Look, when you click on an article titled “What It’s Like To Date Your Dad,” you know what you’re getting yourself into. Of course, the second you see a headline like “What It’s Like To Date Your Dad,” clicking is no longer optional. It’s rather like the Babadook, in that sense.
It’s distressing! (But you already knew that.) There are a great many questions that are brought up but barely addressed within the interview! (But you already knew that.) It does not seem like the dad in question has practiced Being The Responsible Adult in a healthy and appropriate way! (But you really, really already knew that.)
But easily the most upsetting portion of this deeply unsettling piece (I DO NOT BELIEVE FOR A SECOND THAT SHE ACTUALLY TOOK HER DAD-BOYFRIEND TO PROM AND THAT NOBODY NOTICED; NOR DO I BELIEVE THAT HER GRANDPARENTS ARE TRULY PLANNING ON ATTENDING THEIR UPCOMING WEDDING) is this:
Nobody says look at King Henry VIII! The man was the picture of health, at least until his festering jousting wound limited his mobility and kept him in chronic pain. His parents were barely related – their papal dispensation was for blood relation in the “double fourth degree of consanguinity”! Henry VII was a Lancaster and her name was Elizabeth of York, for godsakes. The man was six foot two during an era when the average man scarcely rose above 5’7. He was a superb athlete, a world-class tilter, an accomplished poet and musician, a remarkable dancer, and enjoyed archery, wrestling, and tennis.
Yes, later in his reign he was almost certainly suffering from the ravages of advanced syphilis, gout, and limited mobility, but that’s hardly the fault of his bloodline, which was frankly littered with commoners, for a monarch. You, my friend, are thinking of Carlos the Bewitched of Spain, a Hapsburg and the catalyst for the War of Spanish Succession. Not this man, who resembled a particularly robust Benedict Cumberbatch and was a fine physical specimen:
But this man, who resembled, unfortunately, a Hapsburg:
(For more ghastly examples of the famous “Hapsburg chin,” please check out Michelle Vaughan’s wonderfully distressing Hapsburg GIFs.)
Carlos did not speak until he was four and did not walk until he was eight; he was plagued with ferocious emotional and physical distress for the majority of his short life. Henry VIII married six women, most of whom were barely related to him (more commoners and Germans, mostly). Had Henry VIII chosen either Nicole or myself as his consort, I have no doubt that we would have borne him a fine passel of sons, and earned his genuine love and respect for the rest of his days, but that is neither here nor there. Carlos The Mad’s parents were uncle and niece.
If you are planning on committing consensual adult incest (which I do not think is a great idea and also given that the father and daughter in question were 39 and 18, it is highly doubtful that there wasn’t a disturbing power imbalance at the outset of the relationship) and plan on invoking the royal houses of Europe as justification for your relationship, it would behoove you to know your Tudors from your Hapsburgs! If you are going to make Incest Poster Relationship your thing and give interviews to NY Mag about it you have got to sort out your Carlos the Bewitcheds from your Joanna the Mads from your Anne the Fairly Normals. KNOW YOUR HISTORY.
Tags: dating your dad, history, i will never call them the habsburgs, incest, relationships, the hapsburgs
Can we also talk about the other problems in the article? Because I’m interested in the fact that the dad can compartmentalize so well he apparently can switch from Lover to Dad Mode when needed.
D:
Note, all of my replies to this article will begin with D: and end with ???
Nope, not clicking on the article. Mallory’s power over my brain must stop somewhere.
God that’s squicky.
Yeah, I got to the first passage about physical intimacy and just couldn’t. Nope, no more, never again, not even once.
Wait, no, sorry, I just skipped over the sex bits and read the rest. I couldn’t look away. Honestly, it reads like Snape/Hermione fic on fanfiction.net.
D: D:
Don’t insult Snermione fanfiction like that!
Letter to Penthouse, then?
I’ll take it!
Does anybody really believe this was a real interview with a real 19 year old from rural America whose boyfriend became a father in seventh grade and every other kid is a heroin addict, whose grandparents are apparently such hicks they’re ok with incest? I raised three kids in rural America and we knew several families rife with incest (and lice). None of the teenagers they knew talked the way this “girl” supposedly does, not even my kids who were at least the off-spring of middle class suburban-raised parents, and certainly not the kids who came from families who think nothing of incest.The syntax is 35 year old middle class liberal college graduate. This is a made up story. Nothing about it rings true. Not one single thing.
Maybe her dad is a 35 year old middle class liberal college graduate?
(I’m saying her dad wrote this.)
“liberal dude erotica”
Yeah it sounded fake to me too.
I believe that this is a real 19 year old who is totally fucking with us. The syntax sounds fine to me but in my experience with rural America I have never known anyone who was fine with incest?!
I believe the REPORTER is screwing with us. This reads like “Jimmy’s World” for the 2010s.
Incest is not a cultural problem in rural america. It’s a mental health / sexual predator problem. You can have wonderful syntax and sound brilliant and have serious mental health problems and be the victim of a sexual predator father.
Not saying it’s not a prank. Could be. HOPE TO GOD IT IS.
I did wonder how old the boyfriend who got the girl pregnant in the seventh grade was – seeing as the pregnant girl then burnt her house down smoking in bed… all bizarre.
Is he going to walk her down the aisle all misty eyed about saying goodbye to his baby girl, and then when they reach the end just be like “ALRIGHT, let’s do this!”
I have so many questions, but I don’t want answers to any of them.
The last time I was drunk I googled, in increasing bafflement, trying to find the wealth of posts on the Internet I KNEW existed on Michael Cera being a secret Hapsburg, or at least deeply inbred. I did not find them.
Anyway, I worry about this girl for many reasons, but seriously, poor Charles couldn’t even eat. Henry VIII was so much less pathetic than that!
Don Miguel Suarez, Seventh Duke of Cera y Retorcida. Not a drop of Hapsburg blood, funnily enough.
THAT WE KNOW OF
Don Jorge Miguel Suarez?
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lq8vhsVh0c1qcm1… http://cdn.splitsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2013…
JUST SAYIN THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
He is, however, the fifth cousin thrice removed of John of Gaunt.
OH my goodness of COURSE Michael Cera is a secret Hapsburg. IT HAS BEEN STARING US ALL IN THE FACE FOR TOO LONG.
Normally after a night of Knob Creek I wake up all “what was I thinking” but I’m sticking by this one. I’m a Michael Cera truther now. LOOK FOR HIS FAMILY TREE, THERE’S A HAPSBURG IN THERE SOMEWHERE. MAYBE TWO.
Probably a greatx uncle father
Let’s not forget her immortal line “When you’re 18, you know what you want”.
I may have done a lot of stupid shit when I was 18, but I didn’t MARRY MY FATHER IN A BLACK AND PURPLE WEDDING WITH MY GRANDFATHER GIVING ME AWAY.
I also knew the difference between a Hapsburg and a Tudor BUT THERE YOU GO.
Yeah but come on, I am sure that when you’re 18 these days, you know what you want, ’cause when you’re fifteen and somebody tells you they love you you’re gonna believe them. I mean. Clearly there’s correlation between those two particularly exceptional times in your life. I am 110% certain that if at the age of 15 you believe somebody that they love you, you will definitely know what you want at 18. Like, totally.
True story I had written out a fairly detailed response to this that included a story about how dumb I was when I was 18 (not that I’m much better at 22) before I realized that your entire comment was a wonderful Taylor Swift reference
“The tables will have bouquets of trees without leaves to represent our marriage, which will be like a growing tree.”
A growing, dead or dormant tree. Sure.
What does she mean a “bouquet” of trees? Like……… how…?
I think it’s a bundle of sticks.
Trees without leaves. To represent their marriage. AHAHAHAHAAHA. ugh.
I like to think it’s a bundle of broccoli with the buds removed and her father still calls them ‘ little trees’ to get her to eat them.
oh god oh god oh god oh god
And only one branch.
“I hate drama,” says the 18-year-old girl giving an interview to NY Mag about how she is going to marry her dad and doesn’t even CARE what you think about that and also SUCK IT.
18 year old who is so much more MATURE than other teens, who are, like 5, right
Pfft. They don’t know what they want.
The more I think about it the more I think it’s a hoax but COME THE FUCK ON
HI MAYA
HIYA BB NICE TO SEE YOU OVER HERE <3
Well, in that respect, she has an advantage over Alice Cooper at that age. (Rimshot)
he…he really does look like benedict cumberbatch.
(i really can’t even with the dating-my-father aspect of this, SO willful denial it is!)
Even I know the difference between these two families, and given how little I know about such things, that should be a tip off.
Also, I really didn’t believe you that those Hapsburg gifs would be so distressing, but you were not kidding or exaggerating! D:
Also, I’m calling bullshit on the vast amount of research she did if she could make such an elementary inbreeding mistake.
I did enjoy that the top of the article linked to a study that was like, “Umm no” all over the idea that inbreeding is hunky-dory.
That article is so over the top that I’m choosing to believe it’s fiction. Because, otherwise there are not enough nope gifs in the world.
the “play-wrestling” that led to their first encounter feels so romantic-movie cliche to me. I’m /really/ hoping it’s made up.
And the whole thing with her 5th grade boyfriend. THAT NEVER HAPPENED
“In fifth grade I dated a boy for two years.”
but… what?
i prefer to imagine this was pulled from the plot arch of some teen drama where the kids never age and every type of calamity happens to everyone. but in 5th grade.
degrassi + hey arnold mashup.
And, ummm…he got other girls pregnant. At the age of 11 or 12.
If Helga Pataki has a long-lost brother, this might be it.
(P.S. Adore your screen name, sweetie darling.)
Porn-movie cliche or pedophile grooming behavior… I’ve heard it both ways.
That’s honestly more or less what happened with my first serious boyfriend when I was about her age. Except that the guy was the same age and not related to me–but those are just minor differences, right? 🙁
Why would you even be play-wrestling with your dad (while both wearing shorts)? Why?
Is it terrible that the thing that jumped out at me was all the other kids being addicted to heroin? That strikes me as unlikely as a drug of choice for middle schoolers. Or maybe that’s me just grasping for evidence that this is just a kid with some issues making stuff up on the internet.
*All* the other kids. There wasn’t a single other kid in the area that wasn’t addicted to heroin! It was in the malk, I’m guessing.
Now with Vitamin R!
Me too. Every questionable internet commenter, whether it’s an old coot complaining about kids these days or a teenager trying to sound tough, seems to have some experience where “every kid was a pregnant junkie, and this was in fourth grade! The teacher was just a stray dog!”
Also, the descriptions of how cute and in-love they are, and how “funky” the wedding is going to be, sounded like something a young teenager would write as fiction.
Yes, she talks about how he looks “alternative” because he has tattoos and piercings. I think it is when the interview asks about her physical attraction to him. She goes straight to the superficial “cool guy” trappings.
And the whole black and purple wedding thing. I mean I guess if you are 18 and live in the rural midwest then Hot Topic does seem pretty cutting edge…?
Oh man I really wish I had a stray dog as an elementary school teacher. That’s all my horrified brain is going to be able to take away from this one.
They’re both going to wear converse! So counter culture.
The whole thing is just…..it doesn’t ring true to me.
Evidence for a hoax: would an 18 year old go through the trouble of saying “Converse tennis shoes”
really tho
She would if in fact she is a hoax and actually 29 years old.
I think she has to be older- I’m 29, and I (along with all the 30-somethings around me) don’t refer to them as “tennis shoes”. That sounds like my mom, who is 58.
“My high school boyfriend got a girl pregnant, and I told him he had to do the responsible thing! But then she was smoking and burned the house down ZOMG.”
Not even high school. FIFTH GRADE. Apparently there is nothing for the children to do in this small town except SEX EACH OTHER and HEROIN.
See, this girl does not live in our universe. She lives in a Lana Del Rey video in hell.
I have decided this is some V.C. Andrews fan fiction. I cannot be convinced otherwise.
The inner thigh seems to be a favorite of hers.
I lost it at “we’re really similar! Neither of us like neck-biting!” OF SUCH COINCIDENCES IS TRUE LOVE MADE.
They both LOVE neck-biting! True evidence of soulmate status.
They also enjoy pina coladas and getting caught in the rain! However, they only kind of liked Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Please be right. Oh please.
I just want to give all my love to the Toastie Twitters for sitting through that with me and also apologize to Jaya for cc’ing her on all those tweets.
Y’all, that totally made my week. Nothing to brighten up a day like mutual horror.
No it’s amazing, I’m still processing everything about the article
It was truly quite beautiful.
This is so many levels of fucked up. Not to mention they both like The Big Bang Theory! UM, THAT’S A RED FLAG GIRL.
hahahaha I had the exact same thought!
those dark horses of pop culture, THE BIG BANG THEORY and THE SIMPSONS. who could have imagined two people with interests so rare would have found each other!!!
This reminds me of my friend who had a crush on a guy who worked for security at our college. One day we were at the library, and he started chatting with the girl at the front desk. “You like the Beatles?” he asked incredulously. “I love the Beatles!” My friend got upset that they were bonding, and I was like, “P, EVERYONE likes the Beatles. They are the two most boring people on earth bonding over boring things.”
(This story is even more hilarious when you know that the guy went onto become a cast member of the Real World.)
WHICH SEASON?!
Ryan on Real World Brooklyn!
Not to mention their favorite food is chicken. Girl, if that’s your threshold for compatability, I’m sure you can find another dude who fits the bill and yet is not your dad.
But their second favorite is fish! C’mon, that’s just too much of a coincidence.
Right? I mean, who’da thunk it? Don’t most people say ‘steak’ as their second-favorite?? CRAZY DESTINY LOVE is what that is.
Another dude with PIERCINGS and TATTOOS, though?
It’s upsetting to see the Simpsons get lumped in with that.
Oh God, I foresee this comment thread being hijacked by incest apologists. Yes, those exist, and they will never shut up about how incest is great fun for all the family, if you’ll only open your closed little minds.
GOOD THING WE MODERATE WITH A HEAVY HAND HERE AT THE OLD TOAST DOT NET
normally I want to see the deleted comments but this time I do not want to see the deleted comments
I DOOOOO
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
I see that whole damned *article* as being written by incest apologists.
These people should totally get together with the NAMBLA folks. They would be like the Gatekeeper and the Keymaster in “Ghostbusters.”
On second thought, maybe not a good analogy…
I… I may never sleep again after viewing those Habsburg gifs.
HAPSBURGS DAMMIT I HATE THAT DANG B
Say what you will about the Hapsburgs, but at least they probably never considered trying to keep their blood relationships secret from their incest-children.
So the grandparents/great-grandparents are going to be involved in the lives of the children and the kids are somehow not going to know? “Hey, how come you call him Grandpa but dad calls him dad? WTF is up with the family photo albums, seriously?” And she thinks her mom, who doesn’t know about it yet, is going to play along?
Yes, that is exactly what will happen, and good thing too, because it could really mess the kids up to grow up with that information! More than it would for them to stumble upon it while researching their family tree, or to hear it from a relative. How lucky that their maternal grandmother can be trusted to keep it from them, despite being “unpredictable” according to their mother.
I think we all learned from V.C. Andrews that this method is always the best method and never results in murder or arson.
“Did you ever think about the fact that Dad is old enough to be your dad?”
“Well, now that you mention it …”
I think it would be hard not to, what with that chin.
YES. Yes, can we talk about that?!? In addition to all the other layers of fucked-uppery being ably articulated by other commenters, and besides the oh-lord-let’s-hope-this-isn’t-real factor, NOT PLANNING ON TELLING THE CHILDREN about a significant aspect of their medical history strikes me as extremely unethical.
The more I read this article, the more convinced I become that it is very, very fake. Who publicly admits that their favorite TV shows are The Simpsons in its current iteration and The Big Bang Theory???
Half my inlaws.
18 year olds.
All my engineering students.
WHAT
what
also alarming: the range of variation of the human chin. from the barely-there-benedict to the truly-horrific-hapsburg.
it would BEHOOVE you.
Mallory called it for what it is in first sentence.
39 and 18
what
… what
And I am no great history buff (Christian names confuse me too much to keep track of all these people) but come on, everyone knows who Henry VIII is! You can draw up his face in your mind’s eye! He doesn’t look incesty at all!
So “The Dad” was 21 at his high school senior prom when he impregnated The Girl/His Daughter’s mother?
Well, that would certainly establish a pattern of sleeping with younger women he probably shouldn’t be sleeping with.
Man, when I chaperoned prom no dates over 20 were allowed. But that was primarily to keep alcohol out.
But in this town every child was on heroin in 5th grade, so their standards were understandably a bit looser.
I mean, Chad Michael Murray wasn’t even allowed to go his fiancee’s prom because he was in his 20s and she was a high school senior, so that does seem to be the common practice.
(Sorry, but I will never, ever, ever pass up any opportunity to mention that Chad Michael Murray, of the CW and playing-a-sexist-douchebag-on-Agent-Carter fame, was denied entry to his child bride’s senior prom.)
From my reading of the piece (“my parents had me when they were 18”), he would currently be 36 to her 18. Which, not really better.
Literally none of the math in this thing makes sense. To the extent that THAT was why I had to stop reading it half-way through. Because the math was twisting up my brain.
Wait are there mathematical inconsistencies? I won’t click on this article while at work, but that would certainly add fodder to the “it’s faked/it’s some weird delusion” arguments.
i noticed the saaaaame thing
I read that as “incestry” at first. Maybe it’s the dating site version of ancestry.com? Incestry.com?
Well this is one of the more horrifying things I’ve ever read! I do get some compulsive liar vibes from some of her anecdotes though. Like the one about the 7th grader who got pregnant and then burned down her house by accident? And the woman who let her ex-boyfriend and his daughter move in with her and then did not have a problem when she heard them having sex? Maybe I just really want to believe it’s fake because if it’s real it’s way too sad and gross.
My assumption was that the boy and his baby momma were probably like high school sophomores, but then again what do I know
If that is true, then he was 15 while the bride-to-be was 10.
She has a strong history of healthy and loving equal relationships.
Lord, I don’t know. I have met a fair number of people who’ve had some PRETTY EVENTFUL LIVES that sound a lot like this. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, etc.
You’ve clearly never dated anyone from Etobicoke, Ontario.
ZING
Some of my best friends are from Etobicoke. I keep them around for entertainment purposes, mostly.
ok but seriously
the fifth grade parents, one of whom burns down the house because she fell asleep smoking
where’s THEIR science of us column??
Guys I am so mad at their wedding decor. It is so “Pinterest told us this was non-traditional.”
I just….a leafless tree?? Why leafless??
Yeah, choosing a leafless black tree to represent your marriage is pretty unintentionally hilarious.
Our wedding stuff had a leafless tree shilouette (sp?) and it was very lovely and not at all incestuous. But I wouldnt claim it was a metaphor for our relationship either, so.
But they’re weaing Converse to show how unique they are! Could you have come up with an idea as cool as that?
where else but the toast could i read the phrase a particularly robust Benedict Cumberbatch NOWHERE I TELL YOU, NOWHERE
Truly, The Toast are My People.
Carlos II’s (aka Carlos el Hechizado–Charles the Bewtiched) problems are a little more intense than uncle-niece parents. Thanks to centuries of endogamy, he had fewer ancestors than the average child of a brother-sister pairing.
He gets the name “Carlos the Bewtiched” because he really did think he was under a witch’s curse.
(NB: the ‘Mad’ sobriquet belongs to his great-great Grandma Joanna, whose madness is actually somewhat disputed by historians)
This genealogical table comes from the Times of London in (I believe) 2002. Can’t seem to find it on their website now, but someone has thankfully pinned it. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/42/43/4…
Poor Juana… she might not have been mad but she was abused and imprisoned by her husband, father, AND son… 🙁
Joanna always struck me as one of those poor dears whose combination of two X chromosomes and a high-functioning frontal lobe doomed her to a diagnosis of mental illness as a form of institutional disempowerment. Receptive to the ideas of Martin Luther, you say? Didn’t like being forcibly confined, eh? Sounds like a nutjob to me… :/
La Nef, for all your Joanna the Mad period music needs: http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/106…
From Charles’ Wiki page: “The physician who practiced his autopsy stated that his body ‘did not contain a single drop of blood; his heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water.'”
HUBBA HUBBA
This is the first time I’ve seen a genealogical table that requires a color-coded legend entitled “Relatedness of spouses.” Yikes.
They didn’t colour code Maria’s marriage to Maximillian II which was between first cousins too.
There aren’t nearly enough Prince Gerhardt Habsburg gifs available.
Phew, I was worried for a minute that there could be almost 300 comments on this post and not one reference to one of the best 30 Rocks ever.
This is fake, because if it were not I would puke forever, which is physically impossible. QED
A friend once read aloud to me the line, “This was the last generation of Hapsburgs whose teeth met.”. We then sat there and clicked our jaws a bit. I will certainly send her Hapsburgs gifs as “thanks” for this sentence which I will never forget.
And now I’m clicking my teeth together at work and just really THINKING ABOUT THIS.
Haunting, isn’t it?
Mallory what have you done.
(Frankly, the lips are way more terrifying than the chins.)
You just know that in actual real-life conditions said lips would always have been wet and a little loose, and these people would have spat a lot when they spoke.
D: D: D:
Probably they’d also have one of those little spit-lines between one lip and the other when they talked and breathed, too.
*jaw drops*
Well played.
Way, way, way down, in poor Carlos’s case.
ALSO OH MY GOD THEIR WEDDING COLORS ARE HAWKEYE COLORS THAT’S IT MARVEL IS OVER
This looks bad.
Nooooo! Kate Bishop is too good to be associated with this disaster.
What about “For example, we both hate neck-biting.”
She really opens up a whole new world of potential sexual compatibilities with that sentence. “For example, we both hate having our feet slammed in doors while we’re having sex.”
I’m giggling quietly out loud at work and god forbid anyone ask me why
ohhh ditto.
HOWEVER. They both like chicken, which is very unusual and a true sign of compatibility.
The chicken and fish thing KILLED me.
Also, after discovering that particular gem of a read organically, I clicked over here because I was sure The Toast would have something to say about it.
AND their second favorite is fish. can you believe it?
this is all so horrifying that the only thing i can do is laugh, a horrible, desperate, why-is-this-happening kind of laughter.
Uggggh, you beat me to it!
I bet they both like soup and snow peas.
Talking and not talking…
We both love talking and not talking.
We could talk or not talk for hours.
And still find things to not talk about.
Another difference from a Tudor!
(I’m sorry, I tried to resist but I couldn’t manage it.)
“Puppies—cute or ugly?”
Er, I’m calling BS on this whole thing – it smacks of “get famous for a second as long as TLC is the televised sideshow of the 21st century. Howevah. She’s dead wrong on the whole “it’s only years of incest that cause problems” canard. They’re called autosomal recessive disorders, dear. But I guess you know what you want when you’re 18, and what you want is offspring with Tay-Sach disease.
I really can’t even with the dating your dad thing, so this is just taking me down an internet hole of “awful historical people who had it going on in the traditional sense.” Stalin, you were the worst, but…. And of course the most Abercrombie-modelesque dude ever to conspire to assassinate a president.
Has anyone checked whether Stalin and Sergio Ramos are related?
Is he the one played by Norman Reedus in the The Conspirator?
You’ve seen the colorized version, right? A few splashes of pink and brown make him look even more like a modern guy in a linty sweater.
That is new to me, so THANK YOU.
goddamnit sexy hipster Stalin
edit: whoops, wrong “reply” button but my point still stands!
Whaaaaaaat????? That is amazing.
And is apparently a dead ringer for Karl Urban.
my warm and fuzzy feelings for karl urban should not be allowed to exist in such close proximity to the “NOPE NOPE NOPE”-ness of this article.
Young Ariel Sharon, anyone?
This guy looks remarkably similar to a guy I go to school with.
Everyone has seen Bangable Dudes in History, right?
http://bangabledudesinhistory.blogspot.com/
It’s where I first leaned of this fine specimen of a would-be assassin.
And EVERYONE AROUND THEM IS OK WITH IT. His parents/her grandparents! One of his exes! Her best friend! Her sister! Wow.
This feels a little like aspirational fiction to me? Like, possibly, there is an 18 year old, and she does have these feelings for her biological long-estranged dad, but the rest of it is made up- the first sexual encounter, the detailed wedding, the acceptance from everyone around them.
Ding ding ding. That’s the most plausible theory yet.
“Yeah my sister’s cool with it, no prob, yeah she’s only six years old but she’s totally mature and discerning.”
“Not like those shitty teenagers who are totally like, five”
“And I can tell she knows and is cool with it because she calls him by his name.” I think I figured out why she thinks everyone knows and is ok with it: people keep calling him by his name, and that’s gotta mean something, right?
If so, it’s the worst-ever Mary Sue fic in the history of Mary Sue fic.
Honestly, I’ve met girls like this. Not that were sexing their dads, perhaps, but who had really dysfunctional childhoods, and it sort of erased their ability to call a spade a spade. Instead of being cynical and hardknocks, they were easily manipulated, sweet, clueless, and desperate to be “grown up.”
Everything about this smacks of weird lonely person who reads way too much Victorian incest porn and is wiping their nethers all over the NY Mag’s unfortunate face.
Yes. As I go through the comments here and learn more, I can’t help but think of those Victorian porn rags that hang out on the internet (and also most of the porn fiction sites that popped up on LiveJournal’s Weeping_Cock community).
Right? This is has “I read The Pearl at an impressionable age and now I can’t stop thinking about daddy’s coursing charger” written all over it.
Is that the one with the spanking fetish? I can never remember, because I read a few parts of that one out of curiosity and have never been able to peek at any others. It’s all a bit much.
BUT I found it fascinating that pretty much every part I clicked on went to incest within a few paragraphs. Like, really? can’t have just one fetish here, gotta collect ’em all.
Fucking Victorians.
They all have a spanking fetish. (If they’re in English — it’s la vice Anglais, after all.)
So the mom was controlling and didn’t want her seeing her father? Mayb eshe knew that the father was a fucking child predator! Gah! (I am getting some seriously fake vibes from the best friends and grandparents being hunky-dory with everything, so maybe the article is one of those legendary ‘social experiments.’
The mum is like, totally unstable, except she’s been in a relationship for ten years, and super controlling, cos she had her facebook password and vetted who she friended when she was like thirteen or fourteen. Dear My Baby, you better believe I’m checking your Facebook/whatever has replaced Facebook friend requests when you’re thirteen.
This guy. You need to be familiar with him. http://www.joeyskaggs.com
I’m actually speechless and having a really hard time not writing a novella about everything wrong and (hopefully) implausible about this situation. It’s going to haunt me all day.
I assumed she meant Richard III. On further investigation, though, it looks like the Plantagenets were able to clear the incredibly low bar for acceptable inbreeding levels in royal European families.
Nah, RIII was pretty clear. He did have to publicly disavow any plans to marry his niece, though.
Well did he? Or was just that trumped up Tudor propaganda made to make Elizabeth of York seem more of a legitimate heir to the throne? (I might have read a Daughter of Time a bit too much )
Poor Elizabeth of York — such a douche of a husband, douche of a son, brothers, uncles, murdered, difficulties with an intense mother-in-law, and she never got to see how her grandchildren turned out.
Excuse YOU. Elizabeth of York and Henry VII ADORED each other. He may have been a skinflint douche in many other respects, but they had a very happy marriage!
. . . whenever Margaret Beaufort was out of town, anyway.
Dickie just had some scoliosis going on. Nothing particularly horrendous–one shoulder a bit higher than the other is about it. Shakespeare is mostly to blame for what we think he looked like (evil=severe physical deformity). He actually wasn’t all that bad looking, medieval monarch-wise.
But Henry VIII–I’ve seen a suit of the man’s armor in London. That guy was certainly not the product of rampant inbreeding. Also, the codpiece almost had me in fits of laughter. Good lord, those were interesting times.
oh yeah, I’ve seen his armor too, the last set that was made for him really demonstrates just how huge (on several levels) he was!
In fairness, maybe Carlos really was bewitched. Maybe inbreeding provokes the ire of witches!
She may think she’s thought this all the way through, but wait until her dad suddenly turns into Dick Sargent.
GUYS if this is fake, does that mean that the dude who bones horses is fake too?????
Next you’ll want me to believe that the myth that Catherine the Great died after shagging a horse is only a malicious rumor, probably cooked up by the French!
NOT NECESSARILY because never forget the “His wife? A horse” internet dramaz from years back.
That article pretty much ruined horses for me forever. Everytime I see even a picture of a horse I get flashbacks to the VERY SPECIFIC HORSE/HUMAN SEX ACT DESCRIPTIONS.
It was very… colorful, wasn’t it?
A few years ago, the Field Museum had a special exhibit on Cleopatra and the Ptolemys. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen a kinship diagram go in a square.
The recent recreation of what King Tut probably looked like is fantastic support for “incest is bad.” His parents were siblings, so.
Terrifyingly, I once read an article (called Insanity Breeds, and I wish I could remember the rest), which pointed out that, despite the incest, the Ptolemies showed no greater levels of illness or insanity than the surrounding, only sort of incestuous, Hellenistic Kingdoms.
Clearly the first three centuries BCE were just generally really messed up.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you Mallory and commentors for addressing and helping parse this! I unexpectedly found myself reading the original article on my feedly this morning and then had to tear away. I am SO relieved to hear that this isn’t real, clearly cannot be real. I see that now, and I don’t have to worry about it anymore. WHEW!
Ok, just read the interview.
Someone who knows reaction GIFs needs to post one ASAP. I can’t keep typing D: forever.
Someday, this woman is going to look back on this interview with her 18-year-old self and be just as horrified as I am, right? Even if it is not true. Even if she is just making this all up for attention. At some point, she too will have enough self awareness to D:
That said, I am absolutely prepared to believe that is is real. I have watched enough documentaries about dysfunctional families and have enough friends who are social workers to know that this is not beyond the pale. It is well within the horrifying pale.
Let’s get a new pale.
Ok so did anyone else catch the inconsistency between “I didn’t really want to waste my first sexual experience with someone who I couldn’t guarantee I’d be with forever” at the end of the article with the story about the girl in middle school she was “intimate” with?
Well you see, only sexual experiences with boys count, even when the girl in question has “always identified as bisexual.”
What I can’t stop thinking about is that she was intimate with this girl at least twice even though she knew it made the other girl cry. And if they were in middle school, they are either 11, 12, or 13 years old.
I don’t want to jump the gun here, but can there even be consent between kids this age? Are we going to call “buyer’s remorse” on the girl who cried? Because surely not. Do we have to chalk it up to two kids participating equally who didn’t know what they were doing?
What do we even call this?
We call it “we need better education about consent”. And it’s honestly not that unusual for queer kids, based on conversations with various queer adults. 🙁
whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
With such an unremarkable wedding, I’m sure her secret will totally stay secret until she moves to New Jersey. Sidenote – WTF, New Jersey? Legal incest?
We looked it up before, and apparently it isn’t illegal for consenting adults over the age of 18, but that doesn’t mean that we condone it I promise.
WHAT you mean it is not a state consisting entirely of happy brother-fuckers, what kind of utopia is this anyway, I want my money back.
I was going to comment on the same thing. Wtf, home state?
Wait wait wait! The Hapsburg lip is the BOTTOM one? I don’t know how I have never realized this, but the entire time I’ve been picturing all of these Austrians with like, a giant droopy upper lip. Is that not right?
IDK but looking at those GIFs it’s not the chin or the lip that strikes me as Hapsburgish but the NOSE.
They all have the exact same nose. It’s a little disturbing.
Yep, bottom lip. It caused difficulties that made Carlos’s eating and drinking repulsive, apparently.
ETA: Though, as I think about it, a pendulous upper lip would probably do that too, pretty effectively.
Speaking of consensual incest, I somehow ended up on this wikipedia page just the other day, and I am so disappointed that the link to cousincouples.com appears to be broken. “The world’s primary resource for romantic relationships among cousins including cousin marriage”! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage#Unit…
My dad is a pastor and he officiated a cousin wedding a few years ago! He admitted it was weird when he, during the church-required premarital counseling, asked the couple how they met and heard the reply, “At a family reunion!”
My mom’s great-uncle died when I was in high school, and she went to the funeral with her sisters. Apparently the program listed his surviving relatives, including an entry that read “So-and-so, wife (met at family reunion)”
You don’t need to volunteer that information if nobody’s asking!!!!
My parents are actually first cousins and yeah, it’s never been something they advertise.
Cousin marriage is often therefore something I get a little defensive about, because unless your family is prone to recessive disorders and generations of cousins are marrying each other, it actually is fine.
BUT it’s also a shitty idea, as demonstrated by the fact that my parents are now divorced, which makes weddings and funerals hella awkward.
Cousin marriage is actually preferred in many cultures; often they are specific about which side the cousins come from (e.g. marrying your cousins on your mom’s side is AOK, marrying the ones on your dad’s side is verboten). One of the things I find fascinating about people is that every culture we know of has some sort of incest taboo, but what counts as “incest” isn’t universal (and of course many of those cultures make exceptions for royalty).
My Mum dated one of her cousins once, and her brothers dated the *same* cousin. (As each other – not the same cousin as her.) It’s legal here; a bit weird, but legal, and not that big a deal. Certainly not the same as marrying your *Dad*.
I saw an online fanfic discussion years ago that derailed into “wait, people in your country think marrying cousins is incest?” “People in your country don’t?”
I definitely think fake, though that make be wishful thinking on my part.
Not fake, and terrifying: Kathryn Harrison’s The Kiss, which is a mesmerizing and frightening read about being in an abusive, controlling sexual relationship with your father, and is a book that is REALLY good but I will never reread, ever.
I’ve heard it’s good but can’t bring myself to read it. I also can’t bring myself to read this one, I’m just skimming the comments and choosing to believe those who think this story is fake.
I’m choosing to focus pretty narrowly on this over the Oscars, because at least here I can have paroxysms of argument with myself (in theory, incest is a life choice I shouldn’t really judge because consenting adults/in practice there’s almost always, I think, a power imbalance and pressure dynamic that makes it super squicky and gross and bad) instead of just blind rage.
Exactly. Siblings or cousins, maybe there’s no imbalance. I can also see a hypothetical situation where the child is 30 (or older) and the parent is like 45 and there was an adoption of some other reason that they did not have a relationship until they were adults, where it might not be the choice that I would make, but it is a lot less squicky than a man in his 30s having a relationship with an 18-year-old who probably has lots of daddy issues. Sure, maybe she is legally able to consent, but that doesn’t mean she has the knowledge to give informed consent, and doesn’t mean you have to consent to it. Sometimes the person who has more authority has a responsibility to say “I know we both want this, but it is wrong, and I’m not going to do it.”
I fully support the right of consenting adults to do what they want, but just because I accept that people make choices doesn’t mean that those choices are always good ones.
I have nothing much to add, other than this gave me a Very Bad Feeling inside. Ewwww the part about the goosebumps… it will not leave my mind!!!! D:
This Ortberg hot take is thoroughly Ortbergian. I appreciate being distracted from father/daughter incest by Hapsburg chins and Tudor/Cumberbatch doppelgangers.
Just stopping by this thread to add my own AUUGHGHGHHHHHH
If this is real (which I really hope it’s not) it really bums me out. The girl frankly seems like she’s pretty dim and she’s obviously extremely vulnerable, compounded by the fact that she has zero frame of reference for healthy relationships. From her account it sounds like literally none of the adults in her life are looking out for her! It can’t be true that all of these grown people are just fine with this?!
But she’s like a 37-year-old trapped inside an 18-year-old’s body! (I similarly thought I was mature beyond my years at that age, and I am here to tell her that no, she is exactly as mature as an 18-year-old, just as I was.)
Me too! And the 32 year old college professor I met at underage night at the goth club when I was 19 was drawn to me because I was sophisticated and mature for my age! It had nothing to do with me being a very young looking 19 and him being a creepazoid!
THIS. THIS THIS THIS. I genuinely thought that the much older men who liked me at 17…liked me because I looked and acted so much older than 17. NO, KID. It’s BECAUSE YOU LOOK 17, ACT 17, AND THEY ARE TERRIBLE.
I don’t know, the mom sounds like she was a bit messy when the interviewee was younger but has been in a pretty stable relationship with perfectly sensible rules for her daughter for the last 5-10 years? Nothing she describes sounds that unstable or “controlling”.
“No. I had a girlfriend in middle school and that was the most major sexual experience I’d ever had. But she was very religious and every time we were intimate she would sob and read me verses out of the Bible.”
THIS is what I’m taking away from the article. Because, somehow, in all the AAAAAAAAH NOOOO this is what gets to me? I can’t imagine most of it, but I can imagine this.
Does she live in some kind of sexually torturous parallel universe?
On a sort of related note, I saw the following headline today: “I was friends with my dad – until I found out he was secretly dating my mom.” It made me do a double take, and then a friend and I had great fun thinking of even more absurd variations:
– My dad had friends – until they found out he was secretly dating me
– My mom was secretly my dad – until my friend found out
– My friend was secretly my dad – until I found out I was dating my mom
– My mom was dating my dad – until he found out I secretly had a friend
– I was my friend’s dad – until I found out I was secretly my mom
– My mom and dad were friends – until they found out they were both secretly dating me
“It happened to me! I’m my own grandpa.”
This is the LOL stuff that I really needed
I feel like the world’s worst sestina is hiding in there somewhere.
literally snort chuckled.
“My mom and dad were friends – until they found out they were both secretly dating me”
Literally snorted at my desk.
Thank you also for sharing this article-it was cute and a good antidote for the horror of the other one..
“I was my friend’s dad – until I found out I was secretly my mom.” This one made me laugh out loud at my desk. LAUGHTER IN THE FACE OF HORROR
There’s nothing that’s NOT horrifying about this, but I’m really stuck on her insistence that if mentally ill people are “allowed” to have children, so should a biological father/daughter pair.
aughhhhhasdfjahs i need brain bleach.
NOT ALL HAPSBURGS
But really, most Hapsburgs.
Original version Habsburgs, maybe. The Habsburg-Lorraines seem to have mostly excised the demon through marrying people not quite so closely related to them. Look at Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette, Franz Joseph, and so forth – perfectly normal looking.
I want to post something coherent, but I can’t because my brain is screaming WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT over and over.
Actually, this is about ethics in family journalism.
[I know this joke is pretty played out but it still makes me crack up. I guess I’m not very MATURE for my age]
honestly, this thread has me laughing out loud more than any in weeks.
I think it’s an anti-squicking protective case of laughter, to protect my tender mind and slow down the full grossness impact crash?
What would have been ethical in this case is to finish the interview, politely thank them both and then throw the tapes into a 44 gallon drum and set the whole abomination on fire.
“After I was born [my mom] had a nervous breakdown and couldn’t take care of me, so I lived with her grandparents until I was about 2. I think that’s part of the reason we’ve never been close: We didn’t bond when I was a baby.”
Uh huh. And yet, the whole not bonding with your dad as a baby thing seems to have had the OPPOSITE effect. Good, good.
**throws up**
Am I the only one seeing this as a twisted power play over her mother? Where she believes that she’s acting with agency rather than being groomed and manipulated by her own father for sex?
The things she says about her mother’s mental illness basically ruining her life, the girl in middle school who took her boyfriend, “ended up pregnant,” and burnt her house down, ruining that relationship apparently, the other girl in middle school that she had sex with at least twice despite knowing that it made her cry…
She has a couple of things that maybe she needs to work out. On her own.
God, now I’m imagining some Old Boy-type shit. *shudders*
“I had a girlfriend in middle school and that was the most major sexual experience I’d ever had. But she was very religious and every time we were intimate she would sob and read me verses out of the Bible. It made me feel like I’d hurt her.”
Well, that’s probably because you did hurt her, in that you clearly weren’t respecting her boundaries.
The parents clearly set a great example there.
He says he’s not wearing a bow tie, but it’s my wedding and I am saying that he is.
“And I’m your DAD and I’m saying I’m not wearing a bow tie!”
This was exactly my thought. Well, after AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHH NO NO NO NO
Which relationship takes precedence in times of conflict? Does Dad retain his ability to pull rank or do the sacred mysteries of matrimony overrule the parental dynamic?
SO MANY QUESTIONS I DON’T WANT ANSWERS TO
I can’t stop making the D: face and I’m kind of itchy everywhere.
I mean, I’m sure their non-traditional SO WACKY purple wedding will render this moot, but who’s walking this girl down the aisle?
Her grandpa who’s also her father-in-law?
I feel like there’s a distinct lack of puns in this thread.
And I laughed uproariously at your comment.
So I’m guessing that we need more humor to combat the sheer NOPE of the woman’s story, and the Hapsburg’s aren’t cutting it. (I mean, Carlos up there just looks emo and constipated, tbh.)
YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD OH WAIT YOU TOTALLY ARE SORRY I FORGOT
If I were properly inbred like this gal’s kids will be, I might have enough thumbs to give this comment.
Nicely done.
“I hate immature people, I can’t stand drama, and I want to smack most teens because they act like they are 5. I feel like a 37-year-old trapped in an 18-year-old’s body.”
Mmhmm, yes I sense this about you. You **radiate** maturity.
I also thought I was *so* mature when I was 18. But strangely enough, it did not lead to me dating my own father, so I guess I dodged a bullet there!
We should count ourselves lucky indeed. LUCKY INDEED, I say.
God my cringe levels were at Maximum Warp reading that. I was adopted as an infant and have met many members of my biological family, including my biological father, as an adult. Know how many of them I was sexually attracted to? Zero. Less than zero. Negative amounts of attraction.
I once had a guy interested in me that I couldn’t date because he looked A LITTLE bit like my brother.
Perfect summary, Manka, thank you.
When your daddy issues are grossing out Dean Winchester, you know it’s time to reel it in a bit.
I’m as sexually attracted to this comment as this chick is to her dad. BAZINGA.
(see what i did there)
WE BOTH LIKE TWO POPULAR TV SHOWS.
I know, I’m so surprised to find out that some random dude likes The Simpsons! What a rare bird indeed!
They also like chicken and hate neck-biting.
I got far, far more excited when I saw this article’s title than I should have. Last year I had to write a math paper, so I wrote about inbreeding, in which the Habsburgs figured prominently. That did nothing to mitigate my already-strong Carlos II obsession. I’ve gotten some very strange looks at meal tables, I tell you.
You can come sit next to me at lunch, then.
I’m going with fake on this one, but the horse guy’s story rang horribly, vividly true for me.
I’m going to start using “Are there any Hapsburgs in your family tree?” as an insult now.
I’m stealing this. Right now. Literally cutting & pasting into my current book.
Do it, do it, do it!!!
Re Hapsburg Is it a…hap-penstance that this is now on IO9? http://io9.com/a-family-in-spain-displayed-three-…
“Had Henry VIII chosen either Nicole or myself as his consort, I have no doubt that we would have borne him a fine passel of sons, and earned his genuine love and respect for the rest of his days, but that is neither here nor there.”
brb dying forever
Except of course the lack of sons was technically all Henry VIII’s own fault according to genetics.
Thank god I know little about horses and have little experience of horses, and will now never go seeking information about horses. The horses in that article may as well have been the horses from HorseMaster to me. It’s much less disturbing that way, as you can pretend the whole article is just a fiction set in a future metropolitan hellscape.
Maybe fake, probably gunning for a reality show, though.
Relevant: http://io9.com/a-family-in-spain-displayed-three-…
This reminds me of that Rumi poem on the spiritual lessons to be learned from proper – not improper – donkey-fucking:
http://www.naseeb.com/journals/very-interesting-r…
GRACIOUS. I wasn’t expecting quite such a… descriptive… lesson there.
I want to know what happened to the thin, tired-looking donkey! There was some foreshadowing there, but Rumi never followed up on it.
Talk about humiliating her desire!
“WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, A ROYAL DYNASTY FOUNDED BY GODS!? NO, NO YOU ARE NOT.”
~me, reading this article.
Just kidding, I was actually trying not to puke.
I’m sure Carlos the Bewitched is rolling in his grave right now at having his most important legacy appropriated so casually.
Assuming he could roll, that is. If he couldn’t walk until he was eight years old, I shouldn’t have have high hopes for his rolling abilities.
Just woke my fiancé up because I was laughing so hard.
Man, if ever there were an adult child who needed to be estranged from a parent…
Also: how very dare she call Henry VIII a genetic mutant? All of his problems were in his soul, thank you very much. The tiny head and square toes are just from his clothes, sweetheart.
Boy is she ever going to be embarrassed when she takes her world history AP exam!
Which she’s studying for in between planning a wedding to her dad!
They teach AP World History in cosmetology school?
Setting aside the unspeakable horror of this article, I misread “[Henry VIII was] a world-class tilter” as “a world-class lifter”. I then pictured Thomas More shouting very dramatically, “Does Your Majesty even lift?!”
Thumbs up to you forever, kind sir!
Nobody says “Well, look at King Henry VIII” in this context! He was known for being handsome and athletic! Surely this is basic knowledge! (Also: the “it’s only a problem if there are loads of generations of incest!” argument annoys me as much as the “any incest leads to deformed children” argument*. Some unpleasant genetic conditions are recessive, meaning you need two copies of the gene, one from each parent, to exhibit symptoms; the more closely you are related, the more likely it is that both of you will have copies of the same gene. Lots of generations of incest increase the likelihood, but it’s not a prerequite; equally it is not, as I have heard argued, that your body just knows that you’re reproducing with a close relative and deformed children are the result. It’s just the result of sharing unpleasant recessive genes! It can happen to unrelated people too, or you can have children with a relative who are fine! But don’t use that as an argument to commit incest, seriously.)
*Note: I AM NOT IN FAVOUR OF INCEST. I just get annoyed when people are wrong.
And honestly, the possibility of unpleasant genetic defects is not the biggest reason not to have sex with a parent. Or a sibling.
It really isn’t. There are so many compelling reasons not to do it!
I read this article; I was drawn to it, like a moth to a flame. I kept on shrieking as new revelations unfurled. My brain is frantically malfunctioning trying to erase the memory of reading this. :-O
I read this article; I was drawn to it, like a moth to a flame. I kept on shrieking as new revelations unfurled. My brain is frantically malfunctioning trying to erase the memory of reading this. :-O
I’ve been watching a TON of SVU the past couple of weeks and all I could think about was that one episode where all those teen girls were seduced by James Van Der Beek pretending to be their donor dad, but at least in that episode a) he wasn’t actually their father and b) the whole point was about how he was committing horrific sex crimes. Are we sure this isn’t a rare example of the headlines being ripped from Law & Order instead of the other way around?
(Also I’m sorry that every comment I’ve left on this post has been about teen heartthrobs of the WB.)
She was 16 when it started. SIXTEEN. AUGH
To be fair, the parents of Joanna the Mad (“Juana la Loca”) weren’t all that closely related to each other, for royalty, and she may not have been all that “loca.” Rather, the poor woman may have been the victim of one huge gaslighting campaign, to keep her down for political reasons. After all, it simply would not do for the daughter of the Most Catholic Kings, founders of the Spanish Inquisition, to have been a religious skeptic, would it? Better to tell her there’s something very wrong with her and beat her and lock her up.
Oh god. It just got really Old Boy in here.
http://i.imgur.com/09MrCPk.gif
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-chafin/duchamp… can you please write about this Ms Ortberg??!!! You would be the best I think. Only if you are interested of course. It’s about Elsa what’s her name and Marcel Duchamp the founder of everything modern art. Sorry I digress from consensual incest although I admit I was intrigued and sceptical about that article about CI (is that a new acronym please no) and you nail it with visual examples here (omg I might have a Hapsburg chin).
“Resembled, unfortunately, a Hapsburg” / Resembled, unfortunately, all the Hapsburgs–because what would be the difference, really?
For whatever bizarre reason I am not too disgusted with the overall concept of incest (providing it’s consensual). Like, yeah, it’s not really a good idea, but if both parties are consenting grown adults and have thought extensively about the consequences of their actions, fine, whatever. I think the squicky-shock-value of the concept of incest has worn off for me long ago, and now I just have a “be smart about it” attitude.
And that’s where I butt heads with that article. She is not being smart about it. Oh, she thinks she is, and that’s exactly the issue.
What I see when I read that article is an abused girl. Not by her father, but by her mother. And her father was absent, replaced by a string of awful, unreliable moms’-boyfriends, which makes the situation worse. She was kept in isolation, she was teased about her weight, she was pulled out of school by her mother for kissing a boy, her mom is bipolar, her first girlfriend would cry and weep about the bible during every attempt to be intimate. All this adds up to abandonment issues, intimacy problems, lack of confidence, no real childhood, no real family, and a desperate need to be loved—not to mention a deep, subconscious need to go against the grain and do something majorly shocking that her mother wouldn’t approve of, whether it’s healthy or not.
People are decrying this article by saying that this is “hick behavior” and that “hick’s don’t speak like that” and that this is therefore fake. But I have seen, out here in the suburbs, similarly broken families where the grandparents and mothers consent to their similarly troubled and childhood-robbed daughters being with a man twice their age. These daughters, like this girl, say things like “I prefer more mature men” and “everyone my age acts like they’re 5” and “I’m 16/17/18, I know what I want”. I found a blog over a year ago by a girl whose mother had a severe drug problem, and the girl, 13, was taken in by a much, much older man who seduced her and pressured her into being his BDSM submissive. And while I have no problem with BDSM on the whole, the things he had done to her were horrific. And she, now in her mid-20’s, asserts that it was entirely consensual, that she had not been brainwashed or coerced at all, and that she loves him and would do anything for him, and that she was already kinky and he just brought it out of her. This happened in New York City. Not exactly a hick town.
The girl in this interview is no different. She was raised in a shitty situation, was forced to be an adult when she was not ready to be one, was offered a chance at intimacy, a father figure, and complete devotion all rolled into one neat little package, and she is now bending over backwards to rationalize the situation to herself and the people around her. She was probably force-fed lines to repeat to other people by her father without even realizing it. If she were in her mid-20s and had been lusting after her father SINCE she was 17 instead of immediately deciding to lose her virginity to him (after 5 days of staying with him. Five. Days. That doesn’t sound like an informed decision to me) this would be a very different story.
But unfortunately, this is just another case of sad, strange, family-condoned abuse. Maybe not physical, but there is no way she can convince me that there isn’t some sort of coercion or awful, awfulawfulAWFULAWFULawful power dynamic going on here.
So no, I don’t think this is fake. Because things like this happen in corners of the big cities and the suburbs as well as rural town all the time. More than we would like to admit. And that’s the sad thing.
The other sad thing is that she didn’t actually do her research. Incest leads to problems. Do not have a baby. DO NOT HAVE A BABY, INCEST-GIRL. I know she’s trying to rationalize this but come on! You can adopt. Just adopt. Adoption is a nice thing to do.
What is she going to do when he dies at 90 and she’s in her early 70s? I can’t imagine that will be fun.
Also, “18 year olds know what they want”—HA. No. NO NO NO. 18 year olds have no fucking clue. I’ve been 18. It was awful. Yeah, you’re a legal adult, but you’re a fresh, new, green adult. It takes a few years to start really figuring out what you want. It takes time and world experience, which this girl sounds like she is not allowing herself to gain.
Also also, although I love history, I didn’t quite catch that Tudors/Hapsburgs mess-up because that’s not really an area of history I pay much attention to. Though maybe I should. But I did catch myself cocking my head to the side and going, “…Henry? Henry VIII? That… that doesn’t sound right…” So thank you for proving my suspicions correct.
This has been a long rant. Apologies. This just… is too much of a train-wreck not to consume my thoughts, as fruitless as it is to think about.
Mmm yeah, adoptee here, and a small quibble — I don’t think this couple should adopt. It would NOT be a nice thing to do to the child they adopted.
I don’t think it’s fake because of the outrageousness of the situation (such things happen.) I don’t think it’s fake because of the syntax or the diction. (Such things happen grammatically.)
I think it’s fake because it’s porny as hell. C’mon, she’s a virgin when it happens, and they sleep together and spoon and they play wrestle and then it’s a multi-hour sensual extravaganza. Nah, that’s the moment when I sighed with relief and knew I didn’t have to worry about these people.
The “hick” comments fuel my curiosity about how much of the North American ideas about what incest “looks like” are the result of early 20th-c eugenicists looking to demonize the rural poor and blaming *everything* on “bad blood,” rather than including environmental factors.
I have known a strange number of people who lost their virginities around that age. I don’t know what to tell you. A guy I knew when I was 13 kept on trying to initiate things with me and, although I was polite about it, my basic message to him boiled down to “fuck off, I got my first period like, yesterday” and eventually got him to stop. But I remember thinking “why do people wanna get down and dirty when most of us still can’t solve for X yet.”
But as far as I know, at least in certain states, consent starts around 15 as long as the other person is 15 or older and within 3 years of age. Something like that. So no, it wasn’t ok at all, but if the girl with the bible passages was that Christian that she felt guilt about it I’m gonna say her parents would have kicked her out if they’d known, so she was probably more concerned with expressing herself and finding herself than following the law.
Also sex and consent education in schools sucks. It sucks majorly. It sucks so, so bad, it is a sad thing, it needs to be changed, we should all be ashamed.
I do think that this is somewhat understandable on the narrator’s part though (the only thing that is). I mean, it sounds like her girlfriend was attracted to her and wanted to do things, and would start to do those things, and then stop and go “OH WHOOPS SORRY GOD I DIDN’T MEAN TO DO THAT.”
So I guess we can call it “experimentation between two very sheltered children whose school system desperately needs to hire a new Sex Ed teacher” if we want to call it anything, which we probably shouldn’t, because this whole thing is just a goddamn nightmare. I don’t even WANT to click on the Hapsburgs Gifs link.
…Yeah, that was actually one of those post-send-button-realizations. The second I clicked I realized, I’m not so sure any child should be in their custody. So thank you for pointing that out, and my sincerest apologies.
It seems like a very mean thing to say that some people should just not have children but… maybe these people should just not have children?
I don’t think it’s mean to say a man who is having sex with his daughter should not have any more children.
Or forr that matter, be around them at all.
Jesus, it's not even 1pm and that's enough internet for today.
I took my 36-year-old boyfriend to my senior prom. There was an age limit, but it wasn't really enforced. A few teachers knew how old he was and didn't care. One of the teachers even told him he was a "good man" for coming!
I just wanted to say that I read *about* that article, and the piece I read about it contained that quote (“look at Henry VIII”) and I was seriously disturbed by all of it and perplexed by the Henry VIII business, and this response is a thing of magnificent fvcking beauty. If I was keen on needle point, I would stitch the title into a sampler and hang it over my favorite chair.
As an animal lover (NO, NOT THAT KIND, DAMMIT), this makes me want to punch the NYMag's editor-in-chief.
Sorry, but I see a slippery slope here towards "It's all consensual just because I said so!"
I know I am pretty late to the game, but wherever this NYMag article pops up, this needs to be added as a counterpoint. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/…