And, since it's such a powerful taboo in Western culture--and I'd also say for good reasons that, as Mordant has demonstrated, almost certainly go beyond authoritarian conditioning and don't require a knowledge of genetics, it can play a powerful part in sexual fantasy, and has long played a part in Western story telling for that reason.
There's a long, long tradition of sex between gods and early humans who are siblings--Greek and Roman traditions as well as non-Western stories. I remember asking my grandma when I was a kid "Ok, so if Adam and Eve are the only people (and lets face it, aren't they basically bro and sis or even closer?), who did their children marry?" and she explained that, just for that time, they would have had to marry each other. Freaked me out, and I don't have any brothers.
Most societies are, therefore, grounded in stories of basically incestuous relationships, and then have to engage in some kind of veiling of that as they also establish a tabu against incest.
And then there's also a long tradition of stories about "unconscious incest" between family members separated by adoptive relaitonships--e.g., the Oedipus story. He married and had sex with his mother because his adoptive status made him not recognize her as his mother. When adoption laws were first being passed in the late 19th century--and not until 1926 in England--concerns about separated children unknowingly marrying their siblings were again raised.
So, to answer miss wonderstarr's question--
I don't doubt there have always been people who thought sibling incest between attractive brothers or sisters was a big turn-on ~ I wrote some Luke and Leia slash years ago, which wasn't meant to be sexy so much as exploratory, and I almost thought I'd coined the term twincest in '02 ~ but it surprised me to see this tendency "coming out" so visibly and not being met by ick, but by other people joining in.
People explore lots of stuff in fantasy, and may especially create a little distance by imagining others--here especially fictional others, even cartoon others--doing things that are transgressive. In fact, I am sure that many of us here have had sexual fantasies that involve ourselves with a "brother" or "sister" or "parent," but probably many of us have to create a different person to occupy that fantasy role than the actual people we grew up with. (Which also makes me sympathetic to the attraction that these two felt for each other.)
Sure, read that as a confession. I admit can fantasize about engaging in "incest," but only if I re-imagine myself and my family; I myself cannot fantasize about anyone I actually grew up with--I have to imagine myself in a different family, having sex with a fictional brother or fictional sister or fictional step bro/sis. The ick is too strong as it comes closer to my real life, and I find I really don't want/need to cross that mental boundary in that way, even in my mind.
Fantasy and storytelling are quite different, for most people, than actually having sex with a real sibling of one's own in real life. I actually do think that mythological stories of incest functioned in a similar way for ancient cultures, we just always imagine that we're the "daring" generation, exploring things our ancestors, inevitably fuddy-duddies in our minds, never would have dreamed of. The transgressiveness of the behavior is a turn on because a taboo is being violated. It requires the taboo to be intact and strong. |
