It would probably make things easier for everyone if we all admitted that as far as fantasy goes, we're all perverts.

Just want to touch on an aspect of this that I don't think was covered in the long comment thread on the original post. It is this: she found the links on her dad's computer. That's a fact. Now it's tough to tell from her letter, but it doesn't sound like using his computer was unusual or out of the blue. So we can conclude that he did nothing to shield his own daughter from finding this shit even though he damn well knew she was in the house and would use his computer. It would not have been tough for him to erase his history, but he didn't. Now contrast that with the letter above: "it's terrifying to imagine someone finding incest porn on my computer's search history, mistaking it for a real desire, and then destroying my family over it." My conclusion: he wanted her to find it.

He's a creep.

"It would not have been tough for him to erase his history" - my dad's probably a bit older than DAD's, but trust me, erasing his browser history is well beyond my dad's capabilities.

Seriously, the dad might be a technical incompetent. He might be erasing his browser history but not clearing his cookies (thus search history on google would be revealing). He I see no reason to assume (barring any other evidence) the dad was trying anything. Nobody should be judged by their porn habits (provided all participants are consenting adults.)

It's just amazing to me how much more judgmental people are when the person looking at porn is a *parent.* If the guy with the incest porn was a teenager, the presumption would never be that he wants to fuck his own mother, or that since the history showed he looked at the porn during a time when a relative was in the house it clearly meant he wanted to fuck the relative, or that since the history was traceable it meant he wanted his parents to find it and was therefore a creep.

No, people would say he just likes the look of the actors or he's just curious, or he didn't realize that histories will be looked at by snooping relatives (more predictable, actually, that a parent would snoop on a teen's browsing habits, and maybe only slightly more acceptable than a child checking up on her father's use of his own computer), or that he didn't know how to clear histories and cookies.

But because the man is a parent, he is held to a much different standard. This is hypocrisy.

Keep in mind that a lot of people occasionally look at porn they don't even like just out of sheer curiosity! I know for certain that I have. Also, I hate pickup artists, but there have been times when I've browsed pickup artist websites and forums extensively, just because I was so shocked at what I was reading. Somebody trying to figure out what kind of person I am by looking at my browser history would possibly guess that I am either a monogamous conservative Christian or a promiscuous man who uses PUA tricks to pick up girls. (I'm female, non-Christian, polyamorous.)

@3 -- My late mother didn't know what a URL bar was. She thought you typed the URL in the Google search box on the toolbar that her ISP installed in her browser and picked the site you wanted from the list. Just because everyone's dad is on Facebook doesn't mean they know anything about computers besides that.

@6

Very good point. It comes down to the fact that all of us universally shudder when we imagine our own parents consuming porn. Let alone some weirdo fetish porn. Sure, it's not fair, but all parents above a certain age simply need to be asexual in all of our minds because it's too much of a gross out.

@7

Yeah, exactly. There was some study that came out recently that supposedly "proved" that people's secret sexual desires are granny porn, fatso porn, etc. since it was searched so frequently online. But, hello, that's bullshit research because people use the internet all the time to search for weirdo, gross out shit just out of curiosity.

Yeah, and for the record, my dad's also an internet retard so I wouldn't read into that. And dudes, whatever the age, aren't always so good at meticulously covering their tracks particularly when they're thinking with their cocks.

My conclusion: he wanted her to find it.

He's a creep.

If you think so, kamper (@3), then you haven't seen how most people behave who use a computer, especially those who are older (I assume the LW's father was born in those far-away days when there were no home computers...). How many people do you know who actually know how to erase their histories in their browsers? (Remember, Chrome is not Firefox is not Safari is not Explorer...)... Also, knowing people and their insufferable arrogance, how many people do you know who actually think about what they'll do if their porn habit is discovered -- because they just don't think about the possibility?

Man, you're imagining the world is composed of intelligent people who compute their risks accurately and act accordingly. This is not true, not for 90% of it.

I don't know what porn my dad might have looked at on his computer (the only time I use it is when he needs something explained or fixed and I would NEVER look at his web history). One thing I know for certain is that if I were to look in his web history I'd see absolutely every site he's visited because I don't even think he knows web history can be erased or what a cookie is. My dad isn't really even that old (mid-50s) and I know plenty of people around his age who are really tech savvy but he isn't one of them and there's no reason to assume that the LW;s dad is either.

But because the man is a parent, he is held to a much different standard. This is hypocrisy.

Precisely, nocutename (@6). Part of the reason is of course the horror of anything that puts sex and children in the same sentence -- and since you can't be a parent without having children, just saying that a parent is looking at porn, in our current culture, sounds mildly... suggestive. (Read abusive).

Even after decades of sexual revolution, it still takes time for people to think about sex in a normal, realistic, no-nonsense way -- the way they would think about sports, or money, or cars. Sex still has so much 'evil power' in people's minds, it's really difficult to think about it as if it were just, you know, a thing among many others.

@Dan, I'm very glad to see a post in which you defend incest fetishists -- it's important to point out that they are not necessarily the stereotypical obssessive-compulsive serial-killer-cum-child-molester-in-training, but may very well be normal, responsive, caring people who know what the difference between fantasy and reality is, who know what boundaries are and what they're for, who know and understand the need for consent. And you also point out that people don't exactly pick and choose their fetishes in the nearest kink shop as they mature sexually.

Which is why I feel like pointing out that you've been less than fair with some other fetishists, your 'squick', i.e., scat fetishists. 'At least it's not shit,' you said, I think, in one of the last podcasts. Also ye olde comment that "the internet with their specialized sites helps remove 'those people' from the dating pool so that we normals don't have to deal with them" doesn't really help people who have heard (and thought) hurtful things their entire life. In the times you cared to write about it, Dan, your reaction to scat fetishists was not much better than that young person's reaction to the incest porn s/he found in her father's browsing history. (How would you have advised him/her if the porn she found was scat rather than incest? You could say exactly the same things you said here in the incest porn case, but would you have? Honestly?)

I'm sure you're a good guy, Dan -- I admire pretty much everything you've done, books, advice column, podcast, IGB Project. I'm only pointing out an inconsistency in your otherwise commendable moral system, something you might care to write a post about at some point in the future.

Just chiming in here with a vote for the Dad on this one...
I'm 45 and have had intense incest fantasies since high school... and these fantasies actually do include my father, but I would never never act on them, even if he offered it (and trust me, he wouldn't.)
I assume that there is some sort of "trigger" in the LW's father's past that sparked this particular fantasy of his. I feel certain that my own incest fantasies started this way. I was 12 or so and while playing with a cigarette lighter in my grandparent's basement, I started a small trashcan fire. The damage was minimal, but my dad gave me the single most brutal whipping that I'd ever had: bare ass, bent over, thick belt, 10 strokes, etc... I cried for two days and then forgot about it.
The incest fantasies started in high school, and they always involved whippings. Eventually they became completely BDSM. In my late 20's I dated a man about my dad's age who had some incest fantasies of his own, so we were a great match for weekend father/son scenarios. Ultimately, the fantasies proved more interesting than the faux-reality we had created, so I moved on... but I still enjoy thinking about them.
So for the LW... drop it and move on. his fantasies are probably no worse than your own sickest daydreams. He hasn't touched you and probably never will. He may even have a playmate or two. Let him be him... He's hurting no one.

@14: That and the pit bulls. No one is perfect: even Dan has his blind spots.

Also, I just want to say that I don't read incest stories because of "power relationships and taboo-breaking." I read incest stories because incest is hot. At least when it's not your own relatives.

Of people who are into 'ageplay', there seem to be far more who want to play the role of the child. So the original letter writer's father might be fantasising about having a 'mommy' or 'daddy', not being one.

My friend left a copy of Halo lying around. Does that mean he wants to shoot me?

Also, The computer belongs to the father. The letter writer is a temporary inhabitant in his homes (one hopes that at 22, she will get a job and a place of her own soon). Why is the father being scolded for failing to clear the history of his internet use on his own computer? Why should he have to hide it? This is not one of those stories you hear that starts, "I was visiting my parents and my father used the computer and left a screen open and it was incest porn." The daughter should not have been going through the history on her father's computer to begin with and the onus should not have to be on the father to cover his tracks (as if looking at porn was something to have to be ashamed of in the first place).

go back and read #13, in case you missed it. spot on, ankylosaur.

@12 - was the guy saying that he's a generation younger than his wife? I thought it odd that he signed himself "No Mommy Issues" - kinda made me think that maybe he should talk to a counselor and see if there are some mommy issues there.

@16 (BlackRose), point well taken. But still I can see the interest in trying to know where kinks come from and why they're hot. I mean, I get the fact that you can happily live them, but it's also possible to feel curious. Why should incest make a fantasy feel hotter than it would if the characters in it weren't realted? Nothing wrong with it in principle, just real honest curiosity. Just like vanilla (and non-vanilla) people can be curious about pheromones and how they work.

There's a great Chris Rock bit where he talks about the insane lengths men go hiding their porn. Yet where is the most likely place for a significant other or family member to find the porn? The VCR/DVD Player. Forgetting to erase history/cookies is just the 21st Century version of forgetting to eject the tape.

@21: Why? Say he and his wife are both 50-ish. What kind of porn is going to star 50-ish-aged women?

@19: Yeah, all of these "I stumbled across browser history..." scenarios are bullshit: you were snooping, asshole. It takes dedicated effort to read all of the entries in the history, more to actually follow the links to see what the page is. If there are things you'd rather not know (that is, if there is any hypothetical thing that you'd not want to know about someone), stop snooping. Fucking simple.

I THINK I'm a perv.
Don't have issues with incest. I wouldn't fuck my mom 'cause I'm gay, I wouldn't fuck my older bro 'cause he is my best friend and - wouldn't fuck any friend of mine. Besides, he is officialy straighjt and fucking straight guys means drama, and I hate drama. I wouldn't fuck fuck my little bro 'cause he is underage and he seems to be straight and he might become one of my best buds in the future like my older bro. And I wouldn't fuck my dad 'cause he's way too bitter and ugly.
I realize there's a problem with incest conception though, since direct family members breeding could lead to serious harm to the future child. Not thinking- not aborting- about it would be the most selfish act on earth.
But when they could use birth control and condoms and/or this hipothetical incestuous relationship could be a homosexual one -or just straight but not medicaly capable of conception- whats so wrong about it?

I understand though, the social estigma, the social construct that it is traditional family and stuff, just don't quite get why does this dogma still lives in so many peoples minds when most sexual stigmas are just dying.

@24 - is there more porn of older women with young men than with men their age? I wouldn't expect that, so I didn't understand his point. I guess, if I were looking for porn of older women, I would look for "amateur" porn, where I expect the partners would mostly be roughly the same generation. But if you want higher production quality, maybe you do end up finding a lot of older women/young men porn geared towards incest fetishists.

@22: Oh, yes, definitely: it's just that sometimes there isn't an answer. Sometimes there's nothing deeper behind the fact that X turns you on.

For incest, I think I find it hot because relatives often have a lot of comfort and security with each other; because youth and people's first sexual experiences are hot; and because young kids who live with their parents are probably not going to have a lot of sex unless it's with a family member they live with. But if it is, they can have sex all the time: basically a dream come true.

@27 Erica,

Or you look at MILF porn. There is a persistent lie going on in our society that mature women can't be attractive. As someone who believes "more than a handful is a waste", I get irate at a society that forces women to stuff bags of goo into their chests and trim off parts of their Labia Minora. And unless grossly obese, I'm not too keen on liposuction either. Unfortunately a lot of MILF porn involves women that have been surgically "enhanced", so not much joy for me there either.

Peace.

@29 good point.

If the LW is staying with her dad and using his computer, she should have opened a guest profile.

Another factor is that, just because a page or pages are in your history doesn't mean you sat there and delightedly beat off to it. Maybe you looked/read/watched for a second and went "ugh, gross", or a few minutes and then realized/decided it wasn't what you wanted. Just because the dad visited that site doesn't mean he's TOTALLY INTO THAT SHIT AWW YEAH.

That said, if this was indeed a matter of connecting some uncomfortable dots into a skeevy-ass picture, certainly GTFO.

@28, interesting. So you don't think the taboo-breaking, the "forbidden fruit" mythology adds any spice to incest fantasies? After all, if you were a student in a (co-ed) boarding house, you also would live realitvely close to a number of equally young members of the opposite sex -- would this feel just as hot, or would the lack of actual family ties decrease the hotness factor?

I try not to question fetishes too much, but I guess my bias is to think that there's always some reason for behavior (even if the reason is not so culturally interesting, like some hormonal imbalance). My guess about incest fetishes is that people often do feel sexually attracted to relatives but feel terribly guilty/dirty about it (I was attracted to my sister during my early teens, and boy did I feel guilty...); now, sexualizing this guilt/dirtiness in fantasies doesn't seem to be that hard (no more difficult than sexualizing submission or masochism, for instance).

@34: Good question. I'm sure for some people the taboo thing is a big part of it; for me, it's more about being with someone you've grown up with and known your whole life. The boarding house is still really hot, but not as hot as someone you've grown up with; an adopted brother or sister would be just as hot as a biologically related one for me.

For me, though I like reading bro/sis and parent/child incest stories, the thought of having sex with my actual sisters or mom is a turn-off. I blame the Westermarck effect. It's hot in theory but it's a turn-off to think about my actual relatives. I like cousin incest stories too, though I've never felt guilty or dirty about being attracted to actual cousins. The whole incest cultural taboo thing just seems to have passed me by: I don't really get it, it's not really an issue for me and I don't have any guilt from it that gets sexualized.

@35, speaking logically, in this age of anticonceptionals, there is no reason why incestuous relations shouldn't be possible (at least between siblings -- parent-child relations do imply a power imbalance that goes even beyond the mere adult-child level because children depend on parents for survival, which makes everything much trickier). But the tradition is strong, and I was indeed deeply ashamed and guilty. I suppose if I had ever developed a fetish for incest (that's one that never did anything for me), it would have to relate to that guilt somehow.

The way you describe it -- shared intimacy, growing up together -- it feels that being related isn't an important part of it, so a fantasy involving people who grew up in the same orphanage would be just as hot as one involving people who are really related by blood. Interesting. It feels as if you're saying that what is hot is simply the familiarity of the person -- I've grown up with him/her, I know pretty much everything about him/her, so now move on to the next level... (Strangely, that seems less interesting to me. A part of my sexual interest comes from the mistery -- what will this girl be like? What will she like? How will she react? All the things I don't yet know about her make her more sexually interesting -- which is the opposite of what you describe, i.e. actually being turned on by all that you already know and share with that person.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing!

@36: I can definitely understand the appeal of mystery. But yes, there is something really hot about growing up with someone and knowing all about them. The orphanage scene sounds hot as well and I'm tempted to write a story about that now :)

I was going to write that I never felt shame or guilt about sexual feelings as a kid, but then I remembered more clearly. I remember being a kid and being really embarrassed about sex and wondering if I was doing something wrong fantasizing or masturbating: I'm not sure where I got that idea. Reading some young adult fiction about it helped a lot ("Then Again, Maybe I Won't" by Judy Blume and a lot of Jerry Spinelli's books were real lifesavers for me). So, yeah, if I had ever found my little sister attractive, I could understand how someone could feel guilty about it. We did show each other our bodies, though, which I didn't feel bad about: did you ever do anything like that?

As far as actual, real-life incest, there can be a power imbalance between siblings if there's a big age difference. The questions of ethical incest and ethical child sexuality are interesting and haven't been dealt with or researched much, as far as I know, due to the taboos on the subjects. Even just looking at adults, for instance: when is it ok to ask a family member if they're interested in sex? How should it be done in the best way? It gets complicated.