On the ethics and legality of incest

[lordpasternack]

I'm starting this thread in light of a really cogent article on this subject that I just read, which basically puts my previous thoughts on the matter really quite well, and better than I have so far. I decided this belongs in General Serious Discussion rather than News, Politics & Current Events - because I see it more as a subject for, er, general serious discussion - rather than as a transient political happening or event...

Of course, being pedantic - all couplings are to some degree incestuous, since we're all cousins to some degree - it's just that an indeterminate minority like to go quite a few degrees closer in genetic similarity than the rest of us. I never have found the "genetic" (frankly eugenic) defence of the visceral "yuck" reaction, and illegality of incest to be convincing - even allowing for incestuous couples who do decide to reproduce. But the fact is that not all consensually incestuous couples are capable of, or want to, reproduce together - and are still stigmatised, penalised and criminalised - for sexual activity, patently non-abusive, between consenting adults, in private... The "genetic" rationalisation just won't wash - particularly when one fails to mete out the same level of bile and reproductive constraints against CONFIRMED but less closely related carriers of recessive defects.

The article puts this, and other things, quite well: http://www.slate.com/id/2277787/

Incest Is Cancer

The David Epstein incest case: If homosexuality is OK, why is incest wrong?

Incest is for hicks. That's the stereotype among educated liberals: Homosexuality is urbane, polygamy is for Mormons, and incest is for hayseeds. So when David Epstein, a Columbia University political scientist, was charged last week with third-degree incest for allegedly shagging his adult daughter, the blogosphere erupted. Conservatives called it another sign of moral chaos. Liberals said it was gross but shouldn't be prosecuted. One side defends the privacy of all consensual sex; the other side sees an inexorable descent from homosexuality to incest.

Let's try to come up with something better. If gay sex is OK, how can incest be wrong?

The old answer was genetics. Germany's high court relied on that argument two years ago when it upheld the conviction of Patrick Stuebing for sex with his sister. Of the four children the couple produced, three had physical or mental disabilities. In general, studies show a significantly higher rate of birth defects in offspring of incestuous couples. The reason is simple: Every family has genetic flaws, and if you reproduce within your family, you're more likely to get two copies of the flaw—thereby producing the defective trait—instead of acquiring a new, protective allele from another family.

Many incest laws in the United States invoke this concept. In patently eugenic language, they forbid sex between "consanguineous" (blood-related) partners. But this rationale won't withstand close scrutiny or the march of technology. If genetics is the issue, just get a vasectomy. Then you can bang your sister all you want. Or skip the vasectomy and bang your brother. Gay sex can't make a baby, so the problem is solved. As the German court noted, Stuebing could have dodged Germany's incest law in precisely this way.

Epstein has been charged under a different law. It prohibits sex with any close relative, "whether through marriage or not." It also applies not just to "sexual intercourse" but also to "oral sexual conduct or anal sexual conduct." If the law were rationally based on genetics, it would ignore sex acts that can't make babies, and it would distinguish relatives by blood from relatives by marriage.

What about the Scottish woman who was sentenced to probation—and remains under threat of further prosecution—for sex with her half-brother? She was sterilized years ago. You can't prosecute her based on a risk of birth defects.

So let's set aside genetics and consider the next question: exploitation. Nowadays, when we talk about incest, we tend to think of child sexual abuse. That's how we use the term in the repressed-memory debate and in abortion legislation. When politicians such as President Obama make exceptions in abortion laws for "rape and incest," they're using the terms synonymously, except that in the incest scenario, the rapist is your dad.

But you can't prosecute Epstein under that theory. According to news reports, his daughter is 24, and their affair began in 2006. That makes her an adult. Furthermore, police say the sex appears to have been consensual. Four years ago, Ohio's Supreme Court upheld the incest conviction of Paul Lowe, a former sheriff's deputy, for what the court called "consensual sex with his 22-year-old stepdaughter." And last month, a 27-year-old Florida woman was sentenced to five years of probation for sex with her father. Clearly, we're prosecuting people for incest regardless of age or consent.

[and so article goes on...]

Have at it.

[Thinking Aloud]

The writer concludes:

Homosexuality is an orientation. Incest isn't. If the law bans gay sex, a lesbian can't have a sex life. But if you're hot for your sister, and the law says you can't sleep with her, you have billions of other options. Get out of your house, for God's sake. You'll find somebody to love without incinerating your family. And don't tell me you're just adding a second kind of love to your relationship. That's like adding a second kind of life to your body. When a second kind of life grows in your body, we call it cancer. That's what incest is: cancer of the family.

...

But incest is wrong. There's a rational basis to forbid it. And we shouldn't be afraid to say so.

[lordpasternack]

The writer concludes:

Homosexuality is an orientation. Incest isn't. If the law bans gay sex, a lesbian can't have a sex life. But if you're hot for your sister, and the law says you can't sleep with her, you have billions of other options. Get out of your house, for God's sake. You'll find somebody to love without incinerating your family. And don't tell me you're just adding a second kind of love to your relationship. That's like adding a second kind of life to your body. When a second kind of life grows in your body, we call it cancer. That's what incest is: cancer of the family.

...

But incest is wrong. There's a rational basis to forbid it. And we shouldn't be afraid to say so.

But is it a VALID conclusion?

[Thinking Aloud]

But is it a VALID conclusion?

To me, it seems that he's argued that it's the family unit that becomes unworkable when such things happen (and therefore it's all bad). But unless you're talking about parents and young children, which I don't think anyone is, the family unit ceases to be the same thing once the kids are adults. So in this instance, no - I think he's trying to find something to call a rational reason against it, and choosing the thing that no-longer exists once all parties are adults.

(Extremes and exceptions apply.)

[charlou]

I'm quite comfortable with my strong aversion (huge understatement) toward fucking my immediate family (attractive second cousin I met when I was sixteen not included - we so would have had the opportunity arisen). I'm not going to stand in judgement over the consensual adult behaviour of others.

[lordpasternack]

I'm quite comfortable with my strong aversion (huge understatement) toward fucking my immediate family (attractive second cousin I met when I was sixteen not included - we so would have had the opportunity arisen). I'm not going to stand in judgement over the consensual adult behaviour of others.

Fair stance. And similar to those who feel strong aversion to fucking the same gender, or being involved in any other sexual activity - but are glad to allow other consenting adults to indulge.

[lordpasternack]

But is it a VALID conclusion?

To me, it seems that he's argued that it's the family unit that becomes unworkable when such things happen (and therefore it's all bad).

If he'd written it as a Wikipedia article, that would be the point where one should enter a neat little [citation needed]... To me it's a sad little non-sequitur after an otherwise staunchly rational and cogent stance, and a desperate pandering to the incest taboo, flailing around for any rationalisation that might fit. He states that there's a rational basis to reject it, and yet fails to offer a convincing one - beyond vague speculation of effects that it might just have - POTENTIALLY - and cultural reactions that wouldn't carry any weight if heard from family members of individuals pursuing any other course of sexual activity between consenting adults.

We don't take someone who laments their fractured relationship with relatives because they're in a relationship with the person of the "wrong" group, or "wrong" gender, or "wrong" anything else too seriously: We want them essentially to get a fucking grip and accept their relatives, and their consensual sexuality, for what they are.

You just can't live with the fact that a relative is homosexual or bisexual, or wants to marry out of a specified cultural grouping, or is having sex before marriage, or you feel icky about an incestuous relationship in the family (closer than first cousins, of course - first cousins shagging has CLEARLY always been okay) and want to rationalise it on the basis that it confuses otherwise Boolean concepts of familial relationship terms in your mind? Well boo-fucking-hoo... The problem is entirely yours - unless said relative has committed other real grievances against you to alienate you...

The comment about incest not being a sexual orientation and therefore one should just find someone else to fuck is so facepalm-worthy as almost to merit no response. You could say the same about any situation where someone is sexual with someone of the "right" gender but "wrong" something else, according to prevailing taboo... They don't need to be being sexual with that particular person, and if the law or prevailing culture deems it wrong, then they should just damn well go out and find someone else who is deemed kosher... Fuck off... It won't wash.

But unless you're talking about parents and young children, which I don't think anyone is, the family unit ceases to be the same thing once the kids are adults.

As per parents and kids, and abusive sexual conduct of (usually elder) siblings - we are indeed not speaking with respect to that. Those cases usually are of course usually used as synonymous with the word "incest", and people usually mean and understand that definition when they hear that word on its own. Thankfully I grew up understanding the word for what it actually means, and it always confused me when people used it as a term on its own to mean familial sexual abuse. I'm speaking about incest in general - and specifically consensual (adult) incest...

So in this instance, no - I think he's trying to find something to call a rational reason against it, and choosing the thing that no-longer exists once all parties are adults.

(Extremes and exceptions apply.)

I think so too. He's grappling, after reasoning pretty much every objection raised away, to find some reason to pander to that deep, visceral ickiness, and falling on this rather weak rationale - which is speculative, a potential drawback of consensual adult incest, and not really spectacularly convincing at all...

[stripes4]

I don't understand the urge. I think there being an evolutionary disadvantage to piling such similar DNA eggs into one basket, most people have an instinctive aversion to the idea. I just thought about screwing my brother, to test it out, and I can genuinely say there wasn't even a twinge of interest, which was good, as far as I'm concerned! I don't understand the urge to screw close family members, but if people decide it's for them, then that is indeed, up to them.

[Coito ergo sum]

Incest between consenting adults should be legal. Incest from parent to minor child should be prosecuted vigorously, and I think it's reasonable for the "age of consent" to be higher for incest because we have a power disparity between parent and child that doesn't exist otherwise, generally speaking. Many 17 year olds are completely dependent on parents, and unable to leave - nobody will rent apartments to them, they won't be hired for high enough paying jobs to support themselves, they can't buy a car on credit, etc. So, they're stuck at home and a parent can take advantage of that weakness and inability to leave. But, I think once a person reaches the age of majority, they can do what they like, including perform cunnilingus on their sister or mother - whatever.

Brothers and sisters is kind of thorny, but I think the age of consent model works well - where if we had siblings of the same age or within a year either way, we wouldn't criminalize consensual sex between them. However, if one was 19 and the other 13, then there might reasonably be some criminalization there.

As for "stigma" - well - tough noogies. Stigma is the way society and culture operates by nature. If 90% of everyone thinks something is gross, then whether it is vagina piercings or anal licking or brother-on-sister-sex, then that's just the breaks. An individual has a right to view something as yucky and 300,000,000 individuals also have that right. Sometimes, you have to grin and bear the "stigma" in order to do what you love or do what you believe in.

[lordpasternack]

I don't understand the urge. I think there being an evolutionary disadvantage to piling such similar DNA eggs into one basket.

It's quite context-sensitive to state that outbreeding is "advantageous" and inbreeding necessarily "disadvantageous". Like any trait, it can be advantageous or disadvantageous, or mostly neutral, depending on the environment that that DNA is living and replicating in. Most people don't even pause to think about it, actually, but most of the work done cross-breeding specimens to show typical genetic trait patterns in certain animals and plants, NECESSARILY involves SEVERAL consecutive generations of what amounts to sibling incest. Recurrent incest - not just throwing the DNA into the same basket as a one-off, which the resultant offsrping will then outbreed from - but throwing it together again and again and again. All supported in the artificially fertile environment of the lab, mind - but the specimens at no point all die off from their genetic stagnation.

I was even tempted to write an addendum to the conclusion to one of my lab reports on fruit flies stating that it was apparent that Drosophila melanogaster had no moral standards when it came to sexual conduct...

There are also examples of insects where this has occurred naturally, in the wild, and in some cases has provided sufficient genetic homogeneity for eusociality. Richard Dawkins mentions this somewhere. I'd add only that I think Dawkins looks at it the wrong way by seeing such genetic similarity as giving rise to eusocial altruism because such genetic similarity should naturally give rise to altruism because that just makes "biological sense" for them selfish genes... No, I see it more that genetic homogeniety is simply an essential requisite for eusociality because eusociality requires enough homogeneity to have several discrete organisms essentially running different subroutines of the same broad program - and genetic similarity needn't necessarily give rise to such altruism because it simply needn't! Just that where eusociality is to develop, it IS a prerequisite.

(And I do view it as a "super-organism", since several homogenetic units running different subroutines of the same program is precisely what a multi-cellular "organism" like ourselves, IS! In-breeding eusocial insects are like slightly chimeric organisms...)

Sorry, I'm getting a bit technical and biological here...

...most people have an instinctive aversion to the idea. I just thought about screwing my brother, to test it out, and I can genuinely say there wasn't even a twinge of interest, which was good, as far as I'm concerned! I don't understand the urge to screw close family members, but if people decide it's for them, then that is indeed, up to them.

[Svartalf]

First reaction (I may add more when I'm completely up to date on the issue, and with the thread). That law Epstein is being pursued under should go the same way as the sodomy laws. If the related people having sex are consenting adults, from the start, then the law has no business minding what they do in the privacy of their own home.

The ethics of incest are difficult, since it's hard to have a healthy relationship with somebody who is so close, then again, the rate of truly healthy relationships between spouses and sex partners who are not related is not so high that the argument can be used as a proper motive to make incest taboo.

[Coito ergo sum]

First reaction (I may add more when I'm completely up to date on the issue, and with the thread). That law Epstein is being pursued under should go the same way as the sodomy laws. If the related people having sex are consenting adults, from the start, then the law has no business minding what they do in the privacy of their own home.

The ethics of incest are difficult, since it's hard to have a healthy relationship with somebody who is so close, then again, the rate of truly healthy relationships between spouses and sex partners who are not related is not so high that the argument can be used as a proper motive to make incest taboo.

Bottom line, if the sisters are hot, it's fine. Elsewise, not so much....


Incest: You're doing it right:

[lordpasternack]

I'll also reprise an article by Johann Hari, from back in 2002 on this subject:

Forbidden love

Can sex between close relatives ever be acceptable? Johann Hari on the queasy issue of 'consensual' incest

It was a Friday night a few months ago. Rob was standing on my doorstep, ashen and trembling. He still couldn't speak even as he sipped at a mug of tea after my flatmate and I had ushered him into our front room. We could not guess what had happened, but a feeling of dread was fast forming in our minds; we could only assume that something terrible must have happened to Rob's fiancee, Karen. Gradually, his powers of speech returned and the story emerged. Something had happened, but that something was terrible to Rob himself, not Karen.

Now, you have to understand that Rob and Karen were the most balanced, wholesome couple I knew. They had recently moved out of their flat while it was being redecorated, each returning to their respective family homes for a couple of weeks. That Friday, she had left her keys at his place by accident. He was passing by her parents' place later that night, so he stopped off and rang the doorbell.

No answer. So he let himself in to leave the keys, with a note, on the kitchen table for her mum and dad to return to her. Only, the house wasn't empty - he heard some movement in the front room. In an instant, he blundered in on Karen - the woman he was due to marry - having sex. With her dad.

Not her stepfather. Not her adopted father. Her actual, biological dad. She was 22 years old. There was clearly no coercion taking place.

Three weeks passed. Rob had called off the wedding - obviously - and was trying to put his life back together. One morning, he got a call from Karen, asking if they could meet up to divide their mutual belongings, the accumulation of over three years' cohabitation. He agreed.

Predictably, when they met, an argument began. "I don't know why you think it's so odd!" she screamed. "I know lots of people who do this." That stopped Rob in his tracks. "Who?"

And it began to spill out: that she had made contact with lots of people over the internet (and consequently in person): boys, girls, fathers, mothers, who are sleeping with their kin. The internet is value-free: it doesn't care or know whether you are selling a secondhand car or buying arms. If you want to get in touch with someone, it makes no moral distinction between anti-globalisation protesters and convicted paedophiles. So now there are chatrooms and websites that are de facto support groups for people engaged in incest. And what they want is to normalise what we have long considered to be profoundly abnormal.

It was on this basis that Karen said Rob was "overreacting" - she had insinuated herself into an online "community" of people who reassured themselves that they were not freaks. Rob and I spent a few nights gawping at the disguised but fairly developed pro-incest (or, to be more accurate, pro-tolerating incest) areas of the net in an attempt to understand Karen. The exponents of incest that we talked to in cyberspace were very keen to draw a distinction between "consensual incest" on the one hand and abuse, rape and paedophilia on the other. Consensual incest, we were told by "JimJim2" from Ontario, is "when two adults who just happen to be related get it on. You can't help who you fall in love with, it just happens. I fell in love with my sister and I'm not ashamed ... I only feel sorry for my mom and dad, I wish they could be happy for us. We love each other. It's nothing like some old man who tries to fuck his three-year-old, that's evil and disgusting ... Of course we're consenting, that's the most important thing. We're not fucking perverts. What we have is the most beautiful thing in the world."

Voices in Action, a US support group for victims of incest, vehemently rejects these arguments: "These teens have been brainwashed into believing this behaviour is natural; it is not ... Sexual abuse is learned behaviour." But some political thinkers are prepared to support the distinction between abuse and consenting relationships. Dr Sean Gabb, a leading member of the Libertarian Alliance, a radical British thinktank, argues that "consenting incestuous behaviour is no business of the state. It is up to individuals to make their own decisions." He has drawn attention to the "unjust" 1909 case of R v Ball, where a seemingly happy brother-sister couple who had been living as man and wife were "outed" and thrown into prison. He describes them as "harmless and respectable".

Few other public figures are prepared to tread into this ethical minefield. One of the few who was brave enough to talk on the record is Brett Kahr, senior lecturer in psychotherapy at Regent's College, London. He stresses that there is no proper research into this phenomenon, and wonders, "Who are we to say that Joe Bloggs and his sister Jane Bloggs aren't having a perfectly good relationship and we're all missing out?"

But he is also quick to qualify this. "In over 100 years' worth of case studies I've looked at, I have never seen a single case of incest that has ended happily. I don't know a single experience where an incestuous relationship has been positive." He admits, however, that - by their very nature - psychiatrists don't attract happy, functional people. For example, the couple in the case cited by Dr Gabb, whose court transcripts suggest they had a perfectly happy life, would never have come to the attention of a mental health professional.

Kahr, drawing on his experience as a practising psychotherapist, raises some pertinent questions about any incidences of seemingly "consensual" incest. "Even if, as in your friend Karen's case, she did, as she claims, initiate sexual contact with her father, what was lacking in her relationship with him so that sexual behaviour seemed the only way to bridge it? She may have been behaving sexually because she had failed to attract attention in any other way."

There is a surprisingly wide range of literature concerning incest for us to draw on when we try to understand the mindset of the participants. Consensual incest has been portrayed sympathetically in popular fiction for centuries, from John Ford's masterful 17th-century play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore to Ian McEwan's novel The Cement Garden and Steven Poliakoff's film Close My Eyes. The writer Kathryn Harrison caused a sensation in 1997 when she published The Kiss, a memoir of an affair with her father, and even in the popular medium of TV, from Jerry Springer (who has featured incestuous sisters on his show) to Brookside (which featured a love affair between siblings Nat and Georgia), incest has been depicted in a not unsympathetic, if somewhat salacious, manner.

So why is your stomach still churning as you read this? What is it about incest that makes it universally abhorred? The most obvious answer is the risk of producing severely deformed children. King Hatchepsut, an Egyptian pharaoh who was the product of an incestuous union between brother and sister, is considered by many Egyptologists to have suffered from birth defects. In Michigan in the mid-1990s, the state laws had to be reformulated to forbid "consensual incest" after two high-profile scandals. In both cases, the offspring of father-daughter relations had severe birth defects and several of the resulting babies died. All existing studies of inbred populations show that incest increases the rate of appearance of negative recessive genes.

We should, however, be wary of damning incest on these grounds alone. To prohibit two people from having sex because their offspring may be "defective" or "inferior" is to adopt the standpoint of a eugenicist. Indeed, Dr Sean Gabb has clearly shown that the impetus behind the 1908 Punishment of Incest Act was just that: the proponents of the act were exactly the same figures who advocated the "sterilisation" of the "feeble-minded". If we prohibit incest on the grounds that it risks producing "defective" children, we must also prohibit reproduction by haemophiliacs and the carriers of a host of other "defects".

In any case, we must acknowledge that, with the rise of contraception, we have succeeded in separating sex from reproduction. Another unashamed participant in incest discovered in a chatroom, "daddysgirl", insisted: "We would never have a baby, it would be all screwed up and wrong. I use the coil." So has a window opened for "safe" incest? And if so, is our visceral disgust just a remnant from a vanishing age?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... eatures103

[Sisifo]

I oppose vehemently.

My family contains just 2 girls for a big number of male cousins, and I have always considered my friend's and colleagues' sisters extremely shagworthy. I find it immoral and even illegal that they keep them for themselves!!

In a serious note, if it is a victimless crime, I don't see any that it's anyone's business. But it must be clarified that it is a victimless issue:

- If reproduction is allowed, there will be a victim. European Royal families are more than good examples of what interbreeding can do:

And I believe that such situation should be prevented as State's protection of children.

- I would be suspicious of the "adult freedom" in those situations with an a priori negative bias. Relationships in the family are very complicated and contain much of a dominant-submissive role, emotional blackmail and emotional vampirism that even adults can not always get free of. We all know of adults routinely emotionally abused by mother, father, older brother/sister, etc. If someone has grown within an abusive family and ends sexually involved with any of the abusers, I would not accept the freedom of the act, even if the law grants it because of the age.

If those potential victims scenarios are cleared, enjoy the ride!


That said, I think that calling it "cancer" of society is a repugnant drama that recalls the statement of the uncouths of homosexuality as contagious. Any paraphilia is not contagious, or society destructive...

[lordpasternack]

- I would be suspicious of the "adult freedom" in those situations with an a priori negative bias. Relationships in the family are very complicated and contain much of a dominant-submissive role, emotional blackmail and emotional vampirism that even adults can not always get free of. We all know of adults routinely emotionally abused by mother, father, older brother/sister, etc. If someone has grown within an abusive family and ends sexually involved with any of the abusers, I would not accept the freedom of the act, even if the law grants it because of the age.

If those potential victims scenarios are cleared, enjoy the ride!

I broadly agree. As per abuse - there are several scenarios where people from abusive families will go on to have a chain of abusive partners safely OUTSIDE the family unit - and it's sometimes just as repugnant, incest or not. Such occurrences cannot simply be vanished away. I do see what you're saying about how the family unit, and the relationships fostered therein, provide a particularly fertile grounding for abusiveness to take root between individuals - but POTENTIAL abuse, simply isn't ACTUAL abuse, when it comes to age-differences, power imbalances, and close relationship scenarios - and there are several notable cases where this has been clearly the case, and likely several more that we never hear about, because the respective partners have successfully kept the lid on their perfectly consensual and non-abusive private activities.

And I agree completely of course with respect to where it's essentially a victimless crime.

I could even think of cases where someone may "take advantage" of someone in some way sexually, and still not be "abusive" as such - but that's another matter, for another discussion!