Incest—Common Practice?

When I think of incest, I picture the little redneck boy strumming his banjo in the film Deliverance, looking out of his little black eyes with a blank stare.


Incest is what happens in backcountry somewhere, in small towns inhabited by toothless, uneducated rednecks named Bubba. Right? Wrong. With the recent news of a father-and-daughter couple from Australia, John and Jenny Deaves (what an attractive pair!), "coming out" and talking about their seven plus years relationship and the little baby they've produced and are raising, people are discovering that incest is not just a redneck taboo.


Incest comes in many flavors. There is the unfortunate coerced kind—as in, "Hey, honey, it's your daddy, now slide on over in this here bed and be a good a girl." Examples of this type of incest abound in popular culture. Just think of Mallory Knox in Natural Born Killers and her creepy father (who, incidentally, reminds me of John Deaves in the picture above), who tells her to wash up and be clean for him when he comes upstairs.


Or the video for Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun," where Janie finally snaps and shoots the father who has been repeatedly molesting her.


Then there's the accidental or unintentional kind of incest. As in, "Wait, are you telling me that all this time I've been fucking my own twin brother?" Now this one actually did happen recently, as the public have learned. A British couple met and married each other, settling in for a life of happily ever after. Not so fast! One day, the newlyweds discovered that they in fact were twins, separated at birth. Horror and shock ensued and the marriage was annulled.

The final kind of incest is the mutual and consenting kind. In my opinion, it is the most cringe-worthy, because the couple involved doesn't care that they are blood relatives, that they share a parent (or both) or that one of them is the other's parent or child. This one brings us back to John and Jenny Deaves. Unlike the British twins, the Deaves express no horror at the fact that they are immediate relatives. In fact, they embrace it. "We're just like any other family," they say. And, perhaps, the world shouldn't care what these eccentric two do behind close doors...if not for one small fact. Their baby.

Imagine discovering one day that your mommy is also your daddy's baby, and your daddy is also your granddaddy and your mommy is also your...sister? In the sage words of Bugs Bunny, "Nah, I don't think so!"