Opinions on Incest

A fairly simple question really.
What is your general opinion on the idea of brother/sister, mother/father, etc romantic relationships. Is it moral? Wrong? Should there be laws for it?
This could range from a truly romantic relationship or a purely physical one.
Keep in mind I'm implying that BOTH parties are at an age of consent are aware of what they are doing, not just some kiddy "let's experiment" kind of thing.
As someone who has p been in an incestuous relationship I cannot exactly say that it's a bad thing or that it should be forbidden, it's certainly a taboo but I honestly feel that the only reason why incest is frowned upon in society is because of a psychological ramification and negative stigma that seems to follow it(ie when people think of incest they tend to think of a pre 20th century world which tends to lead to a negative outlook considering what the world was like back then).
At the end of the day though I'm a firm believer in that one can't choose who they fall in love with and if one happens to fall in love with their sister then by all means they should attempt to pursue a relationship.

 

couldn't care less. people are gonna do what they gonna do. as longs as it's consensual. and i admit that it's a little gross to me, but people have the right to do whatever.

 

I'm more accepting of the idea of incest between siblings than with a parent, but for the most part I'd say both are okay so long as it is completely consensual and everyone involved is of legal age, etc. Not much more to say but that.

 

I was once very good friends with someone who had romantic feelings for her blood brother. This was yeaaaars ago, and I didn't see anything wrong with it back then. I don't see anything wrong with it now, either ... to an extent. You've already stated that both are of age, but I still can't really ... fathom or really condone a parent/grandparent/uncle/aunt - child/ect relationship. The age difference is a little eeeeh to me?

However, I truly have nothing against a brother/sister/cousin type relationships, including 'step' siblings, etc. I don't feel like it's my place to judge. I don't care what society says about it (or most things). I don't entirely understand. Some people think it's wrong, or gross, or not for them or whatever, but that's their life, bro. Why hate? It doesn't involve you, it's private. As long as it's consensual and they're of age and can make their own decisions, then I see absolutely no reason to make a case out of it.

I used to do a lot of research on this subject because I didn't (and still don't really) understand the issue, and the most common ... 'logical' point against incest was the fact that it increases the likelihood of having a genetically mutated child, or decreases the likelihood that a baby would be healthy and survive. Some people seemed to think it's a primal thing to find incest 'gross', as finding it such promotes the survival of our race. /derp

I feel this is preventable, just don't have babies of your own.

Another argument is that if we start questioning social norms like these, then eventually everyone will make a case out of everything using the same logic. Like bestiality should be okay because it's private and none of our business what they're doing, etc, etc.

But myself, personally, I don't see a problem with incest to a certain degree. As long as they're close in age, and don't have children. I still wouldn't make a case out of it if they were far apart in age, but both legal and consenting, even though personally that would ... sit with me a bit more.

​

​

 

This...

You saw what happened to the English Royal Family... Mix your own genes for a while and you will end up with severely big problems. It's genetically stupid to do it, but you do what you do.

 

Because a person's particular values die when they do, morality is inherently meaningless. I will open with that.

Please do not appeal to the law as a basis for being against an action.

Is there a problem with mixing the roles, either with friend and lover or relative and lover? I am not sure where this idea that there can be only one side or mode to a relationship comes from.

I agree that it is always better to avoid more risk, but the risk of deformation is still fairly small. The risk is doubled, but the risk was very small to begin with. The closer the relations, the more danger, but even if you had children with a parent, the risks would not go over five percent chance? Or have I been reading things wrong?

I will link to a source if I can find it. Google is being annoying.

The only problem with bestiality has been proof of consent. You would have the same problem with incest, pedophilia or any sexually deviant practice. People use that argument to justify bans on gay sex as well. In a situation where expression of consent could not be obtained, there would naturally be a problem. I believe that law enforcement agencies have outlawed bestiality in most places purely because determining consent is too much trouble for them and they would rather ban it and not have to deal with animal rights activists than respect individual decisions.

A slippery slope argument is an informal fallacy and it rarely has any basis in evidence or reason.

 

Like bestiality should be okay. Implying that it is not, and that you are, presumably, less accepting of bestiality than incest. I do not know if I (dis)agree with this. Animal brothels have existed, there is a silent film featuring it; it is legal in Denmark, Thailand, Japan, Finland, and some other countries. My point being, bestiality is not unheard of and is nothing new. My source is wikipedia, I apologise for the lame source, but Wikipedia is okay for overviews, for a general gloss-over.

It is curious that bestiality is generally frowned upon, given its rich history. Which is, I suppose, surprising in itself given that this-- as far as I know-- has absolutely no benefit for our procreation at all. Science, surprise me. Science cannot explain everything. We humans are devilish sidetrackers, doing pointless such things. Benefitless things. It's sort of curious. We've a devilish imagination, that's my only explanation...

That being said, I do not even know what to think of bestiality. I do not necessarily disagree with your disfavorement of it, but I, just, do not know what to make of it. It is not about species intermixing that has me hesitating, it is that we cannot speak their language, they can't ours. There is no way for us to know if they consent, we can only go by their sexual reciprocativity. A mind may object when a body does not, an aroused rape victim is not necessarily a willing rape victim. However, however... "rape", now that is such a man-made concept, as is "consent". It is a common thing in the animal kingdom, rape. We are the only species to victimise it.

In an animal's mind: if it feels pleasurable, bang it.

Yeah, I sidetracked. We sidetrackers.

edit - god damn it makaze, I discussed bestiality with you prior. This is not fair, now it will look as if I am some copycat. God damn it. Well, sorry if this was a restatement of his post, I did not see.

 

@Makaze & LARiA;

I haven't actually stated my opinion on bestiality or that argument. That logic just seems to be one of the few that generally and consistently pop up for me when looking at and reading arguments and discussions on incest, along with the 'genetic deformities' argument. Or, rather, when trying to solve the, "(Why) Is incest wrong?" question.

Bestiality is a whole other subject and simply an example. Incest has been compared to pedophilia, homosexuality, polygamy/polyandry, (insert more 'taboos' here). The fear seems to be that questioning certain things like incest will result in questioning more taboos and making a case out of everything. Like, if you allow incest, why not allow __ __ __? Things that people think are wrong, homosexuality sometimes included. The rational could be applied to many things, I guess.

I'm not saying I agree with it. It's just a perspective I've stumbled upon.

Apologies for any confusion. ​

​

​

 

Rarely have I found incest to be have purely independent consent.
With a parent, it is usually their leadership and superiority role that seems to influence the child's behaviour into consenting a relationship, intentionally or unintentionally. With a sibling, one is almost always older or dominant, and have a greater influence over the submissive one. having a relationship with a family member usually develops from your familial roles with each other and not a genuine meeting of minds or some type of love. It may be you are coerced into the idea of love, but the only time I've seen this not be the case is when two siblings have never met each other and don't know of the family relationship. Same with half bothers and half sisters. Then it is up to them to decide on whether they continue the relationship.

One of the benefits of developing a relationship with someone you don't spend a considerable amount of time with at home during your developmental age, is the fact you meet on a general neutral term. Neither of you is dominant or submissive at first, you are on equal terms, trying to figure the other one out.
Not to mention the fact that in general the relationship promotes a greater diversity of personalities and genetics as a whole. Having the genetics stagnate in your gene pool leads to nothing but almost the idea of creating an almost copy of you. It use to be to keep the blood pure and not contaminated by vagrants and the such. But it, in the end, led to more problems then benefits considering in general the lower general physical and mental health of the descendants led to sub par behaviour and even more stigma by society.

And on Bestiality, just for the heck of it, I find that a romantic relationship or sexual relationship with an animal doesn't promote a healthy relationship or development towards a healthier relationship. At best, a purely sexual relationship is 'fine' but not one where you get attached to the animal like you would a partner or other half.

 

In today times, we're told it's bad right? But why is that? Did someone who saw it as wrong put a ban on it to control us? Because if you go back to Roman times, wasn't it norm to have children with your siblings? Sure back then people didn't live as long as we do now, but why is it wrong? Are the children who's parents are brother and sister messed up?

I myself don't see it as a bad thing, then again I do seem to see it in fiction so much it's normal for me to hear about it.

 

I found this, I thought it was a good read on the subject : http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.fr/2006/10/so-whats-wrong-with-incest.html

Yes you have. First, we can' t generalize those things under a formula like "the risk is doubled" or "goes up to 5%" because there are several different types of risks, and because incest doesn' t just increase the risk to be afflicted with a disease, it also increases the odds for the child to become an unaffected carrier (which in turn increases risks for his own children).

Here' s two different type of risk to illustrate :

Autosomal Recessive gene (Cystic fibrosis) : Recessive conditions are clinically manifest only when an individual has two copies of the mutant allele. When just one copy of the mutant allele is present, an individual is a carrier of the mutation, but does not develop the condition. Females and males are affected equally by traits transmitted by autosomal recessive inheritance. When two carriers mate, each child has a 25% chance of being homozygous wild-type (unaffected); a 25% chance of being homozygous mutant (affected); or a 50% chance of being heterozygous (unaffected carrier).

Autosomal Dominant gene (Huntington Disease) : Dominant conditions are expressed in individuals who have just one copy of the mutant allele. Affected males and females have an equal probability of passing on the trait to offspring. Affected individual's have one normal copy of the gene and one mutant copy of the gene, thus each offspring has a 50% chance on inheriting the mutant allele. Approximately half of the children of affected parents inherit the condition and half do not. If both parents have the condition all their children will inherit it.

If you want to see what happens with the other types of genes see here : http://www.uvm.edu/~cgep/Education/Inheritance2.html#AutoDom
Also, keep in mind that each parent could carry much more than one disease gene.

tl,dr : it' s much more dangerous than you make it sound. I suppose you read an article about the risks of random incest happening here and there in nature, which probably aren' t that high; Machina and I are talking about the risks of incest happening several time in the same genealogical tree, which are devastating.

 

What are you talking about?
Why can there not be a meeting of minds between a brother and sister? It's find for two best friends who have grown up in an orphanage together to be eventually be in a relationship but not for a brother and sister? Other then blood the two practically share the same relationship any other brother or sister do.

This can be said for ANY relationship ever. There are very few couples in the world that are the same age, I garuntee you there is mostly an age gap.

As it is when you are with your sister. As you grow up with your brother or sister the both of you watch eachother change and mature, they begin to see sides of you that no other human being outside of your household may ever see. This also applies to childhood friends.

Engaging in a relationship for the sake of genetics is quite low


Let me just remind you guys that the chance of incestuousness deformations are low. 5-7 percent chance low.
Not to mention most people in an incestuousness relationship are intent with not having children anyway.

 

I' ll just quote the article I linked, I edited my post so you probably missed it :

Over the past century, the evidence for Westermarck against Freud has grown. Arthur Wolf's study of "minor marriages" in China is one line of evidence. A traditional form of Chinese marriage was for parents to give their infant daughter to another family to be raised with the family's infant son, so that when the boy and girl reached maturity, they would be married. Wolf showed that these marriages were generally unsuccessful, because children raised together as siblings developed a sexual aversion to one another.

Another line of evidence came from the experience of the Israeli kibbutzim. In the attempt to create a fully socialist community, the kibbutz would have infant children taken from their families and put in the "children's house," where they would be raised together communally. When they reached sexual maturity, the children were encouraged to find marriage partners among those with whom they had been raised. But the children resisted this, because even though they were not biological relatives, they felt as if they were siblings and thus felt revulsion at the thought of sexual mating with one another.

To put it shortly, the aversion for incest is an emotional response. Natural selection (i.e. the consequences of inbreeding over a long period of time) spread this genetically embedded emotional response to most members of our species.

Of course, incest does occur. But the pattern of incestuous behavior follows the predictions of Darwinian theory. Men are more likely to be the perpetrators of incest than are women, because men, unfortunately, are more indiscriminate in their sexual promiscuity. And some people might not feel any moral inhibition against incest because they suffer from a psychopathic poverty of moral emotions. But still, the natural aversion to incest among most human beings is so strong that we formulate moral and legal norms against incest and enforce them as expressions of our natural emotional dispositions.

This may have been debunked though, I' ll keep fishing for info ...

 

Incest . . . While I'm not fully against the idea of a brother and a sister or two cousins falling in love and starting a relationship and the whatnot, I absolutely don't condone any type of aunt/nephew/niece or uncle/ or whatever. Grandparents with their grandchildren, parents with their own children - I don't care if it's consensual, it bothers me. I suppose you could sway me the other way for certain types of relationships, but I can't think of any I would support.

I've never checked on the statistics of a brother and a sister having a child and that child being deformed, but I wouldn't recommend them having one anyway . . . because there is the chance still, and then there's the deal that the child could have health problems due to the same genetics mixing and doubling. You'd think that would only make the genes stronger, but apparently not.

There was something that tickled me a little here, and it didn't make me go 'haha' . . .

While I suppose I can agree of it being common in the animal world where they can't speak with words, I'm speaking out against it because humans can voice their thoughts, and can say no. Bestiality is often debated because of the wonder if the animal consents or not, I think this was mentioned in a previous post somewhere in here. I'm not sure if I misunderstand or perhaps am feeling sensitive, but rape is victimized by the human species because, to humans in parts of the world, it is wrong, to force someone to have sex without their consent, to even get them pregnant possibly. This is also the deal with incestual relationships, which could be sometimes placed under the same category with the debate on bestiality - is there consent? How could outsiders know if there's consent? And what if there isn't, you wouldn't think it wrong?

Anyway, my point here is, I'm alright with incest, but only of the sibling-type falling in love with each other, regardless of how slim the chance of that are.​

 

Are we only limiting incest to father/daughter, son/mother, brother/sister, etc.? Or are first cousins and the sort under that same umbrella?

Actually that number only applies to first cousins where there are enough genetic dissimilarities for the risk to be low. Although if inbreeding continues then the risk becomes higher and you'll probably get something similar to Charles II of Spain's family tree. >_>;

Spoiler

The actual risk for genetic disorders and things of the such appearing in much closer consanguineous relationships, such as father/daughter, son/mother, and brother/sister incest, is much higher compared to incest between first cousins. Studies suggest that 20-36% of these children will die or have major disability due to the inbreeding. I also found this study to be interesting.

 

I can see why it would be devastating, but because we are speaking the legitimacy of an incestuous relationship and not inbreeding itself, we have little reason to assume that incest will be sought out by their children unless it is taught to them. That is one of the dangers of parent/child incest, I suppose. If the child in a parent/child relationship has children, they might look to their own children for gratification like their parent did and see nothing wrong with it.

While I agree with most of your points, if you live with someone, you will stop being curious about them and are not likely to see them as potential partners. Even in cases where people have grown interested in their siblings, it has usually been after an extended absence from each other, such that when they are reunited they are both different people and their curiosity is new, having not yet explored each other. You need that gap to create feelings other than sibling-like ones most of the time.

There are always exceptions to genetic and emotional tendencies, but they have shown to be there in most people either way.

It is entirely possible that the couple in question may be exempt from these inhibitions, as a lot of people I have met are. While the inhibition is largely genetic, it is also social. People with personalities or conditions that cause them or drive them to disregard social norms are more likely to engage in incest. It makes more sense to think of Jube's example or argument as a special case and that he does not suggest applying incest to a larger class than select couples that are already exempt from these inhibitions.

Is that correct, Jube?

Ah, I thought that might be it. First cousins. The risk was similar to doing something else while pregnant. What was it? I cannot remember for the life of me. I think it was taking in something.

 

I do not agree with the idea of incest. I mean, I guess with cousins it would be more okay, so to speak, since they're technically not part of your direct family, but I just don't find it to be right.

Families, especially kids, should have relationships that are separate from their families so they can eventually move out and be on their own. If they were to be in a relationship with their parents, brothers, or sisters, they couldn't do that.

 

I' m not gonna lie, such cases also make me feel icky, but as long as they don' t reproduce I don' t have any moral objections to raise. It has and does happen behind the curtains, probably more often than most people suspect it.