As promised, this post will consist of unabashed speculation about where the taboo on incest comes from.
You might know about the Kibbutzim – the great Israeli experiments in communal living. Though as societies they did not do badly, as experiments in socialism, they were failures. A lot of studies were conducted by many learned and wise men on what we can learn from those experiments and a lot of interesting things were learnt. For example, one of the interesting things that these wise people learnt was that gender roles invariably came back, even though the participants in the Kibbutz were nominally committed to stamping out gender differences – i.e. men and women invariably ended up doing different things, and they ended up doing the same things that men and women do in the outside world.
But the study that I am interested in looked whether adolescent boys and girls in a Kibbutz got attracted to girls and boys from the same Kibbutz. Remember that they’d typically have parents who were extremely liberal as far as sex went, so you couldn’t blame society for any taboos.
It turned out that the opposite happened. Girls would dress ultra-conservatively when boys from the same Kibbutz were around. Intra-Kibbutz marriages were very rare. Why did this happen?
The theory was that having been brought up practically within the same household, the adolescents would unconsciously think of others as brothers and sisters and thereby forbidden for sexual liaisons – this of course would imply that the taboo on incest has genetic origins, not just social origins.
The “natural” unit of human society is not the nuclear family – it is a tribe consisting of an extended family. Before humans learnt to distinguish between “brother” and “cousin”, it would have made more sense to intuitively distinguish the world into “boy-from-my-tribe” and “handsome-stranger-from-outside” and learn to prefer the latter. The young people in those Kibbutzim were applying the same pre-rational logic, at least that is the speculation.
The second example is from closer (if you are in India). Kingsley mentioned that South Indians have this weird practice of marrying their cousins. True, but in fact it is more complicated than that. You can’t marry just any cousin, and here I am afraid the resources of the English language fail me in describing the situation – I’d have to resort to block diagrams and stuff. But basically the idea is that your mother’s brother’s daughter is allowed, but your mother’s sister’s daughter is your sister. Similarly, your father’s sister’s daughter is allowed, but your father’s brother’s daughter is your sister. In fact this rule goes even at the second cousin level – your father’s father’s brother’s son’s daughter is your sister, but you can marry your father’s father’s brother’s daughter’s daughter.
All this might seem very complicated, but that is only because I cannot use a South Indian language or a diagramming tool to explain it to you. South Indian languages have a symmetry that make the whole thing seem completely natural. For example, the word for “father-in-law” is exactly the same as the word for “mother’s brother”. “In North India” you cannot marry your mama’s (i.e. maternal uncle) daughter” is basically impossible to translate into Kannada, because you end up saying “You cannot marry your father-in-law’s daughter”, which is absurd. Your mama’s daughters bear exactly the same relation to you as your wife’s sisters.
Now if the Kibbutz experiments told us that the taboo on incest is probably inborn, what does South India tell us? How is the poor sod who has some innate ideas about incest that he probably has no control over, to know that his Chikkappa’s daughter is his sister while he is allowed to flirt with his Mama’s daughter? My guess is that while we have innate categories for “boy-from-my-tribe” and “handsome-stranger-from-outside”, who we put into those categories is to some extent influenced by society.
To what extent? There is the example of Ancient Egypt of course. My understanding was that the weird practice of actual brothers and sisters marrying was an extreme example applicable only to the Pharoahs, to preserve royal blood and all that. My understanding was also that both the husbands and wives took on lovers from outside routinely, so the practice was not actually successful in breaking innate taboos.
But a visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York challenged that idea – it turns out that in Ancient Egypt, it was routine to use “brother” (or “sister”) to address your lover. I heard a love-song where the terms are used to convey the idea of “soul-mates”, i.e. someone who is so close to you that you are practically one body. Further research told me this
From the close family relationships in Egyptian mythology and the fact that Egyptians seemed to have no taboo against incest, many have concluded that incest was rife in ancient Egypt.
There were probably some brother and sister marriages, but more likely than not, the siblings in question would have been half-brothers and half-sisters. The problem arises from the limited Egyptian terms of kinship, which are very confusing. A ‘father’ could refer to the actual father, the grandfather or male ancestors, while ‘mother’ could be the same, but for the females of the family. ‘Sister’ could mean a lover, a wife, a mistress or concubine, niece or aunt!
The royal family, on the other hand, did have more incestuous marriages. The royal blood ran through the females, not the males. To become pharaoh, a man had to marry a royal princess… which would be his sister or half-sister
So may be they weren’t so weird after all.
I think the reason South Indian tribes allow selective incest is because, patriarchal system is not strictly followed. Examples being untimely death etc. These instances may have resulted in the quasi union of the tribe along expected lines with quasi matriarchy/patriarchy. That does lead to the block diagram you indicate.
Firstly, great going, this entire question-answer business seems to be very organized, interesting and most importantly logical.
Regarding the South Indian Custom, there maybe an explanation for it (using the insider-outsider theory that you have based your argument on):
1. Your father’s sister / mother’s brother do not stay with your family. This is because, boys get to stay back with their parents after marriage, while, girls go to their in-laws after marriage.
2. So, the sons/daughters (of your father’s sister / mother’s brother) are relatively outsiders when compared to your other cousins, sons/daughters of your father’s brother (a joint family ensures that). Explaining the same for mother’s sister is a bit trickier. Technically, your father’s bro can marry your mother’s sis..so the insider phenomenon comes again.
I hope I have done a decent job of conveying what I wanted to say.. else mail me 🙂
Continuing in the tradition of my comment in the earlier post…
Ravikiran:
If the sexual behaviour of the Kibbutz children can be seen as ‘preference for outsiders’ instead of a ‘taboo against incest’, and if we accept that every social group aims to preserve ‘kinship’, wouldn’t the definition of incest reduce to defining a fine line between the opposing forces of “maintaining genetic diversity” and “preserving kinship”?
(the kibbutz children making the case for the tendencies to “maintain genetic diversity” and the south indians/the pharoahs making the case for the tendencies to preserve “kinship”)
I being a south indian myself, object, on academic grounds, to calling certain south indian marriage customs incestuous—it just isn’t objective enough. From your perspective, maybe.
Ravikiran:
Forgot to include in my previous comment:
Thank you for the post. I first heard about the Kibbutz from you.
I had a question on this a while back:
Not maintaining genetic diversity seemingly has extremely dangerous consequences (in terms of survival). Shouldn’t the instinct against incest then be stronger than just a category or a “fine-line”?
Marrying within kin helps (for survival) if the kin is in isolation or for consolidation of wealth/power; but still the genetic problems should seemingly surmount the others, and in
the “stationary” state, the instinct against incest should be almost insurmountable (like say killing oneself)
The reason the instinct is so soft (e.g. with amenability to transferring into various categories as you suggest) is that apparently the harmful consequences of inbreeding are not carried forward if the next generation outbreeds. So a minor instinctual taboo suffices to maintain the genetic health of society.
The Egyptian case seems strange though; from what you quote it seems the societal taboos were practically non-existent.
Some Tamil Brahmin women address their husbands as ‘Anna’ (older brother). In certain cases I have seen childern call their father that. Even if we assume that the use of the name has been learnt by co-habiting with your husband’s/father’s siblings (who call him so), could it be also construed as a lack of queasiness in doing so? After all, most swearwords in Tamil (or even other South Indian/Indian languages) play on the idea of incest by referring to similar misplaced names for relationships.
seven_times_six:
Both you and ravikiran seem to be using the word incest in a context alien to me. From what I’ve seen so far, the word seems to be used in either of only two contexts:
1.) Those sexual relationships that are proscribed by the norms of a society. (this is clearly a contextual definition)
2.) sexual relationships within the immediate family i.e siblings, father, and mother. (please note the absence of cousins in the definition)
cousins could be brothers/sisters in your cultural context. They aren’t siblings and certainly aren’t brothers/sisters in some cultural contexts.
That said, Where would you draw the line between inbreeding and outbreeding? Defining the line might help resolve why there isn’t any insurmountable instinct against incest (1st definition)
I don’t know how reliable this is, but this might help graple with why animals(including humans) don’t seem to have an instinctual aversion to incest (2nd definition)
http://www.biol.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/users/seitai/index-e.html
Hi Ravikiran.
Nice, thought-provoking post, but I think our ancestors who sowed the seeds of incest-related taboo were quite clever and forward-looking. It has got nothing to do with morality (it is, but not actually). Inbreeding leads to genetic mutations and it has been proved beyond doubt that where lots of marriages happen amongst close relatives physical and mental aberrations begin to manifest in great degree. Amongst the Punjabis they don’t even marry in the same gautra.
Hey sorry for not responding to these comments. I will do it in a day.
Ravi,
While I do not have a great knowledge of genetics, my understanding was
1) That the traits must be trasferable, this means they should be encoded in genes. I do not know whether aversion to incest is encodable and transferable (as opposed to physical trait for example colour of eye or hair).
2) If first is the case then the genes in question (i.e aversion against incest) will propogate if the presence of genes promote the survival of species, assuming that by limiting inbreeding they do so.
In that case why is that only few social species show strong aversion to incest.
Regards
Gaurav,
regarding your point no. 1 I would like to refer you to a lovely Hindi song…
“Ai sanam jisne tujhe pyaari si soorat di hai
Usi Malik ne mujhe bhi to mohabbat di hai”
Replace “Malik” with the Hindi equivalent of Natural selection, (“Prakritik chayan”) and we have a great truth that ought to be self-evident.
OK, this is going to be a lengthy response which probably should have been another post.
Firstly, 7*6, you are asking why, if avoiding inbreeding is so important, nature did not design better ways to avoid it. To that, I must say that you are guilty of anthropomorphising nature. Natural selection is not a human being who consciously designed beings to adapt to their environment. It could design only against the conditions that were present at the time the evolution was taking place. To take another example, our appetites are not designed to give us nutrition in a world where food is abundant, because never in our evolutionary history has food been abundant. We have always faced a shortage of food, which is why we tend to overeat sweets and junk food when we get it (which, now, is unfortunately always.) Similarly, nature designed the tendency against incest at a time when humans did not have multi-year memories or linguistic or conceptual capabilities that could distinguish “brother” from “cousin”. The only way to avoid incest at that time would have been to distinguish between those who were part of the same tribelet and those who were not.
Actually, there is one more way. They could develop a liking for traits different from what they had. For example, if a blue-eyed boy developed an irresistable attraction to green eyes, he’d avoid the problems that come from inbreeding among the blue-eyed. But this will work only for superficial traits.
More importantly, there is one more thing. Let’s say that a straight-haired guy has genes that makes him irresistably attracted to curly haired women. So he finds a curly haired woman, and there is a good chance that he gets a son who inherits mom’s curly hair, and dad’s genes that attracted him towards curly haired women. Now if, for whatever reason, this guy has an advantage over his straight-haired brother (who got his hair from dad) who is attracted to curly haired women this could be the beginning of a new species of curly haired humans who, after a few more mutations, will look upon the descendents of the straight haired ones as freaks. So, the point is, there is a strong counter-tendency against the tendency to avoid incest – the tendency to like people like us. Which one of us will win in a particular case is a toss-up – a brown person might like fair skin, but black hair, for example.
Gaurav, I guess this also answers your questions – there must be some reason why we like human females and not she-gorillas and that must be because the traits that attract men to women (and vice versa) must be subject to genetic influence.
Finally, please bear in mind that from an evolutionary standpoint, it is better to have defective children than have none at all, so it does not make sense to have an absolute prohibition against incest.
Now on to the other questions. Many of you (Nilu, Amrit, etc.) are speculating on why the social prohibition of incest came about. The simplest answer is that in most societies, the instinctive revulsion that people feel when thinking of sex with close relations got codified into social rules. It is unlikely that people got together and thought “Hmmm.. if we allow sex between brothers and sisters, bad things will happen to our society and we will end up with defective children. So let’s ban it.” And 7*6, the Egyptian example was intended to prove that even though there was no taboo against incest, sex between actual brothers and sisters was rare.
pM, following your definitions will make life difficult for me, because I cannot make succinct statements like “Incest was allowed in society X”, because if society allowed it, it wouldn’t be incest, by your definition. So I used the word “incest”, but I am not attaching any value judgements to the word. Also, the thing about South Indian societies is that in some cases even your second cousin can be your sister, but in other cases, you can marry your first cousin. This would be strange by the standards of most societies.
Anand, if I were to guess, “Anna” used to stand for “big man” (that is how it is used in Marathi – and there has certainly been a lot of Marathi influence on Tamil, Telugu and Kannada). More importantly, the Egyptian example proves something other than what you are saying – if we start calling our lovers “sister” or “brother”, after some time, it will stop seeming strange, but it will not affect the categories that we have in our mind too much – maybe just a bit.
Prasanth, thanks 🙂
Ravi: Well, the Egyptian example seems to me just to point to a limited vocabulary, which causes problems in translation (context clarifies ‘bear’ and ‘bear’). It is one thing to say that ‘over time’ it will stop sounding strange, but it is entirely different to have accpeted its usage at all in the first place. Of course, as you say, usage and laguage is not an overnight thing, but nevertheless, human conventions evolve only under constant societal approval. When words and usages evolve sometimes to mean their exact oppsites over centuries, they are never again used in their original contexts. In the case of Tamil, there are different words for husband (sometimes ‘Mama’ – maternal uncle: in which case it is because conventionally girls married their uncles, or their sons; sometimes ‘Athaan’ – father’s sister’s cousin). Yet, ‘Anna’ is used by some women… well in any case, my argument is that since Tamil has no dearth of words for relationships, the Egyptian example cannot hold good.
Anand, in tamil grammar there is something called “marugi vandha sol” meaning something that mutated over time. An example would be how “Hamilton bridge” in Madras became “Ambattan bridge” over time. I can give you the exact root word for that “anna”/”yenna”. Give me sometime.
Ravi: Sorry for having a paraller conversation on your blog.
DNA: Even if ‘Anna’ is to be considered a ‘mutation’, it still does not answer my question that ‘Anna’ (whatever it might have been before) is the same word for brother. The ‘mutation’ in your example did not help retain the original meaning (if ‘Hamilton’ has a meaning). ‘Ambattan’ Bridge became ‘Barbers’ bridge.
Ravikiran:
I didn’t intend you to use the word like I do. I understand you use it to mean ‘sexual relations between close relatives’ and I was saying that isn’t how I see it being used elsewhere. Since your post, I’ve been doing a bit of reading on the subject, and I see the word incest being used as a cultural construct most times. All the dictionaries I referred to, defined it as such too. The only other way I’ve seen it used, outside the cultural context definition, is pretty much the way you use it. Only close is defined to be the immediate family and not an extended one. And so it appears that you are using incest, as defined in your cultural context, to describe marital relationships outside your cultural context.
Anyway, that aside, I fully appreciate your attempt at explaining incest: the social norm, as having both an instinctual and social basis. Instinctually, the ‘not-too-far-and-yet-not-too-close’ solution, blending the benefits of both outbreeding and inbreeding. Socially, the balance between kinship and avoiding inbreeding.
In closing, let me end with this excerpt, because I’ve a feeling you seem to believe that sexual relationships within the extended family are avoided more on an instinctual basis than a cultural one:
“…Incest within intact human families is rare. Inbreeding with other close relatives is inhibited by human awareness of inbreeding depression, not by any apparent genetic predisposition.”
Incest Avoidance as a Function of Environment and Heredity–Ray H. Bixler—Current Anthropology, Vol. 22, No. 6 (Dec., 1981)
Ravikiran:
W.R.T to ‘anthropomorphising nature’ you say seven_times_six is guilty of–I don’t think he is. He only sees inbreeding as extremely dangerous and hence is wondering, in the context of evolutionary theory, why it isn’t abhored by nature.
Also, the biological mechanism by which inbreeding is avoided seems to have something to do with childhood association.
“….effects of childhood association on later mating behaviour are strongest for the first few years of life…” –Inbreeding, Incest and the Incest Taboo–Wolf and Durham–page 99.
Though I cannot cite references at this moment, I’ve come across many other studies that have reached similar conclusions. That should give you a possible explanation for the preferences of the Kibbutz children.
Also, I think it’s wrong to characterize the mechanism of mate selection as having an inherent revulsion towards incest. seven_times_six believed so too and was only struggling to reconcile that view with what really happens in nature. If you do have to characterize it, it’s more aptly described as having a preference for outsiders.
seven_times_six:
Inbreeding isn’t all ‘disadvantages and no advantages’. May I refer you to the above mentioned book: don’t mind the cover page–Amazon’s mistake. The excerpt is what you are looking for.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/080474596X/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-7688975-4354203#reader-link
Also did you know the breeding of the finest race horses involves a lot of inbreeding? Inbreeding has its advantages.
And by the way, when I said the definition of incest reduces to a fine line, I meant Incest as a socially defined norm. Hope it makes sense now.
pM, maybe 7*6 wasn’t actually ‘anthropomorphising nature – I can’t read his mind of course 🙂 But he did wonder why nature did not have stronger curbs against inbreeding if in fact it was so dangerous. I just wanted to point out that one reason is that evolution cannot guard against cases that occurred very rarely when evolution was taking place. The other reason of course is that inbreeding is not that dangerous.
Also, you cannot use carefully selected inbreeding to make the case for random inbreeding.
Also, I really don’t understand where exactly the references you are quoting differ from the conclusion that I drew. In fact, the conclusions match so closely that it is scary….
From the Kibbutz experiments I said that the instinct against incest is actually instinct against sex with those who were brought up with you – that is the conclusion the research seems to be drawing. I emphatically argued that this was the only way nature could in fact implement an instinct against incest, given our evolutionary history.
I then used the other two examples to argue that ‘…while we have innate categories for “boy-from-my-tribe†and “handsome-stranger-from-outsideâ€, who we put into those categories is to some extent influenced by society.’
This seems very close to what your references tell me. The only possible differences would be:
1) You insist on characterising it as “preference for outsiders”. But the Kibbutz experiment tells us that the girls explicitly avoided insiders – Is the difference only a semantic quibble or something else.
2) You seem to think that the instinct and the social taboos are independent of each other. I quite emphatically do not agree. We have an instinctive resistance to thinking of people who grew up with us in the same household in sexual terms. Obviously someone must have given effect to his instincts by codifying it in terms of social taboos. When a child is told that “children who grew up with him” are “brothers” and “sisters”, and that sex with them is forbidden, the reason why that taboo is easy to implement is that it gels with the instinctive feelings of that child. Next, the child is told that there are in fact, others who fall into the categories of “brothers” and “sisters” and that they should be treated the same as he treats his actual brothers and sisters. The human mind being what it is, such categorizations have a high, but not 100% chance of succeeding.
Ravikiran:
Blame my memory for that! I mean how often do we re-read the original post? I just happened to have forgotten your attempt at explaining the kibbutz experiments and thought what I came across might offer an explanation to what you cited. Sorry for the confusion that left you in. The intent was never to say your explanation differed from what I was citing.
I mentioned the breeding of horses only to reiterate that inbreeding isn’t “all bad and no good”.
W.R.T (1): “optimal outbreeding” is what it is called—the ‘like-me-and-yet-not-like-me’ approach to mate selection. I’ve seen it increasingly described as an optimum between two opposing forces. And because the radius of the optimal outbreeding circle draws closer in the face of mate shortages, instead of a decrease in sexual activity(which is what would be expected if it is ‘revulsion’), I thought ‘preference’ would be a better choice to ‘revulsion’—and that’s if it is to be characterized by one word. I would much rather prefer to avoid such characterizations. I must admit what I’ve said above about the optimal outbreeding circle is about most animals and I’ve only extrapolated it to humans. Anway, I do agree preference and revulsion can be used complementarily.
W.R.T (2): I wasn’t saying they are independent. I was merely de-coupling them into two different conceptions and acknowledging the other forces, besides the instinctual, that seem to have shaped incest-the taboo. I do believe that Incest-the taboo has a basis in what you prefer to call ‘aversion towards incest’–the instinctual force. I must add though, that there are scientists who deny instinctual basis to the taboo and though there seems to be pretty much a consensus, the matter isn’t settled.
Anyway, thanks for everything. Learned a lot.
I shud agree that this is a pretty well researched and thought out article. A lot of incest was seen in among the royals because they didn’t have much choice when it came choosing a bride/bridegroom with royal blood!
About the South Indian custom…
I think it comes from the belief that siblings of different sex (will eventually) belong to different families. For example, among brahmins a woman’s gothram changes once married. If you were to strictly abide by custom, you cannot marry someone from the same gothram. So they had some justification for why someone was in one category and another was not.
The other reasons for the South Indian custom were to (a) ensure that the daughter was safe, as in, married to a “known” person (b) ensure that the wealth stayed within the family. With regard to (b), the Vathima brahmins apparently inter-married a fair bit and are known to be quite wealthy. In fact, many Vathimas still try and marry people from the 16 villages where they are supposedly descended from.
You wrote: So, the point is, there is a strong counter-tendency against the tendency to avoid incest – the tendency to like people like us.
I thought there were studies that proved that we are, in fact, attracted to people *like* ourselves, especially in terms of looks.
“I thought there were studies that proved that we are, in fact, attracted to people *like* ourselves, especially in terms of looks.”
That is what I meant. We are attracted to people like ourselves and this acts as a counter tendency to the tendency to avoid incest.
Test
You are looking at incest, as anyone related to you, in absolute terms. I have tried to explain the reason why south indian families in-marry and rules to do so, below, so you can get a greater understanding.
South Indian families are patriarchal [All of them carry surnames from father or father/dad’s name]. The south Indian tribes follow gotram [lineage] which is common across India.
As per concept, same gotram cannot marry [fraternal.] Once you employ gotram viewpoint, technically all people having same surnames such as children of brothers [as well as cousins having same surname] and children of sisters [as well as girl cousins who had same surnames before marriage ] do not marry, as they are considered siblings, and hence incestous.
Offsprings of a brother and sister can marry [including those of cousins who are deemed your brothers or sisters.] The logic is that girls once married have a change in surname, and their kids belong to another patriarchal family, therefore not very closely related to you.
Over time this clause has been abused thoroughly and there are instances of 3-4 generations of in-marriages [so as to hang on to property primarily] and sick offspring generated, as a result.
In modern days, sometimes if two families seek an alliance, but find they have same gotram, but the lineage is pretty remote, as a work-around, the girl is temporarily adopted by maternal uncle, and is given away in marriage by him.
Fascinated by this conversation. Similar stuff is talked about in the workshops i do on sex and sexuality within my work on HIV education. Will keep coming back here. Many thanks Ravi, for this post!
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What an asswipe you are…pity:-(
ok. this may sound kinky, but I think incest… at least between cousins or siblings seems really natural and probably makes sense. I’ve thought about this a lot [and here’s where I’m probably expected to reveal whether I’ve been in/am in an incestuous relationship…] and the reason that i think it makes sense is that somehow you grow with the same values… which for me is the most important thing in a relationship. understanding where [apperceptively speaking] the other person comes from and having a ready-made shared understanding of most things really makes it easy to get along…
of course there is this small thing of chemistry… hmmm.
The TamBram Anna – as I understand it- is not really Anna (brother). It’s ‘Na’ or I/Self. The wife is to think of her husband as herself. Or whatever. Na became Anna over time.
Rather than an inbuilt genetic switch against ‘incest’, it’s merely about sex, I believe. Can I make love to a woman-friend I know for a long time in a non-partner capacity (say a neighbor) and sustain that sexual interest in her, long-term? And in a way conducive to..my normalcy? That too, after I have made up my mind I am not pursuing her sexually.
In ‘Sienfeld’, Jerry and Elaine initially date each other. Then they become good friends. After that, they can’t go back to being regular sex partners. They tried but it affected their hanging out and stuff. So they chose ‘this’ instead of ‘that’. This, that and the other was impossible. Sex can change a relationship completely. Because humans percieve a physical and emotional component to it.
Excessive familiarity breeds reluctance towards sex and its emotional aftermaths. And that also holds good for a (non-incest) spouse/wife (though over a relatively longer period of time). Is it co-incidence that most problems between spouses are related to their sexual activity, in one way or the other?
Also, I think animals- and humans- seek their mates. They don’t just screw whomever they can get their hands on. well, actually, I..never mind.
And the Egyptians had other alternatives. So..may be it’s not all that genetic. May be it’s just about the act of sex and its emotional consequences.
*By sex, I mean relational sex. Not the casual/short-term kind.
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I have a question; am I normal, or totally a bad guy?
I am 30 years old. My father and mother divorced when I was 6, and I never saw my father again; he died a few years ago. I just found out a couple of months ago that my father had another child, before he met my mother. It turns out I have a long-lost half-sister!
We got in touch and finally met a month ago. Here’s the unfortuate part: I like her in a non-sister way, and she feels the same for me. We have kissed, made love, and are basically dating.
Obviously I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. I enjoy her company immensely, I think I am falling in love, and she feels the same way. However, everything I have ever been led to believe is telling me that this relationship is terribly, terribly wrong.
On the other hand, her friends tell her that since we did not grow up in the same household, and did not know each other existed for 30 years, that this somehow makes it better. Additionally, we shared a common father, not mother, which also somehow makes it “less bad”. Still, I cannot shake the feeling of shame, and wondering if I am psycho. 🙂
Thanks for your *non-hateful* responses…
DecentFellow : lol since incest is a taboo in society, u are bound to be hated
Though partly genetically “engineered” and partly socially enoforced(hence the use of the word “engineered”) incest is quite a question initself..anyone heard of the Oedipus complex??
Chipmunk: Yes, I understand I am bound to be hated. Just like Homosexuals, Blacks, and every other targets of bigotry. Hell, I would act the same way.
My question is, “am I normal”, it being the fact that she is my half-sister, and I only just met her in adulthood? Because frankly, I was quite a normal, decent guy until about a week ago. Funny how things work. 🙂
Tu kahan……
Found this while looking for a recent paper on optimal outbreeding (total accident).
The words you’re looking for regarding the Indian marriage customs are cross-cousins (father’s sister’s kids) and parrallel-cousins (father’s brother’s kids). These are the terms used in anthropology. It’s quite common for cross- and parrellel-cousins to be viewed differently in some cultures.
The theory as far as we’re concerned (am doing work on parental imprinting) is that your genes want someone similar to you because it increases your relatedness to your offspring and similarity helps relationships to succeed – hence we’re all attracted to similarity in erspanolity and family-resemblance in physical appearance (see Jedlicka or Perrett’s work)- but too much inbreeding is a bad thing, hence we develop a sexual aversion to anyone we grow up in close contact with (which in days gone by would be our siblings). And yes, it balances the two out.
DecentFellow: You’re entirely normal, it happens a lot. Doesn’t make it legal though and people have gone to prison for it. You should be able to see a Psychologist about it if you want.
DrB,
Thank you for the reassuring words. I understand that half-brother/half-sister incest is illegal in (all/most?) states. However, I also understand the sodomy is also illegal; and yet I see very few gay men going to jail for making love. Is “non-victim” incest also so loosely enforced, or is the “ick-factor” so much more than that of male-on-male anal intercourse?
I know this sounds a bit like a ridiculous argument, but one could ultimately make a case that incest is the last great accepted predjudice.
While a large majority of the Liberal Left rally behind gay rights as human rights, those who practice incest are shunned and shamed. It seems rather hypocritical to me. In fact, one could argue that incest is more “natural” and/or “normal” than homosexuality. Whether one wishes to believe humans evolved from monkeys, or Adam and Eve, incest is ultimately and literally why we are all here on this earth.
Of course, a random BLOG from me is not going to change many minds, nor is it going to launch positive legislation. However, I cannot stand by as a (formerly?) fine upstanding citizen and watch my life turned upside down, being ridiculed, threatened and possibly jailed and ostricized simply because I choose to love a woman who shares a few strands of common DNA. One would think I was a child molester or criminal mastermind. Go figure 😉
Kinda liked reading this
Why hasn’t anyone referred to the Yama/Yami biz? Someone? Anyone? Or is this post too dated already?
Interesting, Shankari. I never heard of Yama & Yami, but just googled them. So what is your take on GSA?
DF,
Sorry I know little enough and bothered little enough to check for regular updates.
Was hoping that some ‘enlightened’ person would suitably examine and explain about the twins and their incestuous longings, which I had heard of as a kid and being a kid, had not pondered about further. Alas!
My take on GSA is then neither here nor elsewhere.
Hi,
GSA is quite common amongst many… I am a victim of the same… I don’t blame my brother alone coz i have encouraged him to go a step further than our sis bro relationship. Its only between we both and its past… we both do feel guilty about it though…
Has anyone faced anything similar here…? well yes its called the oedipus complex and its based on the story oedipus rex by sophocles where son marries his mother..
As with the word “anna” which was being discussed in the forum… its derived from the word “endral”…
vangonna… pongonna…
in kannada a similar practice does exist… wives do address their husbands as “banni ondre” “hogi ondre” ondre is derived from the word andhare… anyone who knows kannada should be aware of this fact…
Update!
My HS and I are still very much in love, and we have told many people in our lives. I told my mother, and she said she would not judge me, that she wishes me nothing but happiness, and she is ok with it. I told our brother (my full brother, her half brother), and he was understandably shocked, but after a day said the same thing as my mother; he was happy for us, and wishes us happiness. He said it was obviously strange for him, but he is not upset. We told our biological grandmother, and she said Jesus values love above all else, so she is ok with it. Liberal family, eh? I think because we grew up on different continents, share only a father, and didn’t meet until we were in our 30s, most people don’t think it’s that bad.
Aside from family, we have told many friends, and they all have the same answer: It’s a bit strange, but they are happy for us. “What’s the big deal? You grew up as strangers”
We are very, very happy, and are moving in together. We realize some people will have problems with us being together, so we are contemplating moving to Brazil, Netherlands, France, etc…. to countries where this is legal, and not looked down upon.
Thank you to everyone…. I am free! 🙂
There is a comment about tamil women addressing husbands as ‘Anna’. The peson posting the comment does not know the history behind it. Actually, in ancient times the word was ‘Arra’, this means ‘please listen’ or was used to attact attention. This is something that people who really know about tamil culture will tell you. Please do not post these comments about culture without knowing about it. The word ‘Arra’ has nothing to do with brother.
Amazing and admirable discussion by all of you posters. I think I have never before come across a discussion forum in which any topic was debated so coolly and respectfully and intelligently by each and everyone without recourse to emotions. And this coming from us Indians ???? Whoa!
Being ‘abnormally’ interested in this subject, i chanced upon this thread quite by accident while searching for ‘incest’ on yahoo. I must doff my hat to Ravikiran and others here who have contributed such intelligent inputs to a taboo topic.
I have nothing to add by way of research since I have done nothing on my own. I just have my view which is generally unpalatable — and, I reckon, strictly my private view — that incest as a form of sexual relationship is nothing dangerous. The risks stem only from procreation, not from the act of sex itself if both persons are ok with it. ‘H’ (September 8, 2006) makes a valid point. And, radha (Jan 3rd, 2007), I wouldn’t feel guilty. To answer your question, yes.
Thanks everyone, and my respects.
People use at least two separate and obvious cues to determine whether someone is a brother or sister: If an individual is younger than us, we unconsciously observe how much time they’ve spent with our mothers; if they are older, we note how long we’ve lived with them.
Hi,
First of all, nice mature discussion. I wonder why free speech and expression is so supressed in India when we are capable of discussions like these.
I have a slightly science fiction angle to the whole debate. Greg Bear has written a lot about bacteria, viruses and cells communicating via the means of transmissions of air and fluid. The best examples of his work in this area are Vitals, Darwin’s Radio and Darwin’s Children. The hypthoses being presented in these books is that evolution is not blind. The entire planet’s evolution is being guided by an emergent mind constituted by neural networks created by bacteria.
Scientists in fields where experimentation is not allowed for ethical reasons, (eg. sociology) search high and low for natural experiments and control groups.Groups in which some things are similar while others are not. If you look at the emergent evolutionary mind as a scientist, then for creating new information, a brother or a sister who has grown up with different germs around him/her, is an awesome new source of information. You have an automatic control that adjusts for 99.999% of your genes. ( All humans share about 99.99% of their genes) Hence there is a great attraction and affinity, because the mind is interested in the results of the copulation. But during growing up together, the bacteria within and around you form emergent structures with those of your brothers/sisters, which prevent you from looking at them sexually. This is because there is very little new information that can be gained here.
So, one may propose a hypothesis that all of us would feel the highest attraction for siblings who haven’t grown up with us, followed by half siblings and only later, total strangers. siblings who have grown up with us have everything in common and hence are not interesting at all, information-wise, and hence we don’t feel for them. However, if an elder brother and a younger sister grow up in the same family, but in radically different overall environments, for eg. a village hovel and a city flat, there may be some chance of the forbidden spark coming up.
I know these are just arrows in the dark, and we aren’t even close to having any experiments done on this, but just thought it might be interesting to speculate.
There is certainly something to be said for the theory that siblings may develop sexual interest in each other in instances where they didn’t grow up together. Take them apart at birth and bring them together again after say 20 years and they could just as easily develop interest in each other as in any other non-related. The current German incest story (brother Patrick Stubing and sister Susan Stubing) is a case in point. The remarkable thing here is that western society can accept such debates in public without casting aspersions on each other. In this instance public opinion is divided on whether the country should change its law which strictly forbids incestuous marriages or breeding. One senior judge has called for re-examination of the archaic law. Does anyone think Indian society can tolerate such a public debate ? I am not considering the excellent discussions on this forum as “public” although it is not private either !
Ravi,
I guess you are talking about this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect
I suspect that’s thereason general public want to read blog….Internet visitors generally create blogs to declare themselves or their secret views. Blog grant them same matter on the monitor screen what they specifically needed,so as the above stuffs declared it.