People who are into step sibling porn — did you grow up with a sibling (or close relative of a similar age) of the gender you're attracted to?

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

I was an only child and a latchkey kid, and am not just into sibling incest but full on incest. But yes, distilled, my fetish is for a functional, unneglected and much less solitary childhood. (Not turning into a pariah as soon as I started developing sexual interests in puberty might have also been nice.)

I suppose I also have the V. C. Andrews fetish which is taboo relationships that are formed as a cope due to extreme family dysfunctionality, since part of my fetish is the sex gets out of hand and when discovered, the drama explodes messily.

Curiously, my family on my mother's side are hot, and my cousin was propositioned by Playboy in the 1980s as possible centerfold material. (She was also a high-school swim-team champion.) And yet, full Westermarck effect (reverse sexual imprinting) was active. I just couldn't think about them in that way.

I remember a post somewhere that suggested the wave of step-sibling porn is because it's really effective short-hand. You get two characters that know each other and are close, but shouldn't do anything because of all the fallout that would happen. It's a quick way to recreate the childhood friend dynamic, but also add a strong taboo and explain why they always hang out in the same house. It also gives a reason why sex can be frequent, but never tie someone into a relationship.

Sure, there's a lot of perverts in the world, but there's also people who enjoy the dynamic of "we really shouldn't... but..."

No, but I am turned on by the idea of a smoking hot woman I am living with showing up randomly in my bed demanding consequence-free sex.

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

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.

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.

I don't like step sibling porn but it's a lot of the content. I type in "blonde big tits" or whatever and what comes out is "blonde big tit step sister gets railed" or whatever. I'd click if it was girlfriend or wife instead of step sister the same.

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.

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.