Incest. Why Not?

[Skwim]

In another of my threads, God's Attitude Toward Homosexuality, the issue of incest was brought up. To justify its immorality the author of the post provided the following Link titled The Problem With Incest. In it, author Hal Herzog Ph.D. notes that one of the most serious side effects of incest is the high percentage of birth defects resulting from intercourse between first degree relatives. It notes that one study of Czechoslovakian children born of such impregnations, "Fewer than half of the children who were the product of incestuous unions were completely healthy. Forty-two percent of them were born with severe birth defects or suffered early death and another 11 percent were mildly mentally impaired." In my opinion, a seemingly darn good reason not to have sex with mom or dad, or even sis and bro.

Just to interrupt for a sec. for a definition of incest. USLegal.com says:

Laws vary by state, but generally, a person commits incest if he marries or engages in sexual intercourse with a person he knows to be, either legitimately or illegitimately:

His ancestor or descendant by blood or adoption; or
His brother or sister of the whole or half-blood or by adoption; or
His stepchild or stepparent, while the marriage creating the relationship exists; or
His aunt, uncle, nephew or niece of the whole or half-blood.

source

[ A personal note. I wasn't aware that sexual intercourse or marriage were necessary factors.]​

Herzog's article also mentions the taboo attached to incest. Explaining this taboo, Herzog says "the primary psychological anti-incest mechanism is the yuck response." So, there are two mechanisms at work that back incest prohibition

1. It's high degree of potential for children with birth defects.
2. It's a cultural taboo.

Although I acknowledge the potential harm that can result from intercourse between first degree relatives. This is severely mitigated where the female is infertile, or where at least one of the parties is made sterile by a vasectomy, tubal ligation, or the like. In these cases reason #1 for prohibiting incest no longer exists, rendering the reason moot. This leaves cultural taboo as justification for outlawing incest. But what is the justification for the taboo? Typically it comes down to a long standing prohibition based on moral judgement, which I've never heard explained any better than: "it's bad" or "It's icky." I recognize there's a psychological power component that can come into play between a parent and child, but it's not a necessary given. So this aside:

I'd like to hear your best reasoned justification for the unqualified prohibition, legal or not, of incest.

.

 

[Kangaroo Feathers]

While I acknowledge multi generational incest can lead to horrific birth defects, first generation incest is actually about as likely to result in some form of congenital issue as conceiving after 40. There are any number of genetic conditions with a much higher chance of offspring with a horrible defect which we wouldn't dream of trying to legislate against relationships among carriers. Since I don't see people frothing at the prospect of 40 year old mothers, or married sickle cell anaemia carriers I've always found the "birth defect argument" a liiiittle disingenuous, not least because it doesn't even address the possibility of contraception or infertility.

My personal belief, is that because of family dynamics, incest can never occur with genuine consent. One partner invariably has undue influence over the other, consciously or unconsciously. Now, I am happy to consider the rare examples where people who don't know they're related because of adoption or whatever may be able to form a fully consentual relationship. In such cases, assuming adequate and full genetic counselling, I don't have a moral objection to it.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's extremely icky. I'm just enlightened enough to acknowledge that my personal sense of ick is a pretty crummy basis for morality and legality. I won't expect other people to abide by my subjective weird ideas of morality and decency, and in return expect the same respect.

 

[Estro Felino]

indeed...I hate my parents because they gave me sisters and no brothers

It notes that one study of Czechoslovakian children born of such impregnations,
.

Well...why are you Americans bothered by the fact that Ivanka Trump has known his father biblically, then?
respect other nations' customs!

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Some countries do allow incestual marriage by special permissin.

One place where I worked a female member of my staff often came in, in the morning, with a smile on her face with the declaration " that incest is best"

As they say in the army, don't as and no pack drill.

So it seems not every one feels icky about it.

 

[PureX]

The potential for and occurrence of abuse would be greatly increased if sexual activity were allowed between family members. And it's already seriously high.

 

[Vouthon]

If I may ask, in all politeness, why do you have this apparent obsession with incest?

You have spoken about it so much on this forum and always seem to be offering justifications for it. (are you a Trump supporter? or perhaps a fanatical Game of Thrones fan? I can think of few other reasons...)

I think you will find that 99% of people in the outside world, beyond this forum, are not approving of sex between close relatives. It's a virtually universal taboo across cultures and societies, excepting some Egyptian and Persian monarchs (for instance) who fancied themselves to be living deities and desired to keep their bloodlines pure.

As I said before in a prior thread where you advanced a spirited defence of incest, I am cosmopolitan. I abhor narrow-mindedness and insularity.

I would argue, echoing Levi-Strauss, that the prohibition of incest was the commencement of "the social" and of cultural life.

Without it, we'd have no society or civilization because the incest taboo was required to solidify, broaden and widen the kinship of individuals and groups of people inside society or across different societies.

If one cannot marry his own siblings or relatives, he or she has to seek a marriage partner from outside his or her group. As a consequence, the kinship of one group extends to another group.

I maintain that this is socially advantageous and more culturally fit than inbreeding or sexual partnership with kin.

Aside from this, the % of abuse rises exponentially in incestuous relationships. They are often initiated by elder brothers, fathers and uncles towards younger females in the family, which means that these "relationships" tend to be founded upon inequality of status, sexism, domination and exploitation.

Read:

Incest: Origins of the Taboo
By Jonathan H. Turner, Alexandra Maryanski
(Published 2016)

p. 41 onwards

Link:

Incest

It explains how most sociologists since have followed the essentials of Malinowski's theory (i.e. that incest is inherently disruptive to intra-familial relations and that this was one of the main reasons for the origin of the taboo).

 

[Augustus]

Don't get me wrong, I think it's extremely icky. I'm just enlightened enough to acknowledge that my personal sense of ick is a pretty crummy basis for morality and legality. I won't expect other people to abide by my subjective weird ideas of morality and decency, and in return expect the same respect.

It seems to be an evolved response, at least to some extent.

For example, as well as the 'ick' factor, women at a fertile time of the month are less likely to contact close male relatives, whereas not close female relatives.

As such considering it 'weird and subjective' morality might not be accurate.

 

[Vouthon]

It seems to be an evolved response, at least to some extent.

For example, as well as the 'ick' factor, women at a fertile time of the month are less likely to contact close male relatives, whereas not close female relatives.

As such considering it 'weird and subjective' morality might not be accurate.

It does appear to be one of the few and genuine universal traits that are at least partially biologically based.

Things can get very "weird" within just a few generations of consistent incest:

The Heptameron, by Marguerite de Navarre : Tale XXX.

In the middle of the nave of the collégial church of Ecouis, in the cross aisle, was found a white marble slab on which was inscribed this epitaph:—

“Here lies the child, here lies the father,
Here lies the sister, here lies the brother,
Here lie the wife and the husband,
Yet there are but two bodies here.”

“The tradition is that a son of Madame d’Écouis had by his mother, without knowing her or being recognised by her, a daughter named Cecilia, whom he afterwards married in Lorraine, she then being in the service of the Duchess of Bar. Thus Cecilia was at one and the same time her husband’s daughter, sister and wife. They were interred together in the same grave at Écouis in 1512.”
​

It destroys social relations and inhibits the ability of complex societies to form - and that's quite apart from the inbreeding issue.

 

[Augustus]

If I may ask, in all politeness, why do you have this apparent obsession with incest?

Because there are only so many threads you can start about teenagers wanking off?

 

[joe1776]

Human acts happen in an almost infinite variety. So, if one could imagine a hypothetical case where incest would not be immoral, it has probably happened and will again.

If the genetic factor isn't in play, and no innocent person is being harmed -- it's none of my business.

 

[Kapalika]

The topic of incest, at least "cosmic incest" so to speak (I want to write on this some time but it's a difficult topic to talk about), I am interested in (no lie). However incest between people, er, that's a different story.

 

[Vouthon]

Human acts happen in an almost infinite variety. So, if one could imagine a hypothetical case where incest would not be immoral, it has probably happened and will again.

If the genetic factor isn't in play, and no innocent person is being harmed -- it's none of my business.

But what about the danger of excessive tribalism and closed communities? We should aspire to widen our social relations, gene pool and partnerships - not restrict them to a tiny self-contained family tribe that bears our likeness. That is narrow-minded and not a social good IMHO.

And another argument: most sociologists and anthropologists explain incest avoidance by means of one or another type of functionalist argument, such as the so-called family disruption theory (whereas evolutionary biologists would explain it on the basis of natural selection favouring variation to avoid genetic bottleneck and recessive alleles).

Basically, sexual competition among family members would foment so much rivalry, jealousy and tension that the nuclear family could not function as an effective unit, which since our hunter-gatherer past has been essential for cooperative survival. The unity of each family was necessary to protect it against wild animals and to carry out large hunts.

Because the family must function effectively for society to survive and indeed to thrive, society has to curtail competition within the family. The familial incest taboo is thus imposed to keep the family intact.

Incest taboos therefore have high cultural fitness because of their advantages in preventing competition and disruptive relations between family members.

Would we recommend incest on an industrial, societal-wide scale? Of course not. The same cannot be said for exogamy, which is why it will always be more culturally, socially and genetically 'fit'.

 

[joe1776]

But what about the danger of excessive tribalism and closed communities? We should aspire to widen our social relations, gene pool and partnerships - not restrict them to a tiny self-contained family tribe that bears or likeness or with whom we have familiarity. That is narrow-minded and not a social good IMHO.

Would we recommend incest on an industrial, societal-wide scale? Of course not. The same cannot be said for exogamy, which is why it will always be more culturally, socially and genetically 'fit'.

Given the limitations I put on an act of incest qualifying as justified, I wouldn't expect there to be enough cases to have any social impact at all.

 

[Curious George]

Typically it comes down to a long standing prohibition based on moral judgement, which I've never heard explained any better than: "it's bad" or "It's icky." I recognize there's a psychological power component that can come into play between a parent and child, but it's not a necessary given. So this aside:

I'd like to hear your best reasoned justification for the unqualified prohibition, legal or not, of incest.

Now I am sure that ypu have had it better explained to you on this very forum. This smacks of dishonesty.

In case you have forgotten:

1) Power dynamics are learned and ingrained throughout childhood. Laws against incest protect children and people from abuse.

2) Incestuous relationships produce higher rates of defects. Prohibiting this at the level of excluding all relationships involves the government the least.

If you wanted to allow for some level of incest, you could make both of these presumptions rebuttable. Laws that restrict sexual partners certainly strike at the fundamental right of Liberty. Thus, the law should be narrowly tailored to fit the important governmental concerns. I hope you agree that protecting children and adults from abuse is an important governmental concern. I also hope you agree that avoiding increased birth defects of the citizenry is an important governmental concern. So the only question left is wether the laws are narrowly tailored.

You offer sterility as an instance where the law is overbroad. Yet sterility does little to address concerns of power dynamics that are at play.

 

[Vouthon]

Given the limitations I put on an act of incest qualifying as justified, I wouldn't expect there to be enough cases to have any social impact at all.

The limitations you mentioned were "non-harm" (which is rather nebulous as a concept, especially given the psychological dimension and Stockholm's Syndrome) and non-reproductive (i.e. sterility or contraception).

I don't think that's a particularly effective set of restrictions. The first is much too ill-defined and open to interpretation. The latter doesn't address the very real social, cultural and power dynamic issues either.

The greatest liberation many people have experienced in life, is to "leave" the family unit and broaden their social relations by finding a sexual partner outside their original, narrow social unit. There are literally mountains of research which demonstrate, amply, that excessive kinship is bad for individual self-fulfilment and for a properly functioning society, of any degree of sophistication beyond a hunter-gatherer tribe (and even different tribes had to collaborate and practice exogamy for survival).

Incest taboos therefore play a key role in the healthy development of an autonomous personality. They give individuals, particularly young women, agency from patriarchal control.

Carte blanche legalising or socially accepting incest, with the weak controls that you mention, would have a disastrous impact not only on society but on personal freedom for many people.

Incest taboos are a necessary precondition for both personal liberation and overcoming tribalism (liberating social and political arenas from kinship and patriarchy).

If you believe in liberty, global citizenship and cosmopolitanism, as I do passionately, then incest is anathema to those ends.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

In another of my threads, God's Attitude Toward Homosexuality, the issue of incest was brought up. To justify its immorality the author of the post provided the following Link titled The Problem With Incest. In it, author Hal Herzog Ph.D. notes that one of the most serious side effects of incest is the high percentage of birth defects resulting from intercourse between first degree relatives. It notes that one study of Czechoslovakian children born of such impregnations, "Fewer than half of the children who were the product of incestuous unions were completely healthy. Forty-two percent of them were born with severe birth defects or suffered early death and another 11 percent were mildly mentally impaired." In my opinion, a seemingly darn good reason not to have sex with mom or dad, or even sis and bro.

Just to interrupt for a sec. for a definition of incest. USLegal.com says:

Laws vary by state, but generally, a person commits incest if he marries or engages in sexual intercourse with a person he knows to be, either legitimately or illegitimately:

His ancestor or descendant by blood or adoption; or
His brother or sister of the whole or half-blood or by adoption; or
His stepchild or stepparent, while the marriage creating the relationship exists; or
His aunt, uncle, nephew or niece of the whole or half-blood.

source

[ A personal note. I wasn't aware that sexual intercourse or marriage were necessary factors.]​

Herzog's article also mentions the taboo attached to incest. Explaining this taboo, Herzog says "the primary psychological anti-incest mechanism is the yuck response." So, there are two mechanisms at work that back incest prohibition

1. It's high degree of potential for children with birth defects.
2. It's a cultural taboo.

Although I acknowledge the potential harm that can result from intercourse between first degree relatives. This is severely mitigated where the female is infertile, or where at least one of the parties is made sterile by a vasectomy, tubal ligation, or the like. In these cases reason #1 for prohibiting incest no longer exists, rendering the reason moot. This leaves cultural taboo as justification for outlawing incest. But what is the justification for the taboo? Typically it comes down to a long standing prohibition based on moral judgement, which I've never heard explained any better than: "it's bad" or "It's icky." I recognize there's a psychological power component that can come into play between a parent and child, but it's not a necessary given. So this aside:

I'd like to hear your best reasoned justification for the unqualified prohibition, legal or not, of incest.

.

There's also the issue of consent, regardless of whether a person is a blood relation.

Close family members can have undue influence on each other. This is why many jurisdictions require that close family members looking to enter into a contract with each other have to get independent legal advice.

I think the same holds true with incest: if free consent isn't clear, then sex shouldn't happen. Family relationships can sometimes provide a way for people to coerce each other, so there can often be a question of whether they're consenting freely.

 

[Kangaroo Feathers]

It seems to be an evolved response, at least to some extent.

For example, as well as the 'ick' factor, women at a fertile time of the month are less likely to contact close male relatives, whereas not close female relatives.

As such considering it 'weird and subjective' morality might not be accurate.

Whole lotta "maybe" in those assumptions. What percentage of any given "ick" response is biological vs cultural is always debatable, and that's before one even considers the fact that technology renders some of our "ick" responses inappropriate or unnecessary.

For "weird and subjective" morality, I was referring to ALL of my own little opinions, which are a result of my biology, my upbringing and my life experiences and biases, of which distaste toward incest is far from the most irrational or extreme. I'm pretty sure most people's emotive "ick based" morality is just as subjective and varied as mine, and I'm frankly scared by the idea of anyone with ideas as arbitrary, subjective and emotion based being in a position to give those opinions the weight of law.

The older I get, the more I believe that all law and morality should be built on a structure of minimising harm to the unconsenting, and that's about it. If an incestuous couple can demonstrate that neither of them is harming the other without genuine consent, well, it's sure as heck not MY cup of tea, but who am I to tell them what to do? Maybe there's people out there who find stuff that I do just as offensive, and I sure don't want some idiot with a strange moral fixation telling me what I can and can't do.

In a perfect world, basically, I think "morality" is simply a combination of the Golden Rule and enlightened self interest.

 

[Kangaroo Feathers]

The limitations you mentioned were "non-harm" (which is rather nebulous as a concept, especially given the psychological dimension and Stockholm's Syndrome) and non-reproductive (i.e. sterility or contraception).

I don't think that's a particularly effective set of restrictions. The first is much too ill-defined and open to interpretation. The latter doesn't address the very real social, cultural and power dynamic issues either.

The greatest liberation many people have experienced in life, is to "leave" the family unit and broaden their social relations by finding a sexual partner outside their original, narrow social unit. There are literally mountains of research which demonstrate, amply, that excessive kinship is bad for individual self-fulfilment and for a properly functioning society, of any degree of sophistication beyond a hunter-gatherer tribe (and even different tribes had to collaborate and practice exogamy for survival).

Incest taboos therefore play a key role in the healthy development of an autonomous personality. They give individuals, particularly young women, agency from patriarchal control.

Carte blanche legalising incest, with the weak controls that you mention, would have a disastrous impact not only on society but on personal freedom for many people.

Incest taboos are a necessary precondition for both personal liberation and overcoming tribalism (liberating social and political arenas from kinship and patriarchy).

If you believe in liberty, global citizenship and cosmopolitanism, as I do passionately, then incest is anathema to those ends.

This is why I don't think, generally, there can be genuine consent in an incestuous couple. That said, there ARE always exceptions. Victoria and Albert were first cousins, after all.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

The potential for and occurrence of abuse would be greatly increased if sexual activity were allowed between family members. And it's already seriously high.

I do not know if that is true or not, figures, for obvious reasons, are not available.
In any event, Incest happens, it prevalence is unknown, because no one can admits to it.

It is only the few cases that come to court that we ever hear about.

 

[Stanyon]

Some animals do incest, some animals also kill their young, eat their own s**t and are cannibals. The road is wide open, it's your life.