Anyone who's browsed for porn on an even semi-regular basis probably would prefer their browser history never be seen by another pair of human eyes. I think most of us, in the throes of total horniness, have watched things that could make our loved ones recoil in horror. My point is: Everyone has masturbated to something weird.
And even though porn likes to tug at our boundaries of good taste in an effort to get us off, it still might shock you that several of Pornhub's top-trending searches of 2014 were incest-related. Men and women alike were searching for not just terms like "stepdad" but also "daddy" and "mom," which feels like a degree of separation from other popular age-related searches, like "teen" and "MILF," but just on the other side of taboo. Incest is one of the top growing categories for PornHub — "stepsister" rose 132 percent last year and "stepmom" rose 94 percent — and as VICE reports, other sites like GameLink are also noticing a huge upturn in the number of people looking up incest porn.
Why? Well, for starters, if you like TV, you've probably watched one TV show where things got all weird and incesty recently: Game of Thrones, American Horror Story, and Sons of Anarchy all feature (or featured) very, um, familial relationships within the past few years. Even outside of TV, incest has been bubbling up on the mainstream Internet, exemplified by a recent New York Magazine interview with a father-daughter couple that went viral. Many sex trends start out in the media — a celebrity with a big butt gets famous (*cough*Nicki*cough*Kim*cough*) and anal sex videos get popular — so it's not a huge jump to see why incest is on porn-searchers' minds now more than ever.
But that doesn't mean everyone is out there having family-game-night orgies or that they even want to have sex with their family. They also don't want to watch actual incest; incest porn is made by paid (and not blood-related) actors and actresses.
"It's cerebral kink, not an extension of reality," explains Courtney Trouble, a porn performer and director. "It plays into a lot of role play and BDSM scenarios. Most incest porn is not playing off an actual desire to have sex with a family member, but more like experiencing the intimacy and power dynamics inherent in those kinds of family relationships." For instance, she says, a daddy/girl relationship doesn't mean that those people are attracted to their actual dads or daughters — it could mean they like the power play of a BDSM relationship but want that kind of caring, unconditional love folded into their sex lives. A parent/child relationship lends more of a sense of nurturing or "feeling special" to porn that you wouldn't get between say, a masseuse and their client in a different video. And on top of that, there's a layer of forbidden sex that adds to the whole thing — a trend that's also popping up in pornos that depict people having illicit sex in public places. Incest role-play is basically a kink layer-cake.
But the underlying appeal could be more innocent than that. "I believe that incest role play is gaining in popularity because age play is gaining in popularity," says porn actress Penny Barber. "Most incest role-play porn is made with actors who could be siblings more easily than they could be parent and child. Most sibling porn is made of adults pretending to be teenagers. I'm pushing 30 and I still play a high schooler in a lot of incest role-play porn." It's a weird kind of wish fulfillment for people who like the idea of those early, fumbly, nervous years of sexual experimentation. And she points to it as a sort of repurposing of youth culture. Barber references Christopher Noxon's book "Rejuvinelle," in which he writes that our generation tends to reclaim things like cartoons and cupcakes and Disney princesses in adult contexts so we don't have to get rid of them as we age. Incest porn, Barber thinks, is a way to never forget that exciting, awkward, youthful sex you used to have.
It might even be booming because a few people started Googling it after seeing Game of Thrones, which caused it to show up on more home pages and pop-ups. In other words, people might just be clicking on it because it's more visible and they're curious. "It could be that idea of 'Oh my god, that's taboo. What does that look like?' Especially when something starts trending, someone could think, what am I missing out on?" says sex therapist Megan Fleming, Ph.D. "But just because people are clicking, that doesn't mean it's erotic to them." Incest porn could very well be the "Gangnam Style" of the porn world — you can't stop watching it out of perverse fascination one week, the next it makes you deeply uncomfortable.
So don't be too worried if you're seeing this stuff on the fringes of your porn browsing sessions (or if you watch it). It doesn't mean everyone is a bunch of deviants. Well, maybe we are, but not because we like some taboo stuff mixed in with our regular kink.
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