ext_74584 ([identity profile] karinmollberg.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] steepholm 2012-10-15 07:13 am (UTC)

So this is a U.S. thing then? I had assumed it was a rural-vs.-urban divide in that way where people care less after you move to the city.

I think, I agree to being astonished in the same way. Must ask people here in France, but generally I believe, the first reaction is on the health side rather than a moral taboo, more a simple feeling of it being somehow "wrong"; with the important difference between rural and city situation.

I recall some whispering conversations from the east-german countryside my parents stemmed from, about cousin marriages. Elder women talking Altmark platt with my grandmother. If I recall right, there was more a fear of madness (as in: mental illness, for city folks) running in someone´s family than about ickiness, though lots of superstition was being talked of in a matter-of-fact way that is not as common in cities, where a woman living alone with cats isn´t necessarily a witch, etc.

My lover sometimes reminds me of my (dead) uncle but I find that sense of familiarity strangely fascinating and not icky (it took me a while to realise whom he remotely reminds me of but then, I have a tick about lookalikes). I remember finding my eldest cousin attractive as a teen but that was it. Some natural phase of starting to look at boys that way at all, rather.

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