https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1758425498101707002
It is though the strong taboo against cousin marriage is relavtively recent and kind of weird and supported by incorrect beliefs that you'll definitely have flipper babies instead of any kind of analysis of power disparities or family dynamics.
From a genetics and general health perspective having babies with a first cousin creates a trivial risk unless you're both carrying genes for some serious condition. Condemning cousin marriage bc genetics is not valid and is probably left over gene hygeine nonesense from the bad old days of eugenics.
If you have a social critique of cousin marriage i am 100% on board to hear it, but if you bring up genetics I will point at you and laugh.
Sincerely; i'm an anthropologist and marrying your cousin is weird in our cultural moment but has been entirely normal in many places in the past and doesn't cause your babies to be born with tentacles and fangs.
The cultural taboo against first-cousin marriage is probably due to the fact that if you have too many people marrying first-cousins in a fixed community over generations it will eventually lead to inbreeding problems, which was a bigger issue when everyone lived in small agricultural communities. People who get weird about second or third cousin partnering are frankly silly, if you live in any sort of rural community finding a partner who isn't somehow distantly related to you is near impossible and inbreeding really not a problem with anyone beyond first cousins.
But first cousins, honestly it's one of those things that's mostly harmless on the micro but harmful on the macro, hence why it's been discouraged via social pressure for millennia.
It has not been discouraged. It's very common around the world today. it only started to become taboo in European societies in the mid 19th century. (pardon the anthropology word) exogamous, ie outside your immediate group, marriage has been common throughout history and people in the medieval and ancient world travelled much more commonly than people think. Even a marriage group of a few hundred people has so much genetic diversity that unless a specific genetic illnes becomes fixed in the group, like Tays-Sachs or something, it's unlikely for cousin marriage to cause problems, doubly so if there's any outsiders marrying in to the group which has almost always been the case.
This is a taboo that developed recently in European culture and isn't well founded in science. There is a small increased risk that an genetic illness already present in the partners genes will be expressed in their children. The idea that it's an ancient taboo is not historical.
Are there any credible explanations as to why this taboo developed?
I'm sure there are, it's a pretty recent phenomena so people were almost certainly writing about it, and it happened at more or less the same time we were figuring out genetic hertitability. I've never really bothered to look in to it but I'm pretty sure i've read a few times that it was tied up in the emergence of Eugenics and "scientific" racism.
Interesting. Never would've guessed this was a modern thing
There is totally a genetic problem caused by multiple generations marrying inside the family though, which is part of where the taboo comes from, isolated families or aristocrats marrying their first cousins for literally centuries.
There is totally a genetic problem caused by multiple generations marrying inside the family though, which is part of where the taboo comes from, isolated families or aristocrats marrying their first cousins for literally centuries.
So I did some digging I and found this: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060320, which says:
Perhaps surprisingly, these bans are not attributable to the rise of eugenics. Popular assumptions about hereditary risk and an associated need to control reproduction were widespread before the emergence of an organized eugenics movement around the turn of the 20th century. Indeed, most prominent American eugenists were, at best, lukewarm about the laws, which they thought both indiscriminate in their effects and difficult to enforce [2]. In the view of many eugenists, sterilization of the unfit would be a far more effective means of improving the race.
Nonetheless, in both the US and Europe, the frequency of first-cousin marriage—a practice that had often been favored, especially by elites—sharply declined during the second half of the 19th century [3]. (The reasons are both complex and contested, but likely include improved transportation and communication, which increased the range of marriage partners; a decline in family size, which limited the number of marriageable cousins; and greater female mobility and autonomy [4,5].) The fact that no European country barred cousins from marrying, while many US states did and still do, has often been interpreted as proof of a special American animosity toward the practice [6]. But this explanation ignores a number of factors, including the ease with which a handful of highly motivated activists—or even one individual—can be effective in the decentralized American system, especially when feelings do not run high on the other side of an issue. The recent Texas experience, where a state representative quietly tacked an amendment barring first-cousin marriage onto a child protection bill, is a case in point.
The laws must also be viewed in the context of a new, post–Civil War acceptance of the need for state oversight of education, commerce, and health and safety, including marriage and the family. Beginning in the 1860s, many states passed anti-miscegenation laws, increased the statutory age of marriage, and adopted or expanded medical and mental-capacity restrictions in marriage law [7]. **Thus, laws prohibiting cousin marriage were but one aspect of a more general trend to broaden state authority in areas previously considered private. And unlike the situation in Britain and much of Europe, cousin marriage in the US was associated not with the aristocracy and upper middle class but with much easier targets: immigrants and the rural poor. **In any case, by the late nineteenth century, in Europe as well as the US, marrying one's cousin had come to be viewed as reckless, and today, despite its continued popularity in many societies and among European elites historically, the practice is highly stigmatized in the West (and parts of Asia—the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and both North and South Korea also prohibit cousin marriage) [8–11].
So it doesn't seem like the rise in those laws and the associated taboo really had anything to do with genetic disorders, but rather other factors.
There is totally a genetic problem caused by multiple generations marrying inside the family though, which is part of where the taboo comes from
Frank is an anthropologist and he literally said that's not the case, so I'm not sure why you're saying this? It is more of a "vibe" thing?
What I said is a widely documented fact. Frank doesn't actually contradict it except in the sense that he doesn't consider that historical cases of muti-generational inbreeding contributed to the taboo around first cousin marriage. Since I've seen multiple claims of this that I consider reliable I would need to see some counter-evidence of that, anthropologist or not.
What I said is a widely documented fact.
It may be widely documented in the sense that it's basically bad information that remains hegemonic.
You and your cousin are not gonna have flipper babies, but after doing this for several generations, your descendants will all have PCOS and astigmatism, they will need glasses for poor eye sight, and probably several of them will be physically and mentally disabled. There is a lot of research to back this up, and if you don't believe in research, you can compare the side of your family that have been inbreeding with the side that have not and you can see for yourself.
Edit:
I'm gonna add that if you are considering marrying your first cousin, you undoubtedly already have family members that have been marrying eachother for several generations and you probably also personally know several people with some or all of the issues highlighted above, which is all the more reason for your family, friends and wider society to bully you out of doing it again yourself.
It's especially weird when people get like that about second and third cousins. Like ffs, genetically those may as well be complete strangers. If you've had a lot of sex partners and still live near your family you've probably banged one of those without having any idea about it lmao
I literally have a degree in Anthropology and I can't even remember what a second cousin is half the time, it's so irrelevant. Like you've got the same great grandparents? Cool, so does probably a third of the population within a hundred miles no one cares.
Ok but if everyone is having kids w their cousins, doesn't that compound?
Yes if you repeat cousin-couplings consistently, eg as a wealth protection strategy because you’re a European “noble”, then yeah you end up with that fucked up shit that was the Spanish monarchy and Prince Charles.
There was a Spanish king who was in fact more inbred, in a genetic / statistical sense, than had he been the product of a sibling-pairing.
Slightly inbred cousins having children with even less genetic diversity who marry their own cousins etc and the genetic pool gets about as deep the lyrics of the spice girls - when repeated as a norm for generations.
It’s funny how people get disgusted by breaking of arbitrary social taboos. What’s disgusting about it? They act like it’s making them physically sick just to think about which I just don’t understand.
That's what makes it a taboo. It's something everyone around them believes, and they believe, and everyone who doesn't believe it is a weird outside Other. People who challenge taboos within the culture are often ostracized, the taboo itself often has a bunch of myths justifying it, the actual nature, causes, and consequences of the taboo are rarely questioned let alone interrogated.
People who challenge taboos within the culture are often ostracized, the taboo itself often has a bunch of myths justifying it, the actual nature, causes, and consequences of the taboo are rarely questioned let alone interrogated.
Yeah I don't get it, they'll fight back against "taboos" that they personally support (e.g. gender norms, sexuality, etc.) but then on other things they basically turn into your conservative uncle. Complete dumbasses imo with a sense of cultural chauvanism.
yeah, it's extremely frustrating. I've got an advantage, I literally studied the discipline of learning about cultures other than my own, but it's still extremely frustrating.
Speaking of that, do you know any good youtube videos that do an overview of cultural differences, or maybe a playlist from a course that looks into this kind of stuff? The differences between customs of different cultures, especially things that are "taboo" in one culture but completely ok in another really interest me.
I can't think of anything off hand. I know there was a tv show called "Taboo" years ago that was supposedly about cultural taboos, but I think it was probably pretty exploitative. As far as I know the word "Taboo" is based on a Polynesian word pronounced more like "tapu" that represents various restrictions that people have to observe to protect their spiritual or esoteric power.
Westoid brainworms which they haven't yet shed, even though they claim to be "marxist" and "materialist"
get their asses a social critique of cousin marriage
i think this is something that cannot be placed within the auspices of consanguinity, the relationships people have with their cousins is wildly, wildly divergent even in the same culture and class. i'd rather have the rule be more like 'don't fuck someone that grew up in the same house as you' or similar
There's some evidence out there that there's a built in "don't fuck someone that grew up in the same house as you" mechanism in humans, that doesn't have anything to do with consanguinity or shared genetics.
I respect your determination to bend reality to suit your whim.
It's a bit weird to fuck a cousin tho innit. Although if i had a hot cousin I'd have to re-evaluate but I dont so
Although if i had a hot cousin I'd have to re-evaluate
A vibes based disgust that doesn't level accusations of moral or ethical wrong doing is fine.
It's amazing how many "marxists" immediately turn into reddit science bros when they encounter the slightest notion that goes against their "sense of disgust" (which btw they have zero introspection about). It's amazing, cuz an actually existing socialist state like China largely takes this "cultural relativism" approach when dealing with other nations (even with minority ethnic groups within China, so long as they don't threaten the state by being used by western states as puppets). I mean that approach has more or less been the approach taken by civilizations that lasted centuries (i.e. the Roman Empire, Persian Empire, Abassid Caliphate, Ottoman Empire, Tang China and other dynasties, various Mongol Empires, etc.).
Sincerely; i'm an anthropologist and marrying your cousin is weird in our cultural moment but has been entirely normal in many places in the past and doesn't cause your babies to be born with tentacles and fangs.
Also you're an expert in this, but their only response is "YEAH BUT SCIENCE SAYS ITS BAD!!
" even though you literally stated that this is your expertise.Pretty much number 923432432432 in the evidence pile that hexbear is just a bunch of whiny western leftists that are actually guided by their own personal idealistic sense of morals and project that into a "material" analysis.... for fucks sake smh... At this point they might as well just say CW (Islamophobia):
spoiler
"Those fucking m^zzies and their love of cousin f*cking, those sand n-words are basically savages. I only "critically support" but if I was in charge I would immediately gulag them!."
"If God didn't want me to fuck my cousin, then why did he give her such a fat ass?"
- The Economist
Respect to hexbear for being pro cousin marriage this is why I will always rock with you freaks
One of the mottos of Anthropology is "Make the strange familiar. Make the familiar strange."
It's not right to mock the Anglo-Saxons for their traditional practices.
When The Economist starts talking about the merits of dynastic marriage like this, it makes me rethink the validity of the whole neo feudalism thesis coming true.
This is the shit I come to Hexbear for. Idk anywhere else where someone would put those two things together. I certainly wouldn't have thought about it.
I mean it jokingly of course. I've come to doubt the idea of capitalism transitioning to neo feudalism after listening to some arguments that took apart the thesis.
Something tells me one of the cases where it's "not fine" for hereditary diseases is after ten centuries of unclefucking
This article was definitely written by someone’s creepy uncle who’s angry that he’s not allowed to be alone with children at family gatherings.
I'm going to go against the grain and say whatever. What you think of cousin marriage is mostly just cultural. (I don't know why comments are insinuating cousin marriage is solely or mostly a white or European thing)? The genetic dangers of incest are typically overblown (just like genetics in general are given far more importance than they deserve). The immorality and general badness of incest is mostly social (do I need really need to elaborate?) Cousin marriage is so normal and widespread throughout time and space that I can't get too much of a bug bear about other people doing it, especially if the science says it's mostly harmless.
feels like we're posting a little too close to the appeal to nature
Are you saying I'm using an appeal to nature argument?
not necessarily, I'm saying that I'm uneasy with the general argument throughout this thread of "it's been a normal thing that other peoples and cultures have done for millennia without any problems arising, and it's only recently that people have had any trouble with it." there are other things one could justify with that argument that are much less agreeable on this site, like loveless marriages done purely for political or economic advantage. feels like we're approaching, but not yet strictly reaching, an appeal to nature - not to be the logical fallacy reddit guy or anything
What is the harm you're alleging though? My take was indifference, not support. I'm not naturalizing, I'm acknowledging that my personal distaste and that of others in the modern west is largely cultural. The arguments that I do see against it are literal appeals to nature (e.g. if you marry your cousin your kids will come out wrong). But if that appeal to genetic purity is largely false, then you're just engaging in cultural prejudice against something that doesn't even affect you. Some cultures are exogamous (marry outside the group), some are endogamous (marry within the group), we happen to be exogamous. I don't think we arrived here because of rigorous logic, but because of changing conditions (rejection of feudalistic marriage, rise of eugenics, alienation of people from their communities, etc).
Even the idea of 'love' marriages is a modern cultural tradition that isn't nessecarily better or worse than a tradition of arranged marriage. Often arranged marriages take in account the desires of the betrothed. Marriages being a matter of commumal matchmaking probably doesn't sound so bad to the many who have experienced modern alienated dating. It's not just the unhappy couplings as typically shown by western media when they detail the lives of colonized peoples. It's why I highlighted the fact that marriage between cousins isn't just a white phenomenon, a lot of colonized peoples have cultures of endogamy and arranged marriages and to blanketly assert that there is something wrong with those cultures is chauvinistic.
Any cultural practice can be good or bad, but the devil in the details. Yeah, a forced marriage between you and your cousin you grew up with and despise sucks. But what of a union between two cousins who didn't spend much or any time together as children and form a spark in young adult hood and find love. I don't see how it hurts me or them, and if what the article alleges is true, their children. And what of arranged marriage? What if your community goes out of its way to matchmake you with a perfect fit because they see something in the two of you? Or what of living in our modern alienated capitialism hellscape where you have no community and can't meet anyone, with zero assistance to meet someone, that also fucking sucks. It then becomes a personal failure that you can't find a mate, not a communal effort to matchmake you with someone your sympatico with.
I'm arguing against an absolutist prescription of all four of these practices, not disallowing critique of their specifics in the real. I wouldn't argue 'love' marriage and exogamy is inherently bad because tinder sucks and everyone is lonely now, and I wouldn't say arranged marriage and endogamy is nessecarily bad because European aristocrats married cousins for deeply cynical reasons.
I don't think we arrived here because of rigorous logic, but because of changing conditions (rejection of feudalistic marriage, rise of eugenics, alienation of people from their communities, etc).
...
It's why I highlighted the fact that marriage between cousins isn't just a white phenomenon, a lot of colonized peoples have cultures of endogamy and arranged marriages and to blanketly assert that there is something wrong with those cultures is chauvinistic.
...
Any cultural practice can be good or bad
I'm not disagreeing with these statements in a purely academic sense; as far as I'm aware, Marxism and dialectical materialism doesn't really vibe well with morality and it doesn't seem like the debate between moral objectivism and moral relativism is something we deeply concern ourselves with, or perhaps we could say that there's some "proletarian morality" that is "superior" to "bourgeois morality"; idk, I'd have to read more and refresh myself about the philosophy of Marxism here.
What I'm trying to get at is how we approach this in a more colloquial sense. And I'm talking about the general style of argument here now, not so much the specific question of "Is fucking your cousin good or bad." Because when I put my Marxist hat on, I could say the points above quite comfortably - there is no moral objectivism! Conditions govern what people believe and why, and there is no bestowed moral code, from a deity or particularly wise person or otherwise, that governs humanity in all situations, even if those moral codes were very complicated. Like, not just "You shouldn't steal." but "You shouldn't steal, unless it's for survival, or unless it's from a person or company that would not even notice it missing while you would greatly benefit, or--" etc.
The trouble begins when you say that moral objectivism is false and then somebody tells you that they just read an article about misogyny, and, wow, that really sucks, doesn't it? Well... does it? Do/should you launch into a historical analysis of misogyny and its foundations and oppression, and how certain countries in the past and present have had misogynistic policies and a culture of oppressing women without really going into whether it's moral to be a misogynist, or do/should you say "Yeah, misogyny fucking sucks and is never okay, and all misogynists should be punished?"
Here's something else: a couple months ago, a user here wrote up a piece (featuring a quote from yours truly!) on Latin America and whether it should be regarded as Western. This did get me thinking about a potential situation that I could one day experience, as a British person. Imagine that I went out in public and went on a long rant to a friend on how the British Empire fucking sucks, it was awful, it killed millions of people, the culture is/was bad, it involves racist worldviews, and so on. Imagine an Asian immigrant from Hong Kong who moved to the UK who identifies strongly with British culture overheard me and said "No, the British Empire was great. It spread law and order throughout the world, it developed countries - including Hong Kong, where I grew up! - and was a massive force for good in the world. By presenting this overly negative argument, you're being a chauvinist." What should my hypothetical response be? She's presenting an argument from the standpoint of moral relativism, saying that it would be chauvinistic for a white British male to inform a female Asian immigrant what they should find moral. Does this mean that the British Empire truly cannot be objectively evaluated as one of the worst regimes the world has ever seen?
So the problem I fundamentally have with the argument here about whether fucking cousins is morally good or bad isn't so much a debate of the cold hard facts of cousin-fucking throughout history and how many countries and cultures have done it without being really that negatively impacted by it and so on, and whether, on those grounds, it would be wrong to say that "you shouldn't fuck your cousin" because that's unscientific or even chauvinist; it's how far this argument can actually extend. Let's say that we do ultimately come to the conclusion that despite fucking your cousin being generally seen as taboo in Western societies, this doesn't matter because Western societies can suck our collective dicks and having a romantic relationship with your cousin has been a part of many places for millennia - we cannot prescribe arbitrary moral laws on other people just because we think that something is icky or taboo. It has to be rooted in science!
Okay, what about a little more questionable topic, like stepsiblings? And so on through moral issues of increasing complexity that may not have clear, amoral, scientific answers? If we're dialectical materialists then do we reject moral objectivism (or, hell, even morality entirely) even in casual conversation, or can we say "Killing slaveowners is fucking awesome whether it's in 5000 BC, the 1800s, or today, and every single place on Earth, regardless of culture?" Because I sure want to keep saying that. Consent is a moral issue that I would regard as extremely important, but I could easily imagine that there have been cultures and civilizations before that have regarded the consent of one group or another as an arbitrary moral requirement that they would consider as much as they would consider whether having a romantic relationship with your cousin is a good or bad thing - that is, not at all. I think that they would be very morally and culturally wrong. They might not understand what the big deal is. I think the consent is an important moral issue because I think harming people is generally wrong, with certain exceptions (slaveowners, for one). I can't really scientifically "prove" that harming people is wrong - in fact, the largest, richest, and most powerful empires on the planet got there explicitly by harming a shitload of people. It's a morality, even a cultural norm, that I am asserting.
I'm just going to say that colonialisation does hurt people, slavery does hurt people and rape does hurt people and I don't think they're equivalents to endogamy and/or arranged marriages. Literally ask the people who are on the receiving end of all three of those and you're going to get some pretty universal results (as far as whether they like them or not). I don't think you need morality to understand whether rape is bad or good. People in arranged marriages from cultures that practice them don't universally despise being subjected to them the way the three sources of comparison you made do. I'm talking very specifically about how society expects adults to couple and ultimately marry.
The argument is not "It's okay because other people do it". The argument is that it's a baseless cultural taboo in The West with no justification at all beyond cultural norms. There's no scientific basis, there's no argument from cousin marriage being inherently harmful or violent, there's nothing. It's entirely cultural chauvinism.
Ya it's bizarre that that's the prevailing opinion on this post like... am I still on hexbear? Do y'all fuck your cousins here??? For the love of god these dweebs better not use their facts and logic against age of consent next.
You can't see the difference between two consenting adults coupling and a child an adult?
Age of consent is inherently a different issue than cousin marriage. You know, because of the whole consent thing which is right there in the term.
I don't fuck my cousin and I have no desire to, but I also have no problem with people who do, so long as it's consensual. I'd say the dweebs here are the ones who can't see past their own bias, a bias which apparently exists mostly due to the same eugenicist bullshit they rightly despise.
I think there's the immediate reaction of "No, fucking your cousins is weird, I don't like it," and then right after that, you go "...but, now that I think about it, I don't really know why I think that this is bad. Hm." Which is a good impulse to have! It's good to be inspecting your own beliefs and overcoming reactionary disgust! It's also entirely possible to then go "...no, actually, I do think this is morally bad even if it's not necessarily always genetically bad; this isn't just me being ruled by harmful cultural norms or something like that."
Here's a question to "calibrate" your moral compass in this situation: Is fucking your stepsister or stepbrother a bad thing? I personally think that it's pretty taboo, despite there being no genetic relation there (within reason). Why is it taboo despite the lack of blood relation? The answer to that question should help inform the answer to the cousin question.
Articulate why it's morally bad. What inherent harm is there in marrying a first cousin? Where is the unavoidable imbalance of power and coercive hierarchy that invalidates consent? Put down in words why it is inherently wrong and harmful to marry another person who shares the same grandparents with you. Examine your beliefs and provide a grounded materialist justification for them.
I think there should be no sex between family whatsoever. Not between cousins, not between stepsiblings, and not between any other pairing. Obviously, non-incestuous married couples are fine (and unmarried couples and trouples and whatever).
There were other replies to my comment but I'm not gonna argue why incest is bad wtf am I on reddit
I think there should be no sex between family whatsoever. Not between cousins, not between stepsiblings, and not between any other pairing.
Honestly, I really think these western "lefitsts" need to study cultural anthropolgy, cultural sciences, etc. because they claim to be "redpilled" when it comes to politics but when they encounter an otherwise harmless cultural aspect they don't like, they immediately go ham with the chauvanism. It's so knee-jerk, and they use after-the-fact rationales to justify their initial "vibe."
All I can really say to this is there’s a lot of good lookin people out there. If your taste is so niche that you’d prefer to fuck your cousin than any of the other millions of people that’s weird. I don’t care what the science says nor do I care if you’re an anthropologist or whatever.
Preparing the British public for a new monarch in case Charles isn't long for the world.
Yep, another aryan classic.
Us puny undesirables will never understand NASCAR-Americans, our natural superiors.
Accusing southern people of being genetically inferior because of inbreeding is classist and also tacky.
