Is Incest Wrong?

With the ongoing inclusion of more sexual minorities into the LGBTQ+ community, the Western world has accepted many sexual “deviants” who were once seen as being intolerable and detrimental by society. However, despite meaningful progress, one sexual minority is hardly ever discussed. It still remains in the category of unmentionable taboos, and any attempt to bring it up in public discussion is ridiculed. Perhaps instead of discrimination or hatred, a better phrase for the community’s situation is total ignorance and exclusion. I am talking about incest, or sex between close blood relatives. In this essay, I will demonstrate that incest is morally acceptable and the incest community deserves inclusion and respect. I will do so by primarily introducing and responding to common anti-incest arguments and showing their incapacity of supporting a moral or legal deprivation of the fundamental human right of sexual autonomy based on the essentialist interpretation of blood relation.

Although the Western culture has an ingrained aversion to incest, it is not as disgusted in some other societies. For example, The Arab world has a long history of marriages between cousins. Hanan Hamamy (2012) stated that “[c]onsanguineous marriage is traditional and respected in most communities of North Africa, Middle East and West Asia, where intra-familial unions collectively account for 20–50+% of all marriages.” Globally speaking, about 10 percent of people have married their second cousins or closer (Bittles, 2012). In addition, anime depicting romantic relationships between sister and brother is not unpopular in some East Asian countries. The legal contrast is more evident: incest is legal in many East/North/Central Asian and South American countries. If we look at East Asia specifically, the only two exceptions that illegalize incest are Hong Kong and Taiwan, two regions with a history of Western colonization and deep cultural influence. While in the Western world, with the exceptions of the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Spain, and some states of the United States, all governments banned incest. For example, in Canada, section 155 of the criminal code states that those who commit incest are liable to at most 14 years of imprisonment. What makes consensual sex between blood-related adults as dreadful as sexual assault against minors, which also has a maximum sentence of 14 years (while the maximum sentence for sexual assault against 16+ people is only 10 years)?

 Back in 2014, the German Ethics Council “call[ed] for incest between siblings to be legalised by Government” and recognized “[t]he fundamental right of adult siblings to sexual self-determination” (Dearden, 2014). Perhaps we should unveil the central issue that many are ashamed to even ask: Is consensual sex between blood-related adults inherently morally wrong? The American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt created a thought experiment where two adult siblings take a holiday together and decided to have consensual sex with contraception (Singer, 2014). Afterward, both of them enjoy the experience and agree to keep it a secret, which keeps them even closer. When Haidt told the story to his experimental subjects, most of the subjects think the incident is unacceptable. But when he asked why, they offered explanations that are already excluded, such as the dangers of inbreeding or damaging their relationship. Then Haidt pointed out that these reasons are already ruled out, and they responded with “I can’t explain it, I just know it’s wrong.” Haidt refers to this unexplained moral disapproval as an example of “moral dumbfounding.”

But let’s not too quickly conclude incest is morally permissible, let’s look at the most common arguments against incest and see if they hold. I will start with, in my mind, the weakest argument and gradually move to more sophisticated ones. One instinctual answer given in opposition to incest is that it is not natural, it is disgusting, or it is against the divine law. I don’t even want to treat this naturalistic fallacy seriously. I don’t think the readers need to be reminded how homosexuality or just unconventional sexual behaviours are viewed and felt by the public at large just decades ago.

The second argument is about genetics. It rightly points out that infants of inbreeding have a higher chance of genetic disorders and defects. This may sound like the valid argument that on its own supports the moral and legal prohibition of incest, but it actually provokes more questions. Firstly, such an argument does not apply to protected sex or sex between infertile blood relatives. Secondly, prenatal screening, in vitro fertilization, and other reproductive technologies can prevent the births of defective embryos. Most importantly, this argument only claims the births of defective people are wrong, rather than that the sex itself is wrong. You may have already noticed that this is leading us into the dangerous slippery slope of eugenics. According to geneticists Diane Paul and Hamish Spencer, “the risk of congenital defects is about 2 per cent higher than average for babies born to first-cousin marriages – with the infant mortality about 4.4 per cent higher – which is on a par with the risk to babies born to women over 40” (Connor, 2008), but do we think women over 40 giving births is immoral? Not to mention that there already many people have diseases that are more or less genetically linked—from severe ones such as  “progressive blindness; haemophilia; cancer; sickle-cell anaemia; [] cystic fibrosis” (Cavaliere, 19), Huntington’s disease, to arguably less severe ones like anxiety (Gottschalk & Domschke, 2017), depression (Shadrina, Bondarenko, Slominsky, 2018), diabetes (Ali, 2013), obesity (Loos & Yeo, 2021). Should these people be considered immoral to and be banned from having sex with each other or other people? If we take on the objective of genetic controlling, we can even target the violent, low-IQ, and other communities that we consider unfit, but we all know how the eugenic movements in North America and Germany ended up. Now, a smart eugenicist would say “well, but a little bit of eugenism for severe conditions may be acceptable; just like the government reminds pregnant women not to smoke (City of Richmond Public Health Protection Bylaw No. 6989, 2000), why should we purposefully give births to genetically defective babies and creates miserableness?” This is a good point, in fact, it would be more logically consistent if someone advocates for mandatory prenatal screening, mandatory in vitro fertilization or a ban on pregnancy for high-risk groups, a ban on defective embryos, and forced abortions of defective fetuses. But have you seen anybody of this standpoint? Exactly no, because anti-incest eugenicists know that would spur public outrage, so they employ essentially a technique of doublespeak: “no we are not eugenic and we have no problems with children with genetic defects, but we don’t think siblings should have sex because, well, what if they give birth to children with genetic defects?” Therefore, with such hypocrisy, the eugenic premise is hidden, but it is at the center of the anti-incest argument for many.

The third argument concerns the social consequences without the stigmatization and scrutiny of incest. Some ask: “what if siblings all start having sex once incest is no longer a taboo?” Firstly, it still implies siblings having sex is somehow wrong, probably due to eugenic tendencies. Secondly, it sounds like the “what if my son becomes gay once gay marriage is legal” argument, but I think it is safe to say that it is the stigma and legal prohibition that discipline and repress affection, rather than the lack of them causing people’s preferences to change. But let’s get back to the question—will a moral and legal acceptance of incest cause large-scale and widespread practices of incest? I argue the answer tends to be negative. When making their decision on the ethics and legality of incest, the German Ethics Council (2014) cited the works of “the Finnish philosopher, sociologist and ethnologist Edward Westermarck, who has assumed an innate aversion to acts of incest among humans who grow up together and thus have close physical contact as siblings.” Latter studies on kibbutz children in Israel and Shim-pua (Tongyangxi) marriages in Taiwan (in both cases, the married couples have emotional and locational proximity in their childhood but without blood relationships) found that these couples have low marriage rates, fertility rates, and high divorce rates. It is argued that this demonstrates an “evolutionary acquisition” where people naturally find those growing up together sexually unattractive, regardless of whether they are biologically related or their relationship is socially approved (or even desired in the Shim-pua cases). In addition to early domestic proximity, genetic similarity itself may also reduce sexual attraction. In 1996, zoologist Claus Wedekind designed the “Sweaty T-shirt” experiment, where female college students were asked to smell T-shirts worn by male students with various genes and report their feeling. It turned out that

“[t]he women strongly preferred the scents of those T-shirts worn by men with differing MHC genes. They even described these scents as reminding them of boyfriends past and present. If the T-shirt belonged to a man whose immune system was similar to hers, the woman often describe the odor as like that of her father or brother. Some of the women were surprised by how beautiful or dreadful they found the various odors” (Alff, 2010).

Therefore, considering these two natural mechanisms, incest in humans will likely to still be rare even when the incest communities are given inclusion and respect. In fact, the case reports submitted to the German Ethics Council in 2014 “by those affected have concerned exclusively half-siblings who became acquainted only as adults,” another proof of the Westermarck effect.

Now we can move to the fourth and last argument, that incest (especially between parents and children rather than between siblings and cousins) is often a product and mean of manipulated relationship where the more experienced and authoritative figure abuses their dominant position to explicitly or implicitly “brainwashed” the weaker counterparts into having sex with or loving the former. According to this view, incest, like underage sex, is a sexual assault with victims even if consent is given, because the consent is irrational and manufactured by the powerful. This is the strongest argument on the matter, it may also be a very relevant point because there are undoubtedly many such victims. But still, a distinction needs to be made. Many cases of domestic childhood sexual abuse are already illegal even without laws on incest due to the young age or lack of consent. While for adults who come together willingly, it is hard to prove that the couple is “irrational” and “misguided” simply because society disapproves of their choice. To be honest, I don’t think the current legal system should regulate people’s sex autonomy based on how rational they are perceived. It can be argued that sex and love between physically attractive people with problematic characteristics are irrational, but there is no law against it. So let’s restrict our subjects to those with close teaching or nurturing relationship where undue influence is viable and possible. In these cases, I think a case-by-case approach is much fairer and more comprehensive. Section 228 of the Republic of China (Taiwan)’s criminal code is often referred to as the “sex by authority” clause:

“A person who takes advantage of his authority over another who is subject to his supervision, assistance, caring because of family, guardian, tutor, educational, training, benefactor, official, or occupational relationship or a relationship of similar nature to have sexual intercourse with such other shall be sentenced to imprisonment for not less than six months but not more than five years. A person with relationship specified in the preceding paragraph who commits obscene act against such shall be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than three years. An attempt to commit an offense specified in paragraph 1 is punishable.”

In addition, responding to a public scandal where the Chinese-American lawyer Bao Yuming was “suspected of sexually assaulting his teenage adopted daughter” (Global Times, 2020), the Chinese government proposed a new law similar to the aforementioned one in the 11th amendment of criminal code:

“Persons with special responsibilities such as guardianship, adoption, nursing, education, medical treatment, etc., who have sexual relations with minor women between the age of 14 to 16, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years; for vile circumstances, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than ten years.”

But it is a misfortune that the law does not apply to women above 16 or men. I did not find similar “sex by authority” law in the Canadian criminal code. But in comparison with the current anti-incest law, it punishes those who are ignored, such as teachers abusing their positions of authority to have sex with students or step-parents with step-children, and also exempts those who are genuinely consensual, such as a pair of siblings who only meet and fall in love as adults. One may argue that such a reform makes the judicial process more complicated and time-consuming, but this is precisely how the nature of sex by authority is. For those blatant abuses of power involving guardianship by blood relations, the perpetrators will likely be processed as quickly as under the current anti-incest law. For more subtle incidents such as sex between adult university students and professors, it naturally requires more investigative efforts to conclude whether there is a direct abuse of authority. Most crucially, it enables the conceptual clarification we desperately need. Sex by authority is inherently wrong (with the current symbolic system of sex) and should be dealt with as such, but it is irrelevant whether there is a blood relation between the victims and perpetrators—it does not make an evil act good, nor does it make a good act evil. Fixating sex between blood relatives as inherently wrong is an essentialist and discriminatory fallacy, just like seeing gay images as inherently sexually provocative and erotic.

Now, I hope I have given you a convincing account of why the moral and legal arguments against incest fail. But maybe you are still emotionally aversive to incest. This is fine, heterosexual people may find homosexual sex repulsive, and vice versa, but it does not hinder the rights or respect of all as people. Actually, there is a cultural explanation for the aversion to incest in the West. Using the example of eating dogs, many Westerners find it repulsive even if they know there are no universal good moral grounds against eating dogs specifically, because dogs are commonly kept as pets and emotional companions in the West while dogs had been more commonly used as food in East Asia. I have spoken to a few Chinese and Canadian schoolmates about the morality of incest (although the sample size is very small). After my explanation, the former all found incest morally acceptable, while the latter, well, did not want to hear my explanation at all. The reason is simple, many Canadians actually have siblings who they grow up together with, while most Chinese students in my generation are the only children in their families due to the one-child policy (similarity, there are more single-child families in South Korea and Japan due to low fertility rates). So on the issue of incest, Westerns can imagine the repulsive image of it happening between their siblings (relating to the Westermarck effect), while Chinese youth will either feel like “it is none of my business and why should I care” or image the romanticized and fantasized depiction in artworks. Although emotional aversion itself is not a valid reason to deprive the rights of a group, I still think it would be useful to explain where the emotion comes from so that we can see ourselves from a more comprehensive and rational angle and not take our cultural intuitions as universally correct.

Does repealing the anti-incest law yield substantial benefits? The answer is certain. Although hardly anyone in the incest community would come out openly due to the social stigma and we don’t have reliable quantitative data, there are cases where the law and the moral and cultural sentiment it upholds devastate happy incestuous couples. As documented in the report by the German Ethics Council (2014), a wife was in a secret incestuous relationship with her brother, and her children also wanted everyone to be together happily. But eventually, the wife’s estranged husband found out about the affair and told the wife’s father, who blackmailed the wife and her brother that either they break off contact or he would press charges against them. He also threatened that the wife would lose her children. The anti-incest law gave the husband extra power to make the wife obedient to his wish, which would not be the case if the affair was between non-blood related people. Although some opponents of the anti-incest law claim it protects the family, in this case, it instead harms the family. The anti-incest law not only reinforces social stigmatization and delegitimization, but also enables others to weaponize the law for their own selfish interests. In addition, the torment of being prohibited to have sex with and marry one’s loved one simply due to their genetic similarity is very difficult to justify—what happiness is created by the prohibition and how is it greater than the suffering? 

In this essay, I examined the realities of and moral arguments against incest. I defended incest as morally and legally acceptable and ask for a repeal of anti-incest laws. My argument primarily concerns the act of incest (sexual activities between blood relatives), but it also goes for the love and marriage between blood relatives. In the end, I think today we should be open and genuine about the principle of “love is love” except in highly manipulative relationships and advocate for a moral and legal rethinking of anti-incest cultures and laws.

—-Atlas, 2022.10.17

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