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Incest Is Best?

Consanguineous marriage is not a good thing for any resulting kids.

The elephant in the room is the fact that it is disproportionately common among British families of Pakistani/Bangladeshi origin, where there's a centuries-old tradition of cousin/cousin marriage.

A recent Waily Fail article summarises several research projects, and some anecdotal information, into a feature that doesn't make comfortable reading.

maximus otter


I wasn't going to go there, but I heard a documentary on Radio 4 recently that interviewed a woman who had lost 3 children to a genetic disease after marrying her cousin. As a bereaved parent I felt nothing but sympathy until she said that she knew that God would allow her to have a child who lived. Eventually.

Of course one explanation for the Cleveland Sex Abuse scandal was that doctors finally couldn't cope with the significant amount of children suffering parental abuse, supposedly rife in isolated North Yorkshire villages.
 
I love you! Yet again my flawless memory has failed me! I thought it was a kiwi film and from about 1971.
 
I think it was aimed at the morality of consenting adults.
 
I think it was aimed at the morality of consenting adults.

True, but your average consenting adult doesn't go in for incest. A sister and brother who had sex together as adults would doing something abnormal and they'd know it. So there'd be something wrong there.
 
When I was at Bangor University in the mid to late 80s, certain families from Bethesda would shamble into town occasionally. It was fairly obvious that they were, er, close-knit.

We've been cycling round there. Bethesda isn't exactly the big city, is it? Probably not much to do if you're not into sheep.
 
An edition of the UK TV police series Z Cars had an incest theme. Can remember watching the episode in about 1976. It was played very seriously indeed, a fantastic storyline.

It went thusly:

A woman makes a rape complaint against a workman who was with a company doing road repairs or whatever outside her house. The man is arrested but swears she led him on. She says she was just being friendly to the workers. I think she offered them refreshments and he attacked her when he went to collect them.

When inquiries are going on the woman and her male partner are found dead. Turns out that they were a sister and brother who'd lived together as a couple. They killed themselves in fear that their incest would become public.

One of the officers discussed it with a psychiatrist afterwards. He was told that the woman might have unconsciously led the man on, because she knew her relationship with her brother was unnatural and may have wanted validation of her attractiveness as a woman from another man.


Total victim-blaming bollocks of course. The brother might feel the same but he wasn't out on the pull.
The officer who'd spoken with the psychiatrist believed the woman was telling the truth, incest or not, and that the man might have done it before or might again. The police believed her.
 
An edition of the UK TV police series Z Cars had an incest theme. Can remember watching the episode in about 1976. It was played very seriously indeed, a fantastic storyline.

It went thusly:

A woman makes a rape complaint against a workman who was with a company doing road repairs or whatever outside her house. The man is arrested but swears she led him on. She says she was just being friendly to the workers. I think she offered them refreshments and he attacked her when he went to collect them.

When inquiries are going on the woman and her male partner are found dead. Turns out that they were a sister and brother who'd lived together as a couple. They killed themselves in fear that their incest would become public.

One of the officers discussed it with a psychiatrist afterwards. He was told that the woman might have unconsciously led the man on, because she knew her relationship with her brother was unnatural and may have wanted validation of her attractiveness as a woman from another man.

Total victim-blaming bollocks of course. The brother might feel the same but he wasn't out on the pull.
The officer who'd spoken with the psychiatrist believed the woman was telling the truth, incest or not, and that the man might have done it before or might again. The police believed her.

Ah….Z cars Scargy, that’s stirred a few memories. I have a Fortean story about Z cars, which I will share with you now.

Years ago I dated a girl who’s uncle is a well-known actor. Just before Christmas one year we were visiting her Grandmother, to find the actor uncle had also decided to visit her that day.

We were sitting in the living room with cups of tea, when a neighbour popped in with a Christmas card, she said hello to all of us but said she couldn’t stop as she was busy with Christmas shopping – this neighbour had always claimed to be a psychic medium, and when she left the uncle told me a very interesting story about her.

Back in the late 60’s the uncle was a young man just starting out in the acting world, and looking for any work that came his way. Early one morning he was sitting in his agents office, when a call came through from the set of Z cars, asking for a young male to play a bit part for the day, the uncle agrees to do it and gets himself over to the studio.

The scene he has to play is to resist arrest, as 4 or 5 police officers attempt to forcibly put him into the back of a police van, after a few takes the director is happy, the scene ends, and as there is no more scenes left for him to play he goes home (back to his Mother’s house)

As he’s walking down the street in which his Mother lives, he notices the psychic neighbour standing on her doorstep staring at him with a face like thunder. He says hello to her but through gritted teeth invites him into her house, and to take a seat in the kitchen.

As soon as he sat down she rip’s into him about, how kind and decent his parents are, and that he should not bring any trouble back to his parents’ house. Confused he asks what on earth she thinks he’s done, and she tells him she saw him in her minds eye, and that she saw him fighting with the police, and that she saw him be arrested and be put in the back of a police van.

He tells her that he’s just come from the set at Z cars, and what she’d just described was true but only for a piece of Television.

She looked thoughtfully at him, for a moment, smiles and says “Ah that will be that then, you had me worried there”

Strange story I think.
 
I reckon the late great Philip José Farmer described it most eloquently in his brilliant Riverworld saga:

"Consider this. Each generation of your ancestors, going back in time, doubles its number. You were born in 1925. You had two parents, born in 1900. (Yes, I know you were born in 1923 and your mother was forty when she bore you. But this is an ideal case, an average.)

Your parents' parents were born in 1875. That makes four. Double your ancestors every twenty-five years. By 1800, you have thirty-two ancestors. Most of them didn't even know each other, but they were "destined" to be your great-great-great grandparents.

In 1700 a.d., you have five hundred and twelve ancestors. In 1600 a.d. 8192 ancestors. In 1500 A.D., 131,072 ancestors. In 1400, 2,097,152. In 1300, 33,554,432. By 1200 A.D., you have 536,870,912 ancestors.

So do I. So does everybody. If the world population was, say, two billion in 1925 (I don't remember what it was), then multiply that by the number of your ancestors in 1200 A.D. You get over one quadrillion. Impossible? Right.

I just happen to remember that in 1600 the estimated world population was five hundred million. In 1 a.d. , it was an estimated 138,000,000. So, the conclusion is obvious. There was a hell of a lot of incest, close and remote, going on in the past. Not to mention the present. Probably from the dawn of humankind. So, you and I are related. And, in fact, it may be possible that we're all related, many times over. How many Chinese and black Africans born in 1925 were distant cousins of you and me? Plenty, I'd say."

Or, to illustrate the principle;

PSX_20191010_140332.jpg
 
Ah….Z cars Scargy, that’s stirred a few memories. I have a Fortean story about Z cars, which I will share with you now.

Years ago I dated a girl who’s uncle is a well-known actor. Just before Christmas one year we were visiting her Grandmother, to find the actor uncle had also decided to visit her that day.

We were sitting in the living room with cups of tea, when a neighbour popped in with a Christmas card, she said hello to all of us but said she couldn’t stop as she was busy with Christmas shopping – this neighbour had always claimed to be a psychic medium, and when she left the uncle told me a very interesting story about her.

Back in the late 60’s the uncle was a young man just starting out in the acting world, and looking for any work that came his way. Early one morning he was sitting in his agents office, when a call came through from the set of Z cars, asking for a young male to play a bit part for the day, the uncle agrees to do it and gets himself over to the studio.

The scene he has to play is to resist arrest, as 4 or 5 police officers attempt to forcibly put him into the back of a police van, after a few takes the director is happy, the scene ends, and as there is no more scenes left for him to play he goes home (back to his Mother’s house)

As he’s walking down the street in which his Mother lives, he notices the psychic neighbour standing on her doorstep staring at him with a face like thunder. He says hello to her but through gritted teeth invites him into her house, and to take a seat in the kitchen.

As soon as he sat down she rip’s into him about, how kind and decent his parents are, and that he should not bring any trouble back to his parents’ house. Confused he asks what on earth she thinks he’s done, and she tells him she saw him in her minds eye, and that she saw him fighting with the police, and that she saw him be arrested and be put in the back of a police van.

He tells her that he’s just come from the set at Z cars, and what she’d just described was true but only for a piece of Television.

She looked thoughtfully at him, for a moment, smiles and says “Ah that will be that then, you had me worried there”

Strange story I think.

What a fantastic story! I love it!

Here's another, not personal to me but something I read about.

Way back in the '80s there was an article in the Guardian about an actor, unnamed but apparently well-known, who had the gift. In between performances or during a lull in rehearsals he'd entertain the cast with messages from The Other Side.

The actor's demeanour would become serious and he'd appear to be listening respectfully and trying hard to repeat exactly what was being said to him by the Spirits.

The witness said that a Spirit wanted to express their thanks to a woman present for taking care of her. The woman was puzzled at first but as more details were given she recognised the scenario and went pale.

Eventually the actor came out of his trance or whatever and carried on with his lines or whatever. The woman who'd had the message explained to the witness what it was about.

Apparently when the woman was a child she lived in a poor area of an industrial city and her mother used to lay out the dead ready for the undertakers. Sometimes the child had to go with her. On one such occasion they laid out a very young baby girl. The daughter helped her mother lay out the baby with kindness and dignity, as she'd been taught to.

(It might be that she did most of the work and did something extra like leave flowers or tie a bow round the child's head, I'm not sure.)

It was upsetting and she'd never talked about it so nobody there knew. The message was to thank her for being so kind at such a young age.
Brilliant, eh!
 
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BMCS,

Re 278 above.

Oddly, many people can't make this connection.
.

INT21
 
What a fantastic story! I love it!

Here's another, not personal to me but something I read about.

Way back in the '80s there was an article in the Guardian about an actor, unnamed but apparently well-known, who had the gift. In between performances or during a lull in rehearsals he'd entertain the cast with messages from The Other Side.

This was done seriously. The actor's demeanour would become serious and he'd appear to be listening respectfully and trying hard to repeat exactly what was being said to him by the Spirits.

The witness said that a Spirit wanted to express their thanks to a woman present for taking care of her. The woman was puzzled at first but as more details were given she recognised the scenario and went pale.

Eventually the actor came out of his trance or whatever and carried on with his lines or whatever. The woman who'd had the message explained to the witness what it was about.

Apparently when the woman was a child she lived in a poor area of an industrial city and her mother used to lay out the dead ready for the undertakers. Sometimes the child had to go with her. On one such occasion they laid out a very young baby girl. The daughter helped her mother lay out the baby with kindness and dignity, as she'd been taught to.

(It might be that she did most of the work and did something extra like leave flowers or tie a bow round the child's head, I'm not sure.)

It was upsetting and she'd never talked about it so nobody there knew. The message was to thank her for being so kind at such a young age.
Brilliant, eh!

Although mostly fraudulent Scargy, some of these mediums do seem to get it eerily spot on a lot of the time.

A workmate of mine who is 100% sceptic when it comes to things fortean, told me this story quite recently.

Many years ago (well over 20) my workmate was working for a company that held a corporate Halloween party for both staff and clients.

As a gimmick for the party, a psychic medium is hired for the night, so both the staff members and their guests can have a reading - my workmate decides to have one and whilst the reading is mainly positive, the medium does stress quite strongly, that she must be very weary with a man who has a bald eagle tattoo on his left shoulder.

The reading ends and is soon forgotten about, the years roll by and eventually my workmate meets a man, falls in love and gets married.

Not long after the wedding day her husband begins to change, whereas during the courting process he had been loving and attentive, he has now become possessive and abusive. The abuse gets worse to the extent that she starts fearing for her wellbeing - in short he has become violent towards her.

One evening the husband comes home drunk with his back bloodied and bandaged. After a few days the bandage was taken off to reveal a freshly inked tattoo in the left hand side of his shoulder – you can probably guess what of.

She divorced him in the end, but not before continued violent abuse, police involvement, him stalking her and the subsequent injunctions taken against him etc.

Sometimes, life can be very strange.
 
Although mostly fraudulent Scargy, some of these mediums do seem to get it eerily spot on a lot of the time.

A workmate of mine who is 100% sceptic when it comes to things fortean, told me this story quite recently.

Many years ago (well over 20) my workmate was working for a company that held a corporate Halloween party for both staff and clients.

As a gimmick for the party, a psychic medium is hired for the night, so both the staff members and their guests can have a reading - my workmate decides to have one and whilst the reading is mainly positive, the medium does stress quite strongly, that she must be very weary with a man who has a bald eagle tattoo on his left shoulder.

The reading ends and is soon forgotten about, the years roll by and eventually my workmate meets a man, falls in love and gets married.

Not long after the wedding day her husband begins to change, whereas during the courting process he had been loving and attentive, he has now become possessive and abusive. The abuse gets worse to the extent that she starts fearing for her wellbeing - in short he has become violent towards her.

One evening the husband comes home drunk with his back bloodied and bandaged. After a few days the bandage was taken off to reveal a freshly inked tattoo in the left hand side of his shoulder – you can probably guess what of.

She divorced him in the end, but not before continued violent abuse, police involvement, him stalking her and the subsequent injunctions taken against him etc.

Sometimes, life can be very strange.

So the medium foresaw not only that a man with that tattoo would be dangerous, but that he would be getting the tattoo AFTER the customer met him! Eery indeed.
 
I enjoyed your story @Dick Turpin but I do have to wonder what the "hit rate" for stories like that is, as in: throw enough mud and some sticks. Physic readings/visions etc are going to be right some occasionally, people will generally forget those that prove wrong.
 
I am surprised this is considered newsworthy. Most Muslims live in fear of each other, and are scared of inter-clan marriages and the potential for tribal violence they represent. To quote my informant Ibrahim Al Bashiri who lived in Aden, but is now dead due to the war in Yemen:

"It is one thing to strike your wife if she is your cousin, for none will take offense. How can they, for your Nephews and Uncles too beat their wives who are your sisters ? Now if your wife, she comes from another family, far away, and they hear of her treatment, they may take offense and start a feud that lasts for years with many dead for that dishonor. So how then is a man to have peace under his roof if he cannot discipline his wife? So we marry our cousins, for the sake of a quiet life, and it is wise to do so."
 
Most Muslims live in fear of each other, and are scared of inter-clan marriages and the potential for tribal violence they represent.
You get the same argument popping up in non-Muslim tribal societies, of course. See the War of the Spanish Succession, for example. It's an issue within several of the more orthodox branches of a number of faiths, too.

I read something about this a longish time ago (cannot remember where for the moment owing to caffeine deficit), the gist being that areas that have remained sparse and remote and haven't been subjected to a rigorous system of governance will fall into the "keeping it in the family" dictum. Examples were Siberia, Mongolia, and the Appalachians. Not many Muslims in there.
 
You get the same argument popping up in non-Muslim tribal societies, of course. See the War of the Spanish Succession, for example. It's an issue within several of the more orthodox branches of a number of faiths, too.I read something about this a longish time ago (cannot remember where for the moment owing to caffeine deficit), the gist being that areas that have remained sparse and remote and haven't been subjected to a rigorous system of governance will fall into the "keeping it in the family" dictum. Examples were Siberia, Mongolia, and the Appalachians. Not many Muslims in there.
Spanish culture is specifically very affected by Muslim culture due to the centuries of occupation by Muslim warlords, until the Reconquista. As to Central Asia, much the same situation applies, with multiple waves of Muslim warlords only ever being punctuated by the Mongols and their genocidal attacks on the region, who later converted to Islam and became the even more genocide prone Timurid empire.

The Appalachians are a different situation entirely, and you have not properly characterised the sociological problems of the region, which date back to the period of indentured servitude, where runaways lived in fear of literally everyone for generations, and often still do. This causes a destructive and baseless insularity and tribalism that is reinforced by poverty, criminal behavior, and an active hatred of education and what it represents. This all leads to a very limited gene pool and a cult-like social structure, which is further reinforced by the multiple instances of incest in the Bible, where it is sanctioned by God. Specifically Abraham and Sarah, Lot and his daughters, and all the descendents of Adam and Eve (etc). It is a wonder the church made incest a sin, really.
 
Looking at art online today. Discussion of Spanish royal portraiture always involves explanations of facial deformities known as the Hapsburg Jaw, which was, as discussed above, most likely caused by interbreeding in the Spanish royal family.

So, led astray by the richness of this fascinating subject, I came across this page on a Morrissey fan site messageboard.
(Morrissey Solo, a safe site.)

Morrissey and the Habsburg jaw from inbreeding revealed

Morrissey had an operation on his jaw to correct it. There's a link to a YouTube video of him talking in 1985 with his original jaw intact.
There are also photos of famous people with a similar feature, including our own late dear Sir Jimmy Hill, he of the most famous chin both in soccer and in playground vernacular.

We should really have a thread on this. I'd read every word.
 
I have a nose which is apparently a family nose. Might even have saved a womans life once, the king didn't chop her head off. Not sure how far back in time it goes though.
 
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I knew someone who had a nose.

And oddly enough, his nose came up, and up again with friends kids.

He used to joke about it; he helped friends out if they had problems...

(One wonders why they had problems?)


He died at 92, and some of those noses who attended his funeral were on very young faces....
 
My wife watched a documentary about the incest "epidemic" on France 4 TV only last night - Inceste : écouter les victimes et prévenir (Incest - listen to victims and prevent).

Looks like France is finally facing up to this shameful legacy which, for decades, has been something of an omertà.
 
:bump:

Was looking for a photo and came across this thread. Coincidentally, I'd just been reading about Lawrence Durrell's alleged abuse of his daughter Sappho.

I believe it happened. Sappho killed herself in 1985 and after her father's later death her diaries were made public.
At the time the abuse was still called 'incest' or an 'incestuous relationship' rather than what it was.
 
I don't know, the word "incest" is really bad as it is!
 
I don't know, the word "incest" is really bad as it is!

Yes but it could be consenting adults: siblings, cousins for example.

There can also be abuse between siblings and cousins of course.
 
I would question how consenting that kind of sex is, but this isn't my field of expertise.
 
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