ÍslendingaApp: Icelanders' anti-incest app.

It's 2013, right? Surely people in Iceland have sex for fun way more than they have sex for babies. Why do they need an anti-incest app? [content note: classism in comments] 

Some have suggested that Iceland is so culturally closed off from the rest of the world that they risk becoming a nation of "inbreds". I disagree. I don't think they can. It would have to be a small handful of people over multiple generations (think the Pharaohs of Egypt, or certain noble houses of England). I'll leave it to the actual geneticists to settle this one, though.

I do think it's worth exploring why people are concerned about things like bumping cousins outside of the context of reproduction, though. Or to phrase it another way: why do we instantly think of babies when we think of "incest"?

We've fought long and hard for sex and even marriage itself to be recognized as something for more than reproduction. We had to do this to validate same-sex relationships, even though (gasp!) no babies will result*. We had to do this to validate birth control for teens, unmarried women, and really anyone at all. Masturbation even used to be called "onanism" because of a Bible story about a guy who would rather jerk it than impregnate someone.

But suggest that a person might want to have a one-night stand with their cuz, and ZOMG INCEST! and they make an entire fucking app for it?

Unless it turns out that the majority of children in Iceland are born within the context of casual cousin-sex gone amok... maybe I could see the need for caution.

*which erases trans experiences, but I digress