Taboos You Can't Handle

Every culture on earth has taboos deeply rooted in their belief system. Taboos are so powerful that merely bringing it up is itself taboo. You might be thinking to yourself “Taboos don’t make me uncomfortable, I can talk about cannibalism and animal sex without being squeamish any day.”

Be aware that taboos only exist in a certain context. It’s impossible to quantify the amount of taboos with a giant list. For example, passionately kissing another person may seem to be far from a taboo. Now imagine I change that example to passionately kissing your twin brother. The very thought of somebody engaging in a sexual relationship with his or her twin makes you wiggle in your chair. Logically, kissing your twin should be just as harmless as a kiss with anybody else. The taboo is just too powerful for most of us to consider this normal behavior.

There is a popular drinking game called “I Never,” also known as “10 Fingers.” Here are the rules of the game quoted from wikipedia:

…Where players are arranged into something resembling a circle. The game is started with each player putting up 10 fingers. Then, one player says a simple statement starting with "Never have I ever," such as "Never have I ever had sex." In this case anyone who has had sex must drink and put down one finger. Play then continues around the circle and the next person makes a statement.

The interesting thing about this game is that you can talk about seemingly taboo subjects to a bunch of friends and strangers. I have heard people say “Never have I ever had anal sex,” or “Never have I ever done it in my parents bed room.” Saying these things is far from taboo because with taboos context is everything. Lets look at the reality of the situation – everyone is at a party, drinking, and have their inhibitions lowered. The very reason that this game is popular should be evidence as to why the game isn’t taboo. Taboos are not supposed to be the life of the party - instead, they are party poopers. To test this theory I needed to come up with the most taboo statement I could say when playing this game. I wanted to test whether this game could withstand the strongest taboos. Here are the top three I came up with:

1. Never have I ever seriously considered committing suicide.

2. Never have I ever had an abortion or miscarriage.

3. Never have I ever been molested as a child.

So far I have I have only said the first one during an actual game and guess what happened? One guy thought it was a really bad joke, we got in a long argument, and I killed the game.

Next time you play “10 Fingers,” don’t think you are doing anything profound by breaking social boundaries, because you probably aren’t.