My cousins are having sex!

by Blair Bishop
Sex.scoop.co.nz

University researchers claim first cousins are at no more risk of creating a child with birth defects than is a woman over the age of 40. Research by Otago University professor of molecular ecology and evolution, Hamish Spencer, and US researcher Diane Paul, of Harvard University found that birth defects are only marginally higher in cousins. Offspring defects in cousins occur only at an equivalent rate to birth defects in the children of women over forty. Their findings suggest that laws which ban cousin sex are based on outmoded beliefs about the chance of genetic abnormality.

When it comes to cousin sex laws in many countries still reflect a belief that cousin sex, sexual deviance and ‘six fingered birth defects’ go hand in hand. Deliverance,  a 1970’s movie in which Burt Reynolds rescues his friends from sexual violence at the hands of two inbred hillbillies highlights commonly held cultural misconceptions about cousin sex.

Sure sibling inbreeding has given rise to things like ‘the royal family’, but how little does the gene pool have to get before it is too small. It seems that the biological parameters are more relaxed than the moral parameters.

Confession and help websites are strewn with ‘I slept with my cousin’ disclosures, and these declarations are resoundingly guilt laden. The writers are clearly overwrought and worried that they are sick for doing such things.

Cousin sex is quite a searchable philosophical debate on-line, with people saying resoundingly they have no moral qualms but would never do ‘it’ themselves. Some conclude that siblings and close cousins; that is those who live near vicinity of one and other, even biologically unrelated ones, are less measurably less attracted to each other than the to the population in general.

I am not sure that I was thinking that at 14, when my cousin and I were prised apart in the throes of teenage passion. As we screamed for the right to unite, both our sets of parents laughed. Admittedly we were both particularly drunk (a vice quite happily overlooked by our respective older kin), and I vaguely remember her looking out the window for me as I was locked in the car like a dog! Now this was a good thing in my case, but I think we must have been quite attracted to each other. I suspect many of us have had cousin encounters but we don’t bring these stories up around the water cooler.

The notion of ‘cousin sex ‘quite nicely encapsulates the sexual moral quandaries many people needlessly fall into over sexual preferences which they do not understand. In some parts of the world cousin marriage is vociferously valued and in other parts illegal.

Cautionary tales often spin out of these ‘dilemmas’. As a young man I gave consideration, all be it faint, as to how my masturbation related to my deteriorating short sightedness. Sex often becomes a focal point of prejudice. Don’t forget how dire for the state of the world interracial sex was going to be, and listen out for the funny but telling line about the anus being a one way valve. Maybe now is a good time for the popular perception that ‘sex with your cousin makes deformed babies’ to join the ranks of such ideas as gay sex is unnatural, and masturbation makes you blind.

Blair Bishop is mental health clinician specialising in Sex, Drugs, Alochol and youth and blogging for Scoop at http://sex.scoop.co.nz. He can be contacted at Blair@sassi-inc.com