I was reading a post on gamefaqs and a few members were debating human sexuality in one of the threads. One poster posted tribes and evidence of accepted child sexuality, his reason seemed to be just to show that humans have had varied sexuality throughout history.

Anyway I decided to look up these tribes. First I want to post some quotes.

First off this one was humorous, ignoring the fact that this tribe is said to horribly abuse children, but this quote made me laugh:

Males also masturbated and sucked children’s genitals, both sexes, using the child as a maternal breast as all pedophiles do.

You here that? Apparently you guys want to masturbate and "suck" a little girl's genitals because you want to use them as a maternal breast. Anywayyyy this source had some interesting gems though:

The masturbation by mothers of their children, Korbin found in her large cross-cultural sample of tribes, is widespread, but, as was mentioned previously, she concludes sex with children is not abusive because the society itself doesn’t call it abuse, saying “children’s genitals being fondled does not constitute ‘abuse’ if in that society the behavior was not proscribed.”

And

After all, another cross-cultural study of adult-child sexual relations finds, experts believe that there is “no reason to believe that sexual contact between an adult and child is inherently wrong or harmful.” Such “experts” as, for instance, Kinsey and Pomeroy, who claimed that “incest between adults and younger children can be satisfying and enriching.”

Source for the above three quotes: http://www.psychohistory.com/originsofwar/07_childAbuse.html

I had another link I found but I lost. For the life of me I can't find it.

Basically it talked about multiple tribes, all over the world, from N. America to Spain where child sexuality was embraced and adults often partook in sexual contact with children. One tribe the children's genitals were highly praised and complimented, in others kids were involved in parental sexual relations, and in yet others little girls would pair with adult men. Now some tribes did things non-consensually, yet others did so with the consent of children and it was fun for them etc.

Now finally to get to my point.

A lot of these tribes partook in "incest". Now not incest as in, child parent or sibling pairings for the purpose of reproduction, but incest as in sexual contact with blood relatives.

First I feel incest is a confusing term. As seen with anthropological evidence many peoples taught their children sex and sexuality by partaking in it with them. Yet they did not pair with them. I feel that is a crucial difference. The former can be seen as a bonding and teaching thing, where as the latter can be seen as what is called incest.

It got me thinking about paedosexuality and incest. Incest as in, pairing. Is the willingness to partake in this kind of incest more common with pedosexuals? Or is it simply because of the lack of available partners outside the family because of social conditions that cause many paedosexuals to pair with those available to them?

Forcing incest is obviously bad, but is mutually consented incest innately bad? In both definitions of incest? At least to me, when the sexual activity is done for bonding, teaching, or just pleasure, it seems that incest is not innately harmful and can be beneficial. However for pairing I can see where this would cause problems. First we have the Westermarck Effect, then we have the fact that the father will essentially abandon his wife for a daughter or son and this can be a huge burden on the child.

Anyone have any input to help me think through this?