Although I’m new to the Reylo scene, there seems to be a common theme of “But OMGWTF THEY COULD BE COUSINS!” among the people who scorn Reylo shippers.
And all I can say to that is…uh, what?
Regardless of whether Rey is Luke’s daughter or not, I’m genuinely amused by the fact that tumblr seems to be forgetting that first cousin marriages are in actuality a common practice in many countries around the world? Or is this an instance where countries other than the United States and other valid cultural practices cease to exist when convenient for hateful tumblr rhetoric?
I grew up in a country where first cousin marriage is a common occurrence – I have quite a few close friends who fell in love and married their cousins. They’re happy, have kids and pets and jobs, the whole usual deal – and I fail to see how anyone could view that love with disgust. Maybe because it doesn’t comply with your personal world view? If something offends you, ignore it – don’t insult other ways of life because it clashes with the culture you’ve grown up in.
I ship Reylo. I ship Reylo happily, without guilt, because I don’t think that first cousin marriage is something abhorrent, and I don’t shame those who find it an acceptable practice.
I won’t decry the people that don’t ship Reylo for other reasons, because to each their own, but for the love of everything, I just wish the bigoted, repetitive argument of “EWWWW COUSIN LOVE” would stop.
I’ll ship Reylo if Rey is the daughter of Luke, I’ll ship Reylo if Rey is related to Obi-Wan, and by god, I’ll ship Reylo even if she’s Kylo Ren’s father’s mother’s aunt’s sixth-cousin twice removed.
Tag: discussion
Hey I found a documentary video about people who have had Genetic Sexual Attraction to their relatives after they’ve been separated from them for so long
And it’s really sad to read the comments and see other people judge them so harshly like saying how it’s a psychological thing (which doesn’t make much sense because it doesn’t happen with everybody) and that they’re sick and awful for putting their families through so much pain.
It’s interesting that in most interviews I’ve read people who have incest relationships always say that their love is so much stronger and intimate than anything they’ve ever had before and while for those who are against it it might be a case that they love the thrill of the forbidden (it may be true for some but certainly not for everyone). I think having this love as a family transfer into a romantic love can be a pretty powerful thing.
In a way I think genetic sexual attraction is something that the society could rationalize a lot better because they can justify that with saying if they weren’t separated they would have never crossed the line because they confuse family love with sexual attraction.
I would expect people to be a lot more forgiving in cases of
GSA, but there are always going to be some people who just can’t get over it. I
imagine those are the people who were leaving all of those judgmental comments.
It seems to me that they’re too afraid to be empathetic and really consider
what it might be like to be going through that. Maybe for some people they are
into the forbidden aspect, but most of the people who are out there talking
about their GSA experience are doing so because they are in a committed and
loving relationship and want the right to have that be an open/legal
relationship like any other. I think a lot of the people who object just don’t
get that. And yes, maybe they are putting their families through pain, but if
these kinds of relationship were accepted then that wouldn’t be an issue. The
families are choosing to feel that pain by objecting. (Of course every GSA
situation is different, and I’m sure some of them are problematic relationships
and there are good reasons for objecting to them as there are to many
relationships that exist, GSA or not, but assume we’re talking about a healthy
example.) These people would not be fighting for these relationships and going
through all of this unless it was everything to them.
heres the final kicker about the napoleon ambiguous incest thing: in the 1804 napoleonic code, his huge legal reform as ruler of France, he decriminalized incest. all incest. incest is still legal in France i think? not 100% sure. but yeah, Bonaparte did the thing
[x]
Very interesting!!!
I actually had no idea that incest was legal in France (and Belgium and Luxembourg):
The 1810 penal code promulgated by Napoleon I and adopted throughout most of Europe abolished incest laws in France,[40]Belgium and Luxembourg. On 27 January 2010, France reinstated laws against incest. The new law, however, defines incest as rape or sexual abuse on a minor “by a relative or any other person having lawful or de facto authority over the victim”. Incest between consenting adults is not prohibited.
Go France!
Hmmmm, Napoleon, what were you up to? (What an odd thing for him to legalize. He was either really enlightened about it, had a person investment in it, or had some supporter pressing him to legalize it.)
Also, I love your blog and it has encouraged me to create my own incest blog, but for now I’m only considering it bc I’m afraid of negative reactions maybe? Anyway, thank you for all the incest content!
Hi, Anon!
Sadly, I don’t think I received the first part of your message! I hope you’ll see this and re-send.
Thank you so much for what you said about my blog. I am so happy that you enjoy it!!!
I hope you will create your own incest blog. I understand why you might be afraid, I was afraid of the same thing, but I have honestly never had a problem with negativity. I have barely received any negative messages at all. When I do get them, I just delete them and forget about them. If they are spreading hate or attacking your right to ship what you want on your own blog then they are in the wrong. All you need to do is remind yourself of that.
And if you want to keep a low profile (which is often what I try to do) then just be careful with your tagging and what you mention in the post (since any text in the post is searchable using tumblr search) with original posts, and when you reblog from someone and you’re not sure how they feel about incest then be careful with how you tag the post and what text you add to it since the original poster might see it. You can always quote the other post or refer to it instead of reblogging. I’m full of tips!
The “we think we’re related but surprise plot twist we’re not!” is something I dislike, except for one thing. For that glorious time period between the reveal that they’re related, and the later reveal that they’re not, there’s some reader out there reading in breathless anticipation, not previously aware that s/he could still root for them to be together while thinking they’re related, and yet s/he does, and another potential incest shipper is born. Maybe they’ll go on to write the real thing.
You’re too right, Anon!!!
I’m glad to look at those situations with this new silver lining.
(Maybe that’s what Cassandra Clare was going for, to create more incest shippers without having to “compromise” the popularity of her series by writing actual incest. She had a secret agenda.)
I’ve been seeing people mentioning how Raven and Finn (The 100) were like brother and sister. Well, they also had a sexual and romantic relationship for years and no one bats an eye at that. What do you think of this sort of couples that are not blood related, know they are not siblings, but are pretty much raised as such, and yet develop a romantic relationship. I used to think that this was just lazy incest making (not in The 100’s case) but now those are growing in me. What do you think?
That’s a great question!
For me, it might be that I would ship the couple in question, but not because of incest reasons. I just don’t see it as incest or even incestuous except in a pretty strictly defined way.
Sometimes I do see it as lazy/safe “incest”, and in those cases I’m usually more annoyed than anything. (Like Eric and Nora from True Blood.) In most other cases (and in those cases too), especially where it’s the fandom that’s saying that they’re like brother and sister or the characters themselves have said something like, “He’s like a brother to me”, then I just don’t see it as incestuous at all.
For me, the way I see it, is that there’s only incest, and you can compare things to incest but they’re not truly comparable. And there are relationships that can become more and more analogous, but there’s still this line where it’s either incest or it’s not. I guess I’m just all about the line.
Because people on the outside can look at a relationship and say that it’s weird because they’ve known each other all their lives or it’s step-relation and they’re in the same family or whatever. But for the people on the inside, I just can’t imagine it feeling the same for them as it would if they were actually having sexual/romantic feelings for a member of their immediate family.
I used to like best friend ships a lot. I really liked that moment where their feelings started to change, and they went from not being able to think of the other person in that way to being in love with them. But I think that maybe that was just proto-incest shipping. That was like drinking watered-down hot chocolate and now I’m just stuffing chocolate bars into my mouth topped with mousse and fudge and it just doesn’t compare.
(I do still like best friend ships though.)
A lot of the times, when the fandom says “they’re like brother and sister” or something like that, it’s the anti-shippers saying that. And they may genuinely feel/believe that there is no romantic/sexual chemistry or tension, but usually it’s just a cheap argument against the relationship that doesn’t carry any weight. So often I find those comparisons pretty annoying.
I know, you’d think it would be the opposite with me, that the more it’s like brother/sister the more I would like it. But I guess I’m kind of a snob??? Like give me the real thing or don’t bother. LOL. I’m a connoisseur.
But I do like step-cest ships and cousin ships and things like that too. But maybe that’s because while those relationships may only have echoes of immediate-family incest and be degrees away from it, they’re still relationships that exist and not just a comparison to another relationship. If that makes any sense.
I won’t say much about Raven and Finn, except that it got me thinking about what life must have been like on the Ark. They would have had no real concept of siblings. And everyone lived within walking distance of each other, possibly they all ate meals together. The rooms were small so kids especially probably spent a lot of time outside. A lot more things would have been done communally. It’s an interesting environment. (Given my impression of what the size of the population was, it’s actually hard to believe everyone was as much strangers as they seemed to be.)
I tend to think that the arguments against incest are mostly justifications. People have an instinctive disgust for incest, so they need a logical reason to oppose it. For example, a common argument against incest is that relationships between family members are inherently abusive because of the power dynamics. I have a feeling these people aren’t okay with incest between siblings who grew up separately, not knowing about each other.
(cont.) Even though these people wouldn’t have any more of a power difference then two random people. And those who argue against incest because of the genetics problems with their children aren’t suddenly going to be okay with homosexual incest, or incest when one of the pair is infertile.
I agree completely, Anon. 100%
My argument against the “power dynamics” point is always that all relationships have power dynamics. Whether one spouse makes more money, or has more sexual experience, or is older, or smarter, or is more manipulative by nature, or whatever. And as you said, that can’t be anyone’s main objection because their are plenty of incestuous relationships to which that wouldn’t apply.
As for the birth defect argument, it’s exactly as you said. A lot of these couples couldn’t or would not choose to have biological children. And on top of that, we don’t restrict the reproductive rights of other couples at an even higher risk for the same thing but in a different way (like addicts, or people with hereditary diseases).
I wish their was a safe tag for incest type stuff because when you go into the incest tag 99% of its porn. I wished when people made edits they used the tag incestedit
I feel your pain, Anon. I’ve been thinking for a long time about trying to create a tag for us incest shippers to use. It would be such a great resource both to find posts that interest us and to make it easier for others to find our posts. “Incestedit” is a good one. The only thing I’m concerned about is that people might be shy about using it since it’s so direct. Like maybe if they make a post about a non-canon relationship and the post could be for the pairing as an incest ship or not, then they might not want to use that tag. Or people on the outside might think it’s for porn. Or it could attract haters/spammers. Those are just some of the things I’ve been thinking about.
What I really want to do is make a survey for it. Have people send in ideas for what the tag should be, and then we could vote. I’m happy to lead but I’m afraid if I do too much of it myself then people will think I’m dictating or that it’s proprietary. Also I’ll be really embarrassed if it fails completely.
But maybe I should just go ahead with this. Because I’ve honestly been thinking about it for years – plural, with an s – so maybe it needs to just happen and it might take a long time to catch on and it might not be perfect but it would be better than nothing.
Ok, everyone, start generating ideas. What should the tag be?
(I’ll make another post about this soon.)
You know I find it kind of hypocritical that the society has no problem of people falling in love,getting married and being welcomed into the families of the bride/groom yet they would feel disgust if that was happening if blood related siblings were marrying
The same thing also applies to having biological children vs adopting
We like to stress the fact that blood isn’t everything yet it suddenly becomes of huge importance if siblings fall in love,it’s very hypocritical if you ask me
Those are interesting ideas. I’ve always thought it seemed a little incestuous sometimes when the new husband or new wife becomes deeply embedded in their in-laws’ family. It’s certainly comparable to foster siblings. But that is considered incest in some cases. Like marrying your brother’s widow, which troubled Henry VIII so much.
I do think it can be hypocritical sometimes, but adoptive sibling incest is also considered taboo. Less so sometimes, but not always. But it’s a really interesting point and certainly something that made me think.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
I wish they were more incestuous book even if it’s only subtext, especially of dystopian genre. Actually I have an idea to write a story bout siblings who were groomed to married each other since they were no else, before a troop of people comes to
to their place and they have to act natural. I mean when human is in extinction, siblings is just a label. You need to populate the world somehow.
Every genre could use more incestuous books but I totally agree with the Dystopian genre. Dystopian tales have been really popular recently – so many major movies made from popular novels – but they’re not carrying their incest-vibes weight.
Although, it’s a mixed blessing. Because if you include too much incest in dystopian tales then it starts to look like incest is a symptom of an unhealthy society, which is not what I like to see.
I think your novel sounds pretty fascinating. It actually reminds me a little of one of the post-apocalyptic stories I’ve been working on that involves a similar situation with extinction being a very real possibility.
I love the idea of that period you described where they go from expecting to marry each other to suddenly being surrounded by people and having to deal with that.
That could even been mainstream. As long as there’s a sci-fi excuse for the incest it can be mainstream, lol.
shipcestuous3 