All that said, I have a hard time agreeing with the argument that adult father-daughter incest is always, without exception, rape.
Well, golly, Tracy Clark-Flory: in CandyLand were unicorns shit rainbows and little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks this would be a reasonable position to take. In the real world we actually live in it's a foolish, contemptuous notion.
But I could not articulate this nearly well enough to justify the pixels sleeting into your eyes. Happily, Steve Barnes did it so I do not have to.
The hideous McKenzie Phillips incest revelation started a debate in the blogosphere about whether or not parent-child incest is always rape. My thought is that it is always just about the sickest thing in the world, a violation of every imaginable social rule in 99.9% of the world's societies through most of time. Children enter the world so damned helpless, and need desperately to bond to their parents, the source of love, food, shelter, education, and so much more. There is just no way that that bond, once formed, could possibly be expected to magically transform into a mature, non-abusive sexual relationship. And what if the parent didn't raise the child? And neither of them wish to have children? Separate from the genetic component (tribes encourage exogamy to provide genetic variation) there is the question of social good. In other words, I wouldn't doubt that there might be some extraordinary circumstances in which such relationships are not evil. But creating a context in which they are accepted opens the door to an abuse potential in other relationships that is simply not worth even considering changing our social attitudes.
Can an adult woman make the decision to have sex with her father? Well, obviously. And what should we think about it? The only safe conclusion, if we wish to protect the little girls who are looking at their Daddies as god-creatures and wish desperately to please them...is no. Can an adult man make the decision to have sex with his mother? Well, obviously. But again, in whatever grotesquely rarified atmosphere such unions would be considered "healthy", the door has opened to an horrific violation of the basic protections of children. I see no way that it could ever be in a society's interests to do other than look upon such relationships as ghastly.
There is a reason he makes a good living slapping words onto paper. See also the Hangdogs' Flatlands
She held her tongue about the other women
She held her tongue when he drank all the rent
She shot em when she caught him with her daughter
Told the sheriff that's one sin I won't repent
Via TJIC who has strong words of his own for this nonsense.
