Time and time again, we see that science and appeals to nature actually back allowing people to have the relationships to which they mutually agree. Bigots who try to use appeals to nature to interfere with relationship and sexual rights are embarrassed over and over again.
“People assume that animals should avoid mating with a relative when given the chance,” says Raïssa de Boer, researcher in zoology at Stockholm University. “But evolutionary theory has been telling us that animals should tolerate, or even prefer, mating with relatives under a broad range of conditions for more than four decades.”
This isn't so surprising to some. Part of the natural spectrum of sexual diversity includes a consanguinamorous orientation.
The study provides a synthesis of 139 experimental studies in 88 species spanning 40 years of research, settling the longstanding debate between theoretical and empirical expectations about if and when animals should avoid inbreeding.“We address the ‘elephant in the room’ of inbreeding avoidance studies by overturning the widespread assumption that animals will avoid inbreeding whenever possible,” says Raïssa de Boer.The study demonstrates that animals rarely attempt to avoid mating with relatives, a finding that was consistent across a wide range of conditions and experimental approaches.
Consensual incest has always been a part of life. That includes humans. Most children born to close relatives are healthy.
“We compared studies that asked if humans avoid inbreeding when presented with pictures of faces that were digitally manipulated to make the faces look either more or less related to studies that used similar approaches in other animals. Just like other animals, it turns out that there is no evidence that humans prefer to avoid inbreeding,” says Raïssa de Boer.
Of course, attraction often involves more than appearance. But along with the information about other animals, this refutes the idea that consanguineous mating is unnatural and naturally repulsive.
If researchers could study consanguinamory in humans, these findings would be further bolstered.
There is no good reason to deny consenting adults the relationships to which they mutually agree, including full marriage equality.
![Non-Monogamy Diagram [I:FV]](http://www.obsidianfields.com/lj/nonmonogamy2.5.1.gif){kind=link}
Couldn't agree more
ReplyDeleteThere are multiple inbreeding avoidance strategies, one of the most common ones is sex biased dispersal. It works by having all members of one sex leave their natal groups to join another, which is very unlikely to contain close relatives. There is also kin recognition, individuals will avoid mating with close relatives by simply knowing who they are. If you take two related individuals from a species that relies dispersal for inbreeding avoidance of course they will have no inhibitions about mating because they didn’t evolve to avoid mating with close relatives in adulthood since they naturally wouldn’t be in contact with them most likely. It’s not that surprising that species which use dispersal don’t practice min recognition.
ReplyDeleteI’m not anti incest BTW, I just wanted to give some context for why this probably isn’t as groundbreaking as you may think. I am a huge nerd for genetics in general and inbreeding in particular because it is a topic with a surprising amount of depth. In touches on societal taboo, culture, genetics, evolution, psychology, sexuality, etc. I could write an entire book about incest and inbreeding and I honestly might, I’ve been thinking about it for a while.