This is a good article. The attitude is positive, even if some of the things the author says are problematic.
When Melissa, an administrative assistant in a law firm who’s in her
20s, met an older woman named Lisa a few years ago, it was love at first
sight. The two have been in a relationship ever since but know that
marriage is out of the picture. And it’s not because they are lesbian. It’s because they are mother and daughter.
Incest
is still society’s deepest-rooted sexual taboo, mainly because the word
is so often associated with rape and inbreeding. But consensual incest
exists, and cases like Melissa’s — who discovered Lisa, a personal
trainer, was her biological mother only after the West Coasters had
started dating — pose their own host of ethical dilemmas, including some
we may finally be ready to discuss.
So far, so good.
It wasn’t that long ago when homosexuality and sadomasochism
were also considered taboo. These days, though, Hollywood’s offerings
are packed with homoerotic imagery and commuters are happy to crack open
a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey
on the morning train to the office. So
if pop culture is anything to go by (and when isn’t it?), there are
some signs that romantic love between family members is slowly becoming
less socially outrageous. Look no further than HBO’s Game of Thrones —
which explicitly portrays sex between a brother and sister — or scenes
of a mother and son going at it in Boardwalk Empire.
Yeesh. I would hardly hold up
Boardwalk Empire. It's clearly understood in the show that Tommy's relationship with his mother is unhealthy and not truly consensual. She is emotionally manipulative and abusive. I would hope that people can tell the difference between consent and abuse. Try
The Borgias or something.
In many cases, experts warn, incest destroys families and hurts people’s
ability to trust others and form healthy relationships. So while
consensual incest does exist, “legalizing it would be too risky because
it may incentivize it,” says Dr. Karin Meiselman, a psychologist who
specializes in treating incest cases.
For people like Sarah, however, the social stigma feels grossly
exaggerated. The 27-year-old journalist from London recalls with a smile
the time she and her cousin had sex after a birthday party. “Nothing
about it felt wrong,” she says. “We were adults, we both wanted it and
we are still friends. What’s wrong with that?”
That's a pretty weak refutation of such hyperbole. Yes, I agree with "Sarah's" point, but it's not enough. Where's the broader context? Where's the challenge to the baseless logic of that psychologist's assertions? I wasn't under the impression that Spain or the Netherlands were cesspits of child rape. People talk as though it's never been legalized before.
It's been legalized here, in the United States. So, all of these people are supposed to suffer under state oppression because some psychologist thinks child rapists take their cue from the government?
Science doesn’t
have a clear answer. Humans are wired to develop a sexual aversion
toward close family members to avoid inbreeding, some research shows,
but that mechanism is usually triggered by growing up together. So when
family members don’t meet until they’re adults, attraction is actually
pretty common. “Imagine meeting someone who has your exact predilection
for spicy food or music, which is likely since you share that much
genetic material,” explains Debra Lieberman, an assistant professor at
the University of California, Santa Barbara who has done extensive
research on incest aversion. “We need to start asking if it’s OK to
limit someone’s freedom just because we have a ‘yuck’ response to it.”
The
German Ethics Council agrees. Last year, this independent body of
experts called for an end to the criminalization of incest between
siblings and argued that, even if rare (it touches only 5 percent of
siblings), it isn’t appropriate for criminal law to preserve a social
taboo. France will soon add the word “incest” back into its penal code
to label sexual abuse within the family (French legislators had stopped
using the term two centuries ago), but the decision doesn’t change any
of the pre-existing laws condemning rape. Consensual incest is still
legal in the land of baguettes.
Governments have long used two arguments to criminalize consensual
incest — risk of inbreeding and damage to the family — but societal
changes may be chipping away at both of these stances. While couples who
are close relatives do have a higher chance of having children with
severe birth defects, today there are many effective ways to avoid
pregnancies, or to get pregnant using a third person’s genetic material. The need to protect the traditional family structure
may also become less relevant as society changes. When one case of
consensual incest between a stepfather and stepdaughter was brought to
the Supreme Court in 2007, the judges ruled it should remain illegal
because it harmed the family. But J. Dean Carro, the lawyer who defended
the incestuous couple says, “We were ahead of our time, but
legalization will happen because such cases will become more common.”
She accidentally manages to make the gradual normalizing of consanguinamory seem somewhat menacing. It throws in consanguinamory with BDSM, and while I'm fine with people doing what they want in their bedroom, consanguinamory isn't just another kind of "kink". (
50 Shades of Grey isn't a positive portrayal of BDSM, either.)
I
don’t know if the various sibling dynasties throughout history would’ve
considered themselves radical or destructive to the structure of the
family. And I don’t think there’s any reason to see them as that, if you
actually look at what happened. And I don't think any couple now would
see themselves that way. Plenty of the long-term consanguineous
relationships I've seen are pretty conservative: man and woman, 2.5
kids, monogamous, man works while the woman takes care of the household.
Many of them are Republicans. Some are even Christians. (There are plenty of military veterans among them as well.)
They don't see themselves as trying to destroy traditional family, except that they don't care for the part of tradition that demands exogamy. In fact, such relationships are usually hyper-stable (in the absence of ridiculous outside pressure), for the same reason consanguineous mating sometimes happens in nature: two kinds of love equals twice the bond, but still an unconditional one. (In nature, closely related mates treat each other better, and better protect their mutual children.) If it's a threat to "traditional family", it's only because family has recently been defined so rigidly and narrowly that any deviation is perceived as an attack on its foundation. And as far as that last quote, there
will be more cases, but only because people are getting fed up with the status quo.
As well intentioned as the whole thing is, I'm not sure what demographic she's trying to convince. I do think it's a step in the right direction, but we're going to need stronger arguments than "the destruction of the traditional family is inevitable." At most, it just points out to people that it is real, and it's an issue.
Anyway, Melissa and Lisa seem familiar.
Hmmm...
