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How Science still marginalizes Sexual Minorities, and what we can learn from that

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Yes, I know people don't like this topic, but I will speak about it anyway because it is an excellent example of how language informs and distorts our view of reality and subsequently our moral evaluations.

I will use incest as an example here, because I find it is the most obvious and glaring example of language abuse in regards to how science today uses it to marginalize a minority.

 

There is multiple ways you can evaluate what incest is and how harmful it is, and depending on where you draw conceptual lines it will completely determine the policies that you might find reasonable and just. Especially how we construct, use and apply our language will be the determining factor here, and I will demonstrate how this is the case with incest.
Now, generally we frame incest as a singular concept that contains all incestuous interactions, and then evaluate whether or not "incest is harmful" on that basis. In that case, incest would include incest rape, it would include parent to child exploitation and so forth. A reasonable person might come to conclude that it is perfectly valid to say incest is abhorrent and dysfunctional, given how much of it would fall into that category. On that basis, one might want to ban incest, or heavily stigmatize it, because obviously nobody wants to say that it is okay to rape.

But that is clearly unreasonable, we can just ban rape without banning consensual incest, so we can exclude that from our definition of "incest". We can say there is incest, and incest rape. But obviously there are risks even in non-rape cases of incest, as there are in any relationship between two humans. So now the question is, is it enough to generalize incest as a singular concept, if we have all sorts of different relationship constellations within that concept that are utterly different from each other?

You can see here that we can draw the line anywhere, and on that basis make an assertion about how harmful, dysfunctional or risky a particular thing would be. The more granular we get, the more nuanced and sophisticated our notions will become.

 

Obviously incest between a parent and a child is not the same as between two siblings, so does it really make sense to talk about incest as a generality and subsequently evaluate it's "risks"?  Clearly we have to be more sophisticated than that, and make distinctions between the various types of incestuous constellations given they all have unique risk factors that will not carry over to each other. For example, we might find that parent to child relationships have a high instance of risk, whereas sibling relationships have a low instance of risk. It wouldn't therefore make sense to congregate those ideas into a singular concept.

 I want to point out that, we are actually not even that sophisticated in how we use our language even in the context of science. Science, if you look at publications about incest, generalizes incest as a singular concept all the time, and worse, the term, in the scientific literature, becomes synonymous with incest rape. So there is not even an effort made to distinguish incest rape from consensual incest, it is all just one term that is applied willy nilly. There is no need for clarification in the eyes of the authors of papers on incest abuse. The language is very loose and that actually informs how people perceive incest. This is essentual to understand because it shows you how language itself can impact your view of reality. To understand the problem, it would be like conflating homosexual rape and child-abuse with the term homosexuality in general, and given a scientific paper, basically use the word "homosexuality" as synonymous with the word "homosexual rape". The problem of this is obvious and glaring, but given the bias we have against incest, scientists don't really care. In fact, it is encouraged given our views of incest.

 

So, let us be more sophisticated and make proper distinctions.

We could say there is vertical and horizontal incest. Vertical incest would be incest between parent-child, grandparent-grandchild, aunt-nephew etc while horizontal incest is between siblings and cousins. The risk profiles for all of these will look wildly different, so if we want to make evaluate the reality we would address each of these individually rather than treat them as a general concept.

In fact, even within the category of siblings, we might have wildly different risk profiles. For example, siblings with larger age gaps are susceptible to different risks than same ages siblings. If we are talking about power dynamics for example, it reasonable to believe that twins (independent if same sex or not) actually might have a more egalitarian and equal power-dynamic than the average heterosexual couple. If we are talking about risks of abuse, it might turn out that twins are less likely to abuse and exploit each other than the average couple.

There is a further point to be made about how we contextualize data. Let us say we look at the data, and it gives us a certain number on how likely a same-aged sibling relationship is to be abusive. Maybe that data shows us it is more likely to be abusive than the average relationship, and therefore we conclude that same-aged sibling relationships are riskier than the average relationship. But here is where it gets tricky: In what context is this the case? What if, due to stigmatization and legal persecution of incest, it is far more likely that those who are willingly to violate such social norms will also be more likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior? In that case we have a significant selection bias. It might actually be true that, in a society which deems incest between same-aged siblings as permissible, you would see that same aged siblings are less likely to abuse each other than the average couple. In that case, if we wanted to prevent abuse in society, it might be rational to permit such incest rather than prohibit it. It's actually perfectly reasonable to propose that the average same aged sibling would be less likely to rape, abuse or coerce their sibling than the average boyfriend would be to abuse his girlfriend.

Just because it is the case that more sibling relationships are dysfunctional than non-incest relationships, does not actually mean that siblings are more likely to be dysfunctional if they pursue a relationship. We can understand this because, given a society in which homosexuality is illegal or highly stigmatized, it will likely be true that homosexual activity in such a society is dispropotionately problematic. In the past, the homosexual community actually had a real problem with grooming, where older, more experienced gay men would groom underage homosexual boys to "show them the ropes". This was driven by the stigmatization, but depending on how you use science, you could have framed it as the risks of homosexuality and therefore might have suggested to ban it on that basis. Imagine if homosexuality was a choice, if people were bisexual rather than homosexual. For how long would we have converted people who sought to engage in homosexual relationship under the guise "preventing abuse"?

We have to be really careful here, because we are talking about severe stigmatization and legal persecution of individuals who engage in consensual relationships, and we might actually drive more dysfunction and abuse through this stigmatization, even though we claim we are trying to prevent it.

None of this is even considered. We don't, scientifically, make evaluations about the risks of sibling relationships vs parent relationships and consensual vs rape and so forth. There is not even an attempt made to arrive at some sort of truth here, and yet we confidently assert that we have to stigmatize and ban such things because of our preconceptions about it. Because it is so dangerous, because it is inherently unnatural and dysfunctional. Because most cases are abuse (where is the evidence for this). Because individuals who engage in such things always came out harmed and traumatized (the only evidence on this shows the exact opposite, which I go into later). It's all basically rape and abuse and anything that validates any form of incest as anything other than that deserves to be viewed as highly problematic.

People don't even have an intuitive grasp of how risky a certain relationship type would have to be to justify shaming and imprisoning people for engaging in it. If you ask them, they can't even give you a ballmark number. Becaue in the end, it's not about how risky it is. We have no clue how risky it actually is, and even if it was, there are probably ways to mitigate risks without shaming and imprisoning innocent people. All this is about is our revulsion, and science is used to basically justify our already present dispositions. 

 

 

Now, what I described with incest is even true with how we conceptualize inbreeding. We attribute an inherent risk to inbreeding, because of how we conceptualize inbreeding. We just say there is a higher risk of child-defect with inbreeding. It is in one way true, but technically inaccurate. It is only true if your view and understanding of it is unsophisticated. Two siblings might not put their children at a higher risk of birth-defect on the basis of inbreeding, given that they do not both carry the same recessive genes that would have to be present in their parents.

Maybe their parents have particularly good genes and don't carry any terrible recessive genes, or the way those genes were transmitted to them was not such that both of them carry the same recessive genes. In that case, they might get a genetic test and it might be the case that there is not a particularly elevated risk of genetic disease. Their potential children might even be less likely to be unhealthy than the average couple. So, you can see how the unsophisticated notion of "inbreeding elevates risk of birth defects", actually does not tell the whole picture. And this is especially important if we want to make decisions about banning certain sexual activity on the basis of prevent birth defects in general. It wouldn't be reasonable to put two siblings in prison for engaging in the "risk of causing genetic defect in offspring", if they got a genetic test and either don't have a significantly elevated risk or can reduce that risk using pre-screening during early pregnancy. In the end they could engage in more responsible reproductive decisions than the average couple does.

Saudi Arabia actually mandates genetic counselling before marriage, and interestingly enough, even they do not engage in eugenics the way western societies do when they justify the prohibition of incest on the basis of higher likelihood of birth defects. If you truly care about reducing genetic problems in your population, you would mandate the same and prohibit individuals from engaging in sex if they meet a certain threshold of risk to offspring. That would at least be reasonable and consistent in regards to how we treat inbreeding. You could say that would be an infringement of sexual liberty, but there is no way you could argue that mandating a test is more of an infringement on sexual liberty and reproductive autonomy than putting siblings in prison because they might be at an elevated risk of causing birth defects in their children. If you want to engage in eugenics, you at least have to be fair about it.

 

 

So, in the case of incest we can see how using language, as well as how we interpret data, is done in a way that enables the marginalization of a sexual minority. You will notice that most people who evalute this topic will do so from an incredibly emotional place, and scientists are not exempt from this given that they are highly discourage from framing incest as anything but harmful. The best data (it is not amazing data but the best we seem to have) on consensual incest between siblings that I have found is from the 80s, in which Finkelhor found that 20% of incestuous interactions between siblings (a survery of 796) were coercive. Overall, 30% of those who made such experiences described them as positive, 30% as negative and the rest felt neutral towards them. 15% of females and 10% of males reported incestuous interactions (seems it is not so unnatural after all). All of  this in a society in which incest is highly stigmatized. Finkelhors interpretation of that data was ridiculed, and the data was dismissed on the basis that, even between same aged siblings, there is an inherent power differential in society between men and women, and therefore such self-evaluations cannot be considered as valid. Since then, it does not seem that any research has been done that would look at anything but incest-rape, and it seems to be the case that scientists who do attempt to investigate it face significant professional repercussions and social backlash.

Remember that, when homosexuality was viewed as inherently immoral and disgusting, you could have done a study that would have found that a significant portion of those who engaged in homosexuality came out of it traumatized. Not because homosexuality is inherently harmful and traumatizing, but because of the guilt and shame they would feel as a result of societies demonization of such actions. Yet, perversely, society will not take responsibility for causing this trauma and shame. Quite the opposite, they will use the shame and trauma to further validitade how wrong such actions are. 

Importantly, it is to note that there is no research that has been done on consensual incest between adults. Finkelhor's study still is in the context of adolescence and childhood.

 

To contextualize the 20% number, it is actually the case, given a similar definition of coercion, that 43% of adolescent girls and 36% of adolescent boys experience similar sexual victimization. Should we ban sex between adolescent boys and girls, to prevent abuse? Should we shame and stigmatize them if they do engage in it? Or did we learn that these methods are inappropriate, cruel and cause more harm than good for the development of individuals, and that we ought to find other means to reduce instances of harm that do not involve the fundamental violation of individual's sexual autonomy?
 

Edited by Scholar

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