Incest and its probability in reality

[000zing]

I have written a few stories using this theme and I can see it's a commonplace topic on Literotica. I do realise that it's the writer's job to convince (a job which many on here shirk with, seemingly, never a care) but even so I keep having this nagging feeling that it's a hugely uncommon phenomenon in real life. So many things seem to be in place to inhibit it, not least what seem to be evolution-driven aversions within the psychology of most people.

Putting "The Act" itself to one side for a moment, I wonder if any academic studies have ever been done as to the frequency/occurrence of lustful thoughts or impulses within the family context, say mother/son or father daughter. Everything I've ever seen has been purely anecdotal and even information at that level could be useful or at least interesting.

 

[KeithD]

I hold the reality of this as irrelevant to the writing of it in erotic to serve fantasy and arousal. And I consider any deep discussion of medical/psychological studies of it on an erotica site as an unnecessary picking at a scab--and also irrelevant to the nature of the story site. (But what will ensue here is a convoluted, probably acrimonious slugfest of folks telling other folks what they should do/think/say.)

 

[000zing]

I hold the reality of this as irrelevant to the writing of it in erotic to serve fantasy and arousal. And I consider any deep discussion of medical/psychological studies of it on an erotica site as an unnecessary picking at a scab--and also irrelevant to the nature of the story site. (But what will ensue here is a convoluted, probably acrimonious slugfest of folks telling other folks what they should do/think/say.)

And for those us who have this totally absurd idea of basing their erotic tales in settings which are as close to reality as possible... you know: in the stupid belief that this might just somehow aid in the process of convincing the reader...? For oddballs like that, the thing would be irrelevant and unnecessary, right?

 

[KeithD]

To me and my purpose in writing erotica, yes, absolutely. I'm not in the anal retentive or clinical set. But have at it.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

"any academic studies have ever been done as to the frequency/occurrence of lustful thoughts or impulses within the family context, say mother/son or father daughter"

If you're studying thoughts and impulses (rather than actual occurrences), you're going to have to rely heavily on self-reporting, and in view of the taboo and legal complications surrounding these type of relations, any data are going to be highly suspect.

 

[lovecraft68]

And for those us who have this totally absurd idea of basing their erotic tales in settings which are as close to reality as possible... you know: in the stupid belief that this might just somehow aid in the process of convincing the reader...? For oddballs like that, the thing would be irrelevant and unnecessary, right?

I don't know about academic, but just going by things I've been told by people in my real life(I pay no attention to any of the "reminds me of when I was fucking my mom" comments I get from here, things between siblings happen a lot more than people want to think.

Much of it a result of curiosity between siblings close in age with raging hormones and no experience outside the house. Things from the show me yours I'll show you....'playing doctor' to more serious events. A woman I worked with for years who knew I wrote taboo erotica told me that when she was in her teens, she knew her brother peeped at her, and found it excited her and would deliberately give him chances to see her undress, but there was never any contact.

Another longtime friend admitted to me that he and his sister masturbated in front of each other several times, then went as far as 'helping each other out' twice. I won't go on with more, but you get the point.

But what all of them have in common is happening at an age we can't discuss here before they started dating and experiencing sex, and none of them turned into anything lasting or damaging, it was experimental.

In writing the category, I have always felt that a brother/sister story can be delivered more realistically. They're peers, if they're close your sibling is your playmate, best friend, confidant, partner in crime, and under the right circumstances I can see the line being crossed, and I'm a sucker for their being affection involved and not just sex.

Although I write them, the idea of real life parent and child-even adult child as we write here, is not a turn on, its wrong and abuse. Siblings as I said are peers, a parent will always be seen as being someone you're raised to listen to and obey, it would never be an equal dynamic.

Just a few thoughts

 

[lovecraft68]

(But what will ensue here is a convoluted, probably acrimonious slugfest of folks telling other folks what they should do/think/say.)

You mean like you always do, and just did again?
Passive aggressive much?

 

[MrPixel]

It's my belief from experience it's a lot more common than one would surmise given the media's preoccupation with the Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, etc. fantasies. I firsthand know two families that were torn apart by father/daughter incest, one forced, the other loving but very sick in that the daughter bore a child by it.

 

[TadOverdon]

I wonder if any academic studies have ever been done as to the frequency/occurrence of lustful thoughts or impulses within the family context, say mother/son or father daughter. Everything I've ever seen has been purely anecdotal...

I think there was this guy named Freud...

 

[MsNatalie99]

My take is that reality in fiction is relative. There are ample stories on the site featuring werewolf sex, woman who have no need for lube during their first anal experience, and guys who luck out into going to an all girl's harem academy. Nonetheless, I believe there must be some grounded elements in even the most far-fetched piece of fiction. At least some aspects of character and world the readers can identify with.

In my opinion, if you want your story to be believable, your characters should be. How the think, the emotional ramifications of their decisions, and what led them to make the choices they did. Still, in fiction you have the suspension of disbelief. I know that such familial encounters do happen, more than many would care to admit. Although, often times these true life events are far from hot, and not in keeping with Lit standards. Once agian, just my thoughts on it.

 

[KeithD]

Stalking is aggressive aggressive, right, not just passive aggressive?

And something that sick little puppies do on an erotica board.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Well, to quote Stjepan Sejic, the law of writing porn states that the rule of hot trumps the rule of real.

Incest in reality is almost always abusive, hurtful and damaging. For every IRL blissful mom-and-son or bro-sis interlude, there are dozens if not hundreds of scarred, sobbing children and teens.

That said, as you note, it's popular here. Not my cup of tea in any case, but the job of any writer is to make the abnormal seem not only believable but enjoyable. How to do that is up to each writer.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Just my two cents worth, incest isn't erotic, isn't sexy, isn't loving, and isn't enjoyable. In my real family, we had incest but no love. Whereas, with my adopted family, I had love and no sexual involvement. I prefer the later to the former.

The abuse in my original family is why I have trouble writing about happy incest.

 

[000zing]

Well, to quote Stjepan Sejic, the law of writing porn states that the rule of hot trumps the rule of real.

And hiding somewhere in that law is the even more wonderful one of lazy-writer-cop-out, together with its concomitant crapfest of CaptainKirkTentacledElfdom. Don't bother with the graft of explaining exactly how Character A managed to seduce Character B... why, he just aimed his sure-fire, Acme SplungeHypnotron at her. Don't bother with the hassle of inventing plausible reasons for Event C occurring... why, in galaxy D in century E, that just happens all the time, surely you knew..?

Personally, I like to take the dreadful risk of crediting any reader with some intelligence and hence the need to be drawn into a story.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

Incest is primarily one older male family member preying on younger female family members. Most often it involves a father preying on a daughter. The incidence of mothers preying on sons is so rare that it is statistically insignificant. Second most prevalent is an older male sibling preying on a younger female sibling. The notion that the two are peers is a convenient fiction that some may use to delude themselves, but it does not bear out in reality. It is predatory, toxic masculinity in a particularly insidious form, since it involves a power imbalance and the betrayal of a close relationship. Are there exceptions? Probably a few, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. In the real world incest is rape. And unlike sex with werewolves, there are real victims. Most victims show signs of PTSD. It is not sexy. It is not entertaining. Write what you choose to write, but don't delude yourself.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

Or alternatively, you could write the "Uncensored History of the Ptolemies - When your family tree is a bramble bush."

 

[TarnishedPenny]

And hiding somewhere in that law is the even more wonderful one of lazy-writer-cop-out, together with its concomitant crapfest of CaptainKirkTentacledElfdom. Don't bother with the graft of explaining exactly how Character A managed to seduce Character B... why, he just aimed his sure-fire, Acme SplungeHypnotron at her. Don't bother with the hassle of inventing plausible reasons for Event C occurring... why, in galaxy D in century E, that just happens all the time, surely you knew..?

Personally, I like to take the dreadful risk of crediting any reader with some intelligence and hence the need to be drawn into a story.

Without trying to get into a bunfight, successful Lit stories inevitably require the suspension of reality to some degree. Nobody wants to read about normal or average (normal is very often overweight, PMSing, balding, opinionated, etc) Ergo, to be successful, the characters and situation must all carry with them a substantial helping of Unreal.

I don’t think I said that writers shouldn’t work at background or buildup or back story or such. My point, in context, is that the writer’s job is to help the reader escape reality. That, of course, requires effort and skill and, for anything but the most basic stroker, background and explanations. If done successfully, bland or even unpleasant reality is put aside and replaced by a sizzling fictional tale. And that is precisely Sejic’s point.

 

[KeithD]

Realistic doesn't require either clinical discussion or moral judgmentalism.

 

[SimonDoom]

And hiding somewhere in that law is the even more wonderful one of lazy-writer-cop-out, together with its concomitant crapfest of CaptainKirkTentacledElfdom. Don't bother with the graft of explaining exactly how Character A managed to seduce Character B... why, he just aimed his sure-fire, Acme SplungeHypnotron at her. Don't bother with the hassle of inventing plausible reasons for Event C occurring... why, in galaxy D in century E, that just happens all the time, surely you knew..?

Personally, I like to take the dreadful risk of crediting any reader with some intelligence and hence the need to be drawn into a story.

Let's suppose we assume this to be true. None of this requires reading, studying, or being familiar with scientific studies about the incidence of consensual adult incest (since that's what we're talking about at Literotica--let's be clear about that) in real life. As an author, you're not going to advance the believability ball by doing that research and knowing its results. You make your story believable by paying attention to the characters in the story and their situation, and telling the story artfully and convincingly. I'm not being dismissive of your basic question, which is a good one, but I totally agree with KeithD-- focusing on outside research is missing the point. I have NO idea how common consensual adult incest is. I have no personal experience with it. But it's clear to me that it fascinates a lot of readers on a fantasy level, and that, plus the ability to spin a story, is all you need to know.

People get this issue of "realism" wrong all the time. Writing a "realistic" story doesn't mean writing a story about characters whose psychology conforms to scientifically-established norms. You can write a "realistic" story about a character whose psychology is an extreme outlier--and in fact, readers LIKE outlier characters. Readers love stories about heroes, serial killers, and extreme nymphos. The key is to present their unusual psychology in an artful way that draws the reader in and makes the reader interested. That has a lot more to do with story-telling skills than outside research.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Dear Simon,

Agreed, but I'm going to take a different tack.

'Realism' is describing what it feels like when your boyfriend gives you oral sex for the first time.

'Reality' is that it's your parents' basement and being worried they may come home at any minute.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

Verisimilitude is that it doesn't matter that it's your parents basement, you cast "lock" on the door and that has been established as being a common spell in your world.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Verisimilitude is that it doesn't matter that it's your parents basement, you cast "lock" on the door and that has been established as being a common spell in your world.

 

[KinoKe]

I suspect that parent-child incest is pretty rare, but sibling incest is not that uncommon. And, of course, in Britain we have a long tradition of marrying our cousins. I haven't married any of mine, but you know what I mean. Queen Victoria. Charles Darwin. Harold Smith.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

Cousin marriages and Avuncular marriages are a tradition in many cultures.

 

[Comentarista82]

I have written a few stories using this theme and I can see it's a commonplace topic on Literotica. I do realise that it's the writer's job to convince (a job which many on here shirk with, seemingly, never a care) but even so I keep having this nagging feeling that it's a hugely uncommon phenomenon in real life. So many things seem to be in place to inhibit it, not least what seem to be evolution-driven aversions within the psychology of most people.

Putting "The Act" itself to one side for a moment, I wonder if any academic studies have ever been done as to the frequency/occurrence of lustful thoughts or impulses within the family context, say mother/son or father daughter. Everything I've ever seen has been purely anecdotal and even information at that level could be useful or at least interesting.

There's actually far more about it than just anecdotes, and the hyperlink (while listing abstracts mostly, from what I can tell) indicates numerous sources to consult on a cursory review and if someone had zero clue on the psychology and after-effects, there's enough there to at least have an informed accounting if that's what one wishes.

It's been universally acknowledged that any survey inherits some bias strictly because even when respondents are guaranteed to be anonymous, they are rarely 100% truthful about their thoughts/impulses and to some degree, their answers; the only way to gauge thought truly is by one's actions (i.e., the action manifests the thought). To make it completely obvious: if someone says "please visit as soon as you can," but frequently cancels most times last minute, you can rightly conclude that person does NOT want to really "see" you, nor for you to "visit."

One of the best clinical psychologists states (and far more beyond him that are well-published and truly want people to improve themselves so they are less of a burden to their friends, family and society) the human mind is capable of anything it can imagine--and will do it if the person has both the power and the opportunity--so extremes exist, as well as anything in between. So in "keeping it real" in the vernacular, so long as an author makes the thought process transparent/obvious (enough) to the reader, likely the average reader will buy the story and why something's happening.