We have been forced to confront the unpleasant fact of incest on TV this week (why?,one might ask.)
It got a good run for its money. Two stories on 60 Minutes, one of a Scottish brother and sister who were not brought up together, and only latterly discoverred they were sister and brother.
The other, alarmingly closer to home in Mount Gambier; a father and a daughter!
Why, one might ask, would people who live in a smallish town go on national TV. I suppose money changed hands.
Nasty stuff. Interestingly, Stefanovic et al on morning TV gave results of a survey which (I think) said of 1100 people interviewed, 1000 thought incest should be illegal but (and they were surprised by this) 100 didn't.
9 or 10 % is surprisingly high.
I don't suppose that this 10% were necessarily saying that incest is right, just that it shouldn't be illegal; which is different.
There is an appalling interview (here) with the man's former wife. What it shows is, without going into detail, that these crimes are not victimless ( as is so often claimed)[children, wives, grandchildren, society, community etc. etct. etc.]...and does indeed suggest that we are being allowed into this tragedy because of money.
It also seems to suggest that (surprise, surprise) the man has been more than happy with this ...indeed one wonders who was the prime mover...the woman was in the midst of a marital breakdown when her father'comforted her' by having sex with her!
This is the problem with incest, it seems to me....you may want to stand back and say it is "private" or it may be morally OK because no one gets hurt. But the levels of hurt are complex, dark and even more than a little grubby.
I think we should visit age old taboos to see if times have changed, and maybe we can change them. But I think this case rather shows that we shouldn't have any automatic presupposition that old taboos are necessarily wrong and should be jettisoned. We may not fully understand the depth of why a taboo exists, but sociologically they are so powerful that it seems to me the burden of proof is on those who want to change them to make their case, and not just (as so often happens) give in to the modern trend that anything goes.
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This is the problem with incest, it seems to me....you may want to stand back and say it is "private" or it may be morally OK because no one gets hurt. But the levels of hurt are complex, dark and even more than a little grubby.
Obviously the levels of hurt are more complex, dark and grubby in this case: she was going through a marriage breakup! And the father, I agree, was probably taking advantage of her vulnerability. But I don't see how you can draw a general rule--"Incest causes hurt--from a single case. Does this rule apply to all variants of incest--sibling-sibling, parent-sibling, relative-relative, and so on? Or just father-daughter incest. What is the evidence that supports this?
I think we should visit age old taboos to see if times have changed, and maybe we can change them. But I think this case rather shows that we shouldn't have any automatic presupposition that old taboos are necessarily wrong and should be jettisoned. We may not fully understand the depth of why a taboo exists, but sociologically they are so powerful that it seems to me the burden of proof is on those who want to change them to make their case, and not just (as so often happens) give in to the modern trend that anything goes.
This is the argument from tradition fallacy, based on the presupposition that taboos are necessarily right and should not be jettisoned. And the burden of proof always lies with the party advancing the claim. If your claim is that the taboo on incest between consenting adults should be maintained, you need to justify this claim rather than simply asserting it. If you don't know or can't explain why this taboo should be preserved, then your justification for preserving it is not going to be very convincing.
I am not simply nit-picking here. There have been (and in many societies continue to be) sociologically powerful taboos regarding homosexuality, or miscegenation, or women's sexuality (take female genital mutilation, for instance). Is the mere fact that they are sociologically powerful sufficient justification for preserving these taboos?
I think you rather miss my point, which is not that 'taboos' should not be examined, but rather that we should not jettison them without careful scrutiny.
I am suggesting that the existence of a taboo is a reason to be cautious. I think that your argument that taboos should not be maintained is pretty reckless.
And from an anthropological point of view I think the burden of proof is not on those who want to maintain the taboo but on those who want to jettison it that it no longer serves any purpose...perhaps if we move away from this sort of adversarial language full-stop perhaps there is obligation on both sides!
Freud of course suggests that incest is a universal taboo!
This is the argument from tradition fallacy, based on the presupposition that taboos are necessarily right and should not be jettisoned.
This statement is (also) fallacious and makes a huge presumption that tradition is fallacious.
The presupposition is not that taboos are necessarily right, but that their existence is significant and should not just be disregarded, indeed it should encourage caution.
I take your point about what sort of incest we might be talking about.
There being a problem with one word covering a range of things.
As with all of these things, the thing that worries me is when we start a process of rationalistaion (as in this case)where one person is 'persuaded' to do something they don't want to do.
The problem about incest is the intimacy that already exists which can be abused. Thus when a sibling uses their intimate status to get their brother or sister to have sex with them, we are in pretty dangerous territory. Or a father or a mother or a son or a daughter.... it's all well and good to say we are all grown-ups. Some are more grown up than others!
I suspect taboos help us to live with realities rather than proscribe certain behaviours.
But it doesn't mean we have to have them forever,
O what a tangled web we weave when we blog.
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