To my mind it makes sense to strongly discourage via social stigma a behaviour that, in most cases (but not all) is likely to lead to difficult issues of consent.
It is similar in that respect to someone having sex with their mental health worker, social worker, or physician. Assuming they are all adults, it still would seem wrong even though obviously there will be instances in which it was fully consensual - yet there is inbuilt in the relationship issues of power and dependency that make it easy to understand why liasons within such a relationship should be discouraged, though not illegal (they usually result in professional discipline rather than criminal charges - where it is a question of perceived undue influence, not necessarily rape per se).
Of course built into that analysis in respect of incest specifically is the fact that it is very often a question of rape or child abuse. The ‘we, though close family members, decided to have sex as a rational decision made when we were both consenting adults’ strikes me as a highly unusual case, though I have no statistics to draw on - maybe that is a prejudice on my part.
What legitimate interest has the state in regulating the behavior of consenting adults?
I know of many persons who would like to make my marriage to my wife illegal because it’s interracial (or appears so; Kim is biracial and identifies as black, so to her mind it isn’t.) I know at least one person who thinks ours is a de facto exploitive relationship because of the age difference. I know of endless persons who think my late cousin’s 15-year-relationship with his boyfriend was against God’s law and should be prohibited. Can you point explain how any of those prohibitions/prejudices differ significantly from prohibitng consensual adult incest?
This is where I find it so difficult to not have siblings. I have no idea what level of inappropriateness or squickiness one “should” feel at the idea. In the case reported in the OP’s article, the idea doesn’t really bother me all that much. The harm I would be most concerned about in that instance is how the two siblings (and the parents, perhaps) would be villified if they were ever discovered.
While I’m not being addressed, I’ll take the liberty of responding …
While I’m not in favour of legal prohibitions, I’d answer as follows: as an analogous situation, adult incest tracks more closely with those relationships I have described (with one’s physician, mental health worker, social worker) than those you have decribed (interracial, age difference, same-sex (?)). Both are similar in that there are prejudices against both categories; but they differ in that the former legitimately raise concerns of the validity of consent and are, in many cases, overtly exploitive (in that the “consent” is really an aspect of undue influence). The latter are not (or no more so than any relationships) and so one is left with nothing more than prejudice as a reason for disapproval.
A flaw in your argument is that marrying or fucking one’s physician, mental-health worker, or social worker is not illegal, so long as the marriage or fucking is consensual. True, the physican/therapist/etc. in the relationship may face some unpleasant consequences from his professional peers, but I am not aware of any state or government that takes judicial notice of it. Are you?
I’m not in favour of legal prohibitions in this instance, as stated previously.
I do however think that there is a valid distinction between ‘consensual adult incest’ and the various sorts of relationships you have mentioned - so I was answering the question in your post (“Can you point explain how any of those prohibitions/prejudices differ significantly from prohibitng consensual adult incest?”), rather than defending the illegality of adult incest.
To my mind, the preferred state would be one in which such relationships in this category (adult consensual incest, sex with a therapist) were heavily discouraged, but not illegal. In contrast with (say) interracial sex, which should be neither discouraged nor illegal.
I would probably make it legal for consenting adults. I am a nutcase about the sexualization and sexual abuse of children, so for anyone under 18 it is wrong.
Daddy starts on daughter when she’s 13. By the time she’s 18, she’s “consenting,” to the sex only because she’s been brainwashed, for lack of a better term, since she was 13.
Now the activity comes to light. It’s certainly handy if we can charge dad for the sex that we can prove, isn’t it? In other words, the earlier acts are obviously illegal, but the problem is proving them. Daughter’s testimony could establish those acts, but she ain’t talkin. But we can prove the post-18 activity by whatever event brought the sordid business to light in the first place.
Now, does this hamper the ability of the truly consensual 18 year old girl to bang her equally consensual 50-year-old dad for the first time. Yes, it does. And I am willing to live in a world where we do that, willing to make that tradeoff to give us another tool to prosecute the majority of cases where the diddling starts well before 18, but sadly not in front of a notary public, a minister, and a Supreme Court judge so we have reliable witnesses to prosecute it.
Recall the “hoopla” regarding the Morman offshoot branch in Texas, that kept the girls on the compound and married them off (I presume without 100% consent) to other, much older members. The young lads were, generally, weeded out.
In a case like that (if those stories were true), where the women folk are kept sequestered, and raised to believe that sleeping with Dad/Uncle/Brother was “god’s will”, I couldn’t convince myself to think of that situation as “properly” consentual.
The legal system gets called on to cover a wide range of different situations.
I think that’s also why it’s so hard to see FGM as consensual even in situations where the woman is over eighteen. If you’re grown up in a society where saying no to something like that isn’t really an option, how can you ever meaningfully decide you want it?
This is quite a tale, but let’s be realistic in two ways. The first way is that if we don’t have a means of establishing “those acts” then the actual commission of those acts are precisely what is in question. Outlawing the relationship on the evidence of an unprovable story we told ourselves is not particularly cool in my book.
But we must be realistic in another way. A considerable body of evidence exists for an innate taboo against incest. This points us, practically, to the notion that if there is some incestuous relationship, there probably is something going on that isn’t on the up-and-up. That is, plainly, our understanding of why incest is so taboo could be seen as evidence for why a particular relationship is, in fact, one outside the realm of mutual consent.
For example, it’s been shown that people raised in close proximity develop non-sexual bonds, but that people prefer to form sexual bonds with those like the people they were raised in close proximity with. So evidence that a particular child was in fact well-cared for, time-wise, by the incestuous parent, could certainly be an indication of a relationship outside the bounds of ordinary consent and into the realm of a crime. But a father who wasn’t around wouldn’t necessarily trigger the innate incest taboo in a daughter.
I agree, however, that absent any testimony from the daughter in your example, proving the father’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt may be very difficult.
[Devil’s Advocate]
Some* say the same about monogamy in our culture. If you’ve grown up with the idea that one person forever is the only moral way to have a relationship, and having more than one sexual partner is culturally impugned, then how can you meaningfully decide you want it?
[/Devil’s Advocate]
*To be crystal clear: not me. Even though I don’t practice monogamy, I have no problem with those who do. But it IS an argument made by some, and it’s as good a hot-button topic as any.
How often does this sort of thing really happen, do you think? Most women I know and have read of who were molested as children high tail it outta Dodge the second they’re old enough, if Dad hasn’t lost interest by then. Or they’re locked in the basement dungeon with their mother and sisters. The only consenting father-daughter incest I’ve read of is the sort where Dad wasn’t around when the daughter was growing up and they met as adults. It’s pretty easy to see why he couldn’t have been brainwashing her if he didn’t know her back then.
I think you and I might have a fundamental difference in viewpoint on law and it’s place in human interaction, though. Where I’d rather see more individual freedoms, even if that means some might abuse that, I think (correct me if I’m wrong) you don’t have a problem with restricting freedoms in the pursuit of no harm ever. I think curtailing the freedom of consenting adults who want to have sex is harm.
But okay, I can see your point. Do you feel any differently about sibling incest?
I can tell you, though, that I had professional involvement in three different cases of 18+ parent/child incest that began when the child was under 18.
The most powerful example was a young woman who was 27, and had been charged with arson. She set fire to her father’s car, and during the course of working on her defense, it came out that her father had been having sex with her since she was 15. The worst thing about the whole ugly situation was that she was desperate that no one find out about it. She was willing to get jail time rather than testify about the incest.
Well, I favor balancing the competing interests… but yes, I’m willing to curtail a bit of sexual freedom for adults in the name of curtailing harm.
Sibling incest is less of a worry for me, simply because the power dynamic is not likely to be so imbalanced. But I am far from sanguine about it.
To many people, sex between siblings has a Yecch Factor, but I think the reason for that is familiarity breeds contempt. If two people who never knew each other before, get together at the age of consent and don’t know that they are closely related, is there any reason to believe that they would have a natural, mutual revulsion?
Anyone remember the Taxi episode where Alex meets this charming girl of his dreams, Tawny, and they are really starting to get it on when they realize she is his niece? Suddenly, and for no other reason, they separate. They were repelled by the thought of incest, nothing else.
Actually I don’t find it difficult. FGM, unlike incest is harmful on an objective, physical level. At best, moral or not, consenting to it is simply stupid. Incest, as long as pregnancy is avoided isn’t intrinsically stupider or more harmful than any other kind of sex. The harm caused by incest is emotional, and cause because it’s not typically consenting.
In other words, FGM is automatically harmful because it IS a form of harm in itself. Incest is not.
Mutual, perhaps not, but it has been shown that women normally find the scent of males who are close relatives or otherwise share a similar MHC ( immune system molecule ) to be a sexual turnoff.
I would think that a good deal of the emotional harm of incest would take place even if it was, on the surface, consensual. I could easily imagine a person consenting to sex with a parent or sibling and then deeply regretting it, being messed up about it, having their family relations destroyed by it, having it strain their relationships with others, etc.