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New York, 6:39 AM
Tue Dec 1
67 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/28/09
A radio documentary on this subject recently was aired for Chicago Public Radio's 3rd coast festivals.
It interviews a man who was adopted and recently met some of his biological family and fell in love with his biological sister. It's pretty candid and respectful look at this topic.
11/28/09
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11/28/09
The main reason that the incest taboo exists is from when women were the property of the patriarchal head of the family, and marrying off the women to neighboring families was a good way to maintain positive relations (pun!) between neighbors. If a woman were to begin a relationship with a man in her family, her financial value would decrease because then her father could not marry her off. And so began the incest taboo so that men could get the full benefit out of their female offspring.
Today does exist the genetics argument, but incest taboo has existed much longer than we've known about genetics. Nevertheless, knowing how the taboo came about, I'm less apt to take issue with kissin' cousins now.
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11/27/09
Marrying your cousin sort of takes you out of that "safe" dynamic, and just makes everyone uncomfortable.
I probably feel this way because of our culture, I have no real biological reason for my distaste in it. It just makes me feel gross.
11/27/09
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11/27/09
People have mentioned that no marriage should be prevented because of hypothetical children, and I heartily agree with this rational. But if there is sex going on in this marriage, there is no way to 100% prevent pregnancy (without resorting to major surgery). After staring at xrays, pictures, and medical charts of these poor babies who have had torturous lives, I can say (definitively) that even if on of my first cousins was the love of my life, I wouldn't marry them.
Yes, we can test for genetic diseases, but not for the ones we haven't discovered yet.
11/27/09
11/27/09
I know the numbers don't seem too awful, but my large extended family has overwhelmingly lost the genetic lottery due to consanguineous marriage (1st and 2nd degrees). We're a case study for a rare form of anemia and have higher-than-average occurrences of autism.
Since I have well over a 140 second cousins (have not met more than a handful), I joke that any future husband/babydaddy will have to compare family trees just to make sure!
11/27/09
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11/29/09
I know in the US people tend to come from more diverse genetic backgrounds simply due to immigration, but in many other countries there hasn't been the same influx of people over the last 200 years. If two cousins marry in Karachi or Kerry is the rate still the same?
11/27/09
11/27/09
Dammit! Video at link:
[vids.myspace.com]
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11/29/09
Still, I don't know how a 13 year old wouldn't have noticed at least the lack of relatives.
11/27/09
My husband's sister married their first cousin. They were all raised together. My husband was a bit weirded out by it, but honestly his family is so interestingly dysfunctional that it didn't shock me.
They split up this past summer. That has made life interesting, since he's still part of our family but obviously they don't want to be around each other for holidays and things.
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