I think I remember reading that its against the law in Australia for a person to marry their step-sibling, but I may be mistaken (please correct me if I’m wrong). If that’s the case, then it would probably be unacceptable for them to have sex, too.
Well, I had assumed that it was only us humans, with our highly developed social society, who didn’t do it. I figured that before social norms as we know them developed, pretty much everything was ok. I had no idea it was not done even in the animal kingdom…
raisinbread, the legal definition of incest (as in, what gets you hauled before a court and makes you a lot of “friends” at the jail) in many jurisdictions is “sexual intercourse between people who, by their degree of consanguinity or affinity, are forbidden from marriage”. Limiting ourselves to the US, everywhere this includes at least direct ascendants/descendants, siblings whether full or half, and aunt/uncle-nephew/niece. IIRC by now relatives-by-adoption are 100% equal to relatives-by-blood before the law in every state, so they are out. With step-relatives it may vary depending on when the marriage of the parties that created the step-relationship took place (if it happens after everyone is an adult, they may be off the hook) and if any of the parties is still a dependent of the family.
As to your scenarios, that would be likelier in the case of stepsiblings where the link of marriage happens after they are already older, so there has not been the conditioning/imprinting of having “grown up as brother and sister”.
Are your cats completely indoor cats? If so, their mating might be a matter of no other mates being available. Felines in the wild reject males from the litter as soon as they near sexual maturity to avoid this. Your female cat could not get rid of her son, and when hormones start flaring up, animals sometimes resort to whatever’s available. (Much like a human male in a bar after 1 A.M)
Interestingly enough, the only apparent taboo in Egyptian royal marriage was the mother-son combination, though the father-daughter marriage was perfectly acceptable.
There is a school of thought that believes most human social behavior is based off of our genetic programming to avoid what is harmful to our species, and to lust after what is helpful. Thus, we developed the rules of society and culture based on what our genes instinctively told us was beneficial/harmful.
I just need to relate an anecdote here.
My mother knows of a family (she is a custody attorney and this is how she knows about it) which had some serious incest:
Father + Daughter = several children
Father + GRANDDAUGHTER = a few more children.
EWW!
I also knew a lady online many years ago who was involved off and on with her father (as an adult).
:eek:
OpalCat, just out of morbid curiousity, when you say “Father + Grandaughter,” was the grandaughter one of the products of the “Father + Daughter” combination? E.g., simultaneously a daughter and a granddaughter?
I remember hearing of a memoir called * The Kiss * by (I believe) Kathryn Harrison, about the “affair” she had as an adult with her father. Never read it, 'cause the subject matter is a little disturbing, to say the least.
Lissa, I read about the rat/lemon juice experiment, too. I think it was in one of Jared Diamond’s books, but I can’t remember now. I’m not sure what to make of all this, actually. I have this other, somewhat conflicting theory that as children, we tend to idealize the parent of the opposite sex, since this is usually the first member of the sex we encounter, and we thus generalize their behavior to all members of that sex. It’s the old “I keep dating guys just like my father!!!” conundrum, which my friends and I have talked about often.
I think parental imprinting may play a role in forming criteria for later selecting mates, but obviously some sort of biologically inherent taboo against incest is in place, at least in most species.
I agree about the cats, though. Most domesticated animals seem to have lost a lot in the way of instinctual behaviors. This may have more to do with needing to adapt to unusual circumstances than any genetic reason, though. Cats in the wild would never be in such close proximity to one another, thus the threat of incest would never arise.
Kalhoun, that is a crazy situation. I imagine there’s a lot of tension at family get-togethers. Although to be fair, I believe it was okay in medeival Europe to marry your neice if you had special dispensation from the pope. (Richard III was apparently going to try this with Elizabeth of York at one point.)
I also heard of something similar to OpalCat’s mom’s story. Years ago, there was some sort of scandal in our school district when it was learned that a father had gotten his 15-year-old daughter pregnant. Aparently the school was concerned about such a young girl having a kid, and they asked her who the father was. Story went that she told them right away it was her dad, and she apparently didn’t understand what was wrong with that. :eek: AFAIK, the father went to jail and the girl got sent away somewhere. It’s not like I knew these people or anything, but I always felt really bad for that baby. Imagine going through life with that behind you.
Yes, it was the same man. He had kids (several) with his daughter, then more kids with his daughter’s daughter.
Please tell me he’s in jail somewhere, being serviced by a large man named Bubba with AIDS and a deformed penis.
Mother/son incest used to be common in some parts of Japan, even into the last century. The mother would “educate” her pubescent son in the ways of sex. Very interesting article on the subject: The universality of incest.
I only skimmed the article, but I think the author’s characterization of Japanese sexual practices is at best questionable and at worst racist.
One of my sister’s high school buddies married her step brother. They aren’t blood relatives, and didn’t meet until they were young teens. Its a little odd, but not, in Minnesota, illegal.
As an adoptive mom, I know a woman who has a child who’s birthparents are an incest combination (she hasn’t said how, and its none of my business). Adoptive parents have long conversations with each other regarding how to inform their children of the circumstances of their birth. The easy one is “your mom wasn’t married and couldn’t take care of a baby at that point in time.” Much harder are stories involving rape and/or incest - but they happen. One of the things we were asked as an adoptive parent is if we’d be willing to parent a child who was born under such circumstances.
The majority of these kids, btw, turn out just fine. Genetic recessives will show up more often, but not often enough that all genetic combinations result in drooling idiots with rare blood diseases.
To be fair, most royalty incest was cousin marriages, and since you maybe only saw your cousin a few times when you were younger, it wasn’t seen as such a big deal.
While incest undoubtedly occurs more often than it should the 1991 article referenced leans very heavily on the validiity of recovered childhood memories in therapy to find a hidden epidemic of incest. The validiity of memories recovered under therapy/hypnosis has been brought into serious question (to say the least) by more recent research.
Not in all dynasties, though – the Egyptian Pharoahs (I very much doubt the modern-day Egyptian royal family was into this, though being Muslims they may have practiced cousin marriages) are the most famous example, but the Siamese, Hawai’ian and several other families also practiced sibling, parent-child, niece-uncle, etc. unions until very close to the present day. IIRC, the last incestuous union among the Thai royals took place in 1943! Even among the Pharoahs standards varied from dynasty to dynasty – most of the early kings had no problems marrying their daughters, but this was strictly taboo for the Ptolemies, who wed only sisters, nieces, and cousins.
In some European dynasties cousin marriages were the rule, especially in the Iberian royal families, which also practiced uncle-niece pairings. One famous example was Queen Maria I da Gloria of Portugal who married her father’s younger brother, King Pedro III of Portugal. They had 7 children, and their eldest son, Prince José of Beira, married his aunt, Maria’s sister, Benedicta. Thankfully, this union produced no offspring.
In the 15th century Jean V, Comte de Armagnac, claimed to have received a Papal dispensation that allowed him to marry his own full-sister, Isabelle – and people BELIEVED him! :eek: Only after they produced three children did anyone bother to look into the situation and discover that the dispensation had been forged by Jean himself. If one was powerful and wealthy enough, one could get away with damn near anything.
.:Nichol:.
I think it’s important to distinguish between marriage and sex if the subject is incest. It’s perfectly possible to have a marriage motivated by politics in which the husband and wife never have sex. I’m not saying that all intra-family royal marriages were chaste ones, or even that any were, but from what I know of Egyptian history there’s room for doubt as to whether any given incestuous marriage actually led to incestuous sex or inbred babies. The pharoahs kept concubines, and royal geneological records often failed to mention mom’s name.
Interestingly, in the language of Ancient Egypt it was also common to use the words for “brother” and “sister” as simple endearments. Some early scholars were shocked to find so many references to married people calling each other “brother” and “sister” and figured that incestuous marriages must have been very common until they figured out it just meant “darling”!
In any event, even when the royals were incestuous, this had litte to do with what was acceptable for commoners. In many cultures royalty had the power to make behavior acceptable, at least for themselves, so they were often able to do pretty much as they liked regardless of general social standards.
I can only use the Ptolemies as an example, as they are the ones I know best, but there are plenty of examples of mother’s names being given, for instance Pausanias provides the mother for Ptolemy II, saying: * Ptolemy being the son of Berenice… *
Pausanias also writes of Ptolemy IX Soter II, son of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II Tryphon, in his “Descriptions of Greece”: *The one called Philometor is eighth in descent from Ptolemy son of Lagus, and his surname was given him in sarcastic mockery, for we know of none of the kings who was so hated by his mother. Although he was the eldest of her children she would not allow him to be called to the throne, but prevailed on his father before the call came to send him to Cyprus. Among the reasons assigned for Cleopatra’s enmity towards her son is her expectation that Alexander the younger of her sons would prove more subservient, and this consideration induced her to urge the Egyptians to choose Alexander as king. *
Now, in the first example Berenice was not a sister, nor a wife, but she was still mentioned by name. In the second example we know that Cleopatra III was the mother (and not Cleopatra II, who was also the wife of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II Tryphon) because Cleo II was the only Cleopatra alive at the time to have her son exiled.
.:Nichol:.
tsk, tsk, the AIDS bit was overkill, Bubba would have been enough…
But actually I think he has gone on to a career as the lead character in a whole bunch of repetitive and unoriginal usenet-porn stories