Send us Fan MailThe Swing Nation PodcastLifestyle Education: Demand Sexual Freedom with NCSF | Episode 53 In this swinger podcast episode, Dan and Lacy talk to Susan Wright founder of the National Coalition of Sexual Freedom. They discuss activism in the alternative lifestyle community and the ways NCSF can help fight back against the discrimination swingers face in today’s society. GFM: Legal Fees for The Crackenbeards_______________- The Swing Nation -Main WebsiteQuick Navigation Website: -- (Find all our social media links more!)Follow us on Facebook!The Podcast Website_______________ - Swinger Society -Our Website to meet, connect eventsSwinger Society DiscordOur Facebook Group_______________ - Swinger Websites -SDCUsername: TheSwingNation** Use code 36313 for 14 days free! **SLSUsername: NorthernGuynSouthernGirl_______________ - Merch More -The Swing Nation MerchThe Swinger Pride FlagsSwinger Society Merch_______________ - Lacy’s Fun Links -VIP OnlyFansPREMIUM OnlyFans_______________ -- THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS --Shameless Care: ED Medication and at home STD testingUse Code TSN at checkout for $30 off your order!Promescent® Make Love Longer, It’s Time for Great SexUse Code SwingNation for 5% off!Pinaq Liqueur; The Official Drink of The Swing NationUse Code TSN at checkout for 15% off!Non-monogamy Couples Course and Single Guy Mastery CourseUse Code ATLANTA for 50% off!Support the show- Thank you for the support! -
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This podcast is intended for adult audiences over the age of 18. It contains adult language and situations. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to us and not of any employer, organization, committee, or other group or individuals. This podcast is not intended to be taken as professional advice.
welcome to the swing nation podcast a podcast by swingers for swingers where we look to educate others and push back on the negative stigmas and misconceptions associated with our lifestyle come with us and share our pineapple journey as we travel the globe interview the experts learn and grow together join the nation so lacy people are asking how do they get to go to a party or an event with us they check out swingersociety.net you create a profile profile, you sign up for an event, and you come hang out with us. It's super easy. That's right.
If you want to party with us and the other faces and names that you know from social media and TikTok, head on over to swingersociety.net. Can't wait to see you there. Lacey, we get approached by couples all the time and they want to know, like, where can they learn the one-on-ones of non-monogamy? Yeah, I totally get it. You want to get in the lifestyle, but you just don't know where to start. We recommend Sex by Sue's class on non-monogamy. She really helps couples learn how to communicate and do the lifestyle the correct way.
Yeah, I think this lifestyle, you know, it's crucial not to step on the landmines that a lot of us do. Yeah. And you kind of learn the hard way, you know. So having a class that you can take online, you know, in the privacy of your own home and kind of learn the ins and outs, learn, you know, how to approach the lifestyle, how to communicate with your partner about it. You know, I think it's something worth taking and we highly recommend it. Yeah. So click below in the show notes. You'll find this link for that course. Check it out, guys. Bye.
Hey there, pineapple people, and welcome to the Swing Nation podcast. We are your hosts, Northern Guy and Southern Girl. In today's episode, we are sitting down with Susan Wright, who's the Executive Director of the National Coalition of Sexual Freedom. Hello, Susan. How are you? I'm fine. How are you? Good. I'm glad to have you. She's coming to us digitally, so we're trying to use that. It can be difficult at times, but we're going to make do. So I think where we want to start, Susan, is can you just tell us a little bit about you and kind of how you got along this path that you're on?
Well, I started exploring my sexuality in 1992. So I've been doing this for 30 years. And it's been a really exciting, self-empowering journey that I've been on. And it's also, you know, presented some challenges. I ended up getting discriminated against fairly early on and I lost a book contract and I was sexually harassed, you know, into, well, if you want this book contract, you need to date me since you're dating a couple, that sort of thing. So, um, yeah, I was, it was kind of a trial by very quickly. And so I quickly became an advocate and an activist for our communities.
And so that was kind of my beginning and it's been a big part of my adult life. Yeah. And so that led you to to NCF, like your personal struggles led you to find the organization? Or how did that happen? Well, I founded NCSF in 1997, I gathered together five educational groups, those were kink groups at the time, because we were all hearing about the discrimination and the persecution that was happening. And the educational groups just didn't have the ability to talk to the media or talk to local authorities. And so I formed the coalition and it started out with the five groups.
And now we have over groups events businesses and professional practices wow yeah so you were you you founded the whole thing you were there at the start and i've been there ever since and uh i've been i've been the uh spokesperson for ncsf um since the very beginning and then i've taken different roles an all-volunteer organization, so anybody can get involved. There's all sorts of things that you could do with NCSF. And we really are, the power of NCSF is the power of our member groups and our volunteers. Okay. So I think that's perfect, Alidin.
Can you tell us what, so people that are listening that don't know, you know, our, our audience is, is largely the swingers, but we get even people that are, um, I think curious about the lifestyle and curious about swinging, but they're not necessarily involved in the lifestyle. We get quite a bit of that, especially on Tik TOK. And I think some on the podcast here as well. Um, so you know, what, what is NCFF? What are we even talking about here?
The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is an advocacy group for the kink, letter fetish, as well as the consensual non-monogamy communities, polyamory, the lifestyle, all sorts, relationship anarchy. So we represent these alternative sexualities, sexual variants. And the way we do that is by fighting for our rights in the mainstream. And we also educate our constituents, our communities about things that impact you and things you need to be aware of when going about your sexual exploration. There's still landmines out there for these various folks, and we have to let you know.
And we do that by providing free education. We talk to the media. We have direct services where if you get into trouble and need a referral to a professional or need help and got, you know, guidance through a situation, you can contact us directly and you can get confidential help, whether you're an individual or you're a group. So we do a lot of working with people within our communities to, to make us stronger because we're constantly facing headwinds and we need to fight to be able to gather and to be able to talk to each other. And NCSF is instrumental in that. Yeah, no, that's amazing.
And it's interesting because, you know, me and Lacey started this journey on TikTok and podcasting, you know, about a year ago. And we kind of this concept of advocacy or advocating for the community and kind of maybe, you know, pushing back against the stigma and pushing back against some of the discrimination that we've seen, you know, the, you know, the concept of, well, you should be able to do this. And if people find out you shouldn't leave, live in fear of losing your job or losing your children or, you know, any of the other things that happen.
And, uh, it took us a while to kind of find you guys and figure out that you were out there. John and Jackie, when we had them on our podcast, were really some of the first ones that brought you guys up. And we're like, this is, you know, this is a good group. They're out there. Yeah, I read your mission statement. And I was like, this is exactly what we've been talking about for months. So I was pretty excited when they mentioned y'all. And we did some research and found you. Yeah, so I think it's good that there's groups out there.
And I just don't think that maybe not, at least not in the swimmer community enough of even know something like that exists. Yes. What ended up happening is NCSF has worked a lot more with the club owners because the club owners, you know, when they try to create a new brick and mortar club or they're doing a travel agency that's booking, you know, these big cruises. They're the ones that are facing a lot of the discrimination. And I think a lot of the people that are in the lifestyle might not even be aware of all the discrimination that's happening.
And so it's been kind of harder for us to reach those people that were in the lifestyle, just kind of your average person, because, um, you know, it's, it's not impacting them as much if they're not doing what you guys are doing. You know, you guys have a high profile, you know, it's, it's folks like you all that people know, and you know, they could come after you for that. But I think TikTok is amazing for reaching the average person who's checking this out. Yeah, it's been it's been interesting. Yeah, because, you know, to say the least, we started this a year ago.
And, you know, we use the swing talk hashtag is what swingers use on TikTok, you know, to mark their videos is like a swinger video. You know, and we started this over over a year ago.
there was less than, you know 100,000 videos you know maybe a few 10,000 20,000 something like that uh and now there's almost 2 billion um views on that hashtag so just and that's just in the last year that's how much this so people are watching yeah and learning this has exploded and I think you're right like before and I've talked to some of our podcaster friends about it is you know people that went to find podcast information it was you know they got on a uh you know they went looking for information about swinging where tiktok is really pushing us into the faces of people that maybe didn't know this community existed uh and they maybe weren't looking for it um but i think it's opened some of their eyes but the flip side of that is we also think, get quite a bit of scrutiny because it's people that think what we're doing is not right.
So I think it's kind of a double-sided coin there. But it definitely has grown exponentially just in the last year. And I can't imagine what direction it's going in from here. Well, social media is amazing in one way because it does help connect us. NCSF just got our first TikTok account months ago because we realized we need one. Yeah, we need to be reaching out to everybody, you know, so but we need we need volunteers who can help us with that.
And that's a big part of it is, you know, if influencers want to find out about more about NCSF and make videos, you know, we wanted to be on there to be able to share them, to like them, to help promote what's being done there. And so that's really the eye to which we joined to help amplify all of our voices. Yeah.
Well, you got you have you got friends sitting on this side of the computer that can definitely help you with all that stuff uh so we have you know we've tried to you know every time a swinger comes on tiktok or comes on social media and starts publicly posting we kind of try to bring them into our uh i immediately like a or follow a person that posts about swinging or any kind of alternative lifestyle because that takes guts to post about something like that. So I try to always give my support if I see it.
It's a big change because in our research, we do a lot of research on our communities because we are sympathetic to our folks. We understand the language and it's much better if NCSF conducts the research because we know how to phrase the questions and we know the issues because we see the problems. And so we've done quite a bit of research. We have 18 papers on our website that were peer reviewed and published.
And we find that 70% of folks that are engaged in consensual non-monogamy are not out about it they are not telling their work or their family um and that's because you know the the persecution that happens and it's really sad when you see that there's a certain percentage of people that they feel that they are consensually non-monogamous and they identify with that but they can't even tell their partner wow yeah and i think i think that's a perfect lead-in because you know we're talking about sexual freedom and i think you know if you walked up to the normal person and said like do you have sexual freedom right do you have is that an inherent right that you have as a person i think most people would be like yeah like i have i can do whatever i want in my bedroom and nobody has any say any say in that.
You know, we've come to find out that that's not the case. So can you just talk a little bit about what sexual freedom is, or at least the idea of sexual freedom and why, why that's, you know, something that you guys are really pushing for and advocates for? Sure. And, you know, we're actually kind of building on the civil rights movement, the LGBTQIA movement, where groups of people realize that their rights were being infringed. And the, you know, people who are in kink or consensual non-monogamy, there's so many ways that our rights are infringed.
There's so many laws that are on the books that affect us that we may not realize that that you have to kind of be aware of that and you have to be able to organize to fight against all of that. So sexual freedom is not something that we're given. We really have a kind of a puritanical mindset here in America, and it it was never a focus. It started out with like contraception freedom, things of that sort. And it wasn't until Lawrence v. Texas, which is more popularly known as kind of the anti-sodomy law.
It was the Supreme Court decision that stated that we have a right to privacy and that we can engage in sexual relations with other consenting adults. And that's a really important law for us. And unfortunately, that's one of the Supreme Court decisions that Clarence Thomas said in his Dobbs decision that he thought that the Supreme Court should revisit and maybe overturn. And that would be very bad for us because that really was the first legal foundation we had for privacy rights and sexual relations. And this, I mean, this can affect all kinds of things.
Before that happened, you know, we saw so many child custody cases, like it was just, all you had to be was consensually non-monogamous or all you had to be was kinky and your kids would be automatically taken away from you because of perceived morality issues. And why in the world would, you know, people think it's okay for a judge to, to judge our morality when it has nothing to do with how we're raising our kids. So that's why sexual freedom rights are so important because it sounds like this big nebulous thing, but it, it impacts our real lives if we aren't fighting for our freedoms. Yeah.
It's crazy to me. And, you know, we talk about this all the time on our, our, you know, various platforms that, you know, the idea that a government or even an employer or a court can, can, you know, reach into somebody's bedroom and decide what you can and cannot do and then make decisions on, you know, and then have that directly affect, you know, you as a parent or you as an employer, you know, and you spoke to some of the clubs and club owners and stuff like that.
And I know they're, you know, huge issues with banking and, you know, finances and be able to move money because because of some of the discrimination that they face, you know, it's crazy to me that, you know, like you said, we're consenting adults doing consenting adult things. Why the government or why, you know, judges make morality, you know, assumptions based off that. And then that can affect things like child custody. To me, that seems really archaic. You know what I mean? That's still an issue that's going on out there. Yes.
And it's gotten even bigger than that because they're actually trying to control us online as well. I'm sure you've discovered this. NCSF has discovered this. We've been deplatformed by Twitter for six months last year. And we see, we get all these reports from sex educators, sex therapists who can't advertise on social media or they've lost their account. And that is directly due to this law called FOSTA, where it's supposedly fighting sex trafficking.
But really what it does is it allows these large corporations to decide on kind of an arbitrary basis that, you know, we don't want you on our platform when we're not doing anything illegal, talking about sex, talking about sex education for adults, yet we're, we're being stifled. And that's really a huge problem because if we can't talk about this, if we can't give this information to other people, then they're not learning about consent and safety issues and not even able to find these groups and clubs where they can talk to their peers.
I mean, we don't have very good sex education here in America, so it's really helpful when we can get out and talk to people and socialize and actually verbalize what it is that we want and, you know, learn how to set our own boundaries and limits. I mean, what we're doing is really important work and the government is actively interfering in that. Yeah, I agree. I agree 100%. And, you know, it really hits home for us here recently.
And you're probably aware, and I won't get too far into it, but we have, you know, one of the TikTok couples that is associated with us in our group, you know, had an ex parte, I might be saying that wrong, but emergency court order because their ex or his ex-wife, you know, essentially took screenshots of his TikTok, went to a judge and said, you know, I fear for my child's safety because, look, these people are swingers.
And that judge, you know, without even having a single court hearing, without having a child custody, you know, any kind of not even a hearing on it, you know, did a court order and took that 100% custody away from those parents simply based off some screenshots off of TikTok. To me, that's insane that something like that could happen. And it's really scary. Luckily, we were able to help them raise funds.
But what if we couldn't have helped them raise funds but what if we couldn't have helped them like what if we wouldn't have been able to raise the money for them to hire a lawyer to help them that's so scary to know that somebody could lose their kids just because of this lifestyle it's it's sad it i guess for me personally i have a child from a previous relationship and for me personally it really hit home for me because if that happened to me i would be absolutely devastated We'll see you next time.
me personally I have a child from a previous relationship and for me personally it really hit home for me because if that happened to me I would be absolutely devastated yeah it's the most important thing in your life is your children and to have this this fear and for people who don't even realize that there's a risk um you know they may be taking that risk and they're not even informed of of what could potentially happen but certainly we want to let everybody know who's in you know who has divided custody um your ex can bring this up at any time they can show any image they can make any kind of accusation and um as you said the courts will act quickly and then you have to kind of prove the negative.
That's not me. You know, what they're saying is not true. And, um, I'm not risking my child by doing this. I have great childcare, you know, I'm going out on a Saturday night, just like other parents do. It's nothing to be concerned about. Um, but unfortunately it, it does impact.
impact and i think that you're right that it impacts people who are more marginalized even more people who are not clued into the community who can't reach out and get help from other people i think it's great i think that's why a lot of people stay so private in the that and work i think those are the two main reasons because it's scary to think that these things can happen. And so it's just easier to keep your private life private, and not share it with the world because of this type of scrutiny.
Well, I agree, because we see people get fired from their work, even if they're just talking to a friend, somebody who's a work colleague that has become a friend, and disclose, oh, I'm going to a swing club this weekend or, oh, you know, my friend's coming over. What about your wife? Right. And what we see happen in a work setting is people aren't fired so much for being involved in the lifestyle, but they're fired for, quote unquote, sexual harassment because they're actually talking about their own sex life.
And that is taken as, you know, it's kind of flipped on its head and it's taken as, well, because you're talking about sexual things, you're sexually harassing somebody. So you have to be really careful who you disclose this to at your work because you never know when somebody is going to take it and try to use it against you. And we've also seen, unfortunately, people disclose this at work and then they're sexually harassed. Sort of what happened with me. Somebody outed me that I was involved in this triad. And because of that, I was told I should date this person in order to get what want.
I needed in my career. And that's horrible as well. I had to walk away from that situation because of course I wasn't going to just cave to that. But what about people who are more marginalized? What if somebody has a child and they need that job? Um, it can kind of get into, to scare your territory.
So you have to be to be aware of that and and you have to kind of keep that private if you're in a sensitive industry especially like a teacher um any kind of professional like a massage therapist a therapist it can be more difficult to disclose no i think that's 100 i think that's 100 true we're going to do at this point is, uh, take a little break. Uh, we'll hear from our sponsors and then we'll come back and I want to talk about, um, you know, what, what can be done about this, you know, like, um, what, what avenues are you guys pursuing? Um, is there, you know, is there a way to fix this?
Um, and then some of the ways maybe our community can, can help in help in that process. So I think we'll take a little break. We'll hear from the partners and sponsors of the Swing Nation podcast. And then we'll get those questions answered. We'll be right back. Okay. The Swing Nation podcast is proud to partner with Shameless Care.
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Having ED in a lifestyle is super common, right? Because you're in a high stress environment and, uh, you know, trying to maintain your erection in that environment can be difficult. So you go online, you take a little survey, you fill out some healthcare information, um, and they, they ship you the medicine right to your door. You don't have to have the conversation with your doctor. Um, you can do it all from home. Yes. So use our code TSN on shamelesscare.com to receive $30 off. We use it. We suggest you use it. You know, if you need that service, go out there and get it. Thank you.
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So if you're looking to connect with like-minded people, click the link in our show notes and sign up for SDC using our affiliate link and receive a full access for 14 days completely free. Make sure you join the Swing Nation SDC group and send us a message. We here at the Swing Nation podcast are proud to partner with Promescent. Listen, guys, we've all been there. You're having a hot night with a hot chick, maybe a few hot chicks, but you need to kind of delay the time before you pull that trigger. That's where Promescent comes in. They have this awesome product called the Delay Spray.
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Is there something that can be done? Is there a way to fight back against this? And what are some of those ways? that's a great question because ncsf is an activist group so we are constantly running campaigns and different projects to address the roots of this discrimination and persecution.
We did a big project with the American Psychiatric Association when they revised their diagnostic manual to try to remove what they called the consensual paraphilias the unusual sexual interests as we remove them as paraphilic disorders um because it used to be there was things like hypersexual we definitely have that guilty right which is that is not a mental disorder come on so we run these campaigns we work with the american law I don't know. just, that is not a mental disorder. Come on. So we run these campaigns.
We work with the American Law Institute to help create a legal framework for consent to kink. Because when you're doing BDSM, role play, power exchange, you need to have more affirmative consent before you do it. You need to talk about what you're going to do and you need to have a way to stop it at any time. So we're actually looking at consensual non-monogamy and child custody. They can come to us and we can actually refer kink and polyamory aware professionals in your area to you so that you can get expert witnesses.
You can get an attorney who can consult with your attorney or even hire them to take care of your child custody case. We have attorneys that deal with employment discrimination as well who can advise you. So we can fight back on an individual level. We can also fight back as a group. And, you know, you can actually do things as an activist without even outing yourself as somebody who's in the swing lifestyle. For example, we're opposing the earn it act right now. That's kind of a continuation of FOSTA, which is what's clamping down on our rights online so badly.
And we really don't want our legislators to pass this act. So we have an action alert where you can write tears and you don't have to out yourself. You can just say, I'm a constituent and I think this is a bad idea. And it's amazing how much each letter makes an impact. So you can sign up for NCSF to find out about these ongoing projects and keep involved. And we send out a couple of emails a month, sometimes three.
So So it's's not huge but it's enough for you to keep involved and see what we're doing and participate in the projects that you really want to participate yeah and it really seemed you know from from you know my perspective here because we've been digging into this for a while and you know trying to figure out what the best best path is to try to fix some of this stuff and you know make it make it so, you know, hopefully, you know, in the future, people that are non-monogamous or even kink or, you know, this wider umbrella of alternative lifestyle people that they don't have to live in fear of, you know, their coworkers finding out and then losing their job or their ex, you know, wives or spouses or whatever, you know, so, but it's not really really a clear pathway to oh you just gotta you know challenge this one law and then it's all overturned and then you win and it's it's all done it seems like it's you know taking it one case at a time pushing back fighting uh you know suing where you can you know bringing issues to court and making you know making a big deal out of it and just kind of picking away at the at to try to initiate change that way.
Is that accurate? That's a great way to put it because it's picking away at a lot of different fronts because there's a lot of groups that are actively working against us. I mean, there's anti-LGBTQIA groups like Americans for Truth about Homosexuality. Concerned Women for America are also opposed to privacy rights for consenting adults. And we have religious political extremist groups like the Family Research Council and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, which sounds great, but it used to be called Morality in the Media.
so that kind of tells you what this group is really about so we have all of these groups and these really very right-wing political groups that are advocating for the overturning of lawrence v texas so it's kind of all of them and all of these well-funded um entities against ncsf who is standing kind of trying to like push back this tide and it sometimes gets kind of overwhelming but what we did was we just created these different committees to deal with these different issues and you know we particularly want to recruit people like attorneys to help us um anybody who is like a victim advocate, who is a therapist, I mean, you can join these committees that we have.
And NCSF provides a structure where if somebody is very passionate about a project, we can all work together. So you don't have to reinvent the wheel because, you know, creating your own organization, running a 501c3, which we're a charitable foundation. So we can take large donations and give a tax deductible donation receipt. And we're also a lobbying organization, a membership organization. So we provide kind of the scaffolding and the framework for these important projects. Consent Counts, which was one of our largest projects, was created in 2006.
And the communities decided this was really important. We needed to be talking about consent. And they handed this over to NCSF in 2007. And we have just run with it. Yeah, no, I think that's important. And I think there's a lot, you know, you know, I read a statistic online, it was something like one in five couples have in some way or manner or manner, you know, engaged in non-monogamy. Right. Not not saying their lifestyle, not saying their swingers, not saying that they do this, you know, on a regular basis, but in some way or fashion have engaged in this type of behavior. Right.
So I think there's a huge community of people out there.
And then, you know, you add an alternative lifestyle kink, you know, the BDSM, you know, you want to you know label that community you add all them in and there's a lot of people out there right i mean we we should have a very strong uh voice and a very strong community it just to me it feels like we haven't really united that at least not in a way like the lgbt community has um and i think if we could get that community organized and get them you know linked together and talking with one voice and doing things like what you're saying you know writing your senators I don't know.
I don that you guys are aware of them so that, you know, we have numbers, we have statistics, we can kind of show, you know, how often and much people are being mistreated and discriminated against. I think then maybe we can start to turn the tide. Is that is that what you're thinking? Absolutely.
I think he hit the nail on the head and, you know being mistreated and discriminated against i think then maybe we can start to to turn the tide is that is that what you're thinking absolutely i think you hit the nail on the head and you know join ncsf you can join ncsf as a coalition partner or a supporting member and we'll waive the hundred dollar membership fee because we just want everybody to join you know like i said we started out with five groups 25 years ago. We have over 180 now.
It, you know, there, there is millions of us, literally there's millions of us in America who are doing some form of alternative sexuality. Now, most of those people are not part of our communities. They're not active. They're not engaged, but they have the same concerns because NCSF hears from them when they're discriminated against. So we know they're out there. And that's why I just love what you guys are doing. You're, you're spreading the word. You're letting people know that we're here and, uh, that you can do this too.
There's ways that you can explore your sexuality and have a good time. And by you passing on information about NCSF, that's super helpful as well. I mean, I hope that people want to volunteer for NCSF, go to our website and, you know, fill out our volunteer form. And we have our different committees. If you're into social media, we have our PR committee that's focused on social media. We have a fundraising committee.
We have our consent counts committee, our education committee, and our diversity, equity, and inclusion committee that is working on these issues to make sure that our groups are not marginalizing marginalized folks.
yeah and and i know you've hit on this a little bit but i want to make sure that you, you know, people out there know, you know, so if we have, if there are swingers or even kink or alternative lifestyle people out there and they feel like they've had been discriminated against or maybe they're going through something with an employer or an ex-spouse or something like that, what are, what should they do? How can you guys help those people? Definitely contact NCSF. Go to our website. You can contact me directly at Susan at NCSfreedom.org.
And our incident reporting and response team has a lot of experience with this. We get over 200 requests for help a year. You know, we are really experienced in dealing with a wide variety of things that happen. And we have networked with all of these professionals that we can refer you to. We have resources that you can use and we can just give you the benefit of our experience. We've seen a lot of things before, so we can tell you what we've seen happen so that you can make a more informed decision. And then, as you said before, it helps us.
It's incident reporting and response because we need to hear your reports. We need to hear what's happening. It's only been in the past couple of years that child custody and consensual non-monogamy have become such a hot button issue. And we're getting regularly at least 10 parents a year coming to us for help with this area. And that's too many. Yeah, I know our friends that reached out to y'all a few weeks ago, y'all were very quick to get back with them and help. So we really appreciate that. Well, we know that people are contacting us in a crisis.
So we will get back to you usually within 24 hours, but definitely within 48 hours, because, you know, a lot of times people just need to know there's somebody there they can talk to. They're not alone. I mean, when you're facing a crisis, you're alone, right? And that's just not fair. Yeah. And then I think the flip side to this, you know, Susan, me and you will have to talk more about this offline probably. But, you know, I really sense, you know, a movement going on here. Right.
There's several people, you know, there's not 2 billion views on Swinger videos because nobody cares about this subject. You know, we have a Discord server, which is just a chat room that has over 15,000 people in at this point. You know, and that's in like six months that we've gathered that many people, you know, our Facebook group has almost 13,000 or 12, 13,000 people at this point. So, I mean, there's a community that's coming together and informing.
So I guess I need to know how that community or how we can help you guys and how we can kind of push some of these issues and how, you know, where do you need volunteers and how do you need them?
You know, do we have to show up, you know, to court cases with pineapple, you know, suits on like you know where do you need volunteers and how do you need them you know do we have to show up you know to court cases with pineapple you know suits on like you know like how you know how can we make some noise and actually change things and where can can we help you because you know i know me and lacy are very passionate about this i know you know the core group that we call the swinger society of our friends that are close to us i know they're very passionate you know and we have some outreach you know we're just me and lacy are getting millions of views on tiktok you know a month uh and you know you combine all of us the numbers are huge so i think you know finding ways that we can we can help you and push to kind of push the ball forward is i think essential so um you know not to put you on the spot but are there some things that you can think of off the top of your head that people that are listening can engage and help this community?
She has a social media team, right? That's where we need to help. Definitely. And I would love for you to join as a coalition partner because our coalition partners elect our board. I think we are. Are you at this point? Because I know we have to help. Yeah, so I think Kylie just signed up recently. Yeah. Great. I don't know.
I'll have to double check with meg um but i'll confirm if we're not we will make that happen um but for me i'm over here like tearing up i don't know i guess this is like kind of like a full circle moment of like all the things that we worked really really hard for and i guess me i've faced backlash at my job which i'm no longer employed there and you know i anticipate i'll probably get pushback with my child at some point so I don't know I'm just super grateful for this podcast and for our you know our relationship with y'all now and I think it's going to be really good going forward I think so too because you know we do need to speak with a voice you know so anytime we have a an action that would involve consensual non-monogamy, we'll let you know.
You can let your folks know. We can mobilize them. Like I said, it's amazing what, you know, one letter can do. It's amazing what 10 letters can do. 100 letters, we can, those who show up rule the world. And as long as we make our voices heard, we can affect these things. And so I think by us working together, you can be letting us know what your issues are. So we have a better understanding of what your folks are facing. And then we can let you know what we're working on. So you can help spread that. I think that that synergy is super important.
And then for individuals, please just go check out our website. We have most of our resources online. And like I said, sign up for a committee. We'll just put you right on. We have hold them every month, a Zoom meeting. So it doesn't matter where you're located, you can be involved. And like I said, our PR committee is, we are ramping up our work with social media and I am not a social media person. So it's, it's something that is lovely to see all these folks coming in with all this expertise and pretty much suggesting things and able to run with it.
So it's, it's a wonderful way to get involved and really make make a difference yeah no absolutely you know we're going to get our team engaged uh there's a lot going on over here but uh i think you know this is a priority for us because you know it's one thing to go on you know podcasts and tiktok and you know and say you know oh we want to make a difference we want we want to make change uh but you know the truth is and you know probably better than anybody that doesn't just happen by speaking it you have to you gotta get on the ground and do the do the work and get a little dirty and uh i think you know our team um you know speaking for the swinger society you know they're ready to get engaged and i think it's just i think it's more just knowing when and where and how you know and kind of connecting the dots for them and and putting out the information and having that organized.
I think if we can get all those kind of ducks in a row, you know, I think you could see, you know, you're saying hundreds, but it could be thousands or tens of thousands of people that could get engaged on some of these issues.
You know, speaking of, you know, the child custody case that we have with the, what we call the cracking beards, because that's their online persona, you know, we've raised almost for them on a on you know to get a lawyer and push back against that custody issue i mean i think it's things like that um you know it seems like a small thing but to them to them it was huge it meant all the difference in the world you know they went from we think we're losing our son to you know now we have a fighting chance to to actually you know push back against this so you using, you know, the, the, you know, the outreach that we have to be able to do things like that, I think is, is fundamental and hugely important and we're all about it and that's what we're here for.
So I think we're, I think we're going to get to know you pretty good and hopefully continue this relationship. I think so. And I think that what you all are doing is amazing because look what happened. You know, that I see that so often that people who don't have the money can't fight this kind of discrimination. And so if we all contribute to help folks fight it, then that helps the next people, you know, because family court is so closed, it kind of has to be fought out every single court. So we might need to keep doing this over and over again.
But we might have somebody listening right now who has an idea of how we could hit this on a more systematic level to address the institutionalized discrimination that's happening.
So by spreading the about this that's that's so important that's what's connecting us which is why i hope everybody goes and checks out our earn it act and writes to their legislator because if think about this if you guys are shut down suddenly all this these people are there's no way to connect the new folks haven't got a way to hear about it it's so important yeah yeah no we've you know in just in the last year we've lost several accounts with over 100 000 followers just because like you're saying you know they flag a video and then the next thing you know the whole account's gone and it's like what just happened you know i mean it's flagged for like nudity and sexuality even though i'm fully clothed with like a sweatshirt and shorts and right but the word swinger was on the screen you know yeah so they take it completely down that's exactly what happened with ncsf with our twitter account you know we were posting articles that were published in mainstream websites and they shut down our twitter account and you know we did everything we could to get our Twitter account back.
And finally, someone suggested that they went to the head. I think it was Amazon because their book got deplatformed and you couldn't even find it. And so we went to the head of Twitter and said, hey, this is unfair. What are you doing here? And we got our Twitter account back the next day without any comment from them. And all that made, this is unfair. What are you doing here? And we got our Twitter account back the next day without any comment from them. And all that made me think is the only reason we got ours back is because we're an advocacy group.
What if we were just, you know, Joe Smith? Right. Which is crazy because Twitter's got some pretty risque things on it. I'm surprised. Of all the places for y'all to get banned yeah twitter has all the things so the fact that they're banning you know activist groups for for uh alternative lifestyles is crazy yeah but you know hey it's the world we live in um but yeah it is and it really felt we felt it we felt the pain so we know know, we know what's happening. I really feel for you when you lose an account and has 100000 people. It's really frustrating. It is the first time I think I cry.
But now we're kind of to the point where it's like it's kind of part of it. Unfortunately, now we've kind of gotten used to it. But those first few were very hard, very hard on us. And it shouldn't happen. And we're fighting to have that not happen. And hopefully the Earn It Act will not pass. And we're actually signed on. We filed a brief with the challenge to FOSTA, which Woodhull is proceeding with. And so we like to comment on these cases, these court cases, um, and let the judges know how it's affecting our communities. So that's just one service that we're doing. That's awesome.
Uh, yeah. And I, I think, you know, again, we'll stay in touch with you.
We'll, we'll keep, we'll keep fighting, you know, we'll figure out the ways to, to pass that information to to our community so that they can get involved um and we'll just we'll just keep you know one one bridge at a time i guess one one fight at a time and until uh you know hopefully we can get to the end i think you know you spoke on this a little bit but it seems like the lgbt community did this very well right i mean they they've kind of flipped the world on its head from you know having no rights to where now it's you know people are very cautious to to make any decisions against them based on their just their sexual orientation so i you know it seems like there is a pathway to do this we just have to learn from some of those lessons is that is that kind of the pathway you're following or or what do you think on that yes we're standing on the shoulders of giants when it comes to this and certainly lgbtqia movement it showed us the path and we actually learned from from those activists like in the early 90s i was taking my media training with glad and glad was coming in to educate the the kink activists on how to talk about this and kind of adapting their talking points to our issues.
Polyamory had, you know, the year of polyamory, I think in 2018, when you couldn't turn around without seeing another article on polyamory, right? So, you know, affecting, influencing the media is a big way that the LGBTQ community really did make an impact. And and then they also showed us how to do it with lobbying and fighting legislation that was repressive and working with legislators who were sympathetic and understood our goals so that we could get laws passed so that our rights were to bridge. So there is a path to this.
It's, um, you know, not sexual orientation, it's sexual expression. And I certainly hope that sexual expression will be protected. No. And I think, you know, one, I don't think, you know, their fight is still ongoing. I think that's probably worth, worth noting I think another thing worth noting is, at least in the, you know, non-monogamy lifestyle, there's quite a bit of people that identify as bisexual in our community. And, you know, and it's, our community is very much tied in part of that community. So, you know, I think maybe working on some of those bonds might be worthwhile as well.
Absolutely. Any research we do, we find 50 to 60% of our folks are LGBTQIA. We actually have a fairly, you know, it's the minority of our constituents are heterosexual. So I think that that comes part and parcel with exploring your sexuality. You can kind of break outside those bonds. I mean, that's what consensual non-monogamy is, is I want to have the relationship with people based on each person, not based on what society tells me is acceptable or allowed.
And I know for 30 years, exploring my sexuality and being consensually non-monogamous has had a great impact on all of the relationships that I've had. And it's allowed me to develop more as an individual. And I see that kind of as the future. Um, I, you know, nothing wrong with a pair of on I've been married for a long time now.
Um, I've been with my husband since 1994, but we were non-monogamous when we got together and that has continued and i think that it shows that it can be a really successful way to live your life and you shouldn't be discriminated against because of it yeah and that's i think that's a key what you just said there and john and jackie were kind of again hit that us with that is not only do we have to advocate and push back against the discrimination but also show that this this community this lifestyle has lots of inherent value and can be beneficial to so many people not saying that everybody should be non-monogamous or everybody is non-monogamous and that this is the way to do it but there are lots of inherent you know values to way of, of living, um, that I think people just aren't aware of.
So, you know, spreading that and saying, Hey, yeah, we're swingers and we're proud of it. And these are all the benefits that, uh, our relationship gets from being that. I think that's another great message to spread, you know, is separate from the discrimination and stuff.
Pineapple pride to do graphics infographics pineapple pride we can do that yeah well it's funny you say that because we actually designed a pride flag because we're like why not swingers have a pride flag and so we we made a rainbow pineapple and put it on a flag and we've been you know and people are you know people love it people love it yeah there's quite you know you see it all over tiktok now and you know people on social media posting you know in different places you know they're in jamaica they're in wherever and they're holding their flag up and it's pretty cool to see and i think you know symbolism and people kind of rallying behind some kind of you know common uh symbol is i think it's important to people i think that is so great and think about that it's so non-threatening right it's just it's a pineapple you know and it's is it upside down of course it is of course it's upside down i mean you can turn it the right way up if you want to but yeah it's upside down it's designed to be upside down we'll have to get you one yes i think that's great we should definitely post that yeah Yeah, we'll get you one.
We'll get that to you one. Yes. I think that's great. We should definitely post that on our website. Yeah, we'll get you one. We'll get that to you. Well, this was awesome. All right, Susan. Is there anything we didn't touch on that you'd like to share with the Swing Nation listeners out there? No, just our website, ncsfreedom.org. It's National Coalition Sexual and then freedomspelledout.org. All right, guys. I highly encourage you. NCSF, they're at the forefront of this fight. You're going to hear a lot more about this from me and Lacey. It's something we're going to get more involved with.
I think it's necessary. I think it's so necessary. We've had numerous friends at this point that have had various issues, whether it's employers or work or or children um so i think getting the resources out there and starting kind of starting the fight i think is important and we'll be in touch with you susan and we'll definitely uh work on this together that's great it was lovely talking to both of you all right and i think with that folks remember in a world full of apples be the pineapple be the pineapple. Bye.
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