People are discovering the truth about their biological parents with DNA—and learning that incest is far more common than many think.

The geneticist Jim Wilson, at the University of Edinburgh, was shocked by the frequency he found in the U.K. Biobank, an anonymized research database: One in 7,000 people, according to his unpublished analysis, was born to parents who were first-degree relatives—a brother and a sister or a parent and a child. “That’s way, way more than I think many people would ever imagine,” he told me. And this number is just a floor: It reflects only the cases that resulted in pregnancy, that did not end in miscarriage or abortion, and that led to the birth of a child who grew into an adult who volunteered for a research study.

Most of the people affected may never know about their parentage, but these days, many are stumbling into the truth after AncestryDNA and 23andMe tests.

  • errer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    102·
    3 months ago

    My theory about all the step sibling porn is that they’re trying to get you to pay for the “normal” porn. “Yes you can watch it for free…but wouldn’t it be better if it wasn’t so weird?” I don’t think most people find those story lines appealing.

    • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
      4·
      3 months ago

      Sibling or other incestuous roleplay is super common actually. The step sibling stuff on porn sites afaik was once again enforced from their payment providers or advertisers. Because people who aren’t related, but acting like they are, are apparently turning the world into Sodom & Gomorrah, and based on some of those weird virgin or conspiracytard comments here it seems that some people actually do believe this too.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
      43·
      3 months ago

      I think the idea is that step porn is basically just normal porn past the first few opening lines.

      Normal people will just skip that bit and watch.

      People into incest will watch the first few lines.

      Unfortunately, I think a lot of porn makers have tried to split the baby and ended up alienating both audiences. People into incest don’t like the whole “step” thing, because it’s not real incest. And people who don’t like incest don’t like the “step” thing, because it’s too close to real incest.

      Essentially, I think porn producers think it’s a moneymaker, but it’s really just bad porn production.