Is incest really common?

I mean is it really common?

 

Not common, but frequent enough that you know people who have voluntarily engaged in it. I suspect it would be fairly common if it were not stigmatized.

 

It is not too common, I do not see it around me. You have to come here to see that there are more people.

 

I'm sure you know at least two people in your neighborhood

I know of four people in the family (two cousin couples). A friend once told me of another friend who credibly has experience with his sister.

Some polls I've seen explicitly ask people whether they have heard from others about incest experiences. This is a really interesting answer to get because people are less likely to lie about it. It gives you an idea how common it is. These answers seem about in line with anonymous self-reports from similar demographics. This gives me some confidence that most people who answer polls anonymously don't lie, though there may be a stronger, unknown bias about who answers sex-related polls in the first place.

I believe society projects wrong ideas about the demographics of incest, which is why it is underestimated. When hearing the word, most people conjure pictures of trailer parks and violent drunks raping their unwilling female relatives. Sadly, few would think of sophisticated, female classical musicians in a loving relationship with their father.

One of the things that surprised me the most when entering this forum was the incredibly broad demographics. It seems you can find just about any kind of person around here. There are devout muslims and convinced atheists, staunch conservatives and free-spirited liberals, insufferable horn dogs and hopeless romantics, men in love with their mothers and women out for sex with their brothers, people from just about any country on earth and from all kinds of professions and educational backgrounds. Based on that, I believe it is safe to say that sexual and romantic attraction to relatives is likely a fairly universal aspect of human nature. It's truly bizarre that it is so maligned.

 

Really no, I have not met anyone interested and who does incest until this page, until ID. I understand what you are saying, incest is related to dirty and uncultured people who are abusive and violent, but there are also many people who are not like that, a lot, people in love with classical music and a violin or who are doctors and their daughter He studies law at the university, like Star of Sea, people who read and only want to live the love they have for another person every day, live it freely, with respect, with concern, but always with much, much, much love. That incest characteristic of a family without culture and without education is closely related to incest and that image must be changed.

 

I wrote this is a different thread on the same question - I think it happens a lot more than people will admit, but its very, very discrete due to the societal taboos against it.

 

Consensual incest is not very common, but it does probably happen more than what people think. But its still not a very common thing.


Non consensual incest is sadly far more common.

 

If it is not common, it’s common in our collective psyche ...

https://www.ranker.com/list/tv-shows-weird-plotlines/jacob-shelton

A list of 15 TV shows from decades ago to recent thad had incest plot lines or as ranker puts it “weird” plot lines.

Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Arrested Development, Futurama, etc.

Heck, it was a prank at a high school pep rally ...

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/na...pts-apology-school-principal-article-1.992930

What’s ironic is that incest is automatically considered rape in which a dominant forces the sex. Using that line of thinking, all sex is deviant and should be shunned and illegal because non-incestual rape happens a lot.

 

Maybe not common but definitely more common than most think. My sis and I were in the pool becoming acquainted with the pump jet and never saw anything wrong with it. At the time I didn't have the words to describe how hot it was..

 

I think or better in my experience it is more common than you would think. Obviously the consensual vs non factor plays a role… I wasn’t initially consensual but wasn’t truly non consensual… I was finally not only consensual but Often actively performing the acts willingly and enthusiastically… i honestly liked it… my family didn’t openly talk about it… there was always an air of mystery and secrecy about it but it happened a lot and multiple members male and female were involved. I’ve also had friends who had similar experiences… it helped that we moved often so if things were ever noticed they were forgotten when we moved. So I may have a different opinion on how common it actually was but wherever we moved there were others…

 

It might have been more common when I was in smaller country schools of around 40 or so students. I had a girl friend and we would talk about who we knew was doing (it?) - brother/sister. We were aware of six or so family incest relationships including my sister and I. I was able to convince a BFF to start with his youngest sister as the middle sister was not game. My girl friend and I guessed one in five were into incest. Cousin partnerships were also common, but not really assumed to be incest.

 

It probably happens more often than we realize but definitely not enough to say its common.

 

Yes, 20% of siblings having engaged in "sibling experimentation" sounds about right. Considering the reluctance of people to reply honestly to scientific polls, which typically claim around 10-15%, I believe it might even approach 30%. Not necessarily intercourse, but touching seems fairly common. Once they try out oral it is often a small step to full sex.

How many do you think went all the way?

 

Or you know, maybe they are answering honestly and the number is around 10-15%


Also when has there been scientific polls on that done by actual scientists and not by random people on the internet ?

 

It is a fairly safe bet that scientific polls underestimate the incidence of incest. The conducting scientists typically agree with that sentiment. If you take a somewhat representative sample (at least one thing scientific polls are more likely to get right), there are quite surely more people who lie in the negative than positive direction. When it comes to unscientific online polls, the sampling bias is enormous (kinky types are more likely to respond) and participants are probably more likely to lie in the other direction.

Even if answered honestly, the precise question asked makes a big difference. For example, "Have you ever been sexually abused by a family member?" would likely be answered differently than "Have you ever had sex with a family member?". Because, obviously, not all poll participants had sex in the family that they experienced as abusive. But many scientific studies ask that way for fear of being seen as pro-"abuse" and therefore not credible.

As a matter of fact, yes, there is a substantial number of scientific studies, some with thousands of participants, on the incidence of incest that has been published in reputable scientific journals. They pretty much all agree that unbiased information is hard to obtain and that the data are likely skewed towards underestimating it. They can only report percentages as found in data.

One also shouldn't dismiss anonymous online polls out of hand. Some at least ask reasonable questions. Though the sampling bias towards more kinky types is likely enormous, such polls in my experience often display a remarkable internal consistency, for example when it comes to sexual practices, who initiated, preferences, etc. Less sensitive information contained in them, not directly related to incest, also typically matches external scientific polls or realistic assumptions. They also show great stability over time, with people basically answering in similar ways to polls today as they did 20 years ago.

The best online polls use trick questions that ask the same question twice in different ways. For example, they might ask whether you have engaged with a parent or sibling and then elsewhere ask whether you have engaged with a brother, sister, father, or mother. If people answer honestly, you should get consistent numbers. In my experience these polls are consistent enough to add them some credibility. That's why I believe that other than attracting more kinky types (or people who actually had incest), people do try to answer the questions honestly for most part.

Based on reading a lot of scientific and online polls, I don't believe that incest closer than cousin is particularly common. But it's probably in about the same ballpark as homosexuality, possibly even slightly higher.

 

Growing up here in the UK it was common to know someone who had dated their cousin in school

 

As an interesting side note, pretty much every poll I've ever seen on this subject indicates that cousin and sibling incest relationships are about equally frequent in Western cultures. That means if you live in a country where cousin relationships are accepted, though preferably not promoted like in some South Asian countries, then you probably get a good idea of how many sibling relationships there are.

 

Growing up we never did anything but my older sister although she's straight would always talk about tits with me I grew to like big ones from this as she would also talk about her friends huge breasts

 

I once met a family with whom it was common, but I'm not sure whether everyone took part voluntarily

 

A friend of mine told me a classmate of his had sex with his mom but have no proof. Also where I live it's not againt the law to have sex with your cousin