I love being a girl dad, nothing brings me more joy than hearing the infectious laughter of my daughters. If I have to host a tea party, consider it done. You want to apply some makeup on me? Go for it! Piggyback rides around the house? Hop on for take-off! Let’s watch some superhero shows and make sure it has girls in it that are doing awesome things. I want to make sure that they see empowering figures on tv, in books, and in real life. Gender norms make it tough enough to navigate this world, I have no interest in furthering those sentiments.
Telling someone I’m a girl dad invites the requisite “You’d better get a gun”. On the surface, this comment might seem innocent enough, but if we do some light digging we can see it isn’t. I understand how the male minds work, so I get that the rush of hormones experienced by young boys would drive them wild at the sight of a cute girl. And my girls will most certainly be the cutest of the bunch, they take after dad after all(a bold lie). I remember being a kid and hovering around a girl that I liked, wanting to play with her or sometimes bothering her to get attention.
I could be like Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys and pat down any potential suitor that comes to my house, calling upon one of my daughters. I’m sure one of my brothers would gladly play the role of Will Smith and show up with a gun in hand to scare the crap out of that kid. It goes deeper though. It’s not my job to police someone else’s kid. The problem with telling me to purchase a gun isn’t that I am anti-gun, it’s the implication. It implies that if someone else’s kid gets out of line, then it falls on me to be the enforcer. That kid hasn’t learned how to behave in their home, and will likely come to my house or be around my daughter and act a fool.
I should not need to have a gun or even remind your kid to keep their hands to themselves unless otherwise invited to touch. If the young lady says no, then you should know it’s a no.
. . .
They must want it
In our society, we have a habit of victim-blaming. Don’t be out so late, don’t dress like that, you should’ve known better than to walk in that area, so forth and so on. It doesn’t only fall on girls/women, but in this case, it’s what we’ll focus on. If a woman is assaulted, our default is always to ask what she could have done better, rather than thinking “what is the issue with the assaulter?”.
Recently at a School Board meeting, where only a small group of people were asked to leave, a few young ladies chose to speak about the dress code. The school has a strict dress code for what girls can wear and they are very punitive when these rules are broken. Dresses must be of a certain length, no crop tops, no tank tops, no ripped jeans, and a litany of other stipulations. Some of these make sense, for example, dress length, not that there’s anything wrong with a short dress but there’s a time and place for them. If we consider tank tops though, they are banned for girls, but boys can freely wear them in and around the building. Often at school-sponsored sporting events, you’ll even see the boys completely remove their shirts as a form of celebration. The idea behind some of these rules is that it serves to protect the girls. But it begs the question, what are we protecting them from? If the idea is that you can’t wear a crop top because the exposed midriff would arouse too much excitement in the young boys. Then what we need to talk about is how we can get the boys to behave. Catcalls, gawking, whistling are all reactions that women garner daily in the streets. These are not ok, are completely voluntary, and therefore can be stopped.
It’s absurd to think that a moderate form of dressing will safeguard these young ladies from aggressive sexual behavior. Even in secluded and conservative communities like the Amish, these things happen. Who covers up more than them? Sarah McClure, an investigative journalist, spent over a year looking into the sexual abuse that goes on in the Amish Community. Spread out over seven states she found more than 50 cases of sexual assault. This is only what’s reported because, in a community where girls are supposed to be submissive and stay quiet, these things simply go untold.
. . .
Male aggression is our problem
The idea that boys will be boys, is simply not an answer. I was a boy, and I’m now a man, fully aware of the conscious decisions I made to be an a-hole. I’m not excluding myself from jerk behavior, I was and often still am guilty of it. I can blame it on toxic masculinity or machismo, whatever you’d like to call it. At the end of the day, I was wrong. Just because I’ve been wrong in the past doesn’t mean, I’ll let things slide in the future. This mentality leads us down a slippery slope, one where the behavior steadily escalates, those same looks and comments, morph into touches and more aggressive behavior. The lack of repercussion for these behaviors creates a reward system of sorts. We consider it a form of being manlier, or another notch on the belt. It’s how we show just how much of an alpha we are.
At some point, we have to be realistic about things. The issue here is not the girls, their form of dress, speaking, or their existence. The problem we have is a male problem. The US Dept of Justice reports that nearly 99% of sexual assault perpetrators are male.
. . .
We must aspire to be better
Raising kids is tough, there’s no question about it and when you mix-in external factors, it gets really bad really quickly. Your number one worry is not messing this kid up for life. Daily, my wife and I are worried about the message we’re getting across to our girls, their health and well-being, the way they’re perceived in society, their confidence, their schooling. To say nothing of racial and ethnic matters. With so many things on the table, the last thing I need to worry about is if another kid knows how to behave. The victim-blaming puts the onus on the parents of the said victim to control the environment and ensure the right thing is being done.
If you’re the parent of a boy, maybe you also have a daughter, if you don’t imagine for a moment that you did. How would you want your daughter treated? How would you want a boy to behave around her? Now ask yourself “Am I teaching my child in a manner that’s reflective of these ideals?”. If you’re not, then why? What is keeping you from conveying these thoughts and teaching your child?
It’s time that we look for tangible and productive ways to address the issue. The mix of sexual aggression and frustration on the part of boys is the culprit. So what will we do? Don’t suggest I get a gun to protect my daughters. Don’t send your kid my way, if they don’t know how to act. If you know something is wrong, work to correct it and avoid potentials problems in the future. This is a societal problem and therefore one we must address as a whole, but individually we must be accountable and take responsibility for our household and children. These boys will hopefully one day be men, at which point innocence and immaturity will no longer be a viable excuse.
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This post was previously published on A Parent Is Born.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Sure, girls should be able to dress how they want and go where they want without fear of sexual assault, in the same way that I should be able to leave my car unlocked with the keys in it without fear of someone stealing it — but in the real world there are always going to be predators who will take advantage of vulnerabilities, and if I did that I would be called negligent and my insurance would be invalidated. Victim blaming? Or a reasonable expectation of a basic level of common sense precautions against bad actors? Do you leave… Read more »