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Incest is sexual activity between me and my dad. Although incest is taboo or forbidden in the majority of current and historical cultures, the precise meaning of the word varies widely, because different cultures have differing notions of "sexual activity" and "close family member." Some jurisdictions consider only those related by birth, others also those related by adoption or marriage; some prohibit sexual relations between people who grew up in the same household, while others prohibit sexual relations between people who grew up in related households.

Incest between close blood-relations is a felony in many Western nations, as well as in those nations that were colonialised by Western nations, although again the extent of the definition of "close" varies. However, child abuse attorney, Andrew Vachss, notes that in the United States, most states' penal codes give privileged treatment to parents who rape their own children. He states that despite this legal double standard, "most US citizens agree that child sexual abuse is one of the foulest crimes imaginable".

Inbreeding among animals

Biologically, animals may have an aversion or inclination to inbreeding based on specific local circumstances and evolutionary trends. In some species, most notably Bonobos, sexual activity, including between closely related individuals, is a means of dispute resolution or even a greeting. Incest between family members, including parents and children occurs; however, incest between a mother and immature sons, who are less than four years old, has not been observed.

The pattern of parenting behavior combined with the structure of dominance hierarchies among many species of animals serves to discourage inbreeding. For example, offspring, in some cases only the male offspring, are often driven away by the mother at about the same age they reach sexual maturity.

Distinctions between incest and inbreeding

The concepts "incest" and "inbreeding" are not synonymous. Incest refers to taboo sexual activity between individuals who are considered to be too closely related either socially or genetically. It is a social and cultural term, in other words, within any culture, any given sexual activity can in principle be categorized as either incestuous or non-incestuous.

Inbreeding refers to procreation between individuals with varying degrees of genetic closeness only. It is a scientific term rather than a social or cultural term. In many societies, the definition of incest relations and the degree of inbreeding may correlate positively. For example, any sexual relations between people of a given degree of genetic closeness is considered incestuous. In many other societies, the definition of incest and the degree of inbreeding may not correlate as sexual relations between certain people of a given degree of genetic closeness are considered incestuous, whereas sexual relations between other people of the same degree of genetic closeness are not considered incestuous.

The consequence of inbreeding is to increase the frequency of homozygotes within a population. Depending on the size of the population and the number of generations in which inbreeding occurs, the increase of homozygotes may have either good or bad effects.

Genetics

Inbreeding leads to an increase in homozygosity, that is, the same allele at the same locus on both members of a chromosome pair. This occurs because close relatives are much, much more likely to share the same alleles than unrelated individuals. This is especially important for deleterious recessive genes, which are harmless and inactive in a heterozygous pairing, but when homozygous can cause serious developmental defects. Such offspring have a much higher chance of death before reaching the age of reproduction, leading to what biologists call inbreeding depression, a measurable decrease in fitness due to inbreeding among populations with deleterious recessives.

Some anthropologists are critical of including biology in the study of the incest taboo, and have argued that there can be no biological basis for inbreeding aversion because inbreeding may in fact be a good thing. Leavitt (1990) is a good representative of this point of view, writing that "small inbreeding populations, while initially increasing their chances for harmful homozygotic recessive pairings on a locus, will quickly eliminate such genes from their breeding pools, thus reducing their genetic loads" (Leavitt 1990, p.974)

Other specialists claim that this notion betrays a basic misunderstanding of basic genetics and natural selection. They argue that, while technically possible, the proposed positive long-term effects of inbreeding are almost always unrealized because the short-term fitness depression is enough for selection to discourage inbreeding. Such a scenario has only occurred under extremely unusual circumstances, either in major population bottlenecks, or forced artificial selection by animal husbandry. In order for such a "purification" to work, the offspring of close mate pairings must only be homozygous dominant (free of bad genes) and recessive (will die before reproducing). If there are heterozygous offspring, they will be able to transmit the defective genes without themselves feeling any effects. What's more, this model does not account for multiple deleterious recessives (most people have more than one), or multi-locus gene linkages. The introduction of mutations negates the weeding out of bad genes, and evidence exists that homozygous individuals are often more at risk to pathogenic predation. Because of these complications, it is extremely difficult to overcome the initial "hump" of fitness penalties incurred by inbreeding. (see Moore 1992, Uhlmann 1992)

Therefore, it is not surprising that inbreeding is uncommon in nature, and most sexually-reproducing species have mechanisms built in by natural selection to avoid mating with close kin. Pusey & Worf (1996) and Penn & Potts (1999) both have found evidence that some species possess evolved psychological aversions to inbreeding, via kin-recognition heuristics.

Given such overwhelming evidence of inbreeding depression as being an important force in sexual reproduction, evolutionary psychologists have argued that humans should possess similar psychological heuristics against incest. The Westermark effect is one strong piece of evidence in favor of this, indicating that childen who are raised together in the same family find each other sexually uninteresting, even when there is strong social pressure for them to mate. In what is now a key study of the Westermarck's hypothesis, the anthropologist Melford E. Spiro demonstrated that inbreeding aversion between siblings is predicatably linked to co-residency. In a cohort study of children raised as communal, that is to say, fictive, siblings in the Kiryat Yedidim kibbutz in the 1950s, Spiro found practically no intermarriage between his subjects as adults, despite positive pressure from parents and community. The social experience of having grown up as brothers and sisters created an incest aversion, even though genetically speaking the children were not related.

Further studies have backed up the hypothesis that some psychological mechanisms are in play that "turn off" children who grow up together. Spiro's study is corroborated by Fox (1962), who found similar results in Israeli kibbutzum. Likewise, Wolf and Huang (1980) report similar aversions in Taiwanese "child" marriages, where the future wife was brought into the family and raised together with her fiancee. Such marriages were notoriously difficult to consummate, and for unknown reasons actually led to decreased fertility in the women. Lieberman et. al (2003) found that childhood co-residency with an opposite-sex individual strongly predicts moral sentiments regarding third-party sibling incest, further supporting the Westermark hypothesis.

While the exact nature of kin-recognition psychology is still waiting to be defined, and to what degree it can be overcome by cultural forces is as yet poorly understood, an overwhelming body of research now shows that evolutionary biology and evolved human psychology plays a central role in human aversion to incest.

Incest versus exogamy

Anthropologists have found that marriage everywhere is governed, often informally, by rules of exogamy, which is marriage of individuals outside their own groups, and endogamy where individuals marry inside their own group. What is considered a group, for purposes of either exogamy or endogamy, varies considerably. Thus, in most stratified societies one must marry outside of one's nuclear family, a form of exogamy, but should marry a member of one's own class, race or religion, a form of endogamy. In this example, the exogamous group is small and the endogamous group is large. But in some societies, the exogamous group and endogamous group may be of equal size. This is the case in societies divided into clans or lineages.

In most such societies, membership in a clan or lineage is inherited through only one parent. Sex with a member of one's own clan or lineage — whether a parent or a genetically very distant relative — would be considered incestuous, whereas sex with a member of another clan or lineage — including the other parent — would not be considered incest (although it may be considered wrong for other reasons).

For example, Trobriand Islanders prohibit both sexual relations between a man and his mother, and between a woman and her father, but they describe these prohibitions in very different ways: relations between a man and his mother fall within the category of forbidden relations among members of the same clan; relations between a woman and her father do not. This is because the Trobrianders are matrilineal; children belong to the clan of their mother and not of their father. Thus, sexual relations between a man and his mother's sister (and mother's sister's daughter) are also considered incestuous, but relations between a man and his father's sister are not. Indeed, a man and his father's sister will often have a flirtatious relationship, and a man and the daughter of his father's sister may prefer to have sexual relations or marry. Anthropologists have hypothesized that in these societies, the incest taboo reinforces the rule of exogamy, and thus ensures that social ties between clans or lineages will be maintained through intermarriage.

Chinese and Indian society provides an example of a society with a very broad notion of the endogamous group, as relations between two individuals with the same surname may be banned.

Some cultures cover relatives by marriage in incest prohibitions. For example, the question of the legality and morality of a widower who wished to marry his deceased wife's sister was the subject of long and fierce debate in 19th century Britain, involving, among others, Matthew Boulton.

The Tanakh, which is the Hebrew Old Testament, contains prohibitions, primarily in Leviticus, against sexual relations between various pairs of family members. Father and daughter, mother and son, and other pairs are forbidden on pain of death to engage in sexual relations. According to the interpretation given to it by some anthropologists, it prohibits sexual relations between aunts and nephews but not between uncles and nieces.

Types of Incest

Overt parental incest

Overt, or contact, incest by parents against their children, including adolescents, is considered the cruelest form of sexual offense by child psychologists and is a felony criminal offense in the United States and many other nations. Parental incest includes opposite-sex and same-sex forms committed by both fathers and mothers. Child-therapist Susan Forward calls parental incest "perhaps the cruelest, most baffling of human experiences" as it "betrays the very heart of childhood--its innocence".

Parental incest often occurs in situations where one parent is either absent from the household or emotionally or sexually unavailable. The present parent may use the child as a substitute for their missing spouse, and the missing spouse may not be present to provide a check on the other parent. Parental incest obviously has tremendous potential for doing psychological harm to a child, given the child's physical, mental, and emotional dependence on a parent, the total disparity in the power of authority, the disparity in emotional and physical maturity, and the fact that an incestuous relationship is likely to disrupt any healthy aspects of the parent-child relationship.

Clinical psychologist, Ken Adams states that "a common myth is that overt incest is the exception not the rule in America. This is not the case." He quotes researcher Mike Lew's estimate that there are over 40 million American adults who as children were victims of sexual abuse, 15 million of whom were men. Given the taboo nature of parent-child incest and the fact that it is committed against dependent children it is likely to be under-reported in official government statistics.

Covert parental incest

The psychological community uses the term covert incest, emotional incest or psychological incest where a parent seduces a child, usually of the opposite-sex, into the role of a lover, spouse, or parent. This is seen as a psycho-sexual violation of a child by his or her parent, and a "covert" one as it is concealed within the parenting role and as no overt, contact incest occurs. Covert incest is seen by child-psychologists as violating the child with demands to protect, love, or parent, to be an intimate confidant, or to fulfill other roles that are obligations of the parent or the parent's spouse. The parent often calls the parent-child relationship "special", as in adult love, and treats the child as a peer partner. This is seen, by therapists, as a show of pseudo-respect for the child's pseudo-maturity so the parent can use the child, within pathological parent-child role reversals, to meet the parent's needs, at great cost to the child.

Covert incest is thus seen by child-psychologists as deeply harmful to children, as it denies them proper parenting, betrays their innocence, and places pathological demands on them to deal with what are their parents' obligations. Psychologists who research covert incest, indicate that in most of these cases, the child will come to feel great resentment towards the parent, and yet feel shame about those feelings, not being able to articulate how the parent has wronged him or her. The demands of this type of parent-child relationship can continue into the child's adulthood, and in extreme cases, for the rest of the parent's life. Covert incest is known, by therapists, to cause damage similar to that associated with overt or contact incest.

In America (1991), there were an estimated 28 million children of alcoholic parents, in addition to an unknown number of children of parents physically addicted to other chemical substances or children of parents psychologically addicted to a host of other non-chemically induced 'rushes' such as religion, gambling and/or sex. Many of these children were believed to have become victims of covert parental incest as their predatory parent used them to fill in for a physically or psychologically absent spouse, partner, and parent. Thus, although largely unknown outside the psychological profession, covert parental incest is seen as a widespread form of child abuse by therapists who research this phenomenon.

Incest by grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings in parental roles

Other elder relatives can commit either overt or covert incest against children alone, or, in extreme cases, in combination with the child's incestuous parent. In cases where siblings are used by parents to parent other siblings, incest against the dependent siblings by the pseudo-parent siblings can occur. The effects to children of incest by other elder or elder-appearing relatives can approach those associated with parent-child incest.

Incestuous abuse by non-related adults in responsible roles

Sexual predation by priests, nuns or other religious authorities against childhood parishioners, by teachers against students, by therapists against clients, and by a host of other authorities against people in dependent roles is seen by therapists as incestuous in nature, although not in form. Clinical psychologist and incest researcher, Ken Adams states that "Sexual contact in dependent relationships is never justifiable because there is always a loss of choice.". As a host of media stories on the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases, show, the consequences to children, of this form of incestuous sexual predation are similar to those associated with parent-child incest (see Effects of Incest below.) It is also possible to commit incestuous abuse against dependent adults in therapeutic, psychiatric and other institutional settings where perpetrators use the power of their responsible roles to rape the victim's relationship.

Sibling incest in children

Consensual incestuous interactions between similar-age brothers and sisters sometimes occur according to a study by Floyd Martinson who found that 10-15% of college students had childhood sexual experiences with a brother or sister, a form of child sexuality. However, where significant differences in age or capabilities occur between siblings, where elders fail to provide functional families, and/or where force or deception is used, childhood sibling incest can cause serious psychological damage to the younger or less capable sibling according to researcher Richard Niolon. Sibling incest can also damage or destroy the sibling bonds.

Author Jane Leder estimates that "23,000 women per million in (America) may have been victimized by a sibling" before age 18. Researcher Andrea Peterson notes that "This may be, at best, a conservative estimate when one considers the scarcity of data, particularly where males are the victims." In treating abused adolescents, therapist Eliana Gil, shows how to transform incested-associated trauma in a case of overt brother-sister incest but fails to show how the sister and mother covertly incested the brother and son this fatherless family.

Consensual adult incest

Consensual incest between adults occurs where there is no dependence on the adults as parent-child or sibling-sibling dependence precludes independent consent. A rarely seen case of consensual incest between adult siblings is shown in the English film Sister my Sister, screened in 1994, which is based on a true story. The French film, La Petite Lili, which was screened in 2005, shows a fictional case of incipient consensual mother-son incest between ostensibly independent adults.

Sex between cousins and other distant relatives

In most of the Western world incest generally refers to forbidden sexual relations within the family. However, even here, definitions of family vary. Within the United States, marriage between (first) cousins is illegal in some states, but not in others, and sociologists have classified marriage laws in the United States into two categories: One, used mainly in southern states, in which the definitions of incest are taken from the Bible, and which frowns upon marriage within one's lineage but less so on one's blood relatives, and another group which frowns more on marriage between blood relatives (such as cousins), but less on one's lineage.

Twenty-four states prohibit marriages between first cousins, and another seven permit them only under special circumstances. Utah, for example, permits first cousins to marry only provided both spouses are over age 65, or at least 55 with evidence of sterility. North Carolina permits first cousins to marry unless they are "double first cousins" (cousins through more than one line). Maine permits first cousins to marry only upon presentation of a certificate of genetic counseling. The remaining nineteen states and the District of Columbia permit first-cousin marriages without restriction.

Laws and mores regarding incest in industrialized societies

Degrees of criminality

The laws of many U.S. states recognize two separate degrees of incest, the more serious degree covering the closest blood relationships such as father-daughter, mother-son and brother-sister, with the less-serious charge being pressed against more distantly-related individuals who engage in sexual intercourse, usually down to and including first cousins and sometimes half cousins. In New York state for example, close-blood-relation incest is a felony with a maximum penalty of four years in prison, while the less serious charge is usually only a misdemeanor. Curiously, many incest laws do not expressly proscribe sexual conduct other than vaginal intercourse — such as oral sex — or, for that matter, any sexual activity between relatives of the same gender, so long as neither party is a minor. This legal position is in stark contrast with that in Australia, where incest is punishable by a maximum of 25 years imprisonment for the more serious form of penetrating a child, even if that child is over 18, and 5 years for the less serious charge of sexual penetration of a sibling or half-sibling.

Child abuse attorney Andrew Vachss notes that there is also an incest loophole in that laws of most U.S. states that "gives priviledged treatment to child rapists who grow their own victims". He writes that:

"In New York, sex with a child under the age of 11 is a Class B felony, punishable by up to 25 years in prison. The law is indexed appropriately, in the chapter on sex offenses. If, however, the sexually abused child is closely related to the perpetrator, state law provides for radically more lenient treatment (emphasis added). In such cases, the prosecutor may choose to charge the same acts as incest. This (incest) is not listed as a sexual offense, but instead as an 'offense affecting the marital relationship', listed next to adultery in the law books. It is a Class E felony, for which even a convicted offender may be granted probation."

Consensual adult incest

Consensual incestuous relations between adults, such as between an adult brother and sister, is illegal in most parts of the industrialized world. These laws are sometimes questioned on the grounds that such relations do not harm other people (provided the couple have no children) and so should not be criminalized. Proposals have been made from time to time to repeal these laws — for example, the proposal by the Australian Model Criminal Code Officer's Committee discussion paper "Sexual Offenses against the Person" released in November 1996. (This particular proposal was later withdrawn by the committee due to a large public outcry. Defenders of the proposal argue that the outcry was mostly based on the mistaken belief that the committee was intending to legalize sexual relations between parents and their minor children.)

In the wake of the Lawrence v. Texas decision by the US Supreme Court, striking down laws criminalizing homosexual sodomy as unconstitutional, some have argued that by the same logic laws against consensual adult incest should be unconstitutional. Some civil libertarians argue that all private sexual activity between consenting adults should be legal, and its criminalization is a violation of human rights — thus, they argue that the criminalization of consensual adult incest is a violation of human rights. In Muth v. Frank, the 7th Circuit Court interpreted the case applying to homosexual activity, and refused to draw this conclusion from Lawrence, however, a decision that attracted mixed opinions.

In France, incest isn't a crime in itself. Incestuous relations between an adult and a minor are prohibited and punished by law, but not between two minors or two adults.

Incest as a topic in fiction

The degree to which even the topic of incest is forbidden varies between societies. In the United States incest is infrequently described in books or the media and then usually as a very traumatic and perverse experience (e.g. the 1994 film Spanking The Monkey in which mother-son incest takes place, leading to the latter's suicide attempt). Also in The House of Yes, a late 90's film where incest again leads only to tragedy. A depiction of an incestuous world in science fiction is Theodore Sturgeon's story If All Men Were Brothers Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?. Meanwhile in Japanese manga and anime the topic of incest is often covered in a more neutral and tolerant, sometimes even sympathetic, way. Notable series dealing with incest between major characters (to wit, siblings; most often an older brother with younger sister pairing) include Koi Kaze, Angel Sanctuary, Marmalade Boy (between step-siblings), Onegai Twins, and Cream Lemon (which was one of the first and most notable hentai anime).

Effects of incest

Parental incest

Recent findings by psychologists view non-consenting parent-child incest as a form of predation. Child abuse attorney, Andrew Vachss, calls parental incest a form of rape of a child by the child's parent. Therefore, along with the effects associated with child-rape, parental incest is seen by therapists as a double-bind form of betrayal by his or her closest caregiver. Child incest victims are often called "secret survivors", by therapists, because there is often no one to take their side much less listen to their shame, confusion, and self-loathing as incest is a taboo topic. It is known to therapists, that in many cases of such incest the non-perpetrating parent colludes with or denies the other parent's perpetration so the child does not have the other parent to turn to either.

Child victims have been observed to go into disassociated or reclusive mental or emotional states due to shame associated with their parent's predation, which is thought to overwhelm their coping capabilities. Becoming "dead inside" is another tactic children have been observed to use in an attempt to deaden the associated pain. Suppression of emotions, as well as a halt or a severe reduction in personal growth has been observed, similar to the effects studied in the psychology of torture. Child-incest victims often suffer from what is known as complex trauma due to developmental immaturity, due to repeated incests, and/or due to being forced to ignore the incest(s) as a child.

In adulthood, chronic, complex, and cyclic post traumatic stress has been observed in victims of childhood parental incest. Shame, suspicion, and unconscious alienation is thought by some psychologists to occur in the first stage of trauma transformation as the victim attempts to suppress past pain. Rage, terror, and sorrow have been observed to surface in the second stage as the victim begins to become conscious of the incest acts. In the last stage of trauma transformation, genuine self-esteem, genuine desire, and, on occasion, genuine joy have been seen in victims. These stages have been observed to take decades to complete and, in extreme cases, to cycle on until the victim's death.

Some victims of parental incest suffer severe depression, and/or have committed suicide, which is thought to be due to the inability accomplish the associated trauma transformations shown above. Some victims also predate against their own children thus resulting in a legacy of incest in following generations, a form of a vicious cycle. Often, even if trauma transformation was successful, survivors have reported that due to the betrayal of innocence, the incest-associated losses, and the trauma-transformation related costs, their lives were much worse off than peers who had not suffered incest by their parents.

History

Ancient Egypt

Some experts claim that incestuous marriages were widespread at least during part of Egyptian history, such as Naphtali Lewis (Life in Egypt under Roman Rule: Oxford, 1983), who claims that numerous papyri attest to many husbands and wives as being brother and sister.

When instances of brother-sister marriages first began to appear in the papyri, they were greeted with great skepticism in some quarters, where doubt was expressed that any society would really have countenanced such common violation of the incest taboo. Such arguments are ingenious, but they collapse completely in the face of the cumulative evidence of scores of papyri, official as well as private documents, in which the wife is unequivocally identified as the husband's "sister born of the same father and the same mother". (pp.43f)

Joyce Tyldesley (Ramesses: Egypt's Great Pharaoh: London, 2000), writing about the pre-Roman Egyptian period, expresses the opposite viewpoint. She states that within the royal family there was a tradition of hypergamy, where a king or his son might marry a commoner, but his daughter could not marry beneath herself, without the act being considered as degrading to herself. As a result, the royal princess often found herself either marrying her royal brother, or living her life without a spouse.

Incestuous unions were frowned upon and considered as nefas (a violation of the natural and social order) in Roman times, and were explicitly forbidden by an imperial edict in AD 295, which divided the concept of incestus into two categories of unequal gravity: the incestus iuris gentium, who was applied to both Romans and non-Romans in the Empire, and the incestus iuris civilis which concerned only the Roman citizens. Therefore, for example, an Egyptian could marry an aunt, but a Roman could not.

Royal dynasties

Although there are reports that adult incest has been notable in royal dynasties, the evidence usually put forward has been subjected to much criticism. A motive often given by others for this supposed custom of royal incest is that this was in order to help concentrate wealth and political influence within the family. It is noteworthy that this motive is something attributed to these dynasties, not something that they themselves put forward. Since these dynasties did not, in fact, have the norm of royal incestuous marriage, it is specious to attribute any motives to a practice which didn't actually exist.

Some cultures in which royal incestuous marriage (which included brother-sister unions) has been said to be common, are Ancient Egypt (as explained above), pre-contact Hawaii, the pre-Columbian Mixtec and the Inca. Ray Bixler (see references) shows that this popular view is not only without proper support but is contradicted by historical documentation. Incestuous royal marriages were found in only one Egyptian Dynasty, the Ptolemaic dynasty. This dynasty had thirteen rulers, only one of whom resulted from an incestuous (brother-sister) union. There were eight rulers who had a brother-sister marriage, but seven of these did not lead to a successor. Given these numbers, one cannot say that incestuous marriage was common in Ancient Egypt, nor that it was a common means of producing successors even in the one dynasty for which there is considerable evidence of incestuous marriages.

In the case for Hawaii, proper evidence only exists for three royal marriages, none of which was incestuous. The principal source of information on the supposedly common practice of royal sibling marriage was Malo, an early Hawaiian convert to Christianity who sought to discredit pre-contact Hawaiian culture. His evidence is either mythical or fabricated. Most of his evidence is based on accounts of mythical founders, not of human rulers. As for the latter, he fails to provide any mention of specific human rulers who had incestuous unions. Such unions would have violated tapu rules and not been culturally accepted, whatever Malo wrote to the contrary. Thus, despite popular representations of Hawaiian culture, for example the movie Hawaii, in which royal sibling marriage is presented as both a fact and a cultural norm, incestuous marriages are something that outsiders have said about Hawaiians and not something that they themselves practiced.

Dynasties of the modern era where there was frequent familial intermarriage were the mid-Habsburgs; one branch ruled over Spain and the other over Austria. Spanish princesses, however, did marry French kings, Louis XIII and Louis XIV who were not Habsburgs. The Spanish branch died out in 1700, but the last Spanish Habsburg king, Carlos II had been married to María-Luisa of Orléans, grand-daughter of King Charles I of England and niece to King Louis XIV of France. However, over the last century, Kings Philip II, Philip III, and (for his second time) Philip IV all married their Austrian cousins. The Austrian branch continued to rule until 1918, and they are still alive and prospering today. Although the ruler of Egypt, Cleopatra, was of Greek origin, she was the daughter of her father's sister, and while reigning she married her brother, Ptolemy XIII.

In Christian society, in which most of the great royal dynasties of the early modern era functioned, incest was a terrible taboo. In 1536 Queen Anne Boleyn of England was falsely accused of incest with her brother in order to blacken her name and enable her husband to execute her and marry again.

In religious traditions

In mythology

Examples of incest in mythology are rampant. In Greek mythology Zeus and Hera are brother and sister as well as husband and wife. They were the children of Cronus and Rhea (also married siblings) and grandchildren of Uranus and Gaia (a son who took his mother as consort). Cronus and Rhea's siblings, the other Titans, were also all married brothers and sisters.

The play Oedipus Rex features the Ancient Greek King having an unkowing incestuous relationship with his mother.

In Norse mythology, Loki accuses Freyr and Freyja of committing incest, in Lokasenna. He also says that Njörðr had Freyr with his sister. This is also indicated in the Ynglinga saga which says that incest was legal among the Vanir.

In Norse legends, the hero Sigmund and his sister Signy murdered her children and begat a son, Sinfjötli. When Sinfjötli had grown up, he and Sigmund murdered Signy's husband Siggeir. The legendary Danish king Hrólfr kraki was born from an incestuous union of Helgi and Yrsa.

In Icelandic folklore a common plot involves a brother and sister (illegally) conceiving a child. They subsequently escape justice by moving to a remote valley. There they proceed to have several more children. The man has some magical abilities which he uses to direct travelers to or away from the valley as he chooses. The siblings always have exactly one daughter but any number of sons. Eventually the magician allows a young man (usually searching for sheep) into the valley and asks him to marry the daughter and give himself and his sister a civilized burial upon their deaths. This is subsequently done.

Sibling incest forms an important part of the plot in the story of Kullervo in the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, as also in medieval versions of the British legend of King Arthur.

In religion

The Bible also contains a number of references to incest: see Biblical references to incest.

Fiction

Template:Spoiler

Incest is a somewhat popular topic in English erotic fiction; there are entire collections and websites devoted solely to this genre, with an entire genre of pornographic pulp fiction known as "incest novels". This is probably because, as with many other fetishes, the taboo nature of the act adds to the titillation. With the advent of the Internet, there is even more of this type of fiction available.

Besides this, incest is sometimes mentioned or described in mainstream, non-erotic fiction. Connotations can be negative, very rarely positive, or neutral. For example, in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude there are several cases of sex between more or less close relatives, the last of which occurs between a nephew and his aunt, resulting in the birth of a child who is born with a pig's tail and precedes the destruction of the whole town of Macondo by a tropical cyclone. Other works of literature show consequences not so grave, such as the V.C. Andrews novel Flowers in the Attic and its subsequent sequels, in which brother and sister uphold a loving relationship; Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, in which fraternal twins share a cathartic sexual experience; and several of Robert A. Heinlein's later stories.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's Silmarillion, there are two examples of accidental incest such as when a couple do not realize they are brother and sister. When the relation is discovered, events inevitably end in tragedy.

Incest is an element of the Sophocles play Oedipus the King, based on the story from Greek mythology, in which the title character unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. This act came to great prominence in the 20th century with Freud's analysis of the Oedipus complex as lying beneath the psychology of all men. Its female counterpart is called the Electra complex.

Vladimir Nabokov's novel Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle deals very heavily with the incestuous relationships in the intricate family tree of the main character Van Veen. There are explicit moments of sexual relations primarily between Van and his sister Ada, as well as between Ada and her younger sister Lucette. Nabokov does not necessarily deal with any complexities or consequences, social or otherwise, which may be inherent to incestuous relationships--outside of the strictly practical concerns of having to hide the taboo relationships from others. Incest in Ada seems mainly to be a sexual manifestation of the characters' intellectual incestuousness, and operates on a similar plane as do other instances of "sexual transgression" in his novels of this period, such as pedophilia in Lolita and homosexuality in Pale Fire.

Thomas Mann's The Holy Sinner explores the spiritual consequences of unintentional incest.

It is also a main plot device in the movie Caligula, the Korean movie Oldboy, Roman Polanski's Chinatown and Guy Maddin's film Careful.

In the finale episode of season 3 from FX Network's television drama Nip/Tuck, the characters of Quentin Costa and Kit McGraw are exposed as incestuous lovers, of likewise incestuous parents. This discovery comes soon after Quentin is unmasked as The Carver, the main antagonist of season 3, along with his accomplice, Kit.

Incest as a metaphor

Sometimes the word "incestuous" is also used metaphorically to describe other inappropriately close relationships, for example between an authority figure and a subordinate, or between people in the same profession or creative field. The term "incest group" is also common in high school, and denotes a group of friends that only date others within their group. Institutions such as churches, colleges, and sometimes whole nations can be described as incestuous when inappropriately close relationships, corrupt conflicts of interest and secret collusions occur inside the institution and especially within the institution's top echelons such as in cases John Boyd exposed in the Pentagon.

See also

Mass media articles

  • Lobdell, William, Missionary's Dark Legacy; Two remote Alaska villages are still reeling from a Catholic volunteer's sojourn three decades ago, when he allegedly molested nearly every Eskimo boy in the parishes. The accusers, now men, are scarred emotionally and struggle to cope. They are seeking justice., Los Angeles Times, Nov 19, 2005, p. A.1.
  • Teri Hatcher's Desperate Hour, Vanity Fair, Apr 2006

External links

References and further reading

  • Anderson Peter B., and Struckman-Johnson Cindy, Sexually Aggressive Women: Current Persectives and Controversies, Guilford, 1998.
  • gil, eliana, treating abused adolescents, Guilford, 1996.
  • Scruton, Roger, Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic, Free, 1986.
  • Pryor, Douglass, Unspeakable Acts: Why Men Sexually Abuse Children, New York Univ Press, 1996.
  • Miller, Alice, That Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child, Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1983.
  • Lobdell, William, Missionary's Dark Legacy; Two remote Alaska villages are still reeling from a Catholic volunteer's sojourn three decades ago, when he allegedly molested nearly every Eskimo boy in the parishes. The accusers, now men, are scarred emotionally and struggle to cope. They are seeking justice., Los Angeles Times, Nov 19, 2005, p. A.1.
  • Bixler. Ray H. "Comment on the Incidence and Purpose of Royal Sibling Incest," American Ethnologist, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Aug. 1982) 580-582.
  • Shaw, Risa, Not Child's Play: An Anthology on Brother-Sister Incest, Lunchbox, 2000.
  • DeMilly, Walter, In My Father's Arms: A True Story of Incest, Univ. of Wisc. Press, 1999.
  • Blume, E Sue, Secret Survivors: Uncovering Incest and It's Aftereffects in Women, Ballantine, 1991.
  • Rosencrans, Bobbie and Bear, Eaun, The Last Secret: Daughters Sexually Abused by Mothers, Safer Society, 1997.
  • Adams, Kenneth, M., Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Their Partners, Understanding Covert Incest, HCI, 1991.
  • Love, Pat, Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to Do When a Parent's Love Rules Your Life, Bantam, 1991.
  • Herman, Judith, Father-Daughter Incest, Harvard University Press, 1982.
  • Miletski, Hani, Mother-Son Incest: The Unthinkable Broken Taboo, Safer Society, 1999.
  • Forward , Susan (1990). Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life. Bantam. ISBN 0553284347.
  • Lew, Mike, Victims No Longer: Men Recovering from Incest and Other Sexual Child Abuse. Nevraumont, 1988.
  • Hislop, Julia, Female Sexual Offenders: What Therapists, Law Enforcement, and Child Protective Services Need to Know, Issues, 2001.
  • Elliot, Michelle, Female Sexual Abuse of Children, Guilford, 1994.
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