[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
…I know I’ve mentioned before that my father said when I was a teen that you can always tell when one of the women at the office was getting a divorce, because all of a sudden she’d get her hair done and start losing weight. He went on to speculate that maybe if they’d done that sooner they wouldn’t be getting a divorce. My father was a terrible sexist and of course the same is true of men, but aside from that quibble he was right, in my view.
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Could you give us some more examples of your pa being “a terrible sexist?”
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It was mostly an attitude of disrespect, Push. Scorn. Though that did not extend to me as a child - I was my father’s clear favorite and probably the person he loved the most in the world until my adolescence, when he became unable to engage with me. [/quote]
Disrespect and scorn for women in general?
And are you suggesting that as you started transforming into a woman that disrespect and scorn was naturally transferred to you as well?
I’m not looking to pry personal things out of you that may cause you pain, just trying to figure out what makes a man sexist in your eyes besides the plainly obvious. Maybe it’s an attempt on my part to find out if I appear sexist in your eyes and those who are similar to you (very much a rare bunch, Em). Not that I’d run straight to and implement the “remedy,” mind you, I’m just curious.[/quote]
These are difficult questions to answer, Push, because it was all long ago and it’s complicated by all sorts of stuff.
My mother left him/us when I was 12 and my older brother left when I was 14 (a troubled kid, he went into the Navy, which had not stopped taking screw-ups yet). So there were other things going on - family issues at the time of my adolescence were numerous.
My father was an angry, volatile man. He was the son of alcoholic Irish immigrants and his father was physically abusive. My dad was the eldest of four boys after one died in early childhood (“I wish it had been you, you little bastard,” he quoted his own father as saying often while drunk). He dropped out of high school to join the Navy and as the story goes blew the standardized entrance testing away, which was his first inkling that he might be very bright. So, he “read every book in the ship’s library” and when he got out got a job sweeping the floors of [large insurance co], went to college nights, and ultimately wound up an executive at the insurance company whose floors he’d swept. He was also a very talented and well-regarded amateur photographer, which probably could/should have been his career, but he wasn’t able to deal with the insecurity of that after an exceptionally insecure childhood.
But back to my adolescence - when everyone else was gone his anger and irritability transferred to me. It had always been assumed that every wrong thing done in the house was my brother’s fault. He’s 6’4" as an adult, and was an awkward, clumsy kid with impulse control issues (and now drug abuse issues). My father treated him very badly, I assume in an effort to tough love him into self-control, but regardless it was extremely unbalanced. I think it would be fair for my brother to say he was physically abused by our father, though I was not (it was my brother who beat me up). Anyway, when he left it became apparent that he was not the only one who left dishes in the sink or tracked dirt in. My father’s negative attention shifted in my direction.
When I began to wobble a bit as the stressors mounted (started cutting classes and smoking pot) my parents went right to the tough love they’d been employing with my brother, who had been breaking into houses and stealing cars (my mother did this over the phone). My father stopped supplying food, I walked or hitchhiked across town if I needed to get there, etc. I left at 16, not as much running away as walking away. No one tried to stop me. My father had few emotional resources to draw on in the first place, and they were long exhausted by then. So not scorn as much as impotent rage that everyone he loved disappointed him. He loved the bookish little girl I was, and had no idea what to do with the damaged and rebellious teen I became.
My father believed a woman’s place is in the home, but when my mother was filling that role with young children she was not treated as a valued member of a team. When I was in kindergarten she returned to work (an RN), working 3-11 so she avoided us all 3-4 nights a week.
He was a Bill Buckley/Rush Limbaugh republican who if he’d had any say would not have allowed the equal rights amendment. He agreed with Dr. Laura about stay-at-home moms and did not want to talk about the paradox of her having a massive career while raising her own son.
As I moved into adulthood our relationship changed due to pushes on my part (e.g. “why would you say that to me?”). He loved me, I know, but he didn’t know how to do it well once I was my own thinking person. Probably the nicest thing he ever said to me was “You’re a goddamn ray of sunshine in my life - don’t fuck it up.” This was when I was considering leaving my ex-husband for the first time. In retrospect I should have left. I stayed so as not to disappoint my dad.
He was against unions, and teachers were a favorite rant of his, allowing him to combine the shortcomings of women with his political beliefs re industry. He died before I’d decided to pursue a master’s in social work. I know that while social workers and their ilk would have been high on his hit list, he’d have been proud nonetheless.
Which doesn’t answer your question, really. I guess I don’t know how to. I would have a much easier time with a simple answer to “what did your father do to indicate his disdain for affirmative action” because it wouldn’t be so entangled with his personal life and mine.
