Talk:Incest

Needs a serious rewrite...[change source]

I think this article needs a serious rewrite. After the rewrite, the following should be covered:

Inbreeding in animals, vs. incest in humans
There is a difference between incest as a result of abuse (a father or grandfather abusing his child, and that child becoming pregnant), and incest between consenting adults (two closely-related adults having sex for fun, using contraception). While the first one is clearly sancioned, there are societies that do not sanction the second one
Incest was common, for example in Ancient Egypt, or in the nobility of the Middle Ages
Different religions have laws forbidding incest, how did they arrive at such laws? - the knowledgeo of how heredity works is fairly recent
Marrying a cousin seems to be fairly common
Even though Islam forbids incest, we find the most marriages between "closely related" people in islamic countries

How we put that in simple English, I don't know; I also think, we need references... Eptalon (talk) 08:16, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Some comments:

Since "sanctioned" can mean either approved or punished (funny language, English), I assume you mean the first type is not approved of, and the second type is sometimes accepted.
It could cover cases where the people involved didn't know they were committing incest because they didn't know they were related.
Let's not assume abuse-type incest is always a male abusing a female.
Contraception isn't required for it to be incest (although it's obviously a good idea). Neither is a resulting pregnancy.

-- Auntof6 (talk) 09:32, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There are many cases to cover, if you feel like it:

As you say, the people might not know they are related
mother-son or father daughter. Abuse involves either threat or violence. "grooming" might be an issue
There seem to be cases of brother/sister having sexual relations, sometimes forcefully
Consenting closely-related adults, in the sex-for-fun type scenario will probably know that offspring may have birth defects/that what they are doing a bad idea from their religious texts and see that they don't produce offspring

What I wanted to point out more with my comment above is that the article likely needs some work, and that the points I listed likley need to be covered when the work is done Eptalon (talk) 10:06, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]