Incest!

[sistermagpie]

Happy birthday naiasf!!!!! I hope you have a fabulous day out by that beautiful sea!

And I apologize for putting a birthday wish in a post about incest.:-)

The subject's come up recently and I'm kind of surprised by the emotional reactions to it--to me it seems like incest’s always been a popular Gothic convention and will probably continue to be so. Last night, reading ajhalluk's lj I was so happy to have one incest-related question cleared up. In my freshman year colloquial on Gothic Lit we were talking about Wuthering Heights and I referred to what I assumed was the commonly known possibility that Heathcliff was actually Cathy's brother. The whole class looked at me like I was crazy. What's more the teacher *told* me I was crazy--and this was a teacher I loved. I never mentioned it again-until last night, when ajhalluk said, "... if the informed reader wasn't supposed to assume Heathcliff was Earnshaw's bastard by a Liverpudlian half-breed whore, then colour me orange and call me a carrot."

Needing to tell someone about my vindication I told my roommate, who spent the rest of the night wandering around grumbling about feeling stupid for never thinking of that herself. I assured her the only reason I knew of it when I did (probably in high school) was because MY MOTHER told it to me. I just thought it made perfect sense, despite my class disagreeing.




Obviously, there are different types of incest. I'm not particularly into the parent/child version. I think it's because I'm not quite so interested in issues of power, which that genre gets into. I don't like non-consensual incest either, since I'm not big on non-con in general. Though I think all of these can be done well--in fact, I think mother/son would probably read to me very differently than father/son or (my least favorite) father/daughter. It's funny the way we seem to have such issues about this when don't the French quite happily make movies about this subject? There was that recent one about the brother and sister, and I saw Murmur of the Heart, which has a mother/son incest scene. Needless to say, I do not think real life sexual abuse within families is appealing or acceptable.

Anyway, the incest I tend to go for is brother/sister. Perhaps this is due to the Flowers in the Attic craze of eighth grade, but I think really the reason those books were SO popular with girls my age is that they appealed to some common fantasy we already had. For me, this probably goes along with a general brother/sister fixation. I love boy/girl stories, especially stories about a lost boy and the girl who goes to find him--The Snow Queen was my absolute favorite story as a kid. I remember talking to a friend after seeing The Blair Witch Project, and I said how much I liked it and she said, "Oh yeah, well, you've got that whole Hansel & Gretel fixation." I hadn't ever thought of it that way, but she was absolutely right. Hansel & Gretel, Gerda and Kay.

In grad school my thesis script also centered around a brother/sister love affair (a chan one, come to think of it!) that was completely unspoken so nobody got it except for one guy who thought it was plain as day. The second big thing I tried to write (well, I did write it even if it's unpublished) was sort of based on The 7 Ravens, though my story was about a girl who was searching for just one missing brother, not 7.

With that kind of background, you can imagine why it would puzzle me that anyone wonders what the appeal of sibling incest stories are. They're all part of the same genre to me. It's not about abuse it's about...finding your other half, I suppose. The yin-yang, the reciprocal self, the male version of the female self (I've not much thought about it from the other way round...I always made the girl the rescuer, I think). Unlike parent/child incest, it's not about power because the whole point is that the two people are completely evenly matched. They need each other. Even when the boy needs rescuing, there was never a sense, for me, that he was a damsel in distress. It was more like the boy was gaining knowledge where he was, and he would bring that knowledge back with him when rescued.

Where parent/child incest often gives one partner an understanding far beyond the other's (since they are older), sibling incest stories are often more about a mutual understanding that's just...intimate. It doesn't always have to be safe, since they can use that understanding to hurt each other just as anyone can. It just doesn't start out with the same power dynamic. I'm not saying this particular kink is better than parent/child, btw, fictionally speaking. They're similar songs in a different key.

An interesting thing about brother/sister incest, too, is that if you take away the power issues by making the two characters the same age and equally matched you do bring up the question of exactly what the harm is. I mean, what is it that makes it wrong? I don't think that's a dismissive question. People *should* be able to articulate why something is wrong when it is. With parent/child it's immediately obvious because there's clear issues of betrayal, but with a hypothetically consensual brother/sister it's less clear. That's why, imo, it's almost too easy to create situations where it seems just fine--Flowers in the Attic is an obvious example. Had these kids not been shut into an attic for three years during puberty, and forced to form a surrogate family where the older brother and sister were parents to the younger two, Chris and Cathy would probably not have gotten together. But still, in the end, it just makes more sense that they are with each other than anyone else because their relationship really is more like husband/wife. (Besides, who else are they going to find who speaks in that same flowery language??)

Then there's also this question of the "universal taboo" which really isn't that universal. Two siblings raised apart are, I believe, no more or less likely to be attracted than two strangers. Perhaps they might be unconsciously drawn by physical similarities (they look like each other/like their parents). The point is the thing that makes sibling incest so weird isn't that we're physically repulsed by people closely related to us but that we grow up not thinking of them that way, which suggests in a different culture we might grow up thinking of them that way. It also seems that people are now pretending that cousin incest is this incredibly bizarre thing when, uh, why? I mean, my own cousins and I are never going to have an affair (I'm not going to sleep with my brother either-ewwww!), but that's probably because we've grown up with relationships that make it seem weird. Cousins can and do marry each other, though, in many countries and in parts of the United States (I think it's legal in 19 states). I once met a guy whose parents were cousins, and his so were his grandparents! (And he went to Dartmouth so presumably he was not too brain damaged to write an application essay, at least.) The risk for birth defects coming from cousin marriages is not significantly higher than it is for strangers--but you wouldn't know it from the commonly accepted idea in the US that, to quote a character in Brighton Beach Memoirs, "You can't marry your first cousin. You get babies with 9 heads!" That's a far cry from that throwaway line in Gone with the Wind,: "You know the Wilkes always marry their cousins!" This used to be a very common thing in the US. It's really rather odd that people think it's a big deal when in fact, it makes sense. Two people who are probably close in age and come from similar backgrounds but are not brother and sister do not have to be psychologically unsound to fall in love.

In fiction, incest is often associated with weird families-one of the few things Anne Rice has ever written that I really love is that file on the Mayfair Witches from The Witching Hour. In HP, the only sibling incest stories out there are about the Weasleys, and I have no interest in those. There's nothing appealing to me about Ron/Ginny or twincest. The Malfoys, though, come firmly out of the Gothic tradition, which is why I don't understand why people think it's strange when people associate them with the practice. Not because it's canon but because they really are linked to that literary tradition--the obsession with bloodlines and family, the big house, the bizarre, dark instruments of power hidden under the floorboards. Poor Sirius was just some non-gothic changeling. The gothic trappings aren't shallow, they are part of the genre-a genre that, I might add, has a history far richer and more fun than the more modern incest genre with its graphic descriptions of abuse and numbness. It just seems to me that in many stories, expecting Draco to react in that style to incest is like...well, like expecting Harry Potter to wet the bed his first night at Hogwarts because his emotional abuse at the Dursleys + a move to a new and strange environment would realistically lead to stress-related enuresis.

Finally, in HP, I always think it's interesting that people talk about this series as if its especially wrong to write about either sex or incest in this universe when JKR mentions Lolita as one of her favorite books and describes it as "a tragic love story." Now, I think Lolita is an incredible book and I don't think there's anything strange about her writing one and loving the other. But I'm also not one who would consider Lolita a love story-at least not a love story between two people. It just makes me feel like the author of this particular canon has an even larger fantasy/reality gap when it comes to pederasty and surrogate father figures having sex with young girls. So maybe it's not all that odd the universe lends itself to odd pairings more than some. Who knows?

Comments

[anaid-rabbit.livejournal.com]

There is nothing strange about the possiblity that Heathcliff may have been Cathy`s brother, in fact it`s even strongly hinted in canon about how young Heathcliff first comes to the story and the "likeness" between him and Cathy. I truly believe that it can be read as an incest story and that was a veiled intention of Brönte`s.

About the Malfoys, I`ve always been unable to read Weasleycest and even squicked by the idea of Weasleycest and twincest, but Malfoycest never came as a surprise for me and I`ve always enjoyed reading about it. I think you hit the nail on the head as to why.

when JKR mentions Lolita as one of her favorite books and describes it as "a tragic love story."
I didn`t know that. It`s kinda cool. I see the Potterverse as one much less innocent and puerile than it is commonly thought, just because sex or some sex related subject isn`t mentioned every twenty pages or so it doesn`t mean its universe can`t be largely sexual and full of sexual subtext, as I believe it is.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I truly believe that it can be read as an incest story and that was a veiled intention of Brönte`s.


It makes perfect sense to me--I mean, one could read their similarities as just a coincidence of temper, but I really like the idea of Earnshaw bringing all this upon himself!

About the Malfoys, I`ve always been unable to read Weasleycest and even squicked by the idea of Weasleycest and twincest, but Malfoycest never came as a surprise for me and I`ve always enjoyed reading about it.

Yes, with the Weasleys, they're far from a perfect family but I can't see how you could introduce incest without introducing all the real life issues that come with it because of the way their family is set up. The Malfoys, as someone said in azalia's thread, are described as being weird by definition--as are the Blacks. Also, imo, their relationship in canon already has incestual overtones the way the Weasley family doesn't.

[shusu.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh this is an old, old guilty pleasure of mine. Remind me to send a link to a fanfic that I wrote before I took this SN. The whole AU premise was that these twins had been born with a gene for madness, and ran away lest they hurt their family and friends (and possibly inherit royal responsibilities). And part of their suppression of violence was to replace it with sex. To them, it was a question of survival, and also... they're the only family they have. Then one of them has the gene fixed, and the other doesn't... LOL, it sounds better in summary than it does in practice. Might be better off without the link *g*

It's weird because I have very little experience in the Gothic tradition. At least, not directly. I read more Agatha Christie than anything else in that area.

Other than that, there is the whole Luke and Leia thing. *After* I found out about their relationship, my favorite scene was still and always will be the bridge scene before Luke leaves. It's so touching, and then here's Han still competing! And although there is a giggling wrongness about the earlier scenes, at the same time Luke *did* find his other half, and that's the hidden driving force for him from the beginning of the story. There are certain scenes which just can't be staged without that backdrop of family.

And lastly, Home. X-Files. *g*

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rp_zeal_/]

Other than that, there is the whole Luke and Leia thing.

Ah yes. There definitely had been chemistry between the two, that weren't strictly 'siblingly'!

[djinanna.livejournal.com]

Your position and points pretty much match my reaction to the whole incest discussion. I wish I could come up with something more articulate to add, but all I've got this morning is "what you said".

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It's a weird issue, and maybe just hasn't gotten as hashed out as rapefic has yet.

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

Great essay; I'm totally with you on all of it--Flowers in The Attic! The Seven Ravens! I feel like you and I had the same childhood. *g*

And vis a vis WH--yes, absolutely is the inference of half-brotherness there, which is the story's underlying tragedy, the real prohibition that underlies why C & H can't get together. Less appealingly, WH is really a story of DAD Earnshaw's sin and how it takes a couple of generations for it to wash through the family genes--Heathcliff is left entirely heirless, biologically. He's framed almost as a germ that has to work its way through the family system. It's a story of Dad's infidelity and its consequences.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hee! I love that we both have such excellent taste in stories! As stupid as it sounds, I really think somebody should make a proper movie or miniseries of Flowers in the Attic. The movie was so stupid and hello? Cut out the incest! I remember us all walking out of the theater going, "Um, did they not realize that was the whole point?" I think somebody could do a great job if they had a sense of humor about it and just piled on the Gothic awfulness.

The idea of Heathcliff being almost a personification of Earnshaw's sin seems very traditional to me too--another Scarlet Letter, in a way. Though he really is washed out in the end--strange really, that the most fertile-seeming character winds up barren.

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

I think perhaps the reason I don't see incest as TEH EBIL EBIL HORRAR is because I read The Hotel New Hampshire when I was about 13. When my mum handed it to me and said, "Read this; it's good."

Or maybe it comes from starting Julian May's Milieu series when I was 17, and looking at the family tree she put at the end of the book and thinking, "that makes no sense" and then reaching the third or fourth book and seeing that actually, yes it did.

It is, as kitsune13 said at Nimbus, just another type of trope, and it's something that comes from a literary tradition. And let's not forget that in P&P, Darcy is meant to marry his first cousin, which is only one degree away from siblinghood. And didn't everyone laugh in the second Brady Bunch movie? Or is that different because they're step-siblings?

Mind, I think that in real life, in sibling-situations, there are probably very often real-world power imbalances that are exploited by one party or the other, but in a fictional narrative the writer can create a universe where those issues are part of the story.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! Hotel New Hampshire--I forgot.

Mind, I think that in real life, in sibling-situations, there are probably very often real-world power imbalances that are exploited by one party or the other, but in a fictional narrative the writer can create a universe where those issues are part of the story.

Absolutely. I think, as I said above, that's a big reason Weasleycest is so problematic. The Malfoys and the Blacks can be OTT weird with their own rules, but with the Weasleys it would seem like a real life situation and we know those siblings have weaknesses another might exploit.

Incest rec

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

My favorite incest novel, well really a novella: Marguerite Yourcenar's "Anna, Soror" -- a bit hard to find, possibly out of print. One of three novellas she wrote in the style of three Baroque painters, and originally called "D'apres Rembrandt," "D'apres El Greco" and "D'apres Bruegel." This is the El Greco one--you'll see why when you read it. (The Bruegel one became the full-length novel "The Abyss," which I love with a t00by passion.)

She also wrote another short novel, when she was very young, called "Alexis," which I think may have an incest thread in it.

~in haste

Re: Incest rec

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Sounds good! I'll write this down. It'll be an interesting contrast to what I'm reading now. I just started The Thin Man.

[arwencordelia.livejournal.com]

The point is the thing that makes sibling incest so weird isn't that we're physically repulsed by people closely related to us but that we grow up not thinking of them that way, which suggests in a different culture we might grow up thinking of them that way. It also seems that people are now pretending that cousin incest is this incredibly bizarre thing when, uh, why?

The physical repulsion between full siblings is actually very much an evolutionary adaptation (presumably to the "nine heads" phenomenon). But cousins? Not really, if at all. People have studied this in various species of non-human mammals and found a certain degree of "kin selection." That is, where an individual would avoid a sibling (and I forget how it is they can tell...), they will still consistently choose a cousin, sometimes even a half-sib over a "complete stranger", i.e. one they share a smaller proportion of genes with. The reasoning behind this is that individuals try (not consciously, but through evolutionary adaptation) to pass more of their own genes to progeny (I should note not all species do this; but it's certainly not uncommon). So, I tend to agree with the cultural source of "marrying your cousin is bad." It is interesting, too, that this a law here in the U.S., where the average individual is far more diverse genetically, having a more mixed ancestry than the average European. This has changed in the past 10-20 years or so, but when I was growing up in Greece (mostly), I was unusual for having one completely "foreign" parent, and another "only" half-Greek. The majority of my friends had all-Greek, or all-English, or all-French ancestors for at least a couple generations back. Yet marriage between cousins isn't illegal many places in Europe - where, one would surmise, it would be more "dangerous."

I also found your point about siblings who have grown up separately intriguing. I don't know if you've read The God of Small Things (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060977493/102-0091377-1944952?v=glance), and I don't want to give too much away so I'll be vague... But I wonder if it's a case of siblings trying to recapture something that was taken from them. And I'm really sorry if this last bit is completely incomprehesible :-)

/long (again!) ramble

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link--I'll check it out!

It makes sense to me that we could see something in a full sibling that just said TOO CLOSE. Even psychologically it would make sense. You could be drawn to the familiar, like a cousin, but at the same time you'd also not want something that was too much like yourself. That would have to be a strange thing about twincest, really--I expect it's an aspect that's exploited a lot in fics--that when you're watching a twin it's very much like watching yourself.

The new cousin=bad thing is very strange, especially adding the information you just gave about people in the US being more diverse anyway, since we are also the ones who seem to have a big taboo about it. I wonder why that is.

Tripping in from a friends-friends surf...

[singeaddams.livejournal.com]

Heathcliff and Cathy WHAAAAAT?! I'm such a moron, I never once even considered that possibility. That probability I should say. Food for thought, thanks.

Re: Tripping in from a friends-friends surf...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hey, you're not alone there! It's cool to think about the story now, though, huh!

[ex-lonicera600.livejournal.com]

I once read a book (of course I promptly forgot title and author, am getting old) that explained taboos and rules of behaviour put up by institutionalized religions, and they came up with totally mundane explanations in ALL cases.

As for the incest thing it made very much sense in earlier centuries to be forbidden, because people were living in much smaller communities and often never travelled farther than a day's walk in all their life. So the number of people they would meet and come to know in their life was necessarily much smaller than ours today. Therefore the temptation to just marry your sister/halfsister/cousin must have been much bigger just because they were available and you knew them. Then this 'don't marry too close'-rule was sensible because otherwise - if interfamily marriages would have occurred generation after generation - they really would have ended up with nine-headed babies all over the place, so to speak.

But nowadays this reason is pretty much gone as - unless you have a life-threatening genetic disease in the family - people even in smaller countries are so thoroughly mixed up that the occasional brother/sister-coupling would really do no harm at all. The reason that this taboo is still so strong in the USA has, I believe, simply to do with the fact that church/religion still has a more powerful position over there, so Americans have it more deeply ingrained that incest is such a squicky thing.

Here we have the occasional yellow paper story about brother and sister growing up apart and ending up married unknowing of their origins, but most people in my acquaintance would just shrug and say 'so what?', if they're both healthy or just won't have kids to exclude any risks, what's the big deal?

I find those culture clashes often really funny, because I absolutely didn't get it at first when Americans were talking about 'incest' meaning cousin/cousin. To have your first love affair/sexual experience with a cousin is almost a tradition over here.

[arwencordelia.livejournal.com]

But nowadays this reason is pretty much gone as - unless you have a life-threatening genetic disease in the family - people even in smaller countries are so thoroughly mixed up that the occasional brother/sister-coupling would really do no harm at all.

That's absolutely correct. And mating between cousins carries no higher risk of genetic deformities than that of the general population. For anyone interested in scientific explanation/backing, a (relatively) concise one can be found here (http://anthro.palomar.edu/synthetic/synth_6.htm).

[pedantic-celia.livejournal.com]

Incest is something that has fasinated me in a way ever since I read an article about people who were adopted meeting their biological relatives in adulthood and being sexually attracted to them or even having sexual relationships. I find this incredibly interesting, and I think it's a terrible shame that so many people can't have a sensible, non-sensational discussion about aspects of this.

I don't personally do HP incest, but that's generally only because I'm a Snape-shipper, and we don't really have a family for him. Of course, he might have a sekrit half-sibling floating about somewhere, and if that half-sibling showed up in the books, I'd be a lot more likely to consider an incest fic, for the issues and surrounding emotions. One thing I really don't get, though, is the Weasley twincest. Apparently, people find this sexy, but how can it be? They look exactly the same. I'm not sure I can articulate it, except to say that it'd surely be more like maturbation in front of a mirror than anything else.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Heh--that's what I said about twincest. I guess that can be used as part of the squick in itself, that it pretty much is like looking into a mirror, which is something in itself.

I think for me one reason I don't really get the appeal of twincest is that they're pretty much the same. They finish each other's sentences, both like the same jokes, etc. They don't interest me individually so I couldn't care less what they get up to when they're alone!

I always think there's probably loads of things that can happen when adult adopted kids meet their families. We seem to want to cling to this idea that there's a set format these things follow, that you meet your long lost brother and become brothers, or your long lost son and become mother and son. Maybe I'm just a suspicious person but I don't feel like it would happen that way. I just see lots of potential for awkwardness!

I hadn't thought about incest with Snape...the first thing that comes to mind when I think about it is maybe if you were writing about his past there might be something in his family tree that affected him. Maybe he read the story of a relative who had a doomed affair with her brother and he just fantasized about what she was like and tried to speak to her portrait.

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Incest for me it's always been a crucial theme, especially twincest - the ideal eroded by reality that still stands as a symbol for... the absolute, I think. The truth. (I haven't read your post! Sorry! I just wanted to say.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm glad you wanted to say! Do you like Weasley twincest? That one just doesn't do it for me.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Heheh we do share the more startling interests, man. Well, the girl-searching-for-boy and the-other-half thing-- seems to lend itself to brother/sister incest, though I haven't explored it much. I did write two Ron/Ginny fics-- those were a lot of fun. I think I kind of maybe tried getting at why it's 'wrong' in those, but I don't think I came up with anything concrete, except it just kinda messes with how you see the other person and yourself. 'Too close', that sort of thing.

Suddenly, I think I'd enjoy writing brother/sister original fic. Hmmm. There's something about boy/girl reflectiveness/equality that really draws me-- as does reflectiveness/equality of other sorts two, but the m/f has a unique balance to it.
I can't easily imagine writing Malfoycest 'cause Draco is so... easily overwhelmed, I guess? He doesn't have a strong ego. That seems to be a big danger with incest.

It's kinda disturbing that she thinks Lolita's a love story, btw o_0

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, don't you think? I read that quote and wanted the interview to say, "Um, excuse me? Exactly how is it a tragic love story?"

I read a Ron/Ginny fic once and it wasn't badly written, it was just I couldn't be interested in these two characters doing this. Not because I don't like them (well, I hate Ginny, but not Ron), it was just that it didn't do anything for their characters for me. With Draco, for instance, I've read fics where the way he's easily overwhelmed is the point...and it's interesting of that can be turned around on the other person. A bit like the show Passion--or a better example, like Letter from an Unknown Woman. You've got these women who just throw themselves at these unworthy men who use them and would abuse them, but the women's relentlessness ultimately destroys the men.

I don't know how this would apply to Draco, but I think that might be some reason he never seems completely overhwhelmed. It's like he's so twisted himself into wanting it--yes! I think that's the reason it's more interesting when Draco has some thoughts on the incest, either resentment but acceptance or some twisted enthusiasm, as opposed to the woe is me! fics where he hates his father in a sort of wimpy way but just has to take it.

[cursive.livejournal.com]

My parents both *loved* this book. Hell, I'm even named after one of the characters. My father taught it every year for 35 years and never once tired of it. And he always included the incest possibility in his first lecture.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ha! I wish I had been in your father's class! Your parents have good taste.

[ackonrad.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly a fan of incest (and yes, I avoid incest in the HP fandom as much as possible; IMO, there isn't an incest relationship in canon I find interesting enough, except maybe for Lucius/Draco, and this in very small doses). However, it would be untrue if I say I haven't read incest - as a teenager, I was a fan of French romance novels (yeah, I know; don't make fun of me, please! :D), in which first cousins were getting married all the time, as though this was the most natural thing on earth. The mere thought of making out with my cousin makes me sick, but in the books, the entire thing was presented a little more differently, of course.

I remember watching a movie about twins brother and sister who fell in love with each other, eloped and got separated in the end. The movie was fascinating, and I admit that I enjoyed it a lot. There was an incest relationship in the novel we read in my Old Spanish class just a couple of months ago (La Vida de Santa Marja Egipciada, in which with thirteen years, she had already managed to sleep with countless people, including both her parents and other members of the family).

IMHO, incest can be fascinating and interesting if you look at it aloof and forget about your own family. Unfortunately, I'm used to comparing the books I read or the movies I see with real life, and incest relationships inevitably lead to very unwelcome thoughts I'd rather forget. I know that I should distance myself from the dream world and reality, but I don't seem to be able to. Not to mention that incest exists - not long ago, I saw an interview a bother and sister gave. Both have two children. And imagine, they said they would die if something like this happened between their own children.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Wow--you do have to wonder how you could really ever feel secure that this wouldn't happen between your children if you'd done it yourself.

But yeah, when you bring the incest into the real world, especially your own family, it's just straight-out squick. It's funny how I never really do that. Like, reading Flowers in the Attic never once made me think about my own brother. I think that maybe also comes in the Malfoycest vs. Weasleycest idea. The Weasleys, I think, are presented as a "normal" family. They've got their own problems, but they're a regular family. Whereas the Malfoys and the Blacks are so weird, almost Addams-family-like that the whole thing becomes surreal. If you're beheading house elves when they get old, dating your uncle might just be neutral!

[chresimos.livejournal.com]

Okay...I don't like reading incest fics. The concept of incest disturbs me quite a bit. What disturbs me more though, is, as you said, that I can't really come up with a reason *why* it's wrong. I mean, if it's because the children are going to be mutants, then surely not having children removes that problem? And if it's a matter of transgressing the social relationships created by people being raised together, then why is it less wrong for people who aren't biologically related, but grow up in the same household, and is it okay then for true siblings who didn't grow up together? (This was what bothered me about Catherine/Heathcliff, which I alwaysthought had incestuous overtones, so good call on that one. :) )

Anyway. I don't know. I don't know where the taboo comes from or why it's such a strong one (okay, I know to an extent, obviously, but it's not as if people go around lecturing you, "Now don't have sex with your siblings!"...).

Though this is kind of tangential, these debates make me think about the way people relate to their fiction. The original incest post by...was it pandarus?...reads a lot like some of those anti rapefic posts, about how this is a real thing and handling it lightly is really offensive to people have gone through it. And there are always people who like rape fantasies, some of whom haven't experience abuse and fewer, I guess, who have, and they don't mind the positive aspects that a fantasy situation creates, because they're happy with that fantasy. (Which in turn gets me thinking about how maybe writing things with realistic levels of angst and suffering is a different kind of kink to writing them for 'teh pretty!' but no less a kink...anyway.) But the people who can't dissociate that fantasy from the traumatic experiences and suffering of themselves or people they know are the ones who have problems. I guess for me I have problems with incest because whatever happens in a story, it won't get over my innate dislike and conviction that it is just wrong. I can't separate the fantasy of the situation from my sense of judgement about what's going on. In this light I think your comment about the Malfoys vs the Weasleys makes a lot of sense - and in addition it's always easier to let the morally strange characters get away with dubious things, incestuous or otherwise, because nobody expects the evil guys to behave properly, you know? It seems much more sinister when you have the good guys doing things the reader is less likely to morally sanction, even if the acts themselves are similar.

Eh...that's just what this post made me think about. In conclusion, I think these arguments are always pretty futile anyway, since people aren't going to stop writing about subjects that upset other people(even if it's a little bit unfair to the victims - there are too many of them, there's always somebody who can be offended), and they won't stop liking something they like, and vice versa. But the discussions are very interesting to read. :D

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

They are interesting discussions, aren't they? :-)

I think it's interesting on both sides--just as people sort of have to have the freedom of their kinks as long as they're not having any negative effect on real people, other people need to be able to just be squicked by what they're squicked by and not have to get over it before they're considered normal.

Personally, I just can't help analyzing everything when it comes to my attention, so I usually want to know why I really like or really don't like something. It's very strange that right now I can't come up with my squicks, but I know I have them--I just avoid them so I probably don't think about them. Violet non-con doesn't appeal to me, but it doesn't disturb me. I usually just spend my time thinking, "That would really hurt," rather than finding it sexy at all. But it's not disturbing, exactly.

So I do think you really can replace rapefic with incestfic--I mean, why not? Especially when you figure that most real life incest is connected to rape anyway. But I started to think that maybe rape fantasies are just something that's been discussed more often. I mean, I remember reading that not so long ago romance novels *had* to have a virgin heroine who was raped. Now that's scary.

[kylandra.livejournal.com]

Heh, I think that I'm also kind of weird in that I don't have this strong negative reaction to incest stuff (except for, like, real life cases of child abuse). I didn't read the same stuff you did (though I'll have to check those out) but my parents were big SF fans and I remember reading some Heinlein with pretty functional incest in it, and I have insane love for the Gothic in all it's OTT or cheesy glory (though for some reason I hated Wuthering Heights, and I think I kind of overlooked the whole incest angle, strangely). Plus, I don't have any siblings, so there's no gut 'ewww' reaction in thinking about a real brother/sister. And for all the stuff people are wailing about in fanfic, I think if they ever watched even half the hentai I've watched their heads would explode, heh. So I just never really thought of it as a big deal.

I really wonder how it came about that incest among cousins became such a bad thing here in the US. There's got to be a dissertation on that somewhere. *ponders* I also wonder how it's become so tied to the South in some people's understanding. It's kind of a joke about the South now, like you joke about people from Alabama or Arkansas marrying their cousins (I'm from the South and I've heard those remarks even from people in some places down here). Maybe it's because of the kind of...clanishness (no pun intended) that people see down here, even though I'm sure there are similar large, close-knit families farther north (aren't there?).

I use way too many parenthesis. Ack.

I think you're right, the Malfoys do really strike me as being sort of the perfect Gothic family, all pale and strange in their big house full of Dark artifacts, with their huge sprawling family tree and their obsession with blood. I also agree that they seem the most fitting to explore incest stories, just because of how insular and blood-obsessed they seem, and given how inter-related they seem to be with so many other Purebloods.

How weird and ridiculous is it that Rowling thinks Lolita is this tragic love story? Kind of makes me wonder about some of the relationships in HP.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I think you're right, the Malfoys do really strike me as being sort of the perfect Gothic family, all pale and strange in their big house full of Dark artifacts, with their huge sprawling family tree and their obsession with blood. I also agree that they seem the most fitting to explore incest stories, just because of how insular and blood-obsessed they seem, and given how inter-related they seem to be with so many other Purebloods.

Yeah, and I think that's probably also why so many of us like them and want to see them continue. Because that's the thing about Gothic, even at its most twisted it's something you still want to have existing. I'd include that sort of Southern Gothic in there too, which is where I'd include the whole Deliverance-type cousin' marryin' thing. It's really tied to this idea of the past too, and preserving things even as they become more and more distorted. So I don't mind saying that this is why I'd be devestated to see Slytherin go. The world needs night as well as day. I want the dungeons *and* the tower.

How weird and ridiculous is it that Rowling thinks Lolita is this tragic love story? Kind of makes me wonder about some of the relationships in HP.

LOL! You said it! Seriously, there's so much in HP that reads as unpleasant to me that's supposed to be good that it does seem incredibly significant that a book I think is about a self-absorbed person who destroys a child for his own destructive fantasies (and blames her for it) to her has anything to do with a love story. Who exactly loves what in the story?

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

*mildly surprised* You were told you were crazy about the Heathcliff-Earnshaw's-bastard theory? Heavens. My lecturer told me about it. And my jaw dropped and I said 'NO WAY!... and yet it does make sense.'
... which proves that I am stupid.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Not unless my professor and everybody I know is also stupid, because this is the first time I've brought it up since that time, and everybody I know IRL seems surprised!

[ex-monochro174.livejournal.com]

Someone up there recced The God Of Small Things, which I must wholeheartedly second. There's also Wasteland, by Francesca Lia Block, and while it's YA, I have a weakness for how raw the connection is there.

Also, really, this comment is mostly to say there's always Padma/Parvati, and I know of quite a few that have been done fabulously; however, that's not brother-sister, so. And also, I really just love this post, I think it defines a lot of what makes this sort of incest so beautiful. *secretly looks up to you* :D

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hee! Thanks-for the kind words and the recs! And how odd I didn't even think of the Patil twins writing this whole post. There are two sets of twins in this series, one set is constantly together and the other two are obviously the types who made their own way. I think that's why, on instinct, I prefer the Patil twins. They're very different, but also the same!

[lilyhs_backup]

Got here through wayfairer. Awesome essay-- really puts into words just how I feel about incest (in fiction and otherwise). Putting this into my memories! *thumbs up*

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad it did that!

[ceris.livejournal.com]

Also got here via wayfairer. Absolutely fascinating discussion and all the more interesting because I've just written a novel and a thesis on incest for my Masters' degree. Can't add much except that there was some discussion above about incest/twincest being like masturbation - aparently many psychologists believe that all incest is narcissistic behaviour, and that this explains much of the attraction between siblings. Interesting, I thought.

I don't read Fred/George stuff, mainly because I don't find them particularly attractive characters. I do like Malfoy/Black-cest because they are more twisted families anyway. I wrote a story about the Patil twins (with Lupin) that was quite fun, and I don't see anything wrong with that pairing.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Can't add much except that there was some discussion above about incest/twincest being like masturbation - aparently many psychologists believe that all incest is narcissistic behaviour, and that this explains much of the attraction between siblings. Interesting, I thought.

That makes a lot of sense. In fact, on pandarus's thread on the topic I think antaniel93 brought that up too. I'm surprised at how little I thought about the Patil twins in writing about HP twincest here, but I have the same feeling as you do. That pairing seems fine to me; Fred and George just don't appeal to me that way as characters.

Your novel and thesis sound fascinating, though--now I want to read them too!

[sine-que-non767.livejournal.com]

Wonderful - thanks for helping me understand a little clearer why I enjoy incest stories. I loved Flowers In The Attic's portrayal when I read it years ago, because it seemed to have that inherent softness, gentleness of the characters reflected in the sex. And Gerda and Kay! *blast from the past*

Perfect argument on the Malfoys.

It just makes me feel like the author of this particular canon has an even larger fantasy/reality gap when it comes to pederasty

Yeah. Hehe. Very, very interesting. Aw, y'know she sekritly wants to slum with us and post dodgy fic, right? ;)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks! You just have to love Flowers in the Attic in all its awfulness.

Aw, y'know she sekritly wants to slum with us and post dodgy fic, right? ;)

Oh, definitely. I would, if I were in her place!

[no-remorse.livejournal.com]

Two siblings raised apart are, I believe, no more or less likely to be attracted than two strangers.

That's right. On the other side children that grow up with each other are unlikely to develop romantic feelings for each other. That is the Westermarck Effect.

Basically to quote someone at metafilter at length (I love bookmarking random sites):

'When siblings sense the beginnings of an attraction, they immediately, perhaps even subconsciously cut it off before it is given voice'

Freud concluded that our earliest sexual feelings were for our family (particularly our mothers), and that, as you say, we develop incest taboos as an unconscious method to suppress these latent urges. Westermarck, on the other hand, said almost the opposite, that the incestuous urges never develop. What method did he propose for this?

Imprinting.

The scientist Konrad Lorenz (1937) discovered that newly-hatched chicks would follow the first colorful moving object that they encountered, regarding it as their mother (realized after Mr. Lorenz himself unwittingly became the mother of some baby geese). They mentally 'imprint' that object as their mother, with a pre-programmed set of rules regarding it (follow, imitate, etc.). Imprinting had to occur within the first 25 hours of hatched brain development; and the sooner the more reliably it was imprinted This mother identification is known as 'filial imprinting', but the birds also avoided mating with their siblings by a similar mechanism of 'sexual imprinting.' Like the fake mother, those avoided as mates don't necessarily have to be genuine siblings, just anything 'imprinted' as a sibling, which it will be if it shares the correct combination of sibling-like traits (proximity, motion, etc..) As troutfishing said, all this 'sexual imprinting' is for avoiding the harmful effects of inbreeding.

Westermarck then proposed a 'sexual imprinting' model for humans, that has received much support through the years. To name some good evidence: A) Unrelated children raised together in communal Israeli kibbutzim, seldomly pair bond as adults, despite a lack of discouragement to do so. And B) In Taiwanese arranged marriages, the female is raised together with her future husband. Looking at data from over 14,000 of these, Anthropologist Arthur Wolf compared fertility and divorce rates from these marriages to traditional arranged marriage cultures, and decided there was a significant amount of greater dissatisfaction.

What's even more, it appears not only that children 'imprint' their siblings and parents, but that grown adults 'imprint' children as well. Looking at evidence from sexual abuse (no links, damn.) , it can be seen that the more removed from a child's infancy a step-parent enters into the family unit, the more increased the likelihood of eventual sexual abuse. This is not only true for step-parents, but for actual parents as well, who may be missing from a child's earliest years for whatever reason, and later return.


On the topic of Wuthering Heights I have to add the unnecessary remark that I always perceived Cathy's and Heathcliff's romance somewhat incestuous without ever wasting much time on Heathcliff's biological father. Family is more than just blood for me. And consequently incest does not require blood relation.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thank you for those quotes! I think I had read bits of them before because I specifically remember the reference to the kibbutz and how children rarely married people they grew up with there, despite knowing they weren't really related. As you say, sometimes it just doesn't matter, the point is that you *think* of the person as a brother or sister. It would certainly makes sense for humans to have this kind of psychology.

I also remember reading that a lot of incest happens when a child is put into the role of the mate--like if a wife died and an older daughter sort of took on her role. There again you have this switching of the way the adult perceives the child before there's any incest.

[godonthewater.livejournal.com]

You really got me thinking.

I went out and got Flowers in the Attic. To my surprise, I found myself MAD shipping Cathy/Chris, even as I read Petals on the Wind. I've just started If There be Thorns, and I plan to finish the series.

And the most unsettling thing is...I know that I'm reading these books for the Cathy/Chris dynamic.

I don't know quite what to think about that, but thank you for your thoughts on the whole incest thing, and for the book rec, and for getting me to question my beliefs.

:\

Would you mind if I friend you?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

OMG, I'm so glad you're enjoying them! They're quite a hoot--and really, who couldn't ship Cathy/Chris when they're under that Christmas tree???

Would you mind if I friend you?

Not at all. Welcome!