Articles

When I was a teenager, I had a crush on a cousin of mine. She lived in a different country, but whenever I had the opportunity to see her, my body was filled with excitement. My mind, however, said "this is wrong."

If you have been following my blog for a while, you know that just because there is something culturally, sexually, or psychologically controversial, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't ask the question: why is this so?

So you can imagine my surprise when Carlin told me that "incest" and "sister sex" are in the top 5 most searched terms on the D&R website. Apparently, I'm not the only one looking for answers.

Today I'm devoting the blog to exploring the subject of incest.

In many western cultures, incestuous sex is taboo sex. In others, sex between cousins is common. For centuries, intentional incest existed to keep wealth in the family. In many religious circles, incest is the only choice - because religious bloodlines are to be kept "pure."

In our own Christian oriented culture, just thinking about such things can create anger and derision.

Take the case of a couple in Ireland; they are brother and sister and they are having their second child. They made the news last week because, after years of being together, they finally wed - illegally of course. They are also in the process of fleeing their native Ireland for fear of reprisal and repercussion - if people discover the truth.

To me, this is a particularly sad situation because I wonder - where they will go? Our western culture is so sexually crazed and oppressed that there is no place for this couple to live openly and safely.

This is because myths and stories clog our most basic thinking about sex, which is why sexual oppression takes so many forms - not just incest taboos.
Even a seemingly progressive state like California passed the 2008 ballot initiative Prop 8, which denied the legality of gay marriage.

Fortunately, the proposition was recently struck down by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker - restoring the Governator's state to the ranks of five other states where same-sex couples can wed. The bad news is this ruling ensures the issue of alternative marriages will eventually be decided in the hallowed halls of the U.S. Supreme Court.

And trust me on this, someone arguing the position against legalizing same-sex marriage will argue that it opens the door for legalizing all kinds of "morally corrupt" marriages - including incestuous ones.

In the case of the couple above, they didn't know they were brother and sister. They met by chance and just had the feeling that there was a deep connection. In fact there was: they shared the same father.

By the time they figured this peculiar paternal paradox out however, they already had a healthy child together.

For a grandmother and her grandson - it was love at first sight. They are planning on starting a family together.

The reason these stories are regularly picked up by the media is because they are so culturally provocative, titillating, and taboo.

In reality however, cousin sex is more common than we imagine. We humans share a common African ancestor, DNA Adam and Eve. African Adam and Eve were sexually active - and non-monogamous. How do I know this? Because you and I are here at all.

The monogamous couple who didn't mix up sperm and eggs - with their nearby cousins by the way - are not here to tell the story. One mishap, one glitch, one nasty disease, one hungry tiger, and the whole little monogamous lineage comes to an end.

Our African Adam and Eve loved sex and loved to spread their wealth - to other family members in the very begining. All of us humans share some common bits of DNA with them. DNA - which represents how to make a copy of you - was passed down to us generation after generation. So in this sense, you and I are distant cousins - part of an extended African family.

In this way of looking at things, we are all practicing incest.

Throughout history there have been stories of relatives who have decided to hook up. Stories of kissing cousins abound, and while discussing this blog with my girlfriend, she remembered crushing on her cousin, Tim.

As it turns out, we are also far more likely to fall in love with our neighbor than we are with someone living across the country. There is a correlation between love and nearness.

Also when we are little, we have more private access to our cousins in ways that we don't have with other little people - like in school for example. This means if we have closer access to cousins, it's more likely we will have attractions to our cousins.

I'm curious how many readers have stories or fantasies regarding incest that you would be willing to share - good, bad, ugly, sweet.

In West Africa there's a saying "cousins are made for cousins". On D&R, we have a saying: openly sharing and communicating is everything.