I have a pet hypothesis that, on average, those into step porn are more likely not have grown up with a sibling of the gender they fancy. I reckon those of us who did are more likely to repelled by anything alluding to incest.

People who grew up with ACTUAL hot step siblings notwithstanding.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    3 months ago

    Hmm.

    There’s an psychological effect that people who grow up alongside someone generally aren’t attracted to them to the extent that they might be to someone else.

    Can’t remember the name of the phenomenon.

    kagis

    The Westermarck effect.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect

    The Westermarck effect, also known as reverse sexual imprinting, is a psychological hypothesis that states that people tend not to be attracted to peers with whom they lived like siblings before the age of six. This hypothesis was first proposed by Finnish anthropologist Edvard Westermarck in his book The History of Human Marriage (1891) as one explanation for the incest taboo.[1]

    The Westermarck effect has gained some empirical support.[2] Proponents point to evidence from the Israeli kibbutz system, from the Chinese Shim-pua marriage customs, and from closely related families.

    In the case of the Israeli kibbutzim (collective farms), children were reared somewhat communally in peer groups, based on age, not biological relations. A study of the marriage patterns of these children later in life revealed that out of the nearly 3,000 marriages that occurred across the kibbutz system, only 14 were between children from the same peer group. Of those 14, none had been reared together during the first six years of life. This result suggests that the Westermarck effect operates from birth to at least the age of six.[3]

    In Shim-pua marriages, a girl would be adopted into a family as the future wife of a son, often an infant at that time. These marriages often failed, as would be expected according to the Westermarck hypothesis.[4]

    Studies show that cousin-marriage in Lebanon has a lower success rate if the cousins were raised in sibling-like conditions, first-cousin unions being more successful in Pakistan if there was a substantial age difference, as well as reduced marital appeal for cousins who grew up sleeping in the same room in Morocco. Evidence also indicates that siblings separated for extended periods of time since childhood were more likely to report having engaged in sexual activity with one another.[5]

    You’d expect the Westermark effect to decrease attraction for someone that a person grew up alongside, but not to decrease appeal of other people who are siblings having sex.

    I’m not aware of any formal study as to the effect, but I’d assume that some of the appeal of what people consider kinks derives directly from the fact that something is, in fact, taboo. Like, let’s say that we had no incest taboo in present-day society – and that hasn’t been a universal – then I’m not sure that “incest porn” or the like would be a thing.

    kagis

    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-where-incest-is-legal

    Twenty-two countries around the world have not criminalized incest. Portuguese law, for example, does not criminalize incest. Additionally, no laws prohibit consenting relatives from having sexual relations in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Incest is also legal in Argentina, Brazil, India, the Ivory Coast, Japan, Latvia, South Korea, Thailand, and Turkey.

    In Spain, Netherlands, and Russia, consensual incest is fully legal. However, siblings may not marry, nor may half-siblings or a step-parent and a stepchild. In Serbia, Lithuania, and Slovenia, incest between an adult and a minor is illegal, but the law does not prohibit minors or adults from engaging in incest with partners in the same age category. Israel outlaws incest among minors but declares it legal if both persons are over 21 years old. Perhaps the most unique laws on incest come from Ireland and Germany, where the language forbidding incest specifically addresses male-female pairings—which means incest remains legal for same-sex couples.

    Of course, legal prohibitions aren’t exactly the same thing as having a cultural incest taboo.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest_taboo

    I’d guess that to test that, one could probably run a study, come up with some kind of quantitative measure of how intensely “taboo” incest is in a given society, and try to see whether there is correlation with frequency of incest pornography.

    EDIT: Hmm. You know, that makes me think that if a correlation between cultural taboo and popularity of a kink exists, maybe you could use the effect in reverse as a metric for hard-to-measure cultural taboos.

    Like, okay. In 2024, there are no legal prohibitions on miscegenation. Like, if someone of Race A and someone of Race B want to have a kid, the law isn’t going to stop them. But there’s definitely some level of cultural taboo floating around out there. I’m pretty sure that it’s going to be hard to get someone to fess up to their views on that.

    But…you can get aggregate data on frequency at which people are consuming interracial pornography. If you figure that the kink derives from the cultural taboo, then a sociologist has got themelves a pretty interesting metric right there on racial views.

      • tal@lemmy.today
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        3 months ago

        googles = “uses the Google search engine to search for something”

        kagis = “uses the Kagi search engine to search for something”

          • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I never understood why bing didn’t hire The Rock as its advertiser, and have him say “Just bring it”, and then some tiny pencil neck geek says “Actually, I just bing it!”

            And then he punches The Rock in the mouth, and puts him in the Sharpshooter, and The Rock throws up blood and passes out and dies, and the little guy has a championship belt that says “Bing” in the center.

            And then the next commercial he could do the same to Connar McGregger.

            And then whoever else.

        • tal@lemmy.today
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          3 months ago

          I’d put it as “Google is Kagi, but you pay via them data-mining and profiling you instead of an up-front fee.”

          • Susaga@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            Well of course you would. You paid for a search engine. You’re gonna justify that any way you possibly can. There are other free search engines out there, you know.