sorry, Ivy
-
scarlettbees — 11 years ago(April 28, 2014 06:02 AM)
Okay, let me try this again
You meet Charles and Ivy at a cocktail party in New York. They are super sweet and are obviously happy together and in love. You even keep in contact with them for whatever reason.
A few months later, you find out the truth. Somehow, some way, the truth is out. You have not witnessed the horrible antics of this family, only that Ivy has mentioned that her family is "nuts" and she doesn't really talk to them.
Yet you find out this detail. HOW would you react? Your gut reaction.
And please, PLEASE be honest. -
Sook-Yongsheng — 11 years ago(April 28, 2014 09:59 AM)
Yet you find out this detail. HOW would you react? Your gut reactionAnd please, PLEASE be honest.
Okay, let
me
try this again, and it will
still
be honest:
I would say to myself "It's their life, it's not for me to judge. They should be together if they want to and if they love each other which they do."
Get the picture? Not all of us are so judgmental. -
cpoet — 11 years ago(May 02, 2014 06:56 AM)
Okay, I took your test and seriously tried to imagine myself in the proposed hypothetical scenario. Nope. Outrage meter: zero. More like, "Well, there's something you don't run into every day."
I see where you're coming from. A few years ago, I learned that a seemingly decent enough man I knew owned a puppymill. So based on that one single piece of information, I became instantly disgusted by him.
There are so many child abusers, spouse beaters, sex slave traffickers, racists, rapists, schoolyard/internet bullies, etc. among us who actually cause suffering in the world. Is it possible to save the disapproval for them and just give everyone else a pass? -
Sook-Yongsheng — 11 years ago(May 03, 2014 04:05 AM)
I learned that a seemingly decent enough man I knew owned a puppymill.
I would say that the situation with Ivy and Little Charles is not even in the same
category
as running a puppy mill. Puppy mill owners ought to be put up against a wall and shot.
There are so many child abusers, spouse beaters, sex slave traffickers, racists, rapists, schoolyard/internet bullies, etc. among us who actually cause suffering in the world. Is it possible to save the disapproval for them and just give everyone else a pass?
Beautifully stated. That's the fair and sensible viewpoint.
IMHO, of course. -
ForeverVR46 — 11 years ago(October 14, 2014 06:05 PM)
Amen on the puppy mill owners! I work in husky rescue(and have 3 of them that just didn't leave LOL) and I want to bitch-slap anyone like that. On the other hand, I have two cousins who are first cousins to each other, married and had 8 slightly "off" children. I don't claim any of them as family and they don't claim me either(my father was a product of my grandmother's first marriage and never as good as her children from her second marriage). No loss on my part but if they ran a puppy mill I would be all over them with my 3 rescues and all the people that I work with in rescue.
-
GravityCakes — 11 years ago(November 20, 2014 06:12 PM)
Exactly. That is my feeling as well. They are not hurting anyone else, they are adults, there are no children in the future, and they actually love and support each other, which is nice to see these days. A lot of my peers have gone through or are going through divorces (I am in my forties), so the fact that they are a happy couple is what is most significant to me. At this point I don't have any interest in being "disgusted" or "morally outraged" by a loving couple. As you say Sook-Yongsheng, save the disapproval for people who are actually hurting animals and/or other human beings.
"Hearts and kidneys are tinker toys! I am talking about the central nervous system!" -
TracesOfLove — 11 years ago(June 02, 2014 10:06 AM)
"Okay, let me try this again
You meet Charles and Ivy at a cocktail party in New York. They are super sweet and are obviously happy together and in love. You even keep in contact with them for whatever reason.
A few months later, you find out the truth. Somehow, some way, the truth is out. You have not witnessed the horrible antics of this family, only that Ivy has mentioned that her family is "nuts" and she doesn't really talk to them.
Yet you find out this detail. HOW would you react? Your gut reaction.
And please, PLEASE be honest."
I would at first laugh and be like "Oh man that's crazy!". I would think it was gross but I wouldn't care since it doesn't affect me in anyway except the bizarre experience of meeting such a couple. I would find it very interesting. Like a real life Flowers in the Attic, and wonder how crazy her family must be and the stories she could tell. In the movie I thought it was gross when they were merely first cousins so the brother and sister thing didn't really make me that much more grossed out than I already was. I like interesting people and as long as they aren't hurting anyone it's cool with me. I'm so conditioned to think incest is gross, I can't even think otherwise. But then you see royals marrying cousins, as well as people throughout history(I've heard of Orthodox Jewish people marrying cousins), not to mention the Bible! So maybe I abhor it because I was programmed to. Maybe it is programmed in us so we don't create strong powerful families. Because high society seemed to encourage it quite a lot. The only other people you hear about committing incest are the proletarians who tend to be uneducated which means they probably skipped the programming to think it's wrong. So maybe it's not as weird and unnatural as we'd like to think. -
butaneggbert — 11 years ago(October 26, 2014 12:12 PM)
What's interesting about the scenario you set up is that it divorces their situation from everything we know about them. In other words, "Let's say you didn't have the facts, and met them in the most superficial way, and learned the most hot-button, least-explicated fact of their lives. What would you think?"
Now why would you posit that as the most authentic reaction to their situation? I think it's just the opposite: I think it explores the most knee-jerk, least-informed reaction any of us could produce.
Their relationship is "incestuous" only in the most technical sense. They weren't raised as brother and sister. Their affection for each other grew as it would have between any two people with a more socially acceptable distance.
And you have to examine what "incest" is, in Western culture. It has two primary facets: a romantic association between siblings, and the sexual involvement between them that could produce a genetically flawed offspring.
The first has an "ick" factor that's as much an emotional reaction as a logical, legal one.
The second is a genuine societal concern. As a culture, we're invested in having the strongest, most capable citizens possible.
When you react to Ivy and Charles, you can't consider that more reasonable, logical element, because they're not going to have children.
You can barely consider the brother/sister element, because that's not the structure they were raised with.
So discarding the validity of their relationship with "Ick, incest!" doesn't stand up to scrutiny. -
sabar-1 — 11 years ago(November 09, 2014 08:01 AM)
Interesting comments but I do think most people have some sort of built in factor - maybe evolutionary in some way. For instance, my husband had a son with a girlfriend before our marriage. This son is a half brother to a younger daughter. They grew up in different states and rarely saw each other. However, they love each other as brother and sister - I don't think a thought of them as some sort of romantic couple has ever entered their minds. I think this is the case for most people.
(This excludes sexual desire in teens - I personally know more than one woman whose full brother raped them as teens growing up in the same house. That is a completely different discussion.)
Rachel -
GravityCakes — 11 years ago(November 20, 2014 05:28 PM)
Oh please. I think i have heard many much more "shocking" revelations over the years than this one. It has been common historically for related persons, especially cousins, including first cousins, to marry especially among members of the aristocracy. Mary and Matthew on Downton Abbey were cousins (and Mary's first fiance was a cousin as well). Sure, it is unusual in 2014 American culture for incestuous hookups (at least publicly admitted), but I honestly would give a rat's behind the same way that I wouldn't care if they mentioned that they were into bdsm. They are a loving couple, and at this point in my life, I would be happy for them, as I have seen many marriages and relationships fall apart at this point in my life. I have seen friends "come out" in their fifties who were from what the rest of us knew happily married with kids, etc. But I am a married man in my forties so I have seen and heard quite a bit over the years. They are not having children, so that issue is off the table.
Interestingly this is a theme in the film Lone Star (another Chris Cooper film). I won't spoil it but the response is quite amusing.
"Hearts and kidneys are tinker toys! I am talking about the central nervous system!" -
TrevorReznick — 11 years ago(January 14, 2015 02:53 PM)
Interestingly this is a the
me in the film Lone Star (another Chris Cooper film).
Yes, someone mentioned that on another thread:
http://www.imdb.com/board/11322269/board/thread/225174186?p=2&d=2 25231941
Ironic about Chris Cooper's character in Lone Star being in the same boat as Little Charles in A:OC. And Cooper's character in A:OC happens to be the
uncle
(loving and supportive, naturally) of the nephew character in the same situation.
Cooper rocks, he is such a wonderful actor!
Hard to believe that country used to rule anything -
-
img54-1 — 11 years ago(December 13, 2014 05:38 PM)
Why on earth would anyone they casually meet find out they are sister and brother? First cousins yes, and that's actually quite legal in most places in the USA (I think.) They wouldn't ever need to tell anyone that they're really half siblings.