Fanny and Edmund Got Married

[steepholm]

I'm curious about attitudes to first-cousin marriage.

First, to get the medical side out of the way, I can see good genetic reasons for not marrying one's first cousin, reasons which may indeed be powerful enough to justify measures banning or restricting the practice. I don't feel qualified to judge that, and for the present purpose I'm not interested in it either. It's clearly less than optimal, like having parents over fifty, but whether it's a sufficiently bad idea to pass laws about it I just don't know.

What I'm interested in here is the visceral ickiness some people clearly feel at the idea of first-cousin marriage - the feeling that it breaks some powerful incest taboo, perhaps just a notch down from marrying one's sibling, child or parent.

I wasn't brought up to feel like that at all, and I'm curious as to why not - or, conversely, why other people do. Since these things are cultural, where are the cultural dividing lines, in terms of geography, generation, or belief systems? My impression is that the taboo feeling is stronger in the States, but I also think that in the UK it's stronger with the younger generation than with my own or older. There are also ethnic groups within the UK where first-cousin marriage is common, notably within the Pakistani community where I believe it runs at over 50%, and of course that has meant that the subject has inevitably become embroiled in rows about race, religion, etc. Has that altered the broader terms of the debate?

In short - as I see it, when I was growing up first-cousin marriage was considered unusual but in no way taboo, at least in my little bit of the world. I think it was even seen as romantic. Now, the feeling that it's taboo is much more widespread.

How does this tally with your experience of your own and other people's opinions? Have things changed?

Comments

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I was grown before I found out cousin marriage was legal anywhere in modernity; I knew Charles Darwin had married his first cousin but assumed that had become illegal since. Where I grew up it is on the level of a sibling taboo, i.e. would not even cross most people's minds as possible.

One of my lovers is my wife's third cousin (see above), which is about at a level where people in my area of birth would start shrugging shoulders and saying well if you really must-- the way this would go down would be a lot of people saying in gossipy scandalized tones 'they're cousins' and getting the instant, not-quite-excusing reply from their respondants 'by marriage'. Of course since we are both female that trumps everything in terms of unacceptable-in-those-parts.

If I were involved with anyone with that degree of consanguinity who was biological instead of by marriage I would never ever hear the last of it from my extended family. Third cousin also gets scandalized but-if-you-must. Fourth is no longer scandalous but gets mentioned in the way that people get mentioned who are unusually tall etc. I have the data readily accessible to what I think would be ninth.

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.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Third cousins is really pretty distant. I'm the only person I know who even knows any of her third cousins. And that's only because my parents were good friends with my dad's second cousin and his wife. In that case the friendship was by far the main thing; their actual relationship only explained why they happened to meet.

With more folks having second marriages quite late, lots of people are suddenly introduced to adult stepsibs -- I've got three myself. It would seem extremely awkward to be attracted to them, but not necessarily squicky.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I've known first, second and third cousins (because the family kept in touch) and fourth cousins (because they were into genealogy and contacted us). I have to confess the only ones I'd remotely consider fancying are the first cousins!

I'm possibly not a good subject for this test, though, as I'm not repulsed by consensual sibling incest, however ill-advised I might think it for breeding purposes. I believe I remain in the minority on that one.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm in that minority too, and I always rooted for the couple in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. I do feel squicked by parent-child incest, though, because the most likely scenarios for it involve a huge disparity in power that amounts to abuse. Even there, it's the abuse that squicks rather than incest per se.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Exactly - I had this conversation with regard to incest in fanfic a couple of years ago, and my position was that (breeding implications aside) it's the power imbalance that I see as the moral issue. Which imbalance can of course occur in sibling incest as well as the parent-child version, but I don't see that as so inevitable. As various people have observed, the love of Annabella and Giovanni in TPSAW is presented as the purest in the play.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

The thing is that people trying to justify going against such taboos in itself hits my squick-meter, because it's so often done in order to groom others for really nasty relationships. Not saying either of you is doing this at all -- you're at a more meta kind of level. But when someone starts sounding all reasonable-Robert-Heinlein about incest, I start going "Danger, Will Robinson!" Especially as I know people (multiple people, two different families) who've experienced sexual abuse at the hands of siblings. (And don't get me started on 20th-century psychiatry and the normalizing of father/daughter incest. Feh.)

Anyway, there's just no need. There are plenty of other people in the world who could be sexual partners, but no one else who can be your sibling.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I just read an article that pointed out that part of the problem is what happens if you DIVORCE your cousin? Or you have a serious relationship and then one of you cheats on the other or something and it all goes kablooey? That could potentially put quite a strain on family relations.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

May I ask where you grew up, and whether it was rural or an urban?

In the UK, as in the US, there is a stereotype of incest and inbreeding in isolated rural communities: hence "Normal for Norfolk" (the possibly-apocryphal medical term "NFN" being used on medical charts at Norwich Hospital) combining with unpleasant jokes about Norfolk virgins being girls who can run faster than their brothers, etc.