Incest: The Straight Dope

[Lumpy]

I've been looking for some reliable information on a sensitive topic: incest.
What I'm trying to determine is, how prevalent is consentual sex between either siblings or parent and child. Everything on incest that I can find on the net falls into one of the following categories:

-Survivors of incest, mainly women who were raped and exploited by their fathers or other male family members.
-Incest as the ultimate family dysfunction, usually associated with substance abuse and other pathological behavior.
-Wack-off stories ('nuff said.)
-Anectdotes of rural degeneracy.
-Royal incest, such as practiced by the ancient Egyptians.

None of these is particularly helpful for my inquiry. What I'm trying to get an honest answer to is, is incest inherently aberrant or do some people truly maintain incestuous relationships that are healthy?

As a related topic, can the degree of consanguity that a society permits be correlated with any other feature of that society? In some societies, you aren't supposed to marry someone who was even born in the same village as you were. In others, first-cousin marriage is not only permitted but actively encouraged. Why the difference?

[On The Edge]

When I was in college living in a dorm we used to talk about this all of the time. There were many long and taudry discussions which sometimes lasted until sunrise. Usally when our forums lasted this long we would somke alot of pot....Burning incest all the while we smoked :o

[Chef Troy]

Boy, the direction this discussion has taken has really got me incensed.

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Live a Lush Life
Da Chef

[Mazey]

Seems pretty incencitive to me.

[Toymaker]

The only form of incest I've been involved with is having sex with myself. I always light up two cigarettes afterward.

Gary

"How was it for you? "Great! and you?"
"Let's make it a threesome next time: Me, myself and I !"

[According to Pliny]

I would guess that sexual indifference (or even abhorance) toward family members is largely a product of natural selection. Those with incestuous proclivities were for the most part weeded out of the gene pool through the degenerative combining of recessive genes.

BTW - What's the definition of a Tennesee virgin?

A girl who can run faster than her brothers!

[Lumpy]

Perhaps I should give some background on my original question:

I got in an extremely heated argument with an acquaintance of mine who is gay over comparing homosexual sex to incest. If gay sex used to be considered sick or immoral, and now isn't, then couldn't incest eventually "come out of the closet" as well?

To put it mildly, he resented the comparison. His position basicly boiled down to "there's no such thing as 'healthy' incest, and anyone who says there is is a liar". Not being able to cite any evidence to the contrary, I had to give up at that point.

I still wonder though if the situation is similar to where gay people were before the 1960's, when what little public discussion there was of homosexuality invariably portrayed gays as sick, degenerate or in need of psychiatric treatment.

[dougie_monty]

According to one book, the issue of "close order relationships," even sister-brother, father-daughter, or mother-son is not invariably genetically defective: The genetic traits of the parents are intensified, for better OR worse. The queen we know as Cleopatra was the product of seven generations of brother-sister marriages and she was not a "horseradish with a lisp"; also, Manco Ccapac, the founder of the Inca empire, was married to his sister.

[NanoByte]

I gather the original poster here did not particularly wish to bring in the reproductive component of the issue, but rather to concentrate on the copulative behavior considered in a context of no allowance of survival of offspring. I believe rejection of incest is more driven by environmental development than direct genetics, whereas homosexuality is probably, on average, of the opposite nature. Siblings not known by either of same to be related probably mate at the same rate as those unrelated -- in proportion to the relative number of each category that exist.

Ray (all speculation, no laboratory)

[mr john]

Some intelligent entity has taken over nanos brain. There is also a socio-antrhopological connection, having to do with heirarchy,and passing on ones own genes.In most groups(bands ,troops,etc) of primates when the males begin to mature the dominant male, who is usually the father of them all,makes sure they don't mate with ANY female.( every body in the band is probably related anyway) The young males best chance is to head off to some other band and try to dump the dominant male there. That is sorta like that marrying outside the village. when we became more settled down living in smaller families it certainly led to a more peaceful existence if Papa didn't have to worry about Jr bumping him off to marry maw and take over the family farm.So they came up with the rules of sanguininity as they apply to inheritence of property.And then lots of incest rules to protect those. BTW any Navahos here? I understand that certain families can't marry certain other families, and certain clans other clans unless they are in a certain family or another one of the certain families but another clan.but members of this clan can NEVER marry that clan unless the family......Real complicated. AND that all this is traced from the mothers side but the fathers clan influences and..for as many generations as the oldest one can remember.

[Ringo]

My take on the OP (especially after OP followed up w/a clarifying post) question would be:

Is it conceivable that societal mores may evolve (if that's what they're doing, maybe I should say mutate) to the point that sanctions against incestuous relationships will relax or disappear?

dougie_monty's post seems to indicate there have been widely separated instances in human history when incest has been considered ok. If you think about all the hillbilly sis/bro jokes you've heard, what they're telling you is that there is yet one more instance of such relationships being tolerated by the local community.

As I'm sure everybody knows, homosexuality was pretty open in ancient Greece, and there's other examples of societies that have condoned such. And then it wasn't ok, and now it is again (depends who you ask).

It wasn't very long ago that right here in the US 13 year old girls were considered prime rutting material; now such activity is prosecutable sexual deviancy (for that matter, from what I know of the gay community, checking ID's is not a major pasttime there).

Abortion, which I would consider to be inextricably tied to sexual mores, has waxed and waned in its acceptability over the meanderings of history.

So, to try and answer Lumpy's question, it seems conceivable that incest may lose it's societal sanction at some point, somewhere, for a while. It also seems hilarious that your gay friend thought this abhorent. Doesn't he know how to celebrate diversity?

[handy]

As that comic Jeff once said, 'YOu know you are a redneck if you get married three times and still have the same In-Laws'

[mr john]

Look, this was a seriuos question, I don't think this friviolity is called for. As my sister, Mrs John said the otherday, Do you think I should get a present for Aunt Jennies birthday or just wait 'till mothers day. Seriously, the last time I tried to have an incestual relationship I got beestung.

[DougC]

- - - I have a psychiatry textbook somewhere that says most incest occurs in Southern, complete (both parents) Protestant families. If the father is involved, the usual method is mutual oral sex. If the mother is involved, the typical method is nude "dry humping". Of all cases, most involve father-daughter relations. This book didn't address the subjct of inter-sibling sex (I seem to recall that's classed as something else - not incest), but you probably heard enough already. - MC

[DougC]

- - - I can't help but remember those lines from National Lampoon's Vacation:
-
- "I go out with boys. And I French kiss."
- "So do I."
- "Yea, but my daddy says I kiss the best." - MC

[ellis555]

i think the chef's post pretty much provides an answer to the original post. if we develop the necessary genetic testing (and we'll have that genome sequenced any day now, boys. i'm just wondering who's going to be holding the patent on it...) it should be possible for incest to "come out of the closet" - if the child of the union isn't going to suffer negative reinforcement of recessive genes, why keep a boy from his sis?

ellis

[DougC]

- - - I kinda doubt that genetic testing will do much to advance the cause of making incest socially acceptible. Whether a child is produced or not is irrelevant; the act itself is the offense because it is an act which can lead to producing offspring. - I think eventually it won't have much stigma attached to it; I hear stories of grade schoolers now getting caught "in the act" with unrelated participants. No successful society ever worshipped primitivism. - MC

[ravenous]

In Nabokov's Lolita Humbert Humbert (the narrator) relates that father-daughter relations are condoned in Sicily (somewhere in the beginning of part II...don't have the book with me). Can anyone verify this (the fact, not the reference?)

Also, slightly off topic (sorry, OP), I've heard that (South) Koreans have to get special gov't permission to marry someone with the same last name from the same village for fear of "inbreeding" (insert correct term here).

Rav

[dougie_monty]

I don't accept the "hierarchy" concept; I am not quick to ascribe any rules of society to some power conspiracy.
In Corpus Juris Secundum (available in law libraries), one basis for the incest taboo is how incest would undermine parental authority--and, God knows, that's been undermined badly enough as it is! Also according to CJS, only Illinois and Pennsylvania prohibit first-cousin relationships.

[mr john]

Dougie sez," I am not quick to ascribe any rules of society to some power
conspiracy." I would ascribe ALL the rules of society to SOME power group not a conspiracy as such.Not neccesarily for an evil purpose. Them that has the power make the rules. One of the rules they made was "No incest." And the 'power group' (the 'people' or the dictator) defined incest. Incest is a legal term, some states prohibit 1st cousin marriage some don't.

[mr john]

Just trying to break the record for total postings. I forgot,Ravenous, I don't recall the specifics, but for some odd reason there is a dirth of family names in Korea.Something like 50% or more of the people have the same name (Lee? or Li?) so it is a concern not just in the same village.
Heinlein,yeh I always wondered what that fellow was up to.Then there was Phil.Jose Farmer even before he really opened up, all kinds of neat interspecies stuff. Real nice thing about human 'relations' a race of aliens descended from cats. or we can talk about Harlin Ellison, no you can I don't want to go there.

[Lumpy]

[QUOTE]Also, slightly off topic (sorry, OP), I've heard that (South) Koreans have to get special gov't permission to marry someone with the same last name from the same village for fear of "inbreeding" (insert correct term here).

Rav[QUOTE]
Yes, I've heard that too. It's because the Koreans maintain family records that go back centuries, and because the male lineage is considered immutable. It's silly really; it would be like two people named "Johnson" being forbidden to marry in the US. But the Koreans take this ancestry bit quite seriously.

[sunbear]

I read somewhere about (some mammals) where the animals will not mate with siblings but cousins are OK. Seems like the critters could keep track of siblings easily enough.

[Chef Troy]

Fans of the late Robert Heinlein will tell you that he (or his characters, which comes to the same thing) sees incest as an obsolete concept that should be dealt with primarily by drawing the shades. I quote from "Time Enough for Love," his novel about character Lazarus Long (who winds up going back in time and sleeping with his mother):

(BTW, a sentient computer named Minerva says this in response to Lazarus' request that she define incest)
"'Incest' is a legal term, not a scientific one. It designates sexual union between persons forbidden by law to marry. The act itself is forbidden; whether progeny results from it is irrelevant. The laws are usually, but not always, based on degrees of consanguinity."

I'm quoting the above from memory and it may not be word-for-word but the gist is there.

The theme of incest is present in "Time Enough for Love," "The Number of the Beast" and "To Sail Beyond the Sunset." (I may have missed others.) "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" is the only one to show negative consequences to the act, and even that is due more to the sexual obsession that results than to the incest itself. Heinlein, through his characters, espoused the viewpoint that incest should be defined only in terms of genetic hazard. The geneticists of his "future history" might approve the union of a brother and sister with clean gene charts but forbid two strangers to marry if their DNA was incompatible.

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Live a Lush Life
Da Chef

[handy]

Gays Vs. Incest? I see not a connection. I see but a lack of groups to associate with.
Gays Vs. Incest, Lumpy? Surely you jest, I see no relationship betwixt the two for this sort of argument.

At any rate, depending on how far back you want to go Lumpy, you could say we are all related to each other because we all are offspring of the original couple, or apes, or whatever, therefore, everyone is having sex with a 'relative.' WHich would make the question moot.

Oh, if anyone is looking for 'postive' reasons for incest [were that there actually be any], try one of the incest newsgroups...

[dougie_monty]

You didn't read what I wrote, Mr. John. I quoted Corpus Juris Secundum as an authority that first-cousin marriages are illegal in Illinois and Pennsylvania.
Even where they are not illegal, such unions have a potential problem: How do you get away from such a close relative if you should break up? :(

[Stoid]

It occurs to me that incest may become more common thatn we realize, though unwittingly.

Think about it: with today's creative reproductive technology, anonymous egg and sperm donors, 50 years from now people migh tbe screwing their brothers, sisterss, mothers, uncles, aunts, cousins.... it's not only possible, it's likely!



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We do precision guesswork

[handy]

Stoidela, sharing genetic material like that is not considered incest morally.

[ravenous]

Handy, I think what Stoi meant was that in 50 years people won't know that so and so is their sister/brother due to the gene swapping.

I guess that can't be morally wrong either.

I don't think it's very likely, though...

Rav

[Alan Q]

Of course, legality and morality are two different things, and nowadays the genetic problem can be sidestepped, after all, birth control/abortion issues probably wouldn't be much of a moral dilemma to people who have already decided they have no qualms about the act itself. Heinlein's apologias were interesting and compelling reading, but for me, at least, like so much of his work, I couldn't help thinking that maybe, just maybe, he was ROTFL as he wrote it.
My personal take on the subject is--the dynamic of even the most "normal" family you've ever heard of is such a delicate and volatile mix, the added emotional and psychological stimulus of incest couldn't help but harm something somewhere.
--Alan Q

[handy]

"Handy, I think what Stoi meant was that in 50 years people won't
know that so and so is their sister/brother due to the gene swapping."


Rave, this is already true, just ask some genetist and they should be able to give you the low down on how most Europeans were born from the same king/queen combo line.

Incest is very dangerous for the emotional well being of the children involved. That is why it's a no-no.

[dougie_monty]

Touche, Handy.
I have sometimes held to the notion that the "hillbilly sis/bro" incest jokes were concocted by a fertile New York mind; it's a matter of historical record that, once urban areas sprouted in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, rurals were increasilngly treated with contempt by urbans--and no place is more urban than New York City. More to the point, I would guess that sibling or mother-son incest is perhaps no less common in urban areas than in rural areas; and father-daughter, or uncle-niece, incest is particularly deplorable--for reasons that courts and state legislatures have been expounding on for decades. :(

[Olentzero]

A lot of this discussion seems to be focused on adult/child incest, which I think we all agree is right up there with paedophilia in all its forms. But what about incest between consenting adults? I think perhaps this is the gist of Lumpy's original post - is there any information on incestual relationships between consenting adults?

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Cave Diem! Carpe Canem!

[dougie_monty]

I have found mention of adult sibling incest in only two places: An old sexy-cartoon anthology called Sex to Sexty, and, more seriously, in Dear Abby's column. A man wrote to tell Abby that he was having a sexual affair with his sister; Abby called this "sick."

[DavidForster]

It seems probable that:

1) Due to the taboo and various laws, incest of all kinds is more common in this country than is believed or reported;
2) Even the frequency with which it IS reported, as well as the historical acceptance in some parts and the variety with which the boundaries are and have been drawn, all suggest that it is a cultural taboo that "prevents" it, not an evolved, physical control mechanism;
3) The cultural taboo is found universally because we are all culturally descended from groups who developed the taboo (for good reason both psychologically and, in the long run, genetically).

I would then suggest that, as ours is an inquisitive and creative species, if the "good reasons" ever changed or disappeared* the taboo could be unlearned or forgotten.

* For example the Heinlein "alternative" or ready abortion allaying fears of monsters; or the public coming somehow to view cases of adult and/or same-generational incest as being different in kind from adult-child or cross-generational incest. "Different strokes..."

I agree with beatle that your gay friend's take seems...without true thought. But it may be that he wasn't *listening*, and heard only "gays are like daughter-rapists..." Possible? Or no, just unable (like so many...) to open his mind wider than 4:3 60Hz interlaced?

[Jophiel]

is there any information onincestual relationships between consenting adults?
Or for that matter, what of incest between a younger brother and sister (or sister and sister or brother and brother)? Not necessarily rape or anything, just early adolescent exploration and the like. Any info? (I suspected that this was part of the original post).


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"I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn't."

[Big Iron]

Jebediah Springfield: People, our search is over! On this site we shall build a new
town where we can worship freely, govern justly, and grow vast
fields of hemp for making rope and blankets.


Shelbyville Manhattan : Yes, _and_ marry our cousins.


Jebediah: I was -- what are you talking about, Shelbyville? Why would
we want to marry our cousins?


Shelbyville: Because they're so attractive. I, I thought that was the
whole point of this journey.


Jebediah: Absolutely not!


Shelbyville: I tell you, I won't live in a town that robs men of the right
to marry their cousins.

[Enright3]

This is really off topic, but maybe someone can help me. Speaking of incest... There is a horror movie (I thought it was one of the Amityville flicks) where the two siblings (teenage brother & sister) have an incestuous relationship. IIRC it happened because of the evil in the house. Anyone else remember that? What was the name of that movie?

Enright3

[CFQWEST]

Robert Heinlein was a bit of a nut who liked to rationalize his own quirks as if they were provable scientific laws or at least superior ways of running society.

Thus, in "Farhnam's Freehold," the elder Farhnam (with whom Heinlein obbivously identifies) is so all-fired wise and right about everything that we're supposed to accept it as inevitable when his daughter announces that he can have her whenever he wants.

On the other hand, Farhnam's son is portrayed as an annoying, ungrateful wimp precisely because he does not acknowledge the superiority of his father. And we're told quite specifically that the root of his problem is an Oedipus complex over his mother.

So what are we to make of this? A daughter who wants to have sex with her father--that's empowering. But a son who wants to have sex with his mother--that's degrading, even emasculating (literally so, in the novel, as the son ends up castrated).

What we have here isn't a rational argument on the merits of voluntary incest. It's an irrational tirade telling us that the Heinlein-surrogate deserves all the available women, regardless of blood ties and that the challenger to his authority shouldn't have sex at all.

Sorry about the tirade, but I can't understand why anyone would cite Heinlein as the voice of authority on any subject. He had talent as a storyteller, but as a thinker-philosopher...ouch!

[DavidForster]

I've been reminded (thanks to Big Iron, Shelbyville Manhattan, et. al) of another series of points that has long occurred to me, namely: it seems quite common (at least in this society) for successful couples to share a greater-than-random physical resemblance. Besides research showing that long-term couples grow in resemblence over time (and because that observation seems to apply with frequency to newlyweds and other newly-minted couples), I have heard it speculated that: people tend to look for those whom they find physically attractive (no surprise there); people are attracted by that which is familiar (both in the family environment and the mirror?) and possibly by that which is powerful (parents?); and so it is, if not common, at least not uncommon, for people to be attracted to others who look like themselves.

To the extent this is true, this would be a source of a psycho-physiological impetus TOWARDS coupling with your (presumably similar-looking) cousins (or nearer relatives) - and might also help in part to explain the strength of the incest taboo, i.e. it HAS to be a strong learned taboo to overcome even a subtle physical drive in that direction.

Thoughts?


P.S. Not to disagree with CFQWEST; I'd only point out that the idea that genetic testing may someday replace taboo as a means for avoiding monsters remains plausible.

[Hazel]

I think DavidFoster makes a good point. The taboo vs. incest needs to be strong because the temptation toward it tends to be strong. We're attracted to people who look like us. Also, as someone else pointed out, horny/curious adolescent kids may tend to see op. sex siblings as, well...handy.

I'd say that the really big no-no is incest between an adult and a child.

Re Heinlein, I'm a fan -- with the exception of Farnham's Freehold. I actively dislike that one. Re the others of his later works that included incest, I've wondered if he didn't include this in the belief that there wasn't much else left that would shock anyone in these decadent times.

[Chef Troy]

CFQWEST writes:
Robert Heinlein was a bit of a nut who liked to rationalize his own quirks as if they were provable scientific laws or at least superior ways of running society.

Thus, in "Farhnam's Freehold," the elder Farhnam (with whom Heinlein obviously identifies) is so all-fired wise and right about everything that we're supposed to accept it as inevitable when his daughter announces that he can have her whenever he wants.

On the other hand, Farhnam's son is portrayed as an annoying, ungrateful wimp precisely because he does not acknowledge the superiority of his father. And we're told quite specifically that the root of his problem is an Oedipus complex over his mother.

So what are we to make of this? A daughter who wants to have sex with her father--that's empowering. But a son who wants to have sex with his mother--that's degrading, even emasculating (literally so, in the novel, as the son ends up castrated).

What we have here isn't a rational argument on the merits of voluntary incest. It's an irrational tirade telling us that the Heinlein-surrogate deserves all the available women, regardless of blood ties and that the challenger to his authority shouldn't have sex at all.

Sorry, but I really think you've missed the point in several directions here. First of all, the major theme of "Farnham's Freehold" is not incest but racism. In the passage you mention, Hugh Farnham's daughter mentions her preference for her father over her brother or the other man present (a black man who was the family's houseboy before they are, for lack of a better word, "marooned" by a nuclear blast) as one throwaway line in the middle of a discussion about whether miscegenation should be a factor in their new circumstances. Also, nothing comes of it beyond that discussion.

Second, Duke (the son) has a lot more problems than just disliking his father or being a mama's boy. He is also a racist who is emotionally undone by being transported into a society where blacks are in charge and whites are slaves. Also, the castration you mention (a customary operation performed on whites in the society depicted) is performed on Duke at his MOTHER'S urging.

Also, your contention that Heinlein felt father/daughter incest was good and mother/son incest is bad is directly contradicted by his last books, "Time Enough for Love" and "To Sail Beyond the Sunset," which examine a mother/son relationship (among MANY other things) from both sides of the coin. It is portrayed as a very positive thing. (I should point out that due to time traveling and such, the son is much older than the mother at that point.)

And finally, may I point out that your assertion that the Heinlein figure deserves all the available women is not borne out by the narrative--after all, he ends up with only one of the women and she's the only non-family member in the group. As a matter of fact, no actual incest occurs in this book at all.

In summary, I feel obliged to say that you've chosen a Heinlein text of questionable relevance to the subject to prove your point (his books that deal with incest in more than a cursory way are the two I mentioned above and "Number of the Beast") and then supported your argument from that text by distorting some things and leaving others out entirely. Come on, you can do better than that.

As for Heinlein's worth as a philosopher/thinker, granted most of his work is now quite dated (for example, "Starship Troopers" and "The Puppet Masters" with their ham-fisted Cold War imagery, and the hokey new-age crap that is "Stranger in a Strange Land") but the philosophical concepts outlined in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" are used in many a classroom discussion even today. I'm not trying to claim that everything the man wrote should be taken as gospel, but he made some excellent points...including genetic hazard as the only sensible basis for defining incest.


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Live a Lush Life
Da Chef

[Chef Troy]

BTW, I agree that "Farnham's Freehold" is at the low end of the quality scale for a Heinlein book.

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Live a Lush Life
Da Chef

[Chef Troy]

Man! I hate it when I get interested in a thread just when everyone else starts to ignore it. *sigh*

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Live a Lush Life
Da Chef

[heatherlee]

well there are a lot of links on the internet for this subject. this is another subject that I just have a plain old hard time with..so Ill leave it at that

[Broodha]

Great thread!

[Buck The Diver]

Soon to be closed, I bet.

[dqa]

Originally posted by Enright3
There is a horror movie.... where the two siblings (teenage brother & sister) have an incestuous relationship.Flowers in the Attic?

[lindsay.reid]

I remember that in a psych. class I took back in high school, the teacher mentioned something sort of related to this. Apparently, brothers and sisters who have never met and don't realize they are related (but have grown to adulthood) are usually very sexually attracted when they meet. The study posited that this was due to a couple of things, the main one being that people are attracted to others who resemble themselves. The study also posited that the reason why brothers and sisters who grow up together do not usually experience the same kind of attraction is because societal standards have influenced them.

[Derleth]

SPOILER

A `can anyone help me find this book' question related to incest:

A man finds a paradise planet from hearing about it from an old spacer friend who had to leave lest he divulge the Big Secret. Once there, the man gets bizay with the natives (hell, doesn't everyone? :)) and finds out the Big Secret is ... incest. In the story, incest cures the natural human drive to be assholish by moderating the gene pool and making big genetic swings in any direction impossible.

Any ideas?

[clairobscur]

Originally posted by lindsay.reid
I remember that in a psych. class I took back in high school, the teacher mentioned something sort of related to this. Apparently, brothers and sisters who have never met and don't realize they are related (but have grown to adulthood) are usually very sexually attracted when they meet. The study posited that this was due to a couple of things, the main one being that people are attracted to others who resemble themselves. The study also posited that the reason why brothers and sisters who grow up together do not usually experience the same kind of attraction is because societal standards have influenced them.




I've read at the contrary that people were more attracted when the genetic difference between them was greater. But I can't remember at all what methodology was used to demonstrate that...

[effac3d]

I remember reading something written by a psychologist?,sorry but i have no idea where to find it to cite :)

Basically it was posited that father daughter intercourse was almost always harmful to the daughters emotional health,mother son incest was not considered that severe.

Incest between siblings or between aunts nephews,uncles neices was considered to be not harmful,and sometimes beneficial to the participants emotional health.

Now the article was discussing at least mid to late teen participants,so child molestation wasn't covered.
I do remember that the article claimed that males faired far better than females in the emotional problems area,sexist maybe but i see a basis for it.

[Shodan]

Hi, Derleth -

Maybe you mean the short story "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" by Theodore Sturgeon, in the collection Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison.

Regards,
Shodan

[CasperQ]

I read an article (about a year ago, IIRC) in "Discover" magazine regarding a tribe and described their approach to child raising. The boys and girls would be segregated once weaned, boys raised by the men and girls by the women, and they boys (it did not mention the girls) were used as sexual objects until such a time as they could establish their manhood through hunting and whatnot.

This goes back to the original OP which, if I understood the question correctly, simply asked if incestuous relationships would or could ever gain the same societal acceptance as homosexuality (not making a correlation between incest and homosexuality, just using them as two issues that in earlier years were both socially unacceptable). So the society described in "Discover" magazine WAS accepting of both factors - as to whether America's ways and mores ever stretch this far? I doubt it - too much puritan thread in the American lifestyle - we're lightyears behind many other countries...

[CasperQ]

::Admits that she remembers this article strictly because she had such a hard time with it's premises - and that it raised many discussions in her group to get other people's opinions::

It boils down to acceptance of other cultures and, as someone said earlier, celebrating diversity.

Though in this case, when in Rome I could NOT do as the Romans do...!!!

[Mighty_Girl]

I see two reasons why incestual relationships might be so widely unaccepted.

Parents-children relationship: One of the participants is in a position of power. The participants are not on equal footing, even in those societies that accepted siblings relationships parents-children seemed to be a no-no. I would like to know what the genetical consequenses would be. I GUESS that it is worse than in the case of the offspring coming from siblings.

Siblings: Well, I don't know if there is a great danger of the offsprings having genetical deffects. I have heard that for organism that reproduce through sex variety is an advantage.

There is also the fact that it is advantegous to create links between clans/families/tribes. If people just marry in the family new links will not be created, in that case there will be no need for a larger society to exist.

[TV time]

Please excuse me if my response gets a bit rambly. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time last night and got my nose broken and I am a bit foggy today, but I do have something to add, even if it may not flow as well as I wish.

About 12 years back I briefly worked as a translator for a fellow who was examining a relationship between pheramones (sp) and sexual desire. Well actually, it went beyond that, it dealt with lack of desire. His contention was that, as we all know, sexual attraction is directly related to scents emmited below the cognitive level by specific individuals and other individuals' responses. He took this a step further and was well on his way to establishing a link between the virtually universial taboo (yes it is done almost everywhere, but it is taboo almost everywhere too) of incest and those same pheremones.

He was suggesting that because of genetic similarities of specific pheremones within a family unit, individuals within that family unit were predisposed to not find those other individuals within that family unit sexually appealing dispite having many other sexual attributes that others would be arroused by. At the time I knew him, he was not certain whether it was a specific aspect of the pheremone or merely that the constant nearness of a family member's phermones sort of overdosing the other individual into being unresponsive. He said it was linked to animals' genetic proclivity to widen the gene pool.

When I first read the OP, I did a search for the informaton and was unable to find a cite (or site for that matter). I could well be misspelling his name or he may have never published (or both). However, when I worked with him he seemed to have compiled a great deal of evidence on the topic.

TV

[Eats_Crayons]

Originally posted by Mighty_Girl
I see two reasons why incestual relationships might be so widely unaccepted.

Parents-children relationship: One of the participants is in a position of power. The participants are not on equal footing, even in those societies that accepted siblings relationships parents-children seemed to be a no-no. I would like to know what the genetical consequenses would be. I GUESS that it is worse than in the case of the offspring coming from siblings.

Siblings: Well, I don't know if there is a great danger of the offsprings having genetical deffects. I have heard that for organism that reproduce through sex variety is an advantage.

There is also the fact that it is advantegous to create links between clans/families/tribes. If people just marry in the family new links will not be created, in that case there will be no need for a larger society to exist. Finally, a really good answer to the OP.

There's an interesting article on incest and inbreeding here (http://is2.dal.ca/~kcollin2/incest.html) that also contains cites to supporting material.

Mighty's post seems pretty good.

[hibernicus]

1) Anais Nin supposedly seduced her father.
2) Sir Francis Beaufort (inventor of the wind scale) reveals in his diaries an incestuous affair with his sister, that took place when they were both quite elderly.

Allegations of incestuous behaviour have frequently been made against female royalty in order to discredit them.

In fiction, you have a brother and sister liaison in Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire.

[Melandry]

Re: Egyptian brother-sister incest, I think a telling fact that speaks to the OP's interest in consensual incest is how quickly the (Greek/Macedonian) Ptolemaic dynasty adapted to the custom. The second ruler of that dynasty, Ptolemy II Philadelphos, married his full sister (Arsinoe). Of course they had no children, so it's hard to tell if it was more a sham marriage to fulfill forms. It wasn't until Ptolemy IV that a Ptolemy married his sister and had a child with her. I guess by that time you could posit them having "gone native" as it were. In general Greek and native Egyptian elements in Ptolemaic Egypt mostly stayed separated, however I do not know if the royal household remained Greek in mores or not...

Additionally, several of the crazier Roman emperors, such as Caligula, seemed interested in adopting this custom of the ruler marrying a close relative to avoid "contamination" of the royal bloodline. Of course they were crazy, so they can't exactly be taken as the best examples of well-adjusted people adopting incest consensually. What I'm getting at, though, is that although raised in cultures which did not have an approved tradition of incest as the native Egyptians had, these folks seem to have "converted" fairly quickly.

[Tamerlane]

quote]In general Greek and native Egyptian elements in Ptolemaic Egypt mostly stayed separated, however I do not know if the royal household remained Greek in mores or not...[/quote]

Although the Lagids ( Ptolemies ) did adopt some "Oriental" customs, like deification and a remote despotism, it could be said that in that they were just emulating Alexander the Great who broke with the rougher, more personal style of kingship the Macedonians had been used to well before his young death. Now it might well be the case that Pharaonic custom influenced the adoption of brother-sister marriage and cast the custom in the divine image of Osiris and Isis. On the other hand it might have just given Ptolemy II a ready excuse ;). His very ambitious and capable sister Arsinoe II had already been married to two other major figures among the Diadochi, Lysimachus ( next to the last of Alexander's old officers to go ) and her half-brother Ptolemy Keraunos ( Ptolemy II's elder, estranged brother, Lysimachus' lieutenant, who was mostly interested in eliminating the threat she posed to his ambition - he slaughtered her sons by Lysimachus and she fled to Egypt ). It was apparently on her instigation that Ptolemy II first wife Arsinoe I ( daughter of Lysimachus ) was banished and it was she who persuaded Ptolemy II Philadelphus to marry her. Later the custom became more entrenched in the family, but at the time it was considered a great scandal.

However it seems in general the Lagids weren't very Egyptian, despite the trappings. Cleopatra VII ( the last, famous one ) was apparently the only Lagid who ever learned to speak the native tongue and in much of the later Ptolemaic period, the Lagids' influence at times scarcely extended beyond ( very self-consciously Greek ) Alexandria.

- Tamerlane

[Derleth]

Originally posted by Shodan
Hi, Derleth -

Maybe you mean the short story "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" by Theodore Sturgeon, in the collection Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison.

Regards,
Shodan Yep, that's it.

Thanks. :)