This is going to be a fun one.

So here are the facts:

I commented on a news article about a mother and adult son charged with incest (and adultery as well for her.) This is what I said:

Someone responded to me and I replied before I realized my original comment was removed for being inappropriate. Then I added the edit when I saw.

The next day I discovered I'd been banned from that community for "pro-incest comments" and several others I don't think I've ever been in for rule 4 violations. The orignal post was removed.

You can see those here:

Site rule 4 is:
Usernames or posts/comments containing transphobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, ableism, zionism, anti-veganism, or trivializing COVID. No self-described or obvious fascists, conservatives, or reactionaries.

My comments had none of those things. I'd even go so far as to say my banning was reactionary.

Now, I'm not defending incest, especially not for myself. My problem is with puritanical laws interfering with the private sex lives of people. In my original comment I stated that grooming was a separate issue and should be dealt with, but that there is nothing inherently wrong with incest. That is, enthusiastic consensual sex between capable adults.

I know someone will bring up the Hapsburgs, so yes, children of incest should be avoided.

Wow, rule 4 tells you all you need to know about that community and mods.

Talk about closed minds.

on hexbear? well yeah, fuck that

I agree with rule 4 and don't see how it indicates closed minds. I just don't think I broke it.

If it's legal for the royal families to do it it should be legal for the rest of us.

It's only a 7 day ban.

I'm not sure how grooming could possibly be made illegal.

I agree that maybe siblings could consent to healthy sexual relationships as adults. It's gross to me but doesn't need to be illegal.

I don't agree that parents and children fucking eachother should be legal. Parents are the guardians and protectors of their own children. That role doesn't end when a child transitions to being an adult. I think it would be nearly impossible to micromanage a relationship in order to determine that grooming took place, better for society to just make it illegal for parents to ever fuck their children.

I think that it's appropriate that you're being muted for a week for repeatedly defending the right of a parent to fuck their child.

I should have been more clear, my ban from the unrelated communities was temporary while my ban from news was permanent.

Again, I was saying incest shouldn't be a crime. To say I was defending a parents' right to fuck their child is deliberately misinterpreting the argument.

Is there a word for being fine with something controversial instead of pro or con? I'm with you, not in favor (pro) but also not seeing any reason to prohibit (con) as long as everyone is consenting adults and there wasn't any grooming, which should be prosecuted as grooming.

Social stigma against it because of the downsides and likelihood of being the result of grooming is enough.

PTB, especially due to the rule not matching.

Leaving aside whether the rule was the right one to use, I will stress that, when it comes to incest, the power dynamics in play make consent dubious at best. This is doubly so for parent/child incest, such as the case you were talking about.

This is a weird hill. Are you sure you want to die on it?

It’s presumably too pro-aristocracy for Marxist-Leninists to allow

Won't die on it. Still think it's weird to be banned for it.

PTB. Ban doesn’t fit the rule.

I don’t agree with OP’s position, but that isn’t the subject of this thread. The ban is. And I don’t think it’s justified.

just so you fully understand...

everyone is consenting adults

incest cannot be about 'consenting adults' because those adults psychology are incredibly intertwined, and the decision to perform the incest cannot be held separately form those relationships.

its a power dynamic tangential to rape, and the only people 'pro-consenting-adult incest' are completely ignorant of the actual issue.

there is no such thing as a 'healthy' sexual relationship with regards to incest, hence its illegality.

By making this post, you are still fighting on it.

I said this below, but i think it requires visibility.. you people are just missing the actual problem:

just so you fully understand...

everyone is consenting adults

incest cannot be about 'consenting adults' because those adults psychology are incredibly intertwined, and the decision to perform the incest cannot be held separately form those relationships.

its a power dynamic tangential to rape, and the only people 'pro-consenting-adult incest' are completely ignorant of the actual issue.

there is no such thing as a 'healthy' sexual relationship with regards to incest, hence its illegality.

The ban fits the spirit, if not the letter, in a sort of "we didn't think we needed to specify a dog can't play basketball" situation. I suspect the wording of the rule will be changed to reflect this.

Mods are people, and people are biased. Yeah, they'll ban you over sensitive-to-them subjects, and there's not much we can do about it but appeal. I happen to agree with you re: incest, but I knew better than to voice it directly to that same article posted in a different comm. You spoke your mind and someone with a bit of power shot you down. So it goes.

But, there's more to it than that.

Lemmy is a general interest, public forum and therefore full of people with opinions that fall in the middle of the bell-curve. Opinions of all types that fall at the edges get shouted down and trimmed off. Everyone is aware that MAGA opinions are in that group, as well they should be in, again, a general interest public forum. But, there are plenty of others, like permissive ideas around incest, and support for AI in there, too. You need to "read the room."

You can find other quite active forums outside of Lemmy that will be more sympathetic to such fringe positions of all sorts, if you feel the need to express support or discuss.

so incest is fine if they were separated for most of their lives and only recently met

you really want to search for an incest loophole?

really? really?

edit:
tell ya what, lets let the grand jury decide on whether to prosecute oedipus

I disagree, if by "spirit" is how rules and laws are to be followed, this will make it open to ambiguity and alternatives. In effect, negative effects such as abuse-of-power can be seen (as indicated in this scenario).

I agree, this ain't the community for moralising op's shenanigans - but for abuse-of-power inflicted by mods.

And if you ignore the spirit of the rules entirely, you get shitty people doing shitty things while clinging to technicalities. If I say "I technically didn't steal your watch", you would still want your watch back.

The solution is to uphold the letter of the rules and, if they are insufficient, you update the rules.

The power dynamic thing is also an issue for relationships with age gaps like marrying someone who the older person knew as a minor, but who is not related. Like a teacher marrying a student after the student is an adult. Or someone in their 30s marrying a young adult from their neighborhood who was in their scouts program. They are not exactly the same, but can be very similar, especially when family isn't all located in the same place.

Also, not all incest is between a parent and child. Siblings don't really have the same kind of power dynamic thing. It also gets muddied when adoption and step children are involved. Is incest wrong based on genetics, legal status, or the power dynamic?

I don't think incest should have legal penalties on its own and I think the power dynamic parts that are common between a lot of relationships should have strong legal penalties. Those will apply to most, but not all incest. Absolutely not pro, I think society should continue to discourage it socially because the odds of a power dynamic issue is likely. We should also discourage people from dating people they knew as children because of the power dynamic issues.

It's pushing the envelope towards PTB, but isn't for two reasons: first, it is a 7 day ban, so a timeout. Secondly, incest is strongly associated with pedophilia, and it typically comes across the same way arguing about age of consent does.

While it's not specifically in their rules, incest and pedophilia would reasonably fall within their lineup of bannable topics given what is on there.

If it was a permaban? Clear and flagrant PTB. But this is just a warning in function.

Focusing on the mod action without delving much into the topic, I think your first comment could reasonably be perceived as reactionary (provoking reaction from others) by some mods which fits under rule 4, even if you were genuine in intent.

The other comm bans I think are half a step too far in the PTB direction, but the one comment removal and news comm ban are within the ballpark of reasonableness.

Iirc hexbear has a self-crit community where you can explain where you went wrong and appeal mod actions

Sure, but if you completely rely on the spirit without regard to technicality you get the same scenario. In addition, the "spirit" is highly subjective so the basis of technicalities is not only beneficial but necessary.

I do agree on the latter, however.

The power dynamic thing is also an issue for

right, but this isnt about those relationships. its about incest.

so, move the goalpost all you want, incest should still be illegal.

7 day ban ain't shit quit being gross

In a lot of people's mind there can't possibly be consent so it's simply rape which makes you a pro rape advocate. If that makes it make a little more sense to you.

So siblings who were separated at birth or had the same sperm donor and don't find out until after they meet as adults and have an ongoing relationship should be prosecuted?

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

Social stigma tends to end those relationships already once they are discovered. I am saying that is enough and it doesn't require legal punishments.

The good thing is this is Lemmy, not any anything of any consequence, so being a little loose with the rules isn't the end of anyone's world. (And if it is, you need to get off the Internet and go touch grass.)

In particular, banning someone and changing the rules to cover a scenario that just occurred (ex post facto) is usually okay. We're not large enough for thorough rulemaking to cover every conceivable situation.

And in OP's case, they're being reasonable about it and the ban is temporary, so I'm not going to call this PTB or YDI.

I do not think that would be a power dynamic problem

whew, well, lets all be glad youre not a clinical psychologist who actually understands these things

and attempting to defend this shit? thats pretty sick.. what is your motivation here?

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

Incest between people who know beforehand is absolutely wrong and pretty much guaranteed to not meet the criteria for consent, but it is a broad topic that isn't as simple as parent/child.

If the power dynamic is clear (which includes parent-child cases like what OP was talking about, I'm in agreement with you there), then why should the law specifically care that the people involved are relatives, wouldn't more general laws about coercion, grooming, or abusing positions of authority be sufficient to make that a crime? (And if they aren't, shouldn't they be?)

If the power dynamic is not clear, like if both people involved are of similar age and there's not some other clear marker of who has power over the other like financial dependency or some kind of caretaker relationship (not "if there is no power dynamic", just if it's ambiguous enough to an outsider that there's a significant risk of an outsider like a judge or jury or cop getting the dynamic wrong), then doesn't having a specific law about incest risk punishing the wrong side a significant percentage of the time, or create a situation where a victim is afraid to come forward or can be threatened into more abuse, because they fear the penalty being applied to them as well if the law isn't convinced that they weren't the person with the power in their situation?

o0o0 i see, you want the actual, common incest to be legal because of an edge-case easily handled by judges.

got it, youre an incest cheerleader.. for some reason.

A judge can't just rule someone gets a free pass when something is illegal because they didn't know. That isn't how law works.

The law could conceiveably be written to exclude those cases, but anyone trying to include that would have people like you claiming they are pro incest for pointing out exceptions.

my original point was grand jury which absolutely decides whether charges are applied and prosecution attempted

either way, still not sure why anyone would think that edge case is a reason for you all to want incest to be legal... sure are strainin' to do some explainin as they say.

You said judges, not grand juries. You also assume I want the opposite of what I wrote.

Not wanting something to be illegal is not the same as being in favor of it. There are lots of things that I am fine with being legal that I am opposed to because I think making them illegal would be a huge negative compared to addressing it through social pressure.

I think it's weird you came here to complain first, instead of googling "why is incest bad" and reading literally the first result.

I disagree. Rape, coersion and sexual interference are already crimes (in many places) and ethically wrong (anywhere.)

As someone who doesn't know most of my family, and assume most everyone didn't grow up with their extended family, I wouldn't say familial relationships are more psychologically intertwined than any other. It's a long walk to assume there's such an unfair power imbalance in incestuous relationships as to make incest tangential to rape.

I think a permanent ban was unjustified, yes.

That's a hell of a long walk to call me a pro-rape advocate. No, that doesn't make sense to me.

I feel like your last sentence could lead down a very slippery slope of ending up on a list somewhere.

"Neutral"?

It's quite a short walk I'm afraid and yeah I figured that was the case. Fun question, are you now or have you ever participated in incest?

Weirdly enough, I wrote a paper in philosophy about the puritanical reasons things like incest, adultery and sodomy are illegal.

You know what? That's fair. I looked at the other comments being made and checked the sidebar. I was a little crass in my verbiage but thought I was participating as I should. Someone didn't like that and I'm still happy to be here.

Yeah but those aren't the only reasons it's bad. They're just the bad reasons. There are good reasons, too.

I have not.