I am researching Family Values for a documentary film. I will be posting several threads that explore this subject. It would be helpful if you contribute to this research with your views on incest. If you could preface your view with a Y or an N to signify that you have personal experience, that would be even more helpful.
Incest is decreed by State laws as a crime. To most it is seen as a despicable sexual act. There is no census on how many children are the product of incest. But it surely is in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. While the problem lies as skeletons hiding in our cultural closet, all those thousands of young lives are lived in shame and as lies.
The question is: If incest is entirely natural, in fact the way human evolution began, and was once openly practiced by Royalty, and to some extent still, is, and is used by breeders to obtain highly pedigreed offspring - why is incest considered to be a social crime?
Can the children of incestuous family relationships be allowed to come out of the closet and reveal their family secret and lead a decent life without suffering from social stigma? Or shall we keep the closet locked and refuse to assess the damage?
that’s an interesting question, I guess there probably are a lot incest children out there.
You say that its completely natural… but I’m not sure that’s totally the case. It has happened historically, and was even common, but I’m not sure that makes it natural. Or do you mean that because its heterosexual its natural.
I think there are very good reasons that our society takes a stand against incest:
it does tend to lead to unfortunate genetic outcomes.
it seems to me that there is a tendency in incestual relationships to involve minors, which raises concerns about sexual abuse.
If you’d care to clarify natural I could probably answer further.
Incest is universal. All specie share a common parentage. Those near extinction have been interbred and their vitality restored.
But can also lead to high pedigre.
That is so outside of incest as well. My concern is not with the adult act, but with the impact on the child psyche. Why should it too suffer for an artficially perceived crime?
Therein lies the fallacy of your position. The child does not suffer because of a “social crime”, because a child has no concept of such determinations, being built from adult logic.
The effect on the child is because an abuse has been recognized and determined by the intrinsic value system as a negative.
As a child does not have the cognition to reason out that an incestuous parent is a psychologically sick fuck, it then becomes a condition of guilt, or personally owned consequence, for which they are not able to assign the responsibility to anyone other than themselves. Having no known quantity of wrong doing available, a determined cognition arises that as an individual, there is something inherently wrong within them, for which the parent felt compelled to punish them, and sex is then the objectified punishment.
This is why it is a crime, because it leaves a child in a state of an unsolvable connundrum which continually debilitates, psychologically or emotionally.
Your assertion that this is simply a “social crime” is erroneous, that is an effect, from the cause of society understanding, in the majority, that these actions irreparably damage a child, making for a non-productive society member, and likely as well, a future abuser to manifest yet again the continuation of the crime.
I am afraid I find that view far too harsh. How does that relate to the biological fact that we are all the product of endless acts of incest? How could we then, since we have all been irreparably damaged since Eve, end up as a productive specie?
The Creation story of Genesis is a parable, we are not all the descendants of Eve.
A simple study of genetics will show that we are not one continual line.
Incest creates unwanted mutations because of overrepitition of similar defective genes, which would have ended in our extinction. Contrary to assertions that “line-breeding” creates superior breeds, it promotes repitition of defects that would have been otherwise weeded out, “line breeding” is only effective for producing wanted appearances. It is proven that cross breeding is what enhances the breed for purposes of adaptability and survivability. You confuse the superfluous for the functional.
You over simplify far too much, and further enhance the fallacy of your first premise.
@MagnetMan, are you sure incest is illegal between adults who are relatives?
If one isn’t aiming to have any children, it’s hard to imagine what exactly is wrong with incest between adults (according to our conventional morals; one would expect the case would be analogous to homosexuality between consenting adults).
But then again, considering that persons with all manners of defective genes are not prohibited from reproducing, it’s hard to justify anti-incest laws/taboos by appealing to the possibility of genetic damage.
As for incest in the nuclear family, one would tend to think (this is an assumption) that most incest goes on in families which are already very disfunctional, and the damage done by adding sex is like adding a few grenades to a prison riot.
Sex with minors is considered worse than genocide by a lot of folks these days. Sex with minors might not really be a big deal, but to try to argue that loving physical intimacy in a strong family is a positive and healthy thing, would be fighting an up hill battle. “The family that fucks together, stays together.” That line would not go over well with the family values crew.
(@MagnetMan, this is off-topic, and pardon my crassness, but soliciting free philosophical advice is a little gauche. No doubt you know what “sophist” means. You might want to consider making a small monetary donation to the board in compensation, if you find anything from these threads valuable.)
I’m not sure about that. Pedigree in terms of desired traits is a sense we reserve for animals. Continued in-breeding may reinforce appearance or breed like traits. (Yes, the english royals do all look uncannilly alike.) But, what comes with it is a major risk for the repetition of genetic disorders. And ending up like prince Charles.
If it is an artificially percieved crime. (Although I’m not sure what an authentically percieved crime is.)
Whether or not its a crime is based on a legal definition. Whether or not it is morally objectionable is another question.
Should children grow up with the risk of being subjected to sexual advances from their families? I don’t know if it should be a crime, but I certainly know it is morally questionable at best.
The argument that we did it in the past does not make it morally right today. We may have committed incest for generations- I don’t know. But whether or not we practised it in the past is irrelevant to the question today.
In the past people fed christians to lions for their amusement, and that was considered legally and morally unobjectionable.
In the past men were considered legally and morally within their rights to beat their wives.
Also in the past, a moral life included owning slaves.
As you can see past practice, or even moral endorsement bears no relation to the morally acceptability of a question now.
I believe you’ve made an error in saying that because it may have happened for many years it is not harmful.
Rape has been going on for eons, but we can all agree that its harmful. Can’t we?
Whether its gauche or not depends on your community spirit. I think yhe internet foums can be put to more constructive use than just endless intellectual masturbations.
I think that incest has become such a taboo because of obvious cases of birth defects. Royalty practiced incest out of a belief that began in Egypt, that since the gods were incestuos and the Phaeroh was a god then it was okay for the Phaeroh. The whole thing about royal families was to keep blood pure. It was more about inheritence and keeping family money together than anything else. Plus they only understood a limited amount of genetics. Basically if one family is chosen by God for the kingship then there must be king blood in their veins and only by preserving that blood can the dynasty continue.
Its hard to say what consitutes a natural act of sex. Our bodies are very simple and physical reactions are activated no matter who’s doing to sexual act. I think its when these feelings get mixed up with our higher brain functions that deviant sexual behaviour can be thought of as normal.
But I think on some level people know that the act of incest is, if not unnatural, then an unwise act due to the risk of producing a deformed human being.