Rural people are often satirized as taking part in incest, esp. incestuous (or near-incestuous) marriages. It’s a very common insult, so I’m sure I don’t need a cite. Where did this insult originate? And like many insults and jibes, does it have some basis in truth :eek: .
Thank you in advance to all who reply 
I don’t think the origin is that much of a mystery. People in really rural areas were often isolated geographically especially in the days when travel was difficult. Someone looking for a mate or just a romantic release would be much more likely to find a suitable partner in someone that happened to be related to them. Family relations could spread out like cobwebs through rural areas after many generations and it may have been hard to even keep it all straight. Cities simply had more people to diffuse those effects and associations.
Further reference from Straight Dope columns for additional reference:
Inbreeding in rural areas:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a980724.html
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/051028.html
Cousin Marriage:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/041001.html) (Nic2004’s link)
The germ of the idea arises from the very real issue that if you are in a small, isolated rural (or insular) community, unless you have vigorous migration after a few generations everybody will be some degree of cousin to everybody else. Look up also the case of the inhabitants of isolated Pitcairn Island, all descended from a handful of HMS Bounty mutineers.
Now, what constitutes “incest” is culture-dependent(*) – and depending on the culture there are many degrees of cousinhood or nephew/niecehood that may be fair game. In many cultures “first cousins” are entirely fine and dandy as potential mates. Siince in that culture, it’s NOT “incest” to do your cousin, the problem if any is not of prevalent “incest” but of inbreeding – a depleted gene pool. You throw into that also the association of “hill people” villages with “old country” traditions or religions that promote endogamy, i.e. marriage within the group. If the group is not too big, again… This was a bigger potential problem before advances in transportation and access, when it could be a major endeavor to travel to the nearest decently-sized town and a particular valley could be cut off all through the winter or the flood season. Still, you do not need a situation of massive less-than-4th-degree-of-consanguinity pairings to cause a noticeable inbreeding effect – and NEITHER does that sort of pairing guarantee ill effects.
(which is not to say there may be social environments where what the culture itself calls incest has a higher frequency: Jerry Springer keeps finding cases of Dad/Daughter, Son/Mom, Bro/Sis, Sis/Sis, Mom/Daughter, etc. “happy couples”… but they are not necessarily from the hills and hollers, some are from in-town)
Cecil does hint, in the column on the source of social oprobium and bans upon 1st-cousin marriage, that the use of this as a stereotype put-down of rural people (and in the USA, of even not-quite-so-rural so-called “Trailer Trash” [sub]What the hell does the trailer have to do with it anyway?[/sub]) derives from a belief in the moral superiority of the urban, cosmopolitan lifestyle brought about by “progress”. It correlates with the old idea of “degeneracy”, wherein those deprived of the favorable influences of progress (or of wiser elites) will become “degenerate” and that will include their morals.
[sub](*“Incest”, traditionally, is sex between two people who due to degree of consanguinity are forbidden to mary one another; in modern times it was adjusted to refer to specific degrees in its own right. You can imagine how much that may vary in time and location. Many believe the ban, anthropologically, arose not so much to combat inbreeding as to ensure that no romantic rivalries or favoritisms will arise between people who have to maintain obligations as family/clan members, and that there will be a pool of eligible mates to marry members of other clans so as to strengthen the tribe’s bonds. Any inbreeding ill-effects would be seen as a “smiting” for violating the rule.)[/sub]
[edit at poster’s req. P.S., report a post (any post), we’re more likely to see it. --G]
OK, I implore a MOD to correct the misplaced ** in my next-to-last paragraph to a [/sub] :smack:
At least we’re not seeing bumper stickers that say, “You can take my incest when you pry my cold dead figners from around it!”
Now that the question has been answered, I just have to share this story. A few years back, my great aunt and uncle were having a family reunion in celebration of their 75th wedding anniversary. One of my cousins, let’s call her Amy, had just arrived.
Amy: So, are there any hot guys here?
Me: :eek:
Amy: 
Me: Uh, Amy… you do know this is a family reunion, right?
Amy: :smack:
Me: No big deal. This is Alabama.
No, I’m not letting her live that one down.
Don’t ever let her live that down. Priceless.
Jim B.: There was a study done on the Pine Barrens of NJ around 1880. The locals had inbred to a point where the Doctor doing the research thought he had discovered an offshoot of the human race. It was merely inbreeding and within 2 generations and with roads into the Barrens the worst of it was gone.
Jim
Visiting adult bookstores purely and strictly for fighting-ignorance purposes, I have noticed that there are several “letters” publications that are all about incest. Family Affairs, stuff like that. So apparently there are some people (enough to constitute a target market) who fantasize about incest and find the idea arousing. Maybe rural people (assuming there is anything to the stereotype) just have more opportunities to do it and keep it quiet.
(I’ve never seen any incest-themed adult videos. Probably because there’s no way to make it convincing – you could just pair up any two performers of the same apparent ethnicity and say they’re brother and sister or whatever.)
The trailer is a form of house that is nearly guaranteed to decrease in value over time. (It is also widely known as Tornado Snacks.) When you compare it to a real, tied to the ground house, you will see how ignorant buying a trailer home is. That’s what the trailer has to do with it. It’s foolish. :smack:
And cheap.
“Trailer Trash” usually refers to those on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale - those without much money are more likely to settle for a trailer home if they can’t afford a house with a foundation and don’t have the economic prospects to mortgage one.
…and it’s how we say “White Trash” on the Dope without getting accused of racism. :rolleyes:
You might be a redneck if:
Your favorite place to score chicks is the annual family reunion.
Second cousins are fair game, right? RIGHT???
Which is why rednecks are a/k/a “tornado bait.”
You mean the Jukes and Kallikaks? That study was used as an argument for eugenics (sterilizing the poor) in the early 20th century. An offshoot of the human race, like in The Truth About De-Evolution? “Oh Gramps, we’re all devo!”
Marrying your cousin typically falls into two categories. Parallel cousin (children of parent’s sam sex sibling, mother’s sisters kid) marriages are typically found in matrilineal societies and cross cousin (children of parent’s opposite sex simbling, father’s sister’s kid) marriages are typically found in patrilineal societies. Obviously the cultures that practice these kinds of marriage, many Arabs for example, don’t consider it incest. If you have a large enough population you don’t have to worry to much about inbreeding with these customs.
Marc
Actually, there is a brother-sister movie that did find a way to make it convincing. It took the whole plot long of the movie to set it up so that it was thoroughly convincing, and the incest was revealed only at the very end as a surprise shocker twist, they hadn’t known they were brother & sister. Talking about this movie in this thread, to tell its title would be the spoiler. Don’t look at the title within this spoiler unless you want the surprise ending given away…Lone Star.But the sex in this movie, while very romantic, is not nude or very explicit.
I had a friend from college who grew up deep in the pine barrens whose family had lived in the same community for 250 years. He had a family member get into geneology, and told me once that 100 years ago his family was as inbred as pedigreed dogs.
Pineys are odd ducks, though, even in this day and age. This guy and every single one of his friends were all built like linebackers. It don’t think I’ve ever met a non-burly native piney. My friend swore it’s all the iron in their water. Secretely I wondered if this was some kind of upside to all that inbreeding.
There may have been a brief fad about it in the early 80s as I know of several movies from that time that played with the idea. In fact one of those is one of the more famous adult movies from that time and starred the more famous actors. But I don’t know any from the last 15 years. Of course none of these were meant to be thought of as real, they were all actors playing family members.
I have seen it, and there is no way it can be described as an adult movie. It is well worth seeing though, if you fancy a harrowing film where emotions are taken to the extremes.