Essay Index
Custom Writing
Admissions Help
Submit an Essay
FAQ / Help
Q & A Forums
Essay Links
Link to us
Contact Us | |||||
| Essay IndexCustom WritingAdmissions HelpSubmit an EssayFAQ / HelpQ & A ForumsEssay LinksLink to usContact Us |
| |||||||||
On the Incest TabooWritten by: palma Incest is not such a clear-cut matter as it has been made out to be over millennia of taboos. Many participants claim to have enjoyed the act and its physical and emotional consequences. It is often the result of seduction. In some cases, two consenting and fully informed adults are involved. Many types of relationships, which are defined as incestuous, are between genetically unrelated parties (a stepfather and a daughter), or between fictive kin or between classificatory kin (that belong to the same matriline or patriline). In certain societies (the American Indians or the Chinese) it is sufficient to carry the same family name (=to belong to the same clan) and marriage is forbidden. Some incest prohibitions relate to sexual acts - other to marriage. In some societies, incest is mandatory or prohibited, according to the social class (Bali). In others, the Royal House started a tradition of incestuous marriages, which were imitated by lower classes (Ancient Egypt). The list is long and it serves to demonstrate the diversity of this most universal taboo. Generally put, we can say that a prohibition to have sex with or marry a related person should be classified as an incest prohibition, no matter the nature of the relationship. Perhaps the strongest feature of incest has been hitherto downplayed: that it is, essentially, an autoerotic act. Having sex with a first-degree blood relative is like having sex with yourself. It is a Narcissistic act and like all acts Narcissistic, it involves the objectification of the partner. The incestuous Narcissist over-values and then devalues his sexual partner. He is devoid of empathy (cannot see the other's point of view or put himself in her shoes). For an in depth treatment of Narcissism and its psychosexual dimension, see: "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" and "Frequently Asked Questions" (scroll down for a complete list of FAQs). But incest involves more than a manifestation of a personality disorder or of a paraphilia (incest is considered by many to be a class of pedophilia). It harks back to the very nature of the family. It is closely entangled with its functions and with its contribution to the development of the individual within it. A family is a mechanism of allocation of genetic and materialistic wealth. Worldly goods are passed on from one generation to the next through succession, inheritance and residence. Genetic material is handed down through the sexual act. It is the mandate of the family to increase both, either by accumulating property or by exogamy (marrying outside the family). Clearly, incest prevents both. It preserves a limited genetic pool and makes an increase of material possessions through intermarriage all but impossible. Once allocated, the family is an efficient venue of transferring material wealth, as well as transmitting information and messages horizontally (among family members) and vertically (down the generations). A large part of the process of socialization still rides on the back of this property of the family. It is still by far the most heavyweight agent of socialization. Gender roles, for instance, are learned, emulated and assimilated mainly through the family. Incest, in itself, isolated from its social context and judgement, should not have affected this function in particular. There is no logical reason why incest should interfere with socialization, role learning or with the allocation of material resources (except, perhaps, when it comes to inheritance). Paradoxically, it is the reaction of society that transforms incest into such a disruptive phenomenon. The condemnation, the horror, the revulsion and the social sanctions distort the internal processes of the incestuous family. It is from society that the child learns that something is horribly wrong and that he should not adopt the offending parent as a role model. The formation of the Superego is stunted and it remains infantile, ideal, sadistic, perfectionist, demanding and punishing. The Ego, on the other hand, is likely to be replaced by a False Ego version, whose job it is to suffer the consequences of the socially hideous act. To sum up : social control in the case of incest is most likely to produce a Narcissist. Disempathic, exploitative and in eternal search for Narcissistic supply – the child becomes a replica of his offending parent. One of the main businesses of the family is to teach to its members self control, self regulation and healthy adaptation. Family members share space and resources, for instance. Siblings share the mother's emotions and attention. Similarly, the family educates its young members to master their drives and to postpone the gratification and satisfaction, which attaches to acting upon them. The incest taboo teaches children how to control their erotic drive by abstaining from ingratiating themselves with members of the opposite sex within the same family. There could be little question that incest constitutes a lack of control and impedes the proper separation of impulse (or stimulus) from the response to it. Additionally, it probably interferes with the defensive aspects of the family's existence. It is through the family that aggression is legitimately channelled, expressed and externalized. By imposing discipline and hierarchy on its members, the family is transformed into a cohesive and efficient war machine. It sucks in economic resources, social status and members of other families. It forms alliances and fights other alliances over scarce goods, tangible and intangible. This efficacy is adversely affected by incest. It is virtually impossible to maintain discipline and hierarchy in an incestuous family wherein some members assume sexual roles not normally theirs. Sex is an expression of power – emotional and physical. The members of the family involved in the incest surrender power and assume it out of the regular flow patterns that have made the family the formidable apparatus that it is. This weakens the family, both internally and externally. Internally, emotive reactions (such as jealousy of other family members) and clashing authorities and responsibilities are likely to undo the delicate unit. Externally, the family will be vulnerable to ostracism and more official forms of intervention and dismantling. Finally, the family is an identity endowment mechanism. It bestows identity upon its members. Internally, the members of the family derive meaning from their position in the family tree (coupled with societal expectations and maxims). Externally, through exogamy, the family absorbs other identities and develops its own. Exogamy, as often noted, allows for the creation of extended alliances. It reduces the solidarity of the nuclear, original family by extending it to “strangers”. The “identity creep” of the family is in total opposition to incest. The latter even increases the solidarity and cohesiveness of the incestuous family – but at the expense of its ability to digest and absorb other identities of other family units. Freud said that incest provokes horror because it touches upon our forbidden, ambivalent emotions towards members of our close family. This ambivalence covers both aggression towards other members (forbidden and punishable) and (sexual) attraction to them (doubly forbidden and punishable). Others had an opposite view (Westermark) that “familiarity breeds contempt” and that the incest taboo simply reflects emotional reality rather than fight against inbred instincts. There is little doubt that incest has nothing to do with genetic considerations. In today's world incest does not need to result in pregnancy and the transmission of genetic material. Good contraceptives should, therefore, encourage bad, incestuous, couples. In many other life forms, inbreeding or straightforward incest is the norm (chimpanzees, to mention close relatives). Finally, incest prohibitions apply to non-genetically-related people in most countries. The more primitive the society, the more strict and elaborate the set of incest prohibitions and the fiercer the reactions of society to its violation. It appears that the less violent the dispute settlement methods in a given culture – the more lenient the attitude to incest. Incest seems to interfere with well-established and rigid patterns of inheritance. This interference led, in all probability, to disputes. In more primitive societies, arms were resorted to in an effort to resolve conflicts. To prevent recurrent and costly bloodshed was one of the intentions of the incest taboo. The incest taboo is, therefore, a cultural trait. Protective of the efficient mechanism of the family, society sought to minimize disruption to its activities and to the clear flows of authority, responsibilities, material wealth and information horizontally and vertically. Incest threatened to unravel this magnificent creation. Alarmed by the possible consequences (internal and external feuds, a rise in the level of aggression and violence) – society introduced the taboo. It came replete with physical and emotional sanctions: stigmatization, revulsion and horror, imprisonment, the demolition of the errant and socially mutant family cell. As long as societies revolve around the relegation of power, its sharing, its acquisition and dispensation – there will always exist an incest taboo. But in a different society and culture, it is conceivable not to have such a taboo. This would be either utopian or dystopian, depending on the reader.
|
| Athiestjc 2007-02-25 09:08AM | No Rating |
|
I think it should be seen in a consequcial way, what are the conseques? It can definitely mess up the geetics of the offspring. Offspring of insest throughout history have often resulted in deformations. Some fruit and vegitables are cloned when they are farmed becausde thats a very efficient way of doing it. For example all bananas in a farm have the same dna, and so genetic deseases spread a lot faste and easier. The is infact a sort of 'banana plague' at the moment. The dna resulting from insest means that genetic diseases are passed on vey easily. The royal famlies of Europe were/are all related, and continued to make diplomatic marrages. They are quite a good example of the consequences of insest, if you look at the spred of deseases through royal families. I'm sure the relatioships between insestuous couples must be pretty confusted, and are probibally not good for the mind. However there is no guarranteed negative consequences (apart from variating levels of social exclusion) of insest. It should definitely be avoided, but should not be condemed. | |
| cantori 2007-08-05 01:40PM | No Rating |
|
Note: A 41-year-old woman has a 10% higher-than-average chance of birth defects, because of her age. http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13686645&BRD=1706&PAG=461&dept_id=72001&rfi=6 [...]Robin Bennett, manager of the Genetic Medicine Clinic at the University of Washington Medical Center, with Arno Motulsky, professor emeritus of medicine and genome sciences at the University of Washington, presented a paper on consanguinity in the 2002 April issue of the Journal of Genetic Counseling. In a summary of the paper, the authors conclude that the genetic risks to offspring of consanguineous relationships have been overstated. Bennett, in a telephone interview with The Register Herald, said first cousins are third-degree relatives, uncle/niece are second-degree, and sibling/sibling or parent/child are first-degree. "Uncle/niece risk is somewhat higher than first-cousin risk, which is between 1.7% to 2.8% above the background risk," said Bennett. "Risk in first-degree relations is 7% to 31% - based on limited studies," she said. Following Bennett's reasoning, the genetic risk of morbidity (the relative incidence of disease) in uncle/niece relationships is somewhere between 2.8% and 7% above the risk of unrelated couples. "These (incest) laws are old and draconian," contends Alicia Craffey, a genetic counselor at the University of Connecticut in Farmington. "The (genetic) risk is usually a little bit higher, but not exponentially," said Craffey [...] Because "it is the reaction of society that transforms incest into such a disruptive phenomenon", the correct approach is clearly to de-toxify the reaction of society. Laws against incest should be repealed, as explained here: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/colb/20070725.html Should Pro-Choice and Pro-Life Approaches to Reproductive Rights Carry an "Incest Exception"? By Sherry F. Colb Special to FindLaw.com Wednesday, July 25, 2007 Incest within a Reproductive Rights Framework The notion that "incest" ought to be treated as distinctive, in the context of reproductive rights, is not unique to pro-life compromise on the issue of abortion. To give one example, Alexander Sanger, grandson of Margaret Sanger (the founder of the organization that eventually became Planned Parenthood), argues in his book, Beyond Choice, that we ought to view ready access to and use of contraception and abortion as successful human strategies for survival - strategies that we, as a species, prohibit at our peril. When a particular exercise of reproductive choice endangers human survival prospects, Sanger suggests, the rights of the individual should give way to the needs of the species. As two illustrations, he provides the ban on reproductive cloning (a technology which, he claims, would undermine the genetic diversity necessary for successful evolution in a changing world), and the criminal prohibition against incest (a practice that, he claims, would hurt humanity by increasing the prevalence of birth defects in the population). In keeping with Sanger's perspective, liberals defending a right of privacy to select one's sexual partner typically emphasize the distinction between the practice of incest - for which, they hold, there should be no recognition - and other practices (including contraception, abortion, and gay and lesbian relations) - which, they hold, should be recognized and protected. The notion that there ought to be an "incest exception" to bans on abortion, otherwise supported by some members of the pro-life community, is simply the flip-side of the liberal approach: However we view sexual and reproductive choice generally, incest exceptionalism counsels that we suspend that view when faced with the risk of incestuous reproduction. Incest and Child Abuse To question the virtually universal ban on incest is, at one level, to seem like a dunce or a deliberate provocateur. How can anyone support a right to incest? Isn't that tantamount to supporting child molestation? And isn't the nearly-universal taboo on incestuous relationships in place for a reason? First, by "incest," let me be extremely clear that I do not mean sexual relations that involve a child. Such relations are rightly criminal, because children are too young to provide consent and therefore, they suffer abuse when an adult subjects their bodies to sexual contact. This is true regardless of whether the adult is a parent, an uncle, a stranger, or the neighborhood pedophile. We might understandably consider such abuse to be worse when the offender also occupies the role of parent or guardian, but that point is less about incest than it is about the betrayal of a trust. For that reason, most people would rightly view molestation by an adoptive parent as equally outrageous, though it is not genetically an incestuous relationship. It poses no contradiction, then, to support sexual freedom generally while opposing incest involving a child: Like rape, child molestation is a violation that necessarily falls outside the heading of "two consenting adults." By the same token, a pro-life advocate who supports an exception for victims of child molestation faces no greater challenge in defending this position, than he would in defending the rape exception more generally. (For more on the challenges posed by defending the rape exception, see my prior column.) One need not treat "incest" as special, in other words, to protect children from abuse (or from the consequences that follow from that abuse). A Genetic Defense of the Species To defend a ban on incest (or a special allowance for abortion in cases of incest), one must, however, confront the case of consensual incestuous sexual activity between adults. Consider, for example, a brother and sister who were separated at birth and raised in different homes. They meet as adults, begin dating, and fall in love. In undergoing simple blood tests, they learn that they are in fact biological siblings. They still want to marry, but the law prohibits them from doing so and, indeed, threatens to punish them criminally if they engage in sexual intercourse with each other. Why do we have such a prohibition? It is to protect the species from the increased likelihood of birth defects. The genes for a birth defect are often recessive, which means that a child must inherit the gene from two parents in order to develop the harmful trait in question. Tay Sachs disease and Cystic Fibrosis are examples. When two sexual partners are genetically related to each other, their relation - by definition - means that they share a large number of genes in common (depending, of course, on how closely related they are). Two siblings share, on average, 50% of their genetic endowment (not otherwise common to the entire species). It follows that whatever genetic trait is present in one of the partners is far more likely to find its defective analogue in a sibling than in a random member of the surrounding community. The result? More birth defects in the children of siblings. Thus, if everyone must find a mate outside of the immediate family, there are likely to be fewer birth defects than if everyone is marrying his or her close relatives. And with fewer birth defects, there will be a heartier population, better able to survive and reproduce into the future. A Natural Taboo Apparently because of the selective evolutionary advantage of marrying outside the family, most of us have a natural aversion to the idea of sleeping with our relatives. There is, indeed, evidence that people are likely to be most sexually aroused by the odors of other people whose genes are most different from their own. If we're built to avoid close couplings, then doesn't it seem sensible (and properly distinctive) to criminally prohibit incest, if one is a liberal, or to allow abortions of the products of incest, if one is pro-life? Not necessarily. The fact that an overwhelming majority of the adult population finds revolting the very thought of intimacy with a parent or sibling - that such aversion seems hard-wired - suggests that, in fact, there is no real risk of large numbers of incestuous couplings. This, in turn, means that it is unnecessary to "make an example" of the rare pair of consenting adults who both lack the relevant aversion. The Categorical Imperative Immanuel Kant introduced the moral notion that one should behave in a manner that, if adopted as an axiom by the entire population, would not be destructive. Kant referred to the requirement of generalizing one's proposed course of action in this way as the "categorical imperative." As a Kantian, if I feel like stealing an iPod from Circuit City, I cannot rationalize it by noting the slight impact that such a theft would have. If everyone behaved as I did, the harmful impact would be grave and unjustifiable - and that is enough to make my iPod theft immoral. If one takes a Kantian approach to incest, then it might seem that even though a particular incestuous coupling may have little impact on the population, the generalization of this practice could bring catastrophe to our species. Therefore, one might say, it is appropriate to punish incest criminally and thereby penalize those people who act in a manner that could not, without courting disaster, be generalized to everyone else. The problem with this argument, however, even if one is a strict Kantian, is that the "harm" of incest - its tendency to increase the odds of birth defects - is not unique to incest and is also not universal in cases of incest. A ban on incest is, accordingly, both under- and over-inclusive. Under- and Over-Inclusiveness In a world in which genetic testing is unavailable, avoiding incest may be among the only steps one can take (short of infanticide) to guard against congenital birth defects. In our world, however, people can (and often do) undergo genetic testing before they decide to have a child together. People might undergo a test for a particular gene before marrying, before trying to achieve conception, or during an extant pregnancy. As a result of this possibility, a true effort to minimize birth defects - even by force of the criminal law - would require genetic testing and would prohibit the union of individuals who share a gene for a particular disease or disorder, whether or not the man and woman were related. In this sense, then, the current ban is under-inclusive. Within some communities of Eastern European Jews, for example, where the incidence of the gene for Tay Sachs disease is heightened, people are strongly encouraged to be tested and to plan their marriages accordingly. A broader version of such an approach could become the law, if we wanted to prioritize the prevention of genetic birth defects. Our reaction to such efforts, however, is to view them with suspicion and even outrage, because they are literally "eugenic" policies, reminiscent of what the Nazis (not to mention the U.S., in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries) did. Though it would be bad for the species to have enormous numbers of people born with congenital birth defects, we rely on voluntary efforts (including optional genetic counseling for couples) and choose not to impose mandatory eugenics on the population. Given the relative infrequency of incestuous couplings, it would seem arbitrary to single them out for coercive regulation in the campaign against genetic birth defects. Similarly, it would seem arbitrary for one who considers himself generally "pro-life" to make an exception, on this basis, only for pregnancies that are the result of incest. Indeed, many pro-lifers emphatically oppose permitting abortion even when amniocentesis reveals the near-certainty of genetic illness as bad as or worse than the illnesses that incest may risk. Conversely, there are many incestuous couplings that will not lead to birth defects, even though the odds increase. Indeed, an incestuous couple might - in any given case - have genes that are, relative to a particular non-related couple, unlikely to lead to a birth defect. Furthermore, many couples who do not intend to have (or cannot have) children will not create a birth-defect problem in the population. In this sense, a ban on incest is over-inclusive. Sexual relationships are, despite religious efforts to the contrary, not synonymous with procreation, and a criminal law premised on the view that they are is necessarily going to be quite imprecise. Encouraging Incest? No Despite my foregoing defense of a legal right to incest, I do not believe that incest is a wonderful thing that ought to be encouraged. If it turned out that I was wrong and that millions of sibling couples were patiently waiting for legalization to attempt to populate the earth, I would find the prospect profoundly disturbing. But this is true, as well, of other choices that we allow individuals to make in a free country: For example, I would be disturbed to learn that everyone in the population had turned away from reproduction and would practice contraception for the rest of their lives. Such a course of events would, in fact, lead to human extinction far more quickly than even universal incest. Yet I suspect that neither of these nightmare scenarios is remotely likely to come to pass. Survival of the species depends on a complicated combination of genetic and environmental factors, some of which may be counterintuitive and unknown to us. Rather than embrace a discriminatory brand of mandatory eugenics, we should focus our efforts on facilitating and informing voluntary choices. Like the species as a whole, every individual within it has an inherent interest in protecting the health and survival of her family and can - and generally should - be relied on to act accordingly, without legal intervention. Sherry F. Colb is Professor and Frederick B. Lacey Scholar at Rutgers Law School in Newark. | |
| cantori 2007-08-05 01:40PM | No Rating |
|
Note: A 41-year-old woman has a 10% higher-than-average chance of birth defects, because of her age. http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13686645&BRD=1706&PAG=461&dept_id=72001&rfi=6 [...]Robin Bennett, manager of the Genetic Medicine Clinic at the University of Washington Medical Center, with Arno Motulsky, professor emeritus of medicine and genome sciences at the University of Washington, presented a paper on consanguinity in the 2002 April issue of the Journal of Genetic Counseling. In a summary of the paper, the authors conclude that the genetic risks to offspring of consanguineous relationships have been overstated. Bennett, in a telephone interview with The Register Herald, said first cousins are third-degree relatives, uncle/niece are second-degree, and sibling/sibling or parent/child are first-degree. "Uncle/niece risk is somewhat higher than first-cousin risk, which is between 1.7% to 2.8% above the background risk," said Bennett. "Risk in first-degree relations is 7% to 31% - based on limited studies," she said. Following Bennett's reasoning, the genetic risk of morbidity (the relative incidence of disease) in uncle/niece relationships is somewhere between 2.8% and 7% above the risk of unrelated couples. "These (incest) laws are old and draconian," contends Alicia Craffey, a genetic counselor at the University of Connecticut in Farmington. "The (genetic) risk is usually a little bit higher, but not exponentially," said Craffey [...] Because "it is the reaction of society that transforms incest into such a disruptive phenomenon", the correct approach is clearly to de-toxify the reaction of society. Laws against incest should be repealed, as explained here: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/colb/20070725.html | |
| cantori 2007-08-05 01:41PM | No Rating |
|
Note: A 41-year-old woman has a 10% higher-than-average chance of birth defects, because of her age. http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13686645&BRD=1706&PAG=461&dept_id=72001&rfi=6 [...]Robin Bennett, manager of the Genetic Medicine Clinic at the University of Washington Medical Center, with Arno Motulsky, professor emeritus of medicine and genome sciences at the University of Washington, presented a paper on consanguinity in the 2002 April issue of the Journal of Genetic Counseling. In a summary of the paper, the authors conclude that the genetic risks to offspring of consanguineous relationships have been overstated. Bennett, in a telephone interview with The Register Herald, said first cousins are third-degree relatives, uncle/niece are second-degree, and sibling/sibling or parent/child are first-degree. "Uncle/niece risk is somewhat higher than first-cousin risk, which is between 1.7% to 2.8% above the background risk," said Bennett. "Risk in first-degree relations is 7% to 31% - based on limited studies," she said. Following Bennett's reasoning, the genetic risk of morbidity (the relative incidence of disease) in uncle/niece relationships is somewhere between 2.8% and 7% above the risk of unrelated couples. "These (incest) laws are old and draconian," contends Alicia Craffey, a genetic counselor at the University of Connecticut in Farmington. "The (genetic) risk is usually a little bit higher, but not exponentially," said Craffey [...] Because "it is the reaction of society that transforms incest into such a disruptive phenomenon", the correct approach is clearly to de-toxify the reaction of society. Laws against incest should be repealed, as explained here: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/colb/20070725.html | |
| cantori 2007-08-05 01:43PM | No Rating |
|
A 41-year-old woman has a 10% higher-than-average chance of birth defects, because of her age. [...]Robin Bennett, manager of the Genetic Medicine Clinic at the University of Washington Medical Center, with Arno Motulsky, professor emeritus of medicine and genome sciences at the University of Washington, presented a paper on consanguinity in the 2002 April issue of the Journal of Genetic Counseling. In a summary of the paper, the authors conclude that the genetic risks to offspring of consanguineous relationships have been overstated. Bennett, in a telephone interview with The Register Herald, said first cousins are third-degree relatives, uncle/niece are second-degree, and sibling/sibling or parent/child are first-degree. "Uncle/niece risk is somewhat higher than first-cousin risk, which is between 1.7% to 2.8% above the background risk," said Bennett. "Risk in first-degree relations is 7% to 31% - based on limited studies," she said. Following Bennett's reasoning, the genetic risk of morbidity (the relative incidence of disease) in uncle/niece relationships is somewhere between 2.8% and 7% above the risk of unrelated couples. "These (incest) laws are old and draconian," contends Alicia Craffey, a genetic counselor at the University of Connecticut in Farmington. "The (genetic) risk is usually a little bit higher, but not exponentially," said Craffey [...] Because "it is the reaction of society that transforms incest into such a disruptive phenomenon", the correct approach is clearly to de-toxify the reaction of society. Laws against incest should be repealed. | |
| PlanetPapers.com | Contact Me | Copyright © 2009 | Privacy Policy | Add to Favorites |
