You’re not doing your daughters any favors with this stuff, daddies.
by digby
Ick:
I’m sure the intention here is good humor and fatherly concern. It’s natural to want to protect your children and I think fathers are especially protective of their little girls.
But this list is an awful lesson for both teen-age boys and teen-age girls. Girls aren’t inanimate objects and daughters are not daddy’s property. In fact, you could easily substitute “borrow my car” for “date my daughter” in that list and it would make perfect sense. They should be acknowledged as having equal agency in all this. And boys shouldn’t be “negotiating” privileges with a girl’s father. She’s a person and if either boyfriend or daddy are going to be doing any negotiating, it should be with her.
It reminds me of the purity balls especially the princess/conquest thing which, again, reduces the girl in this picture to daddy’s private property. It’s antediluvian, patriarchal claptrap and modern men should know better. If you have those thoughts, keep them to yourselves and try to help create a world where your daughters don’t have to fight to be seen as equal citizens.
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