Is Incest Porn Really Taboo?

Every once in awhile, it seems like Sigmund Freud was right and we all have an Oedipus Complex – meaning we all want to have sex with our mothers, or in some cases fathers or sisters or brother. Whatever the reason incest porn is apparently on the rise.  

In a new report by GameLink.com, searches for incest and family porn saw a sharp increase between October 2014 and January 2015. Of course, PornHub did a similar study, which lead to the theory that more people look at step-father/step-daughter or step-mother/step-son porn during the holidays because they are at home. Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals, the author of Encore: A Sociologist Explores Sex, Society, and Adult Entertainment, has a different idea:

"Intimacy between step-relations is very taboo in contemporary US culture, and yet many people live in step-blended families,"

"There's something about stimuli for such a highly taboo topic simultaneously being so commonplace that may resonate with some people. In terms of why now, certainly technology, accessibility, and the availability of the content itself all play a part."

Tibbals also thinks that regions that are more sexually repressed are into porn with a little more edge to it. And how could we forget the 1977 Penthouse article "Incest: The Last Taboo." In that article, journalist and social commentator Philip Nobile wrote about the “positive” side of incest and suggested that incest tends to happen more than people care to admit. Even famed sex researcher Alfred Kinsey believed that incest was positive, but Kinsey did say incest would be a major social issue in the 1980s, which it was.  

Of course not everyone believes that incest is positive or no big deal. Psychologist Sharna Olfman wrote in her 2008 book The Sexualization of Childhood that there is a link between father/daughter porn and what she refers to as “pseudo child pornography" or PCP. She theorizes that incest movies, films, and websites normalizes the idea that children are legitimet sexual partners for adult men or as she puts it, this "cornucopia of sites that deliver the message that sex with children is hot fun for all."

With so many reddit forums, video searches, and movies being made about incest, one could make the leap and assume we all want to have sex with our family, when in reality those who watch incest porn know it’s not real and know those people are acting. Founder of Girlfriends Films, Dan O’Connell, who has produced 36 editions of Mother-Daughter Exchange Club, believes it’s all about boundaries. As he puts it:

"Producers of adult movies are among the greatest mavericks of society,"

"It is their nature to leave the realm of conventional sex and depict the very outer edges of sexual behaviour. Today, every unsupervised kid with an online connection can look at all the sex they want."

"The industry does these movies because that's what sells. And, very simply, they sell for their taboo factor."

Porn is a fantasy. It always has been and it always will be. Whether that is right or wrong is the hardest question of all to answer.

Via Vice

Photo Credit: Girlfriend Films