My Thoughts on Incest
Recently, I got called out in the
comments on a blog entry for calling incest disgusting. The person
said “just because it's not your kink doesn't mean you can call it
disgusting”. True, it's not my kink. And I know full well that you
don't choose your kinks, and won't judge anyone for what their
fantasies are. (I don't judge people for being pedophiles, either.)
But I stand by what I said.
I think incest is morally wrong.
Note: by incest, I'm referring to
sexual and/or romantic activities between individuals who were
treated as part of the same nuclear family when one or both were
children. I don't care if you get involved with your cousin, or even
your long-lost sibling separated from you at birth. I do care if you
get involved with your adoptive sibling, stepsibling or foster
sibling.
I also don't care if you have kids with
recessive genetic disabilities. I don't think deliberately choosing
to have a child with a high probability of disability is wrong. After
all, I'm hoping to have an autistic child. It would be pretty
hypocritical of me to judge someone else for the same thing that I'm
OK with doing myself.
I will admit that, as a survivor of
incestuous child sexual abuse (they were both my cousins and my
foster siblings), I'm not entirely rational about this issue. I will
also admit that the particular situation I experienced would have
been abusive regardless of the relationship between me and my
abusers, simply because they were 10 and 13 years older than me and I
was under the age of 5. But even if the situation isn't like mine, I
still can't approve of incest.
I'm 27 years old, and when I'm with my
parents and my brother, part of me still feels like I'm a kid, he's a
younger kid, and those are our parents. And I know this is a common
experience, because I've heard people talk about it before so many
times. I even saw a very funny dedication in a book co-written by
siblings, where they wind up arguing over who to dedicate the book
to, calling their mother to mediate, and then dedicating it to her.
If you knew someone from childhood, the patterns of relating formed
then will linger on in your relationship with that person.
All non-twin siblings have a power
differential in childhood. Even a year or two can be huge when you're
both children. This puts the older sibling at an advantage, and
although this advantage will lessen, it'll never truly go away. And
power differentials in romantic or sexual relationships are a toxic
combination.
In addition, there is the Westermarck
effect – reverse sexual imprinting. For most people, this effect
inhibits the ability to find people attractive if you were raised in
a close relationship with them. Obviously, this doesn't work on
everyone, but it does mean that most people who have sex with
siblings or parents do so for reasons other than being attracted to
them. And many of those reasons, too, are dysfunctional.
Lastly, romantic relationships create
strong feelings, which, if the relationship breaks up, can easily
ruin the bond you had before. It happens very often with friends –
of the people who were friends before getting romantically involved,
if they break up, how many are still friends afterwards? Many people
choose to create distance between them and their exes, because to do
otherwise hurts too much. This effect also leads many people to
deliberately avoid seeking romantic relationships with a close
friend, because if it fails, they'll probably lose the friendship.
Well, your immediate family has a bond
with you that can never be fully erased. I've seen from my parents
how it hurts to have to sever those familial bonds, even when the
reason is abuse. If family members get romantically involved, and it
breaks up, then they'll have to deal with their ex being their family
member. And they'll have damaged what I personally consider one of
the most important bonds in their life. And as for having sex, for
most alloromantic allosexuals, having sex with someone strongly
predisposes them to fall for that person romantically. It's why
swingers tend to deliberately create distance with their sexual
partners, by only sleeping with strangers and not with the same
person more than once.
So, even when it's between two
consenting adults, without too large an age difference, there are
still plenty of reasons that incest is likely to harm them.
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