Jabberslythe comments on Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong Discussion
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True, but that's largely a noncentral fallacy.
If I'm grossed out by it, why am I watching lesbian incest hentai? :-)
Agreed. But not all the arguments are basically the same. Some of the arguments are more like the "teachers shouldn't date their students" argument and the "psychologists shouldn't date their patients" or even "50-year olds shouldn't date 20-year olds" argument, and reflect on the likely unhealthy effects of power-imbalance.
The power-imbalance in intergenerational incest is obvious. In intragenerational incest it can of course be significantly less clear; especially in cases like the German couple where the siblings only met during adulthood.
That's a plus to those arguments, not a minus -- because we're moving to a consequentialist perspective from an arbitrary deontologist one.
Perhaps they should -- but keep in mind that banning incest bars any one person from a very small subset of potentially desirable sex partners -- much like barring psychiatrists from sexing their patients. On the other hand barring e.g. old people from having sex, or gay people having sex, pretty much precludes them from having pleasurable sex altogether. The cost of such a policy seems higher in such a case.
That having been said, I'd have been all in favour of applauding the German couple (especially since they didn't grow up together) if they had only made sure they didn't have children via e.g. vasectomy, getting tubes tied, etc...
If incestuous desires are common (certain people think they are at least...), having a harsh prohibition on them might cause a lot of guilt even if those people wouldn't actually go as far as to mate with their relatives. So trying to get rid of the prohibition might still be somewhat valuable.
Incest themes are quite common in porn.
That might be in part because guilt and shame can act as huge turn-ons for nearly everyone.