{"id":381,"date":"2017-11-11T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T17:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/?p=381"},"modified":"2017-11-13T17:13:57","modified_gmt":"2017-11-13T22:13:57","slug":"daddy-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/2017\/11\/11\/daddy-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDaddy Issues\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"474\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">As the father of 25 daughters, I&#39;m starting to think women might actually be people<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jess Dweck (@TheDweck) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheDweck\/status\/918019598393282561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 11, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a \u201cdaughter of a father\u201d I sometimes think it would be hard to understand men, what they want, and why they behave the way they do, if I didn\u2019t have one. I can understand when the daughters of gay parents (moms) \u2014 or in the seriously unfortunate cases where dads end up in jail, leave, or die \u2014 find it hard to make sense of them. I get that it can be hard to imagine they would have wants, needs, and boundaries similar to those women have, but you know, they\u2019re people too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tati, tata, baba, papa, daddy, dad, father, whatever you call him, it is personal. The devolution of \u201cdaddy\u201d to a taboo can attest to this. Over the summer, I was talking to my dad while we made the drive to and from my sister\u2019s college in New York City. The trip was long, and I\u2019m sure it made him more aware than ever that he was losing the women in his life that allowed him to function at an unhealthy intensity at work. You will later see why without us it would not only have been unnecessary, but impossible. We talked about a lot, though most of it was redundant and distressing because it clearly lacked any release. Slowly, I began to realize that his incessant criticism about the way people act was dictated by the priorities society encouraged him to accept. Socializing for what seemed to be\u00a0the sake of talking was reserved for women, or my mom in particular, and his only job was to work in order to take care of his family (parents, wife, and kids \u2014 brothers when he feels like being generous.) Speaking to anyone needed good reasons: sharing political ideas, health, information, business, connections, formalities. Of course, these weren\u2019t invariable missions he set out on as he initiated any conversation, but they were definitely reverberating in the back of his mind.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To him, my mom helping her brother by letting him live with us and finding him a job didn\u2019t make any sense, and wasn\u2019t worth it because her brother\u00a0was ungrateful. But, my dad knows how women work. Even though he\u2019d constantly remind her that giving anything without foresight wasn&#8217;t right, he\u00a0expected her to\u00a0\u201cact out.\u201d It didn\u2019t stop there. His degree in economics couldn\u2019t be wasted, so he would analyze each relationship to measure how much they\u2019d cost. In this case he owed my uncle nothing except resentment. He would never communicate to someone who \u201cwronged\u201d him because he was sure they were aware of how they were impacting and insulting him. Additionally, they were easily discarded, because they weren\u2019t part of the work\/family deal he signed up for. This would happen with people in and out of the family, and he would act as though it didn\u2019t affect his mental health. I was slightly infuriated by his inability to see the intrinsic value of relationships \u2014 that can\u2019t be quantified by ideas or knowledge or money or power, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">but as a woman I was taught to be tactful in these circumstances. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I turned to look at him, and I think I was the first to ever ask him sincerely, \u201cAre you happy?\u201d Seconds ago a flaming rage filled the car, but now I was answered with the chill of\u00a0silence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The more distance I have from home, the more objectively I can see these situations. My dad\u2019s personal views about how my mom generally handled things shaped the way I view what is considered \u201cfeminine.\u201d Because he was both an expert at assuming the dominant and more knowledgeable role, and because she survived on submission, my views were shaped in such a way that I equated femininity with weakness, passivity, lower intelligence, and being overly nurturing (to the point of neglecting yourself.) More importantly, I saw that he deplored of every one of those qualities. I never hated women, especially not my mom, but I did hate what it meant to be feminine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I wasn\u2019t the only one. As an adolescent, everyone\u00a0around me\u00a0seemed to suddenly start hating pink, admiring heartless \u201cSherlock\u201d characters, judging based on intelligence and aggression (throwback to king of the hill,) and acting as if they were ok with the fleeting relationships they felt they had with people. Yes, the \u201cI hate pink\u201d phase has faded, yes, we have begun to tell men to \u201cembrace their emotional side,\u201d and yes, some have begun to realize how unrealistic and destructive it is to glorify Sherlock characters. Yet, I fear we are still holding on to the tainted ideas that we should\u00a0welcome\u00a0feminism by\u00a0embracing masculinity and rejecting femininity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I don\u2019t know about you, but \u201cfierce\u201d and \u201cblack woman\u201d have nearly become synonyms in my mind for reasons I\u2019m pretty upset about. Among them is that it\u2019s a reminder that they\u2019re too vocal, that it\u2019s surprising they have shit to say, and that whatever they\u2019re doing is <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">abnormal<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. I don\u2019t know about you, but I still have problems figuring out how to dress, and rarely consider putting on makeup. This is not for fear of promiscuity, because lucky for me that\u2019s not something I\u2019ve internalized (is it because I haven\u2019t been <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">harassed<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> enough or my weight issues? you tell me,) but for looking too \u201cgirly\u201d to be taken seriously. I don\u2019t know about you, but I still feel pride knowing I\u2019ve worked myself too hard today or didn\u2019t sleep yesterday. I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019m not sure anyone else is more anxious when talking about their feelings than our own generation. In this instance I\u2019m comparing my current experience with my experience in an isolated region of the Balkans, in addition to what I\u2019ve heard coaches say about the 80\u2019s and 90\u2019s. Both tend to be behind in the social scene, but in neither case would people feel awkward saying \u201cI love you\u201d or showing affection in any way. Note: talking about feelings <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">is not the same as sharing personal information, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">which we tend to do instead. People here and now are more guarded, and superficial things like social media and \u201chook-up culture\u201d endures, despite everyone being aware of the caveats. Wouldn&#8217;t you rather scroll mindlessly through twitter than even attempt to make plans that likely require ridiculous coordination, time spent away from work you should be doing, anxiety about whether you&#8217;re worth spending time with, and probably more money than you&#8217;d prefer to spend? We are desperately searching for ways to be ok with the deterioration of long-term relationships, and mostly what we have right now is detachment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What I didn\u2019t realize while marinating in my indignation in the car with my dad, was that women adapted to be exactly what men needed them to be while they were setting out to meet society\u2019s demands of them. For one thing, wives\u00a0are the single person\u00a0they are bound to. The single relationship\u00a0they are obligated to maintain\u00a0<span>\u2014<\/span>\u00a0which should, according to game theory, indicate\u00a0an optimization of social welfare. Both parties seeking to maximize each other&#8217;s outcome to ensure the relationship remains perpetual. Women are not weak, passive, stupid, emotional, or nurturing by nature, but when the only priorities your partner has in life are to work and support the family, the things holding them together are the perceptions that they are strong, aggressive, smart, emotionless, and don\u2019t need support. The same dynamic that may occur in gay relationships leads ignorant people to ask &#8220;who is the &#8216;man&#8217; of the house?&#8221; Under the right conditions, these role fulfillment expectations perpetuate themselves. The\u00a0delicate illusion that gender is related at all to\u00a0intrinsic qualities continues to wear thin as feminism rises. No\u00a0gender can be happy with these fundamentally flawed molds they&#8217;re expected to adapt to, and moving past them shouldn\u2019t be questioned. But, listen to teachers when they tell you the movement began when women\u00a0joined the workforce. The implications are significant, because right now we are <em>all<\/em> facing these ridiculous expectations and have no one to properly fill the shoes of the feminine role \u2014 with only a partial exception of pets (insert Rick and Morty reference here.) We can&#8217;t\u00a0forget to\u00a0analyze what was effective, what wasn\u2019t, and why this discrimination emerged the way it did. Otherwise, we can easily fall into patterns of the past.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a \u201cdaughter of a father\u201d I sometimes think it would be hard to understand men, what they want, and why they behave the way they do, if I didn\u2019t have one. I can understand when the daughters of gay parents (moms) \u2014 or in the seriously unfortunate cases where dads end up in jail, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/2017\/11\/11\/daddy-issues\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">\u201cDaddy Issues\u201d<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7073,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[64,67,5,126],"tags":[502,500,141,501,498,209,499],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7073"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":418,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions\/418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}