When I was a teenager, I read all of her books. I loved them. In Flowers in the Attic, she manged to make incest sound very…exciting. Then when I saw the movie, the guy who played the brother was so hot that I thought the sister was lucky to be getting it on with him. But who knows? You take two siblings who are in their teens, lock them in an attic for a very long time, and you may not be surprised if stuff happens.
But here is the question. If you and your brother or sister were adopted, and years later you met and fell in love with someone, and only later did you discover that this person was really your sibling, what would you do? Would you end the relationship? I don’t think in this circumstance it would be necessary.
But seriously, as best as I could ascertain, the reason West Virginia has that sterotype attached to it is because long ago, WV was very isolated and rural, and is very mountainous, with lots of narrow valleys or “hollows.” These geographic features would create pockets that would severely isolate people for generations. So I suppose that led to some sort of incest on occassion. Anyone else know anything about this?
Hmmm I have done some online research on the West Virginia thing but could not find anything.
But it has made me think, marrying your first cousin was very common not 100 years ago. Anytime you ever read a novel written more than 100 years ago, or see a Jane Austen movie or anything from that era, there’s tons of first cousin marriages going on. And it’s also very common amongst the royals of Europe. What was it OK a couple of hundred years ago, but not now?
That said, it seems that one or two people are advancing the viewpoint that as long as both people are consenting adults…, most people are hung up on the “EEEEWWW” reaction, which is understandable, and everyone else is engaging in conversation.
I can’t remember where I saw this, but it was in a movie or a TV comedy. This guy introduces his girlfriend as follows: “I’d like you to meet my girlfriend, she’s my sister, my mother, and my lover”.
In one of Xaviera Hollander’s books about her years as a prostitute, she described a pair of twin brothers who liked to double-team her. In her opinion there was an incestuous impulse behind their behavior that she also saw in fathers and sons who shared the same hooker (at different times, that is).
My family lived in a sparsely populated area of eastern Kentucky in the 1800s. I’ve done extensive genealogical research, and while I have never come across a case of incest (i.e. cousin marriage or closer), I have noticed a strong pattern of marriages occuring within the same relatively small circle of people. For example, my great-grandfather’s uncle married my g-grandfather’s wife’s mother after her first husband died. In other words, my g-grandfather’s uncle was also his step-father-in-law. Also, my grandfather’s father and stepfather were cousins. So my family tree looks normal except for a lot of dotted lines going between branches. It’s not incest, but it is startling to modern eyes, where it is very unusual for a bride and groom to have any common relatives. I think it was the result of geographic isolation and the frequent need to remarry due to the early death of a spouse. I don’t know how widespread this sort of thing was, but it could certainly account for the incest jokes. I wonder if there are other regions that had similar social practices and also have to deal with the incest jokes.
Wasn’t there some novel set in the Appalachians that presented mountain folk as violent, incestuous hicks? Apparently that was what started off the stereotype of those crazy ol’ mountain folk. I think the story was from the 1920’s or 30’s. Sorry, can’t help you with more.
I dated a girl once that confided, in a semi-drunken stupor, that she had slept with her brother, that she initiated it, and that he was the love of her life. She was upset because bro was getting married and cutting her off.
There seems to be a lot of guys out there that wouldn’t mind having sex with twins or sisters. I’d call it incest pretty soon after they touched eachother, but I don’t think it has the same stigma as brothers and sisters doing it. Either way IMHO it’s pretty icky.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have a problem with it, if I had any siblings I found attractive. Both my sisters are 40-something grandmothers, though, and I would never even consider having sex with them if I wasn’t related to them.