Inspired by this post on !incest@burggit.moe.
What are Burggit’s thoughts on the ethics (not the legality!) of real life incest? Some common conditions for starters:
- Between consenting people
- Between consenting adults
- Between consenting adults of a “reasonable” age difference
- Between consenting adults, no parent/child relationships permitted
Personally, I am torn between 2 and 4. Can there really be a consenting relationship between adult and child (both being adults)?
P.S.: Please let me know if this should be marked NSFW. I didn’t because this is the type of post I like to see when browsing SFW
I’d say it should be legal between consenting adults. However, with the potential birth defect issues that can occur later down the line, there should maybe be some sort of law preventing incest after a certain generation of inbreeding. Maybe after 2 or 3 generations of inbreeding is illegal? I’m honestly torn about it because in general, I think if people are consenting adults, and they aren’t hurting anyone, then they should be able to do what they want. However,; one could argue that bringing a child with various birth defects into the world could potentially be harmful to someone who could not and did not consent. I think if there was a way to deal with/reduce the risks of birth defects after a certain number of generations then I think there’d be nothing wrong with it.
Someone else brought up a good point where if between a parent/child the child should be completely independent living on their own, which is definitely a good point as there is a clear power imbalance otherwise.
Biologically speaking, stopping incest after a few generations makes sense. However I hardly think it would work in practice… like “Ah yeah, well your grandparents were cousins, and your parents were siblings, so you’ve got a whole incest family going on, but that means you two have to stay off eachother, sorry!”
In practice I feel this would be more of a “think twice” mostly unenforced type law, mostly to make people think a little harder about what they were doing and potentially assess the risks. Stuff like this would probably be hugely helped with things like easy access to free nationwide birth control.
There are a few laws kinda like this which aren’t technically enforced, but do make people think twice about doing it by being technically illegal. Also, to be clear, this hypothetical wouldn’t prevent the incest couple from being together or having sex, just heavily discourage reproduction and/or encouraging the use of birth control.
This runs into the precedent it sets for disallowing pregnancies for people with disabilities. Dwarfism is much more likely to be passed from parent to child if both parents have the gene. So should it be disallowed that two people with dwarfism produce a child? One could make many similar comparisons. If we were to legalize incest but making illegal the product of such a union (suppose after X generations, if you prefer), we would have to justify how it is distinct from the such disorders/disabilities.
I tentatively want to say that ethically both incestuous relationships and breeding should be legal for consenting adults. I don’t like the idea of pumping out products of incest, but at the same time, I cannot construct a solid argument against it for precedence issues. The more I think of it, the less I feel I even have a moral reason to be opposed: If two consenting adults decide to have a child who is more likely to have a disability, are they really doing wrong? Antinatalism aside, we actually tend to view as morally good future parents who, for example, decide to not abort a fetus determined to have Down syndrome. It is different to try for child knowing that they are at significantly increased risk of birth defect, but not that different, in my opinion.
Like I mentioned in another comment In practice I feel this would be more of a “think twice” mostly unenforced type law, mostly to make people think a little harder about what they were doing and potentially assess the risks. Stuff like this would probably be hugely helped with things like easy access to free nationwide birth control.
I don’t have any true problems with any 2 consenting adults reproducing. But I think it should be made very clear the risks and resources to provide things like free birth control should be given to reduce such risks.
I (as a disabled person whose parents were told they’d never make it past a few months old) have no problem with people reproducing and giving birth to disabled children, so long as the risks are very clear to the people. I guess education and prevention for those who do not want children is my main concern when it comes to incest. Sort of like, you should know what you could be getting yourself into type of thing.
That makes a lot of sense; I can get behind that!
I would just put the line at non reproductive sex. Anal or oral is fine, but any thing risks pregnancy is illegal. Then again enforcing that would be hard unless we monitored them, which creates another issue.