We can just add this to the list of hills on which I intend to die:

[conuly]

Cousins aren't incest unless they're actually siblings by birth or adoption or were raised more or less in a sibling fashion. Cousin marriage is very common worldwide and throughout history, and unless you do it over and over again for generations it's not really a problem for your genes.

I'm not saying we all should boink our cousins today, but I really wish people would stop talking about how gross and squicky and incest it is when that's a far from universal opinion. Honestly, not all opinions need to be gratuitously shared. (And really, you gotta wonder what is going on when somebody feels the need to talk all about this at the very drop of a hat, which happens more often than you might think. I genuinely have no idea how I keep encountering people who just want to talk so much about how gross cousins are. It's not like I'm actively looking for things to annoy me! Trying to avoid it, in fact.)

Sooooooo... what hills do you all plan to die on?

Edit: I somehow forgot how people are. The very very biggest hill on which I will always make a stand is the basic principle that adult native speakers do not make mistakes in their own native speech. (Barring serious language-related disabilities and momentary disfluencies.) This is the very foundation of the science of linguistics, because the alternative belief, that language somehow manages to exist outside the speakers, doesn't make any sense.

So you're welcome to say that your hill is some word usage you hate, but I will fight you on that. Especially if you hate it because you think it's just immutably and objectively wrong.

Comments

[conuly]

Incest is taboo all over, but one weird thing is that other than parent- child it seems every group defines it differently. Pairings that are super forbidden in one culture are preferred in another!

[melannen]

Sort of, but not really? Like there are of course weird exceptions (half-sibling marriage comes to mind, as is our society, where it's just kind of ~handwave~ I know it when I see it ~) but in most cases, incest is defined as marrying *in* to your close family group, and not-incest is marrying *out* of your close family group. It's how "close family group" is defined that varies widely!

But for example, if you live in a society where you're raised in your father's family home, then marrying your mother's first cousins probably isn't incest, but marrying your father's second cousins might be (and vice versa if you were raised in your mother's family home.) If you're raised in a society where you're considered a close relative of everyone in your totem-group, then you're expect to marry someone outside it. If you're raised in a society where close family is only parents and children, often it's okay to marry anyone who isn't in your direct line. If you're raised in a society with small, close-knit extended families on both sides, you may have to double-check to make sure you're not third cousins. If adoptees/foster children are expected to break all ties with their birth families, it's usually sibling incest, but if they're expected to maintain close ties with their birth families, it usually isn't.

But generally people covered under the incest taboo are considered to be people you *already* have the closest of family ties with, so making marriage-bonds with them won't help you much, and therefore you're pushed out to forge new ones.

That's actually a large part of the evidence that cultural incest taboos aren't really about genetic inbreeding - if they were, it wouldn't matter if they were your mom's cousins or your dad's, and a huge number of societies make that distinction. It's about creating bonds between different family groups for mutual support.

[conuly]

Oh, I totally get what you're saying and completely agree. (This sounds sarcastic, but I don't want to erase my adjectives. I'm not being sarcastic.)

[melannen]

I just wish more people who shipped blood relatives (especially in fantasy settings!) got what I'm saying ;_; (If only because the kink is much more juicy if you work in the lack-of-outside-support-system aspect as much as you can!)

[alexseanchai]

yeah, if cultural incest taboos were about genetic inbreeding, the Habsburgs would have shown genetic problems in earlier generations than they actually did

[conuly]

Note: it’s not entirely clear how bad the Hapsburg chin actually was. Our main evidence is from portraits, and just as people asked not to be shown with warts and pimples it is possible Hapsburgs wanted to be shown with exaggerated chins - more jutting than they really had, especially if they didn’t have that chin at all - to show their ties to the family.

[gisho]

I'm curious - where is half-sibling marriage acceptable? I know a number of societies accepted uncle-niece, and Ancient Egypt allowed full siblings to marry, but I've never heard of half-siblings specifically as the cutoff.

[conuly]

It wasn’t just Ancient Egypt which allowed sibling marriages, though I’m not particularly sure if the others I’ve heard of allowed full siblings. They might have just allowed it with different mothers.

[melannen]

I was thinking Ancient Egypt but possibly I misremembered (or was reading out-of-date stuff) and it was really mostly full siblings there! That's even weirder.

[flemmings]

Asuka period Japan allowed half sibling marriage but only (if I'm recalling my manga correctly) when the father was the common parent. Same mother was yuck no unnatural the horror!

[swingandswirl]

Yes! It's not as common now, except in very traditional/rural areas, but girls (and it was often girls, alas; child marriage hasn't entirely been stamped out) being married off to their maternal uncles was a thing, since you were not considered related. (Basically, everyone has a 'gotra', a presumed line of descent from one of twelve major saints. You got your father's gotra, which was why avunculate marriage was acceptable - culturally, you weren't related!)