hmm..incest is the best??

[SaRaHmArIe8588]

ok.. i dont even know how to begin talking about this. just thinking about it makes me sick, seriously. i was hanging out with my best friend last weekend and her cousin, 23, was there. he was drunk and was actin like an idiot. but we hung out with him all night. we were talkin bout how cute he was..and i mean, its ok if i think hes cute..but they are cousins so i foudn that kinda weird. he suggested we go for a walk and it was pitch dark so we all held hands. we stopped down the road where there was a light from someones house and just sat down in the grass and talked. before i knew it we were both laying in his arms and he was touching my butt. i pushed his hand away and he shot me a dirty look and rolled over with his cousin. he began touching her butt and rubbing his head on her chest and iheard him saying how he couldnt help it, she was so beautiful and then they started making out. i said i wanted to go back so they said they would follow later, and that i could go on. when she got back she told me that they messed around and did EVERYTHING except have sex..but they almost did, except they had no protection..they are planning to get together alot this summer, cause she said even though its wrong, it feels so right..blah blah blah..

 

I've been tryin to talk to her and try and get it through her head how wrong this was..first of all..hes 23..so could get in trouble..but to make it even nastier...they are FIRST cousins. its just not right. does any one have any suggestions on what to tell her, cuz i cant let her do this..they can really get in trouble. HELP!!!

 

*Sarah*

[confusedgrl23]

ummm Im speechless

 

I guess tell her shes nasty and so is he and to stop having incest sex?

[darkblue]

ReRead confusedgrl23.

 

They haven't had sex yet.

[darkblue]

There is a huge amount of controversy sourounding this issue.

 

Should people be labelled and discriminated for an attraction?

 

But should they be allowed to have sex knowing that it will increase the chances of producing a defected child?

[DN]

Sex between first cousins is only considered incest and illegal in about half of the States in the US. I don't know what the law is in New York.

 

A lot would also depend on how old she is and what the age of consent is in NY.

[confusedgrl23]

it doesnt matter if they had intercourse or not, they still did almost have sex which means that they prolly had oral sex

[thegirl_00]

Yes i think this is wrong... however my aunty and her first cousin got married and had kids. They are devorced now and are embarrassed about it. It's even worse for the kids i imagin.

There is nothing you can do about this.... if they love eachother then no one should get in the way of their happiness. No law should have to tell you who to love or not and clearly their not going to break this off for any law anyways.

[WuvWolf]

Very weird situation... I deffinatly don't agree with what they did or even plan to do. They obviously have a strong attraction for eachother.. it is not unheard of.. I have read about father daughter and mother son attractions getting very physical (Dont think about it). It's a topic that deals directly with morality. The age thing, by law I guess is wrong, but I don't dissagree. Being first cousings though, that's really pushing it. The more you tell her it's gross and wrong the less respect she will have on your opinions. So what I would do is let her know what impact it has on you and your opinions on her.. Im sure you want to remain friends with her so don't go ratting on her just yet but.... Wow, that's a difficult spot for a friend to be in. Let her know that you support her on a lot of things, but that is not one of them. It's a problem with morality and she will have to see that. good luck.

[Day_Walker]

Incest has a lot of stigma attached to it but it seems that most people dont really know the biological/genetic facts about it. Incest is more of a social unacceptable issue rather than a biological one. People have been misled to believe that the children will come out deformed or mentally disabled because of an incestuous union. The truth is that the children from an incestuious relationship can be completely normal, the problem is that genetically speaking the gene pool is smaller so the traits inherent in the family get magnified in the offspring.

 

As far as first cousins go, I know that other cultures in the Middle East and Asia accept the idea of first cousins marrying. I happen to see this kind of union more so than most people given the type of job I have. Instead of relying on what you have been old by other people look up the facts yourself so you actually learn about this issue before you start with the same old social arguments against incest.

[SilverManic]

It used to be very common over here about 50 years ago for cousins to get married. Of course I wasn't alive then. I've heard a lot about brother/sister relationships and I personally think that is wrong. But if someone else is doing it and not you can you really critasize them? It's their life right?

 

Personally I wouldn't do anything with any of my cousins, second or first. But I don't particually see much wrong with it because I was brought up in a society where it's not unuseral to get married to your cousins. The age gap isn't so big. I'm 20 and my boyfriend of nearly six months is 31 and we are still very happy. Men mature slower than females in some cases (not always true). Women tend to go for older men all the time, it's not unuseral at all!

 

I guess it's a culture thing and I think it is a bit weird but as long as their happy it doesn't matter right?

[WuvWolf]

It's not the idea of having birth defected children that brought this topic to eNotAlone. This girl wanted advice on how to tell her friend that she thinks it's wrong. She does think it's wrong. Throwing facts out there is not going to change her beliefs. This topic was not about accepting it or not. She obviously feels uneasy about what has happened with her friend and she is asking for support. Right or Wrong.... Vs. Help and Options very simple

[DN]

Support doesn't always mean agreeing with, or validation of, an existing opinion or feeling.

 

Sometimes it can mean helping people become more informed about a subject so that whatever moral decisions or opinions they reach are based upon a wider grasp of the facts and an appreciation of other people's opinions.

[Spirits Away]

It's their business, really.

 

Funny how we absorb information of what we should or should not do, then it becomes a weapon to stab into other people who is not following the majority.

[SilverManic]

Hm since Wolf puts it that way I was just informing though. But if you think it's wrong tell her so, she might not listen to it and may get angry but there is only one way of putting your feelings out there and only you know how to do it.

[Spirits Away]

I really like the informing idea, whomever started this idea here is pretty smart. Human have this defense mechanism whereby even if you're just informing, they'll take it personally, or that you're taking advantage of them somehow and then just tune out on you, unless you can get pass all that first.

 

How you may want to structure what you wanted to express is first to say something like "I also don't follow the society's view on this, but I'm just a bit concerned about how will you handle the outcome of this situation in the future with all the social pressure that's involved in this..." then start informing.

[btbt]

Definitely and cultural and "modern" thing, as other posters pointed out that it is and was socially acceptable (remember all those Victorian novels where the apparent suitor for the girl was her cousin). The higher chance of genetic defects are someting to worry about. I think the main issue about incest is about the power relations -- a father, mother, aunt, uncle who is having sex with someone who is significantly younger and could not take care of him/herself and make decisions on his/her own.

 

This sounds like some kind of drunken fluke and a case of overraging hormones. I bet they are both embarrassed about it and it will blow over.

[asdf]

As far as incest being immorally wrong goes, the only real good argument is that it increases the chances that it does increase the chances of the offspring getting the rr rather than the Rr or RR. But is that really a good reason? I think most people here wouldn't care if two unrelated both had similarily recessive genes and they had high chances of having "defected" offspring.

 

In any case, I think in most cases of incest, their offspring won't be that much at risk, unless both parents had some horrible genetic disease. Two healthy siblings can produce a healthy offspring too.

 

I agree, the major cause of people believing it to be morally wrong is social and/or religious stigma.

 

I would respect (although not nessesarily agree with) arguments more about how it may intefer with the concept of family relationships, than people who go "ewww, it's just gross!" or "it's just wrong, full stop".

[asdf]

the only real good argument is that it increases the chances that it does increase the chances of the offspring getting the rr rather than the Rr or RR. But is that really a good reason? I think most people here wouldn't care if two unrelated both had similarily recessive genes and they had high chances of having "defected" offspring.

In any case, I think in most cases of incest, their offspring won't be that much at risk, unless both parents had some horrible genetic disease.

Thank you for proving my point. I don't mean to sound condescending or to offend you in any way, but you have no idea what you're talking about. The Mendelian RR, Rr, or rr isn't just a question of whether you have brown eyes or blue eyes. Genetics gets a lot more complicated than that. There are a lot of traits that are caused by multiple alleles, and then there are others that can't be explained through basic Mendelian genetics. But since one of the major concerns in inbreeding is the expression of recessive traits, here are a few:

Hemophilia

Albinism

Congenital Deafness

Deaf Mutism

Spielmeyer-Vogt Disease (Amaurotic Idiocy)

Phenylketonuria

 

The list goes on, but this is what your not seeing. People carry a lot of recessive genes that are not expressed because a dominant allele is present to override them. But when you have two people who share a common ancestor, then the likelihood that those exact alleles are present in BOTH parents increases exponentially since they each got a set of genes from the EXACT SAME source.

 

And if congenital deformities and recessive disorders aren't enough, you also see increased rates in spontaneous abortion of the fetus, and neonatal deaths.

 

I don't think what I said came out to you right. I knew there was an increased chance for related people that offspring would have both recessive genes (and also a higher chance for both dominant genes as well). My latter statement which downplayed the risk meant for example with albinism, there was an approximated 1 in 50 chance (by a study conducted amongst a British Population I think) of a person being the carrier (and not an albino) of at least one Albinism gene. This would keep the probability of both siblings/relatives having the albino genes low because their parents would have a low chance anyway.

 

And my first point, although I did use Mendelian genetics as an example, that point wasn't to say that was how all diseases would be inherited, but that even if both people were carriers or had the "defects", people wouldn't consider it immoral for them to reproduce if they weren't related. So why should that argument apply to related people.

 

I'm not offended, because I don't claim to be an expert on genetics, but I wasn't even try to say that there weren't increased risks, but that wasn't the point of that post.

 

 

On the genetical tangent however, it is true that incest increases the chances of homozygocity, both dominant and recessive, and the rate of carriers for significant congenital birth defects is relatively low, one could argue that increased, but not total incest within a population would increase the number of dominant homozygotes more than the number of reccessive homozygotes. And since people who are infected with these are less likely to reproduce, over generations, the number of birth defects will be minimal. This does assume that the population is rather small though.

[asdf]

As long as a recessive allele was present in a common ancestor, the recessive trait will eventually become expressed.

Please explain this part (I assume you mean expressed in the entire population, otherwise it wouldn't be a valid point). In a line of descendants from carriers, there is also the healthy non-carrier offspring, who by being more healthy, are more likely to reproduce. The ones who express the recessive trait will be far less likely to reproduce. This is not unlike how livestock breeders work to establish some desirable traits in their stock.

 

Also, as inbreeding continues the number of successful births will decrease. Population size decreases until the inbreeding population becomes extinct.

 

^ Not a very good assumption. Birth numbers affect birth rates, but birth rates don't affect birth numbers. People who want to produce offspring are likely to keep trying to keep going at it till they succeed. May lower the birth rate, but not the number of successful births.

 

I'll reiterate "increased, but not total" incidents of incest. I understand how your argument works for a a community where all are close relatives and with both common ancestors expressing recessive traits.

[melrich]

Guys this is all really interesting stuff but has little to do with the original posters question of whether she should tell someone about the two cousins she knows are progressing towards a sexual relationship.

 

I suggest if you want to carry on the genetics discussion, make a separate post (and really it is a waste of an interesting discussion to have it going on here in the backblocks)