A Father for Feminism

by Alan Stewart Carl

I have made that joke about the shotgun. You know, someone says to the father that his daughter is beautiful or that she’s growing up fast or that she’ll be a heartbreaker, and the father smiles knowingly and says, yeah, he’s already shopping for shotguns. He’ll spend his daughter’s teenage years sitting on the porch and cleaning the sucker all day, just to make sure every boy who comes by sees him.
Because, of course, a daughter is a father’s property and he needs to protect his property from being stolen and potentially defiled by another man.

Not such a great joke when it’s put in those terms, is it?
But I’ve made the joke. Multiple times. Because I don’t always think before I try to be funny. And because, while I want my daughter to grow into a strong woman who loves deeply and who experiences life fully, I am afraid of the men who will, indeed, attempt to treat her like property.
Almost every culture throughout the world oppresses women. Our culture is not nearly as bad as some but that doesn’t mean our culture doesn’t have a lot of work to do. American fathers don’t make jokes about needing a shotgun when their sons come of age. We assume our sons will be mostly fine. I want a world in which we can assume our daughters will be mostly fine too.
I have a strategy for this. And a metaphor.
Fathers: Feminism is our shotgun.
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