Should incest be normalized?

[ErosWired]

12 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

Caligula was far from alone among the Roman imperials in committing incest. Agrippina, Nero's mother and sister to Caligula, married her paternal uncle Claudius. Rumors (possibly spread by opponents of the family) alleged Nero and his mother Agrippina had a relationship. But then those rumors wouldn't have had much effect were there not, as you noted, a general prohibition on incest.

Note, too, that "incest" is a matter of degree; obviously it applies to parent/child or sibling relationships, but what about cousins? In researching our family tree, my mother found numerous records of church dispensations for first cousins marrying. And in the latter part of the 19th century and into the early 20th, cousin marriage was almost universal among European royals, because most of them prohibited (if not by law, then by custom) a member of the royal family marrying a non-royal. In Great Britain, it was only after George V expressly okayed royals marrying noble-but-not-royal individuals that the future George VI was freed to marry his love, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (who most of us would know as the Queen Mother). Prior to that, especially since Victoria's progeny had married into almost every major royal family in Europe, any suitable marriage candidate was almost certainly a relative.

“Far from alone” stretches it a bit - he wasn’t very far from alone. I had omitted the reference to Agrippina because she, too, was an outlier and less well-known than Caligula. The point being, their behavior was a gross affront to the Romans, and goes a long way in contributing to the infamy that has clung to the name of Caligula down the ages.

Yes, incest is certainly a question of degree of consanguinity, and the status of first cousins is not universally perceived in that regard, neither historically nor in modern times, depending on locale. But in terms of familial structure, the role of first cousins in relation to an individual’s core support family is more variable depending on the society. In some cultures, extended families are very close and highly interdependent, making the potential for relationship trauma and traumatic bonding as a result of incest much higher. In other cultures, cousins may play little or no role in the life of an individual and would therefore pose no more likelihood of relational conflict than any other unrelated person.

The marriage customs and restrictions established to preserve ruling power cannot be conflated to apply to the people in the society at large (and are unwise even at that level). People have an innate sense of what kinds of couplings are wrong. When we watch Game of Thrones, and learn that Cersei and Jaime Lannister, twin brother and sister, are fucking, we instantly understand Wrong, and that is the point of Martin writing them as doing it.

[Poz50something]

1 hour ago, ErosWired said:

 

Yes, incest is certainly a question of degree of consanguinity, 

 

I mean, the Habsburgs took the notion of 'keeping the bloodline pure' and keeping the power within the family to the limit....uncles were wed to their nieces, and cousins to cousins......drooling on the chin with the added inability to close one's mouth, anyone? No takers? [think before following links] https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/what-was-habsburg-jaw-chin-royal-inbreeding-sign/ 

[blackrobe]

14 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

But again, the question remains: is the negative outcome a result of the action itself, or of society's treatment of the action as something shameful or dirty?

Gay sex - ALL gay sex - was treated that way in my lifetime. We've come to realize that the problem isn't the sex itself, but the way society treated people who had it.

So I'm not taking about adaptation - there may well be negative effects for people who've had incestual experiences. The question remains, though: is that because of the incest, or because society makes people ashamed of incest? Those are two very different things.

You're suggesting an hypothesis, that societal disapprobation may be a cause for the negative impacts of incest.

I've also put forward an hypotheses, that perceived positive perceptions of those experiencing an incestuous relationship don't mean that there are no negative impacts from same. The hypotheses are completely disjoint except in that they address the same group.

The wheels to tease out the contributory factors have already been invented. This is how researchers have been able to show that it was societal disapprobation that most impacted gay people, not being same-sex attracted itself. I'm saying "Let's do the research to find out" because the tools exist and they've already worked in the case you're basing your hypothesis on.

When there are multiple hypotheses, we design research to prove or disprove them. That's what I was proposing in a broad way.

Your position seems to be that there are no effective tools to do so, and that's just not so.

[hntnhole]

"Should incest be normalized?"

This ^ is  the original post,  As is often the case, the thread has developed into a deeper issue: namely, serious child abuse.  I have nothing against the "development" of a thread, and enjoy reading the responses.  It was not specified if the prospective participants were boy/girl, boy/boy, girl/girl.  

To the original issue, once the prospective participants have reached the age of majority (as I included earlier), it's not the business of anyone to judge.  There are many interesting viewpoints expressed, and one truly tragic experience.  Doing so would only open the door even wider to judgements from disassociated "arbiters" of normalcy, which we - as gay men of a particularly delicious-yet-deeply-frowned-upon persuasion - should not enable.  

Since we've migrated to include those not of majority, I completely agree, whether biologically related or not, that it should never be tolerated.  Those misguided souls who willfully wreak havoc on the emotional lives of minors should be punished to the greatest extent of the law.  That kind of behavior is a moral outrage, akin to emotional murder.

[BootmanLA]

12 hours ago, blackrobe said:

Your position seems to be that there are no effective tools to do so, and that's just not so.

Not at all. I'm merely saying that at this point, we don't know, and all the harrumphing from people citing examples of people who engaged in incest later having issues doesn't prove the cause one way or the other.

The problem is that it's very difficult to get the number of people needed to do the analysis required to fess up to that kind of activity. Hell, even on this forum I suspect at least half the guys who brag about their brother, father, or uncle breaking them in are just writing fapping material. So it's not that the tools to analyze the data aren't there; it's that the data is very hard to collect, at least a meaningful amount of it.

[blackrobe]

55 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

The problem is that it's very difficult to get the number of people needed to do the analysis required to fess up to that kind of activity. Hell, even on this forum I suspect at least half the guys who brag about their brother, father, or uncle breaking them in are just writing fapping material. So it's not that the tools to analyze the data aren't there; it's that the data is very hard to collect, at least a meaningful amount of it.

Agreed. Finding a representative sample will be difficult, especially if recruiting focuses on those who were adults and only engaged with adult relatives. A convenience sample is the likeliest option.

[Guest]

If it's consentual, then why not! Personally, I've never considered having sex with a relative not because I'm against incest, it was because my relation with my family wasn't good, all I was thinking of when I was young, is how to get away from them.

[ErosWired]

On 1/11/2024 at 11:27 PM, BootmanLA said:

The problem is that it's very difficult to get the number of people needed to do the analysis required to fess up to that kind of activity.

Indeed, this is the kind of problem that plagues studies of many kinds of human activity where any sort of potential shame, embarrassment or stigma is involved, be it abuse, sexuality, mental health, etc. In the case of incest, correlating data over time is particularly fraught among those in the psychiatric field, as the issue is so sensitive that some avoid even using the term incest - thus inevitably influencing the nature of the specific pool of subjects available for their studies.

[Pozguyinchi]

I had sex with my step father from the age of 13 to 18. Because he was my step and not my bio father it was technically not incest. However I agree that it should never be normalized. It was consensual with me but most are not. Sex with two adult members of the family is not illegal and we should stay out of their bedrooms . 

[PervBugChaser]

Adult sex is legal, but raping and sexual assaulting are illegal. It is not about age, but how people conduct sex. I know some guys started to chase for men for sex at young age. Every body is different. The legal ages are set manually. It can't fit everybody.

[BadBob2023]

Definitely not. Gay or straight. 

[Raw1974]

I think it's relative to a case-by-case scenario.   I agree as per above, that rape and sexual assault should be illegal.  I knew what I wanted when I was 4 to 5 years old.   Or at least I think that's when I became conscious about my needs.   I think it is unprecedented to simply say all that those who were involved in incest will manifest mental health concerns.   My mental health is relatively ok.   I also know another family, and their in their late 30s now and they're a very close and loving family.   It works for them.  

[hntnhole]

1 hour ago, Raw1974 said:

that rape and sexual assault should be illegal

They're both already illegal, and have been for many years.

Both are aggressive, violent, non-consensual acts violating another person's most basic rights.  While Federal law avoids the common term "rape", that act is included in the basket of "non-consensual sexual acts", punishable via a fine to life in the clink.  Many States have further codified those acts within their State laws, along with punishments.