Yes, there is a grey area involved. But FGM is far more towards the “having a limb cut off” end of the spectrum than the “get your tongue pierced” end.
Well, that involves other people’s prejudices, and the unpredictability in any relationship. Neither of which is a moral problem, but a practical one.
And making either into a moral consideration quickly leads to absurdities; for example, is it immoral to marry someone who’s race or religion your family disapproves of ? And if a relationship potentially screwing you up makes it immoral, doesn’t that forbid ALL relationships ?
That’s my second-favorite Taxi episode of all time. “Uncle Alex?!”
[Taxi hijack] All-time favorite: IIRC the title was Nina loves Alex. A young black cabbie comes to work at Sunshine and has a crush on him. He puts her off and finally explains that he’s a “no-magic man.” She kisses him and he realizes he does want to be with her, but she’s gone out the door—and she’s over him.[/Taxi hijack]
It’s been awhile since I studied genetics, but it’s fascinating stuff. The incest taboo, I thought, arose from concerns about inbreeding/the possible expression of recessive genes. Of course for royalty, all that goes out the window…which is why some of them suffered from hemophilia, for instance, and would have done well to incorporate some peasant stock.
IIRC it’s a given that we tend to get more “related” all the time. Start with four families, A, B, C, and D. Have their children mate with the others; they have three families to choose from. Maybe they choose such that all the kids are either AB and CD. When that generation is ready to mate, they only have two families to choose from…ABs can only marry into C or D and CDs can only marry into A or B. So Maybe you and up with ABCs and BCDs in the third generation. They can’t marry anybody.
The larger scale of the real world helps, but the principle is the same. I imagine it would be difficult in a place like Japan, which was closed to foreigners for a long time. Or in backwater areas and other closed communities like the Amish. But my conclusion also was that the lack of choices was probably the force behind allowing the marriage of cousins.
Another factor that may help is spontaneous mutation…not caused by radiation or anything, just part of the natural order. Nature will shuffle the deck even if you won’t.
You know, you could remove the word “adult” and this would still be just as true. Telling someone “we know better than you, this was rape even if you don’t think so” simply because they haven’t orbited the sun a sufficient number of times also takes away their power of judgment and discrimination, overpowering them with our collective legal will. It’s infantilizing and obnoxious even when directed at a teenager.
I am rather surprised that there has been no mention of the basic reason incest would be discouraged- the fact that unless you are willing to cull the progeny, you are going to have a higher number of defective kids.
I’d say both, with a heaping helping of EWWWWWWWWWWW. My sister is very pretty but I cannot possibly conceive of being sexually attracted to her. It squicks me the hell out but I guess if they’re not hurting anybody, have fun! sickos
I’m going to go ahead and have to disagree with you there, Mr2001. Not orbiting the sun a sufficient number of times is a fantastic reason to remove someone’s power of judgement. I wouldn’t let my 3 yr old nephew play with a loaded handgun, I wouldn’t let my friends 9 yr old son drive my car and I don’t believe that my 13 yr old son fully understands the ramifications of a sexual relationship. When I spoke to him about why having sex at a young age was a bad idea, he chimed in with, “Well because if she got pregnant I probably would have to get a good job and wouldn’t get to spend as much time playing my xbox.” :smack:
Therefore, we draw a line that works for the majority of people, and accept that it may unnecessarily restrict a small number of individuals.
I have friends who can drive VERY well at 110mph, but I wouldn’t recommend upping the speed limit because most of us cannot.
I am not trying to state that inbreeding is a valid current argument against incest- I just think it is the reason the taboo exists at all- I don’t think that the consent/nonconsent issue is really relevant to the development of the taboo.
As an only child I always expected that if I had a sister that she and I would have played around- 'specially cause I grew up in the middle of nowhere with no one else around… But of course I don’t know if it would have been like that at all.
Nor should you. But come on: the reason you don’t trust them to do that isn’t because the numbers 3, 9, or 13 are less than the number 18. You don’t trust them because after a few minutes of conversation, you can see for yourself that they don’t understand gun safety, driving, or sex. You could tell that without even asking their ages, simply by talking to them over the phone.
When the only reason to rob someone of their power of judgment is their age, however, it’s quite different.
No, we don’t: there’s no evidence that it “works for the majority of people”, because the supporters of these arbitrary limits never bother to think about whether they meet any objective standard.
The age of consent is 14 in some places, 18 in others, but no one cares to find out which one is correct. Maybe the majority of 14-18 year olds are capable of making these decisions on their own, and the states with higher limits are stripping agency away from millions of teenagers for no good reason. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and the states with lower limits are trusting millions of teenagers to make decisions they aren’t equipped to make. But since the people setting the limits seem to think it’s a waste of time to think about objective requirements for making those decisions, we can’t be sure.
You make a valid point, but I can assure you that I could prep a teenager to give the “right” answers and there’s really no way to tell whether they’re A.) Quite intelligent and mature or B.) Good at parroting. I’d almost always suspect the latter of children under 14, mostly suspect it of children under 16 and I’m a little hazy on the 16-18, but since parents are legally responsible for their children (at least in my state) until 18 years of age, that seems like a good call. I suppose we could start to blur that line as well. Raise our children to seem quite mature at 15 or 16 and then boot them right out of the house and let them sink, swim or (more likely) draw tax dollars as most companies don’t hire <18 groups full time.
So now we have to change the law to hire children full time… do you see where I’m going with this? If 17 yr old Johnny can’t get his rocks off with his 25 yr old girlfriend for another 4 months, I just can’t get too worked up about that. YMMV, of course.
You’ve got me here. I’d much rather it be consistent. I’d much rather all aspects of adulthood come at a single age. I do believe that if you can be trusted to die for your country, you can be trusted to drive a car. If you can be trusted to have sex, you can be trusted to order a beer. 18 seems like a good, solid age for all of these things, since most children are out of high school by this age and are able to make decisions regarding their future (be it college/military/job force/bum/etc.)
I’m not sure this is the case. Inbreeding certainly increases the risk of genetic problems when it comes to (heterosexual) incestuous relationships, so if inclination towards incest in an inheritable trait then natural selection would have favored those less inclined to sleep with their siblings. But whenever this topic comes up, it seems that what really upsets people is the violation of expected parent/child or sibling relationships.
Most people definitely aren’t cool with the idea of a parent having sex with their adopted child, or sex between step-siblings raised together from a young age. Yet the story of Oedipus and Jocasta or the idea of two separated-at-birth siblings who unwittingly wind up in a sexual relationship are usually considered more tragic than revolting.
From a genetics POV, incest between child and parent must carry basically the same risk as incest between two siblings…if my logic is right and the law of averages holds up.
E.g. father and daughter have 50% of the same genes, 50% for the ones she got from him and 0% for the ones she got (and he doesn’t have) from the mother.
Siblings get genes from the same parents…of the genes from the father, there’s a 50/50 chance each will be the same or different, and ditto from the mother. Half of the genes from the father’s half will be the same (25% of the overall), ditto the mother’s side. So they’ll be 25% the same on the genes from the father, 25% the same on the genes from the mother. 25%+25%=50%
The parent/child product should have 25% repetition on the genes, as would the sib/sib product, assuming the law of averages holds.
Any doper geneticists want to confirm or refute this?
Is it really? I’m not being snarky, I have no idea and wonder if other Dopers know. I have certainly heard this before, yet I have also heard that incest between siblings is not that risky genetically (in a scenario where it is one sibling couple as opposed to a repeated cultural pattern) AND that if siblings do have bad genes, it can be viewed as better for the species overall to keep the bad genes out of the general gene pool. Survival of the fittest and all that, if your kids are that defective they won’t reproduce.
In theory, I’m okay with whatever consenting adults want to do with each other in bed as long as no one expects me to jump on the bandwagon. However, I was struck by what a poor case the linked article makes for consensual sibling incest. Even with the sibling aspect aside, it read like a description of a sad dysfunctional relationship. It is baffling to me how someone could share that story and believe she was portraying sibling incest in a positive manner.
Well, what are you afraid of? Do you think they’d study the issues well enough to convince you that they know what they’re doing, and then forget it as soon as you left the room? Or act in a way that’s inconsistent with what they’ve learned and rehearsed, just to spite you?
Honestly, you could make the same accusations of an adult. Why should anyone believe that you or I are capable of making our own decisions about gun ownership, driving, or sex, if not because of our ability to demonstrate mature, rational thought? You say you’d “almost always suspect” a 14 year old of merely being “good at parroting”, but if someone else happens to suspect everyone under age 75 of the same thing, isn’t his suspicion just as valid? If it’s acceptable to have an arbitrary age limit with no objective standard to back it up, drawing the line at 75 is no less plausible than 18.
I think I do, but it sounds like a fine destination to me. The law already prevents discrimination based on sex, religion, and race. Hell, it even prevents discrimination based on age – but only for being too old. Changing the law to prevent discrimination based on being too young would fit in perfectly, and perhaps we should be ashamed that it doesn’t do that already.
Indeed. I, on the other hand, can’t get worked up about the thought that a person who’s having safe, consensual sex might have “parroted” his or her way into it.
Of course, on this and any other civil rights issue, it’s easy to point to individual cases and argue that they aren’t a big deal. If Johnny can’t eat at a certain restaurant because of the color of his skin, he isn’t going to starve, right? But the principle that people should be judged as individuals, not as members of an arbitrary group, deserves to be taken into account, even when the harm in any particular case can be casually dismissed.
Cite. Read on to the second page where she talks about the pill flipping the attraction around – maybe this could have something to do with it, actually.
The article you referenced is entertainment, not a scientfic paper. It draws conclusions not supported by the meager evidence. Only one study was cited, and not referenced directly, and it had a sample size of 54, too small to be worth anything. The writer, Brie Cadman, says he has
So the editors gave him a story to write and he made it interesting.
It’s an intriguing premise (scent/attraction), indeed, but not supported by evidence you supplied.