This is going to be a fun one.
So here are the facts:
I commented on a news article about a mother and adult son charged with incest (and adultery as well for her.) This is what I said:
Someone responded to me and I replied before I realized my original comment was removed for being inappropriate. Then I added the edit when I saw.
The next day I discovered I’d been banned from that community for “pro-incest comments” and several others I don’t think I’ve ever been in for rule 4 violations. The orignal post was removed.
You can see those here:
Site rule 4 is: Usernames or posts/comments containing transphobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, ableism, zionism, anti-veganism, or trivializing COVID. No self-described or obvious fascists, conservatives, or reactionaries.
My comments had none of those things. I’d even go so far as to say my banning was reactionary.
Now, I’m not defending incest, especially not for myself. My problem is with puritanical laws interfering with the private sex lives of people. In my original comment I stated that grooming was a separate issue and should be dealt with, but that there is nothing inherently wrong with incest. That is, enthusiastic consensual sex between capable adults.
I know someone will bring up the Hapsburgs, so yes, children of incest should be avoided.
I have not.
Then I find your position even more odd.
Is it something you think about, like what is the motivation here? Like is statutory rape wrong to you or is that another “well there’s consent” issue for you.
That’s called a bad faith argument. I stated in my comments that people need to be capable of and enthusiastically consenting.
I’m opposed to overreaching laws based on ideas about sexual purity.
For instance, under Canadian law, two people who don’t know they’re blood relatives who begin a sexual relationship can be guilty of incest if they later learn that they’re related and continue that relationship. And that seems insane to me.
I knew a guy in the Navy who had been porking his cousin for months and didn’t find out she was his cousin till he brought her home to meet the folks.
He was from Alabama.
They literally could not consent for the same reasons consent in statutory rape. The power Imbalance is too too far skewed.
So you draw any limits to incest. Same legal age siblings. Mother son, father daughter, grandparent grandchild? Or where when and how do you draw your line.
Two adults, raised by different families, enter into a relationship. 10 years later, they find they are biological half-siblings from the same sperm donor. Does this constitute incest? What interest does the state have in criminalizing the continuation of this stable, long-term relationship?
You ask for a line, but you described the proper line:
The line is not drawn on the biological relationship between the parties. The line is drawn on the formalized social structures in place at the commencement of the physical relationship.
Prohibit a relationship between parent and child, while recognizing that, being separated for the entire childhood, the social structure of “parent” and “child” never actually existed. While there is a biological kinship in such a relationship, there is no power imbalance to criminalize.
It should include a fairly short statute of limitations. Prohibit a student/teacher relationship for example, but don’t come back 20 years into the relationship to jail the (former) teacher.
So no lines, you believe n it should be legal to fuck your child?
I think the ban isn’t far enough you should probably be instance banned for trying to normalize gross and quite honestly criminal behavior.
That is the same language used by anti-miscegenists, homophobes, TERFs…
No, I specifically described a line, the exact line that you drew. I quoted it and everything.
All of your examples sans terfs which I think you just randomly threw in are consenting adults without an intrinsic power dynamic.
No my line is it is illegal for good reason.
Yeah you said it’s gross. Everyone knows if people think something is gross, it should be illegal.
That’s the base of your argument. You think it’s gross and are grasping at straws to justify banning it. You don’t actually have supporting arguments.
They are today.
In the past, the power dynamic between the participants was the same as that present in bestiality. Homosexuals were considered mentally incompetent. Minorities were considered inhuman. Your argument is only valid after the parties were actually considered equal and competent, but that supposition also defeats your argument here.
Because incest isn’t inherently bad and we already have crimes for all the reasons it could be bad.
Removed by mod
Are you really arguing that laws are synonymous with morality?
The word moral is not said in that comment at all nor is it implied in any way. Just answer the question in front of you with the words that actually exist therein.
You mean where you started calling me a molester, misgendered me, and said I defend fucking kids? No thanks. You seem too riled up for the kind of conversation.
The same reason a white person with a white partner would argue against anti-miscegenation laws: They are wrong, and they are needlessly harmful.
The same reason a straight person would argue against homosexuality prohibitions: They are wrong, and they are needlessly harmful.
The same reason a cishet person would argue against transphobic laws: They are wrong, and they are needlessly harmful.
You don’t have to be in a miscegenated, homosexual relationship with your trans half-sister to realize that the public and the state has no valid interest for interfering in the free association of capable, consenting persons. Such interference is wrong, and needlessly harmful.
By all means, ensure that any such association is freely entered. Ensure that the individual participants are capable. Ensure that the individual participants are consenting. Once those three criteria are met, the public is free to speak its mind, but it is not free to arrest or otherwise interfere.
Those are people capable of consent, your child simply isn’t capable of that no matter how much you convince yourself they are.
I have been very clear in my arguments that the relationship you describe is not and should not be lawful. I have been very clear that the reason it is not and should not be lawful is due to the power imbalance in the parties you describe. I have been very clear that the biological kinship of the parties you describe is not at all relevant to the illegality of the scenario.
Your comment here does not seem to be based on a desire for genuine discussion, but rather an ad hominem attack. Should you wish to raise a genuine argument, I’ll be happy to discuss. Otherwise, I do not intend any further engagement.
It 100% is relevant, the law exists because people were and technically still are having kids to fuck and pretending they weren’t theirs.
There’s no ad hominem, I said I cannot fathom your position unless you yourself are involved in it or drawn to it. No person in know would advocate for going Giuliani on your family.
Two individuals enter into a relationship. 5 years later, they determine they were half siblings, born to different mothers via artificial insemination from the same donor. The did not know of eachother until they were both adults; they did not know they were biologically related until long after they were in a relationship.
Justify criminalizing the individuals in this relationship. Give me a compelling reason why these two individuals should be imprisoned. When you can provide a compelling rational reason why the state should criminalize these individuals, you will have convinced me. Until you can do that, you’re not actually discussing incest. You’re discussing a power imbalance established not by biological kinship, but by social familial structure.
I have long conceded that the circumstance you are talking about should not be tolerated, but that the circumstance you are talking about does not arise due to incest.
The same circumstance you describe is present in a step-parent/step-child relationship. That same circumstance is just as problematic and for the same reasons as the scenario you describe, but that circumstance does not actually constitute incest. Whatever method you use to ban the improper step-parent relationship is more than sufficient for banning the improper parent relationship.
They aren’t automatically imprisoned in the in us or Canada as per your example. You seem to be getting upset about situations that are already handled to favor the unknowing participant even if that is both of them. No we’re still discussing incest were just not discussing extreme hypotheticals that already have mechanisms to deal with. Going along with the “incest should be legal” guy is a weird route to take if you don’t actually believe it shouldn’t be illegal.
Your new nonsensical example are not blood relatives, which is gross and immoral but it actually cuts against your argument given it isn’t illegal but still gross and immoral.
Quite the contrary, it cuts against your argument. Your argument ensnares inoffensive relationships in an attempt to capture gross and immoral relationships. Your argument ignores functionally identical gross and immoral relationships, because they don’t technically qualify as the kind of relationships you were thinking of.
Just because some relationships are gross and immoral doesn’t mean that we need to criminalize every relationship. We can go ahead and criminalize the “gross and immoral” relationships, without criminalizing the inoffensive relationships. We can draw a more logical, more rational, more effective distinction than “biologically related”.
Problem is that the law is based on morals rather than damage. SA is illegaland grooming is illegal, why does incest need to be illegal in addition?
Because consent is extremely hard to determine if it is even possible when there are family dynamics involved and moreso if there’s religion involved. They might say whatever because their loyalty to their family is an religious obligation.
thinking out loud to come to the conclusion below:
I am a bit confused to be honest. Does saying “my brother molested me” hold less weight than “this guy on the street molested me”?
It does make it harder for victims to come forward, i’ll give you that, and i suppose by the laws of democracy if most of us decided it was worth banning incest just to prevent that, then it would happen.
There aren’t religions which advocate incest, though there are some cultures (and i guess subcultures of familiar cultures) which advocate incest. When religion is brought into it, it’s an excuse - but they’re always making up their own writings, their own off-shoot cult which wants to claim it belongs to the wider religion so as to shield the cult from scrutiny a little bit.
I just don’t get how the presence of religion would make it harder to distinguish if someone was sexually abused
So rather than a “determining consent” problem you mean it causes problems with victims coming forward in the first place?
No.
Yes that’s it exactly that is why I talk about power dynamics directly.
There are religions where honoring your family’s wishes is more an obligation like I said.
No they’re both issues for the same reason, power dynamics.