Dingus of the Week: Prom Dads
It’s prom season, which means it’s the season for Facebook to be deluged with pictures of dads holding guns and posing with their daughters. Or threatening their dates with violence.
I get it. It’s a joke. And yes, it’s so funny that you feel like your daughter’s virginity belongs to you and you must defend it with a weapon.
Absolutely hysterical that while gun violence is the leading cause of death for American teens, surpassing even car accidents, you want to wave your weapon around in front of actual teens threatening to kill them.
I love that a long-standing joke in American society is about daughters being the personal property of their fathers. Absolutely hilarious.
When my daughter was born actual family members sent us little onesies calling her “daddy’s girl” and “daddy’s princess.” I threw them all away because that is a gross way to talk about a baby and also women are not possessions.
The violence done in the name of protecting white womanhood is a scourge in American society. The virginity protection racket has been responsible for the murder of Emmitt Till, it’s responsible for the anti-LGBTQ legislation that’s passing in red states, and anti-immigrant rhetoric.
In a time when reproductive rights are being rolled back and women (especially LGBTQ women) are under attack, a picture of a man with a gun standing guard over the body of his daughter doesn’t communicate love, it communicates entitlement over another human being. Eighty percent of perpetrators of child abuse are biological parents. The place a child is the least safe is inside the home.
Turns out, dads, you are the problem.
Patriarchal entitlement over a woman’s body is pervasive as the pollen count. And it doesn’t just manifest in creepy prom photos and baby onesies. When I was going through my divorce my ex-husband claimed I owed him $10,000 for his contributions to my brain. What those contributions were, I never asked. I made a lot of jokes about this (I thought my brain was worth a little more than $10,000) until my friend asked how he valued the other parts of me. “How much for your left arm? How much for your right leg? How much for your used uterus?” The jokes became less funny when I realized that my lack of agency was the punchline.
I am sorry. The Friday email is supposed to be hilarious. And as an apology, I offer up to you the greatest father-of-daughters essay ever written by
.I’m not proud to admit this, but before I had daughters, I sometimes used to harvest women for their organs to build Liver Pyramids in my backyard. I just didn’t see a problem with it. I sure do now, though. What if someone killed my daughters just to make a pyramid, or even a ziggurat, out of women’s internal organs in their backyard? I sure wouldn’t like that at all. They’re my daughters!
Boy oh boy, do I regret all the women I paid an illegal sub-minimum wage to, then cannibalized before I had daughters. If I could take that back, you can sure bet I would.
And Now For Something Good:
The WGA is on strike and we love to see people standing up for their right to get paid for their work. You can read friend-of-the-newsletter
on why the WGA is striking in The Nation.More than 150 workers gathered in Nairobi this week and voted to form the first African Content Moderators Union.
The Proud Boys leader was found guilty of “seditious conspiracy.”
Reminder:
What I Am Drinking:
This was a spectacular week for me, personally, I put plants out on my porch. I got to see a rainbow and drink brandy old fashioned. And I also made Gold Rush cocktails with hot honey.
That’s right. I made a Gold Rush with hot honey. If you don’t know, the Gold Rush is a drink made with honey simple syrup, bourbon, and lemon. It’s like a boozy lemonade. I was at the store and saw hot honey and had a moment of inspiration. I did Google this later and learn that I am completely unoriginal. But I still think we should name the drink the Men Yell at Me.
Next week, I will invent a device that warms bread up and makes it crunchy on the outside, I will call it the toaster. Just spitballing here.
I hope you all have wonderful weekends!
I was once a teenage boy who went on dates with girls and attended dances with girls and I am glad that I never encountered this. With the full acknowledgment that the impacts are not equally distributed, I really hate the message that "prom dads" send to boys as much as I hate the message it sends to girls. The patriarchy is a prison for us all.
I remember my ex-husband making that joke about cleaning his guns on the porch when suitors came. I told him, Unless you’re planning on going with her you realize the threat stays here when she leaves? You’d be better off teaching her to shoot so the threat travels with her wherever she goes.
To be clear, I never wanted my kids to own or use guns. But the moment when he realized, Oh! This isn’t about me? And my kid is under threat everywhere she goes?? Well, damn. That moment was pretty priceless. Freakin’ dumbass.