Word: taboo
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Defining the ancient taboo becomes hard in an era of recombinant families created by divorce, remarriage and adoption. The traditional stricture -- no carnal relations between parent and child or brother and sister -- still holds, but how does it apply to today's blended and extended families, where blood ties are often thin or absent...
Historically the taboo has had a scientific rationale: that inbreeding drains the gene pool, greatly increasing the chances of mental and physical defects in offspring. But modern geneticists have found that such dangers are overstated; it would take generations of inbreeding for such problems to surface regularly. A more important reason for the taboo is cultural: incest has been banned to preserve family harmony by keeping disruptive rivalries and jealousies at bay. It has also helped to strengthen kinship clans; by forcing members to marry outside the group, the clan expands its wealth and allies...
...essay lays bare how Madonna's supposedly taboo-breaking movie pigeon-holed these groups into lifeless stereotypes. Shedding a harsh light on the pop goddess, hooks reveals how much of Madonna's act is the "same old nonsense" in a pointy...
...song Cop Killer is as bad as they come. This is black anger -- raw, rude and cruel -- and one reason the song's so shocking is that in postliberal America, black anger is virtually taboo. You won't find it on TV, not on the McLaughlin Group or Crossfire, and certainly not in the placid features of Arsenio Hall or Bernard Shaw. It's been beaten back into the outlaw subcultures of rap and rock, where, precisely because it is taboo, it sells. And the nastier it is, the faster it moves off the shelves. As Ice-T asks...
...light-hearted, nothing's-too-taboo atmosphere of Condom World removes embarassment from the condom purchase. "If it's easier to buy them, maybe [customers will] buy them more and use them more." Cohen says...