I’m pretty sure most consumers of porn are just interested in watching people fuck. The wraparound story isn’t that important. And it certainly isn’t data for some amateur Psych study.

I mean pizza delivery guys used to be a popular “story”, But I don’t think people were secretly trying to recover from their Oedipus trauma with the help of the Noid.

“People who watched porn in the 80s, were you really into plumbers or pizza delivery people?”

My friend’s husband left her for his step sister. They (the husband and step sister) now live with their dad. The dad moved out of the master bedroom so they could sleep together during the two-year affair before they were exposed. They became step siblings as children - elementary/ middle school age. They did not grow up in the same house, but did spend weekends and school breaks together. The things that freak me out are – they will share the inheritance when the dad passes – if they break up (Is there a Hallmark card for breaking up with your sister?) who moves out? I realize this has nothing to do with porn. It just shows that some people are fucked up.

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.

I heard it’s just a placeholder for vanilla porn.

We’ll see if this is going to be controversial or not but isn’t the entire “step” -part of it there only to give people plausible deniability about incest accusations? It’s incest these people are turned on by. To my knowledge having sex with your step-anything isn’t incest because you two aren’t related.

Either way, I think that most people who like watching mom-son, brother-sister, dad-daughter etc. porn usually aren’t sexually drawn towards their own family. They just like the idea of sex between family members in general but not their own.

Yeah, stepsister. She’s a raging junkie cunt though, so no attraction from me.

I’ve actually heard that she got sober and is doing much better, but fuck her I’m no contact forever. And I mean metaphorically fuck her.

Not step sibling incest porn of you skip to the part where they stop talking

I did. But I never fantasised about actual incest, and certainly not with my family members. But fantasy incest in porn? Defo works for me.

I think lots of people are very capable of finding stuff hot as a fantasy while having zero interest in the reality. In fact, that’s part of the appeal. If I’m just watching hot people have sex, it just kinda makes me sad I’m not having sex with them. But if I’m watching a kinky scene or something that is taboo because of the relationship of the characters involved, then I can find it hot without being disappointed it isn’t real.

(and while I think there’s something to your theory, the popularity of stepmom porn suggests it’s not that simple, as most people who watch that probably had a mom)

I’ve always suspected that there’s some coincidence whereby a lot of people have suddenly started watching some step-sibling porn simply because it’s among the first videos they see and not because they’re into step-siblings, then whoever decides what genre of porn gets made has noticed and assumed it’s suddenly more popular for a reason, so it gets made more often, then there’s a feedback effect.

Edit: that said, I don’t know what kind of porn anyone I know watches, if any, but I’m sort of vaguley aware of this step-sibling meme.

You should do a poll, if you get enough comment responses to be statistically significant it would be a pain to sort through them. A poll would also make people more likely to respond, as it’s less effort.

I just like that it’s taboo, but not outright abuse. I’d love to find another subgenre that had a decent amount of available content. Suggestions?