can you deal with incest in fanfic?

[percival]

If you are a mature adult, yes, possibly. But if you are a child or a teenager? Will you know that it is not a good idea to have sexual relationships with your sibling? Or will repeated exposure to the idea and fantasising about the idea somehow start to make incest acceptable to you after a while?

Just a Buddhist thought:

In Buddhism, we try to be compassionate and loving in our hearts. That means that we neither dwell upon violence nor enjoy it. One of the key insights in Buddhist spirituality is that who you are and how you act is closely related to what you think. As a consequence, we need to work on our mind, our thinking. We need to make sure that our thoughts are compassionate, loving, free of clinging desire.

So, from a Buddhist perspective, actively seeking out incest fics because you get a thrill out of the dark, forbidden relationship is clearly wrong because you are indulging a desire to see people harm each other. You invite these fantasies into your mind and nourish them.

How would a Buddhist regard people who read incest fic? Well, non-judgmentally, with compassion and understanding. If they decide they need to pollute their minds, they will have a reason for doing it.

For the record, I myself continuosly pollute my mind with thoughts of anger, self hate, sarcasm, hate of others, petty jealousy. But seeing that I want to be a good Buddhist, I will need to work on that. Sigh. Revelling in anger can be such fun sometimes, just as revelling in fantasies of incest or rape can be fun for people who read those fics. But ultimately, it's nae good for you, says Uncle Gautama. And Uncle Gautama is usually not far off the mark, if you know what I mean.

Comments

[budclare.livejournal.com]

"I don't think you know people who have suffered from incest."

No, I don't, because I've lived my whole life under a rock. (I'd chide you for your bad logic, except that I sometimes say stupid things like that too. Go figure.)

"It is a violation of trust. It usually involves molestation."

Usually. That was exactly my point, which you would have known if you had bothered to actually read what I wrote. Yes, incest is horrible. I never said that it wasn't. I'm saying that it's theoretically possible for incestous relationships to exist that do not follow the patterns that we are familiar with. Hell, two people could have sex without knowing that they're family. It's technically incest whether they know about it or not. All I'm saying is that odds are that there are a very, very tiny percentage of instances of incest that are not as bad as the rest.

"Talk to any psychologist who has had to council someone suffering from incest - it's not pretty and it leaves scars."
Talk to any anthropologist and they'll tell you that there have been, on ocassion, groups where incest (in the form of marriage between siblings) was acceptable or even the norm. While I'll agree that this is hardly a good idea, growing up in a society like that would produce a worldview that is totally different from our own, and therefore the psychological issues would not be the same as they are for us.

"we make incest "mainstream" so it starts to lose it's "inherent wrongness" and it destroys peoples lives when they find themselves involved in it."

Prove it. Prove to me that people commit incest after reading fanfic who would not have done so anyway. Because in my world, you're either crazy (and/or ridiculously impressionable) or you're not, and nothing you read is going to change that.

"Can you see how someone could enter into this kind of relationship saying "this is okay, I read about it online" (just look at the arguements here FOR "incest is not that bad") or are you just denying that words have any influence over people at all?"

I'm denying that most people are as easily influenced as you seem to believe. Incest happens because life sucks, not because someone writes about it.

[swampfaye.livejournal.com]

Incest happens more often because we say "it's not really that bad." It doesn't happen as often in countries where it has a severe penalty. SO yes, soften the blow - you increase the behavior.

[budclare.livejournal.com]

"Incest happens more often because we say "it's not really that bad.""

Who says that?

"It doesn't happen as often in countries where it has a severe penalty."

Were you hoping for capital punishment?

[swampfaye.livejournal.com]

Capitol punishment for incest does not bother me but I will defer to people who deal with this issue on regular basis (law enforcement and psychologists).

[perceval.livejournal.com]

I agree with most of what you are saying. You can extend the anthropology argument easily to history, fwiw.

Because in my world, you're either crazy (and/or ridiculously impressionable) or you're not, and nothing you read is going to change that.

What do you mean by that? I actually see this more as a continuum, starting at normal sibling relationships, then going via feelings for a sibling / attraction to a sibling to full blown incest. Or going via the need to assert superiority over a sibling, and the need to express one's own sexuality, to incest. Either way, it's a continuum. If you're unsure about what the healthy boundaries of a sibling relationship are, a subculture where incest is feted could push you in the direction of incest. Likewise, a subculture where incest is taboo might push you towards more healthy behaviour.

Note the "might": there are too many other variables in this game to make this relationship deterministic.

(Thank you for having a relatively rational debate with a friend of mine who does not share your opinion, btw.)

[budclare.livejournal.com]

I agree, but reading fanfic could only really be an issue in borderline cases. Most people are so far from commiting incest (due to the "Ew" factor, as others have mentioned) that no amount of reading will change that. In the cases where fanfic could potentially have a negative effect...there had to have been a problem to begin with. Maybe fanfic could provide the final straw, but it can't create the problem in the first place, not without a lot of help. In those cases, even if you remove one possible trigger from the equation...there's always going to be another possible trigger waiting to take its place. You can only do so much to protect people from the world, and if you try too hard to shelter people, you just end up doing more harm than good.

I do find it a little odd that so many people write incest fics, but I'm certainly not going to tell them not to just because there's a remote possibility that it might, along with a variety of other factors, cause someone harm. There's plenty of real blame to go around when something as bad as incest happens. There's no need to start assigning imaginary blame as well.