrested for miscarriages.
01:28:10
Speaker
It's really about power and control.
01:28:13
Speaker
Yeah, about criminalizing people.
01:28:16
Speaker
But yes, there are people who are doing really vital work, and I think it's important to remember that these conditions have existed before.
Hope and Support for Survivors
01:28:24
Speaker
This is not new, and people are... There's always powerful work persisting, and it feels like a lot of doom right now, but I think it's important to remember that the conditions have been worse before in here.
01:28:35
Speaker
We are still.
01:28:37
Speaker
Anyways, that's that's all I got.
01:28:39
Speaker
Sorry that we didn't.
01:28:40
Speaker
Thanks for sharing.
01:28:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:28:42
Speaker
One more thing that I'll say, which is more of a positive note, is that there is an essay written by Amita Swadden, and she has done a lot of work in providing support.
01:28:56
Speaker
for survivors of child sexual abuse and like creating spaces for people to talk about what happened to them.
01:29:02
Speaker
I think one of her websites is mirror memoirs.com and it's an oral history project.
01:29:07
Speaker
that centers the narratives of healing and leadership of LGBTQ survivors of color in the movement and child sexual abuse.
01:29:15
Speaker
So that's something that will uplift as a positive way to end a kind of a lot episode.
01:29:22
Speaker
Thank you.
01:29:23
Speaker
Thank you.
01:29:23
Speaker
Thank you for that.
01:29:25
Speaker
I was like, it came to my brain.
01:29:27
Speaker
Yes.
01:29:27
Speaker
I do remember.
01:29:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:28
Speaker
Okay.
01:29:29
Speaker
There's also some discussions that I've listened to on other podcasts where she's talking about that.
01:29:34
Speaker
I think she does one with Adrienne Marie Brown and talks more in depth about.
01:29:38
Speaker
Check out her work.
01:29:40
Speaker
We'll put it in the show notes.
01:29:41
Speaker
Yes.
01:29:42
Speaker
All right.
01:29:42
Speaker
Well, anyway.
01:29:43
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
01:29:44
Speaker
Yes, take care of yourselves.
01:29:45
Speaker
Take care of yourselves as always.
01:29:47
Speaker
Yes, and then please do.
01:29:49
Speaker
Let us know your thoughts.
01:29:50
Speaker
Let us know your thoughts.
01:29:52
Speaker
Yes.
01:29:53
Speaker
Yes.
01:29:53
Speaker
I think peace.
01:29:55
Speaker
More.
01:29:56
Speaker
alright good day bye thanks for listening and for supporting us you can find us on Instagram and Facebook at unpackingtheerie on Twitter at unpacktheerie and on our website at www.unpackingtheerie.com
01:30:26
Speaker
Yes, and special thanks to all of you who subscribe to our Patreon.
01:30:31
Speaker
As we've mentioned before, we do all the research for this, we edit, and we don't have any sponsorships or ads.
01:30:40
Speaker
So Patreon support is super helpful in just keeping this project sustainable, keeping the Buzzsprout subscription going, paying for the website, all the stuff.
01:30:50
Speaker
So thank you so much.
01:30:52
Speaker
Sari, Liz, Clifton.
01:30:54
Speaker
Jill, Victoria, and Lindsay.
01:30:56
Speaker
Lauren, Vivian, Valerie.
01:30:59
Speaker
Micheline, Montana, Katrina.
01:31:01
Speaker
Raina, Allie, Jake.
01:31:03
Speaker
Drithi, Daphne, and Katie.
01:31:05
Speaker
Vern, Meredith, H, and Vince.
01:31:08
Speaker
To April, Aaron, and Ellen.
01:31:11
Speaker
And to Brittany, Alyssa, and Meredith R. Yay, thank you so much.
01:31:16
Speaker
Thank you.