No you’re right, because I never did tolerate any sort of macho posturing from my dad.
He was a good role model in a lot of ways. That just wasn’t one of them.
I’m trying to figure out what exactly it is that you think you’re protecting with your overly firm handshakes. Are you afraid he’s going to hit her? Make her cry? Pull her hair? Destroy her reputation? Girls are more likely to do those things than boys are, but I don’t see you offering her any protection from her female friends.
Why is it so different with a boy who wants to date her than anyone else? Why is this over protection limited only to those relationships in which the possibility of sex exists?
Right because I don’t have three younger sisters I helped raise, or two nieces I have doted on for years. No, it is that special father daughter bond that means that I must let every other male know that they can only have her by going through me.
I don’t know you or your daughter. I hope you have a great relationship and that she is a happy and well adjusted person. But, what happens if you get hit by a car tomorrow and end up in a wheel chair? Are you going to forbid her to date? Will she be easy prey for all those wicked men out to get her? Will you be helpless to assist her in any way? Because if she is just as safe and just as protected with you in wheel chair, then the posturing isn’t really for her it all.
On edit:
But are you joking about the firm handshake and intimidating look? That seems to be what **catsix **is referring to.
Jonathan
The thread you knew is dead, Xander. What we have here is the vampire its corpse became. Though it looks the same, it lacks a human soul. It is an undead thing–a demon who exists only to kill.
He was speaking ironically. Or perhaps sarcastically. Or maybe sardonically. Something-ically, anyway. I get the sense that you have a dearth of these qualities in your life. If you’d like I can dispatch a copy of Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for you to peruse.
Um…I hate to criticize a fellow fan of Till We Have Faces, but I can’t see how you’d read Shodans posts as anything other than hyperbole for the sake of humor. This
is different only in degree than my old posts threatening people with flying monkeys and whatnot. Only a torturous misreading can make it different in kind.
Since the thread seems doomed to be serious…
I don’t have a daughter, but I have a niece and a sort-of-stepdaughter I am probably over-protective about. But I don’t think of either of them as property, and the main thing I worry about is that they’re too submissive; I’d be happier if both of them would learn to be about 25% bitchier regarding the world in general and men in particular.
We worry about our daughters, wives, sisters, nieces, and girlfriends not because we think they’re property, but because women are, in general, smaller and weaker than men. We don’t really think that every man out there is a an abuser or a rapist. We worry that we can’t necessarily distinguish the knights from the ceorls; because we hear a small minority of guys talk about women in very distressing ways when there are no women around and then observe them acting in very different ways in the company of women, and suspect the bluster-in-the-company-of-males-only may become violence-when-alone-with-one-woman. That’s not ownership; it’s concern born of affection.
I’ll grant you that the guys who do purity balls are touched, though. Touched in a very bad way.
This thread started with a lighthearted little, lets goof on the dads of daughters, motif. There was hyperbole and yucks all centered around the stereotype of the overprtective dad. Ha ha. It is to laugh. Golly gee, the little kernals of truth uncovered by the jocularity really do make one think, no? Hardy-har-har.
How the fuck did we get from that to unbridled vagina hoarding and religious purity balls?
Honest to Buddha. If you really can’t see the humor in the hyberbole, then your sense of humor has my condolences.
You do realize that a lot of that is just the same bullshit macho posturing crap as ‘I will greet him at the door with a shotgun’, right? And that it’s not up to you to distinguish the ‘knights from the ceorls’ unless you are asked for your opinion.
Have you ever thought that if they want your protection and your help, they can ask for it?
Because what other basis is there for asking whether fathers assume that all boys are scum?
Hypoerbole is a ridiculous exaggeration of a grain of truth. So what’s the grain of truth? That you’re protecting your daughter.
This is very interesting. I’ve got one of each. The son suffered manipulation / heartbreak / cruelty years ago and to this day ( age 18.5 ) has had no girlfriend and has disdain for girls ever since. Working on that, though. I mean, therapists, etc.
Daughter is 17. Thinks almost all boys are boys and not young men, therefore not worthy of the hassle. Most of her girlfriends have boyfriends or have had. So, she’s heard second-hand about all that goes with having a boyfriend. I think she’s fairly disinterested in it at this point. Pretty far from “boy-crazy” or “girl-crazy”.
They will each find their own way. I’ve spent time over the years, when appropriate, with each of them talking about respect, and self-respect. What is really important, etc.
This is an example of what I meant - meeting your daughter’s friends, and making it clear that I am an active presence in her life, and that her well-being is important to me, sounds like over protection to you, and triggers a lot of foolishness about vagina ownership.
People who are emotionally stunted, and are apparently unable to empathize with normal relationships, sometimes project. Sux, but what can you do?
Fortunately, my daughter will never know what that feels like.
Again, this is exactly the sort of thing I meant. If you had children, and you had a normal relationship with them - “normal” in the sense of “healthy” - you would understand that your idea that ‘you can only have her if you go thru me’ is something that you just made up. No normal father thinks in those terms. And no boy worthy of dating my daughter thinks that way either.
I doubt I can prove it to you. I already explained it, and it didn’t seem to register. Like I say, it sux, but it is difficult for people to understand something which they have not experienced.
I can’t take it anymore.
Fine. I admit it, CatSix. I will not be happy until I have my daughter’s vagina locked in a safe in my trophy room.
Happy now?
catsix, I wrote nothing that can be construed as macho bullshit. I have not threatened violence against anyone, nor have I said that violence against men or boys on behalf of the women in my life is justified regardless of the women’s opinion or requests. Let’s look at what I did write:
How is wishing that my niece and not-quite-stepdaughter would be more assertive and aggressive “macho bullshit”? I’m quite serious–please EXPLAIN how my wanting the two of them to TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES makes me macho. By that logic, my giving my nieces money to go to the movies makse me a thief.
I wrote nothing saying that I proffer assistance unasked. If you feel I am lying, please point to a specific instance. Shouldn’t be hard.
Signora, IT WAS A JOKE! Oakminster (whose clearly a smarter man than I, given his absence from this silly debate) made a comment I thought joke-worthy. I opened a thread in either IMHO or MPSIMS commenting on on, and Czarcasm, for reasons that escape me, chose to move the thread here, where it has mutated into this lumbering monstrosity.
And my saying that some men behave differently when only men are present is true. I once posted a thread about a neighbor of mine who opined that women are best sorted into the categories of “rapable” and “not-rapable.” He was an extreme example, but guys hear this kind of crap from other guys all the time, and we see the perpetrators sometimes act quite nicely when women are present. This worries us, and maybe frustrates us,because we know that, while most men find rape unthinkable and horrifying, there are a few who find it exciting to contemplate, and it’s hard to distinguish one from the other somtimes.
But you are determined to be offended. You are looking for reasons to be offended. You seem incapable of realizing, as Whynot did upthread, that perhaps a cigar is merely a cigar, and your thinking it’s a rattlesnake is indicative of some issue you yourself are having.
I’ll thank you not to accuse me of being a macho bullshitter. I do many varieties of bullshit, but not that kind.
Catsix’s possession of a vagina is her qualification for telling those of us who have daughters everything we are doing wrong in raising and protecting our children.
In addition to my own biological daughter, age 8, I have two stepchildren_ one of each sex_who are in their late teens. I am protective of them as well. I never considered myself as owning his penis or her vagina.
In addition to having kids, I’ve been teaching for nearly 25 years. I’ve been around a lot of kids. More than most people. More than catsix or strassia, I’ll warrant. Teens are impulsive. Teens routinely do stupid things that, in retrospect, they will admit were stupid.
It absolutely does no harm for a child or a teen to have a strong protective adult presence (note, vagina-equipped readers, that I didn’t say male) who stands ready and for the associates of that child/teen to know that as well.
It’s getting kind of funny now. Catsix figures possession of a vagina qualifies her to tell us how to raise our daughters. Strassia has sisters so he feels qualified to do the same…and 5-HT is just a skeevey asshole.
catsix, upon re-reading your earlier post, I have decided that I misinterpreted you; you seem to be accusing the men who speak ill of women of being macho bullshitters rather than me. I apologize for mis-interpreting you; you did not accuse me of being a macho bullshitter
That said, please examine this thread from August 2006 and this one from last August. You’ll see why I am something less than trusting of some men.
Data point: My father is a great father and I believe that I have a normal relationship with him (depending on what measure you use, of course). One of the best things he did for me was to teach me to trust my own judgment without relying on some man (whether him or a boyfriend) to back me up.
It’s entirely possible that he did joke (among his friends) the way many of you are doing here, but he did my sister and I the enormous favour of never letting us see that. If he had shown any interest in intimidating any guys I brought home, my response would have been to stop bringing anyone home.
I respect and appreciate your relationship with your daughters, I really do. But please keep in mind that if she ever does have this experience (of not liking you intimidating her guy-friends - and remember, if she feels you’re deliberately intimidating her guy friends, it doesn’t matter what your intention is), she is far more likely to sneak around than she is to ask you to knock it off.
Just be aware that this may have the opposite of the intended effects. As I say, my dad was a great dad to teenage girls (and remains a great dad to adult women), but I never would have considered asking for him for help in such circumstances, and if he had offered it (under ANY circumstances) I would have been extremely weirded out, and would have taken measures to avoid such assistance (i.e. I’d stop bringing guys home and I’d never talk about them to my folks).
Because he taught me to know my own boundaries and stand up for them. I’m 100% with the [irony]feminist[/irony] catsix here, even tho it seems our fathers took opposite approaches. Are you going to call me emotionally stunted and unable to empathize with normal relationships?
Add me to the list of those who would like to know, if it’s not about her vagina, what exactly it is that you are protecting your daughter from. Also, is it only potential suitors who get this treatment (as opposed to girlfriends from the school volleyball team), and if so, why?
Those of you without daughters can make all the jokes you want.
But for those of you with daughters who do make such jokes in their presence, you are gambling that your daughter will precisely share your view of humour, hyperbole and reality in this context.
Are the jokes really so hilarious that they’re worth risking your daughter’s respect and trust?
In a