All Comments on 'On Incest'

interesting ideas - although i find it hard to be attracted to my mum or sis lol!! thx 4 another point of view tho

You have omitted to make the most important observation of all. Human genes show a remarkable lack of variety . However, Archeology indiates that we have been around long enough that much greater diversity should have been mathematically certain. This can only be explained by prolonged in-breeding

This piece makes you wonder what other taboos are just bug-a-boos. Thanks for the insights, and let's hear from you again.

So family fucking family is nature's plan?? Oh what better way to have some old, wrinkly ass perv keep pussy on tap by fucking his daughter/s. Same goes for mom, 'cause I'm sure if dear 'ol dad is layin' the pipe to his girls, mom should have the same rights with the son/s. Hey keep all the females knocked up too. Love to see what fine examples of genetic perfection a few generations of this selective in-breeding will produce.

"Walking makes us feel good, so we do it." Walking was an adaptation to life (most likely) in a savannah environment. Whether our ancestors became walkers to avoid predation or to find better food sources (among a hundred other theories), it does NOT "make us feel good." Our primate bodies are primarily designed for arboreality. Walking is a painful adaptation, and incredibly hard on our backs and our knees.

Anyway, just because something "feels" good or bad does not lead to adaptation. The fact that some people feel good about banging their siblings does not make it of any biological benefit. Some people like to murder small children, the fact that it makes them feel good does not make it beneficial for society nor does it make it acceptable behavior. The risk for genetic defects is as high as 50% (debatable, the range seems to be between 20%-50%, depending on which paper you are reading, much higher than the risk for genetic defects among those who breed with non-relatives, which is around 3%.

Incest makes for good reading, but not generally for a good lifestyle choice.

I am no expert on this subject but I do know the best time to mate is before thirty five.I see no valid reason for incest between consenting adults to be a crime. Whats wrong with two otherwise lonely relatives having a sex life,they more than likely do not want children. What is very wrong is child abuse.One thing for sure incest is on the increase if the numerous papers written on the subject are to be believed.

What better love can a father give a daughter if SHE so desires it. I for one worshipped my father especially after we lost our mother during an IRA bombing years ago, in many ways this brought us even closer together for I can remember the sorrow and grief he (and I) went through. I speak as a young women but I'm sure the same applies to young men, the circumstances may be slightly different but we have but one life.

superbly written

The claim that incest is never consensual has gotten a lot of traction from the MacKenzie Phillips story. It is instructive to note that this quote is incomplete. She says:

"As I was writing ['High on Arrival'], I thought, this word, it kept sitting wrong with me. But I used it for lack of a better word," she said. "Since then, I've been schooled by thousands of incest survivors all across the world that there really is no such thing as consensual incest due to the inherent power a parent has over a child."

There, in the final phrase, is the real issue, the heart of the question: the imbalance of power. Consensual sex means consent on the parts of all concerned, and in Phillips' case, her consent was chimerical, her behavior coerced.

Her statement, while applicable to her own case and thousands of others, fails in its assumption that incest is always driven by such a coercive influence. Phillips was 17 years old when her sexual involvement with her father began, and while that is close to adulthood, people at that age are usually still emotionally dependent and subservient to parents. True independence and the power to meet a parent's influence eye-to-eye usually comes quite a bit later.

Whether or not a sexual relationship between a parent and child which does begin with genuine, uncoerced consent is advisable or not, it is still consensual.

There is one thing the writer is forgetting...the sociology of animals, including apes. Many mammals that lives as a herd or group...from meat-eating lions to vegetarian elephants to the omnivorous apes themselves...tend to kick males out of the family group as soon as those males reach maturity. The males wander until they either die or find another family group to join. This did several things...reduce the ratio of males per female in a clan, and increased the chance of introducing new genetics into the family. We find this in many early myths from the Celts and Greeks as well, and we see it among many primitive people. A young man would enter his wife's household, not bring her to his. These cultures are called "matrilineal" today, but they were all common to our genetic cousins, and they were a real part of our primitive human ancestors. Among patrilineals, we often see once a year gatherings, where girls are dangled in front of strangers in order to keep them from having to marry a cousin. It is easy for someone, with this in mind, to see how incest was more easily avoidable than as this article suggests.

real true!

that how people are!

people = animals!

You start off with your opinion "incest is natural", then proceed to say that psychology is somehow retarded in growth because they haven't found a way to confirm YOUR opinion. That is a false argument.

You point to the twins who are separated at birth, who later marry, as an example that supposedly proves your incest model. Yet there are cases of twins of the same gender, who are separated at birth, and yet have led remarkably similar lives. Brothers who were both accountants, married blonde women, named Mary and had sons, named James, and other such coincidences (as in they coincide or match each other). There are twins who made up their own private language to speak to each other. So, there seems to be some sort of psychic link between siblings who shared a womb, but that does not apply equally to other siblings who were born separately. Pointing to those twins as proof of your incest theory does not hold weight.

When you speak of royalty who took siblings as spouses, that speaks to the consolidation of power within one family, and the belief that the royalty is descended from the gods and therefore must keep their bloodline "pure". It's not about being attracted to your family members. Royal marriages, even those not between close family members, is always about who holds the power. They don't want to let outsiders in, if it can be avoided.

Close inbreeding is one of the factors in the French royal family being known to be hemophiliacs. There are plenty of inherited diseases out there that are carried as recessive genes in the human population. If you get two carriers breeding, they have a one-in-three chance of producing an offspring with no genes for the disease (D/D), a one-in-three chance of producing a carrier of the disease (D/r), and a one-in-three chance of producing an offspring with the full blown disease (r/r). That was the origin of blood-testing for couples who want to get married. They wanted to check for certain disease markers, so the couple might be aware of the risks of reproducing. Now, siblings might not share the exact gene mix, [Example: I'm blond with blue eyes (r/r), my three siblings are all brunettes with brown eyes (D/D or D/r)] so the odds will be slightly higher than a one-in-three chance for them to produce a genetically inferior offspring, but their odds certainly lean more heavily towards producing one, than if you marry someone you are not closely related to and who comes from a more varied gene pool.

You point to Lot getting his daughters pregnant, but conveniently left out the part of the story where his daughters got him insensibly drunk with alcohol, before having sex with their unknowing father. It doesn't speak of a mutual attraction and consensual incest, so much as it does to the rape and abuse of a family member. The same would be said if the father got the daughters drunk, then forced himself upon them.

Much of the archaeological evidence for ancient hominids is pure speculation, based upon a few fragments of skeleton from a single individual. It isn't until much more recently that you find any evidence gleaned from groups of people found buried together, so assigning social structure and mores to the earlier peoples is nothing but guesswork.

As one earlier anonymous commentator said, if our ancient ancestors were like animals, they didn't remain in insular family-only groups. The Alpha males tend to kick out any possibly competing offspring, once they reached maturity. Those either join with another group or try to survive on their own.

Hunter-gatherers followed their changing resources and often crossed paths with other groups and most likely combined for hunting large game, like mammoths and such, that a small group would find hard to tackle alone. The small group you use as an illustration would be hard-pressed to survive on its own. When resources became scarce, the groups would split into smaller ones and go their separate ways once again. Each time they split and then merged with another group, it brought a new influx of different genes.

So, much of your so-called evidence is therefore specious, at best. Much has little, if anything, to do with the question of incest being natural. If incest was as prevalent as you seem to be arguing, the human species would be a lot more homogeneous than it is today.

Your argument is a house of cards built upon on a shaky table. It only takes the slightest tremor, or breath of wind to make the whole thing come crashing down.

To suggest that an act having been practiced in ancient times is somehow justifies it being done today is not only poor psychological practice but quite literally barbaric. Even apes will avoid having sexual relations with close family members. This person has probably either been groomed from an early age (another reason why having incest be common would be terrible) or they've simply read too much incest porn.

Oh, and that example with the twins. That's from egoism, not a subconscious desire to bone relatives you fucking Freudian wannabe.

A tribe of australian natives has had a system where every male must marry his cousin of 2nd degree (His mothers cousins daughter). Also a theory suggest that blue eyes and every other racial phenotypes come from inbreeding, and that inbreeding in early human history indeed led to the great diversity in races that we have today because very small natural genetic changes in a tribe got pickex up and amplified significently by incest. The notion that inbreeding leads to a homogenic human species without races as some other comments imply is very absurd.

If every human started having only sex outside of their race, in 2000 years we would all look the same. But this is where the flaw of OPs logic comes into play: early human incest was just the precirsor to ingroup preference aka racism today. You will find that a vast majority of people are uncomfortable with marrying outside their race.

We stopped with incest because the tribe (race) was now big enough that we could still have an ingroup preference without the risk of gentic weak offspring.

The logical conclusion is that incest in early human history was caused by ingroup preference at a time where the tribes (just like the australian one I mentioned) were so small that if you wanted to follow your (xenophopic) ingroup preferance, you had to bone your sister. We see this in the stereotype today that only racist rednecks bang their sisters.

Bull crap.

Incest is an abhorrent practice. Even animals will avoid it unless no suitable mate is provided. Humans, I imagine, were no different. Granted I read this article, I will be completely honest and say you need some help. Not to mention that the stories you provided were the exception rather than the norm

A well written article showing clear proof that incest is neither wrong nor unnatural. Millions of people have incest sex with family member(s) and we are not aware of it. Your neighbor, co-worker, teacher, Even in your family. These people are afraid or ashamed to let their relationship be know because society (driven by right wing bible thumpers) has decided that they can't handle it. As I believe you pointed out, gay and interracial relationships were (and still are by some) considered to be wrong. Sex is just that, sex. As long as it's consensual, and desired. It is neither wrong nor ugly. It's time people pulled their heads out of their asses and their nose out of other people's business. Let me live my life and you live yours.