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--- incest [2024/01/14 12:01] – ultracomfy
+++ incest [2026/04/21 11:42] (current) – ultracomfy
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-<fs xx-large>Incest</fs> describes all [[Sexual Intercourse|sexual activity]] between close, human relatives. Incest faces one the strictest sexual taboos in society, second only to pedophilia, almost to the point of omnilateral repulsion.
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+The [[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:I_thought_this_was_supposed_to_be_RATIONALWiki|"rational"]] people over at [[RationalWiki]] have an article on [[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Incest|Incest]].
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-A preface: I don't have and never really had brothers, sisters, any real parents or a real family to speak of. I don't know what it's like to have close relatives, and if I ever did then I forgot. I don't have a sister that I could look at, wrinkle my face in disgust and go "fuck //her//?? EWWW". I'm sure I would. If I //had// a close relative like that, whom I've known from family for years, I think I would be disgusted. Still, I am surprised by the strength of the reactions you get from a lot of people when you talk to them about incest. Personally, I don't care either way. Incest isn't relevant to me or my life. I don't have any strong feelings about it. The reason **I** look at incest is because there is a strong disconnect between what I would think of as a reasonable reaction to incest, as opposed to the "average" reaction I //get// on incest. I am trying to find out where that disconnect lies, why it is there. Now, me being me I will be looking for a "strong", a rational argument. The way incest is presented most of the time makes it seem like people want to say that it's **//wrong//**, that one **//shouldn't do it//**.
+<fs xx-large>Incest</fs> describes all [[Sexual Intercourse|sexual activity]] between close, human relatives.
-However, no matter how disgusted you or me may be, I haven't yet found any serious moral objections to incest as a whole. So, I've spent quite some time talking to people and evaluating their reasons "against" incest. The first thing most people will say when asked is "it's disgusting". This is not a "strong" reason the way I define it. People are welcome to their personal tastes, so if you think of something as disgusting, you are free to refrain from doing whatever it is that makes you uncomfortable.((Well, as long as it remains within your own sphere of personal freedom. If you find face masks (diseases) disgusting, you still have to wear masks in a pandemic because other people's health and safety interests supersede your right to freedom of self-expression.)) Naturally, I will push further, and here are some of the most common answers:
+TL;DR:
+  * Procreative: No
+  * Recreative: It's complicated
-====== But diseases! ======
+Ah yes, Incest, everyone's favorite topic, real family dinner conversation material (poor taste joke?). Look, let's all get a bit more informed on our favorite topic quickly and painlessly so that we can move on to - whatever - a game design or philosophy topic maybe. So how do I arrive at my conclusions?
-And what if it magically didn't yield a higher chance of disease? What about recreative (not pro-creative) incest?((Most anti-incest positions will probably continue to maintain that position, even if it's done recreatively. Those folks would need a different argument, because in recreative incest the inheritance of genetic diseases isn't a (serious) problem.)) As RationalWiki puts it:\\
-"An additional problem with most anti-incest arguments is that they tend to focus only on procreative sex [...], ignoring the likely possibility that many incestuous couples don't want, or even can't have, children (like gay couples, or those that use birth control). Humans do in fact engage in recreational sexual intercourse after all."
-Remember, the diseases don't make the incest itself bad. Diseases are //associated// with incest, but they //aren't// inherently part of incest. The disease is bad, we can agree on that, but incest isn't disease - it's merely a thing that can lead to a more frequent manifestation of disease.
+====== 1. Genetics ======
+Well, the beginning starts with understanding incest biologically. Biologically, we are talking about organisms with the sexual reproduction mode, and there we care about the terms //inbreeding// and //outbreeding//. In nature, both are common, and both are functional evolutionary strategies. Genetic traits can be roughly categorized into recessive and dominant traits. When genetically different individuals mate, the chance of at least one of the two having a dominant allelle for a trait is relatively high. In contrast, when two individuals have comparatively similar traits (ie. they have high "homozygosity"), then it is likely that if one has a recessive allele for a trait, the other will too. This can lead to what is called "Inbreeding Depression". If such recessive traits are, as they call it, "deleterious", this tends to end up as a selective reason for individuals to engage in outbreeding instead of inbreeding.
-====== It isn't natural ======
+However, this isn't always the case and the opposite can be true. "Outbreeding depression" is essentially the same as inbreeding depression, but works the other way around. Inbreeding is commonly used in domestication to eliminate deleterious traits and establish new, desirable traits. //In general//, inbreeding increases gene expression, ie. it increases the chance of both beneficial //and// deleterious recessive traits getting expressed, which either increases or decreases the [[fitness]] of the offspring.
-Your mom isn't natural.<fs x-small>If that doesn't convince you, how about: "That's what they said about homosexuality as well." - In short: Why is it unnatural? Who are you to decide what is or is not natural? Why does being counter-intuitive make it unnatural? What's bad about doing unnatural things? Does it harm or hurt anyone?</fs>
+Increased homozygosity becomes an issue when there are deleterious recessive alleles in the gene pool of a family. For humans in particular, inbreeding can generally be considered harmful for the child, as it substantially increases the risk of expressing deleterious recessive genes. This is especially problematic in small populations where genetic variation is already limited. Now, this isn't said and done, as it is entirely possible for inbreeding to lead to the expression of beneficial traits as well. As far as the resulting offspring is concerned, this is on a case by case basis. For the parents however, especially if they don't have a genetic study done, this is not a reasonable risk and I believe it it justified to say that humans should abstain from inbreeding (procreative incest) for medical reasons.
+<wrap hi>No Procreative</wrap>
+===== 1.1 Inbreeding and Incest =====
+This medical reason, however, begins to point us into an important moral direction - there is a difference between incest and inbreeding. Inbreeding is a problem associated with genetic problems in the offspring. However, while inbreeding can be part of incest, it doesn't have to be. As RationalWiki puts it:
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+An additional problem with most anti-incest arguments is that they tend to focus only on procreative sex [...], ignoring the likely possibility that many incestuous couples don't want, or even can't have, children (like gay couples, or those that use birth control). Humans do in fact engage in recreational sexual intercourse after all.
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+On its own, the medical reasons against inbreeding would give rise to a crime like "sexual recklessness", if you want to call it that way, but that is only a good reason against inbreeding, not //all// kinds of incest.
+====== 2. Family & Power Dynamics ======
+Another interesting angle on incest is the problem of power dynamics. Parents and their children, even if both are above the age of consent, have an inherent power dynamic that encroaches on the ability of the child to actually give consent. This pervades across the hierarchy as everyone lower on the family tree answers, in one way or another, to those higher on the family tree. For simplicity sake, I will refer to an individual's height in the family tree as a //"Rank"//.
+Now, I will conceptually agree with this argument, but I would like to point out that this line of argumentation //is// risky, because it assumes that one cares about family structures. Family is not real, family is a social construct. To me, my family is literally just another person on the street, I wouldn't even recognize half of them if I met them, their position in a family tree does not give them any authority over me whatsoever. This //may// have been different with my parents when I was under 18 years old, but now that I am of the age of consent it becomes really easy to recognize that family is literally just a brain thing that you either agree with or don't. But, it doesn't take reaching the age of consent to realize the electability of the family construct.
+The "family" is likely anchored into your nation's laws, but that is not a prescription for individuals to accept families on a personal level. In law, families are generally just groups of sexually related individuals, but in the end they're all just individual humans. And, as an example, any individual human can be capable of taking the custody of a child, sexually related or not (in fact, we already //have// this with foster parents and the such). What I'm saying here is that families exist in the sense that they are used to determine roles and obligations (ie. parents care for their children), but these are constructs we created and which no individual is forced to believe in. If you don't want to think of your brother as your brother but merely as a person born by a biological relative, then that's entirely up to you to do. Everything else you may or may not feel about your brother is the result of //you//, as an individual, thinking of him as part of a social construct you allowed yourself to believe in. And while that is perfectly valid, rejecting these constructs is equally as valid. One isn't better than another.
+The only really good argument here is ranks and power dynamics. Your parents hold power over you as the child. This imbalance creates inherent problems with your decision-making. This is, and there is no doubt about that, a serious problem if the child is still underage. Sexual relations between someone who is underage and someone who is of age is **unethical** and under no circumstances acceptable((Unless the age difference is minimal, accpetable age difference varies by country but is generally intended to be large enough to allow for a transition period wherein both sides of a relationship should be able to continue to interact as normal even if they don't have birthday at the same time - but small enough to prevent a properly adult person for starting something with a minor. Typically comes out at around +-3 years or so.)). This is already different if the child is of the age of consent itself, or if the potential incest is horizontally between two individuals of the same rank, ie. brothers/sisters, cousin, cousin-in-law (lol?) (but not vertically between parent/child, grandparent/grandchild etc.).
+Between brothers/sisters/cousins/cousins-in-law, no such power dynamics exist. For where these power dynamics do exist, bringing up incest as a problem is a reasonable objection. Personally, I care more about the potential age difference than about whether it's the same family - both must be of the age of consent or - if underage - roughly the same age. If this condition is satisfied, I find "family" to be a weak argument against it, unless of course the goal is to have //procreative// sex, see [[Incest#1. Genetics|1. Genetics]].
+<wrap hi>If strict: No rank differences</wrap>\\
+<wrap hi>No age of consent discrepancies (applies to sexual relations anywhere)</wrap>
+====== 3. Development Issues? ======
+One argument that I do not know whether it is true/valid is whether incest can cause developmental issues. If siblings of similar age engage in incest, does it genuinely cause harm to either of them? I don't know. I wouldn't have thought that it would, and as usual I'm not typically very knowledgeable; but, if that is the case then of course incest is problematic.
+The other question is about whether incest can be an indicator for pre-existing developmental issues. To me, this question does not really matter because engaging in developmentally malformed behavior does not necessarily increase the harm experienced by these individuals. Sexual encounters following the previously established restrictions don't, as far as I understand, hurt anyone. Yes, developmental issues often contribute to a person exhibiting harmful or maladapted behaviors, but I don't see how incestuous sexual relations hurt anyone. Unless of course they reinforce other developmental issues. Does it? Here again, I am underinformed. I think it would be bold to presume so.
+====== Full List ======
+In the previous topics I have established the reasons for why I agree with some arguments against incest and the extent to which I think these reasons justify restrictions on incest:
+  * No procreative
+  * No rank differences
+  * No age of consent discrepancies (applies to sexual relations anywhere)
+To me, purely recreational incest where no rank differences occur and everyone involved is capable of consenting to everyone else involved, is still possible here. This would apply to siblings of similar age, or for example siblings of similar age who were seperated at birth. In fact, that is the classical example, as siblings seperated at birth do in fact often experience sexual attraction to each other if they get to know each other later in life, no development issues or other problems required. This is particularly interesting to observe in such pairings where both don't even know that they are related.
+This example - of seperated siblings who get to know each other later in life and don't even know that they are related - illustrates why I think that families are primarily an elective brain thing. There is no practical difference between them and siblings that grew up together. Whether they are "family" or not is entirely an opinion in their brain and doesn't change any physical realities.
+====== Addendum: Unnaturality and other Subjective Arguments ======
+Arguments I do not like are arguments that are based entirely around subjectivity. If someone's opinion is based on an entirely subjective perception of the world then it is valuable for them to guide their own behavior - and they are free to do that! - but it is entirely worthless in a general discussion of the ethicality of the thing in question. This includes, amongst others, being disgusted and similar subjective experience, or religiously motivated god arguments ("god says we shouldn't"), because god is exclusively subjective and cannot be externalized or measured in any way.