I am a 22-year-old college grad who has been living at home for the last year. My parents are divorced, so I’ve gone back and forth from one place to the other. The other day, I was using my father’s computer, and the history came up on the search engine. It turns out that while I am in the house, my father views pornography that involves incest fantasies. I felt quite disturbed by what I saw—it made me physically sick—and I’m wondering if I should continue to have a relationship with my father.
In a week, I start a new job in another country—so I can get away from him for a while and think about my options. What should I do? Should I tell him that I know about it and I’m not interested in having a relationship with him anymore? Do I tell my friends or family? Should I trust what my gut is telling me and pack up, jump in a cab, and never talk to him again?
Disturbed And Distressed
There are people who are turned on by incest scenarios—hypothetical dads seducing hypothetical daughters, fictional moms seducing fictional sons—who are nevertheless revolted by the idea of actual incest, i.e., nonhypothetical fuck sessions with their own nonfictional family members. Many of these incest fetishists have sent me letters over the years, DAD, wondering what’s wrong with them. Or wondering what’s right with what’s wrong with them, I should say, as they’re turned on by incest fantasies but not, as they’re invariably relieved to add, by incest realities. So what gives?
It’s the thrill of violating a taboo, not a child; it’s the power dynamics that have been eroticized, not the parental dynamics—but that’s for another column. You wrote, DAD, because you don’t know what to do about your dad.
Unless your father has given you reason to suspect that he actually wants to fuck you—unless finding your dad’s porn helped you to identify a pattern of inappropriate behaviors on your father’s part with but one possible interpretation (he actually wants to fuck you)—let’s give your father the benefit of the doubt, shall we? Let’s assume that one of the many letters I’ve received from incest fetishists was written by your dad.
I’m operating under an assumption: again, that your father has never done anything that made you feel unsafe. If your discovery had led you to connect a bunch of deeply creepy dots, DAD, that’s surely something you would’ve mentioned in your letter. Which is why I’m not just urging you to give your father the benefit of the doubt, however revolting his taste in porn might be, but also to take what you found out about him and stuff it down the memory hole.
Don’t say anything to your father, DAD, or to anyone else. You no longer have to live with your father—or use his computer—and I see no need to terminate your relationship with him, or to go nuclear on his reputation, over a deeply creepy kink that your father neither asked for nor has ever attempted to act on.
1. Thirty-year-old gay man here. I was briefly dating someone until he was a huge asshole to me. I have since not had any contact with him. However, I have been Facebook stalking him and obsessing over pictures of the guys I assume he’s dating now. Why am I having such a hard time getting over him? Our relationship was so brief! He’s a major asshole!
2. It may help you to know that I lost my virginity by being raped when I was 19. I started dating only last year, because I thought sex was scary and never wanted to feel like that again and/or make anyone else feel like that. (The guy who raped me went on to become a born-again Christian!) This guy is only the second person I’ve ever dated. Do you think that’s relevant?
3. I used to have stretched-out earlobes. When I took my plugs out, I did get “earlabia,” but only for a few days, and then they closed up and no one really noticed.
Normal Earlobes Now
1. I can’t know for sure! But it sounds like you might still have feelings for this guy! Just a hunch!
2. I’m sorry that your very first sexual experience was so traumatic, NEN, and indeed it strikes me as relevant. You were violated and powerless during your very first sexual experience and now, 10 years later, your relationship ended in a way that left you feeling violated and powerless. Stalking your ex on Facebook gives you a feeling of power over him, NEN, but that power is bogus, stalking him is making you miserable, and it’s pushing back the date that you’re finally over this guy. Knock it off.
3. You’ve given me hope for all the otherwise cute boys I see wandering around with stretched-out earlabia.
Hipster boys! Keep stretching your earlobes! I’m a hipster girl and stroking the silky texture of a nice stretched-out set of earlobes gets me insanely wet. And tongue-fucking a stretched piercing is enough to bring me most of the way to orgasm. If there are chicks with a kink for something, then surely there must be dudes who have a kink for it, too.
I stretched my own earlobes 20 years ago for mostly sexual reasons. I like the way it looks, but I did it primarily because I get off on having my ears fondled and licked. I figured that if someone licking the outside of my earlobe felt so good, imagine if someone could lick the inside of my earlobe! Now they can—and it’s bliss!
I’m not saying you have to change your mind, Dan, because YKIOBINMK—your kink is okay but it’s not my kink—but I was disappointed that you would come out so strongly against stretched-out earlobes. You’re always defending lesser kinks. Could it be that you were unaware of mine?
Yes, Ears Are Hot
I know enough about sex—and enough about kink—to know that if something exists, someone out there somewhere is perving on it. And if a particular something is made of human flesh and has a hole in the middle of it, someone out there somewhere is sticking fingers, tongues, dicks, or gerbils in it, making sex tapes while they do it, and then posting the video on the World Wide Interwebs for all to enjoy.
Somehow it didn’t occur to me that there were earlabia fetishists out there, so I appreciate—kindasorta—you taking the time to clue me in. While I may disapprove of silky, stretched-out sets of earlabia, YEAH, I will defend to the death your right to tongue them.
You’re going to catch hell for your earlobe observation, but I have to add this: I worked with a young man who decided that gauging his earlobes to the max was a sexy thing to do. When the look got old, he took the plugs out. Because of the size of the plugs, the holes in his ears would not close. He had to have them surgically cut and stitched, which made his ears look somewhat deformed. The cost was $800, and it wasn’t covered by insurance.
Just Saying
You’ve filled me with despair for all the otherwise cute boys I see wandering around with stretched-out earlabia.
Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.
And here I was hoping to never read the term “earlabia” after last week’s column…
Amen on the advice to DAD – listen to Dan and don’t do something stupid that could mess up your dad’s life and relationships!
Sick, and disgusting
DAD: Watching a porn scenario does not mean you want to actualize on it. I enjoy lesbian porn, yet I have no desire to have a sex-change operation so that I can have sex as a lesbian.
F–k, that’s one for the awkward award. For the sake of your dad AFTER you leave you might want to figure out a way of bringing up the importance of erasing search history without letting him realize what happened. You know, just in case someone else inconviently uses his computer.
You know, I’m a little squicked by the dad viewing that porn while the adult child is in the house. It’s not logical or rational of me, but it’s a squick.
Agreed that said adult child should go on this new job and let this information settle before taking any action.
@2: I agree. The term “earlabia” is indeed sick and disgusting.
DAD doesn’t elaborate on what the “incest porn” consisted of, but just about any gay porn or online hookup pitch that involves a big age disparity seems to use the “daddy/son” nomenclature.
Personally, it creeps me out – and I say that as someone whose boyfriend is 17 years his junior – but I suspect that most who use those terms in that context aren’t fantasizing about actual incest, any more than “bear admirers” fantasize about sex with actual bears.
I like dad/son porn stories. But I don’t actually want to have sex with my dad (or son if I had one). I think DAD is flipping out unnecessarily. I also like rape scenarios in porn, but I don’t want to rape anyone or get raped.
I’m assuming that the incest scenerios reflected the same genders of DAD and hir father? If that’s the case, I’d totally call him out on it. Or at the very least, advise him that he should clear his internet history.
One of the first porns I ever saw was Taboo from the early 80s. It’s still a favorite. Kay Parker has sex with her son, big mustaches and massive amounts of pubic hair. Much as I enjoy it, I have no desire to have sex with any of my children, nor do I have a yen for big mustaches or massive amounts of pubic hair.
DAD needs to learn about boundaries, and respect her father as a sexual being in his own right, completely independent of anything that has to do with her. Self centered much? Jesus. Since when does having adult children preclude one from having a separate sexual life? My oldest child is nearly 20, and I have no intention of turning in my sex card, fuck you very much.
Is this what happens when you “move home with your parents” but they’re divorced? You shuffle back and forth with your belongings in a HelloKitty backpack, as if you were 13 years old again and had no options?
One option (if she weren’t about to leave the country anyway): she could tell her mother that her dad left some porn visible on the computer. (Please, please, don’t specify the details – just say you clicked away as soon as you saw a penis.) In the ensuing brouhaha, the parents will presumably find a solution that gets her out of her dad’s house, but without cutting him out of her life.
“If your discovery had led you to connect a bunch of deeply creepy dots, DAD, that’s surely something you would’ve mentioned in your letter.”
I don’t agree with this premise.
I think “Should I trust what my gut is telling me and pack up, jump in a cab, and never talk to him again?”
Is suggestive that there’s something going on beyond just “wow that porn is icky”.
In my eyes anyway.
DAD, just tell your parents that it’s important to erase their browsers and clear their caches and whatever else to protect their information from phishing online. No need to drop the info about porn. Tell them you saw it on 20/20 or some shit.
A little white lie goes a long way. And FFS, don’t mention that you saw that stuff, especially if you otherwise have a good relationship with your parents. Porn is not necessarily a substitute for something the viewer desires to actually experience.
Gay men should not refer to other men as “a huge asshole to me”.
If you go on my computer, you’re going to find some nasty stuff. How about fuck off? It’s my own private business. What are you doing poking around in my stuff anyway?
Yeah, let’s go with that…
Johnny D.
For the love of God, computers are plentiful and cheap. Why can’t everyone just get one of his/her own, or at least assign individual user accounts. I’m sick of children who “accidentally” find sordid parental browsing footprints.
Really, it’s like sharing a toothbrush, or underwear. Sheesh!
@16: I suspect parents may want to keep an eye on their children’s internet activities. Not necessarily to look for sordid browsing footprints, but to protect their children from online predators.
“Should I tell him that I know about it and I’m not interested in having a relationship with him anymore? Do I tell my friends or family? Should I trust what my gut is telling me and pack up, jump in a cab, and never talk to him again?” for god’s sake, DAD, since when did you get promoted to the fantasy police?
It’s not the nature of the fantasy that bothers DAD, so much as it is thinking of her father as a sexual being. How dare he?!!!
Get over it, DAD. Your parents don’t need to submit their sexual thoughts and fantasies to you for your approval.
For the record, I get off on incest scenarios in my erotic imaginary life. I like to read about them and to role-play with partners (I don’t tend to watch video porn). However, not only do I not *approve* of incest in real life, I can think of no one in a million years less sexually appealing to me than any of my family members. DAD, have you ever heard of “make believe?”
Gotta agree with 18. DAD what if the situation was reversed and it was your father who found the porn on your computer?
Would you like if he decided that made you a pervert, cut off all communication and humiliated you in front of friends and family?
If the answer to that question is ‘no’ that do what Dan says. Put it down the memory hole and stop acting like your Dad is a pervert because he has fantasy that aren’t about having missonary-in-the-dark sex with -insert acceptable person here-.
Watching porn with roleplay scenarios definitely doesn’t make you want to act on it. Also, DAD’s real fantasy might simply be about wanting to fuck a woman young enough to be his adult daughter. For awhile in my twenties I had a fantasy about wanting to fuck a much older guy in his late 40’s or 50’s- old enough to be my dad. My fantasy had nothing to do with wanting to anything sick or incestuous, even if I did look at a few “Daddy” scenes.
I thought older guy porn would be an extremely easy porn scenario to find, but I found it surprisingly difficult to get. I didn’t want Lolita-type porn, but there wasn’t much else available. Other than the gay leather daddy sites, the only other sites I could find were called things like, “fuck me grandpa” with adult actresses in pigtails and knee socks- not quite what I wanted, but the closest I could find to my older guy scenario. I looked at it anyway, because I couldn’t find any other age-difference porn.
Maybe DAD just has a kink for younger women with guys his age. Plus, roleplay is just that- roleplay. Most people know the difference between fantasy and reality. As long as DAD didn’t do anything creepy in rl, no need to judge the man by his porn viewing. Plus, DAD’s daugher would’ve been horrified and disgusted no matter what porn it was. No one wants to know what their Dad uses to get off!
Oh, for flip’s sake! All these disdainful, sexually sophisticated people who are criticizing DAD for being squicked over incest porn amuse me. Stop trying so hard to be hip before you strain something already. Then you wouldn’t be able to have disdainful, sexually sophisticated sex. Wait a minute, that might not be such a bad thing…
Personally, I think DAD needs to thank her lucky stars that all she witnessed was the evidence and not the act. Walking in on her dad looking at that could’ve resulted in years of awkwardness for the both of them, but as it is, the awkwardness is only hers, internally. It’s not much, but it’s an upside.
My only other advice to her would be to use her own personal laptop and/or smartphone to browse at her Dad’s place from now on. Or, at the very least, install a separate browser for herself, to avoid having more search history dumped on her.
@16, I don’t know, if this person just finished college and hasn’t started a job yet, an extra few hundred bucks might not be that easy to come by.
@17, good point in general, but this kid is 22.
re: DAD
Excellent advice, Dan. You understand well the human psyche. Porn watchers are their own breed and if a person has never watched it, almost any of it seem be sickening. One of the worst experiences I ever had happened on Twitter. I don’t use it to this day because of that one incident. Some gay guy posted a porn picture that I clicked on like an idiot. I won’t go into the details, but what disturbed me more than the actual shocking image was what my imagination was cooking up about the pure evil that had to exist in the person who posted it. I felt physically ill for several hours. I felt the human race was doomed, not so much because of the porn but because of how Twitter was being used: to inflict shock on total strangers. It was a day I felt the Taliban maybe had a point.
I still feel whoever did that is evil, but the image itself wouldn’t freak me out at this time. Porn is so prevalent I wouldn’t be surprised if it went mainstream soon. It almost has. Who the h. knows where we’re headed as a society and culture. Much of what this fine new information age of ours is bringing isn’t so wonderful, but then how is that any different from any other media revolution?
Anyway, DAD, if you’re father’s behavior is OK then you’ve got to look at and relate to that. That’s the real person. Don’t tell me you have never had one icky thought your entire life. I won’t believe it. But you still identify yourself as a decent human being, right? If you dislike your father for other reasons, then that’s a different story.
re: DAD
Excellent advice, Dan. You understand the human psyche well. Porn watchers are their own breed and if a person has never watched it, almost any of it seems sickening. One of the worst experiences I ever had happened on of all places Twitter. I don’t use it to this day because of that one incident. Some gay guy posted a porn picture that I clicked on blithely like an idiot. I won’t go into the details, but what disturbed me more than the actual shocking image was what my imagination was cooking up about the pure evil that had to exist in the person who posted it. I felt physically ill for several hours. I felt the human race was doomed, not so much because of the porn but because of how Twitter was being used: to inflict shock on total strangers. It was a day I felt the Taliban maybe had a point.
I still feel whoever did that is evil, but the image itself wouldn’t freak me out at this time. Porn is so prevalent now I wouldn’t be surprised if it were decreed to have gone mainstream soon. It almost has. Who the h. knows where we’re headed as a society and culture. Much of what this fine new information age of ours is bringing isn’t so wonderful, but then how is that any different from any other media revolution?
Anyway, DAD, if your father’s behavior is OK then you’ve got to look at and relate to that. That’s the real person. Don’t tell me you’ve never had one icky thought your entire life. I won’t believe it. But you still identify yourself as a decent human being, right? If you dislike your father for other reasons, then that’s a different story.
@12: There are plenty of children (adult or only aspiring thereto) who are deeply squicked out by the idea that their parents have a libido AT ALL. There have been at least two letters that I can remember in the last year or so here where people freak the fuck out over their parents’ sex lives in ways that inappropriately play the incest card. One was about a parent dating somebody’s best friend, and the “child” in the situation interpreted that as the parent wanting to fuck the child by proxy. One person said that just having to think about their parents having sex felt incestuous.
This case is rather more explicitly about incest than that one, but still, I think that gut reactions from children about their parents’ sex lives tend to be gut overreactions. LW should think really, really hard about whether there was any concrete evidence that this was anything but abstract fantasy for the father — a hugely different concept than if it was about or involved him/her specifically — before going nuclear on him.
Also can’t help but wonder how much digging through the ol’ history did DAD have to do to get so sickened.
If it was just a glance at the website titles in the history, those can be misleading. (There’s a lot of porn about “my sister/mother/son/whatever” that turns out to be about “my sister/mother/son/whatever’s hot best friend, who jumps me while sister/mother/son/whoever is off at the store”)
On the other hand, if DAD investigated deeply enough to confirm his/her initial impressions, what the hell was he/she doing that for? Invasion of privacy much?
I never even considered that enjoying incest porn was scary to some people… I’m going to start wiping my history more frequently.
The third thing to keep in mind is that, given the usual production values of most porn shoots, the premise is invariably the thinnest veneer of plot, costume, and location, which very quickly devolves into yet another pair of naked people of average porn star age and looks, rutting in the usual manner. DAD’s dad may simply have liked the looks of the actresses (who are all over 18 and not actually related to him) and the incest angle may have been entirely incidental.
To the death, huh? I admit I am not nearly so altruistic – should a choice come down between my life and the ability of a stranger to get off on ear sex, I’m gonna choose the former. But that’s why Dan is such a good advocate for kinksters – he’s really committed, you know?
@11 Whoa, telling Mom is NOT a good idea. As an adult child of divorced parents, I resent the drama they continue to drag me into whenever I go home to visit – a bombshell like this would prevent DAD from ever having a significant life event again that wasn’t filled with fights and managing the parental tension.
It is possible that the mother isn’t totally crazy and would just tell her adult kid to grow up upon learning that s/he saw teh porn, but my experience with divorce dynamics informs me that even sane people become crazy with respect to the former spouse.
A much better solution: why doesn’t DAD just go to their mother’s house and say s/he just wanted to spend more time with her? Wait out the squicks there. Problem solved.
Excellent column once again, Dan! Kudos!
Stretched out earlabia. That’s a new one for me.
Viewers of porn, who don’t want their porn to get looked at by others they share a roof with: individual accounts. Sign off EVERY SINGLE TIME. Make it a habit.
DAD, take above advice to heart. Give yourself time to settle into the new gig & new digs. Decide then if something needs to be said. Plenty of people like to look at sick-n-twisted stuff who’d never ever do it IRL. Don’t punish your dad for having a moment of dark fantasy. BUT, your letter has me worried that’s not all there is to it, too.
@31 – I take your point. I was just searching for a way to stop the kid from being bounced house to house like a ping-pong ball. (And I was imagining mom insisting: “If you’re living here full-time, then your dad better be paying your rent.”)
@21 (catseye), way to miss the point of every single comment written here. You get the clueless award for this year!
To DAD: Dan’s right. Has your daddy ever done anything that suggests he wants to actualize those fantasies (is your ‘gut feeling’, as someone above suggested, based on something other than ‘this porn is icky’)? Then you may have a real problem. Otherwise, it’s just another situation in which finding porn in someone’s computer freaks us out because we didn’t expect that person (father, mother, brother, sister) to have an interest in that.
If I told you the things I find arousing, you’d probably consider me an icky perv. Yet I’m a successful, well-mannered, I’d even say well-balanced person who doesn’t represent a threat to anyone (including my daughter) or to society.
There are bad people out there, and your dad may be one of them. But then again, there also are good people out there, and your dad just might be one of them, too, despite the icky kink (we don’t really ask to have the kinks we have, as Dan pointed out). To say nothing of all the in-betweens.
Life’s not simple. Whatever you do, there’ll be consequences. Just think about it before you act.
(By the way, are you sure it was your father who searched for those sites — or could it be that some third person used his computer while you weren’t looking? You did, so maybe someone else did, too?)
I enjoy the hell out of brother-sister incest porn but I so do not want to fuck any of my brothers. I think part of the appeal is the taboo, partly the idea that it’s a bond stronger than any other (say they grew up together, know each other better than anyone else, won’t let anyone else close)… the fucked-up dependent dynamic that goes along with so much of it just appeals to me. My relationship with my brothers isn’t even anything like the brother-sister incest relationships I enjoy.
And come on, how can you be a fan of X-men and not want Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch to fuck, seriously. 😛
Hey, where’s the Joe Newton illustration? I love those
What the fuck, DAD? Incest fetishes are ridiculously common. Is he/she really that surprised? It’s just not that disturbing.
@12: You have a tendency to read abuse into things when it isn’t there… DAD said he/she felt disturbed and physically sick, and “going with my gut” in this case meant going with that feeling and his/her instinct.
@24: Now I have to know what the picture was.
For what it’s worth, DAD, I have a couple of fantasies (neither of them involving incest) that really turn me on but would never, ever want to act out in real life. In fact, my girlfriend in the fantasy isn’t even my real-life girlfriend or anyone I’ve ever met.
Why the fantasy is hot while the reality would be totally gross and depressing is a complete mystery to me.
@18, 15, 10 – nothing in the letter to indicate that DAD has a problem with her father having a sexual fantasy life. It’s just this particular fantasy that prompts the very reasonable, I think, question – does this mean he wants to do this to me?
Dan answered that – “not necessarily”. Problem solved.
@11 – she’s 22, not 15. If she’s got issues with shuffling back and forth between parents’ houses, she doesn’t need to get her mommy to intervene. Just negotiate a living situation that works, as an adult. “Mom, I’m getting tired of shuffling back and forth. What would you need from me to have it work out if I stayed here fulltime?”
I’ve watched incest porn before not because the idea of incest turned me on but because I enjoy watching an older women fucking a younger one and it just turns out that the porn God provide this in the form of incest porn. Could just be the age thing for DAD dad too.
@40 (agony)
You say that finding out your father watches incest porn “prompts the very reasonable, I think, question – does this mean he wants to do this to me.”
What if she’d found centaur porn? Would it be reasonable for her to think her father wants to really find a mythical creature? People do watch porn of things they’d like to do, but they also watch porn all the time, about things they wouldn’t do in real life (hello, 40 foot tall woman porn).
The letter writer is judgmental because the dad’s porn breaks incest taboos, and because she doesn’t want to think of him getting off to something she doesn’t approve of. He might well not even transfer those thoughts to his own, real daughter, let alone want to pursue them. Unless she has any reason to think that he is getting off to specific thoughts of her (and even that, if it stays always in the realm of his own imaginative life, seems icky maybe, but as long as it remains unshared, benign and none of her business.) or she thinks he has been planning to try and molest her, this is absolutely about the existence of her father’s having a sexual fantasy life which she is disgusted by.
To DAD, if you’re simply creeped out that your father looked at the site, just assume he was looking at other porn and clicked on the link accidentally. That can happen. And if you’re creeped out he was looking at porn at all, fuck you.
Oh my gosh! Any parent who has every watched one of the vintage (and now essentially mainstream) Taboo porn series NECESSARILY DESIRES TO HAVE SEX WITH THEIR CHILDREN!
This is breaking news, and I think everyone with an incest fantasy needs to be sterilized and forcibly separated from their children.
Hmm, I think Dan really REALLY likes writing “earlabia”.
33: Better yet, the major browsers now all have a feature called “Private Browsing” or something similar: no cookies, no history, no temp files, no nothing. When you close the browser, all data concerning the private browsing session are wiped. Everyone: use this for porn browsing if you share a computer. That is exactly why it was added.
@37 I know, right? Instead it’s that guy who demonstrates what a t-shirt is on Wikipedia.
One thing that may be relevant in DAD’s case: Do you have siblings? Are your siblings of another gender than you are?
If dad was watching dad-on-daughter porn, you’re a son, and have a sister, well, I may begin to pay some extra attention to her relationship to dad, see if everything seems normal or if there’s anything that seems off about it.
Same goes the other way around, if you’re a daughter, has a brother, and he was watching dad-on-son porn, try to figure if anything seems wrong with your dad’s relationship to his son(s).
Try to be supportive of your siblings, in case they need somebody to talk to. Don’t mentioned what you found unless there’s a pretext to mentioning it.
If this isn’t relevant, Dan’s advice is sound.
DAD getting all self-righteous about her father’s incest porn–he might want to do that to her!–is like a straight homophobe believing that every gay man, by virtue of their being gay, wants to fuck him. It’s arrogance mixed up with disgust, fear, and a huge amount of narcissism.
@42, Geez, have a heart for DAD. Your point about the centaur may be logical but it’s not pertinent. (If the kid were a centaur, then it would be.) Her “eek” reaction is totally reasonable, even if she wasn’t able to reason the whole issue out the rest of the way. That’s why she wrote to Dan. (I hope she takes his advice.)
Once, I heard the shake of a rattle and I jumped sky-high. When I landed, I realized that I had subconsciously thought the rattle was a rattlesnake. Turns out it was only a musical instrument. My reaction hadn’t been “correct” but it sure was reasonable!
Just a quick tutorial…to use InPrivate Browsing on your computer you can usually just click Control+Shift+P or use the Safety link on your toolbar. Anything you view there will not show up on your history. My husband and I (he way more than me) use it so that others on our computer can’t see what we’ve been looking at.