Some of both, I think. I realize they didn’t have anything like the father/daughter relationship I had with my dad, but I have to admit there seems to be something fundamentally weird about screwing your parent or your kid. This may well be the same reaction a lot of people have to the idea of gay sex, but there it is. One difference I see in my reaction, though, is that if you are gay, you are wired that way (for whatever reason, be it genetic or otherwise). You can’t tell me there is such a thing as being incestually oriented.
I also think that there’s such a thing has having a mind so open that your brain falls out. Accepting parent/child incest is crossing that line for me.
I got sidetracked by work and lost the time to edit.
Concerning children and genetics, that’s a concern. I think the bigger concern for me with kids, though, is putting them in the middle of a clusterfuck of a relationship like that. And no, I don’t think it’s the same thing as gays having kids.
I guess it does come down to “ewwww” for me. Hell, I could see having sex with another woman. Wanting to have sex with my dad? WTF? Ick!
In this case though, as it turns out, the father did meet the daughter when she was a teenager. I don’t know details, but maybe he was molesting her then, and this isn’t a healthy relationship. Obviously, she’s an adult now, but it really doesn’t feel…right.
You’re the one who’s going off about there being a child involved.The actual person involved in the story is in her thirties, right? And 18 is when somebody legally becomes an adult in this country, and thus is allowed to make that decision on their own, right? I was speaking of a person who’s legally empowered to say yay or nay to the possibility, and who’s not dependent on the older party or otherwise at his mercy. Your pounding away at “the parent-child scale” is not only inaccurately applied, it’s irrelevant to the situation . If two or more people past the age of consent, without coercion, choose to have sex with each other, it’s not only acceptable, it’s totally their own goddamned business. You’re throwing out “parents banging their children!” as if that was the important issue, so important that it preempts their individuality, their particular situation, and their right to do as they choose with their own bodies and lives. Volatile emotional phrasing does not give you or me or anyone legitimate authority over what other people’s free and uncoercive choices of action. That’s where I draw the line.
He met her for a week when she was 15, and there is no indication in any of the court testimony of any molestation. Even the guy’s second wife, who was the one who brought that first visit to light, and who is strongly opposed to the relationship, isn’t actually alleging that he molested the girl that week. If this is all you got, it’s pretty lame.
How is that grasping at straws? It just seems a lot sketchier now that we know that she didn’t just meet some random guy who happened to be her dad. She knew he was her father. Maybe he didn’t molest her, but she was more likely to be thinking of him as a father. Obviously they’re allowed to do what they want–I’m not saying she shouldn’t be with him if that’s what she wants, and what he wants. It just looks a LOT worse now.
Those of us who actually read the stories knew that from the beginning.
She made very clear (even before we knew about the teenage visit) that she knew he was her father when they first spent time together as adults. She has never once claimed, as far as i know, that she simply met some random guy and THEN found out that he was her father. If you can find where she did make such a claim, i’ll retract my criticism.
But it’s definitely different than meeting your father as an adult and not really thinking of him as a father figure. What I mean is, if she’s already, even as a teen, thought of him as a father, it makes the whole relationship seem a lot more creepy.
Yeah, I’m substantially more squicked by it knowing they apparently had a father/daughter relationship at least at some points in her childhood–had they seriously not met until she was 30, and introduced him to her children as a random unrelated adult, it’d be much more palatable (not in the edible sense).
I should clarify that my squickiness comes from the fact of the emotional (and power-balance) relationship implied in having a father/daughter relationship, not necessarily by the genetic closeness.
How do you know that she thinks of him as a father figure? In fact, if we’re looking to make claims without actual proof, wouldn’t the very fact that she chose to have a relationship suggest that she might not view him that way at all?
A father (in the biological sense) and a father-figure (in the cultural sense) are quite different things. My parents divorced when i was 5, and i haven’t seen my biological father since then. I know who he is, i know where he is, and i could easily find him and meet him if i wanted to. Hell, our family stil has old pictures of him somewhere. He’s my father, but we have nothing approaching a father-son relationship, and he’s certainly not a father figure to me. And if i had spent a total of one week with him at age 15, i can’t imagine that it would have caused me to view him as a father figure.
On what basis do you claim that this woman must have seen her father as a father-figure, based on a one-week visit at the age of 15?
But again, you’re assuming the very thing that you claim to be explaining.
You’re begging the question, because you cannot know, based on the evidence of a week together at age 15, that they did indeed have what we understand as a “father/daughter” relationship.
Really, this is my point, better-phrased. I don’t believe that a child, of any age, can “freely consent” to having sex with a parent. Even if they say they consent, it’s not freely given, there’s a mental illness going on. Nothing anyone says is going to change my opinion of that. Crowing about how the woman is 31 is meaningless. There are plenty of mentally-unbalanced 31yos.
I don’t think it’s obvious that she was or wasn’t molested. And yeah, I guess she has the right to do what she wants. It’s just that it raises red flags now. It’s one thing if she met the guy as an adult and decided, okay, he’s my genetic dad but I’ll have a relationship with him. The fact that she knew he was her dad when she was a teen…I don’t know, it feels more wrong.
This isn’t the same situation, necessarily, of a father starting to molest a daughter when she’s a child/adolescent and continuing it when she’s an adult–a clear abuse of power. The fact that he met his daughter as a teen and then was okay with starting a sexual relationship with her as an adult makes me wonder if he was in some way grooming her for a relationship when she was a teen. Will we ever know? No, but it doesn’t sound all that wholesome to me. Call me crazy.
Yeah, well, they have instructions on shampoo, and warn you on the packaging that knives are sharp. I guess there is no universally obvious knowledge.
I can’t imagine this happening outside a town with a population under 250 that has no access to the outside world. In which case I’d move on general principle.
Wow, this guy is apparently an evil genius of the caliber of Ming the Merciless.
In executing his devious plan to have sex with his daughter, he remains estranged from the family for well over a decade while she’s a child. Then he swings into action, and has the daughter visit with him for a whole week when she’s 15, and uses that week to groom her for a future relationship.
Then, he springs his trap.
He cunningly waits 15 years, divorces, remarries, and divorces again, before finally pouncing on the daughter and, at the age of about 52, bringing his life-long plan to fruition.
She doesn’t say that molestation happened, but this sounds a bit off. The fact that the marriage broke down after several of those visits? And the fact that the father is now in a sexual relationship with the daughter? You don’t think it’s a stretch to think that maybe something happened on the trip to Dubbo?
I mean, maybe nothing went down. Maybe it was fine, chaste, perfectly above board. However, nothing about this relationship sounds that way…
No, i don’t think it’s a stretch at all. In fact, if i had to guess, i’d probably be willing to guess that something probably did happen on the trip to Dubbo.
But that was in 2000, when the woman was 30. Your earlier claim was, if you remember:
The idea that he was, during that one week’s contact when she was a teenager, “grooming her for a relationship” that would not eventuate for another 15 years is, quite frankly, pretty preposterous.