viscousmemories

There have been several threads housing discussion of whether incest is immoral, so I don't think that needs to be rehashed here. I am more interested in hearing what people have to say about the morality of fantasy, and I'm using an incest scenario as a prop. I hope for the focus of the discussion to be on the questions following the description of the hypothetical scenario.

Scenario:

A man realizes a sexual attraction to his 15 year old daughter. He believes that it would be psychologically damaging to her, not to mention immoral, for him to even reveal his attraction to her much less act on it. Because he has no desire to cause her pain, and he tries his best to be a moral person, he never intentionally gives her any indication of his feelings.

Now:

Is it immoral (or otherwise 'wrong', if that's possible) for him to fantasize about having sex with her? Does the frequency, duration, or content of the fantasies matter? Does it make a difference if he masturbates while he fantasizes?

vm

VivaHedone

No - as long as his fantasies do not encourage him to act on his attraction. I do not believe that anything that causes pleasure yet no harm can be wrong - except sometimes when it infringes on someone else's rights, and that is not the case here.

keyser_soze

He's sick, but nothing illegal going on, or immoral(in action). He should definately seek counseling however.

Theli

No for me aswell... Fantasies cannot be immoral as they cannot harm anyone (other than possibly the person having them), however any actions taken based on this attraction can be immoral.

Loren Pechtel

I see nothing immoral here.

Tom Sawyer

Morality is based on actions, not desires. In order for something to have a moral element to it, it must have an element of choice involved - if there's no possibility of choice, then there's no morality involved. If you're driving a car and hit a dog that you didn't see, you're not doing anything immoral, but if you chase after the dog in your car to run it down, then you are. The end is the same, but the second involved you making a choice to hit the dog, which makes it immoral as opposed to the first, which was just an accident.

This related to the original post in that we don't have a choice over the thoughts that come into our head. We do, however, have a choice over what actions we take because of those thoughts and that's where the element of morality comes in. The man can have whatever thoughts he wants, but as long as he doesn't do anything because of them then there's nothing immoral about it.

Note that this doesn't only involve actions taken against her - if he watches his daughter sunbathing in the backyard and then goes into the washroom to masturbate, I'd say he's doing something immoral. No one is harmed by his actions, but they are far enough outside of the societal norms that they could be considered immoral. A lot of people would probably disagree with me about this, but the general rule of thumb that I use to decide if an action is not moral (other than it causing unnecessary harm to someone) is would you feel comfortable telling someone what you're doing?.

If someone asked him what he was doing, he likely wouldn't feel comfortable saying, "I'm masturbating to images of my teenage daugther sunbathing". The fact that he wouldn't want to let people know what he's doing says that he's probably doing something wrong. Note that there is a key difference between this and the mere thoughts of incest he's having, which he also wouldn't want to tell anyone about, although there's no moral element involved there. The difference is that with the mere thoughts, he's not doing anything, while with the masturbation, he is, even though no one may ever know about it. It's still wrong.

So any thoughts a guy has, no matter how freakish, do not have a moral element attached to them. Actions taken on those thoughts, however, involve a choice to take those actions and thus enter the realm of morality.

Loren Pechtel

We don't have control over who we find sexually desirable. What's sick about this situation?

viscousmemories

That's a pretty big "as long as". Do fantasies ever encourage action? If you fantasize about going on a killing spree at McDonalds, is there more danger of you eventually acting on that fantasy?

Keeping this to the strict example of fantasy, why do you specify "anything that causes pleasure"? To the best of my knowledge, fantasies can't cause harm, so that's a given. Are you suggesting that if they don't cause pleasure, they may be immoral? Also, can you give an example of how fantasy can infringe on someone elses rights?

vm

sergeyvladimirovich

First there is a thought, then there is a deed. If you constantly fantasize about doing something, you are likely to do it. If someone thinks that something is wrong, they had better admonish it from both action AND thought. If they believe something is immoral and still dream about it-- they are just hypocrites or weak people. So in my understanding, it IS immoral to lust even when the guy does not engage in the act physically.

Now of course you can tell me that I'm using chain reaction logic which is generally considered faulty thinking. You can tell me how there is absolutely no basis to assume that if someone thinks about something they'll do it. Well, to me this is a question of probability, really. It seems bloody obvious to me that the more you lust after something, the less control you have over your actions and the higher is the probability of you "slipping". Your actions come from your fantasies afterall.

To summarize:

1. If you think something is bad, try to stop thinking about and drooling over it-- otherwise, you are in danger of losing control.

2. If you decided that something is wrong and still fantasize about it...well, you are not wholesome, a hyporcrite.

sergeyvladimirovich

I wouldn't say that. With training one can become pretty good at avoiding mental states that are undesirable. I believe we DO have control over everything in our consciousness so we are responsible for what's in our heads and morality does very much apply there!