Q&A: Incest and Taboos
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This one is pretty intense. (They won't all be.)
CW: This post discusses sibling incest. It’s a question about how to react when someone discloses such an experience. Feel free not to read it. In fact, probably skip it. Sex is complicated, and everyone has something that makes them uncomfortable, and this post’s topic is right at the top a lot of people’s lists of “no thank you please.” Always remember, you get to choose how and when you engage with any of these posts! If this post isn’t for you, stay tuned for next week’s, which will be completely different.
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Q: I know that you talk about nonjudgment, letting go of right and wrong, (for most cases)... and this gets a bit taboo.
I'm dating a guy who admitted to me pretty early on that he and his sister had a consensual sexual relationship in the past. (Well, he says it was. I'm friends with his sister and afraid to bring it up) Mostly teenagers when it happened, but occasionally it continued in their 20's. It hasn't happened for a decades.
I listened to him, as he told me, with nonjudgment, as I do with anybody who shares anything with me, but internally, I've been struggling with knowing this. Have you ever come across something like this? Is he a guy that I should be, (I know, the "should") dating or involved with? His sexual appetites at times do tend to go towards dark places, much darker than mine, and I'm pretty open when it comes to exploring. I know that you're incredibly busy, but I would really like to have someone with your expertise talk me through this... and sexual therapists around where I live, really just don't exist.
A: Okay, deep breaths everybody. This is a Very Big Feelings question, about which readers will have strong opinions. Let me go ahead and say that a lot of people are going, “OH MY GOD THAT’S HORRIFYING AND GROSS AND YOU NEED TO DUMP HIM IMMEDIATELY AND TAKE 40 HOT SHOWERS TO CLEAN YOURSELF OF HIM.” That’s most people. That’s not me. I truly don’t have an opinion.
This isn’t the absolute most taboo subject, but it’s high up there, and it is as close to universal as any taboo on Earth. (I have never come across a behavior, not one, is truly universally taboo.) The easy story about why it’s taboo is that if such a behavior results in offspring, there’s a high risk of genetic problems. But the “why” isn’t particularly important; what’s important is that your body and mind react with a disgust/withdrawal response to descriptions of sex that cross a moral line.
And it is a moral line. Which brings me to “moral dumbfounding,” the experience of feeling that something is morally wrong, without being able to generate a logical reason for it. For example, many people’s moral judgments of “right and wrong” are based on whether or not a behavior does harm to someone or whether or not a behavior is fair.
Consensual adult sibling incest is so morally dumbfounding that it’s used as a research question on moral dumbfounding—literally:
Julie and Mark, who are brother and sister are traveling together in France. They are both on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy it, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret between them, which makes them feel even closer to each other. So what do you think about this? Was it wrong for them to have sex?
Is there anything about this scenario, as described, that is unfair? Is there anything that does harm?
At this point, some people focus their reasoning on whether harm is done to the individuals involved, and some people expand to consider whether harm is done to their friends and family or their community. The moral assertion that individuals’ private sexual behavior does harm to a community is the foundation of a great deal of homophobia. There is no actual evidence that same sex couples’ private sex lives harm a community, but a moral judgment isn’t about evidence.
The question asker might have more detailed information than she’s offering here. We don’t know how old the siblings were when the sexual relationship began, and we don’t know the age difference—a large age difference could indicate a power differential. We also don’t know what constitutes a “sexual relationship,” and there might be some behaviors that feel more acceptable than others.
So you’re confronted with one of the most powerful morally dumbfounding situations a person can ever experience. I’m going to suggest you focus on the question of harm—harm to him, to his sister, or to you.
To that end, I think the sister needs a voice in the story. If it truly did no harm to either of them as individuals or to their relationship as siblings, then she should be able to tell you so, just as he was able to tell you do.
This is a conversation you have face-to-face, not over text or Facetime. And you begin the conversation with all the buffering caveats you can think of. For example: “I’d like to ask about something pretty private and I feel uncomfortable even just considering talking about it, so I understand if you feel uncomfortable, too, and your personal privacy matters to me, I don’t want to invade your life with any questions, but I wouldn’t be starting this conversation at all if it weren’t really important to my relationship with your brother, and by this time you might know what I’m going to ask about?”
Let me normalize that this could well be the most difficult conversation of your life. Calling it “awkward” would be like calling World War II a slight difference of opinion. You have presented me with a very hard problem, and I’m answering with an equally hard solution.
But there are a couple reasons you need to hear directly from the sister.
First if she says, “I can’t believe he told you; we agreed we would never tell anyone,” then we know that he violated her trust by telling you, and you can decide what to do with that information.
If she says anything like, “He insisted we couldn’t tell anyone,” or “I didn’t have a lot of choice,” or “I didn’t like it,” or “I didn’t want to do it,” those are red flags about her lack of consent. Conversely, “I insisted he couldn’t tell anyone,” or “I didn’t give him a lot of choice,” or “He said he didn’t like it,” or “He said he didn’t want to,” are red flags about his lack of consent.
This was a really challenging question to ask and also to answer. I hope you found it helpful – and that you can apply some of these principles of nonjudgment to other issues you may come across.
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