During the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, political pundits, comedians and others made sport of implying that Donald Trump either wanted to fuck his daughter, Ivanka Trump, or already had.1 2 3 GIFs of Trump’s daughters spurning his embraces, and video clips of him ogling them and referring to them as sex objects, circulated widely. While I didn’t think he had fucked them–and couldn’t possibly like him any less if he had–I couldn’t help but wonder: Why would Donald Trump want to fuck his daughter? Why would any father? So I Googled it.
Below, I examine father-daughter incest. I take an epidemiological approach, which is to say that I look at both who is committing incest as well as why they commit it. I begin with a discussion of typology–that is, the categories into which researchers and others have divided incestuous fathers. Next, I discuss etiology–which is to say, the question of why some men commit incest while others do not. Finally, I end with an analysis of father-daughter incest in general and as it relates to the question after which this article is titled. The analysis is kinda the TL;DR version of this article, so you can CLICK HERE to skip ahead to it if you want.
a typology of father-daughter incest
In a 1992 paper, two University of New Hampshire professors, Linda Meyer Williams and David Finkelhor, studied 118 men who admitted to sexual contact with their daughters. Among other things, they found a “bimodal age distribution” in the onset of abuse, concluding members of their cohort most often began abusing a daughter between the ages of 4-7 or 10-12. Another thing they found was that, for some of the men, sex was a primary purpose of the incest while, for others, it was a means to some other end. They also noted that, for those of the men who were physically attracted to the daughter, while most reported attraction leading to the incest (63%), others reported only becoming attracted to the girl after “onset” of incest.
In addition, they noted the men fell into the following five categories.4
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- Sexually preoccupied – These men are obsessed with fucking their daughters and often become attracted to the daughter while she is very young, even just days old. They are not just obsessed with fucking the daughter though; they are highly sexual and pretty much will fuck anything that moves. They comprised roughly 26% of the cohort.
- Adolescent regressives – Making up about 34% of the research cohort, these guys also view their daughters as sex objects, but the attraction doesn’t start until puberty. Their infatuation with the daughter’s developing body is similar to a young teenage boy’s fascination with his female classmates’ changing bodies.
- Instrumental sexual gratifiers – To these men, their daughters are objects of sexual convenience rather than of sexual attraction. Bluntly, they see the daughter as not a person but the nearest warm body. These guys are the most likely to say they feel guilty about what they’ve done; so maybe we should call them the full-of-shit sexual gratifiers instead, since it’s entirely possible they are as attracted to their daughters as the rest and are simply too ashamed of themselves to admit it. Regardless, they made up 20% of the cohort.
- Emotionally dependent – Picture a depressed and lonely loser yearning for any human contact. For this group, “abusive intimacy” and over-enmeshment precede incest. An example from the study: “[A] father rhapsodized that he was intent on loving his daughter like he should have been loved by his father. ‘I wanted to give her all the love and attention she needed…The closeness was very good and loving and it turned sexual. …When she came over for the weekend, it became a relationship, it was companionship; I had been alone for six months. … We slept together and would fondle each other.’” She was five years old. These guys made up about 11% of the group.
- Angry retaliators – I’m not sure it’s possible to pick a “worst of the worst” out of these five types of daughter-fuckers; but, if it were possible, this group would probably be my pick. Like the instrumentalists and the emotionally dependents, physical attraction isn’t the primary motivator. They fuck their daughters as a roundabout way of punishing their wives for perceived neglect or mistreatment; or, alternatively, as a way to punish the daughter for replacing them as the most important person in the wife’s life. Of the five categories, these men are the most likely to describe their conduct as “rape.” They comprised around 9% of the cohort.
- GSA – Of course, the above categories are generalizations. Not every daughter-fucker fits neatly into one of Williams & Finkelhor’s types. For instance, all of the above men are effectively pedophiles (or hebephiles or ephebophiles, if one wishes to split hairs). But what of men who first become attracted to a daughter in her adulthood? I couldn’t find much on this–probably because this type of incest is less socially problematic and therefor less reported on and studied. (As Greenberg and Littlewood [1995] put it, our discomfort with incest is likely triggered less by genetic kinship than by “the sexualization of cross-generational authority.”)6 I did, however, find one example of this in a less common type of incest purportedly resulting from genetic sexual attraction (GSA).
According to Barbara Gonyo, founder of Truth Seekers in Adoption, genetic sexual attraction is a strong romantic attraction between relatives (often parent-child or siblings) who were separated when one or both were very young and are reunited as adults. Gonyo herself experienced this with her son whom she’d given up for adoption at birth and was reunited with when he was in his mid-twenties.5Back in 1995, two University College London researchers, Maurice Greenberg and Roland Littlewood, investigated numerous cases of relatives reuniting after being separated at birth and concluded that such reunions result in GSA as much as 50% of the time. That is not to say that every other reunion results in incest, just that as many as every other reunion might result in feelings of sexual attraction on the part of at least one of the parties.6
That said, their sample size was very small (only 9 people agreed to disclose anything to them) and biased (it consisted entirely of people utilizing a specific counseling service who had disclosed incest to the service). Because of the shortcomings of their sample, and the absence of a control group, how Greenberg & Littlewood derived their 50% statistic is anybody’s guess. That said, while their statistics (though widely quoted) are shit, their paper’s main focus is theory, and the theoretical portion is worth the read.
- Wife surrogater – The last type of incestuous father I came across in my research did not show up in Williams & Finkelhor’s paper but was once thought to typify daughter-rapists. Back in 1977, Herman and Hirschman reported on a cohort of 15 women who were in therapy for, among other things, the trauma produced by childhood incest with their fathers. In these cases, the wife was unable or unwilling to perform her “duties”–both around the house and in the bedroom–and so the husband essentially replaced her with their daughter. These men expected the daughter to not only satisfy them sexually and emotionally but also to rear their younger siblings and run the household.7
Well, that’s pretty much the extent of what I could find on common types of incestuous fathers. But the primary point of this inquiry is the question of why, not whom; and, while the above typology helps us understand what motivates what type of man to have sex with his daughter(s), it sheds little light on what predisposes him to this behavior. I mean, plenty of fathers are lonely sacks of shit, but few seek solace in a child’s body. Many men resent their wives, but few would seek to punish her by raping their daughter. Also, not all men who are aroused by their daughters have sex with him. The question then is: Why do some men commit incest while others do not?
On to etiology.
” …l’amour…naît de la ressemblance…”
~ Marquis de Sade, La Philosophie Dans le Boudoir
an etiology of father-daughter incest
The first incestuous family: Lot and his daughters
Williams & Finkelhor (supra) noted that “as many as one in six girls are incestuously abused and one in twenty girls may suffer sexual abuse by a father” (citing Dr. Diana E. H. Russell‘s 1986 book The Secret Trauma). As to what inclines men to have sex with their children, they describe seven theories, addressing each based on their study’s findings. The theories addressed are bonding/empathy failure, sexualization of emotional expression, sexualization of dominance, early sexual victimization, alcoholism, deviant socialization, and marital problems.4
- Bonding/empathy failure – This theory holds that a “biobehavioral process” prevents parents from seeing their children as sex objects. The authors cite previous research showing that men who sexually abuse their children tend to have had little involvement in caring for the child. This actually brings us back to our discussion of GSA. Many GSA sufferers explain their predicament via the so-called Westermarck effect: a hypothesis in psychology that being close to someone (or in “intensive tactile contact,” as Greenberg & Littlewood put it6) when they are a baby–or, conversely, when you are a baby–causes “negative sexual imprinting.” Since the majority of folks who experience GSA were separated when one or both were very young, they argue that this mechanism was never allowed to work its inhibitory magic on them. Similarly, when there are “disturbances in bonding” between parent and child (that is to say, when they are separated–or the parent-child role is interrupted–for significant periods of time 6 ), the likelihood of later incest increases.8 9
- Sexualization of emotional expression – The idea here is that little girls are socialized to explore and express their feelings for and with others, while little boys are taught to keep their feelings to themselves. Boys don’t start opening up emotionally until they start dating girls who require it of them. Since such relationships tend to be or become sexual, males learn to associate emotional expression with sex. The father who sexualizes his daughter may not feel capable of expressing intimate feelings any other way–that is to say, “[his] sexual and affiliative interests [may have become] enmeshed.”6
- Sexualization of dominance – According to the authors, this theory asserts that “sexual behavior toward children is legitimated by a cultural value system which eroticizes youthfulness, smallness and dependency/vulnerability. […] It is possible that those men who become sexual with children are more likely to hold attitudes and beliefs which endorse such child-like characteristics as sexually attractive and arousing.”
- Early sexual victimization – This one is pretty obvious. People who were sexually abused as children are more likely to sexually abuse children. Prior studies, cited by Williams & Finkelhor, suggested that anywhere from 18% – 57% of child molesters were themselves victims. The current study found that 70% of its cohort reported sexual victimization in childhood. One in 8 reported sexual abuse by a mother, and 1 in 10 reported sexual abuse by a father or father figure.
- Alcoholism/substance abuse – Previous studies reported 19%-49% of child molesters abused alcohol. However, Williams & Finkelhor found no significant correlation between alcoholism and incest. That said, their findings did show some incestuous fathers consumed alcohol or drugs prior to abusing their daughters, perhaps in order to lower their own inhibitions in order to carry out the sex act. It’s worth noting here that many of the previous studies likely contained significant sample bias, since most studies of incest perpetrators are of those who have been reported to the authorities. Such a cohort is likely to over-represent the lower classes7 as well as people who exhibit antisocial behaviors beyond incest (exempli gratia: alcoholism). That said, the current study suffers from an obvious sample bias itself, as half its participants were Navy men enrolled in a reformatory program for incestuous parents.
- Deviant socialization – This is the old pornography-produces-perverts proposition. Russell (cited above) is an adherent of this theory. For the most part, I am inclined to dismiss this train of thought as the product of prudes. That said, if the pornography in question were pedophilic, I could see it. If, instead of pornography, we were talking about an actual mentor training a mentee to treat family members or vulnerable/dependent individuals as sex objects, I could see it even more. Number 3 above would fall under my interpretation of deviant socialization.
- Marital problems – Studies preceding this one presented qualitative data suggesting that “disappointments and trauma in adult family life and adult heterosexual relationships may trigger pedophilic activity.” The study in question found that 46% of incestuous fathers reported a troubled marriage, 35% reported problems in the marital bedroom, and 19% admitted to physically abusing their wives. A more recent study, by Stroebel et al. (2013), found parents whose relationship included “verbal or physical fighting and/or brutality” as one of four risk factors for incest.10
- Parental (especially maternal) rejection – Many incestuous fathers were rejected by one or both parents, often the mother. Also, in certain types of incestuous families, the mother often rejects her children and her husband, a fact we will go into further with etiological factor # 11.
- Isolation – From an evolutionary perspective, we are driven by an instinct to pass on our genes. If an entire family unit–or, in cases of separation or divorce, just the father–is isolated from the rest of society, and the father does not have a sexual relationship with an adult intimate partner, he might turn to a daughter for that intimacy.
- A breakdown in “intergenerational boundaries” – While Stroebel et al. focus on nudity in the home, the breakdown in boundaries it might represent is of more interest to us here. If you’ll recall, the emotionally dependent father’s incestuous overtures are generally preceded by overenmeshment and a level of intimacy so intense and adult as to be abusive.
In a paper discussing family annihilators (people, generally men, who kill their entire family and then usually themselves), Bernie Auchter (2010) described overenmeshment as “a condition in which perpetrators either view their family members as possessions that they control or [they] don’t see any boundaries between their identity, their wife and their children” (quoting a panel comment by Richard Gelles).11 Emile Durkheim described this type of familicide not as murder but “anomic suicide” because the enmeshed patriarch’s identity is so wrapped up in his family that the boundaries between self and other have disintegrated and (in his mind) all have become one. Killing himself without first killing his wife and children would be like cutting a limb from a body and leaving the rest to slowly bleed out.
If overenmeshment can lead to murder and suicide, then surely it can lead to other abuses. If the enmeshed patriarch cannot distinguish between his identity and the rest of his family, how could he distinguish between his wants and needs and those of his children? If he is hurting then they must be hurting. If he desires sexual intimacy then so must they. They are satisfied when he is satisfied.
- Maternal role abdication (e.g. low maternal affection) – Mother-daughter estrangement increases the likelihood of father-daughter incest for several reasons. Primarily, it is a risk factor because it is a symptom of the mother’s own traumatic childhood experiences. Beard et al. (2013) posit that a woman who herself was a victim of childhood incest might subconsciously believe a sexual relationship between her husband and daughter inevitable and behave in ways that are inadvertently conducive to that outcome.12
She rejects her daughter because she cannot bear to see confirmation of her fears in her daughter’s eyes. She spurns her husband’s sexual advances because she is repulsed by the touch of her daughter’s abuser. She withdraws from her own family because of the perversion she fears to confront.
The absence of motherly affection increases the spurned daughter’s need for paternal attention leaving her vulnerable to manipulation, sexual grooming and abuse by her father. The mother’s seeming indifference to her daughter increases the father’s sense of freedom to abuse her: The girl is unlikely to go to her mother for help for fear of further rejection; and, even if she did go to the mother, the woman indeed could prove indifferent to her child’s plight or–even better for the abuser–might blame the victim much as she blames herself for her own childhood abuse.
An aggravating risk factor to the above is low marital satisfaction. Remember how we said that, back in the 1970s, wife surrogaters were considered typical of daughter-fuckers? Well, a big part of what typifies that type of incest is a troubled marriage where the wife has not only abrogated her maternal role but also her marital one: She’s not providing her husband the emotional and physical intimacy he needs, so he seeks it elsewhere.
This is an aspect of incest that researchers largely avoid these days for fear of appearing to blame the mother for the father’s crimes. However, if we look at the types of incestuous fathers enumerated above, we see that the mother is often significant. The sexually preoccupied man has a voracious, licentious appetite that his wife not only is not meeting but is incapable of meeting–in fact, no one person could satiate him. Instrumental sexual gratifiers, by definition, only sleep with their daughters because no other vagina is readily available. Emotionally dependent molesters are seeking emotional intimacy–something they would already have if they had a good relationship with their significant other. The angry retaliator’s primary motivation for raping his daughter is his resentment for his wife.
- Adverse childhood experiences – Williams & Finkelhor’s fourth etiological risk factor, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), falls under this umbrella. A risk factor for father-daughter incest is the existence of formative adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as physical or emotional abuse at the hands of a parent. Grady (2017) asserts that “adverse experiences disrupt…empathy and self-regulation [and] attachment formation.” In other words, “Pathogenic parenting [leads to] maladaptive schema, disorganized attachment styles, and poor affective and behavioral regulation.” Such problematic personal characteristics can predispose a person to sexual offending. Childhood sexual abuse is, of course, the form of abuse most predictive of sexual offending. Grady writes:
Molestation in childhood can make a unique contribution to sexually abusive behavior through a number of avenues: compensation for feelings of powerlessness, social learning by which individuals model their own abuser’s behavior and distorted thinking, or through the association of sexual arousal with adult–child sexual activity.13
Child molesters, more so than other sex offenders, tend to have a “preoccupied/anxious” attachment style (needy and clingy), which can be the result of childhood abuse, and they tend to fall into “disempowering interpersonal patterns.” When you combine obsessive and needy relationship traits and a tendency to become involved in unfulfilling relationships with other maladaptive traits such as “deficits in arousal control, emotional regulation, intimacy and relationship skills, problem solving, self-monitoring, social skills, and victim awareness and empathy, as well as a lack of family support networks, minimal offense responsibility, and sexually unhealthy attitudes,” you end up with a person who always needs more from the people around them, lacks self control, has little empathy, and tends to blame his victim’s for the things he does to them.13
Williams & Finkelhor’s research did not necessarily bear out all of the above. Instead, they found that the men most likely to have sex with their daughters are men who suffered severe abuse (not necessarily sexual) at the hands of their own parents. Fifty-four percent of the cohort were abused by their fathers, 37% by their mothers. Parental rejection/neglect was also a major predisposing factor: 28% of the cohort were rejected by their fathers, 66% by their mothers. As previously noted, sexual abuse in childhood is common among incestuous fathers, and 72% of the study’s cohort reported childhood sexual abuse (not necessarily by a parent). Childhood sexual offenses are also predictive. That is to say, men who committed rape before the age of 18 made up 33% of the cohort. 43% of the incestuous father cohort reported low involvement in childcare, especially in the first six years of life. The researchers warn that lack of involvement in caregiving might simply be a symptom of some other causative factor (e.g. parental rejection in childhood) rather than a predisposing factor in and of itself. That said, they conducted further analysis and concluded that low involvement is predictive independent of other factors.
An odd finding was the relationship between caregiving and incest. High paternal involvement in childcare was found to protect against incest; and, as just discussed, low involvement was found to be a risk factor. However, sole caregiving (defined as 30+ days uninterrupted as lone caregiver) increased the likelihood of eventual incest. The researchers concluded that caregiving has some inhibitory effect but that it is weak and provides little protection against incest when other risk factors are present. Also, some men use caregiving as an opportunity to groom a child for incest.
While Williams & Finkelhor’s findings are instructive, they are not the only findings out there. While the above researchers focus on lifetime events, others take a broader behavioral ecology perspective. Marcinkowska et al. (2013) argue that “mating strategies are an adaptive behavior functioning in present but shaped in the past.”9 Greenberg & Littlewood posit that “any continuing cultural pattern must be consistent with the survival of the group”.
They cite Fox (1967 & 1980) in hypothesizing that the main factors in the history of our species that bred against incest were high death rates and the need to form intertribal alliances. Parents were unlikely to have sex with their offspring not because of an aversion to incest but because they were likely to be dead by the time their children reached sexual maturity. Similarly, because of high infant/childhood mortality rates, siblings were unlikely to be close in age and therefore unlikely to live in close proximity to each other while both were sexually mature. Meanwhile, resource scarcity and threats from other tribes necessitated the practice of intertribal exogamy for the sake of alliance-forming.
The authors suggest that perhaps people are not naturally disinclined to incest. If incest avoidance isn’t in our DNA, and exogamy is no longer necessary for our species’ survival, then it is to be expected that inbreeding would become less uncommon.
One factor that might incline one toward incest is isolation. Physical community is in decline. People spends years, even decades, living next-door to each other without ever learning the other’s name. As the sphere of one’s irl experiences becomes increasingly limited to the borders of one’s home, it is not surprising that increasing numbers of people would look within those walls for sex and intimacy. Also, as people continue to live longer and sexually mature faster, multiple generations’ “period of potential sexual activity”6 are increasingly overlapping, providing more opportunities for intergenerational incest.
Turning from behavioral ecology back to family dynamics, let’s briefly discuss the findings of Stroebel et al. (2013). They identified several risk factors for father-daughter incest including (1) “unsatisfactory parental relationships,” (2) “family-tolerated reciprocal father-daughter nudity,” and (3) “low maternal affection” for the child.
Low marital satisfaction might incline a husband to look for a a surrogate wife or it might lead him to seek to punish the wife by abusing their daughter. Father-daughter nudity could be indicative of a breakdown in “intergenerational boundaries”, could facilitate sexual grooming of the daughter, and/or could provide opportunities for the child to behave or display herself in ways the father finds sexually enticing. Low maternal affection is the most interesting of these factors because it is mentioned in multiple studies. While these authors don’t speculate much about why this is a risk factor, this coupled with the finding that sole-caregiving increases the likelihood of a father committing incest, suggests that the mother serves as a barrier between husband and child.10
To recap, in addition to Williams & Finkelhor’s list of 7 etiological risk factors for incest, we have added the following:
analysis
The primary, if not sole, thrust of most incest research is toward the question of how can we predict who is most likely to commit incest and what interventions can we provide to avoid that outcome and heal such a damaged personality? A reasonable approach might be to make two lists, much as the table above displays. The first list shows the types of people who might commit incest. The second list shows risk factors–some from the person’s childhood, other’s from their present–that could incline them toward incest. If you believe the man fits a type in the left column and possesses both a childhood risk factor and a present-day risk factor from the right column, then you might want to consider the possibility that he could be more at risk of committing incest than the average person. For instance, if someone is sexually preoccupied, was rejected by his mother at a young age, and is currently a socially-isolated alcoholic going through a divorce, you might not want to leave your young daughter with him unsupervised for long periods of time.
While I do not advocate using the above, crude calculus, nor do the researchers whose work I’ve cited, the general proposition underpinning it–that, for a parent to commit incest, a number of factors must come together in the most unfortunate of combinations–seems plausible. So, for the sake of anaylsis, let’s examine the initial incest act to see how these factors might come together to push someone over the line.
The first question is what motivates the person to commit incest? If we look back at the typology section of this article, we see that the primary motivation tends to fall into one of three categories: sexual, romantic/intimate or punitive. Regardless of motivation, the next question is what could cause someone to cross such a clearly-defined line? First, I think we should examine the source of that line. Is incest aversion in our genes or is it a solely social/legal proscription?
I think we can discount an innate incest aversion (e.g. the Westermarck effect or Marcinkowska’s hypothesis that “neural circuitry…trigger[s] sexual aversion to kin”). It seems likely from the above-cited sources that incest avoidance is not instinctive. At least, not for men. In fact, Marcinkowska et al. (2013) found that men are most attracted to faces that are phenotypically similar to their sisters’. Also, as Greenberg & Littlewood note, “the prohibition of something already unlikely is implausible”–in other words, if we were wired to be incest-averse, the need for a such a strong and widespread social prohibition would never have arisen. Marcinkowska, playing devil’s advocate I assume, even suggests that father-daughter incest could be evolutionarily beneficial as it might distract the father from parenting an additional resource-sucking blackhole that is a chid.
On that last point I would note that, while there is little evidence for the existence of an incest-avoidance instinct, there is some room to argue the opposite. As noted above, incest could conceivably improve a family’s chances of survival in a resource-scarce environment (We are speaking here of our knuckle-dragging ancestors), though the child would have to either be male or sexually immature for this to benefit their “inclusive fitness.” In other words, if, in times of deprivation, the father slept with sexually immature children instead of his wife, the act would not result in pregnancy and, while the children he raped would likely be traumatized, their chances of surviving long enough to eventually have their own children would be higher than had the man slept with his wife and had to provide for another hungry mouth.
If, instead of concerning ourselves with the survival of individuals, we concern ourselves with the survival of genes, Fox (1980) suggests a father mating with a sexually mature daughter could be genetically advantageous so long as both participants possessed genetically desirable characteristics and such unions were not especially common in their bloodline.14
Finally, further undercutting the incest-avoidance instinct argument is Williams & Finkelhor’s finding that 11% of the 116 “non-abusive fathers” they surveyed admitted to having “some sex interest” in their daughter. If 11% of non-incestuous fathers admit to being attracted to a daughter, you can bet your ass the percent who are attracted to their daughter and won’t admit it is even higher. For these reasons and others, I think the biosocial argument is weak.
While incest avoidance might not be hard-wired into us, survival certainly is; and, as incest is one of the most untouchable of taboos (and generally illegal), its avoidance would seem to be in the interest of any adult wishing to prosper in modern society. Incest is risky business. Incest is irrational. A man who has sex with his daughter endangers his (and her) position within the family and society.
Of course, when is sex rational? The impoverished Slovenian who has sex with an American billionaire is making a rational decision. Sure, he will probably use her and lose her, but he might not; and, someday, he might be President and she might be First Lady. But is the billionaire making a rational decision? I’m not sure. On the one hand, a trophy wife could be a source of pride and a social-status-symbol for him (He can show her off as he might a shiny, new sports car). Also, her upbringing might have formed her into the perfect fuck-puppet, doormat spouse. On the other hand, she might have STDs. She could accuse him of rape. She could become pregnant. She might have an over-protective, psychotic, ex-con brother.
He sleeps with her because man is not a rational or moral animal and because, while we are not hard-wired to avoid incest, we are hard-wired to crave sex. From this view, the fact that Stroebel et al. (2013), Beard et al. (2013), and Herman & Hirschman (1977) all list “maternal role abdication” as a risk factor for father-daughter incest is telling. Remember how we said the mother acts as a barrier between father and child? Well, that barrier isn’t just for show. As Marcinkowska warned, we are all animals whose behaviors function in the present but are shaped by the past.
The point I’m getting at is that the incestuous father’s decision to cross the line and sexually abuse his daughter is not a rational decision. The decision is either based on emotions (maybe punitive, maybe romantic) or it is based on his sex drive.
If the motivation is punitive, then all bets are off. Maybe the guy is a sadistic sociopath, maybe he is just very controlling and abusive, or maybe he is very passive-aggressive and thinks the girl is too young to tell on him; whatever the case, he did it because either he thought he could get away with it or because his anger overruled all else. Every day, we read news stories of people–usually men–doing crazy, evil, inexplicable shit that is certain to land them on death row. Rational decisions are not what brought them to that point in life.
The good thing about these punitive types is that they probably have a history of being abusive.13 So, ladies, if you’re with an abusive man and considering having his children, don’t. He probably won’t fuck your kids, but he might. And, even if he doesn’t fuck them, he will definitely fuck them up.
The other motivators, emotional/romantic intimacy and sex, are not overtly malevolent. Since the motivation here is not overtly hostile, in order to cross the line and commit incest, the perpetrator must either convince himself that what he’s doing is not harmful to his daughter emotionally or socially, or he must act impulsively with little or no thought. If he was abused as a child, he could have “deficits in arousal control” and self-regulation and might act impulsively. The sexually preoccupied individual might fit this pattern. If the father is an alcoholic or drug addict, he might also fall into this trap.
Otherwise, the father has to convince himself that what he’s doing is not harmful to his child. If he is overenmeshed, this is easy: His wants are her wants; his needs, her needs; his secrets, her secrets. If a sexual relationship would make him feel good, then he’s sure she would feel the same. For most of the other types of incestuous fathers, the importance of self-deceit and denial cannot be overstated. If a father wants to have sex with his daughter badly enough, he’ll find a way to rationalize it.
Another scenario, hitherto undiscussed, is that the family lives in a community that tolerates or even promotes incest. An ethics professor I had once related a story from many semesters prior where, during a discussion of incest, a female student stood up and indignantly stated, “Ya’ll just don’t understand. Where I was raised, we was taught that love is best learned in the family.” If it is emotional harm and social stigma that prevent people from committing incest, then a community like the above college student’s would clear the way for men to cross that line uninhibited. Similarly, an especially socially-isolated family unit might engage in behaviors less insular families could never abide, since the fear of getting found out and suffering socially/legally would be minimal.
conclusion
Well, that’s pretty much it for our discussion of incest. Unfortunately, the answer to the question Why is not an easy one. As we’ve seen, there are many possible answers. As for the question that started all of this–why would Donald Trump want to fuck his daughter–well, there are a few answers.
The most obvious answer is, she’s hot. People give hime a lot of shit for pointing this out, but the fact is it’s true. Also, having learned from Williams & Finkelhor that many “non-absuive” fathers are attracted to their daughters, we can induce that many of the fathers out there calling Trump a sick bastard for finding his daughters sexually appealing are hypocrites who are secretly attracted to their own daughters.
That said, something I have discovered over the course of this inquiry is that I asked the wrong question. The question is not why would a father want to fuck his daughter but why would he fuck her?
Why would Donald Trump fuck his daughter? He wouldn’t. The guy has way too much to lose. He doesn’t live in a trailer park in the middle of the desert where men fuck their daughters more than their wives. He’s not a raging alcoholic with no self-control. He wasn’t, as far as we know, molested as a child or rejected by his mother. His sexuality doesn’t appear to be any more or less voracious or deviant than any other man’s. His wife does not appear to have ever abdicated her maternal role. He doesn’t seem to have a “preoccupied/anxious” attachment style. And his daughters aren’t exactly blowing up Twitter with #MeeToo hashtags.
References
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