you raise a free girl
by respecting her mother.
One of my favorite parts about our community, is how spectacular our comment section is. *The comments* is usually the place where hope goes to die, but in our case, it’s the opposite. While I wish I had someone to help me run my social media channels (and this substack!) I find it remarkable how little moderation I have to do, to keep our community safe and positive. I’m always impressed by your ability to compassionately discuss and share some your most profound reflections and experiences with each other, and with me. I love seeing some commentators come in pretty hot, and many of you kindly listening and guiding them towards greater understanding. It makes me feel so privileged to be in this, with you.
While last week’s comment section about #BeigeUnderwearGate was so popping that it needed its own response, here you go again with your juicy contributions on a post about the intricacies of raising empowered daughters. Many of you had a lot to say about this exchange from an episode of the Man Enough podcast where we discussed how much we love our dads. When we highlighted the importance of fathers signaling respect to mothers, I referenced a study that was conducted in 2015 and that was published in the Shriver Report that showed a distinct difference between the qualities men value in their daughters, and the ones they prefer in a wife. While most of the male subjects in the study expressed a strong desire to raise a woman who is independent, intrepid and assertive, they reported seeking the opposite qualities in their partner. I thought about how confounding it must be for a daughter to see this play out. This kind of fatherly incongruity sets the groundwork for betrayal, and based on your comments, a lot of you have felt it deeply. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes about the way that fathers and daughters can unite in degrading the mother.
“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”
― Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence
I’ve thought about the cognitive dissonance that patriarchy creates for dads a lot. In fact, I cited the aforementioned study in my book For the Love of Men and recalled Tracy Moore’s fascinating analysis that I remember reading in Jezebel at the time. In her article, which I recommend reading in full, she posits a theory to explain the contradiction in the way men treat their daughters vs their wives, and why it’s rooted in the way men see themselves.
“For them, a wife is a reflection ON you, while a daughter is an extension OF you. If you’re choosing a mate as most men would, based on (among other things) social approval, or the idea of the sort of wife you ought to have, you’re going to go with the generic, culturally sanctioned option, i.e., “sweet,” and “attractive,” and not necessarily “brilliant/ambitious hustler.”
-Tracy Moore
But this male cognitive dissonance doesn’t just exist within families, it’s also embedded in our contemporary culture and encoded in our laws. Many of the politicians who have passed the most barbaric laws restricting female freedoms, are fathers. After Roe was overturned, Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn, who has a daughter himself, told a reporter he believes that a 12-year-old girl should be coerced to give birth to her father’s child. It’s a view shared by Ted Cruz, another girl dad, who has lobbied for legislation that would force his own daughters to carry their rapists’s baby to term. One of his daughters was recently admitted to the hospital for self- inflicted stab wounds.
How curious it must be for girls to be growing up in a world where they’re told they can be anything, except in charge of their own body? How can a ten-year-old girl be too young to have a phone, but be old enough to become a mother? If this doesn’t make sense to me, I can’t imagine what it feels like for a little girl to grow up with such mixed messages about her dignity and worth in society.
