Chill Out, Dads

"I'M A DAD AND I'LL KICK YOUR ASS IF YOU TRY TO DATE OR HAVE SEX WITH MY DAUGHTER" is a perversion of chivalry. Wanting to protect your family is noble, and somehow baked into the male psyche, so I understand the impulse. However, like any noble impulse, there's a line past which it becomes dangerous and oppressive. The notion that it's "funny" to threaten violence to your daughter's suitors is dangerous and oppressive.

For starters, it removes agency from your daughter, implying that she is completely unable to care for or protect herself. This is a fundamental problem with gender roles today, one that's reinforced constantly, from the "damsel in distress" trope in media to the still-pervasive notions of appropriate employment opportunities for men and women. If you're raising a daughter and you're invested in her having the best possible future, you should be concerned that she can make the most of any opportunity that comes her way. That requires agency, something that's lately been mislabeled as "self-esteem" but really means "the knowledge that I am capable of doing things if I choose to put forth effort." Patriarchy exists because of a long and systematic removal of agency from women, something that's only started to reverse course lately. I want my daughter to have agency. I want her to be the protagonist of her life. I don't want her to think that only dad can make choices for her about who's date-worthy, kissable, or even fuckable.

That's not to say parents shouldn't do everything they can to educate their children about the ramifications -- emotional and physical -- of sex. That's not even to say that parents shouldn't express strong disapproval of pre-marital, or pre-twenties, or pre-college, or pre-whatever sex. That's up to the parents' moral code. However, the smartest way to keep your kid, of either gender, out of sexual trouble is a combination of education and -- here's the kicker -- enough agency (self-esteem) to feel in control of their sexual desires. It's Parenting 101: don't make something forbidden to a rebellious person, just make it seem like a bad idea.

Point number two: This conveys to your daughter that sexual control is always in the hands of the male. Men decide when, where, how, and with whom sex is possible. That's so retrograde, it's almost laughable. We shake our heads at the Taliban and even gape in wonder at the sexual mores of Mad Men, but this Dad Meme is actually a pure shot of patriarchal sexual control, the kind that can quickly inculcate entire societies. Newsflash: women are human beings, and they get to have sex with their bodies. If that scares you somehow, you're the one with the issue, not women in general.

Point number three: It's counterproductive. Not only is putting up the meaty hand of Dad Violence just a subtle form of slut shaming against your own daughter (this also extends to hyperventilating about teenage girl outfits), it makes people think your daughter might be a slut. If you witness someone making inappropriate comments about your daughter's appearance (you'll know they're inappropriate because she'll freeze up and be unable to respond), by all means, break out Thor's hammer and wollop. But to preempt the world by loudly announcing that your daughter's body is off limits pretty much makes folks extra-motivated to check out how hot your daughter is. After all, only someone guarding a treasure would stand in front of a vault with an AK-47.

Point number four: You wouldn't do this to your son. You just wouldn't. The t-shirts aren't out there. The meme isn't active. There's not even a parent flip where moms take this stance of trying to keep filthy chicks away from their precious son's penis. Why is that? Why such a strong gender preference?

I'm assuming that your mind skipped over the sexist reasons and leapt to the one that sounds pretty good: rape. After all, the vast majority of rape victims are women, it's a horrifying and prevalent crime, and young women seem to be particularly vulnerable. These things are all true. However, we MUST stop putting the burden of rape as a crime on women. You may think that offering your fists in her defense takes on some of that burden yourself, but that's not true if you're not, in the same breath, threatening to kick your son's ass if he ever comes close to committing an act of nonconsensual sex. Rape should not be an accepted part of the male psyche that women are forced to deal with. Defending women from that is attacking the symptom, not the disease.

Rhetorically defending women from rape -- especially in a jokey joke way -- CONTRIBUTES to rape culture.

Again, if you're in a position to actually defend a woman from an actual attempted rape, please do so, and bring as much firepower as you can to the fight. I'm not talking about the male impulse to protect loved ones or even women in general. I'm talking about not funneling that impulse into the creepy territory where women are possessions to be guarded instead of human beings to be cherished.

Really, when you go overboard on this "guard the daughter" bullshit, you start to sound like you're cock blocking. And that's just creepy.

Sex is not a fun topic for parents of teenagers. It's tempting to joke about postponing it indefinitely. But the fact is, sex is also awesome and fun, and we (mostly) agree that it's not cool to withhold the sexual experience from anyone's life when they're ready for it. I totally get the desire to make your children's lives as sexless as possible for as long as possible. But parenting is the slow revelation that you can't freeze time or prevent a kid from growing up, and sex is just a part of that equation.

Will I teach my daughter to wait as long as possible before having sex, and to be super gun shy about it, and to be triple sure that the person she wants to have sex with has her best interests at heart? YES. Will she know that if she's in trouble, I'll find the troublemaker and create Hell on Earth for that person? YES.

Thing is, I'll teach the exact same thing to my son.