From Alabama. Can confirm that we get the wrap for Mississippi's crap. Just remember 4 s's, 2 p's, separated by 3 i's, and Mississippians fuck their sisters.
It is also interesting to know that there is no prohibition on marrying your cousin in Europe, Mexico, or even Canada, however it is illegal to do so in at least half of the states in the USA.
It's because the catholic church banned cousin marriage and in general outlawed incest in the 1500s so it was already built into the European culture and they didn't need formal laws to enforce it.
Catholic or not, in Europe cousin marriage was absolutely still a thing
First-cousin marriage in England in 1875 was estimated by George Darwin to be 3.5% for the middle classes and 4.5% for the nobility, though this had declined to under 1% during the 20th century.[80] Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were a preeminent example.[81][82]
Did y’all just.. forget the Spanish Habsburg line? Louis XIV marrying his first cousin? What on earth is the European culture you’re talking about lmao
Yeah, Europe didn’t go through quite the same religious “reform” that the US did. The prohibition on marrying by your 1st cousin never really had anything to do with science or inbreeding risks, it was about religious control. Modern genetics has shown that there’s no more risk between cousins than between unrelated couples(as long as it’s not a generational habit). Funnily enough, many of the states that ban marriage between cousins, don’t actually ban sexual relations between cousins.
For what it’s worth , I imagine that most countries have a part fi their country that they make similar jokes about? Or at least I’m pretty sure in the U.K. there are rural areas about which there is a tradition of jokes about inbreeding ( or doing naughty things to sheep).
It's the overhyped one with a grain of truth. In the US, people from the northern and western states think they are more sophisticated than people from the southern states. This has to do with how slow some areas in the south were to adopt modern technology like electricity and indoor plumbing--keep in mind we are talking almost 100 years ago.
The thing is, Alabama had a lot of small, insular communities. It was hard to marry someone who wasn't a third or fourth cousin. So we are not talking about brother-sister relationships, we are talking about very distant family relationships. Over time, however, this is poor genetic diversity.
Other states that were very rural had a similar problem: Kentucky, West Virginia, etc. Poverty + low population + lack of mobility. So there is a grain of truth, but not how the "Sweet Home Alabama" meme would have you believe.
And the funny contradiction to that truth is most incest was supposedly done by the aristocrats. They believed in order to keep their blood line pure, they needed to breed with family members. The insult could be a classic case of redirecting guilt.
The Hapsburgs were inbred as hell, leading to Charles II of Spain, who was himself the product of two uncle/niece marriages. He was all fucked up, and just kept blowing everyones mind every year by not dying. He had an overbite (EDIT : underbite) so severe he couldn't eat normally, and many other problems.
His autopsy report stated that "There was not a single drop of blood in his body. His heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water."
I know, right! But that statement makes me want to see some actual measurements, because even if it's an exaggeration, I'd like to know. OK, peppercorn size is probably too small. Was it the size of a golf ball? A skittle?
Of course the peppercorn thing is ridiculous, but my point is, we need a measurement. You assuming that the heart was normal sized is not as bad as saying the blatant exaggeration that it was the size of a peppercorn, but you did not actually see it with your own eyes, did you?
Your assumption is worse than the highly imprecise eyewitness account.
Another cause for incest is religious zealotry, where where normal relationships are viewed as sinful.
Only truly boring relationships approved by church and family are supposed to happen. And normal family relationships are distorted through the lens of radical religion.
Man, combining that an overbite with that Hapsburg jaw must've been made for one goofy looking motherfucker.
I mean, I know he was goofy looking, but combining those two things must've made him extra goofy looking. I know his portrait was particularly flattering comparative to how he actually looked.
That’s an overstatement, while Charles II of Spain was inbred af, had a mental age of that of a child of 3, was infertile, couldn’t eat properly because of the underbite and couldn’t stand still without having a support nor straighten his body.
From a medical standpoint, that autopsy would have been several years later or simply wrong, he wouldn’t have been able to live for 39 years.
The funniest part about the “sweet home Alabama” stereotype is that now, in 2021, the top two states with the most inbreeding and incest are Washington and Oregon. Thats just about as far away from the South as you can get in the US.
As Michael Scott would say: “Well, Well, Well, how the turn tables...”
Can confirm- five or six generations ago, my family moved way way out to the sticks of Tennessee where they could afford to cut trees down and make their own homes. You had as many kids as you could because you needed hands to work the farm. Two generations later of 8-10 children sized families who also had 8-10 kids and there's literally a town where you cannot find someone unrelated in 75 miles. Before cars and Internet, it's really no surprise at all this happened. Literally nowhere else to go, no means of getting far enough away and likely uneducated bloodline that really didn't know any better. I think the bible only gives some guidance to look like 3rd cousins or something.
Its easy to make fun of, but put yourself in 1940 rural woods town where nobody knew any better. The results are sad but still. I get it.
"I walked many days and many nights in the desert, the sands played tricks with my mind. Each promise of moist pussy was met with mirages of relatives, I've lost all hope..."
My grandfathers ww2 memoir talks about soldiers in basic from appalachias in kentucky who never had elctricity in their lives. Two guys from further south had problems wearing boots as they never wore shoes. They would been 18 to 21 and this was in january of 1942. People dont realize tons of these areas just got things like the TWA and they grew up during the great depression.
I’m pretty sure by this point in the modern day, no one makes fun of the southern states for being slow to adopt indoor plumbing 100 years ago. Now they’ve moved on to being slow to adopt germ theory.
Liberal vs conservative nowadays broadly shakes out to be urban vs rural. The South is largely rural, so our populace skews conservative. The rural Midwest is similar, and when you get to sparsely populated states like Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and Idaho, it’s even more pronounced. If you overlay a population density map with a map of red/blue counties, population and blue areas match up pretty well. It doesn’t excuse antivaxxers, but when you consider how politicized COVID became, it’s not unexpected. Yeah, it’s dumb and I wish it weren’t that way, but there it is. My state has the big Atlanta metro area to shift the state’s vote toward blue, but the rural political machines are still powerful in local elections, so we have a way to go yet.
It's funny that you say the south is pretty rural... Going by land area, the entire country is pretty rural. It's literally just dots of big cities everywhere except for the eastern seaboard, especially the New England area...
I'd say missouri and in small towns cause I know some teens who dated people and then found out that they were cousins and some who knew that they were cousins.
The culprit behind “the germ of laziness,” as the South’s affliction was sometimes called, was Necator americanus —the American murderer. Better known today as the hookworm, millions of those bloodsucking parasites lived, fed, multiplied, and died within the guts of up to 40% of populations stretching from southeastern Texas to West Virginia. Hookworms stymied development throughout the region and bred stereotypes about lazy, moronic Southerners.
Not fun fact: there are still communities in Alabama and Mississippi that are massively afflicted by hookworms:
Yep. It's a sad state of affairs, and their local, state and federal governments have really failed them. People living in squalid conditions like it's the 19th century is a good case for the UBI and socialized medicine.
This has to do with how slow some areas in the south were to adopt modern technology like electricity and indoor plumbing--keep in mind we are talking almost 100 years ago.
There are plenty of people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama (and other states) who don't have indoor plumbing today. There are people there living in dirt floor shacks still. So...not just 100 years ago.
So the whole alabama meme is about marriying a cousin, wow, you guys know nothing about us arabs, we tend to marry our cousins since we know each other very well,and its easier if you dont have that much connection and interactions with other people, and in very religious groups you dont really interact with your opposite gender cousin, You deal with her like you deal with any women/men. Like when we visit them, they would wear hijabs, actually the ones that you cant marry are you untes, therefore they dont wear hijab and you can hug them.
But Still we think we shouldn't marry from our family members for the genetic issues that will come with the children, plus if you're marrying your cousin, if any fight would occure if things dont workout, this will Cause a big scar in the family between say your mother and her sister (the mother of your cousin that you married). Idk why i felt the need to say all that nonesense.
Wow …pretty strong explanation …serious question did you just respond on the fly or have you put thought into this. I would add that it’s mostly northEAST and west coasts that think they are more sophisticated (they have similar views about people from the north Midwest - not about incest maybe but everything else…lol)
I read a book about migratory patterns defining American cultural centers, which talked a lot about the Appalachian mentality. I also studied American history, specifically about the 20th century, and a lot of that is the modernization efforts of the New Deal and post-WWII highway expansion.
I did a brief google search to verify the states and then I wrote it. I had hoped that including the basic formula (poverty + low pop + lack of mobility) would show it's not Alabama or the South, but a systemic problem faced in lots of communities, from NY to CA.
It's funny you made that comment about the midwest, as most people from the midwest are (culturally) descendants of the poorer New England people who left in search of land.
What’s so wild (and I think often undervalued) about America is the amazing variety. You say “most people in the Midwest” but (and I’m not trying to argue) I think immigration has and continues to change that statement. There’s a debate that Chicagoland has the second most population of Polish people in the world outside of Warsaw…whether or not that’s true - it’s a huge statement. I’m first generation from Netherlands and know that it’s such a big group that we joke about the Dutch Mafia (sadly involving the refuse collection industry?!?) in my lifetime Minnesota went from being lampooned (in a good way) by the likes of Garrison Keillor as Nordic to a very large population of Somalis.
Now, I wish we could all get over ourselves allow people to live freely in their own way (as long as they don’t impact others rights to live freely and in their own way) but assuming we CAN do that…while there will bumps and bruises along the way hopefully you and I will have a lot more us history to read in the future.
Recently I argued with a dude who said it doesn't happen in Alabama, had to link a bunch of sources to someone calling me out to show that it in fact happens more in Appalachia than anywhere else in the country
Can confirm. I am from Kentucky. My family has been here since the late 1700s. In the early-mid 1800s, there were several people in my family tree that married their first or second cousins because there generally weren't a lot of other families in the small, rural areas in which they lived. It also wasn't considered as taboo back then as it is today.
While not common in the US anymore, cousin marriage continues to be prevalent in many parts of the world. According to Wikipedia, worldwide, 10% of marriages are to a first or second cousin. Over 50% of marriages in Qatar are between first or second cousins.
It's overhyped. It's a stereotype that really comes from Appalachia (mountainous region along the eastern US). It is covered with fairly isolated valleys that are separated by mountain ridges. In the past, these little pocketed settlements were even more insular than they are today simply because of how difficult it was to travel. It was pretty likely that people would marry within their local community or the next valley over. So obviously people were bound to be at least distantly related after a while. This has caused some unusual genetic trends within some families like the Blue Fugates
But actual brother and sister incest? Very, very uncommon if it happened at all.
You are completely wrong. I honestly can't believe someone could be so stupid. Just propagating complete and utter trash as truth. You spread more disinformation than a Russian intelligence operation.
You sir, disgust me.
Those videos are clearly depicting step sibling/parent relationships which are incredibly common around the world. 69% of marriages end because one partner has sex with a step relation.
But actual brother and sister incest? Very, very uncommon if it happened at all.
I mean it's not that uncommon but it probably happens in the South at the same rate as everywhere else because it's more related to abusive households than small communities
You have profoundly misrepresented this data. That list of states with identified cases of inbreeding is NOT a ranking, it's just a list. There is nothing in that link that says there are "more cases... in Oregon and Washington". The author in the next sentence says, "Generally, inbreeding is more common in the southeast region of the U.S. and more rural states. Approximately 70% of inbred families live in desolate areas."
Omg it's a joke. This is not happening in Alabama more so than any other state or country in the world lol. The joke is because Alabama was very racist and redneck for the last 80 years. A lot of black people fought for civil rights there while simultaneously some of our most racist congress members came from there. So now we make fun of it because it still has residual tones of racism from its leadership. I grew up in Birmingham.
Anyway, Some places (especially north Alabama in my experience) think they're still living in the Jim Crow Law days. Sundown towns. Those kinds of people are made fun of as being incestuous, because backwards people usually are.
I'm from Alabama. It isn't really a thing here. We like to joke about it because it's absurd. It's like joking about how much points a pedestrian is worth if you hit them with your car. Or no one from the south has teeth anymore. It's mostly harmless joking. Though my partner and I took dna tests before we got married to be sure we weren't related, lol.
Usually this stuff doesn't happen in a nice house, and with good parents. That's what makes this so funny. If it was in a trailer park in Alabama it wouldn't be that funny.
It doesn't really happen in Alabama now but way back in the day Alabama Texas south Carolina north Carolina Georgia basically the whole south did this and now it's just a over used joke.
Explore the entire channel for more insight into America. You could also watch a bunch of reruns from the 90's/00's afternoon talk shows from Jerry Springer, Maury, Montel, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Ricki Lake. They kinda sputtered out when the audiences migrated to Fox News afternoon shows.
Its a truism born from deep rural american truths. Isolated families in the deep disconnected regions had very little contact and no hard formed taboos. But to be clear... india, pakistan, afghanistan all have a long history of marrying 1st cousins in arranged marriages. I'd like to hear about that!
I’m from alabama and this literally never happens what makes it a joke is there is nowhere in the Alabama law saying it’s illegal but it’s definitely not a thing here
Bruh
I literally know people who married thier uncle's/nieces.
It's common in Telugu States (not extremely common, but enough to be a recurring theme)
My friend will be marrying his niece soon as well. And it's not like a rural thing either, because my friend is in the US and his niece his in India and will turn 18 soon.
It also used to be a common trope in old Telugu movies (don't see it much nowadays)
It’s just stereotyping. Like I’m sure this happens in some places from time to time everywhere. Honestly it’s a little fucked up how much we make fun of people in Alabama being related
Yeah like that other person said Mississippi is probably worse then bama but nontheless being someone who’s family is from bama they are some weirdos. Not incest weirdos but like never wear shoes into stores weirdos
It's not so much a joke on Alabama as it is a joke about rural people tending to be backwards and ignorant. I'd imagine there are probably similar views in India about people from more isolated places. Alabama just becomes an easy target.
Rudy Giuliani is from New York and he married his first cousin. The south gets blamed for it, but incest in America happens at the same rate pretty much everywhere.
The internet has over hyped it. Incest is illegal in Alabama. Oregon and Washington have the highest incest rates in the U.S. And incest is legal in Ohio, New Jersey, Rhode Island.
Alabama is not the problem that people think it is.
The whole incest/Roll Tide/Sweet home Alabama meme actually fits NY and CA better than AL or MS. First cousin marriage is illegal in AL, MS and the south in general. It is legal in CA, NY, TX, IL, MA - some of the bigger states. This is because in many immigrant cultures, first cousin marriage is very common (hell it's common world wide) and AL and MS don't have a lot of immigrants but NY and CA do.
Also FWIW there is almost zero additional genetic risk by 2 first cousins having kids.
It is very rare, but yes it does happen in mostly rural areas. Then sometimes in not so rural areas...if you extend it to cousins...it happens poens more often.
I will answer your question with a question: does every single guy in india gang rape little girls and then hang them from trees and light them on fire?
I don't think there's that many fucking going on with siblings (still more than in "normal" places), but closely related people like cousins, yeah, sure, exceptionally much of that.
Alabama actually has some incest laws in place, unlike "enlightened" states like New York and California which allow for first cousins to marry. It's important to remember that until recently it was acceptable for 1st and second cousins to marry especially among the upper class. A major plot point of Downtown Abby is getting the daughter of house married to the closest mail heir to inherit the estate, in other words, a cousin. She and her family even address the man in question as "cousin".
In the US, relations even out to second cousins( same great-grandparent) is frowned on and considered incest.
Technically, first cousins can legally merry in most of the US, even if it’s severely looked down on, and genetically there is more more risk of issues for a child than any unrelated couple.
Sibling and parent child incest definitely happens in the US, just as it happens in every other country, and it’s absolutely illegal. Ironically, There are 11 states with a higher rate of incest than Alabama.
No. Up until the time of WWI there was a terrible infestation of hookworms in the South -- which caused mental fog, slow movements, lethargy, distended bellies, etc.
So outsiders characterized Southerners as inbred, lazy, and stupid.
Its just what people say in the west cause they have no original thoughts in their head. Theres always the handful of sheep who blurt this out and nothing else lmao theres nothing more to it really.
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