Why is it that males/men/guys seem more open-minded about incest, but mostly ALL females oppose it very strongly?

well its no secret that most men fantasize about their daughters, and teen sons all look at mom and fantasize. although they might not admit it its the trueth and is why they accept it like they do. Some moms also enjoy the thoughts(and acts)of giving their sons all their love and fulfilling their sexual needs

The problem here is that "incest" can refer to many different things. Some people are hearing it as "pushing yourself on you 10 year old baby sister", while others might be hearing it as "consensual sex with your 30 year old cousin".

Maybe that has something to do with the genders responding differently. Maybe the are responding, at a subconscious level, to two different things.

What guys do you hang out with? I think most societies are against it, male of female....even in West Virginia:)

You should start hanging out with different guys.

Who said most female oppose it. i have talked to a lot of open mind woman that are all for it.

I have yet to notice in my experience a gender divide on the incest question.

I don't think I know anyone who is "open-minded" about incest.

I am Female and totally love the thought of incest. It is a huge turn on for me!

I don't think gender matters that much in this question.

I don't think anyone is open-minded incest.

I don't know if this is actually true (I'd have to see some experimental evidence to believe it. x Starlie x saying 99% of women oppose incest implies she has talked with or gotten feedback from 100 or more women, which I find unlikely).

However, if there IS a significant difference in female versus male reactions or opinions to the concept of incest, I believe it can be explained within Darwinian terms as follows:

Incest produces greater number of mutant genes in offspring, which are almost universally harmful.

Woman would be impacted more than men by this result, because they would be stuck to a greater extent with the childcare. (This would have been the case for over 99% of human history, through essentially all of the time that humans evolved). Reproductively, this disproportionate consequence to the female reduces opportunity for her to have more children, much more so than it reduces the male's opportunity.

Additionally: their defective offspring from the incestuous pairings would be less likely to themselves reproduce (creating a "dead-end" for their parents genes), which again creates a much greater consequence for the female than the male:

A male can have almost unlimited number of offspring, potentially hundreds. A women is limited by the number of times she can survive pregnancy. At this point, that limit is around 20 times, but during most of human history, most women would have died in labor after far fewer births than that.

So while both males and females ability to pass on their genes will be impacted by their choice of a mating partner, the impact on the male of one bad choice might be less than 1/100th of his overall reproductive potential, while for the female it is at least 1/20th, and potentially much higher.

NOW, the counter-argument to this is that if these behavioral tendencies are genetically based, wouldn't they be handed down equally to both male and female offspring?

And the counter to that is: not necessarily, not if they are caused by genes on the sex chromosomes.

The two ways I can think of that genes responsible for rejection of incest residing on the sex chromosomes could lead to differences between males and females in this regard:

A. Females hand down genes leading to instinctive rejection of family as mating partners on X chromosome, while the male hands down genes that reverse or lessen that tendency on Y chromosome.

B. The genes leading to rejection of family as mating partners reside on X chromosome, and are only effective (or are more effective) with 2 copies (which only women will have, they are XX, men are XY).

A. and B. are NOT mutually exclusive, both could be happening.

And by 'incest' I mean STRICTLY love/sex WITHOUT possibility of the woman getting pregnant. NEVER with a child!!

If both fully consent, are over 18 (or 16 - legal consent age in some places).

Even when its fully consensual, still 99 out of 100 women will strongly oppose it.

Men, on the other hand, even when they say they are fully against it, its wrong/immoral, etc.. they will STILL consider it (or have at least thought about it and will most of the time admit it).

Why are men and women different in this regard?

I'm a woman myself, but curious. If its something all of us are biologically programmed to NOT DO, then how come most men will (or have) considered it? While most women don't and won't?

I'm a male and I am close-minded about incest...

I suppose I'm more perceptive than most then.

Interesting observation anyway.. =)