Kissing Cousins?

[Rumple Foreskin]

There's an early scene in, The Great Gatsby, where Daisy Buchanan can't recall if she and her second cousin once removed, Nick Carraway, the story's narrator, are, "kissing cousins."

I decided to see if there was a generally accepted genetic definition for the term. There isn't. This one by American Heritage is typical: A distant relative known well enough to be kissed when greeted

While noodlin' around in that neck of the woods, I came across three items on the subject at About.com that were news to me.

1. The US is the only western country with laws (in about half the states) against first cousins marrying.

2. Approximately 20% of the world's couples are first cousins. (It's apparently fairly common in Muslim society.)

3. As Elvis said in, Kissing Cousins, we really are all cousins. No two people are more distantly related than 50th cousins.

We're all cousins? Well, the Bible says we all come from Adam and Eve, while science claims Lucy is the grandmother of us all. So I guess that means Literotica writers have been churning out stories involving Incest whether they knew it or not.

Just thought all my cousins here at the Authors Hangout might find some of that info interesting.

Cuz Rumple Foreskin

 

[DesertPirate]

*snerk*

Nice one Cuz

 

[CharleyH]

There's an early scene in, The Great Gatsby, where Daisy Buchanan can't recall if she and her second cousin once removed, Nick Carraway, the story's narrator, are, "kissing cousins."

I decided to see if there was a generally accepted genetic definition for the term. There isn't. This one by American Heritage is typical: A distant relative known well enough to be kissed when greeted

While noodlin' around in that neck of the woods, I came across three items on the subject at About.com that were news to me.

1. The US is the only western country with laws (in about half the states) against first cousins marrying.

2. Approximately 20% of the world's couples are first cousins. (It's apparently fairly common in Muslim society.)

3. As Elvis said in, Kissing Cousins, we really are all cousins. No two people are more distantly related than 50th cousins.

We're all cousins? Well, the Bible says we all come from Adam and Eve, while science claims Lucy is the grandmother of us all. So I guess that means Literotica writers have been churning out stories involving Incest whether they knew it or not.

Just thought all my cousins here at the Authors Hangout might find some of that info interesting.

Cuz Rumple Foreskin

I do. Funny and real. Blue Blood is a very interesting term.

 

[xssve]

Interesting - I think the Catholic church had to prohibit sex between anything less than Third Cousins in the Middle Ages, had to do with feudal lords not allowing their Vassels to seek mates outside the fiefdom.

I stumbled across this blog researching sex crimes yesterday, interesting story about the sentence a guy got for consensual sex with his 22 year old stepdaughter: http://sexcrimes.typepad.com/sex_crimes/incest/

Scroll down to "Interesting Ruling on Incest".

 

[Weird Harold]

So I guess that means Literotica writers have been churning out stories involving Incest whether they knew it or not.

Since "Incest" is legal fiction defined as "sex between two individuals too closely related to marry" as long as we're not writing about first cousins who live in the US or immediate family (parents, children or siblings) we're not writing about "incest."

About half of the stories in the "incest" category aren't about incest since step-siblings or step-parents/children are the subjects of a good percentage. (It's actually why the category was remnamed "Incest/Taboo")

 

[trysail]

The general public still seems to think being a "Mayflower descendant" is a big deal. Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War contains a fascinating little factoid toward the end of the book— and I'll give you a little quiz based on it: roughly how many "Mayflower descendants" are living today?

A) 100,000
B) 125,000
C) 200,000
D) None of the above

( scroll down for the answer )

























To my utter astonishment and amazement, the answer is: approximately 37,000,000!

 

[trysail]

I married my sixth cousin. It turns out that I'm twice-descended from two of my great-great grandparents because a pair of siblings both married a sibling pair of their first cousins. It's sheer hell for the genealogists.

Genealogy is, of course, the unofficial state sport of The Commonwealth of Virginia.

http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~ritschrd/genealogy/all.pdf

 

[Boxlicker101]

I always thought "kissing cousins" were relatives who were distant enough that sex between them, with or without marriage, was not legally or even socially conaidered to be incest.

 

[slyc_willie]

The idea I've always had about 'Kissing cousins' was that it was something you did because you wanted to do more, but didn't because it was wrong because she's your cousin and . . . .

Well, you get the point.

Following up on the 'Lucy' comment above, mitochondrial DNA testing has all but confirmed that all humans alive today are descended from one little African tribe that crossed the Red Sea about eighty thousand years ago, at a time when a supervolcano erupted and wiped out most other strains of humanity . . . .

I guess it could be said we're all inbred, then. Incest, indeed.

 

[epiphany65]

While everyone seems to know what incest is, legally, there are great swaths of grey. Within The US, some states (mainly in the south) allow first cousins, and other cousins, to marry, while others do not allowed. The same is the case worldwide. Some states allow oral sex between siblings and other close adult relatives, as well as other acts that do not lead to pregnancy. In The Netherlands, France and Belgium there are no laws against incest amongst legal adults. It's legal. It's a cultural taboo, and cultures vary from place to place. Some countries and cultures encourage marriage between cousins to strengthen tribal and familial bonds. Some cultures consider males and females who are raised together (but with no blood relation) to be siblings and relationships between them are forbidden. Literotica was wise to add the Taboo tag to the category -- although taboo could also include Interracial, gay/lesbian, or whatever else some find distasteful. Sexuality and sociality are murky.

 

[gauchecritic]

Following up on the 'Lucy' comment above, mitochondrial DNA testing has all but confirmed that all humans alive today are descended from one little African tribe that crossed the Red Sea about eighty thousand years ago, at a time when a supervolcano erupted and wiped out most other strains of humanity . . . .

I guess it could be said we're all inbred, then. Incest, indeed.

Following on that, I read a while ago that there is more DNA variation in the African continent than in the whole of the rest of the world.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Then there are the six degrees of separation...

 

[unregistered]

 

[slyc_willie]

Following on that, I read a while ago that there is more DNA variation in the African continent than in the whole of the rest of the world.

There are more than a few books on the subject. One theory suggests cycles of migration, with nomadic tribes "coming home" every handful of generations or so, bringing new DNA with them. The advent of permanent settlements eventually stifled that practice.

Anthropology is fascinating stuff.