Inspired by this post on [email protected].
What are Burggit’s thoughts on the ethics (not the legality!) of real life incest? Some common conditions for starters:
- Between consenting people
- Between consenting adults
- Between consenting adults of a “reasonable” age difference
- Between consenting adults, no parent/child relationships permitted
Personally, I am torn between 2 and 4. Can there really be a consenting relationship between adult and child (both being adults)?
P.S.: Please let me know if this should be marked NSFW. I didn’t because this is the type of post I like to see when browsing SFW
I see parent/child as being okay if the child is a fully independent adult who’s lived separately, and there was zero push for it by the parent. Otherwise it gets iffy quickly.
I can’t say I’ve put much thought into it, but ethically I don’t really see anything wrong with underage siblings or cousins of a similar age. It might not be healthy or practical in most cases, but as long as nobody is taking advantage of someone else.
My problem with the underage thing is that I’m not sure that they have the emotional intelligence to deal with that when there is no real way to get away from each other (assuming they live in the same household). I also feel it can develop some dependency issues where it makes it hard for the siblings to develop relationships outside of their own family: if all their needs are being met, why would they? Maybe that is naïve, I don’t know.
From what little psychological studies I can find, that is basically true. Normally, underage relationships are illegal outright because one party is older and taking advantage. But even if both parties are underage, it is correlated with less emotional development and sometimes difficulty building other healthy relationships. It isn’t really an “ethical vs unethical” question when you have, say, two twelve year olds messing around. What are you gonna do, arrest them? Whip them? But if you’re some party responsible for those kids (parent, guardian, teacher, whatever) basically you want to keep them off of eachother lol. Hence why separate bathrooms, no co-ed sleepovers, whatever.