The Right to Parent

kuwisdelu · Aug 14, 2016

So, first off, I'm hopelessly single, young, don't have a functional female reproductive system, don't yet have kids, and am generally just not-quite-yet ready to be a parent, so I profusely apologize if it is inappropriate for me to be making this thread.

But queer parenting has come up a few times in some other threads, and this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, at least partially because I've recently had to come to terms very quickly with my own fertility and reproductive role, and not without a certain amount of crying.

I'm an ardent supporter of the right to choose not to be a parent, and all of the reproductive rights we typically talk about, like abortion and birth control, as well as fighting against the societal pressures many people, particularly women, often face in their decisions to not have a child.

But there was always something nagging at my heart strings in those conversations that I could never quite articulate. Probably mostly because I never really fully understood how I felt about it until recently. And it had nothing to do with what anyone was saying, but what is often left un-said.

While reading the recent articles about lesbians being denied fertility treatments for not having sex with men, I came across this article about non-gestational parenting which suddenly and miraculously managed to put words to my feelings:

The Privilege of Parenting

I'm seeing more and more of my queer community opting in to having kids and it's great. I'm still hyper-aware that it's a privilege to be able to make parenting decisions. There is no affirmative right to parent, though there should be. When I was working as a community organizer in the reproductive justice field, I became really passionate about the right to parent. We talk so often about the right not to parent, the rights of people to make their own decisions about abortion, birth control, etc. As we should. Those rights are being constantly threatened and they are vitally important.

We are much less comfortable, even in reproductive rights activism, with the idea of people having an affirmative right to parent. We get squirmish about the right of teen moms and parents to choose to parent, about incarcerated women and people's rights to parent, about the rights of pregnant people who are recovering from addiction to parent, about poor people as parents. As we think about and talk about the rights of LGBTQ people to parent, we can't forget that so-called "traditional family values" impact not just our rights, but those of many people who are considered "unfit" or "undesirable" as parents simply for being who they are or because of their life circumstances. It's all related.

Adoption costs and fertility treatments are still not covered for many queer and/or trans people who want to parent. Surrogacy is still unprotected by law in many states. DIY insemination is still not protected by law in many states. It's still just something that's outside of many people's financial means. Class, race, and economic discrimination still play a huge part in who is allowed to pursue parenting decisions in addition to sexual orientation and gender discrimination.

This column is often glib and cutesy and I don’t mean to be a downer, but as more and more of our LGBTQ communities move towards growing our families with children, I really believe we have to stay vigilant. We can't let this become another way that queers get drawn into the mainstream heteronormative narrative. Being queer married and queer family-making still feels like a semi-radical act to me and I want it to stay that way, in large part by holding up the intersectional values that come with making and sustaining a queer family.

http://www.autostraddle.com/countdown-to-baby-t-rex-the-non-gestational-parent-perspective-and-my-enduring-love-for-pickles-37-weeks-345345/

I guess being at the intersection of being Native American, autistic, queer, and trans, I come from many worlds where people are not necessarily allowed to be parents, because of who they are, and I suppose in many ways I've internalized that and I've been subconsciously aware of that during all those conversations. Even before I came to understand my queerness and transness (relatively recently), among Native Americans and disabled people, there is a long history of being denied the right to parent, whether through forced sterilization or having their children taken away.

And of course, I'm now coming to terms with the fact that I'd rather be a mother than a father, and struggling with never really being able to carry a child and be a "biological mother" in quite the way I wish I could be. Even if I'm not 100% sure whether I want kids or not, I desperately wish that option were open to me.

And to get intersectional again, in terms of Native identity, I've struggled with issues of blood quantum and tribal enrollment, and how to raise my future children within my cultural heritage even if they are not related to me by blood.

(I ultimately decided to say "fuck it", and to forgo banking genetic material; if I have kids, they will be adopted. I'm not sure I could emotionally handle watching a partner go through pregnancy knowing I couldn't. I hope I'm able to adopt.)

And yet, I'm now excited about the prospect of potentially being a mother one day, and all of the amazing things that are biologically possible. Like lactating. I'd like to breastfeed, if they're at that age. It's possible, but there's very little research on it, and now that I'm Dr. Kuwi, and plan to stay in academia, someday I'd like to help find funding for research on inducing lactation for non-gestational parents who have breasts (and other cool queer things like better research on hormone replacement therapy).

So those are just some of my recent thoughts and feelings recently, and my happiness at finally finding a way to express how -- while I'm glad that we're talking about and fighting for reproductive rights, and the need to accept the choice to not be a parent -- I also wish we talked more about affirming the right to be a parent for people who are often denied that right, and the accompanying reproductive rights that we rarely discuss.

I've had complicated feelings about these things for a while now, but I haven't really understood or figured out how to express them in a way that made sense to me until now. And I keep getting inspired and understanding a little bit more as I read more about queer and trans parenting.

Thanks for listening.

MaeZe · Aug 14, 2016

Different battles, different era, but I have friends who fought the battle of the right of single women to adopt or be inseminated. I happily raised my son as a single mother because his father walked out when I was pregnant. I only had to be mildly annoyed at all the assumptions that single women were poor and the child needs two parents. No, I wasn't and he's turned out to be an incredible son now at 27, good job, master's degree, never been in trouble or used more than pot which is legal here now. And we get along well, are close and he couldn't be a nicer kid.

Though he's visited his dad from time to time, he doesn't feel connected to him. First time he met his dad he was 12, we were at the mall and his father was playing music in a band there. I told my son it was up to him and he went and introduced himself while I disappeared into the used book store. Bottom line, no all kids don't need two parents and no they don't all need a father.

One of my single friends was able to adopt an Honduran boy. None of the adoption agencies in the US would consider a single woman as a adoptive parent. I've lost touch with her so I can't give a status report. We were in our master's program together.

I understand your emotions even though mine were so minor and easy compared to how you must feel. There are strides being made in parenting rights of gays and trans. It's not easy being a pioneer, being in the first wave landing on the beachhead.

Hooray for single mothers by choice. All we did was scout out the beach. I'm not in the landing party but I'll stand here cheering for you.

kuwisdelu · Aug 14, 2016

MaeZe said:
Hooray for single mothers by choice. All we did was scout out the beach. I'm not in the landing party but I'll stand here cheering for you.

Thank you. And it's all part of the same fight as far as I'm concerned.

Silva · Aug 14, 2016

Loss of reproductive rights sucks. Don't be afraid that you're taking away from the right of people to not have children, because you're not. It's the same enemy.

Raindrop · Aug 15, 2016

kuwisdelu said:
And of course, I'm now coming to terms with the fact that I'd rather be a mother than a father, and struggling with never really being able to carry a child and be a "biological mother" in quite the way I wish I could be. Even if I'm not 100% sure whether I want kids or not, I desperately wish that option were open to me.

So much that. I wish I could be a father rather than a mother, and I've refused to have a child for years because of that -- because even the thought of being called Mum creeps me out. Not so much from my own child, but from the people around (especially with that really odd "mummy-baby", sweetly sick culture I witness at times, where you're apparently supposed to give up your identity once you have a child). And now that I want a child, no matter what... well it's not working.
I still can't see myself in the role of a Mum. And I'm in the closet. If I ever get pregnant, it's going to be interesting.
What I'm trying to say is that you're doing the right thing, trying to figure it out *now* rather than wait until you or your partner are facing the wall.

And yet, I'm now excited about the prospect of potentially being a mother one day, and all of the amazing things that are biologically possible. Like lactating. I'd like to breastfeed, if they're at that age. It's possible, but there's very little research on it, and now that I'm Dr. Kuwi, and plan to stay in academia, someday I'd like to help find funding for research on inducing lactation for non-gestational parents who have breasts (and other cool queer things like better research on hormone replacement therapy).

That'd be awesome. There's been the odd example of men breastfeeding children, but imagine if you could induce that ability with hormones or something! It might also help women who can't lactate.

Latina Bunny · Aug 15, 2016

Silva said:
Loss of reproductive rights sucks. Don't be afraid that you're taking away from the right of people to not have children, because you're not. It's the same enemy.

^This.

I (maybe) want to be a mother in the (far) future as well, but I'm being discouraged by my mother who thinks that I can't because: 1) I'm single and not able to support myself, 2) she doesn't want me to give up my dreams (because kids will definitely make huge changes in a person's life, and may put a delay in said dreams), and 3) she thinks I'm not ready yet (which may be true).

(On the biological side, I also have some health problems that may complicate pregnancy and pregnancy scares me a little, lol.)

But, yes, I would probably like to be a parent one day, and I understand what you are saying.

As I'm getting older and discovering myself more likely to be single or maybe having LGBT life partner one day, I'm thinking about kind of parent subject matter as well.

It's all tied together in the same fight for freedom of choice and the fight against discrimination, like you said.

ETA: Something I just thought of: As long as someone doesn't transform the right to parent as a "duty", or "expectation" (especially for women), I'm fine with the conversation for the "right to parent".

It's all about choices in the end, whether to have a child or not (or whether to like children or not, etc.)

kuwisdelu · Aug 15, 2016

Thanks, all. It feels good to know I'm not alone.

auzerais · Aug 15, 2016

It bothers me a fair bit that, as a woman in a lesbian relationship, I will not accidentally get pregnant. If I want a child, I will have to go out and actively make that happen. Probably that's how it really ought to be for everyone. And honestly, I feel deeply ambivalent about being a parent. I am at peace with the idea that I will probably not be having a child in this lifetime. So it kind of floors me that I'm so bothered by this. In an ideal world, I would want to be able to say: if it happens, it happens. And maybe I would accidentally get pregnant, and I'd be okay with that. And maybe I never would, and I'd be okay with that too.

It also bothers me that I'd pretty much have to pay to actually get pregnant (and that it would probably not involve any tequila, either.)

sunandshadow · Aug 16, 2016

It seems that "the right to reproduce" is generally not considered to be a thing in our culture, which I find quite sad. I tend to encounter it more from the 'capitalism' angle (it seems to be considered inappropriate for people below middle class to reproduce), the 'environmental' angle (some people feel that humans as a species have lost the right to reproduce), and the 'medical' angle (some people feel that only healthy people have the right to reproduce, and also they have to be completely unrelated because of a horror of possible unhealthy incest babies; some go even further, and feel horror at the thought that anyone they consider unattractive might reproduce). People are often unpleasantly judgmental and happy to look down on others.

RichardGarfinkle · Aug 16, 2016

I'm ambivalent on the right to parent because of the number of awful parents I've seen. Parenting is hard and most of the problems from it are visited on thie children.

However, there is zero correlation between the ability to impregnate or gestate and the ability to nurture, teach or love.

Parenting is about caring for those who need care all the time, not about the biology of reproduction.

One important thing, one can be unready to care for children, and if one is, it is better if the children are reared by those who are.

But one is never ready to rear children. One can be ready to learn to rear the children one has. And that's what it is, learning to care for them. Each child is different within the common space of human needs. Each child's needs are unique, and parenting involves learning what those needs are and supplying them, as best one can.

No one should be forced to do this, but anyone suited to and honestly willing should have the opportunity.

Perks · Aug 16, 2016

sunandshadow said:
and also they have to be completely unrelated because of a horror of possible unhealthy incest babies

Do you think the cultural taboo against incest is unjust?

Disa · Aug 16, 2016

kuwisdelu said:
Thanks, all. It feels good to know I'm not alone.

You definitely are not alone.

I can't find exactly the right words to say, but anyone who chooses to take on the responsibility of caring for a child, loving it, nurturing it, bringing it up to feel as though it is deeply cherished deserves the right to do so by whatever means they feel necessary(as long as it isn't hurting anyone). Far too many parents raise children in the most atrocious ways and do so only because they were able to conceive. Far too many people have children and never wanted them, so never figure out how to go about making the child's life a good one. I'm not sure anyone is ever totally ready for raising a child, but if you have the deep desire to do it and do it well, you will find a way to make it work.

Any child would be lucky to have you as a parent, kuwisdelu. I just know from reading your posts that you would do a wonderful job as you go along taking the child's thoughts and feelings into consideration and contemplating the best decisions and courses of action for the child throughout it's life.

Best of luck to you in whatever you choose to do. xoxox

sunandshadow · Aug 16, 2016

Perks said:
Do you think the cultural taboo against incest is unjust?

Yes I definitely do. Specifically talking about relationship between consenting adults, I feel that whether people are genetically related is no business of any government or religion when it come to sex, love, marriage, or children. The fact that two cousins or what-have-you can be arrested for sleeping together is absurd and horrifying. The genetic risks of two first cousins deciding to have a child would be about equivalent to a woman smoking throughout a pregnancy, something which is not illegal anywhere that I know of. I don't want to derail this thread though so if you want to discuss it a different thread or a PM would be preferable.

MaeZe · Aug 16, 2016

I could be wrong but I'm not sure siblings are arrested for marrying. The marriage might not be legal. The incest issue comes in when fathers (and rarely mothers) rape their children. And yes, the kids do have the right to protection from some parents for some things.

AW Admin · Aug 16, 2016

MaeZe said:
I could be wrong but I'm not sure siblings are arrested for marrying. The marriage might not be legal.

Incest laws, incest and marriage laws, and the definition of incest varies from state to state.

sunandshadow · Aug 17, 2016

MaeZe said:
The incest issue comes in when fathers (and rarely mothers) rape their children.

That's already doubly legal as rape and child abuse. It shouldn't be different because a child is adopted or a parent is a step-parent vs. them being biologically parent and child.

MaeZe · Aug 17, 2016

sunandshadow said:
That's already doubly legal as rape and child abuse. It shouldn't be different because a child is adopted or a parent is a step-parent vs. them being biologically parent and child.

I agree, but the incest is worse because the child is a captive target with no protector. It's like the cop that rapes, that's the person who is supposed to protect you.

Not saying the priest or coach or teacher aren't also in a traitorous role if they abuse kids, but parents hold a special place and violating that trust has its own additional wrong to it.

[/off topic] Not the best sidetrack for this thread, my apologies.

neandermagnon · Aug 19, 2016

sunandshadow said:
Yes I definitely do. Specifically talking about relationship between consenting adults, I feel that whether people are genetically related is no business of any government or religion when it come to sex, love, marriage, or children. The fact that two cousins or what-have-you can be arrested for sleeping together is absurd and horrifying. The genetic risks of two first cousins deciding to have a child would be about equivalent to a woman smoking throughout a pregnancy, something which is not illegal anywhere that I know of. I don't want to derail this thread though so if you want to discuss it a different thread or a PM would be preferable.

Is cousin marriage illegal in the USA? It's legal in the UK and AFAIK always has been, in fact I know of people who married their cousins.

MaeZe said:
I could be wrong but I'm not sure siblings are arrested for marrying. The marriage might not be legal. The incest issue comes in when fathers (and rarely mothers) rape their children. And yes, the kids do have the right to protection from some parents for some things.

I agree that raping your own child is on a whole other magnitude of horrible due to the child having no protector (i.e. the person who's supposed to be protecting them is the one raping them) but I've always found it weird when that's described as "incest" and not "rape" or "child abuse". You have the same word for, say, a brother and sister who decide to have a consensual relationship as when a parent rapes his/her own children. It implies that it's the genetic relatedness that makes it wrong, not the fact that it's a person raping someone that they have absolute power over. I've always thought that was a really fucked-up way of looking at it to be honest.

AW Admin · Aug 19, 2016

neandermagnon said:
Is cousin marriage illegal in the USA? It's legal in the UK and AFAIK always has been, in fact I know of people who married their cousins.

Including Queen Victoria, in fact.

In the states, it's very dependent on the state, including the definition of "Cousin" (i.e. degree of cousinage).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_law_in_the_United_States_by_state

neandermagnon said:
I agree that raping your own child is on a whole other magnitude of horrible due to the child having no protector (i.e. the person who's supposed to be protecting them is the one raping them) but I've always found it weird when that's described as "incest" and not "rape" or "child abuse".

Typically a parent charged with incest with a minor is also charged with rape and one or more accounts of abuse.

Often the charges are numerous, with multiple counts of multiple charges of several sorts.

kuwisdelu · Aug 19, 2016

The Spectrum Of Reproductive Rights For Trans Women said:
For some of us, the denial of access to the body we live in can feel like a solitary occurrence. When the immediacy of our own needs can be suffocating, the universality of our experience is at risk of being lost. Purchasing illegal hormones as a young trans girl didn’t leave me with the room to consider how systemic misogyny was also tampering with the bodies of the cisgender women around me. Our bodies, rather than our judgments about each other, drew the line in the sand between us.

What hindered us from communicating across difference was our focus on addressing the needs of our immediate communities. The trans prefix in my identity felt like it had no place in the crusade for reproductive rights, so I bit my tongue. The shift began when the unexpected potential of motherhood greeted me as I settled into my new body.

I knew the estrogen that propelled me into womanhood would also make my body sterile. I never had a choice: Trans woman are essentially required to undergo sterilizing treatments before they can be legally recognized as women. My decision to have children was taken from me. The women outside of my direct understanding felt even further away when I searched for solace and language that hadn’t yet been created. The issues across the spectrum of womanhood weren’t being spoken in the same breath, and isolation ensued. I realized before we could forth an image of solidarity to the world, we must acknowledge the truth at home: All of us, cis or trans, experience genitalia-based oppression because we are women. Race, class, and the gender we were assigned at birth further color the nuance of our lives.

http://www.nylon.com/articles/reproductive-rights-transgender-women

Beyond Visibiltiy: The Call for Transgender Reproductive Justice said:
The experience of transgender individuals seeking reproductive and other related health services is one that is often not discussed in any activist circles. Reproductive justice communities are often abortion centric and inadvertently exclude transgender experiences from their discussions. Transgender communities are often too taxed by the need to provide basic awareness efforts and education on our identities to the general public. Both of these communities could greatly benefit from the inclusion of transgender experiences in conversations about reproduction and reproductive health.
...
When I was 11 years old, I witnessed the birth of my oldest niece. That summer, I became the designated babysitter. I marveled at the miracle of genetics, as I found traces of my family in her smile. As time went along and she grew, so did her hair. The thick straight texture of it was clearly inherited from her father’s side. She was the physical embodiment of the love between her two parents. As I taught her colors and shapes, I watched the world through the fresh innocence of her perspective. While I watched her develop into her mother’s disposition, I wondered what my future children would inherit from me.

When HRT made me sterile as an adult, I put these memories away. Every injection of estrogen drove me further away from passing along pieces of myself to my children. However, on February 24, 2016 a 26-year-old woman from Texas become the first in the United States to receive a uterus transplant. The fact that this cisgender woman and I were both born without a uterus allowed me to grant entry to these forgotten memories again.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tory-smith/beyond-visibiltiy-the-cal_b_9748572.html

Reproductive rights includes fertility treatment for trans people said:
...there’s no real room in the medical or social system for [trans people]. People who want access to egg freezing and sperm banking are often turned down by their insurance companies because it’s not deemed ‘medically necessary.’ A cancer patient concerned about how treatment will affect fertility, especially if that treatment involves surgical removal of parts of the reproductive tract, can typically receive insurance coverage. Some companies cover cis couples who need help conceiving. But trans people are left in the dark.

Fertility care is incredibly expensive. Trans people who think they might want kids would have to pay tens of thousands for collection and storage of gametes, and it’s simply not covered. Poverty and lower income are perennial problems in the trans community, which means that many are effectively completely cut off from the opportunity to become genetic parents unless they want to do something that triggers intense dysphoria, like opting to hold off on medical transition until they have children.

Many physicians don’t even provide fertility counseling at the outset of medical transition, or when they do, it’s incomplete. Trans people may ask about it, quite reasonably, as clearly many transition-related treatments are going to affect future fertility, but they don’t always receive the best advice. The level of care available depends on where patients receive treatment, and how much their insurance will cover — some physicians might not bring it up as an option because they know insurance won’t pay for it, or because they assume trans people don’t want kids for some reason.

For some people, the prospect of having children is a really important part of their lives. Transition can be a traumatic period not just because of all the changes happening, but because of a door that slowly swings closed — a door you might be able to prop open by banking eggs or sperm. Other trans people desperately want to have children but can’t — some trans women, for example, really want the experience of being pregnant and bearing their own children, and experience distress because they cannot.

Transness is complicated, and so are the politics surrounding reproductive justice and childbearing. But no one should be deprived of the right to have children, and everyone should be provided with the tools to make that happen. That includes comprehensive fertility care tailored to the needs of the individual patient, just as it includes aggressive pushback on attempts to take children from disabled parents on the grounds that disability makes people ‘unfit to parent.’

http://meloukhia.net/2016/06/reproductive_rights_includes_fertility_treatment_for_trans_people/

When I started medical transition, I knew about the inevitability of sterility and my options for fertility from my own thorough research. I knew many trans girls (for whom it was an option) chose to bank sperm. However, neither my therapist nor my nurse told me about my fertility options, apart from a single bullet point on my informed consent form. I wonder how many trans girls never know their options, or don't have them at all, because of financial or logistical concerns, or crippling dysphoria.

By the time I sought to transition, the prospect of enduring several more months of dysphoria in the midst of one of the most stressful times of my life was unthinkable. I didn't want that. I also didn't have insurance, and couldn't afford to bank sperm on my own.

The entire reason I came out to my parents as early as I did (which I didn't need to do) was to ask them if having more genetic grandkids was important to them, and if so, if they would be willing to pay for sperm banking. In a time I knew would be difficult for them, it was an olive branch I decided to offer, which they rejected without even trying to understand how important this aspect of my decision to transition was for me. I decided not to bank sperm, and embrace adoption, should I choose to have children.

And yet, I'm worried about how difficult it might be to adopt as a potential trans parent, and likely a lesbian trans parent at that. And I'm still coping with the possibility of motherhood being so close and yet so far from me now. It seemed as if as soon as I decided to transition and was forced to confront these feelings, pregnancy suddenly surrounded me, from the happy cis-het couples in the ads on my Hulu Plus shows, to my own therapist. As much as I wanted to talk about how her pregnancy made me feel, I didn't know how to bring it up, and was afraid it would be too close to her and too insensitive of me.

When I first heard about the possibility of uterus transplants, I thought "no way". Too scary. I'm already scared and hesitant about getting genital surgery, even though I want it. But those are all things I once thought about transition itself, too. Although transplants probably won't be ready in my lifetime, I'm learning that fear is something I can overcome, and I hope society will catch up soon. That will be the hard part.

realityfix · Aug 20, 2016

The author of this thread has my absolute respect. Not only has Kuwisdelu made difficult choices but she has gone public, in a sense, with these choices. It is never easy to be true to oneself and open yourself up to public ridicule and scrutiny from the ignorant masses.

Having said that, I do question what appears to be a laissez-faire attitude from others toward incest on this thread. So, here is where I sort of let it all hang out (at least a little bit). My first marriage ended when my wife discovered her long lost father and then decided to sleep with him. I will give all of you a few seconds to pick up whatever it was that you just dropped and to close your gaping mouths. I fought for custody, won it for 21 months, and then had it go back to my ex because I did'nt have enough pictures on my wall and "ät least she wasn't doing it in front of the children". I've moved on but my high school aged sons are still dealing with it and yes they have discovered what their mother did and continues to do.

Politically, I'm a libertarian. Hell, do whatever you want to behind the privacy of your own closed doors but don't force your choices on others who can't protect themselves. I'm against incest in any way, shape, or form because it opens the doors for other things to become socially acceptable and legal. I have a hard time watching new Woody Allen movies because I am totally on Mia Farrow's side. Do you really want to see NAMBLA's political agenda of legalized male on male pedophilic relationships come to fruition? Some may argue why not as the ancient Greeks practiced it but I am against it.

Sorry, Kuwisdelu, I am not trying to distract from the trials and tribulations of what you are dealing with but I just wanted to weigh in on what I believe to be a controversial issue. May all the gods of the multiverse give you strength during this time of rebirth.

DancingMaenid · Aug 20, 2016

realityfix said:
Politically, I'm a libertarian. Hell, do whatever you want to behind the privacy of your own closed doors but don't force your choices on others who can't protect themselves. I'm against incest in any way, shape, or form because it opens the doors for other things to become socially acceptable and legal. I have a hard time watching new Woody Allen movies because I am totally on Mia Farrow's side. Do you really want to see NAMBLA's political agenda of legalized male on male pedophilic relationships come to fruition? Some may argue why not as the ancient Greeks practiced it but I am against it.

My feeling is that it's not morally wrong, in theory, for relatives to have a sexual relationship if it's a relationship between equals and no one is being taken advantage of (which is impossible to ensure in a parent-child relationship, even if the "child" is grown). Realistically, I think that most sexual relationships between close relatives, like siblings, are likely to be dysfunctional or unhealthy, and it's not something I would encourage. But I'm not going to tell people that they can't do it. And people can have different ideas about what counts as incest. Some people are disgusted by cousin relationships, for example, but some people don't see a big deal, especially if they weren't raised very closely to their cousins. Some people are weirded out by step-siblings being together, even if they weren't raised as siblings.

The idea that permitting consensual but "icky" relationships might create a slippery slope that leads to the legalization of actual abuse bothers me because this is an argument that's been used against legalizing sodomy and gay marriage a lot. A lot of people have said that allowing two adult men to marry would lead to marriages between adults and children. So I'm very uncomfortable with making some relationships illegal only to prevent a possible "slippery slope." Laws against rape and child molestation already ban abuse of children. Stuff like cousin marriages doesn't change that.

I also believe that adult victims of abuse deserve to have some agency in pursuing criminal charges. There's a major problem with rape and abuse victims not coming forward or choosing not to press charges because they're scared, but I don't think the answer is as simple as deciding for them, especially if prosecuting the relationship might mean forcing the victim to testify against their will.

Latina Bunny · Aug 20, 2016

realityfix said:
Having said that, I do question what appears to be a laissez-faire attitude from others toward incest on this thread. rebirth.

Um, I'm not supportive of incest. I just didn't post any comment about it since I felt the incest thing was an off topic derail, and I'm not interested in going into any such discussions/debates about that particular topic.

neandermagnon · Aug 20, 2016

realityfix said:
Having said that, I do question what appears to be a laissez-faire attitude from others toward incest on this thread. So, here is where I sort of let it all hang out (at least a little bit). My first marriage ended when my wife discovered her long lost father and then decided to sleep with him. I will give all of you a few seconds to pick up whatever it was that you just dropped and to close your gaping mouths.

I didn't drop anything, spit anything onto my keyboard and my mouth isn't gaping. As a biologist, I'm not actually surprised by this at all, to be honest. It's quite common with long lost relatives.

The incest taboo has a biological basis, unlike most taboos which are purely cultural. It's evolved because of the high reproductive cost of mating with someone that's too closely related to you. To put "too closely related" into context: you share 50% of your DNA with your parents and approximately 50% with full siblings. You share approximately 25% of your DNA with half-siblings. Sharing this much DNA greatly increases the risk of the offspring having genetic disorders because most bad genes are recessive and you need to inherit two copies of a recessive gene for it to actually do anything. If 50% of your genes are exactly the same (as the case would be for parent x child or full sibling x full siblling matings), there's a very high likelihood of the offspring getting genetic disorders. Evolution is about being able to survive and breed and so it's quite straight forward to understand how any biological mechanism that prevents sexually reproducing organisms from mating with those too closely related to them will be favoured by natural selection.

What happens in higher primates (and probably most other organisms, but I've only studied higher primates so I'll stick to them for now) is that individuals don't become sexually attracted to those in their troop that they were in close contact with as an infant or young juvenile (baby or young child in human terms), or those that they raised or helped to raise from infancy/early childhood. In fact, while these individuals develop very close familial bonds, they develop an aversion to sexual relationships with them. Humans are primates... people are not attracted to people they grew up in the same household as or have known each other since one of them was a baby. It doesn't actually matter whether they're genetically related or not - adopted children aren't attracted to their adoptive siblings or parents (and vice versa) as long as they were adopted young enough for this biological incest taboo to kick in. Adoption doesn't happen often enough in nature for us to have evolved a "wait, hang on a minute, this person I'm growing up very close to isn't actually genetically related to me" mechanism.

When it comes to relationships between people who grew up in the same household, e.g. siblings who grew up together or parent and child who were never separated - whether actually genetically related or not (i.e. including adoptive and foster children) - then I'd agree with realityfix that in such cases the relationships are probably dysfunctional, abusive or (for example) siblings who choose to be in a sexual relationship after years of being abused, etc. I agree that there definitely is a slippery slope here and there's a danger of failing to spot that abuse is actually going on. However, it does need to be stated clearly that incest and abuse are two separate things and even if they can quite often occur at the same time, they are not the same thing. If it really is between two 100% consenting adults then I can't really argue with that... I'm just not sure that this is the case most of the time.

It's a completely different situation, biologically speaking, when it comes to long lost family members. They didn't grow up together so the biologically based incest taboo isn't happening. Not only that, but evolution has for millions of years walked a line between the risks of inbreeding and the fact that if two organisms aren't closely related enough they can't breed either. For example, if a horse mates with a donkey, you get a mule, but the mule is infertile because the horse and donkey aren't related enough - they're not the same species (and it's a different number or arrangement of chromosomes that makes their offspring infertile). We're actually slightly programmed by evolution (it's not as strong as the incest aversion thingy, but it still exists) to be sexually attracted to people who look like ourselves yet are not any of the people that we grew up with. What this means is that family members who are separated from birth or early childhood, who then meet up again after reaching sexual maturity, are more likely to be attracted to each other than the general population. The situation whereby people meet, fall in love, then find out they're long lost siblings or other close relatives is more common than most people think. As are cases when they fall in love despite knowing that they're related. So on that basis, I don't find it surprising that someone would be sexually attracted to her long lost father or brother or whatever, and I don't think it's right in that case to assume that abuse must be going on - because there's no reason why it would be abusive and no biological mechanism to stop them being attracted to each other. It's something that natural selection didn't account for because it didn't happen often enough to affect the reproductive success of any species that we evolved from. Also, from a moral and legal point of view, I think we should just leave people be if that's the situation they find themselves in. I would strongly advise them not to have children together if they share 25% or more DNA but that doesn't mean they can't be parents through donor sperm or something like that.

Kuwisdelu - apologies from me as well for the thread derail. I have something on-topic to post in a little while. I think this is a very important thread you've made and it's very thought provoking and I just wanted to provided a biological explanation of the above as I think it's important for people to understand what's going on when long lost relatives meet and fall in love.

neandermagnon · Aug 20, 2016

Going back on topic (as promised) - this thread sort of inspired something in one of my current WIPs although I realise that I'm coming from a privileged position (i.e. being bisexual and having kids from a previous heterosexual relationship) so I wanted to check that there were no problems with me mentioning this issue in my story (as follows):

My story's set in 2055 and one of the characters is a fertility doctor who runs his own private clinic. The main character (Carl) is a cloned neanderthal and the fertility doctor (Dr Bruckner) is the main person involved in cloning him, who's stayed in his life as a kind of uncle/father figure. As the Dr Bruckner's meant to be someone at the top of his field, I thought maybe one thing he'd done was pioneer some technique or technology that helped trans women to become pregnant. In the story Dr Bruckner and Carl's parents are arrested for cloning him because unauthorised human cloning is illegal and Carl was cloned and raised in secret, albeit that no-one who cloned him had any ill intentions or ulterior motives, and didn't think it would work. It's quite a complex back story but they're all good characters and Carl doesn't want them to go to jail. The bit about plasmids refers to the science behind how he came to be cloned, which is complex as it's not a straight forward Jurassic Park style "just stick the DNA in a cell" thingy because you can't do that with DNA extracted from fossilised bones.

It's an epistolary novel and the excerpt is a text message conversation where it's first mentioned:

Dr Bruckner: hey Carl, how are you? Bit worried about you since we all got arrested.
Carl: hey doc. I’m worried about you!! They won’t throw you in jail, will they?
Dr Bruckner: you met Geeta right? She’s a great lawyer.
Carl: Yeah. She said you’d all get bail and you did. I’m still worried you’ll end up in jail!!
Dr Bruckner: I won’t lie to you… I have more respect for you than that… it’s a possibility. We’re going to be convicted. We might get suspended sentences or non-custodial sentences, though - there’s a good chance your parents won’t get locked up because everyone’s concerned about your welfare and locking them up will adversely affect you. And the way they’ve raised you will be a mitigating factor. But none of that applies to me, and I was the one that removed the plasmids. That makes me the mastermind and them the accomplices and the fact that they didn’t know I’d removed the plasmids until you were four means it’s more likely the judge will be lenient on them and heavy on me.
Carl: but it will affect me if they lock you up. you’re like a dad to me :’( you technically are my dad seeing as you made my mum pregnant.
Dr Bruckner: haha… I think it only counts if you make a woman pregnant with your own DNA. I make lots of women pregnant in my job. But I’m honoured that you think of me that way, Carl.

Carl: technically I have 3 dads and 2 mums… my genetic mum and dad who died 40,000 years ago, mum and dad, plus you. Two that died 40,000 years ago and they want to lock my other 3 parents up :’(
Dr Bruckner: awww

*hug* there’s a good chance your parents won’t be locked up. They have to take your welfare into account. Even if any of us do get locked up it’ll be in a low security prison with good visiting hours. We’re not exactly dangerous. I know it’s easier said than done but try not to worry, okay? How’s school?
Carl: today was crap apart from rugby club. I got an F in English lit

I don’t get poetry

I think it’s because I’m not a Homo sapiens
Dr Bruckner: plenty of Homo sapiens people don’t get poetry. I don’t think it’s a species thing. I failed English lit. I was too lazy to read the set texts. English teachers have a way of sucking every last scrap of life out of books. I still got into uni to study medicine no problem. They saw my blog campaigning for trans women to be able to access fertility medicine and realised that I actually do have sufficient English skills to study medicine.

^^^ that's referring to probably about 20 years ago (in the story timeline, so about 2035 lol) but I was thinking of mentioning somewhere later on that he pioneered a technique to enable trans women to become pregnant - or another possibility is that the technology was there already but he did something to make it more widely accessible, or anything along those lines.

My intention with this is to portray the whole issue in a positive light but if you don't think it's a good idea for me to include this then I won't and if there are anything I need to be aware of please let me know.

BTW I do think this kind of technology will be possible in the near future (if it isn't already) and I think what makes someone a good potential parent is their ability to provide a safe, loving, nurturing home for children. Whether someone's male, female, straight, gay, bi, ace, trans, cis, etc doesn't change their basic personality and ability to be a parent. There should be legal protection against discrimination for both adoption and access to assisted reproduction techniques.

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