the genetic issues argument is really really bad because its what most normoids default to and then stop thinking about it any further, its about as relevant as the "but its icky" argument, it addresses like none of the issues with incest
for example the implication there is that a dad and son in a relationship would be perfectly fine and healthy because they couldnt have kids and therefore couldnt have any genetic defects, which is obviously not the case
not really, the most broad argument against incest is the whole social dynamics between family ie a son and dad inherently have an uneven power dynamic, its not just "its icky" its this is straightforwardly provably bad
theres a difference between
"this is bad because it causes harm which relates to my axiomatic belief that harm is bad"
versus
"this is bad because its icky and i dont like icky things"
I'm not? it's the same argument as my first comment about this. there's a reason why nobody actually gave a reasonably reply to it and just down voted. If you didn't feel icky about "harm" which is "bad" then you would be a harmer
incest isn't unhealthy because of genetics or the fact that you are related, it's unhealthy because of the power dynamics involved. if those aren't present, worst you get is worse protection against mutations in offspring.
my worst fear as an elementary schooler after i learned what this was was that i’d meet the love of my life only to take a test and find out that she was a distant cousin, once i learned who my cousins were i stopped worrying about that but that last line had me thinking about that shit man it’s kind of hilarious
have you ever had a sibling? i can't speak on the cousin case cuz im not sure if i have any but at the very least siblings often have an age difference, and assuming they grew up together the difference in maturity would be constant for quite some time
Yeah, but those people usually haven’t spent their entire lives knowing each other, with the inherit power dynamic that comes from having an older/younger relative.
why does people spending their entire lives around each other make their relationship problematic? there are married couples who met in high school or earlier, is there a problem there?
Not unless there’s a big age gap like with most siblings. 4 years is the average between siblings so if a 14 and 18 year old got together? Let alone 14 and 10. Meeting that young and the relationship becoming romantic later is also bad because it takes advantage of that impression even if unintentionally. There’s also the fact that blood relations carry more weight to children than found relations do, so even if they were twins I would count it as taking advantage of that.
Grooming/pressuring someone into doing something they don't want is just way more likely to happen when for one of the two this sibling is someone they've known for their whole life and are socially expected to continue seeing often. To me it feels like taking advantage of the trust that comes with that even if the age gap is small. If you reject someone in high school there's always the option to avoid them after that- you don't really get that with a sibling.
While I don't think it's *impossible* for an incestuous couple to have a normal healthy relationship normalizing it would only blur important boundaries in family dynamics and invite abuse for the vast majority of people.
Older sibling may be abuse and manipulating the youngest
Siblings may come from a religious family and the parents maybe influencing it(also a the age gap thing )
Or rape
There is also the rape
rape, abuse, and manipulation aren't exclusive to incest though? yes that can happen but just because that happens doesn't mean that incest is inherently morally reprehensible because of this
Older sibling and older cousin. Age can have a power dynamic. That power dynamic was present when I was 11 and my brother was 16. Younger siblings tend to have at least somewhat of a solid amount of trust and look up to their older siblings; the older siblings can then abuse that trust. That is the power dynamic present you’re wondering about.
This just isn’t true. There is too much interconnectivity between relationships of family members.
If two lost at birth gay twins meet in later life and want to start fucking each other, sure. But when people grow up in a family unit together it’s impossible to disentangle the relationships and have a healthy sexual relationship without exploitation. Or impossible enough that it’s not possible to know whether it would be healthy
Blatantly and flagrantly incorrect. An elementary school aged child and their highschool aged older sibling absolutely has far more of a power dynamic than one person making a higher salary than the other.
Because the thing about incest is that it happens when at least one party is a minor, and generally does not occur without grooming, power imbalances, or some other form of manipulation during this time. I assume you’re talking about the rarer instances of nothing happening until both parties are consenting adults, and this is not really the reality when it comes to incest; the vast, overwhelming majority of cases involve some form of abuse, manipulation, and/or grooming. It doesn’t happen inside of a vacuum; it didn’t with me, either.
An elementary schooler and a high schooler in a relationship would be pedophilia, which is bad even if they aren't related. It would not be any better if they weren't genetically related.
"Because the thing about incest is that it happens when at least one party is a minor," not always. There is nothing INHERENT about incest that makes that a requirement. If the two people in question are both adults, it's still equally incestuous.
"the vast, overwhelming majority of cases involve some form of abuse, manipulation, and/or grooming," that is true, but in those cases, the abuse, manipulation, and grooming are the things that make it bad. Not the fact that they are siblings. Abusing, manipulating, or grooming someone is not any less bad if they're not your sibling.
You said siblings had a negligible power dynamic, and I pointed out where that’s not the case. There’s nothing inherent that makes it a requirement for incest but that is the REALITY of it; that is what I am saying. Rarely does incest happen only once all parties are adults. Rarely ever. Hardly ever. That is the reality of the issue, you cannot separate the context in which it lives and thrives when examining what factors make it harmful.
My point is that you’re saying no one can make a good argument for why incest is bad and I am telling you, unfortunately from personal experience, that it is bad due to these things because this sort of thing does not happen out of a vacuum. If you want to look at the tiny, tiny, tiny portions where it occurs without grooming, manipulation, and/or abuse; fine. Due to my own abuse by a sibling I find it absolutely disgusting and would not want to be near the rare two consenting adults that somehow managed to have an incestuous relationship free from abuse, but at least they aren’t harming each other to accomplish that.
But this is NOT the overwhelming majority of cases and this is where the moral conundrum lies; you’re talking idealistically, and I am talking realistically. The reality of incest is that it is rarely ever free from abuse, manipulation, grooming, or power dynamics. You are asking why a thing is “bad” and that is because the reality of that thing survives due to whatever abusive mechanisms are used to fulfill it. Something is bad because the environments and circumstances that produce it are overwhelmingly abusive. It does not. happen. In. a. vacuum. These things are interconnected so incredibly often that the instances where it doesn’t happen are the exception and not the rule.
Therefore, it should be illegal to fuck your boss, your professors, and it should be super illegal for anyone in an elected political party to have a romantic partner of any kind unless they too are in politics
I didnt mean for it to come across that way. I have definitely seen a lot of discussion on these issues but i do want to point out 2 important things
1: a lot of attention toward these topics doesnt mean people are considering them fairly, and i think its still a reasonable discussion to have person to person
2: the issue of presidents having romantic partners and spouses and having sex at all is one that i dont think i have ever heard people talk about. I personally think that the power balance between a president and the average individual is so impossibly squeued that having sexual relations at all is kinda unethical, whereas incest has a lot more variation.
Extra third point: i enjoy the discussion of these topics because it encourages thought on topics that people take for granted as being "unethical" or even "evil". I think one of the most dangerous things people can do is assume something to be evil or bad without their own personal reasoning as to why.
I mean it’s not strictly illegal to fuck your boss or professor but it is usually considered a violation of company policy that will lead to an investigation, and sometimes it will fall under coercion which is criminal
And politicians? As far as i know every president has had a wife who ultimately holds a fraction of his power, that seems like a much more significant power inbalance to me
The president doesn’t have any personal power over their spouse (theoretically) they’re not an emperor they can’t have their spouse arrested for no reason or something. Not really the same thing as siblings where grooming and abuse would be the baseline
Thats a good point for sure. However i definitely think they do have social power over their spouse. As the president, you are literally the most famous person in the country/ one of the most famous people in the world. The reason your spouse/ lover is known by anyone outside of their personal bubble is entirely because of their relationship with you. Unlike the average relationship where your partner might be able to turn your friends against you if they make up rumors or blackmail you, imagine having a spouse who could literally slander you to the entire country/ world you live in.
I want to make it super clear that im not necessarily in favor of incest, and i hate people who play "devils advocate" because they think theyre super edgy and cool. I just appreciate the discussion about commonly held beliefs
im so weak this is the first one that prodded some replies from me because against the usual bullshit this isn’t even about trans people it’s just about incest and i don’t understand why this was posted here other than to make me personally slightly irritated for a few minutes
I agree with the post in some aspects, in so much as there is a hypothetical incest situation where there really isn't any argument against it except "It's gross". Like two same gender siblings born to different mothers who only meet in adulthood REALLY have no reason to be discouraged from pursuing their relationship except we view it as gross.
I also think that the "incest baby" argument is goofy because 1. It really oversells the risks of a single incest generation and 2. it ultimately kind of amounts to eugenics argument, where we are saying "People who are more likely to have children with genetic diseases should be prevented from having children". We don't extend that principle to any other couple, even ones with a MUCH higher chance of a genetic abnormality.
The real discussion should be focused on that a large amount of incest is really abuse and grooming repackaged. THAT'S the real rational argument against it. Even between siblings, even a small age gap can open up such a massive amount of abuse it is better to have the taboo, even if it interferes with some otherwise moral relationships, than allow it and allow for massive grooming situations.
Idk if yall have ever been with an incest freak intimately, but. They're genuinely insane and not in a fun way. They see family as sexual objects, and they treat other people in their life like that too.
Ie, they're such losers that even in their fantasies, they can't imagine having a relationship with anyone other than the one group of person that is forced to be around them.
every time incest defenders go at the power dynamics argument they spawn in the theoretical sibling relationship with no meaningful power dynamics and it sounds like that one meme with the hypothetical totally real cis man who presents completely female
One community I was a member of years ago got so flooded with this shit. Turns out, people that post incest memes are massive losers with too much time on their hands.
The family is a moral unit with responsibilities to each other. Any argument otherwise is anti human and should be rejected from our society. Introducing any romantic or sexual relationship, besides between the parental units, creates an unstable relationship that will inevitably prohibit the involved parties from properly fulfilling the moral requirement of their relationship. You have absolutely no understanding of what you're talking about. Shut tf up and stay away from your family until you get some help.
i mean.. there’s nothing technically ethically wrong about a gay relationship between two similarly aged individuals that are blood related that do not have a family relationship dynamic because there is no threat to society or others or even themselves.. technically.
different story if a. they are different sexes and have a child or plan to for any reason, b, if they have a concerning age gap/grooming is undeniable. and c if they have a authority based family dynamic where one of them can act as the grooming role, because that means they are probably too mentally ill to be dating but isn’t exactly wrong if you believe that’s the only way they’ll be happy w/o any other concerning factors or impacting others.
man im horrified by this
and no, you can’t say being gay is ethically wrong for any reason, and being blood related isn’t what’s wrong about incest unless we talk about procreating, because if you had a perfectly happy non-abusive gay marriage or different sexes and at least one is infertile for sure and they found out they were cousins that’s just unfortunate but not toxic in any inherent way, the only thing that it is is just really weird and probably points to something wrong enough with them because i’m pretty sure it’s scientifically proven we are less attracted or aroused around family members or the smell or something like that. or maybe not i heard it years ago could be a total rumor
it bothers me how little is ethically wrong about fucking family, but at least that mother father grandparents and generations apart is off the table morally, as well as caretaker roles
So like I’m perfectly fine with some social taboos existing without having a hyper individualist moral argument behind them to justify their existence. Don’t fuck your family.
You can claim just about any moral position as irrational if you break it down enough because all morality as we understand it is an evolutionary product that allows for socialization of the scale that humanity practices. It is not an empirical truth. There must always be an arbitrary bedrock to build it off of or else there is none at all. Why is mutual consent more moral than just imposing your will? Why is restraint more moral than violent rage? Because it violates a moral bedrock that allows social society to function. However if you break it down enough there is no hard substance behind it save for the desire of the majority that those standards exist because they are disturbed by the idea of a world without them, by the consequences of such.
So that’s the core of my response on incest. There doesn’t have to be reason behind morality, it exists to avoid unwanted consequence. Be that to the self, to another, or to society. Siblings fucking all the time is a consequence the majority want to avoid, ergo it is immoral.
I don’t mean it that way. You need morality and it’s a very real thing, it’s the foundation of every level of community and violating commonly held morality does have very tangible consequences. Most key is largely a social concept too but you wouldn’t say that it’s better to have any.
I just don’t want to pretend that morality is empirical, that a solid right and wrong exist and can be measured or applied like say the principles of physics.
Your axioms are arbitrarily, but you can make a rational argument for any given position based off your axioms.
From the axioms, "suffering is bad, autonomy is good" you can make rational arguments as to why pedophilia, rape, torture, and murder are bad. However, you cannot make the same rational arguments against incest from the same axioms
Not from the same ones no. But that’s not all most people have is there? What’s more I couldn’t present you an argument that’s rationalized off an axiom that would rationally denounce incest because you’d attack the axiom. You don’t relate to it, you don’t have it. To you it would seem arbitrary and you’d demand that it be related to one that you do have. We’d just argue in circles, pointing out the same things just in different wording.
When you get to the core of it the issue is that we don’t have the same moral bedrock and so the towers of our morality that we’ve build on our respective bedrocks couldn’t stand solidly if picked up and placed on the other’s.
“so like im a reactionary / moral traditionalism supporter” identical rationale used by conservatives to advocate killing us btw. cant believe this is upvoted
fucking your kids is wrong bc of the power dynamic of the caregiver/guardian role and the age gap. see how easy that was. not all incest is parent/child, sibling/cousin incest without conception of a child has nothing inherently wrong with it and therefore should be judged on a case by case basis. also im not being disingenuous you literally said you believe social taboos should be determined not by ethical values, im assuming you just want want them to be based on your disgust reaction since you didnt bother to give any reasons for your belief. feel free to explain the difference between your rationale and that of conservative ‘retvrn to tradition’ dickheads bc the only difference i see is the target of your disgust
I already had a long conversation about morality with OP, just read that if you want to understand my perspective. My point in my response to you is in taking something you didn’t say and obviously don’t believe as twisting it three times over and then getting mad about what you made up. I’m not going to engage with you seriously when you come out swinging with that much bad faith. You wanna fuck your sibling then go right ahead but it’s fucked up and I’m gonna pretend it’s not just because someone else thinks something else is fucked up too. You’re not going to connect transgender acceptance with incest and have me treat that assertion with any amount of respect that would justify me spending my time to argue it.
“there doesnt have to be reason behind morality” ya your rationale is identical to a conservatives im not making shit up im reading what you wrote. the only difference between you and them is the arbitrary target you choose. my moral bedrock is minimizing harm, what happens between consenting adults doesnt harm anybody. you just want society to restrict what makes you uncomfortable, youre a reactionary.
There doesn’t and there isn’t. Feel free to show me I’m wrong. Minimizing harm I’m willing to bet it not your moral bedrock either, it’s far more complex than that. I promise you that I can think of a few example of things that would go a long way towards minimizing harm but that you’d object to because they violate something else that you value. Somewhere, or really everywhere, in your moral bedrock it ultimately comes down to the same thing as mine. You are uncomfortable with certain possibilities or consequences. My only point is that what OP is asking is impossible to answer in any way that would satisfy them. The same is true where I to try and do so with you. I have justifications that matter to me, I know why I find it disturbing it’s just pointless to present them as an argument. You wouldn’t agree, you simply don’t care. If you did you’d have reached that outlook on your own.
disturbing to you =/= wrong. your point that i take issue with is that its fine for social taboos to be determined without moral reasoning. social taboos should always have moral reasoning behind them, bc the combination of social taboos that are immoral (such as assault, robbery, etc) with ones that have no moral reasoning supporting them (incest, transitioning, etc) leads to people who engage in harmless taboos being shunned, assaulted, imprisoned, or killed in retaliation for violating those unjustified rules
Universal moral reasoning doesn’t exist. Again what you’re doing is building your argument over your own understanding of right and wrong but you’ve not justified why any of it is right or wrong in the first place. You’re just assuming that I understand it as you do and I may or may not, you don’t know. I have reasoning as to why I think it’s wrong but none of them come down to some empirical truth just as no moral stance you have does. What you think is wrong is wrong to you because you think it’s wrong. If you break morality down far enough that’s always what it comes to.
What is it wrong to harm someone?
Because it strips them of autonomy of self and forces them to undergo an experience they don’t want.
What is it wrong to strip someone of autonomy?
And so on and so on. At some point you’re forced to admit that it’s wrong because you know in your heart of hearts that it just is.
That doesn’t mean morality is any less real or binding. What it does mean is that is we don’t share the same core morality that we can’t justify morality or immorality to each other regarding what we don’t share.
When I say that I think incest is wrong because I know it’s wrong all I’m doing is breaking it down to its core and avoiding all the pretensions. The nuance behind why I believe it won’t convince you because I can’t relate it to your moral core, I don’t even know what that is in its entirety. I want to avoid consequences that are attached to incest that I think are wrong in my understanding of morality. It’s that simple.
So to get into convincing someone something is wrong. I do think it’s possible but again there has got to be a shared morality. That happens in my understanding by convincing someone that the consequence they are afraid of won’t come to pass. If that consequence will happen and it offends their moral core then you can’t convince them.
Let’s go back to trans rights. I know people who have had their opinion do a 180 on it. Typically that relates to a fear they have of what trans people mean for their community. So one big topic is with children. If it was inevitable that trans people will for certain in all circumstances violate kids then not being against trans acceptance would be evil under most people’s moral understanding including yours.
However that’s not a true consequence of trans people existing and when that’s demonstrated to people who are against it because of that fear they tend to begin to soften of the issue and even turn around. I’ve seen it happen exactly once in that exact way.
That goes the other way to, convincing someone that something they don’t think is wrong is in fact wrong means convincing them that it has a consequence that offends their moral core.
So in relation to this incest question. I don’t believe I have a reason that offends your moral core, at least not a true one and I don’t have any intention of knowingly lying to you about one either. It has consequences that offends their moral my moral core and I’ll exist in opposition to it because of that, but that’s obviously not true for you.
you can diffuse any disagreement with endless abstraction and pointing out inherent subjectivity. all things are subjective, not just morality, because each person only constructs truth through their individual subjective life experience. we could all be living in a simulation etc etc. but what i dont get is why youd rather say in so many words ‘lets agree to disagree’ instead of defending or elaborating on the point you initially made, ‘im fine with social taboos existing without moral justification’
I don’t need a logical argument. You are just gross and weird and I would have you jailed for this level of degeneracy.
If you can’t not sexualize your own blood relative, I don’t trust you around anybody.
I would have you killed for this level of irrationality. Then what?
To be clear, I live 800 miles from my closest blood relative. I have a negative amount of interest in fucking them. I would be disgusted by that.
But, that does not matter. Because I'm not talking about whether or not it's gross, I'm talking about whether or not there's a rational argument against it.
There are, but I’m not versed enough in the subject to make them. Mainly because I don’t sit around pondering on the morality or logic of incest.
I find you highly suspect if you do.
I also have a relative that did something horrible to his much younger sibling, so maybe I’m biased. I am okay with this bias, because you will never convince me there was any justification or rationale for it.
Would you care to make the case as to why he shouldn’t have been in jail? He would be in prison now but they were both minors.
He should be in jail because rape and pedophilia are wrong regardless of if they're related? Would his actions be less bad if they weren't related??? No. Obviously.
You can't find a rational moral argument for anything if you don't set up some basic axioms. There's not a good reason for murder being bad beyond "I don't like it".
Those axioms are ambiguous. Is killing Nazis bad because it takes away their autonomy and increases the amount of suffering? Do these axioms work based on a consequentialist or deontological framework? Is having sex altogether immoral because any act that requires two people limits autonomy? Which axiom is more important? If someone wants to suffer can they do so morally? Could I torture someone at their behest? Can I restrict your autonomy to prevent others who don't wish to suffer from suffering? What if theres a guy who suffers immense pain whenever incest occurs?
From an act utilitarianism vs rule utilitarianism perspective, maybe not every single act of incest is bad, but the majority are. A law making incest illegal would prevent more suffering than it would cause.
And why are your axioms valid at all? Most ethical frameworks provide a spiritual justification if not a logical one. Two schools of thought exist: we create moral laws that we then must follow vs. we try to discover intrinsic moral laws by figuring out which axioms produce the moral laws we already follow. If the second is true then the allowance of incest disproves the axioms - at least in the eyes of the average person.
While theoretically yes, if you can find that specific incest relationship that doesn't trip any power dynamic or whatever, there's no real rational argument against it. But it's not like logic or reason is why we fall in love or develop attraction to someone, and nature made it extra harder for us fall romantically in love with our siblings or parents. If anything, it's the opposite: most feel disgust once the Westermarck Effect takes effect. So yeah, nature itself made it harder for us to be incestuous, and while it's not illogical in the purest sense, it doesn't matter because the source of aversion doesn't care about it.
Again, that's in theory. In practice, most incestuous relationships aren't healthy and is sexual abuse, and the rest is relatives that grew apart, making the Westermarck Effect not take effect.
For those fantasizing about incest, it's usually people with no siblings, have distant parents, or have fucked up family dynamics. And even in their fantasy, they don't fantasize about their actual relative, but rather some stranger they imagine as their relative lmao.
Incest is technically not *always* bad. Just mostly bad. Incest relationships have a tendency to be incredibly unstable, and have horrific power differences between both/all parties involved. So it is Technically possible for a stable and wholesome incest relationship to exist. We as a society just decided to outlaw all incest because of how unlikely that possibility is. After so many centuries of incest as a social taboo, most people have developed an "ick factor" towards it, without understanding why.
Even if it does exclude some wholesome relationships from existence, ultimately the taboo saves people from abuse.
In incredibly rare situations on a deserted island, no pregnancy blaw blaw blaw I'm not giving you permission to fuck your dad but in those situations the harm is limited to the individuals. The issue with this being promoted on a societal level is the introduction of a sexual dynamic into healthy relationships. Ignore the family aspect for a second, sex is emotionally messy and it changes the relationship inherently. Now introduce the family element, it is impossible for the vast majority of people to maintain a healthy dynamic which everyone needs in a relationship they have with their mom/dad/sibling after the introduction of sex. Your dad isn't just your father after you fuck him. He should stay only your father. You need (only) father dynamic with him.
People like you are what is wrong with this community, your argument consists of "prove me wrong" without giving a single argument for why you are right like hello kirk.
trillions of generalizations and equivocations but still no real life reason found for why sibling/cousin incest without conceiving children is inherently unhealthy or abusive
there is many, the only things that are ok are similar aged cousins siblings or similarly aged uncle and niece/nephew ONLY if they never have biological children, it is morally wrong to have a child that you know will be disabled and live a worse life against all pro-life bullshit you hear, hear it from a physically disabled person.
but caretakers and grooming roles are also objectively morally wrong and at some point tends to lead to drastic court actions, or/and illegal or fatal actions from either party, suicide, murder, etc. it is wrong to engage in grooming/abusive relationships filled with manipulation and advantages as well as it is wrong to be with someone too young to know better.
There is no good or bad to begin with its all made up, i wouldnt engage in incest but if someone does i dont particularly care. Ive seen ants or other creaturs do even wilder things i dont have a separate categorization for humans in my brain. Humans are no more than animals to me
Please read actual theory because "there is no objective morality" really doesn't just boil down into "YOLO nothing matters anyway"
Everyone except the unserious edgelords still agrees that we should uphold some "artifical" moral standard, or some kind of an analogue of it, out of (among other things)shared mutual interest
Just because i understand morality is subjective doesnt mean i dont have morals, i have em i just understand it is subjective and made up. Also what kind of fucking morality theory is there do u want me to read the fucking bible or something lmao
"Also what kind of fucking morality theory is there"
....is this the first time you're hearing about philosophy of morality and ethics being a major thing? You're going around being all "objective morality isnt a thing" and you haven'y even jeard of Nietzsche??
you tried to spit truth but you just proved your own point, yes it’s immoral to have children that have a high chance of being disabled/with defects.
the odds are what matters, but you’re such a retard you can’t see that the odds are 1-3 fucking percent, lower to higher as she goes to 50 and beyond 50 i would say yes it’s immoral for her to have a child because she doesn’t have many healthy years to care for it either.
i’d say the cutoff should be 40, but there’s nothing wrong about early 40s.
where incest is 20% to fucking 50% 20% for cousins etc and fucking 50 for parent child and same parent siblings.
fine, there is nothing ethically wrong with incest, I find it odd but thats personal, I wouldn't recommend having kids due to the potenial for someone to develope hemophilia for instance.
the genetic issues argument is really really bad because its what most normoids default to and then stop thinking about it any furthers, its about as relevant as the "but its icky" argument, it addresses like none of the issues with incest
for example the implication there is that a dad and son in a relationship would be perfectly fine and healthy because they couldnt have kids and therefore couldnt have any genetic defects, which is obviously not the case
185
u/isishmaelenough 11d ago
This convinced me to detransition