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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!.”
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.
counter-point: Nah bro
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you’re a thought-terminating cliché
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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
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So I did some digging I and found this: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060320, which says:
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.
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?
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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.
Also relevant Dead South song.
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.
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”
“Umm actually it is materialist because [eugenicist rant].”
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Shelbyvillian detected
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 don’t believe you.
I respect your determination to bend reality to suit your whim.
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There is no escape from culture.
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Cousin marriage is gross though
A vibes based disgust that doesn’t level accusations of moral or ethical wrong doing is fine.
Percent of marriages that are to cousins or second cousins:
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.).
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!.”