Incest vs. Rape

An anonymous reader was kind enough to pose the following question/comment:

I saw this in the NY Times yesterday and thought of you. I haven't read the book, only the review. A penny for your thoughts?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/books/review-anonymous-incest-diary.html

First off, I haven't read the book either, nor am I likely to for various reasons not having much to do with the book itself.  So I can only speak to the review. But I'm happy to offer thoughts on the subject.

The issue, as I see it, is that many people don't have a meaningful understanding of consent.  Our sexual morality is largely informed by the idea that sex can only be moral under certain circumstances, and usually those circumstances don't have anything to do with consent.  People say that sex outside of marriage is immoral, or between two partners of the same gender (and my apologies to any trans people out there; I'm not implying anything, merely stating what other people seem to think), or between two people of different races (look up when the last anti-miscegenation law was repealed in this country; it may surprise you), or between more than two people, or between two people who are in relationships with other people, or between two people of different faiths, or any number of other permutations.

I believe one necessary precondition for moral sex is that the participants are consenting (it isn't the only precondition, but it is the first and most important). I won't go into consent here too much (for instance, consent isn't something which is given once, but must be continually given), but consent is something that must be present in order for a sex act to be moral.  Anything without consent is rape. I don't care if you're married. I don't care if you've had sex a thousand times before. If you have sex with someone who isn't consenting for any reason, that's rape.  There are things which are immoral even with consent, such as cheating, but sex without consent can never be moral.

So this book is a chronicle of rape and abuse to me, and in many ways it affects me more because of that than because of any incest.  And that the sex was also incest affects me too, because it makes me sad that we live in a world where the only way people see incest is as rape, however justified that perception may be.

There are other aspects of the story (as presented by the review) that are troublesome as well. For one, her age. For another, the incest. But if she had been whatever legal age was for her situation and had her rapist been a total stranger, it still would have been rape and that still, for me, is the main issue.

As far as the age factor... it's complicated.  I am not interested in joining NAMbLA, but I think the way we talk about and treat pedophilia is broken in this country.  I could go on, but if you think talking about incest is difficult, try talking reasonably about pedophilia without offending someone.  Let me just say that I don't think all child-rapists are pedophiles: they're rapists and they've found the perfect power imbalance to allow them to rape.  There are plenty of pedophiles who never act on their attraction.  Power, abuse, and exploitation know no age restrictions.  And the fact that we can't talk about it because even talking about it seems like tacit support means that predators will continue to prey and we won't be able to figure out a solution.

And above all that a line-in-the-sand age of consent gives children no agency and ignores differences between people to the point where it's just a convenient fiction.  Because we attach so much baggage to sex, we view sexual activity as something which destroys innocence and so by drawing that line, we protect children.  But if we saw it as just another thing you do, and parents could make responsible decisions (which is asking a lot, I know), then perhaps children would grow up with the same permissions for sex as they have for crossing the street or staying out to a certain hour, determined by their individual readiness rather than a set rule.  This is not to say that children should be able to seek out older strangers whenever their parents think they're ready and make all the pedophiles of the world very happy, but it does mean that sex, like all other aspects of life, would be something you'd grow into.  I'm also not calling on all families to embrace incest.  Maybe sexual play could be just another form of play, with children of the same age experimenting sexually as they experiment with other things (and if you don't think this already happens without adults knowing about it, you are very wrong).  This will never happen, but it does have some historical precedent.  And education about sex and consent would go a long way toward making sure that children were safe, even without strict prohibitions.

Plenty of people view those parents who let their kids experiment with alcohol or drugs or other things with parental supervision as fools.  I don't think the argument that "they're going to do it anyway" is good enough.  Simply letting kids do things they were going to do anyway isn't education, it's enabling.  Which is why education is so important.  It's not enough to say, "Well, kids, you're going to drink behind my back anyway, so here's a fifth of gin and stay in the house please."  You've got to teach them that drinking an entire fifth of gin, whether or not your parents know about it, is not a good idea.  And you can't spring it on them suddenly.  In the same way, saying, "Well, I bet if I don't give you condoms and tell you and your friends to go up to your room and be safe while you fuck, you'll just go do it on the streetcorner without protection," isn't enough.  Do all the kids even want to fuck?  Do they have any idea what they're doing?  Do they know what condoms are beyond "things you ought to wear during sex?"  Do they understand consent beyond, "They said yes so I'm going to do whatever I want?"  Parental supervision isn't just making sure they have a safe place to do unsafe things.

And here, I think my parents wish they could have done better.  Because while we had a very good sexual education, we still did plenty of things behind their backs they wouldn't have approved of.  Because nothing is perfect.  I doubt very highly that there's any way to make sex perfect, any more than there's any way to make children or parents perfect.  I just think that there's a different way to do things which would make it better.  You may disagree and I'll listen.  It's just my opinion, and I don't claim the moral high ground other than to say that if you think consent isn't a precondition for moral sex, I'm going to have a very hard time with any of the conclusions you draw.

Can incest be anything other than rape? I would argue that it can. There certainly is a power dynamic involved which could give one the belief that parents and children having sex cannot be fully consensual under any circumstances, and I appreciate that and don't believe that people who hold that view are bad people.  For one thing, the way incest is typically portrayed in the popular consciousness only reinforces that belief.  For another, sex between people of different power levels (boss-subordinate for example) is troublesome precisely because consent is in question when the subordinate cannot give consent because they are in a power imbalance.  It's all very well to say that a lower-status individual can give informed consent, but can they?  And is the status of parent sufficient to create that imbalance?  These are difficult questions with no easy answers, and most of what is presented is cases where the high-power partner was in fact taking advantage of the power imbalance.

People have a visceral response to incest, and I acknowledge that. It's a taboo.  People have a similar response to underage (whatever age we're under) sex as well.  Both of these reactions are probably justified in society, and both are understandable.  And if the story includes both, as well as abuse, then it's hard not to have those reactions.

But for me, the most important part was the rape.  The author was repeatedly and systematically raped by a man, and those around her supported this by allowing it. Whether she was underage or his daughter matters less to me than that he abused and raped her.

More than that, I can't really say about the book.  But you're probably not here for a book review or a discussion of consent.

My father has never raped me.  By various legal definitions, he certainly has, and one could argue that I was of an age where I couldn't give informed consent, that I was groomed and thus never needed to be abused physically or forced, but that it was rape all the same because of consent issues.  But legal definitions are hard and fast (no, get your mind out of the gutter, we're being serious) precisely because they cannot allow for exceptions or they fail.  There's a reason why we have judges to determine the spirit of laws, both at the highest levels and the lowest.  There's a reason why trials are about more than determining guilt or innocence before the letter of the law.  We acknowledge that the letter of the law is absolute but cannot appropriately define the vastness of human experience.

You may believe that some things are in fact written in stone, no leeway, no allowances, 100% right or wrong.  If so, I would agree, although we'd probably disagree about what those things are.  And being so close to the case, as it were, I'm not really in a good position to judge dispassionately, and so I'm probably not a good person to decide.

But I have been raped by a man other than my father.  And I have said no to my father, and my sisters, and my brother, and been respected.  Mari has, for years, said no to sex with both my father and my brother, albeit not in so many words.  She has withdrawn consent, and that has been respected.  My father has never used sex to punish me, and if he enjoys our sex life, I would hate to think he didn't.  I certainly enjoy it.  And I didn't stop enjoying it at a certain point, nor did I initially not enjoy it and later come around to enjoying it.  Am I a reliable witness?  No, of course not.  You could claim that my perceptions of the situation are colored by all sorts of things: I was pressured into it by my father's power over me; or I was abused but have repressed it in the same way that the author of this book clearly came to enjoy her abuse; or while I may now be able to give consent, I wasn't capable when I was younger and now the damage is done.  I know these arguments.  I live them.

At the end of the day, all I can say is that I was raised in a very sex-positive way, which happened to include incest, but I think I would have turned out similarly sex-positive had incest not occurred; I just would have had a lot of sex with non-family-members.  Is raising a child sex-positive wrong?  I don't think so, but that's my opinion.

Have I turned out messed up?  Do I have an unhealthy relationship with sex?  What is an unhealthy relationship with sex?  I know that I don't have the same relationship with sex that most people have, but I know plenty of people who are as sex-positive as I am, if not more so, and they weren't abused as children and came to it later in life.  But many people who police the morals of sex would lump us all into the same group, and maybe they're right.  Maybe sex really should be a horrible, shameful thing that we only do for procreation and no one enjoys.  I don't think so, and thus I don't think my attitude toward sex is immoral or unhealthy.

I am not a healthy person.  I am not a paragon of perfection.  If you expect that from anyone who holds different ideas about morality, you'll be waiting a long time.  But I have introspected and thought and examined and I can't find anything wrong with my upbringing in general.  Things happened when I was a kid which I acknowledge are probably not good things, and I've made plenty of bad decisions, but does that invalidate my childhood completely?  I would argue no.

So, to return to the beginning, I feel sorry for this woman because she was raped by someone who should have loved her.  I feel that way about people who are raped by anyone they trusted or should have been able to trust.  And I feel sorry for her because if she had lived in a different world, maybe her father wouldn't have needed to rape her to get his jollies.  Maybe he would have, because unfortunately there are people in the world who don't need to transgress taboos to take advantage of power.  Many rapists don't want willing sex partners.  They want to have control.  And there are  healthy ways of expressing that desire which are shut off for most people (D/s for one), but even with those available, there are still people who can't have any limits on power.  There are people who never physically abuse anyone who still abuse their power and cause damage because they can and they enjoy it.  Power, abuse, and exploitation don't desire permission.

As I said, I have been raped.  It didn't affect me in the same way it affects some people because I don't have the same relationship with sex as many people.  But it was still rape, and it still hurt (not really physically, but definitely mentally).  And I have never felt that hurt with my family, not even at the worst of times, not even when we've been angry at each other (which, by the way, never involved sex; my family are passionate people and we yell a lot, but sex has never been about anger or power).  And while I could be lying to you and myself, I don't believe I am.  And at the end of the day, that's all I've got.  I know a lot about myself, I know my flaws and broken places, and my family is not one of them.  I don't know what else to say other than that.

That got long and wasn't sexy and probably pissed some people off, but you asked.