Someone’s comment on a consanguinamory group about the subject of reproduction. They said they meant it for any couple, related or unrelated, and gave me permission to share their comment. I just liked the way they said it, particularly that last line.
I just wanted to explain the reason I focus on reproduction a lot on this blog. It’s not because I am trying to push it on you. It’s because it’s the area where most stigma arises from, the area most people don’t know much about. Because of ignorance surrounding the topic of reproduction, straight cousin couples have the most amount of stigma placed on them. So that’s why I like to address it from that angle.
Reproduction is definitely not for everyone, for various reasons. But I hope that the information I link to and share is of use to you, whether you are just trying to learn more, or in the process of deciding if you want to have a family.
I haven’t come across same-sex cousin couples info yet but if I do I will post here. Please feel welcome to submit an Ask or Share a Story if you are with your same-sex cousin.
❤
This page has some really useful links and information for those interested in learning more about love between related people. There’s specifically some great stuff for cousin couples, covering genetics and reproduction…with interesting diagrams. You should check out their video discussion too. I’ll post some thoughts on it once I’ve watched it myself. 🙂
If you really want to see it, is here here, but be warned. Ignorance abounds: http://madamenoire.com/488938/celebrities-who-married-a-cousin/
_The Comment I left:
There is a lot
of misinformation here. As someone who has read up on cousin/cousin
relationships extensively for my writing, I can see so much distortion and
prejudice in your article it’s disgusting. Journalists are supposed to present
facts without telling people what to think. But you are no different than so
many other self-professed “relationship experts”. The fact is, human
sexuality is diverse and complex. There is no one kind of healthy or normal.
You really have to look at things on a case-by-case basis to try and see which
relationships are right for the individuals involved and which ones may not
be….. I fully agree that some of these marriages are inappropriate, but that
is due to the ages of the females involved, not because of the sheer fact of
their relation to their partner.
For your
information, first cousins have a very low risk level for having kids with
defects. All people (whether related or not) carry a baseline risk for defects.
And first cousins’ risks are only a little higher, not high enough to ban
marriages… which is why many places still allow it. The kind of defects that
can occur are not the kind that would ruin the quality of a kid’s life. They’d
be minor inconveniences, if they happen at all. As for the rare worst case scenario
(of severe mental or physical disability) in the case of cousins there is no
evidence to show that it is caused by their relation.
Any relationship can
produce children with major issues. When major issues do occur for a cousin
couple, it is often because there were several generations in a row of
inbreeding in the same family. There is a HUGE difference between that and the
risks for a cousin marriage where there is no history of incest already in the
family tree. Some of Darwin’s kids had issues.. he also had several generations
of incest in his family (both him and his wife’s side). Every time a person
casually looks at the birth defects, they are not getting a balanced view
because they are not investigating further. The major issues happen when there
are SEVERAL GENERATIONS IN A ROW.
Lastly,
and just as important as the stuff on genetics, what makes you think that these
relationships are somehow less valuable than the ones you are used to?? You
have to be a seriously narcissistic person to think that your experience in
life is the only one that holds any meaning. If you study history, you’d see
that morality is largely subjective to the culture, the times, the individual,
etc. And as for whether or not it is in line with
‘natural selection’ or ‘evolution’, you need to take a closer look at the
animal kingdom. Human beings don’t just go and mate in some base way. Human
relationships are about the mind, the soul, shared values and interests. We are
so much more advanced than animals. You think that these people are being
backwards by loving within their family. But you are so far removed from their
experience that you cannot begin to see how far ahead they are in their views
of love. Real Love is not about reproduction and mating like an animal in heat.
Reproduction is a separate matter that should be looked at with consideration
to ACTUAL facts about risk levels on a case-by-case basis – not a generalized
paranoid opinion of someone who is more interested in sensationalism than
truth.
To the author of this article and her fans: You
are not relationship experts. Get over yourselves. There are children of cousin
couples all over this world who are dealing with unnecessary stigma because of
people like YOU. I am not defending customs here… Cousin marriage as a
widespread custom is dangerous in the long term. But I will fully defend those
(in a minority) that marry their cousins out of genuine love and connection.
You cannot speak for these people. They have a voice of their own and each one
is different. Cousin marriage is a complex and controversial topic but in order
to understand it fully you need to be able to look at it from ALL angles and
make distinctions between harmful and harmless, all the while acknowledging
that people have the right to choose how to live and love, as long as there is
consent. They’re not here to play a puppet role for you or anyone. There are a
multitude of ways to be a COUSIN, and to be HUMAN. I’d much rather hang out
with free-minded people any day than those who spread ignorance with pride.
For an example of unbiased journalism, see this: http://www.atomica.com/article/1269307/15-celebs-who-married-family-members
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I am not the gate-holder to anyone’s life, but I feel that because I run this blog I have a kind of responsibility to make some kind of statement about where I personally would ‘draw the line’ in my support of cousins-cousin pairings.
In other posts, I try to be as neutral as possible but this post is largely my personal opinion. If someone out there lives differently I won’t demonize them, but I want to express my personal feeling on ‘limitations’ to reproduction. There is more I need to read to understand this topic more in depth but from what I’ve read so far, including from the real life examples I know of, this is the opinion I’ve formulated for myself:
I repeat this all the time: if you ever plan on making kids with your first cousin or any other cousin, you should try your best to go to at least one genetic councilor to get a better understanding of where you stand with regards to your reproductive risks.
I am very much against the custom of arranged marriage (and by that I mean, the custom of pressuring, forcing, or manipulating two people to marry against their will). Here I am talking about mutually consensual love.
I feel that there does need to be limits to reproduction, even for cousins. I think their risk level is low enough to justify them taking the risk in a single generation, BUT, my opinion is that a “line” should be drawn directly after that first generation has children.
Here are my reasons for thinking this way:
People often rely on the worst case scenarios to argue against cousin marriage. They point to things like Charles II’s family tree… When ignorant people see this they don’t look any further into genetic possibilities because they get scared off. And who can blame them? Charles II was thought to be one of the most inbred people in the world, with very little diversity in his gene pool. If those who fall in love with their cousins follow a set of limits such as that I mentioned to regulate their risk level and keep it consistently small, then there would be no more murky examples like that for opponents of cousin marriage to use against them. This would not only help drastically reduce health risks for children, but it would leave us with better examples to help fight the stigma long-term.
Human beings took our animal need for palatable food … and turned it into chocolate souffles with salted caramel cream. We took our ability to co-operate as a social species … and turned it into craft circles and bowling leagues and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We took our capacity to make and use tools … and turned it into the Apollo moon landing. We took our uniquely precise ability to communicate through language … and turned it into King Lear.
None of these things are necessary for survival and reproduction. That is exactly what makes them so splendid. When we take our basic evolutionary wiring and transform it into something far beyond any prosaic matters of survival and reproduction … that’s when humanity is at its best. That’s when we show ourselves to be capable of creating meaning and joy, for ourselves and for one another. That’s when we’re most uniquely human.
And the same is true for sex. Human beings have a deep, hard-wired urge to replicate our DNA, instilled in us by millions of years of evolution. And we’ve turned it into an intense and delightful form of communication, intimacy, creativity, community, personal expression, transcendence, joy, pleasure, and love. Regardless of whether any DNA gets replicated in the process.
Why should we see this as sinful? What makes this any different from chocolate souffles and King Lear?
Greta Christina (Sex and the Off-Label Use of Our Bodies) (via sexisnottheenemy)
Sadly, those who find our sexuality to be “sinful” also find our other creative endeavors to be sinful as well. Those who go after those of us who are LGBT are the first ones to ban books, boycott shows, etc.
(via mutantlexi) (via terrorsteel)
(via thefinalmanifesto)
Wow, that is so true… like that cousin marriage book that was on that library site, where they were asking whether or not it should be banned. That book contained FACTS around the topic rather than perpetuating more myths and misconceptions created by willfully blind cultural and religious prejudices. It really says something about a society when people try to control information itself from being put out there… anything that takes a neutral view of a subject that is considered taboo is often attacked by these same people because they know that accepting media or art that present these topics in a positive way is the start of examining it more closely in real life.
I also like what the quote was saying about sex. Something that I’ve noticed people do when making arguments against interbreeding and intermarriage is making this assumption that the couple should not be together because there are others out there that they can be with without taking as much of a reproductive risk. These arguments are misguided for two reasons: first, those making the comments are often speaking in ignorance, not knowing the actual facts behind the risks. Second, they fail to consider that the couple may be together for so much more than just the instinctual desire to reproduce… There’s so much more to a human relationship. Which means that those who make up the relationship are not exchangeable with just any random person in the population. They can be unique and irreplaceable to each other.
To say that certain couples (like a cousin couple for example) should break up because of reproductive risks is an insult to all mutual human relationships, because you are saying that it’s just that easy for people to let go since when it comes to sex all that matters is “replicating your DNA.”
(This is an old post, first posted on Tumblr in August 2014)
I began writing a piece on this topic earlier but I had to abandon it because the more I wrote, the more I realized what a complex topic it really is. The only part of the abandoned blog that I would repeat here is this: there is no easy answer.
The moment you begin to think about who should or shouldn’t have kids, when is the right time, how it should be accomplished, etc, you find yourself mired in a tangle of inconsistent rules and incomplete answers that are often only a reflection of your own (very personal) worldview. No matter how objectively you try to present the statement “you shouldn’t have children” to a consanguinamorous couple, no matter how hard you try to justify it on the basis of potential health risks, it still doesn’t change the fact that the issue is so much more complicated than one that could be brushed aside with a simple, impulsively uttered phrase.
✺
For information specific to cousin couple reproduction: have a glance at this blog I wrote about genetics.
♢ The Risks ♢
Much of the opposition towards consanguineous relationships is often based on a belief that the results of such unions would be “harmful to children.” If you’ve done your research you would know that this belief is not entirely without basis. There are genetic risks involved in making children with a blood-relation. However, these risks are often exaggerated in the eyes of people who seem to focus mostly on the negatives – or used as an excuse to halt themselves from exploring consanguinamory in depth. If there really were dramatic and frequent health problems, I doubt cousin marriage would be such a widespread practice. In fact, the chances of a cousin couple having a child with genetic defects are not much higher than those for non-related couples.
There is, however, a heightened risk factor if there are several generations of cousin marriages in either partner’s direct lineage (this is why genetic counselling examines at least 4 generations of your family history). One example of this scenario is Darwin’s family (there were several cousin marriages in both his lineage as well as his wife’s). See article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1270760/How-Charles-Darwins-family-paid-price-inbreeding.html
Although much of the details of Darwin’s family history can be disheartening and alarming, later studies on the subject have maintained that, “recessive or defect-carrying genes in a population may increase or decrease in instances of inbreeding. The frequency of birth defects depends on the availability and effectiveness of healthcare in a population.” (from article by thefinalmanifesto. See “Health of Their Children” Section)
Other studies of consanguineous reproduction in nature might give some weight to these later findings.
Just a glance at these examples and their conflicting implications is enough to give anyone a headache. Imagine how much more anxiety an actual consanguineous couple would experience when thinking about their odds and planning their future together. With so many different theories and case studies out there, which results do you believe? How do you begin to sort out the information when there are still missing gaps in the puzzle?
♢ The Couple ♢
People are so quick to use the phrases “you shouldn’t have children”, “they’ll be unhealthy”. When all else fails in the attempt to find strong arguments against consanguinamory, people seem to think that pointing out the risk factor is enough to discourage the couple, or to make them (the outsider) feel like they have some kind of special moral compass that the couples lack.
Many don’t pause to think how cruel and hurtful what they are saying may be to those being addressed. Inevitably you’re going to think it. If you are a responsible human being, you are naturally going to be worried about the risks of consanguineous lovers reproducing… Maybe the sense of responsibility you feel would even prevent you from supporting that kind of relationship altogether. Perhaps society has an underlying fear that if they encourage consanguinamory they have to take responsibility (indirectly) for any genetic problems that the offspring of these couples may have.
Yet if people really think this way, then their actions are inconsistent with their thoughts. Because there are many other couples whose love these same people would readily encourage without knowing anything about their genetics beyond what the eye can see. People don’t go around saying ‘don’t have children’ to non-related couples (who may or may not have bad genetics in their bloodlines), so why use it as an obligatory response reserved only for consanguineous partners?
When a non-related couple announce that they are dating or engaged, few would oppose them on the grounds of reproduction. They might oppose them for various other personal reasons (the man is ‘too old’, the woman is ‘too young’, one of them makes less money than the other, one of them has kids from a previous marriage, cultural differences, religious differences, etc). But rarely would someone say anything about making children (to their faces anyway). Even where a couple who had met later in life are concerned (their ages inevitably heightening the risks of reproduction), people might have enough courtesy not to mention the topic of making children to them – whatever their personal opinion on it. Why is it so hard to show the same sensitivity and respect towards consanguineous couples?
♢ Friends and Family ♢
It’s true that there is a considerable difference in the way strangers communicate and the way friends and family communicate with each other. Where a stranger could simply shrug off something that bothers them about someone else’s life as being of no consequence to their own, it might be difficult for a friend to stay silent on the same matter – especially if what they want to say is out of genuine concern for the wellbeing of the couple and potential kids.
So reactions of doubtfulness and hesitation might not always be the projection of someone’s social conditioning. It might be selfless concern, or maybe they are assuming a related couple wouldn’t want to have children anyway, or they are speaking with a lack of in-depth knowledge about the reproductive possibilities for consanguinamorous couples.
Where ever you are coming from, a little empathy would go a long way in figuring out the right thing to say – whether you’re approaching the issue as a friend, a concerned family member, or stranger to the couple. Have you ever had to go through life with a certain unalterable condition or reputation? For example, if you were always shorter than others your age, you might’ve heard these things – “you’re so tiny!” “girls don’t go for short guys” “try shopping in the kids’ section” – and other such redundant comments a million times. You’ve probably heard people point out the obvious SO often that you’ve become numb to it, but it still doesn’t quite cease to hurt.
It’s natural for people to want children with the person they love. Many gay people still want kids, so why not related couples? if they are responsible people, they already know what they are getting into. It would be difficult enough for them to overcome their own internal doubts and socially influenced ideas of morality. They would already be struggling with it on their own without needing someone else to point out the obvious. There are going to be risks. They likely already know that. And if they don’t, maybe you can educate them with some real facts, presented sensitively and neutrally, instead of discouraging them with exaggerated myths and your own preferences.
Telling a cousin couple that they shouldn’t have children with each other is in part an extension of the stigma attached to such relationships, and the stigma attached to such relationships is a result of the anxieties around reproduction – an unbroken loop of prejudice. But when you remove all those artificial and subjective boundaries, what’s left is two people with the potential to make a healthy family and have a loving relationship together, just like any other couple (give or take a few advantages and disadvantages, just like any other couple would have).
If you’re going to offer advice or suggestions, offer them something new – factual information to fill the gaps – something productive that’s actually going to help them make this incredibly important decision in life.
A consanguineous couple would already be carrying around internal stigma, arising from a fear of what others would say, anxiety about how their children or grandchildren might react to their relation. If you were a criminal (convicted for rape, murder, child abuse) that would be seriously difficult for the children to understand or accept… whereas finding out their ancestors were engaged in a stigmatized relationship, with mutual consent and for the sake of love, might be a truth they can come around to live with – and even be proud of. Compared to all possible family secrets, Love should be the least difficult thing to justify.
Take out all that self-censoring and socially constructed shame, and it can even be inspiring… Stories of love overcoming social boundaries can be one of the most inspiring things in the world. There’s no reason why consanguineous love can’t be looked on like that. If you raise your children to be open-minded people they should be able to appreciate the deeper implications of your life choices: that you value honesty, free will, being yourself even when the world is trying to make you something you’re not, building a life with the person you love the most and not a 2nd best, etc.
♢ The Future ♢
See here for a little glimpse into the history of oppression of minority groups. The arguments used against consanguinamorous couples are no different than those used to deny many other minorities’ their reproductive rights throughout history.
Quote from article by thefinalmanifesto (See “Health of Their Children” Section): “You’re probably also worried about how the child will deal with the taboo nature of its parents’ relationship. ‘Isn’t it better that a child grow up in a normal family?’ This is the kind of reasoning that punishes all sexual minorities for the bigotry of the majority. Not only do they have to deal with the derision of the masses, but now they have to give up their own children because of that derision? No enlightened person in this day and age would argue that we should take the children of same-sex couples away from them and have them raised in “normal” families. It would be barbarous, and yet there are homophobic reactionaries who argue against same-sex adoption with a similar argument. We should never let the bigotry of others police our families. A child can learn to deal with ostracism, as long as they have a good support network at home, but no child can learn to live without experiencing love. Isn’t it better that this child grows up in an “abnormal” household that loves them dearly, than a “normal” one that doesn’t?”
This is one part of the argument that appears to be overlooked in studies. There is already so little data to work with when considering the possibilities. Something that would add a lot of weight and insight to the dialogues around reproduction is if the children of these couples can come forward and speak for themselves (just talking about how they deal with stigma, how they feel about their parents’ consanguinity, their quality of life, any disadvantages, family life, personal views on relationships, etc). It might help consanguineous couples make an even more informed decision about their own plans for making a family. A good variety of interviews could potentially show that the issue isn’t so black and white and that making children doesn’t automatically lead to regret (either on the part of the children or the parents). It might also help deconstruct the arguments that many make about children being harmed in consanguineous unions.
♢ Internal Stigma ♢
If you’re part of a minority you will be fighting stigma in various levels all throughout your life. Gay people for instance, often struggle with internal homophobia before they come out. Then they have to re-structure for themselves everything they’ve ever been taught about marriage, making a family, finding community, etc. So this process – of discovering one’s true desires – is a life-long struggle for anyone in a minority. It’s a struggle against the oppression from the majority, who push their values and ideals onto everyone uniformly, not accounting for individual differences.
The worst kind of stigma would be the kind that comes from within the minority community itself. I’m not sure how it’s like in the cousin couple community, but I’ve come across others who are more closely related discouraging each other from making biological children with their partners. Perhaps this is due to the heightened risk factor which cousin couples (fortunately) do not have much of (with the exception of those with multiple cousin marriages in their direct lineage), but a large part of it seems to come directly from within.
Just because you’re at one stage of your personal journey doesn’t mean you have all the answers for another person. They may appear to be like you on the surface, but beneath that they could be seeing things from a totally different vantage point. They could’ve overcome some part of the stigma another individual or couple is still struggling with. They could be looking forward to making a family, or being open about the nature of their relationship with friends. No one knows the future and you can’t decide what another person wants or needs just by glancing at the surface. This is all the more reason to be sensitive when having a dialogue on this subject.
Lastly, encouraging a consanguineous couple doesn’t mean you have to take responsibility for everything they do in life. If they’re responsible people, they’d be prepared to take responsibility for their own lives and their children’s lives.
Just like any other couple.
rainbowamory 