Anna N.'s post title earlier today, 5 Tips for Dating Your Family, was just a joke, of course, but in the Home and Garden section (of course!) of the New York Times this weekend, the practice of American cousins marrying each other is a trend a serious matter.

The gist of the piece is that while marriage between first cousins is widely practiced, and even favored, in many cultures throughout history, here in the U.S. it's still seen as a trashy, hillbilly practice that results in inbred babies. Texas banned cousin to cousin marriage in 2005, though it was part of a larger law banning polygamy. Aside from the cultural stigma of cousin marriage, even doctors who are generally not against it admit that there are higher risks for the offspring of such unions that vary from couple to couple.

The story features several couples with varying degrees of community acceptance. Kimberly and Shane Winters are comfortable enough to display in their home a photo of themselves embracing with the word "cousins" on top and the phrase "the most important thing in life is family" along the bottom, which makes Kimberly's mother uncomfortable but is a pretty funny joke if they did it as a joke (another hint that the Winters might have a sense of humor about their unusual union: Kimberly calls Shane her "cusband.") But another couple, Bob and his wife from upstate New York, have a more heartbreaking tale:

They now have two daughters, 13 and 14, who are in good health, he said, but her parents - his aunt and uncle - refuse to speak to them.

The couple, who live on a military base, have advised their daughters not to tell friends that their parents are cousins.

"We don't typically tell folks," Bob said. "We told our daughters, ‘It's not something to be ashamed of, but if you tell your friends, your friends may trust you today, you may be good friends, however, roll the clock forward, people are fickle, and preteens and teens can be downright cruel.' "

Shaking Off the Shame [NYT]

As the article details, the invocation of maternal incest is ancient and wide-ranging.

While it's not quite a universal insult, variations on the command to commit incest with one's mother appear in every region of the globe. Anthropologists note that, across cultures, the most severe insults tend to involve a few basic themes: your opponent's family, your opponent's religion, sex, and scatology. Because motherfucker covers two of these topics-plus incest, a nearly global taboo-it's a popular choice just about everywhere.

The Explainer provides rampant usage in Mediterranean, Chinese, African and Arabic culture. In America, the usage is more recent. "The phrase was considered so vile in late 19th-century America that, in another Texas court case, it was argued that a man who had been called a "mother-fucking son-of-a-bitch" by a person he later shot "could not be found guilty of a higher offense than manslaughter," so grave was the offense." And even in these less sensitive times, where we rarely think about the words' meaning, it's an insult of high order.

The insult, as the article says, plays on some of the most fundamental taboos, while also managing to insult the target's mother's virtue, infantalize the insultee, imply only a mother would have him, and, while Slate doesn't suggest it, probably play on some deep-help Madonna perceptions as well, adding sacrilege to the mix. You'd think adding a father to the brew would render it even more potent, surely, and that's one thing I wish the article had addressed, too - why no daddy issues? And do we still hold motherhood in more reverence than we know? It might go some ways towards explaining the bile directed at Madonna and Jesus - the material ones, that is.

Global Motherf*ckers [Slate]
Related: Bernie Mac Motherfucker [YouTube]

Of course, this begs the question: is winking ever appropriate in anyone of either sex? Not really. Winking tends to be ridiculous by nature: patronizing, conspiratorial, bizarre, old-man roguish. In many cultures, winking is regarded as offensive or obscene; in ours, it's merely odd. But even then, it's generally a masculine purview — albeit an undesirable one.

Sarah Palin's infamous winks are a cautionary tale: the gesture managed to seem flirtatious, childish, dowdy and unprofessional all at once — to say nothing of culturally problematic. Her behavior made us think about winking and just why her co-option of the gesture was so shocking: it became clear that winking is probably one of the least serious gestures in the world. For one thing, winking deliberately disrupts the all-important eye contact that is crucial to communication; seems inherently untrustworthy; and, since not everyone can do it well, there's the ever present risk of tic-or-wink confusion. Winking, for all its conspiratorial overtones, is inherently divisive: it places the winker in a position of secret-sharer; the wink-ee, by contrast, has no say in whether or not he wants to be in on the joke. As such, it's somehow embarrassing for both parties.

If I had to hazard some armchair anthropology on why it's particularly problematic in women, I'd guess it has at least something to do with the fact that the gesture contorts the face in defiance of all notions of beauty, and there is something discomfiting about injecting deliberate distortion into everyday interaction. Then too, women are perhaps less free, given centuries of ingrained suspicion of our inherent moral fiber, to even suggest any notion of dishonesty, lack of openness, or complicity. To say nothing of the fact that as a naked come-on it's hardly going to win any points for traditional demureness.

That said, when done well — ie, not in a political debate — winking can be a valuable, just because so few people do it. One of my friends — a friendly, open person — regularly winks, not at men, but at other women. The gesture is odd, sure, but also strangely friendly and disarming. The same quality that renders man-on-woman winking knowing and creepy can, when used between peers, feel somehow intimate and conspiratorial — there is, after all, always some joke to share between like minds. Without wishing to overburden anyone with personal information, it should be said that I have been known, on occasion, to wink in instances of romantic intimacy — which is always unexpected. I also enjoy occasionally winking at too-cool-for-school types in aggressively hip situations. In a weird way, the very corniness of the gesture and the minor willingness to make oneself ridiculous is a means of seizing benign control of a situation.

Then, of course, you've got the Miraculous Winking Jesus, "who winks so that God would forgive us of our sins." And I really don't have anything to say about that.

Miraculous Winking Jesus [WinkingJesus.com]
Sarah Palin's wink will offend in India and China [Los Angeles Times]
CNN Comapres Winking Sarah Palin to Betty Boop [The Raw Story]