I know what Unconditional Love is because my lesbian girlfriend promised me that if there is a Heaven (not the Christian heaven, I don’t want to go there even if I could… but just some kind of heaven) and I finally get what I want (to be a biological guy) she would still love me. That is the only thing on the face of this earth that can make me feel loved… that promise.
I believe that what you WANT is as much a part of who you are as what you actually have.
All these transphobic hypocrites.. I’d love to see how they act if they have the ability to actually CHOOSE.. to choose their body, choose their life, choose their family, their friends, their surroundings. The problem with this dumb world is that people don’t give each other the full range of options from which to choose.. and that’s sad. Because when you live and think like that, all you’ll ever know is Conditional love. It’s nothing compared to the real thing.
This is another great post you should check out, with informational links.
I really liked this observation especially:
In the US, there is a false notion that marriages between first cousins in a Southern thing, but the varying state laws do not support that idea. Rather, these relationships exist in every region and in every class.
I am completely in love with my cousin. We had conversations where we both said we believe we are soul mates, because of how deep our connections feels between us. I finally took the plunge, and told her I was in love with her, and she smiled and agreed.
But we are both already married. And my wife hates me being around her. So I have had to turn away from my cousin… and it hurts my heart every day…
Hey dude, I’m sorry it’s been like that for you. The important thing is that you are honest with yourself and she is kind enough to allow you to express how you feel. So many people in this world repress what they really think… if society were more tolerant overall there would be many more relationships like yours where two people (even if closely related) could just admit their attractions to each other. As you are married, it’s best not to pursue anything but I hope you and your cousin still maintain the ability to have honest conversations with each other.
There is a lot
of misinformation here. As someone who has read up on cousin/cousin
relationships extensively for my writing, I can see so much distortion and
prejudice in your article it’s disgusting. Journalists are supposed to present
facts without telling people what to think. But you are no different than so
many other self-professed “relationship experts”. The fact is, human
sexuality is diverse and complex. There is no one kind of healthy or normal.
You really have to look at things on a case-by-case basis to try and see which
relationships are right for the individuals involved and which ones may not
be….. I fully agree that some of these marriages are inappropriate, but that
is due to the ages of the females involved, not because of the sheer fact of
their relation to their partner.
For your
information, first cousins have a very low risk level for having kids with
defects. All people (whether related or not) carry a baseline risk for defects.
And first cousins’ risks are only a little higher, not high enough to ban
marriages… which is why many places still allow it. The kind of defects that
can occur are not the kind that would ruin the quality of a kid’s life. They’d
be minor inconveniences, if they happen at all. As for the rare worst case scenario
(of severe mental or physical disability) in the case of cousins there is no
evidence to show that it is caused by their relation.
Any relationship can
produce children with major issues. When major issues do occur for a cousin
couple, it is often because there were several generations in a row of
inbreeding in the same family. There is a HUGE difference between that and the
risks for a cousin marriage where there is no history of incest already in the
family tree. Some of Darwin’s kids had issues.. he also had several generations
of incest in his family (both him and his wife’s side). Every time a person
casually looks at the birth defects, they are not getting a balanced view
because they are not investigating further. The major issues happen when there
are SEVERAL GENERATIONS IN A ROW.
Lastly,
and just as important as the stuff on genetics, what makes you think that these
relationships are somehow less valuable than the ones you are used to?? You
have to be a seriously narcissistic person to think that your experience in
life is the only one that holds any meaning. If you study history, you’d see
that morality is largely subjective to the culture, the times, the individual,
etc. And as for whether or not it is in line with
‘natural selection’ or ‘evolution’, you need to take a closer look at the
animal kingdom. Human beings don’t just go and mate in some base way. Human
relationships are about the mind, the soul, shared values and interests. We are
so much more advanced than animals. You think that these people are being
backwards by loving within their family. But you are so far removed from their
experience that you cannot begin to see how far ahead they are in their views
of love. Real Love is not about reproduction and mating like an animal in heat.
Reproduction is a separate matter that should be looked at with consideration
to ACTUAL facts about risk levels on a case-by-case basis – not a generalized
paranoid opinion of someone who is more interested in sensationalism than
truth.
To the author of this article and her fans: You
are not relationship experts. Get over yourselves. There are children of cousin
couples all over this world who are dealing with unnecessary stigma because of
people like YOU. I am not defending customs here… Cousin marriage as a
widespread custom is dangerous in the long term. But I will fully defend those
(in a minority) that marry their cousins out of genuine love and connection.
You cannot speak for these people. They have a voice of their own and each one
is different. Cousin marriage is a complex and controversial topic but in order
to understand it fully you need to be able to look at it from ALL angles and
make distinctions between harmful and harmless, all the while acknowledging
that people have the right to choose how to live and love, as long as there is
consent. They’re not here to play a puppet role for you or anyone. There are a
multitude of ways to be a COUSIN, and to be HUMAN. I’d much rather hang out
with free-minded people any day than those who spread ignorance with pride.
When people look perplexed at your sexual or romantic choices, saying that there are plenty of other people you could choose from, its senseless. If you are monogamous, then you’d end up with one person anyway, so it doesn’t matter how many people there are in the world… the important thing is that the one you pick is the right one, for you.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I am not the gate-holder to anyone’s life, but I feel that because I run this blog I have a kind of responsibility to make some kind of statement about where I personally would ‘draw the line’ in my support of cousins-cousin pairings.
In other posts, I try to be as neutral as possible but this post is largely my personal opinion. If someone out there lives differently I won’t demonize them, but I want to express my personal feeling on ‘limitations’ to reproduction. There is more I need to read to understand this topic more in depth but from what I’ve read so far, including from the real life examples I know of, this is the opinion I’ve formulated for myself:
I repeat this all the time: if you ever plan on making kids with your first cousin or any other cousin, you should try your best to go to at least one genetic councilor to get a better understanding of where you stand with regards to your reproductive risks.
I am very much against the custom of arranged marriage (and by that I mean, the custom of pressuring, forcing, or manipulating two people to marry against their will). Here I am talking about mutually consensual love.
I feel that there does need to be limits to reproduction, even for cousins. I think their risk level is low enough to justify them taking the risk in a single generation, BUT, my opinion is that a “line” should be drawn directly after that first generation has children.
Here are my reasons for thinking this way:
The stigma that is attached to these relationships comes largely from observations made about inbreeding depression – when several generations inbreed, there are a series of consequences that can occur. All you need to do is have a glance at the family tree of King Charles II of Spain. It is downright horrifying what can happen with several generations in a row of inbreeding. This is an inescapable fact.
I say a line should be drawn in terms of reproduction only, and only after the first generation. If someone whose parents are already cousins ends up falling in love with their cousin I think they have every right to be together, however, I don’t think they should have children. If this 2nd generation marries outside the family, this wouldn’t be an issue and they wouldn’t have to worry about the risks rising.
I feel that those consang couples who should have children (if they want to) are cousin couples that do not have incest in the last 4 generations or so in their shared lineage, and an overall healthy family tree (with their own health also being evaluated). This is to ensure that there is enough genetic diversity to afford them the lowest possible risk level in conceiving their own children with each other.
I think the cut off mark needs to be drawn directly after this first generation, because from that point onward the baseline risk for further incestuous relationships begins to increase. Yes it’s possible that there would still be enough genetic diversity left over to allow for healthy kids in this 2nd generation as well, but I feel that the more inbreeding occurs in a single family line, the higher the chances of their children growing up and thinking no harm would be done in making it a ‘tradition.’
I don’t think cousin marriage should ever be a cultural or family ‘custom’. I think that is dangerous and can easily turn into the Charles II family tree a few generations down the line. I think cousin marriage should be an ‘exception’ made for those few people that truly feel their cousin is the only one they want to commit to.
My argument is not based solely on risk level because it’s possible that the risk is still low for a consanguineous couple even at that 2nd generation. I just think that if someone is going to make a gamble like this they should do it under circumstances where the odds are undeniably in their favor, and get out early in the game. This is the best way to keep the good and leave out the bad. The more generations that take the gamble the higher the stakes get, to the point where more is lost than gained.
My uncle had 3 children with his first cousin. They are healthy. But there is also the fact that we do not have incest in our family line as far back as 4 generations on my grandmother’s side (don’t know beyond that) and 2 generations on my grandfather’s side (don’t know beyond that). So when my uncle had kids his risk level would have likely been the best it could be for two first cousins.
I don’t know why no one talks about this issue of generational inbreeding when supporting cousin marriage. For any freedom to be enjoyed there NEEDS to be some kind of limit.
If there is a set pattern like this, where only those cousin couples that don’t have incest in the past 4 generations make kids, and only the ones that truly want to, then we wouldn’t have the inbreeding depression problem – because cousin marriage would happen less often and when it does, it would occur only under the safest conditions.
People often rely on the worst case scenarios to argue against cousin marriage. They point to things like Charles II’s family tree… When ignorant people see this they don’t look any further into genetic possibilities because they get scared off. And who can blame them? Charles II was thought to be one of the most inbred people in the world, with very little diversity in his gene pool. If those who fall in love with their cousins follow a set of limits such as that I mentioned to regulate their risk level and keep it consistently small, then there would be no more murky examples like that for opponents of cousin marriage to use against them. This would not only help drastically reduce health risks for children, but it would leave us with better examples to help fight the stigma long-term.
I think I’ve mentioned the reddit page before but since then I’ve not been there much, mostly because the discussions there are often fetish-based, and that is not what my blog is about.
However, today I went there to see if I could post something about this blog, when I came across a post that caught my eye… At first it seemed extremely disheartening to read the original poster’s experience. It stirred up some negative feelings in my head… coming from the perspective by which I am used to looking at this type of relationship.
But as I read some of the responses, as well as how the original poster’s reflections evolved as they attempted to understand and process the new information they were getting, I found it to be an interesting and balanced post in many ways.
It helped put some things into perspective for me too, like why the child of a cousin couple might have a hard time accepting their family’s reality. Such a large part of it has to do with the stigma society creates… which wouldn’t exist if more people actually examined this subject up close, with the ability to distinguish between personal distaste vs. facts vs. ideas that are taught to us from a young age rather than occurring naturally in us.
And in the discussion also, the poster mentions the role media representations played in their overall reaction, self-image, and struggle to accept things.
It is an important post to read, no matter from which angle you are coming at this topic (as the couple or the child of such a couple).
The poster also mentions that her father felt he had made a mistake (as in the pregnancy had been unintended). That revelation also had a negative impact on her process of self-acceptance. I just want say that this is why on this blog I am always referring to relationships that are not only consensual but built on deep mutual love. Because the more genuine the love between the couple is the less likely they are to regret their decisions.. and the less likely their kids are to feel more pain than others’ ignorance already creates for them.
I’ve been debating with myself on whether or not to share examples from my own life for this blog. Part of the reason is I don’t want to take away the anonymity of certain individuals, as their stories are not mine to tell. But I feel that maybe it might help someone if I just write about it without giving too many specifics.
The purpose of this sharing is so you can see how closely tied we all are and that these kinds of relationships are all around us, though we may not know of them.
Back when I first decided I wanted to explore these topics someday in my fiction, I didn’t know anyone in person that was in a relationship with their cousin. I only knew a butch lesbian girl about my age who was my close friend. That was the only person I knew at the time that represented anything outside the ‘norm’.
When I was 18, I was having a conversation with my mother one day, telling her about my fictional pairing and their unique bond. I felt very weird sharing that with her, and I was worried she’d judge me. But what she told me surprised me. She told me that one of my uncles was married to his first cousin… He was the only one like that in my extended family, which is a very large family.
At first I didn’t know how to feel about it. I barely knew him since I grew up in a different country, though while I was still in my homeland (before I moved to that other country) I saw him around when visiting my grandparents. I also saw his wife. I used to think she was scary when I was a kid because she had a temper when dealing with her children’s misbehaviour. At a later visit though, when I was older, I saw her in a different light as she treated us very kindly…
But the ones I remembered a little more were their kids. They had two sons back then. I used to think of the younger one as the ‘toothless kid’ cause when I knew him he was so young and still losing his milk teeth. The older one was around my age and I felt more of a bond with him. I would see him picking flowers in my grandmother’s front yard and I used to think of him as being like Peter Pan… because he seemed free spirited and in touch with his imagination. I have to admit that since then he has grown up to be something of an arrogant, self-centred person… I think he developed that attitude from having got to travel the world, while most of our other family were still in our old home country.
I think his travels had also made him a little more open-minded (he has some gay & lesbian friends) though I had to educate him on trans issues, which he knew nothing about. His brother also has a lot to learn when it comes to anything queer.. but I always felt like he made an effort to talk to me, while many of my other cousins didn’t, so I appreciated that. They have a little sister now, who I also got to meet briefly during a later visit, and she was so sweet and humble – she was having some self esteem issues about her looks so I was trying to encourage her and boost her self esteem (she felt like one of our other cousins was prettier than her..)
So basically, I met their whole family and have come to feel that they are like any other family. But at first it was weird for me to hear about their parents, in part because I had a negative impression of their mother when I was a kid, but also because this was the first time I was encountering a cousin/cousin relationship in real life. It’s easier to explore these things in theory or imagination. But when you come across it in reality, especially in your own family, sometimes you do need a moment to process it and adjust your mind to it. Because social conditioning runs deep.
That was the first time I had to look outside my fiction and try to understand the actual challenges that kind of couple, that kind of family, would have to deal with. Luckily for them, they come from a culture that makes space for their love within the greater society, to a certain extent. So they could manage to exist in peace within that society and raise their kids and still be part of the extended family.
I asked my mother how she feels about it, the fact that her brother is married to their cousin. She said she loves her brother very much, he was very kind to all his sisters while growing up (he would buy them clothes, encourage their education, etc). My mother was brought up in the same culture he was, so it wasn’t an unusual thing to see him marry their cousin. But it wasn’t an arranged marriage. The couple fell in love with each other and decided to marry of their own free will.
My mother said that the women that married her other brothers (her in-laws) were like strangers, whereas her cousin was always a part of the family, she had grown up with her, so she felt more comfortable/familiar around her than with her unrelated sisters-in-law.
I talked about it again with my mother several years later, after starting this blog. She had doubts around whether or not it was right for couples like them to have kids. This kind of hurt me to hear, so I told her all the things I learned about genetics from the reading I’ve done so far. She just felt that there was a lot we didn’t know about potential health risks in cases like that, both short term and long term, which is a fair concern. But I kept talking to her until she seemed to at least understand my view that if the risk is a low enough one to make it worth taking, there’s nothing wrong with it. If you can give a kid quality of life to make life worth living, and give them as many opportunities as possible to be successful, then why deny them existence?
Between a society that is judgemental and an individual that follows their heart I think it’s the society that needs to change. Because alot of the damage that is done to families like that or couples like that comes directly from outside, not within.
The only irony, if I’m going to be honest, is that I’m not sure if my uncle would be as accepting of my identity. He’s used to having the same privileges to the most part that straight men have. And in his culture there are no spaces for queer people to be openly themselves.
Knowing about him has made me see that all kinds of people can exist in one family, that closely situated, without ever knowing about each other… there must be so many other families out there like mine, but they either wouldn’t know about it or wouldn’t talk about it.
My mother accepts me and her brother’s family, I accept myself and my uncle’s family, but would he accept me? I don’t know… Some of the family may accept him but not me, or accept me but not him.. some may reject us both. All of that, to me, is simply a refusal to accept that we’re all equal. And that, above everything, is what I struggle most with.
—
That is one example. The second one I have is from my partner’s family [read Part 2]
rainbowamory 