What is it about incest?

i agree with freddie and madem. the truth is incest doesn't damage every person who does it. but anybody wanna wager the ratio of those who, on any level, are damaged vs. those who aren't.

to me to say incest doesn't hurt everybody is like saying the holocaust wasn't so bad because a few people survived. certainly, but look how many died. there are countless studies that detail the different amounts of damage incest can bring down on a child. take my word for it cuz i don't feel like copying, pasting, hyperlinking, etc.. the number of humans who benefit from incest is far outweighed by the number of people thy aren't

agreeable. incest isnt the bad guy.. he just hangs out with a bad crowed. to bad you get arrested if you are hanging out with people who are doing drugs haha.

For some reason it seems to me that many people have missed what the OP's original intent was. This was not meant to be a discussion exploring whether incest is morally right or morally wrong, the OP and everyone can agree, that for the most part and in most instances, incest is morally wrong. No one has argued for incest, some of us have just said that arguably not all instances of what can technically be considered incest are the same and so there may be subtle shades of gray.

What the OP wanted to explore was what creates the "ick" factor about incest from an objective standpoint? If you separate out the, "because it's bad" automatic response, how does one justify the repulsion to incest? (Yes we all know that incest destroys the family unit, that again, is a given.)

Madame R suggested that incest produces the "ick" for her because you don't want to be with someone who farts on your head. I suggested that the incest produces the "ick" for me because my emotional needs and feelings of intimacy are satisfied from my family, so I have no need or desire to see them in any other way. I think many of the people who are expressing fantasies of incest are doing so because they lacked the emotional connection to their family members and they are attempting to relive family moments with stronger expressions of love--it's distorted but emotionally starved people sometimes make emotionally immature decisions.

I'm not sure if it's possible for people to discuss this issue objectively, the immediate response of "because it's bad" is a bit too easy and common. The issue is whether you can express your "ick" response in an objective way? As someone stated, at one point, inter-marrying was considered acceptable. What prevented those families from having the "ick" factor?

Personally I'm not interested in understanding this debate, I don't need to. But I read the OP's thread and appreciated that he was attempting to explore an intellectual discussion about what is behind the "ick". This would be akin to someone asking a gay guy why he thinks a woman's vagina is "icky" or a straight guy why having anal is "icky". I think it's good for people to understand what really motivates their opposition to things so they have a greater understanding of the issue beyond a knee-jerk response.

You know, is it any worse or better if the 17 year old and 6 year old are not related? The situation you are using is a crime either way, and justly so, but it has nothing to do with incest.

Thanks for your objectivity and insight. I think you've fairly well summed up and explained all aspects of the original question and possible answers rather well.

And yes, you are absolutely correct on the notion that I think people should explore things that they have "knee jerk" reactions to, rather than intellectual reactions to. If something just feels wrong because you always thought it was wrong, you should ask yourself why. Understanding yourself and your own motivations is part of growing as a person.

by definition, incest and pedophilia are NOT AT ALL related. conduct interviews at a few rape-victim shelters and prisons and you'll find that the two often go hand-in-hand.

I dont think you should fuck the vagina that you came out of.

I do know of cases where as long as it was same-sex and both parties are either both below the age of puberty or both above the age of puberty where it didn't have all the negative effects at all, the problem is most often if and when it is opposite sex forced when one is above the age of puberty and one under the age of puberty.

There was incest in my family. And let's just say one of them is dead now. I wouldn't recommend it.

I think it is natural not to be attracted to someone you've grown up with, and makes sense from an evolutionary point of view.

Studies have been done into this. For example there was a traditional type of arranged marriage in Taiwan where the girl was raised from a young age by the family of her future husband. They found that such marriages tended to be less successful (in terms of divorce and children) than ordinary marriages. Others conducted on Israeli kibbutzes where unrelated children were raised together found that they tended to reject those they grew up with as partners, despite their parents' hopes that they would marry within the collective.

This thread has brought out a lot of emotions and memories in me. I've never ever had the notion to do anything of the sort, but my family found ourselves in a situation a few years back that required a fair amount of counseling mostly for proactive reasons.

I married my wife 7 years ago and got a 12-year-old daughter in the process. I've never had children before, and have never aspired to be a father. But all of a sudden I was an instant parent to a beautiful and intelligent young woman.
She never had a real dad; he abandoned my wife as soon as he found out she was pregnant. I was a daddy-come-lately and she was anxious to finally have one.

In her second year in high school is where things began to go south, and I blame it entirely on peer pressure. Her friends were always over at the house, and with all due modesty I was perceived as a demi-star since my band is well known in the area. We learned later in counseling sessions that a number of her friends would say things like "if I slept under his roof I'd..." and stuff like that.

Nothing, and I mean nothing ever happened, but she confessed to her mother about having feelings for me. It was a huge case of out-of-control infatuation, and I was completely crushed because I could no longer love her like a father for fear of just aggravating the situation. We finally decided to go to counseling sooner rather than later and I am so grateful that we did. It took almost two-years to work through everything and we still take it one day at a time.

But she is now a gorgeous college freshman, oh, excuse me, college sophomore who hugs me like a Daddy and has a real boyfriend, whom I hate, by the way - not because I'm jealous but because he has the gall to actually think he's good enough for her.

My wife calls me a hero because B was so vulnerable and probably would have done anything I wanted. I keep telling her that there's no part of me that's a hero in this case. It's not that I didn't want to, it's that it was never a reality with me - she was my daughter whether I added to her DNA or not. I was not only proud of her many accomplishments but just proud to be in her company. I look at that time as when she was sick. She was weak and very fragile, and her friends, who were found out later not to be friends at all, only made things much worse.

I'm not superhuman; temptations never bothered me before because I usually gave in to them quite readily. There was never a temptation here.

OK, hot wife in the picture, so that colors the situation. But still, I've never considered incest to even be a fantasy. In my mind it's always a sickness. So, I guess the fact that I never fantasized in those areas before helped me to resist here.

uh....that's awesome!!

Good point, for it greatly "complicates" family relationships, when that weird stuff goes on.

Hopefully, the vagina you came out of, is still for a guy's father to fuck, unless the guy's parents have remarried.

But sometimes people get too carried away with how they define "incest." Isn't the main idea of "incest" to avoid "inbreeding," the passing on of problematic genetic traits? Don't many states still allow for cousins to marry? I think that cousins may be distant enough, to not have the inbreeding problems. The children of Adam & Eve could marry each other, as there were no other humans around back then, to alternatively choose from, and because they were so close to the "orginal" God's creation, that there wasn't yet time for so much genetic damage to occur from generation to generation.

I wouldn't mind at all fucking a woman who I knew as a little girl growing up. I think it's cool to marry such an "old friend" sweetheart. Relationships can change and mature to a more "adult" level, if appropriate. If only I had such a person. But society these days is often too mobile, and children we grew up with, often aren't around anymore by the time we grow up. Living with other friendly people around, and properly committing in marriage, doesn't at all count as "incest," when they aren't even too closely related.

It's sick. The end. Go get a boyfriend/girlfriend to fuck .