Re: Incest recfranzeskaAugust 10 2010, 22:22:04 UTC
Hah. I'm rereading this post just now (from a Fanlore link, I think), and I'm reminded once again of rereading The Thin Man and going: "Wait, how did I not remember this from the first time I read it? What?"
The point is the thing that makes sibling incest so weird isn't that we're physically repulsed by people closely related to us but that we grow up not thinking of them that way, which suggests in a different culture we might grow up thinking of them that way. It also seems that people are now pretending that cousin incest is this incredibly bizarre thing when, uh, why?
The physical repulsion between full siblings is actually very much an evolutionary adaptation (presumably to the "nine heads" phenomenon). But cousins? Not really, if at all. People have studied this in various species of non-human mammals and found a certain degree of "kin selection." That is, where an individual would avoid a sibling (and I forget how it is they can tell...), they will still consistently choose a cousin, sometimes even a half-sib over a "complete stranger", i.e. one they share a smaller proportion of genes with. The reasoning behind this is that individuals try (not consciously, but through evolutionary adaptation) to pass more of their own
( ... )
It makes sense to me that we could see something in a full sibling that just said TOO CLOSE. Even psychologically it would make sense. You could be drawn to the familiar, like a cousin, but at the same time you'd also not want something that was too much like yourself. That would have to be a strange thing about twincest, really--I expect it's an aspect that's exploited a lot in fics--that when you're watching a twin it's very much like watching yourself.
The new cousin=bad thing is very strange, especially adding the information you just gave about people in the US being more diverse anyway, since we are also the ones who seem to have a big taboo about it. I wonder why that is.
Heh, who knows... Perhaps Europeans are a bit more used to this since, not that long ago, all of European royalty was pretty much related to each other :-)
Actually, "kin selection" is actually something entirely different than what I was describing above. The term I was looking for is nonrandom mating, in particular inbreeding (duh!.. *slaps own forehead* )
Tripping in from a friends-friends surf...singeaddamsJuly 22 2004, 13:18:03 UTC
Heathcliff and Cathy WHAAAAAT?! I'm such a moron, I never once even considered that possibility. That probability I should say. Food for thought, thanks.
I once read a book (of course I promptly forgot title and author, am getting old) that explained taboos and rules of behaviour put up by institutionalized religions, and they came up with totally mundane explanations in ALL cases
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But nowadays this reason is pretty much gone as - unless you have a life-threatening genetic disease in the family - people even in smaller countries are so thoroughly mixed up that the occasional brother/sister-coupling would really do no harm at all.
That's absolutely correct. And mating between cousins carries no higher risk of genetic deformities than that of the general population. For anyone interested in scientific explanation/backing, a (relatively) concise one can be found here.
To have your first love affair/sexual experience with a cousin is almost a tradition over here.I've always gotten that impression as well. And I had a lot of cousins my age, at least one of which it wouldn't have been out of the question--we probably wouldn't have actually dated or anything, but if we had experimented or something I really don't think it would have been odd at all--at least not any more odd than fooling around with a good friend
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What you're saying about the rules about incest make perfect sense--I remember reading something once where they talked about how if you thought of a primitive band of people it would make sense to rule out incest just to keep the peace. You'd rather have the young men out to find mates rather than having them fight over the females you had.
Yes, exactly, and by doing so they made sure that the gene-pool got well mixed up by literally bringing new blood into the community. So, because of our ancestors mostly abiding by this rule they enabled us today to more or less neglect it now.
I especially don't understand the idea of meeting someone you didn't know you were related to and feeling like it was incest. It's one thing to discover you're married to the baby you gave up for adoption (eep!) but a sibling you never met? Eh. Even if it bothered you enough to get divorced I don't see any reason to feel like you've done anything morally wrong. Particularly when you consider things like sperm banks etc. That's yet more ways you could not
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Incest is something that has fasinated me in a way ever since I read an article about people who were adopted meeting their biological relatives in adulthood and being sexually attracted to them or even having sexual relationships. I find this incredibly interesting, and I think it's a terrible shame that so many people can't have a sensible, non-sensational discussion about aspects of this.
I don't personally do HP incest, but that's generally only because I'm a Snape-shipper, and we don't really have a family for him. Of course, he might have a sekrit half-sibling floating about somewhere, and if that half-sibling showed up in the books, I'd be a lot more likely to consider an incest fic, for the issues and surrounding emotions. One thing I really don't get, though, is the Weasley twincest. Apparently, people find this sexy, but how can it be? They look exactly the same. I'm not sure I can articulate it, except to say that it'd surely be more like maturbation in front of a mirror than anything else.
Heh--that's what I said about twincest. I guess that can be used as part of the squick in itself, that it pretty much is like looking into a mirror, which is something in itself
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Lol see, that for me is why incest fics are so squicky. As an identical twin (the type that Fred and George are, we can assume), twincest seems like the absolute negation of a twin's identity. "They're practically the same person anyway, why wouldn't they have sex?" But damn, we're not the same person lol. People find it appealing possibly because 1) they could imagine having sex with themselves (masturbation, only not!) and they think that's cool, or 2) What's better than one girl/boy? TWO girls/boys
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Oh, I think twin stuff is fascinating! And I have heard of mirror twins...does that mean that everything is reversed? Like you're mirror images of each other rather than identical if standing side by side? That always seemed sort of "cooler" to me. Yes, I am a dorky non twin fantasizing about magical wonder twin powers
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The physical repulsion between full siblings is actually very much an evolutionary adaptation (presumably to the "nine heads" phenomenon). But cousins? Not really, if at all. People have studied this in various species of non-human mammals and found a certain degree of "kin selection." That is, where an individual would avoid a sibling (and I forget how it is they can tell...), they will still consistently choose a cousin, sometimes even a half-sib over a "complete stranger", i.e. one they share a smaller proportion of genes with. The reasoning behind this is that individuals try (not consciously, but through evolutionary adaptation) to pass more of their own ( ... )
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It makes sense to me that we could see something in a full sibling that just said TOO CLOSE. Even psychologically it would make sense. You could be drawn to the familiar, like a cousin, but at the same time you'd also not want something that was too much like yourself. That would have to be a strange thing about twincest, really--I expect it's an aspect that's exploited a lot in fics--that when you're watching a twin it's very much like watching yourself.
The new cousin=bad thing is very strange, especially adding the information you just gave about people in the US being more diverse anyway, since we are also the ones who seem to have a big taboo about it. I wonder why that is.
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Heh, who knows... Perhaps Europeans are a bit more used to this since, not that long ago, all of European royalty was pretty much related to each other :-)
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That's absolutely correct. And mating between cousins carries no higher risk of genetic deformities than that of the general population. For anyone interested in scientific explanation/backing, a (relatively) concise one can be found here.
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Yes, exactly, and by doing so they made sure that the gene-pool got well mixed up by literally bringing new blood into the community. So, because of our ancestors mostly abiding by this rule they enabled us today to more or less neglect it now.
I especially don't understand the idea of meeting someone you didn't know you were related to and feeling like it was incest. It's one thing to discover you're married to the baby you gave up for adoption (eep!) but a sibling you never met? Eh. Even if it bothered you enough to get divorced I don't see any reason to feel like you've done anything morally wrong. Particularly when you consider things like sperm banks etc. That's yet more ways you could not ( ... )
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I don't personally do HP incest, but that's generally only because I'm a Snape-shipper, and we don't really have a family for him. Of course, he might have a sekrit half-sibling floating about somewhere, and if that half-sibling showed up in the books, I'd be a lot more likely to consider an incest fic, for the issues and surrounding emotions. One thing I really don't get, though, is the Weasley twincest. Apparently, people find this sexy, but how can it be? They look exactly the same. I'm not sure I can articulate it, except to say that it'd surely be more like maturbation in front of a mirror than anything else.
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