I have a daughter who is now just four years old. Any tendencies I have towards feminism are directly attributable to her, my mother and my wife.
When I look at my daughter, I feel an identification that I could be her that helps to strip away many ingrained layers of misogyny.
Every dad feels the anxiety of the potential sexual exploitation of their daughter. We hope against hope that our little innocent kids will somehow escape the very exploitation that we cheer on and defend every time we look at porn or stuff a dollar down a stripper’s g-string. How dads manage to compartmentalize this stuff is more than a thinking person can comprehend.
The other day my first opportunity ever to give her some idea about the evil of men came up, and I hope I handled it right. I don’t want her to be horribly afraid of the world, no matter how evil it is, even though I do want her to understand that evil people do exist and must be watched for and avoided as much as possible.
We were getting up; I was lying in bed in my pajamas and she was bouncing around in her sleeper, and I had to get up and make her breakfast and turn on the TV so she could enjoy her morning ration of TV, which she loves with a terrible love I find hard to oppose.
She usually runs around or leaves me for a couple of seconds at some point in the morning, but this morning she was adhering and I needed to get those pajamas off and put on my clothes. I have these terrible memories of seeing my parents naked as a kid. They didn’t flaunt themselves at me, but once each I did see their sex organs and each sighting was seared into my brain. We live in a culture that hides our actual genitals yet loves to highlight our artificial sexual differences to the point of insanity, i.e. boob jobs. So I’ve never allowed her to see me entirely naked, and never will, since in our culture, like it or not, such a thing would be considered a deviant sex act if we weren’t related, and is a controversial one even when you are.
I realized she wasn’t going to toddle off on her own.
“OK, I’m going in the bathroom for a second. Wait here and I’ll be right out to get you your breakfast.” I told her.
“I want to go with you, daddy” she says. After all, I’m always going into the bathroom with her to read her books while she pees, it was one of our techniques for potty training her.
“No, I need to be alone in there, I’m changing into my underwear.”
“Why can’t I come?” Her tone was just a touch emotional, and I knew I had to give her a good reason, and I paused to think exactly what I should say at this delicate juncture.
“A grownup man should never let you see him naked. If he does, he’s being very bad and you should tell someone right away.”
She looked at me and I saw that she got some of the idea.
“If they do, they should be punished. It’s very bad.”
My feeling is that such things should be constantly said, but never at length.
Was I right? Did I go too far? How much is too much when you’re trying to prepare your daughter for the evils of misogyny; evils that seem to be growing and expanding every day?
