Tuesday, Feb 17, 2015 8:22 PM UTC
“Genetic sexual attraction is normal, and very real”: A woman describes the reality of parent-child incest
Natasha Rose Chenier writes about the brutal stigma she encountered after a sexual experience with her father
Topics: genetic sexual attraction, GSA, Natasha Rose Chenier, Jezebel, parent-child relationships, Sex, Love and Sex, relationships, incest, Social News, Life News, News
Following up on Science of Us’ recent illuminating interview with a woman who was engaged in a sexual relationship with her father, Jezebel on Tuesday published a gut-wrenching and thought-provoking essay from yet another victim of genetic sexual attraction (GSA). This time, it’s not a happy love story: in her remembrances of her experience with GSA, Vancouver-based writer Natasha Rose Chenier describes the psychological whirlwind of falling in romantic love with her biological father, whom she did not meet for the first time until she was 19.
Over a two-year period after they first met, Chenier explains, her father seduced her — but she also experienced a phenomenon that is estimated to affect at least half of relatives who meet as adults (though the figure is disputed). Chenier details artfully the devastating emotional effects of GSA:
I imagine that, unless you have experienced genetic sexual attraction yourself, this is going to sound entirely unbelievable. But trust me: it is as real and intense as anything. The sexual feelings I had for my father felt like a dark spell that had been cast over me — a description that a therapist told me had been used almost verbatim by another client who had experienced father-daughter GSA. … It was like those nightmares in which you scream and no one hears you: you are powerless and you know it. I was not only a victim of my father’s two-year seduction; I also felt a victim of my own sexual feelings. … I felt ashamed of myself, and I had no one to talk to about it. I wasn’t equipped to understand or handle my feelings.
She also highlights many of the problems at the core of how the public tends to respond to incestuous relationships:
