Incest among adults is also sex between consenting adults. At least some such relationships are happy ones. Most arguments against incest are arguments where the bottom line is already written since they are made by people who just don’t want to admit they are plain grossed out by it. Not only the motivation, but many of the arguments are basically the same as arguments in favour of homophobia. If the person has an identity centred on fighting “bigotry” cognitive dissonance hilarity ensues.
Bonus round: Arguments against incestuous couples having children is a fundamentally eugenicist argument. Applying it like a consequentalist results in concluding many other kinds of couples should be discouraged just as much (perhaps even with imprisonment since that is the price of discovered incest in many countries) or incest being legalized.
The ECHR said the main basis of punishment for incestuous relationships was “the protection of marriage and the family”, and because it blurs family roles.
It also noted “the risk of significant damage” to children born of such a relationship.
Incest among adults is also sex between consenting adults.
True, but that’s largely a noncentral fallacy.
Most arguments against incest are arguments where the bottom line is already written since they are made by people who just don’t want to admit they are plain grossed out by it.
If I’m grossed out by it, why am I watching lesbian incest hentai? :-)
Not only the motivation, but many of the arguments are basically the same as arguments in favour of homophobia. If the person’s has an identity centred on fighting “bigotry” cognitive dissonance hilarity ensues.
Agreed. But not all the arguments are basically the same. Some of the arguments are more like the “teachers shouldn’t date their students” argument and the “psychologists shouldn’t date their patients” or even “50-year olds shouldn’t date 20-year olds” argument, and reflect on the likely unhealthy effects of power-imbalance.
The power-imbalance in intergenerational incest is obvious. In intragenerational incest it can of course be significantly less clear; especially in cases like the German couple where the siblings only met during adulthood.
Bonus round: Arguments against incestuous couples having children is a fundamentally eugenicist argument.
That’s a plus to those arguments, not a minus—because we’re moving to a consequentialist perspective from an arbitrary deontologist one.
Applying it like a consequentalist results in concluding many other kinds of couples should be discouraged just as much
Perhaps they should—but keep in mind that banning incest bars any one person from a very small subset of potentially desirable sex partners—much like barring psychiatrists from sexing their patients. On the other hand barring e.g. old people from having sex, or gay people having sex, pretty much precludes them from having pleasurable sex altogether. The cost of such a policy seems higher in such a case.
That having been said, I’d have been all in favour of applauding the German couple (especially since they didn’t grow up together) if they had only made sure they didn’t have children via e.g. vasectomy, getting tubes tied, etc...
I should emphasise this is written in a way to highlight some of the cognitive dissonance I saw in how reasonably intelligent people responded to the story, accepting arguments they would be outraged to hear in a different context.
If you’ve read my comment history you probably know that I approve of eugenics (encouraging some people to have children while discouraging others based on their genetic material). Also I’m sceptical of the coherence of the concept “consent” and think power imbalances can be features not bugs when it comes to humans.
I think he’s referring to things like the age of consent, where the legal definition of “consent” in some jurisdictions might not cover some things many reasonable people would call “consent”.
I’d be willing to bet a small amount that he’s talking about one person being dominant over another, rather than dubiousness about age of consent laws.
power imbalances can be features not bugs when it comes to humans
Right, and excessive+indiscriminate killing power might be a feature not a bug when it comes to weapons, as it might give you peace through deterrence instead of just more slaughter. This doesn’t imply that nukes aren’t horrifically dangerous and don’t have the potential to fuck things up for a long time/permanently. And power imbalances can also be horrifically dangerous and do lasting, pervasive and insidious damage to innocent people.
That both categories are here to stay doesn’t mean that we’d be wise to get less paranoid about them or relax our vigilance.
EDIT: also -
..I approve of eugenics... + ...power imbalances can be features not bugs when it comes to humans...
That you’re against a blanket taboo on “eugenics” doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t literally kill to to prevent an imminent return of Hitler’s “eugenics” cluster, right? Well, of course the difference between you and the mainstream is that you aren’t blinded by the “Ancient Lurking Evil” meme of Hitler and don’t let it affect your risk/benefit assessment.
But you have zero evidence that the meta-category of “power imbalances” contains no Hitler-level lurking horrors, and mountains of 2nd-hand evidence to the contrary! I mean, look—that class of Bad Things is something that every single variation of feminism—some of them being at each other’s throats—agrees to be a clear and present danger. Certainly much feminist thinking is fallacious, cranky or in bad faith—but seeing such uncommon, wide-ranging consensus should call for a thorough self-update.
Also, I don’t see why the concept of “consent” has to be coherent in order to be valuable and useful. Plenty of taboos and moral injunctions that we see are incoherent. And yet many of them (take the American centrist mainstream as an example: “extrajudicial execution is always an atrocity when ordered by a state official, less condemnable when done by soldiers or insurgents”, or “preach respect for the law, but stall the enforcement of some laws’ letter and spirit”) you probably wouldn’t want to tinker with!
That you’re against a blanket taboo on “eugenics” doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t literally kill to to prevent an imminent return of Hitler’s “eugenics” cluster, right?
Nope you’ve caught me red handed, I totally want to resurrect Hitler and am creating a secret army in my Antarctic base for him to command.
But you have zero evidence that the meta-category of “power imbalances” contains no Hitler-level lurking horrors, and mountains of 2nd-hand evidence to the contrary! I mean, look—that class of Bad Things is something that every single variation of feminism—some of them being at each other’s throats—agrees to be a clear and present danger. Certainly much feminist thinking is fallacious, cranky or in bad faith—but seeing such uncommon, wide-ranging consensus should call for a thorough self-update.
There are much much better sources for arguments against power imbalances than feminism, why didn’t you pick those? But yes power imbalances can be dangerous and open the field up to terrible abuse, I assumed this goes without saying. I wished to emphasise that certain kinds of power imbalances can be desirable.
Also, I don’t see why the concept of “consent” has to be coherent in order to be valuable and useful.
Indeed it doesn’t! But it does mean it isn’t universally valid and applicable. I think consent is best understood as relatively strong evidence about a persons preferences.
Plenty of taboos and moral injunctions that we see are incoherent. And yet many of them (take the American centrist mainstream as an example: “extrajudicial execution is always an atrocity when ordered by a state official, less condemnable when done by soldiers or insurgents”, or “preach respect for the law, but stall the enforcement of some laws’ letter and spirit”) you probably wouldn’t want to tinker with!
This is a stronger argument than it may seem to the average LWer.
There are much much better sources for arguments against power imbalances than feminism, why didn’t you pick those?
Um… it seemed like too much work, so I intentionally pointed at a source with below-average reputation on LW, then directed attention at how that source handles its case in an unusually reasoned, consistent manner. Which should imply that evidence for it must be plentiful and come easy. (“Patriarchy: so obvious and oppressive that even a feminist could see it!” Sorry.)
Also yeah, don’t worry, I didn’t really assume that you abandoned all prudence here and just looked for something illiberal to say, in order to signal cool metacontrarianism. I have a considerably higher opinion of you :)
The problem might simply be that I often argue with your stuff from some weird idiosyncrasic position, while you might do the sensible thing for open debates: write with the average LWer opinion in mind and direct much of your reasoning at it—which might make your points look too skewed to me.
I totally want to resurrect Hitler and am creating a secret army in my Antarctic base for him to command.
You actually want the original? Man, you’re too late by far, maybe if you hurry up you could grab a cheap 4th-order Hitler clone with blueprints at some EvilCo sale.
P.S.: fun fact, Chesterton criticized feminism because he felt that it was contributing to the destruction of an older, better familial order… that is, Matriarchy in all but name! If, like me, you ever felt sick after reading the stereotypical amoral PUA shit about gender, reading him is an antidote; gets the sleaze right out. Chesterton was certainly masterful at opposing any ever-modern “misanthropic” creed. I’m not saying I’d really endorse his arguments, but they’re a delight to contemplate.
Sorry, I should’ve clarified. Make that “publicized modern feminist activists”, as some LW readers believe them to be dogmatic and epistemologically unsound, or even unproductive for their own cause. Feminist ideas as such—like all the gender-sensitivity stuff—are widespread here.
Perhaps they should—but keep in mind that banning incest bars any one person from a very small subset of potentially desirable sex partners—much like barring psychiatrists from sexing their patients. On the other hand barring e.g. old people from having sex, or gay people having sex, pretty much precludes them from having pleasurable sex altogether. The cost of such a policy seems higher in such a case.
If incestuous desires are common (certain people think they are at least...), having a harsh prohibition on them might cause a lot of guilt even if those people wouldn’t actually go as far as to mate with their relatives. So trying to get rid of the prohibition might still be somewhat valuable.
That having been said, I’d have been all in favour of applauding the German couple (especially since they didn’t grow up together) if they had only made sure they didn’t have children via e.g. vasectomy, getting tubes tied, etc...
That seems a bit unfair. Why should they have to take particular care about a small-ish increase in risk just because some people are freaked out by them?
It’s even more unfair to carelessly bestow genetical deficiencies on one’s children. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_St%C3%BCbing—“The older two children suffer from severe physical and mental disabilities. The third child was born with a heart condition but is healthy after undergoing a heart transplant”
Actually given further information in that page, and after learning how the woman was still a minor at the beginning of their relationship, I withdraw my hypothetical “applauding” anyway; though at least on 2004 the man finally did undergo a vasectomy.
just because some people are freaked out by them?
Downvoted: I don’t see how you could have legitimately misinterpreted my words to mean that people being freaked out is the reason I offered for their need for birth control.
Lots of downvotes. So do we think there’s a good case for coercive eugenics here then? That’s got a sort of Schelling-pointy feel to it to me, so that I wonder if prohibiting incest might actually be the lesser of two evils.
If a case can be made for coercive eugenics here, where else can it be made? And how does the incest ick-factor influence the arguments?
Do people without siblings feel the ick-factor? Or do you need personal experience of the Westermarck effect?
So do we think there’s a good case for coercive eugenics here then? That’s got a sort of Schelling-pointy feel to it to me, so that I wonder if prohibiting incest might actually be the lesser of two evils.
If we’re comparing two “coercions” (coercive prohibition of incestuous couples from having children) (coercive prohibition of incestuous couples from having sex), the former seems to be the lesser coercion by far, and the more easily justified.
So is it “coercive” part of “coercive eugenics” that really bugs you, or is it that you have an ick-factor against eugenics altogether, voluntary eugenics too?
Whenever I want to trigger a moral intuition that can’t be justified by any moral system that doesn’t just expressly prohibit it by fiat, I use an example that triggers incest avoidance.
Non-consensual sex doesn’t have to be prohibited by fiat, it falls out of the principle of well constructed moral systems. E.G it almost always causes more unhappiness than happiness, so utilitarianism doesn’t like it in almost all cases.
There are cases when non-consensual sex would turn out to be justified, but I think they would be rare and hard to argue even in those cases. Incest is way better as a clear case to use in standard arguments.
There are cases when non-consensual sex would turn out to be justified, but I think they would be rare and hard to argue even in those cases
Some examples: the girl is under the age of consent, but looks older and lies to the boy; or the girl is drunk but says okay … the “wrongness” (if any) of cases like that does not fall out of straightforward consequentialism, but out of the need for a Schelling Fence somewhere, and ideally a simple one.
I think Jabberslythe was referring to “non-consensual” as in actually non-consensual, not in the sense of “the legal jurisdiction doesn’t recognize the legal validity of the person’s consent, because of drunkenness/age”
the girl is under the age of consent, but looks older and lies to the boy
This seems chiefly non-consensual for the boy, and it’s certainly not justified to put him at risk of prosecution!
The next case sounds bad to me, perhaps because the issue would never arise with adults if when the drug(s) wore off she recalled saying it and would still have said ‘yes’. (Or I may be reading it with the knowledge that the law does not, practically speaking, forbid sex with someone who’s had a few drinks.) But I technically agree that we’d need more information.
Living in some even less convenient world, I think I might consciously apply compartmentalization/hypocrisy upon hearing that someone did that—agreeing that they didn’t commit anything too bad either ethically or legally… then I’d still do something to harm the rapist emotionally, socially or materially, accepting that my aggression is merely an outlet for a moral emotion and not the demand of a consistent principle.
It’s not a direct answer, but this thelastpsychiatrist discussion of a similar question “f you could rape a girl, but then give her this magic drug that left her with no memory of the rape, would you do it?” is interesting.
I don’t know if many male readers will fail to think of the reversal before he suggests it. But he has a point that we teach girls, but not boys, that rape could happen to them. (I don’t know if we teach boys that they might be rapists, but we sure don’t teach girls that.) This may explain some empathy failures. Rape of men is around one third as common as rape of women, but the tropes treat rape of men as something that happens to other people, such as prison inmates or comedic characters.
I think you provide a sufficiently inconvinient possible world to challenge but this seems to be almost the default and fairly neutral world in which to test the theory. The worlds that almost instantly to mind in response to the implicit challenge (“hard to argue in even those cases”) naturally took the inconvenience to the extremes.
Most arguments against incest are arguments where the bottom line is already written since they are made by people who just don’t want to admit they are plain grossed out by it.
The most common intelligent argument I’ve seen against incest is “power imbalance!” which in the case of your news story looks like a case of the noncentral fallacy.
In principle, a society could frown upon parent-child incest but not upon incest between siblings, but that’s not what we see, so I don’t think that’s a good explanation.
I think that, however society should choose to treat parental incest, for the sake of consistency and coherency it could be compared to parents giving children legal but strong drugs—whether performance-enhancing or recreational.
Obviously any medical expert who’s just doing a job and is afraid of being sued would “advise” against either if consulted. Clearly, parents don’t have total sovereignity over their children, and most of the “decent” parents wouldn’t ask for it anyway while most of the abusive parents would love it. On the other hand, clearly the vast majority of people are hostile to the idea of thorough, case-by-case state intervention, a social worker ordering parents where exactly to draw the line, etc—both for political and pragmatic reasons.
But still, there are obviously parents who would, in good faith and with good intentions, want to introduce their child to sex or certain drugs. In such cases, not only are their preferences being unfairly violated, they might be right about it being safe and worthwhile for their child. Is there any way at all to filter those benign cases out from deliberate abuse, dangerous carelessness, etc? I can’t think of any.
(Discriminating against sibling incest is just as senseless and barbaric as discriminating against functioning drug users or homosexuals, IMO. Siblings should certainly be able to enter the complete, standard, state-sanctioned civil union with all its trappings—whether we rename it from “Marriage” to something else, as some liberals and libertarians propose, or not.)
I have no problem with non-productive incest. I also think that severely malformed embryos should be discarded before they have a chance to develop into a disabled person, effectively resolving the main objection against incest. On the other hand, I do not feel bad about the current incest laws, they seem to function well as Schelling fences.
I just want to double check something with LWers.
Incest among adults is also sex between consenting adults. At least some such relationships are happy ones. Most arguments against incest are arguments where the bottom line is already written since they are made by people who just don’t want to admit they are plain grossed out by it. Not only the motivation, but many of the arguments are basically the same as arguments in favour of homophobia. If the person has an identity centred on fighting “bigotry” cognitive dissonance hilarity ensues.
Bonus round: Arguments against incestuous couples having children is a fundamentally eugenicist argument. Applying it like a consequentalist results in concluding many other kinds of couples should be discouraged just as much (perhaps even with imprisonment since that is the price of discovered incest in many countries) or incest being legalized.
German incest couple lose rights ruling
True, but that’s largely a noncentral fallacy.
If I’m grossed out by it, why am I watching lesbian incest hentai? :-)
Agreed. But not all the arguments are basically the same. Some of the arguments are more like the “teachers shouldn’t date their students” argument and the “psychologists shouldn’t date their patients” or even “50-year olds shouldn’t date 20-year olds” argument, and reflect on the likely unhealthy effects of power-imbalance.
The power-imbalance in intergenerational incest is obvious. In intragenerational incest it can of course be significantly less clear; especially in cases like the German couple where the siblings only met during adulthood.
That’s a plus to those arguments, not a minus—because we’re moving to a consequentialist perspective from an arbitrary deontologist one.
Perhaps they should—but keep in mind that banning incest bars any one person from a very small subset of potentially desirable sex partners—much like barring psychiatrists from sexing their patients. On the other hand barring e.g. old people from having sex, or gay people having sex, pretty much precludes them from having pleasurable sex altogether. The cost of such a policy seems higher in such a case.
That having been said, I’d have been all in favour of applauding the German couple (especially since they didn’t grow up together) if they had only made sure they didn’t have children via e.g. vasectomy, getting tubes tied, etc...
I should emphasise this is written in a way to highlight some of the cognitive dissonance I saw in how reasonably intelligent people responded to the story, accepting arguments they would be outraged to hear in a different context.
If you’ve read my comment history you probably know that I approve of eugenics (encouraging some people to have children while discouraging others based on their genetic material). Also I’m sceptical of the coherence of the concept “consent” and think power imbalances can be features not bugs when it comes to humans.
Wait—skeptical of the concept of consent? Like I-consent-to-pay-you-money-in-exchange-for-your-car consent?
I think he’s referring to things like the age of consent, where the legal definition of “consent” in some jurisdictions might not cover some things many reasonable people would call “consent”.
I’d be willing to bet a small amount that he’s talking about one person being dominant over another, rather than dubiousness about age of consent laws.
Right, and excessive+indiscriminate killing power might be a feature not a bug when it comes to weapons, as it might give you peace through deterrence instead of just more slaughter. This doesn’t imply that nukes aren’t horrifically dangerous and don’t have the potential to fuck things up for a long time/permanently. And power imbalances can also be horrifically dangerous and do lasting, pervasive and insidious damage to innocent people.
That both categories are here to stay doesn’t mean that we’d be wise to get less paranoid about them or relax our vigilance.
EDIT: also -
That you’re against a blanket taboo on “eugenics” doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t literally kill to to prevent an imminent return of Hitler’s “eugenics” cluster, right? Well, of course the difference between you and the mainstream is that you aren’t blinded by the “Ancient Lurking Evil” meme of Hitler and don’t let it affect your risk/benefit assessment.
But you have zero evidence that the meta-category of “power imbalances” contains no Hitler-level lurking horrors, and mountains of 2nd-hand evidence to the contrary! I mean, look—that class of Bad Things is something that every single variation of feminism—some of them being at each other’s throats—agrees to be a clear and present danger. Certainly much feminist thinking is fallacious, cranky or in bad faith—but seeing such uncommon, wide-ranging consensus should call for a thorough self-update.
Also, I don’t see why the concept of “consent” has to be coherent in order to be valuable and useful. Plenty of taboos and moral injunctions that we see are incoherent. And yet many of them (take the American centrist mainstream as an example: “extrajudicial execution is always an atrocity when ordered by a state official, less condemnable when done by soldiers or insurgents”, or “preach respect for the law, but stall the enforcement of some laws’ letter and spirit”) you probably wouldn’t want to tinker with!
Nope you’ve caught me red handed, I totally want to resurrect Hitler and am creating a secret army in my Antarctic base for him to command.
There are much much better sources for arguments against power imbalances than feminism, why didn’t you pick those? But yes power imbalances can be dangerous and open the field up to terrible abuse, I assumed this goes without saying. I wished to emphasise that certain kinds of power imbalances can be desirable.
Indeed it doesn’t! But it does mean it isn’t universally valid and applicable. I think consent is best understood as relatively strong evidence about a persons preferences.
This is a stronger argument than it may seem to the average LWer.
Um… it seemed like too much work, so I intentionally pointed at a source with below-average reputation on LW, then directed attention at how that source handles its case in an unusually reasoned, consistent manner. Which should imply that evidence for it must be plentiful and come easy.
(“Patriarchy: so obvious and oppressive that even a feminist could see it!” Sorry.)
Also yeah, don’t worry, I didn’t really assume that you abandoned all prudence here and just looked for something illiberal to say, in order to signal cool metacontrarianism. I have a considerably higher opinion of you :)
The problem might simply be that I often argue with your stuff from some weird idiosyncrasic position, while you might do the sensible thing for open debates: write with the average LWer opinion in mind and direct much of your reasoning at it—which might make your points look too skewed to me.
You actually want the original? Man, you’re too late by far, maybe if you hurry up you could grab a cheap 4th-order Hitler clone with blueprints at some EvilCo sale.
P.S.: fun fact, Chesterton criticized feminism because he felt that it was contributing to the destruction of an older, better familial order… that is, Matriarchy in all but name!
If, like me, you ever felt sick after reading the stereotypical amoral PUA shit about gender, reading him is an antidote; gets the sleaze right out. Chesterton was certainly masterful at opposing any ever-modern “misanthropic” creed. I’m not saying I’d really endorse his arguments, but they’re a delight to contemplate.
What do you mean by this? Is feminism disfavored here? If so, in what way?
Sorry, I should’ve clarified. Make that “publicized modern feminist activists”, as some LW readers believe them to be dogmatic and epistemologically unsound, or even unproductive for their own cause. Feminist ideas as such—like all the gender-sensitivity stuff—are widespread here.
Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification!
Freudian slip?
If incestuous desires are common (certain people think they are at least...), having a harsh prohibition on them might cause a lot of guilt even if those people wouldn’t actually go as far as to mate with their relatives. So trying to get rid of the prohibition might still be somewhat valuable.
Incest themes are quite common in porn.
That might be in part because guilt and shame can act as huge turn-ons for nearly everyone.
That seems a bit unfair. Why should they have to take particular care about a small-ish increase in risk just because some people are freaked out by them?
It’s even more unfair to carelessly bestow genetical deficiencies on one’s children. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_St%C3%BCbing—“The older two children suffer from severe physical and mental disabilities. The third child was born with a heart condition but is healthy after undergoing a heart transplant”
Actually given further information in that page, and after learning how the woman was still a minor at the beginning of their relationship, I withdraw my hypothetical “applauding” anyway; though at least on 2004 the man finally did undergo a vasectomy.
Downvoted: I don’t see how you could have legitimately misinterpreted my words to mean that people being freaked out is the reason I offered for their need for birth control.
Lots of downvotes. So do we think there’s a good case for coercive eugenics here then? That’s got a sort of Schelling-pointy feel to it to me, so that I wonder if prohibiting incest might actually be the lesser of two evils.
If a case can be made for coercive eugenics here, where else can it be made? And how does the incest ick-factor influence the arguments?
Do people without siblings feel the ick-factor? Or do you need personal experience of the Westermarck effect?
If we’re comparing two “coercions” (coercive prohibition of incestuous couples from having children) (coercive prohibition of incestuous couples from having sex), the former seems to be the lesser coercion by far, and the more easily justified.
So is it “coercive” part of “coercive eugenics” that really bugs you, or is it that you have an ick-factor against eugenics altogether, voluntary eugenics too?
Whenever I want to trigger a moral intuition that can’t be justified by any moral system that doesn’t just expressly prohibit it by fiat, I use an example that triggers incest avoidance.
You can get even stronger results using non-consensual sex.
Non-consensual sex doesn’t have to be prohibited by fiat, it falls out of the principle of well constructed moral systems. E.G it almost always causes more unhappiness than happiness, so utilitarianism doesn’t like it in almost all cases.
There are cases when non-consensual sex would turn out to be justified, but I think they would be rare and hard to argue even in those cases. Incest is way better as a clear case to use in standard arguments.
Some examples: the girl is under the age of consent, but looks older and lies to the boy; or the girl is drunk but says okay … the “wrongness” (if any) of cases like that does not fall out of straightforward consequentialism, but out of the need for a Schelling Fence somewhere, and ideally a simple one.
I think Jabberslythe was referring to “non-consensual” as in actually non-consensual, not in the sense of “the legal jurisdiction doesn’t recognize the legal validity of the person’s consent, because of drunkenness/age”
This seems chiefly non-consensual for the boy, and it’s certainly not justified to put him at risk of prosecution!
The next case sounds bad to me, perhaps because the issue would never arise with adults if when the drug(s) wore off she recalled saying it and would still have said ‘yes’. (Or I may be reading it with the knowledge that the law does not, practically speaking, forbid sex with someone who’s had a few drinks.) But I technically agree that we’d need more information.
Google “9 of 10 people enjoy *”.
:)
Least convenient possible world:
Is it wrong to rape someone unconscious if pregnancy and STDs aren’t an issue?
Living in some even less convenient world, I think I might consciously apply compartmentalization/hypocrisy upon hearing that someone did that—agreeing that they didn’t commit anything too bad either ethically or legally… then I’d still do something to harm the rapist emotionally, socially or materially, accepting that my aggression is merely an outlet for a moral emotion and not the demand of a consistent principle.
Personally I think the problem is with the quasi-utiliterianism that tends to be the default moral theory around here.
It’s not a direct answer, but this thelastpsychiatrist discussion of a similar question “f you could rape a girl, but then give her this magic drug that left her with no memory of the rape, would you do it?” is interesting.
I don’t know if many male readers will fail to think of the reversal before he suggests it. But he has a point that we teach girls, but not boys, that rape could happen to them. (I don’t know if we teach boys that they might be rapists, but we sure don’t teach girls that.) This may explain some empathy failures. Rape of men is around one third as common as rape of women, but the tropes treat rape of men as something that happens to other people, such as prison inmates or comedic characters.
I think you provide a sufficiently inconvinient possible world to challenge but this seems to be almost the default and fairly neutral world in which to test the theory. The worlds that almost instantly to mind in response to the implicit challenge (“hard to argue in even those cases”) naturally took the inconvenience to the extremes.
(I agree with what seems to be your key message.)
The most common intelligent argument I’ve seen against incest is “power imbalance!” which in the case of your news story looks like a case of the noncentral fallacy.
In principle, a society could frown upon parent-child incest but not upon incest between siblings, but that’s not what we see, so I don’t think that’s a good explanation.
I think that, however society should choose to treat parental incest, for the sake of consistency and coherency it could be compared to parents giving children legal but strong drugs—whether performance-enhancing or recreational.
Obviously any medical expert who’s just doing a job and is afraid of being sued would “advise” against either if consulted. Clearly, parents don’t have total sovereignity over their children, and most of the “decent” parents wouldn’t ask for it anyway while most of the abusive parents would love it. On the other hand, clearly the vast majority of people are hostile to the idea of thorough, case-by-case state intervention, a social worker ordering parents where exactly to draw the line, etc—both for political and pragmatic reasons.
But still, there are obviously parents who would, in good faith and with good intentions, want to introduce their child to sex or certain drugs. In such cases, not only are their preferences being unfairly violated, they might be right about it being safe and worthwhile for their child. Is there any way at all to filter those benign cases out from deliberate abuse, dangerous carelessness, etc? I can’t think of any.
(Discriminating against sibling incest is just as senseless and barbaric as discriminating against functioning drug users or homosexuals, IMO. Siblings should certainly be able to enter the complete, standard, state-sanctioned civil union with all its trappings—whether we rename it from “Marriage” to something else, as some liberals and libertarians propose, or not.)
I have no problem with non-productive incest. I also think that severely malformed embryos should be discarded before they have a chance to develop into a disabled person, effectively resolving the main objection against incest. On the other hand, I do not feel bad about the current incest laws, they seem to function well as Schelling fences.