Abby and Brittany Hensel, who documented their lives in the TLC reality series “Abby & Brittany,” have a new member of the family.
Conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel first gained national attention when they appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1996.
Now the sisters have reached a major life milestone: Abby is married.
The Hensels later starred in the feel-good TLC reality series “Abby and Brittany,” which showed them driving, traveling to Europe and even riding a moped. When the show ended after one season, Abby and Brittany had just graduated from college with degrees in education.
A lot has happened in the last decade. Abby, 34, is now married. According to public records, Abby, a teacher, and Josh Bowling, a nurse and United States Army veteran, tied the knot in 2021. The sisters also shared photos of the wedding on social media. The couple live in Minnesota, where the Hensels were born and raised.
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I have questions that I should probably keep to myself…
Yeah, we’re curious, but polite.
I don’t give a shit.
I wanna know how they all fuck.
They’re one downstairs, so they fuck as a couple. But the other twin also gets an orgasm.
What if the other head is not in the mood?
Then they wouldn’t do it.
It’s hard for us to imagine but they have to live in agreement of everything they do.
They have been doing it since birth so imagine they’ve worked out a lot of ground rules around this sort of thing.
They have same blood circulation, so hormones etc. affect both.
There’s more to being “in the mood” than hormones. Non-consensual sex can trigger a similar hormonal response as consensual sex, but that doesn’t mean the victim “enjoys it” or whatever.
So I wonder how much the brain dampens the orgasm response if you’re not interested.
Being physically aroused and mentally aroused are two different things. I hope that they would take her body-mate’s feelings into consideration. I bet they both are romantically involved with the husband but legally could only marry one.
Faces down, ass up
Two Girls, One Vag
Which one can see when you will die and which sees how you will die?
Yeah, I don’t envy being the guy. It’s hard enough staying on the good side of one person, but doing it with two could get complicated.
The answer is: Yes, Josh can procreate with Brittany in plain Abby’s sight, and Abby would never suspect infidelity.
Wikipedia says one set of reproductive organs, and apparently they’re fully functional.
So 2 orgasms for the price of 1?
Basically a threesome every night 🤣
All joke aside these girls are bad ass I could not imagine being in their situation. I remember them dating different people for a while which would have been interesting for everyone…. Glad they figured it out with a life partner
Do they both feel it at the same time??
So, like, realistically, he’s marrying both of them, right? I get that they can’t do that legally, but… You can’t exactly not, right?
They have found all sorts of coping strategies throughout their lives to assert their individuality, so Brittany would probably say no, she was not married to him and Abby would agree, because he married Abby and they are two different people.
The sisters are both teaching fifth grade in Minnesota
My question is do they get paid double the salary of a single teacher or not?
I kind of laughed when I read this - it would be really awkward if they weren’t both teachers.
Abby: “Good morning class, today we’re going around the room to talk about what we did over break.”
Brittany: "Stupid little shits, I wanted to be a pilot! We could have taken turns sleeping and been a dynamic duo for international travel 😢 "
There is the two women joined at the head where one has a job and the other is a singer.
Yep, they also have a very interesting life. What I really like about them is that the singer sings country music and her sister hates country music but has learned to cope.
According to some articles I skimmed, no, since they’re doing one job. They’re pushing for more though.
They probably get every benefit once and every bill twice.
An article I read said they split a single salary.
Well first i thought they should get 1.5 people’s salary, but then i factored in the wage gap. To make up that difference would mean. Increasing the base pay by 18%. So it’d be 118% + 59%, or 177% base pay.
Or they could do the right thing and give them both a full wage.
Yeah but then believing that isn’t the only factor here. He’s gonna be in a marriage with both these women, practically speaking.
I think Brittany is fine with that or it wouldn’t have happened. It happened several years ago too. The news has just come out about it because they try to avoid public life since it means people look at them like they’re freaks.
Brittney is the third wheel. This can’t end well.
It’s gonna be a very messy breakup.
🔪
Fun fact: in Dutch a knife is a “mes”
This should be the only post on best-of-lemmy
There’s a best of Lemmy?
Yup.
What if he leaves Abbey for Brittney?
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I’m really curious about some details. They both meet this guy. He seems interested. Does he just keep talking to one face and ignoring the other? Were he and Abby kissing, and Brittany’s all “Ew, Abby, he’s gross”. When he proposed, was he like “Will you marry me?” And they both say “yes”, and he’s like “Uh, I just meant the left side”? How do you not end up dating and marrying them both?! Maybe they are in reality, but they can’t say that due to polygamy laws?
That’s my suspicion. They obviously can’t legally have a plural marriage. But then again they could have such a ceremony but only one of the girls’ names on the paperwork.
I mean they don’t have options for a legal poly marriage or some harem multi-wife practice, and they are registered as two persons in one body, I believe. In reality, yes, he can’t marry just one. A weird situation law-wise.
I was going to say “marry the one that has the worst health insurance” and then I realized I’m not as smart as I thought I was.
They’re school teachers. They likely have incredibly shitty health insurance.
Depends on their union and how well they negotiate their contract. My sister is a teacher and has quite good insurance. But more importantly, they are going to have the same insurance since they have the same employer.
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Ah, but the right head controls the left side of the body and vice versa.
It would have to be “Love me, love my sister”, or it would never work.
People are getting so hung up on the sex angle, but the ramifications are more interesting. What if one of them wants to get pregnant but the other doesn’t? One consents to go through labor and delivery but the other doesn’t?
This is all incredibly complex, but you know if Chang and Eng could make it work…
https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/bunker-twins
"They lived together in one house for nine years, but their wives began to quarrel. Starting in 1852, Sarah and Adelaide lived in separate houses. Chang and Eng agreed to reside in one house for three days, in which that brother made all the decisions without question. They spent the next three days at the other twin’s house, where he made all the decisions. The Bunkers faithfully held to this arrangement the rest of their lives.
The twins returned to touring between 1849 and 1870 to support their large families. Chang and Adelaide had ten children, and Eng and Sarah had eleven children."
Everything I’ve read or seen about them shows that they unsurprisingly have a lot of ways of coping with each other when they disagree, even when it is a major disagreement. What’s interesting is that they use “I” as a single entity when they agree and consider each other separate entities when they don’t.
I don’t know what both think about pregnancy, but they’re school teachers, so they definitely like kids. I wonder if pregnancy is even a possibility? Or maybe unwise if their condition is genetic.
but they’re school teachers, so they definitely like kids
Oh, you sweet summer child.
I remember my school teachers telling us they don’t have kids because they have enough of kids in their job, which makes perfect sense for me.
The closest anyone says is that they share a single set of reproductive organs and are a single entity “below the waist”.
Any obstetrician worth their degree would probably consider it a high risk pregnancy due to all the unknown factors. How would an epidural work, for example? No clue. Pregnancy is a stressful event under normal circumstances, no clue what would happen here.
In the Chang and Eng case, the twins were brothers who impregnated separate sisters, so the pregancies themselves were normal (despite being 21 or 22 of them).
It may not even be possible for them to get pregnant. Who knows how functional those reproductive organs are?
Great use case for adoption
(As should be always considered and promoted anyway since overpopulation is rapidly killing the planet)
That article is a ride. All sweet stuff until
The twins prospered and moved to Surry County, where they came to own more than one thousand acres of land and twenty-eight enslaved people.
Wild
I know, right? Conjoined twins in then Siam (Thailand), essentially sold into slavery, smuggled out of the country, then established as slave owners themselves… and having 21 children between them…
There’s a movie to be made there.
Chango Unchained
They’ve had really interesting lives, especially in the way they have fiercely asserted their independence. I highly recommend reading more about them.
They are bad-ass.
Nah, I think I’ll respect their privacy. Though I’d read a book about them if they ever choose to publish one.
I don’t think looking them up on Wikipedia and reading their bio is a big privacy violation. I’m not suggesting hunting them down and taking pictures.
Idk, looking up various websites would increase search traffic for them, which might encourage journalists to pick up the story.
I’ve read about them a bit in the past, so I’m good for now.
Do you think they can both give him a BJ at the same time? Or maybe one tosses the salad while the other gobbles the knob?
upvoted for having the balls to ask the important questions.
Down voted for openly sexualizing people without their consent.
How is asking questions about how things work in such a unique question sexualizing them? Every being on the planet is the result of two people having sex so pretending like people don’t have sex is absurd.
Given their mouths are in parallel and not series, it’s a topological impossibility.
Now some kind of xenomorph, with two mouths in series, maybe.
Maybe the guy has diphallia.
Yeah! Like that one guy on Reddit who didn’t.
Help us /u/DoubleDickDude, you’re our only hope
One in 200,000 births results in conjoined twins? That seems way higher than I thought.
I’d imagine most are a lot more minor than this. Baby is born with a small growth that turns out to be a malformed limb of an incomplete/reabsorbed twin, doctors remove it quickly after birth, and the baby goes on to live a normal life.
I’ve heard of there being chimera people as well who go through most of their life assuming they’re perfectly normal until they learn that their DNA in one part of their body doesn’t match their DNA in another part of their body.
I’m sure it’s been done, but your explanation of a chimera person sounds like a great idea for some kind of detective novel or something.
My memory is hazy, but I recall there being a story from years back of a mother who ended up in a bit of a legal dispute because her child was DNA tested and determined to not be hers, because part of her reproductive organs were actually those of an unformed sororal twin.
Edit: found it.
I was just talking to my son about that lady yesterday.
It’s actually happened in real life… Woman had a baby that doctors later swore was not hers because the DNA of her uterus didn’t match the rest of her.
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/case-lydia-fairchild-and-her-chimerism-2002
CSI had an episode where they were tracking down all of a suspect’s siblings & it turned out the killer was a chimera.
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Yes but this is muuuch rarer because its a very clean case of it. Most of them pass away in early childhood.
And I think some can be surgically separated.
A lot of them die in infancy, so you don’t see them around.
“Hi everyone and thanks again for coming to the wedding. Firstly, I would like to introduce for the first time my better half Abby”. The reception room falls awkwardly silent for a moment until punctuated by the laughter of a very tipsy uncle Ron from right at the back.
Sorry all …
Better third?
That’s amazing and I’m thrilled to hear that Abby found love.
Wonder how Brittany feels about it.
Probably like she is stuck in a relationship she didn’t choose
Clowns to the left of her, jokers to the right
jesus christ 🤣
I’d assume that Brittany OK’d it beforehand. She’s got to live with her, after all.
I’m sure Abby wouldn’t have done it if Brittany wasn’t on board. They all have to live together after all.
I want to know how it works if Brittany starts seeing another guy now.
Also, if they have one set of reproductive organs, who’s the mother? I assume they have separate DNA so they should be able to test that, right? Do the eggs by DNA belong to one of them, or is it a mix?
Being conjoined twins, they likely have the same DNA.
You’ve already got to be adjusted to a very unique situation to be two people sharing a body, and I’d guess that Abby’s husband has considered and discussed the topic of Brittany’s romantic life; if those three can make things work, I suppose finding another special fourth person is possible. It’s difficult to imagine all the intricacies, but there’s seemingly no limit to the human ability to adapt.
Makes the challenge of me and my partner finding a unicorn seem easy by comparison.
What I think is especially interesting about them, I mentioned this elsewhere, is that when they agree, they use a unified “I” and when they disagree, they consider themselves separate. So I assume the choice to marry was an “I” or the marriage wouldn’t have happened.
But you can’t marry two people.
“She does”
😡I do not judge their self-identity and I find it hard to judge people who don’t understand it. I only judge people who do understand it and don’t care. It’s no different than deadnaming.
Mormons enter the chat
I meant legally.
I’m sure Abby wouldn’t have done it if Brittany wasn’t on board
So much for them being “independent” then.
It really seems like any mention of difficulty of this situation is being met with “It’s all magically fine!”
Why are we having such a hard time acknowledging the difficulties here?
And here I am, still single.
I’m in my early 40s, retired, and never even been engaged. I kinda like it tho. It’s pretty chill 🙂
Retired in early 40s? Get out.
Have you even tried having a conjoined twin? Are you even trying bro
Maybe you could date Brittany, I hear she’s single too. :)
Not related to the marriage. They work as a 5th grade teacher, do they each get paid or is it one salary?
I heard they technically each hold a part time position and take turns who pays attention to the students.
I imagine the one off using their hand to play candy crush on their phone lol
That sounds like some kinda employment shenanigans to avoid paying them benefits or something.
The reason given is she cant do the economic work of 2 people but i do agree.
People with disabilities have so many hidden costs in todaya world, she should be getting a proper liveable income no matter if she has a job. Cant imagine she has the same chances on the job market.
Actually beyond that. Everyone should get a basic liveable income regardless of work and people with medical challenges should receive additional resources and care. But yeah society isn’t all that emphatic.
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Congratulations to them! I hope they find happiness
Well, they will always have someone who can weigh in as a final decision when they both disagree on something. Sadly, I think it will be a bit one-sided.
This is literally the most one-sided marriage in history.
I know it’s not the point, it’s just weird that the article called them a “couple.”
Yea, they really are a throuple.
I do wonder how insurance works for them too, are they treated like two individuals or do they get the benefit of having a single body and are treated as an individual?
Literally got two heads. Wild.
I think a better way of describing it is that the two heads have one body since they don’t share a brain, making them two people.
Yes, of course it is. But the reason they get media attention? It’s a person with two heads, holy shit.
That’s one of the reasons they’ve tried to avoid media attention.
They reluctantly did 8 episodes of a TLC show right after college- probably necessary to help pay for it.
They’ve done a documentary when they were teenagers, a handful of other interviews and that’s it.
This is from an article about the documentary:
But as the film progresses, you see that any time the twins leave their Minnesota town, people blatantly photograph them, leaving the girls feeling “violated,” according to their mother, Patty. She gets teary in the documentary when she explains how she doesn’t want her girls to grow up like circus performers, and she hasn’t let the girls speak to the media since the movie debuted two years ago. Watch the movie now—it’s still in heavy rotation on the Discovery Health network—and you can see why they’d shun the spotlight. It’s hard to shake the creepy, voyeuristic feeling you get when you watch the girls make pottery or brush each other’s hair. The narrator explains that they are, “in nearly every sense, perfectly normal teenagers.” But we know we’re watching precisely because they’re not.
And I admit, I watched and read about them because they are so unusual, but I also don’t think that gives a reason to deny their individuality.
All these sentiments are intended by my initial comment.
So the person is the brain?
What else would it be? If your brain was put in a vat but you are still alive, wouldn’t you still consider yourself a person? I know I would.
What makes Abby and Brittany a single person rather than two individuals who happen to share body parts?
What else would it be?
Rest of the body too.
If your brain was put in a vat but you were still alive
Is a situation that has never existed, we have no idea whether it could exist, and it presupposes the premise while supporting that premise as a conclusion. If “you” are still alive, then the question is already answered.
What makes Abby and Brittany a single person rather than two individuals who happen to share body parts?
Didn’t say they were
Rest of the body too.
I see, so if you have no arms or legs, you’re not a person,
I don’t have a gallbladder anymore. I guess I’m not a person.
Didn’t say they were
If you’re claiming a single body makes a single person, you are making that claim.
Of course. Is there a different way to see it?
You think this is an edge case, what about the Canadian twins that are joined by the brain? That’s incredible, literally could not be any more fascinating. I am aware I’m discussing people when I say that, but it really is the most fascinating thing I’ve ever seen or thought about.
