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plaguery · 1 month ago

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indepth discussion of my qualms with/reaction to a youtube video about incest porn below. read at your own discretion (mentions of other paraphilias, csa, cnc & rape)

"What's with all the incest porn?"

The video in question first defends the existence of incest porn by attempting to defend consensual incest itself. (read what I had to say about the creator's definition of incest here, warning for mentions of csa) To the creator, consensual incest is another social construct that we hold too much reserve for and constrain ourselves in our inherent reactions of disgust, rather than engaging with the truth of it's impact. Historically, incest has occurred across cultures and economic lines, often with little fanfare involved. They examine how inbreeding only fosters negative genetic effects after several generations and how it can be easily "rectified" in just a couple generations with the reintroduction of genetic diversity. Our inherent disgust towards incest is claimed to be unfounded against the evidence of how severe and reoccuring inbreeding must be to create tangible effects. Outside of those genetic effects, what else can excuse this nearly "universal" feeling of disgust? Well, that is a question quickly ignored and driven into the ground in this video.

It is often mentioned in the video that incest, even consensual, is a taboo across the many cultures of the world. But I must ask, why is it a taboo? What causes the instinctual feeling of disgust? And my favorite question, why is this taboo in particular popular to fantacize about?

Taboos are often culturally unique, many taboos found in one culture are readily engaged in with little question in another. Yet, there are some "universal" taboos (said with a grain of salt as there really can't be anything Universal about cultures but. we'll say almost here). These typically concern death and the dead. It's easy to connect these to basic fear and sanitary reasons: death will come for all of us, it ends us, we live to defy death until we can no longer, we must properly dispose of/treat the dead to avoid catching it and avoid inflaming the spiritual dead for own peaceful afterlife. But in our modern world, incest has grown close to being one of these near "universal" taboos, especially the closer the relation. It can be quite hard for most to say exactly why. We feel the revulsion, the writhing barriers of transgression around it. It feels obvious, yet just outside full comprehension.

The video explains the common evolutionary explanation that we evolved to feel disgust towards a practice that puts our genetic legacy at a disadvantage. It addresses how this doesn't quite explain why single instances of consensual incest feel just as disgusting as mass occurrences of it over time. Just once is enough to cross the line. Additionally, they claim that it isn't too clear whether scientific evidence supports this or not. And they move on.

But I come back around to the why of it, what is at the heart of this social phenomenon? Even the creator themself laughed at the evolutionary concept, calling evolutionary psychology "astrology for men". So, if that isn't a sufficient answer, what is?

Humans move past basic survival once they can accomplish a feeling of safety and security. I reckon that this can't be achieved alone, at least a small grouping of people is necessary to watch your back when you're at rest or occupied. Shelter becomes property once other people are involved. We start to say that "this is mine" and "this is yours" and "this is ours". And we create the rules amongst each other to respect this. We build trust and camaraderie until our closest network of people becomes our family. Typically, we find this with our blood relations, with parents who are biologically attached to us, with siblings we are raised alongside, with grandparents and aunts/uncles who watch and help us grow up. Your grandparents had the biological hardwiring to care for your parents and their siblings and now by association they build similar care for you, even if its no longer a biological process. And as centuries upon centuries have passed, family has come to mean many things, blood involved or not, but we attach this meaning of utmost security, trust and reliability unto it. Human survival, as a social species, is reliant on the building and operation of a "family", no matter how dysfunctional, no matter the size, no matter who is necessarily involved (meaning blood relation isn't necessary, although extremely typical).

Sociologically, we've created particular ideas of the family, but they do typically involve certain socially ordained sub-groupings where sexual relations are allowed. In many cultures today, this means that of a monogamous committed couple, but different groupings of different sizes can and do exist. Yet, an individual member finds their matches for their sexual sub-groupings by moving out of the family sphere and into the community, where they are allowed to move past mere safety and survival into building the self through integration with the world outside the family. Here, you build larger community with friends, coworkers, neighbors, etc. And it is also where you find sexual partners, potentially building a socially ordained sexual sub-grouping that can either absorb into or create a family.

Within the sect of the family, sexual interaction is not meant to exit those socially ordained sub-groupings. My thought is that this is to ensure our safety. I believe that the incestual taboo and our revulsion to it stems from the fact that we have built the family to be this place of ultimate security and fortitude, yet still so fragile and precarious. The sect of the family asks you to play out very specific roles and play them well, yet human fallibility shows we often fail at this. Dysfunction amongst families is common, if not nearly ubiquitous, as members fail to play their roles and force others to play the wrong ones. Outside of the socially ordained sexual sub-groupings, sexual contact is not part of these roles. Socially, we have moved sexual need from the realm of survival and into the realm of self-realization. We survive in the family and realize ourselves outside it. Something could be said for how we need to socially reorganize ourselves into accepting sexuality as a survival need and how that might change our ideas of family. But at this point, it is very socially ingrained in us to separate sexuality from family, outside of the socially ordained sexual subsects.

I figure that we are more prone to digust towards incest rather than, let's say, parentification (as another kind of family role transgression), due to both the visceral nature of it and the fears we have towards general sexuality. Again, something could be said for how our cultural views of sexuality need to be dismantled and reenvisioned and how this might change our feelings towards all kinds of sexual transgression. Even amongst consenting adults, the fear of incest is one of survival threatening role reversal, general sexual taboo, and a violation of what we consider to be nature (this is where the negative effects of inbreeding would come into play, mixed with typically religious ideas about procreation) all wrapped in one.

I did mention points where even I would agree that our cultural ideas of sexuality need to be reexamined and how they may impact our ideas of family and what sexuality can or cannot be limited to. And we are in an era where many cultural ideas, particularly around sexuality, are being questioned and revolted against. We often will hear that cultural constructs are just that, cultural inventions that served a certain purpose at a certain point in time that are not inherent to the human race. But this doesn't necessarily demean their worth. Should the social sect of the family be abolished or should it be reimagined? Should socially ordained sexual sub-groupings exist or should we find new avenues for engaging with sexuality? What will these things say about our future views of incest? I don't aim to answer these, but I leave it to you to find your own answers.

So, now I concern myself with my favorite question. Why is it this taboo in particular that has found popularity?

The video brought up how the rise in popularity of consensual incest/"fauxcest" (step-) porn happened around the time that Game of Thrones found large cultural purchase. But let me ask you this. If next month, a new show filled with necrophilia blew up "Game of Thrones style", do you think that necrophilia fantasies and porn would follow suit? I must say that I really don't think so. There is merit in that the mass exposure of the American masses to incestuous sex scenes probably helped make them aware of this as a possible fetish, but the exposure alone doesn't explain the whole of it.

I figure taboos exist on this kind of linear continuum of least taboo to extreme taboo. Different cultures will place certain things in different positions from other cultures. For Americans, consensual incest would be more on the extreme side, yet not so extreme as my earlier example of necrophilia. What I posit is that there is a "point of titillation" that is unique to the individual, rather than their culture.

Taboos create a sensational atmosphere around them and many people find themselves intrigued with some taboo or another, while rebuking others. By drawing an uncrossable line, they dare us to cross them and reap the possible rewards and/or consequences. There is a socially constructed danger that thrills and kills all the same. I think as a species, we are enamoured with the idea of transgression (to an extent), and we seek to push ourselves physically, emotionally, and psychologically, some more than others.

What I see as the "point of titillation" is a point in the linear continuum of taboo severity where the individual finds satisfaction in the idea of transgression itself, of engaging with the taboo, regardless of the content of said taboo. The proximity to the taboo, to a perceived extremity of physical/emotional/mental experience, is the core principal. This point does not engage with anything outside the near limits of it, meaning that just because someone finds satisfaction in transgression around this idea of taboo, it does not mean that they will also find satisfaction in any and every taboo that precedes it in severity. The point is only concerned with itself.

I would argue that, for those engaged with incest fantasy and pornography, their "point of titillation" is likely matched up quite well with the cultural marking of incest on the taboo severity continuum, whereas something like necrophilia is too far and thus, merely disgusting.

I believe that most people engaged with incest fantasies are not aroused by the actual idea of incest itself, but rather the transgression around it. Most of them would not be aroused by the idea of actually finding a sexual partner within their family sect and prefer to find sexual engagement in the outer community, as is socially acceptable. In this way, the "point of titillation" is not so much a demarcation of where exactly they're willing to "cross the line" but where they find intrigue in the mere idea of it.

And we come to my other point: it's quite easy.

People are intrigued by the danger of transgression, yet are either unknowledgable or negligent of how to mitigate these dangers while actually practicing the act of transgression. The kink scene is full of players who love dangerous practices and have built the proper protocols and conversational templates to create safe spaces for these transgressions to take place. They've put work and dedication into building their communities and dungeons and scenes. It takes consistent effort. But the average sexually engaged person, with partners or alone, is not particularly interested in all the non-sexy bits of safe transgressive sex. Hell, it's hard enough to get people on board with plain safe sex. They look for the easy routes to get their fix.

If you want to roleplay an incestuous encounter with a partner, it's as easy as calling them by certain titles. If you want to produce a pornographic video, it's as easy as scripting your actors to call each other certain titles. If you're looking for pornography a little more transgressive than usual but not too "out there", it's as easy as watching all the easily made incest fantasy pornographic videos flooding the sites.

A lot of fetishes and kinks take a lot of work and communication to happen safely, especially the more transgressive you go, but this is a rarer case of pretty high transgression, little danger (in the fantasy/fictional realm). For example, consensual non-consent (CNC) can be very endangering to its participants without the proper protocols and communication. Just roleplaying the fantasy of rape alone has a whole host of dangers, whereas roleplaying the fantasy of consensual incest (in cases where no engaging party has a history of the literal thing) is felt to be just another new way to spice things up.

Incest, in the American imagination, has become something to joke and gawk at. While it is still deeply taboo to many, including those who fantacize of it, it has been turned into an oddity, something those "poor Southerners" do and something that "silly" old royals used to protect the "bloodline" with. It is only real in the very fringes of society, if we ignore the CSA. It's a "funny" thing that occasionally shows up in books and movies. It's fanservice, it's fiction, it's simply "not real", if we don't want it to be. We like it because it's taboo and we don't want to talk about it more than that because it's precisely so. Afraid of our own shadow. Ask us about it past the freakshow and we'll laugh, not yet ready to discuss our real fear.

#wow i know this must be missing a lot but like. i only had a couple hours to write this before i Really got to close up shop and go to bed #i have work in like. 9 hours. F #anyways this is even missing a lot of what i was thinking about why its so popular in fandom particularly #before anyone asks i dont identify with anti ship pro ship whatever. im a critic and an armchair philosopher thats all you need to know #girl idc about people doing whatever they want behind closed doors but i am going to be like Okay Why Do You Do That Though #And What Does This Say About You And Your Culture. and sometimes my conclusion is going to be “yeah thats kinda shit innit”#cw incest #long post

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