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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.

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.¹⁾ Naturally, I will push further, and here are some of the most common answers:

But diseases!

And what if it magically didn't yield a higher chance of disease? What about recreative (not pro-creative) incest?²⁾ 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.”

“

~RationalWiki

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.

However, since incest can indirectly³⁾ lead to suffering I am willing to make concessions here. I wouldn't say that incest itself is bad because of disease, but we can agree that there is room for discussion on restricting it (to avoid the suffering). I don't even know where those lines should be placed… recreative incest only? Compulsory abortion? This is where I would be willing to compromise.

It isn't natural

Your mom isn't natural.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? I have yet to see an argumentum ad nature that isn't just purely based on intuition.

I invoke God to win this argument!

And I invoke the flying Spaghetti monster, because he tells me that incest is perfectly fine. But that's heretical? You are heretical to my god and belief system. Now try to get out of this stalemate, motherducker!

But it's children!

Actually a good point. The age of consent for incest is definitely something that would require some attention. We could even agree that it should be higher than that for normal sex, but it should be reasonable. Maybe 18+? I think the biggest source of damage to the livelihood of incestuous people comes from societal stigma, not incest itself. Ethically this may be considered flawed, but either way this means that falling such decisions⁴⁾ requires some additional maturity.

It's a sign of development issues

I actually don't even know here. It might be. Is incest related to developmental disorders? Does removing the prohibition on incest promote those disorders? I mean, I don't know why people would do incest in the first place, I've never talked to one about their motivations. I could see people, especially younger people who don't really make these kinds of distinctions (but then also run into the issue of being unable to consent), kind of just experimenting around; and their family members, especially siblings, will be the easiest test subjects to come by. Look, I don't know when, why and how that kind of stuff happens, I'm really just pulling things out of my ass right now.
Anyway, seeing how counter-intuitive and disgusted even I feel thinking about incest with what little family I have, I can't rule it out that there could be psychological issues attached to the emergence of incestuous behaviors. Not causative factors per se, if anything then probably just correlation, but maybe just nothing at all. But then again, on a large enough population, all kinds of things are mathematically bound to happen eventually, so in case it is strongly correlated to developmental disorders, there would still be more than enough circumstances in which it would just happen. Just like that.

Parents and children

The relationship between a parent and their child is special. It is based on safety and mutual trust. It feels like a parent engaging in sexual activity with their child is violating those principles of trust and compromises the safety of that child.⁵⁾ However, while I can agree that it really does kind of feel that way, I can't really explain it. Why would it compromise the safety of the child? Why would it break their trust⁶⁾? Because I set different expectations for myself? Who decides that the line of trust ends before and not behind incest?

¹⁾

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.

²⁾

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.

³⁾

By the means of disease.

⁴⁾

The decision of whether or not to engage in incest.

⁵⁾

Remember, sexual activities with a minor constitute sexual abuse and/or rape. I am talking about people that have both passed the age of consent - both the legal age of consent AND the proposed age of consent for incestuous sex as proposed earlier.

⁶⁾

A Note From PiousLittleChristianGirl: if I could venture a guess as to why this might feel problematic; I think a sexual relationship between parents and (adult) children could be damaging due to the power dynamic present within the family structure. Even after becoming adults, many people with (thus far) “healthy” relationships with their parents will still know that if things get rough, those parents will help/support/love them. Though they are no longer active caregivers, that can still be their effective role. This could cause conflicts in terms of consent. The child might think “will they still provide x (whether that be physical, monetary, emotional, etc…) support if I reject this?” Even if moving towards a sexual relationship is the child’s idea, it could turn toxic very quickly. I’d call this “weighted consent” where, yes, they’re “consenting”, but it might be for different reasons than they would consent to sex with someone who doesn’t hold power over them. And I imagine it could be all that and worse in “unhealthy” parent/child relationships.

Ramblings

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