not necessarily, I'm saying that I'm uneasy with the general argument throughout this thread of "it's been a normal thing that other peoples and cultures have done for millennia without any problems arising, and it's only recently that people have had any trouble with it." there are other things one could justify with that argument that are much less agreeable on this site, like loveless marriages done purely for political or economic advantage. feels like we're approaching, but not yet strictly reaching, an appeal to nature - not to be the logical fallacy reddit guy or anything
What is the harm you're alleging though? My take was indifference, not support. I'm not naturalizing, I'm acknowledging that my personal distaste and that of others in the modern west is largely cultural. The arguments that I do see against it are literal appeals to nature (e.g. if you marry your cousin your kids will come out wrong). But if that appeal to genetic purity is largely false, then you're just engaging in cultural prejudice against something that doesn't even affect you. Some cultures are exogamous (marry outside the group), some are endogamous (marry within the group), we happen to be exogamous. I don't think we arrived here because of rigorous logic, but because of changing conditions (rejection of feudalistic marriage, rise of eugenics, alienation of people from their communities, etc).
Even the idea of 'love' marriages is a modern cultural tradition that isn't nessecarily better or worse than a tradition of arranged marriage. Often arranged marriages take in account the desires of the betrothed. Marriages being a matter of commumal matchmaking probably doesn't sound so bad to the many who have experienced modern alienated dating. It's not just the unhappy couplings as typically shown by western media when they detail the lives of colonized peoples. It's why I highlighted the fact that marriage between cousins isn't just a white phenomenon, a lot of colonized peoples have cultures of endogamy and arranged marriages and to blanketly assert that there is something wrong with those cultures is chauvinistic.
Any cultural practice can be good or bad, but the devil in the details. Yeah, a forced marriage between you and your cousin you grew up with and despise sucks. But what of a union between two cousins who didn't spend much or any time together as children and form a spark in young adult hood and find love. I don't see how it hurts me or them, and if what the article alleges is true, their children. And what of arranged marriage? What if your community goes out of its way to matchmake you with a perfect fit because they see something in the two of you? Or what of living in our modern alienated capitialism hellscape where you have no community and can't meet anyone, with zero assistance to meet someone, that also fucking sucks. It then becomes a personal failure that you can't find a mate, not a communal effort to matchmake you with someone your sympatico with.
I'm arguing against an absolutist prescription of all four of these practices, not disallowing critique of their specifics in the real. I wouldn't argue 'love' marriage and exogamy is inherently bad because tinder sucks and everyone is lonely now, and I wouldn't say arranged marriage and endogamy is nessecarily bad because European aristocrats married cousins for deeply cynical reasons.
I don't think we arrived here because of rigorous logic, but because of changing conditions (rejection of feudalistic marriage, rise of eugenics, alienation of people from their communities, etc).
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It's why I highlighted the fact that marriage between cousins isn't just a white phenomenon, a lot of colonized peoples have cultures of endogamy and arranged marriages and to blanketly assert that there is something wrong with those cultures is chauvinistic.
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Any cultural practice can be good or bad
I'm not disagreeing with these statements in a purely academic sense; as far as I'm aware, Marxism and dialectical materialism doesn't really vibe well with morality and it doesn't seem like the debate between moral objectivism and moral relativism is something we deeply concern ourselves with, or perhaps we could say that there's some "proletarian morality" that is "superior" to "bourgeois morality"; idk, I'd have to read more and refresh myself about the philosophy of Marxism here.
What I'm trying to get at is how we approach this in a more colloquial sense. And I'm talking about the general style of argument here now, not so much the specific question of "Is fucking your cousin good or bad." Because when I put my Marxist hat on, I could say the points above quite comfortably - there is no moral objectivism! Conditions govern what people believe and why, and there is no bestowed moral code, from a deity or particularly wise person or otherwise, that governs humanity in all situations, even if those moral codes were very complicated. Like, not just "You shouldn't steal." but "You shouldn't steal, unless it's for survival, or unless it's from a person or company that would not even notice it missing while you would greatly benefit, or--" etc.
The trouble begins when you say that moral objectivism is false and then somebody tells you that they just read an article about misogyny, and, wow, that really sucks, doesn't it? Well... does it? Do/should you launch into a historical analysis of misogyny and its foundations and oppression, and how certain countries in the past and present have had misogynistic policies and a culture of oppressing women without really going into whether it's moral to be a misogynist, or do/should you say "Yeah, misogyny fucking sucks and is never okay, and all misogynists should be punished?"
Here's something else: a couple months ago, a user here wrote up a piece (featuring a quote from yours truly!) on Latin America and whether it should be regarded as Western. This did get me thinking about a potential situation that I could one day experience, as a British person. Imagine that I went out in public and went on a long rant to a friend on how the British Empire fucking sucks, it was awful, it killed millions of people, the culture is/was bad, it involves racist worldviews, and so on. Imagine an Asian immigrant from Hong Kong who moved to the UK who identifies strongly with British culture overheard me and said "No, the British Empire was great. It spread law and order throughout the world, it developed countries - including Hong Kong, where I grew up! - and was a massive force for good in the world. By presenting this overly negative argument, you're being a chauvinist." What should my hypothetical response be? She's presenting an argument from the standpoint of moral relativism, saying that it would be chauvinistic for a white British male to inform a female Asian immigrant what they should find moral. Does this mean that the British Empire truly cannot be objectively evaluated as one of the worst regimes the world has ever seen?
So the problem I fundamentally have with the argument here about whether fucking cousins is morally good or bad isn't so much a debate of the cold hard facts of cousin-fucking throughout history and how many countries and cultures have done it without being really that negatively impacted by it and so on, and whether, on those grounds, it would be wrong to say that "you shouldn't fuck your cousin" because that's unscientific or even chauvinist; it's how far this argument can actually extend. Let's say that we do ultimately come to the conclusion that despite fucking your cousin being generally seen as taboo in Western societies, this doesn't matter because Western societies can suck our collective dicks and having a romantic relationship with your cousin has been a part of many places for millennia - we cannot prescribe arbitrary moral laws on other people just because we think that something is icky or taboo. It has to be rooted in science!
Okay, what about a little more questionable topic, like stepsiblings? And so on through moral issues of increasing complexity that may not have clear, amoral, scientific answers? If we're dialectical materialists then do we reject moral objectivism (or, hell, even morality entirely) even in casual conversation, or can we say "Killing slaveowners is fucking awesome whether it's in 5000 BC, the 1800s, or today, and every single place on Earth, regardless of culture?" Because I sure want to keep saying that. Consent is a moral issue that I would regard as extremely important, but I could easily imagine that there have been cultures and civilizations before that have regarded the consent of one group or another as an arbitrary moral requirement that they would consider as much as they would consider whether having a romantic relationship with your cousin is a good or bad thing - that is, not at all. I think that they would be very morally and culturally wrong. They might not understand what the big deal is. I think the consent is an important moral issue because I think harming people is generally wrong, with certain exceptions (slaveowners, for one). I can't really scientifically "prove" that harming people is wrong - in fact, the largest, richest, and most powerful empires on the planet got there explicitly by harming a shitload of people. It's a morality, even a cultural norm, that I am asserting.
I'm just going to say that colonialisation does hurt people, slavery does hurt people and rape does hurt people and I don't think they're equivalents to endogamy and/or arranged marriages. Literally ask the people who are on the receiving end of all three of those and you're going to get some pretty universal results (as far as whether they like them or not). I don't think you need morality to understand whether rape is bad or good. People in arranged marriages from cultures that practice them don't universally despise being subjected to them the way the three sources of comparison you made do. I'm talking very specifically about how society expects adults to couple and ultimately marry.
The argument is not "It's okay because other people do it". The argument is that it's a baseless cultural taboo in The West with no justification at all beyond cultural norms. There's no scientific basis, there's no argument from cousin marriage being inherently harmful or violent, there's nothing. It's entirely cultural chauvinism.
Ya it's bizarre that that's the prevailing opinion on this post like... am I still on hexbear? Do y'all fuck your cousins here??? For the love of god these dweebs better not use their facts and logic against age of consent next.
Age of consent is inherently a different issue than cousin marriage. You know, because of the whole consent thing which is right there in the term.
I don't fuck my cousin and I have no desire to, but I also have no problem with people who do, so long as it's consensual. I'd say the dweebs here are the ones who can't see past their own bias, a bias which apparently exists mostly due to the same eugenicist bullshit they rightly despise.
I think there's the immediate reaction of "No, fucking your cousins is weird, I don't like it," and then right after that, you go "...but, now that I think about it, I don't really know why I think that this is bad. Hm." Which is a good impulse to have! It's good to be inspecting your own beliefs and overcoming reactionary disgust! It's also entirely possible to then go "...no, actually, I do think this is morally bad even if it's not necessarily always genetically bad; this isn't just me being ruled by harmful cultural norms or something like that."
Here's a question to "calibrate" your moral compass in this situation: Is fucking your stepsister or stepbrother a bad thing? I personally think that it's pretty taboo, despite there being no genetic relation there (within reason). Why is it taboo despite the lack of blood relation? The answer to that question should help inform the answer to the cousin question.
Articulate why it's morally bad. What inherent harm is there in marrying a first cousin? Where is the unavoidable imbalance of power and coercive hierarchy that invalidates consent? Put down in words why it is inherently wrong and harmful to marry another person who shares the same grandparents with you. Examine your beliefs and provide a grounded materialist justification for them.
I think there should be no sex between family whatsoever. Not between cousins, not between stepsiblings, and not between any other pairing. Obviously, non-incestuous married couples are fine (and unmarried couples and trouples and whatever).
There were other replies to my comment but I'm not gonna argue why incest is bad wtf am I on reddit
feels like we're posting a little too close to the appeal to nature
Are you saying I'm using an appeal to nature argument?
not necessarily, I'm saying that I'm uneasy with the general argument throughout this thread of "it's been a normal thing that other peoples and cultures have done for millennia without any problems arising, and it's only recently that people have had any trouble with it." there are other things one could justify with that argument that are much less agreeable on this site, like loveless marriages done purely for political or economic advantage. feels like we're approaching, but not yet strictly reaching, an appeal to nature - not to be the logical fallacy reddit guy or anything
What is the harm you're alleging though? My take was indifference, not support. I'm not naturalizing, I'm acknowledging that my personal distaste and that of others in the modern west is largely cultural. The arguments that I do see against it are literal appeals to nature (e.g. if you marry your cousin your kids will come out wrong). But if that appeal to genetic purity is largely false, then you're just engaging in cultural prejudice against something that doesn't even affect you. Some cultures are exogamous (marry outside the group), some are endogamous (marry within the group), we happen to be exogamous. I don't think we arrived here because of rigorous logic, but because of changing conditions (rejection of feudalistic marriage, rise of eugenics, alienation of people from their communities, etc).
Even the idea of 'love' marriages is a modern cultural tradition that isn't nessecarily better or worse than a tradition of arranged marriage. Often arranged marriages take in account the desires of the betrothed. Marriages being a matter of commumal matchmaking probably doesn't sound so bad to the many who have experienced modern alienated dating. It's not just the unhappy couplings as typically shown by western media when they detail the lives of colonized peoples. It's why I highlighted the fact that marriage between cousins isn't just a white phenomenon, a lot of colonized peoples have cultures of endogamy and arranged marriages and to blanketly assert that there is something wrong with those cultures is chauvinistic.
Any cultural practice can be good or bad, but the devil in the details. Yeah, a forced marriage between you and your cousin you grew up with and despise sucks. But what of a union between two cousins who didn't spend much or any time together as children and form a spark in young adult hood and find love. I don't see how it hurts me or them, and if what the article alleges is true, their children. And what of arranged marriage? What if your community goes out of its way to matchmake you with a perfect fit because they see something in the two of you? Or what of living in our modern alienated capitialism hellscape where you have no community and can't meet anyone, with zero assistance to meet someone, that also fucking sucks. It then becomes a personal failure that you can't find a mate, not a communal effort to matchmake you with someone your sympatico with.
I'm arguing against an absolutist prescription of all four of these practices, not disallowing critique of their specifics in the real. I wouldn't argue 'love' marriage and exogamy is inherently bad because tinder sucks and everyone is lonely now, and I wouldn't say arranged marriage and endogamy is nessecarily bad because European aristocrats married cousins for deeply cynical reasons.
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I'm not disagreeing with these statements in a purely academic sense; as far as I'm aware, Marxism and dialectical materialism doesn't really vibe well with morality and it doesn't seem like the debate between moral objectivism and moral relativism is something we deeply concern ourselves with, or perhaps we could say that there's some "proletarian morality" that is "superior" to "bourgeois morality"; idk, I'd have to read more and refresh myself about the philosophy of Marxism here.
What I'm trying to get at is how we approach this in a more colloquial sense. And I'm talking about the general style of argument here now, not so much the specific question of "Is fucking your cousin good or bad." Because when I put my Marxist hat on, I could say the points above quite comfortably - there is no moral objectivism! Conditions govern what people believe and why, and there is no bestowed moral code, from a deity or particularly wise person or otherwise, that governs humanity in all situations, even if those moral codes were very complicated. Like, not just "You shouldn't steal." but "You shouldn't steal, unless it's for survival, or unless it's from a person or company that would not even notice it missing while you would greatly benefit, or--" etc.
The trouble begins when you say that moral objectivism is false and then somebody tells you that they just read an article about misogyny, and, wow, that really sucks, doesn't it? Well... does it? Do/should you launch into a historical analysis of misogyny and its foundations and oppression, and how certain countries in the past and present have had misogynistic policies and a culture of oppressing women without really going into whether it's moral to be a misogynist, or do/should you say "Yeah, misogyny fucking sucks and is never okay, and all misogynists should be punished?"
Here's something else: a couple months ago, a user here wrote up a piece (featuring a quote from yours truly!) on Latin America and whether it should be regarded as Western. This did get me thinking about a potential situation that I could one day experience, as a British person. Imagine that I went out in public and went on a long rant to a friend on how the British Empire fucking sucks, it was awful, it killed millions of people, the culture is/was bad, it involves racist worldviews, and so on. Imagine an Asian immigrant from Hong Kong who moved to the UK who identifies strongly with British culture overheard me and said "No, the British Empire was great. It spread law and order throughout the world, it developed countries - including Hong Kong, where I grew up! - and was a massive force for good in the world. By presenting this overly negative argument, you're being a chauvinist." What should my hypothetical response be? She's presenting an argument from the standpoint of moral relativism, saying that it would be chauvinistic for a white British male to inform a female Asian immigrant what they should find moral. Does this mean that the British Empire truly cannot be objectively evaluated as one of the worst regimes the world has ever seen?
So the problem I fundamentally have with the argument here about whether fucking cousins is morally good or bad isn't so much a debate of the cold hard facts of cousin-fucking throughout history and how many countries and cultures have done it without being really that negatively impacted by it and so on, and whether, on those grounds, it would be wrong to say that "you shouldn't fuck your cousin" because that's unscientific or even chauvinist; it's how far this argument can actually extend. Let's say that we do ultimately come to the conclusion that despite fucking your cousin being generally seen as taboo in Western societies, this doesn't matter because Western societies can suck our collective dicks and having a romantic relationship with your cousin has been a part of many places for millennia - we cannot prescribe arbitrary moral laws on other people just because we think that something is icky or taboo. It has to be rooted in science!
Okay, what about a little more questionable topic, like stepsiblings? And so on through moral issues of increasing complexity that may not have clear, amoral, scientific answers? If we're dialectical materialists then do we reject moral objectivism (or, hell, even morality entirely) even in casual conversation, or can we say "Killing slaveowners is fucking awesome whether it's in 5000 BC, the 1800s, or today, and every single place on Earth, regardless of culture?" Because I sure want to keep saying that. Consent is a moral issue that I would regard as extremely important, but I could easily imagine that there have been cultures and civilizations before that have regarded the consent of one group or another as an arbitrary moral requirement that they would consider as much as they would consider whether having a romantic relationship with your cousin is a good or bad thing - that is, not at all. I think that they would be very morally and culturally wrong. They might not understand what the big deal is. I think the consent is an important moral issue because I think harming people is generally wrong, with certain exceptions (slaveowners, for one). I can't really scientifically "prove" that harming people is wrong - in fact, the largest, richest, and most powerful empires on the planet got there explicitly by harming a shitload of people. It's a morality, even a cultural norm, that I am asserting.
I'm just going to say that colonialisation does hurt people, slavery does hurt people and rape does hurt people and I don't think they're equivalents to endogamy and/or arranged marriages. Literally ask the people who are on the receiving end of all three of those and you're going to get some pretty universal results (as far as whether they like them or not). I don't think you need morality to understand whether rape is bad or good. People in arranged marriages from cultures that practice them don't universally despise being subjected to them the way the three sources of comparison you made do. I'm talking very specifically about how society expects adults to couple and ultimately marry.
Good post, thank you.
The argument is not "It's okay because other people do it". The argument is that it's a baseless cultural taboo in The West with no justification at all beyond cultural norms. There's no scientific basis, there's no argument from cousin marriage being inherently harmful or violent, there's nothing. It's entirely cultural chauvinism.
Ya it's bizarre that that's the prevailing opinion on this post like... am I still on hexbear? Do y'all fuck your cousins here??? For the love of god these dweebs better not use their facts and logic against age of consent next.
Age of consent is inherently a different issue than cousin marriage. You know, because of the whole consent thing which is right there in the term.
I don't fuck my cousin and I have no desire to, but I also have no problem with people who do, so long as it's consensual. I'd say the dweebs here are the ones who can't see past their own bias, a bias which apparently exists mostly due to the same eugenicist bullshit they rightly despise.
You can't see the difference between two consenting adults coupling and a child an adult?
I think there's the immediate reaction of "No, fucking your cousins is weird, I don't like it," and then right after that, you go "...but, now that I think about it, I don't really know why I think that this is bad. Hm." Which is a good impulse to have! It's good to be inspecting your own beliefs and overcoming reactionary disgust! It's also entirely possible to then go "...no, actually, I do think this is morally bad even if it's not necessarily always genetically bad; this isn't just me being ruled by harmful cultural norms or something like that."
Here's a question to "calibrate" your moral compass in this situation: Is fucking your stepsister or stepbrother a bad thing? I personally think that it's pretty taboo, despite there being no genetic relation there (within reason). Why is it taboo despite the lack of blood relation? The answer to that question should help inform the answer to the cousin question.
Articulate why it's morally bad. What inherent harm is there in marrying a first cousin? Where is the unavoidable imbalance of power and coercive hierarchy that invalidates consent? Put down in words why it is inherently wrong and harmful to marry another person who shares the same grandparents with you. Examine your beliefs and provide a grounded materialist justification for them.
I think there should be no sex between family whatsoever. Not between cousins, not between stepsiblings, and not between any other pairing. Obviously, non-incestuous married couples are fine (and unmarried couples and trouples and whatever).
There were other replies to my comment but I'm not gonna argue why incest is bad wtf am I on reddit