Despite clearly remembering my eighth-grade year, with all of its attendant adolescent angst and anticipations of adulthood, I am now the proud and only mildly terrified father of a late-stage middle schooler. No longer a little girl, not quite a full-blown woman, I still use the latter nomenclature to describe Violet to herself and others. Her stature, physically and mentally, has matured to the point that I find myself ascribing to her bits of wisdom, am repeatedly stunned by her grace and power. I am now less a caretaker and more an advisor, offer her less direct assistance than suggested guidance. And yet, I cannot shake my desire to protect her because I still see the toddler in her teenage guise.
Longtime family friends and strangers alike, when regarding Violet’s striking presence, caution me to be careful, that she is so pretty that I need to watch out lest some troubling outcome befall her. In regurgitation of a tired trope, they encourage me to sit on the porch with a rifle, apparently to ward off any meddlesome suitors who will commit atrocities against my daughter unless I interrupt their plans with a gun. Yes, this may be simply a figure of speech, but the references to this antiquated and offensive paternal tactic are so oft repeated that the distance between joke and reality is small enough to be crossed by everyone but Xeno.
I am not naïve, I am all too aware that the world has always been, continues to be an incredibly dangerous place for a woman, even increasingly so as our social mores regress. It is possible that these unsolicited words of advice are merely an echo of the despairing truth that sexual assault and domestic violence are stark realities, ones suffered by infinitely more women than our society is willing to openly admit. And yet, the jocular nature with which the subject is treated by my would-be parental mentors feels more like a perpetuation of the same “boys will be boys” mentality that has ratified abhorrent behaviors from males of all ages.
Instead of teaching these budding rapists, these burgeoning torturers the proper way to behave, the prevailing ethos seems to make it incumbent upon women to tread lightly, to acquiesce, to alter their lives to attempt to avoid the inevitable misfortune of bodily violations, of psychological abuse. Rather than evolving, we are stuck in an abyss of misogyny, where women’s bodies are objects rather than beings, where choice is subsumed to the whims of an unsympathetic populace, where the hormonal rampages of troglodyte dudes are not only tolerated, but expected.
Vehemently opposed to firearms and weaponry of all stripes, that is not the protection that I contemplate. My role is to coach Violet to believe in her own strength, to use her wits to keep herself as safe as possible, to carry her own proverbial shotgun. I am not her gatekeeper nor her bodyguard, I do not control her, I champion her, I am a resource.
I would readily die for Violet and, yes, if pushed, I would kill for her, but that is not the paradigm that I am installing chez nous. This is a house of peace and love, one that acknowledges the harshness of reality, prepares for and contemplates the occurrence of evil acts, but one that does not dwell within the darkness. Here, we are working to create a new era defined by equality, strong and supportive female energy, and the destruction of any sociopolitical structure that abides harm to anyone.