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Dads being protective of their daughters isn't always a bad thing. Here's why.

Threats and violence are never OK, but I reserve my right to be skeptical and, well, even kind of a jerk.

Photo by Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash

There's this one little boy in my daughter's day care class. I like to joke that I don't trust him.

He's every dad's worst nightmare. Tall (you know, for an infant), dark, and handsome. He's the oldest boy in class, and he can walk already. That makes him hot shit, and he knows it.

One day an email popped up in my inbox — all the parents get photos of their kids throughout the day: a blurry crawling pic here, a funny naptime shot there — but this one showed my daughter and this little Lothario holding hands. Holding hands!

The jokes were almost too easy. "Time for me and him to have a little talk," and "He better keep those hands to himself!"

As a progressive dad, I'm on board with the whole "Newsflash, it's 2016! Women are making their own decisions about their own bodies. And polishing your shotgun on the front porch when her prom date pulls up is, um, problematic" thing.

That's why it's so easy to make those kinds of jokes. In fact, the "overprotective dad" has been subject to a lot of ridicule lately.

But there I was looking at that photo, and for the first time, I felt "it" — a little twinge of terror. That desire to shelter and protect my daughter and not let anyone with remotely suspect intentions near her ever, ever, ever.

Which left me wondering: Does being a progressive dad mean I'm not allowed to be protective of my daughter anymore?

That I have to somehow pretend she won't face unique dangers and challenges that boys her age probably never will? That I have to treat her exactly the same way I would if she were my son, instead?

I don't think it does.

First, let me just say: When it comes to rape culture, our main goal should be, you know, fixing it. Not sheltering women.

We need to teach men to understand and respect consent. We need to stop objectifying and reducing women to their sexuality. And as men, we need to set a better example for the next generation.

I'm going to do my damnedest to work toward those goals.

But I'm also reserving the right to play the role of protective dad. Here's why:

1. It's not always about ownership.

I get where this concern comes from, I really do. In a world of purity balls and "virginity certificates," the dad-daughter relationship has definitely crossed the line from protective to creepy way too many times in our culture.

But personally, I can't relate to that notion at all right now. I'm still wiping poop off of my daughter's butt multiple times a day. Ownership over her sexuality isn't exactly at the top of my mind.

Wanting to protect doesn't have to be about control. It doesn't have to be about sex. For me, it's just about trying to make sure my daughter is safe, healthy, and happy.

And it turns out, there are plenty of good reasons for us to be as protective as we are.

2. Because the world is more dangerous for women than it is for men. That's a fact.

This is just the sad, awful truth.

About 1 in 5 women, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will experience rape or attempted rape in their lifetime, and 1 in 20 will face other kinds of sexual violence.

According to RAINN, almost half of those women will be under 18 when it happens.

And finally, 4 out of 5 assaults are committed by someone the victim knows.

When I see stats like these, I realize there's a pretty good chance that someone in my daughter's life will try to hurt her one day, probably while she's still living in our home. I'll probably have met this person. I'll probably have shook their hand.

That thought absolutely terrifies me.

Artist Mike Dawson has a simple approach when it comes to this stuff: "I don't make the rules. You don't make the rules. She makes the rules. Her body, her rules."

I love the sound of that. But a lot of men and boys out there aren't playing by the rules. And they're getting away with it.

That makes me mad. It makes me afraid. I feel like I have to do something about it.

The biggest part of that is raising her to be strong, to make good decisions, to be a good judge of character, and most importantly, to know that it's not her fault if someone crosses the line.

But it might also mean giving a firm handshake and a sideways glance to her dates. It might mean carrying a gruff standoffishness or a thick veil of skepticism.

OK, so I'm not going to be "polishing my shotgun" when her prom date shows up. But being kind of a jerk until that person earns my trust? Totally possible.

3. It's coming from a place of love.

Ultimately, what I'm saying is that us dads — all parents, really — are just out here doing our best.

Raising kids is hard. Good lord, is it ever hard. My wife and I are not sleeping well. We're usually covered in spit up, poop, pee, or all three. And we haven't even entered the wonderful world of bullies, behavior issues, puberty, and whatever else lies ahead.

Right now, it's really hard to think about the long term. Right now, we just want to do what we can to keep her safe.

Sometimes we'll probably do too much. Other times we might not do enough. But we've got to try.

I know there's a right and wrong way to be protective.

Not trusting or allowing our daughter to make her own decisions would be wrong. But not letting her walk home by herself at night, while it might feel unfair, might just be the kind of exception that makes a difference.

Threatening another person, even a smarmy teenage boy, with bodily harm, is never OK. But showing them that I'm involved in my daughter's life, actively concerned about her well-being, and making it clear that I'm not going to put up with her being mistreated? Absolutely.

I'm not saying I know exactly where that line is, but I'm going to try to figure it out.

In the meantime, I guess I can handle occasionally being hated by my daughter when she thinks I'm being an overbearing pain in the ass. But if anything ever happened to her because I trusted the world around her too much?

I'd never forgive myself.

Oh, and as for that boy in day care?

We're going to have to have a few words. You know, as soon as he learns to talk.


This article was written by Evan Handler and originally appeared on 01.05.16

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In one tweet, Simone Biles reminds the world to stop defining women by their trauma.

The greatest gymnast of all time refuses to be associated with terrible men.

U.S. Olympic hero Simone Biles just reminded us that she's in charge of her own destiny.

Just to avoid any confusion, Biles wants the world to know that her aspirations are not defined or determined by any experiences of her past.

She, and she alone, makes the calls for what path her career will take.  

Photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images.

On April 27, The Daily Mail published an article with a rather questionable headline framing Biles' plans for the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020 within the context of Larry Nassar's very public sexual abuse case.

In early 2018, Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics national team physician, was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison after more than 150 women — including Biles — bravely stood up and exposed his years of criminal abuse.

Photo by Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images.

International Gymnast shared the story in a tweet that's since been deleted.

But Biles was not having it.

Biles made it clear that her sights were on the Tokyo Olympics long before Nassar's conviction.

Her ambitious nature isn't surprising, either.

The native Houstonian many refer to as "the best gymnast in the world" is the reigning world all-around champion. She earned four Olympic gold medals in the 2016 Olympics and has won the most medals in U.S. gymnastics history.

And those are just a few things on the 21-year-old's resume.    

Biles is an honorary cheerleader with the Houston Texans. Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images.

While Biles' tweets are a direct appeal to be recognized for her accomplishments and ambitions and not her abuser's behavior, she brings up an even larger point.

Women who experience sexual abuse or assault — whether Olympic champions, chefs, or domestic workers — deserve to be defined by their lives and their lives alone.  

As more women and young people continue to speak out against former and current abusers, people finally seem to be listening. Powerful men are finally being brought to justice, manipulative bosses are losing their jobs, and people are slowly but surely starting to listen to women's stories and experiences.      

Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images.

But as we listen, we must also remember that women exist outside of their trauma, too.

Women who have survived sexual abuse should be able to live their lives without the cloud of their abuser hanging over them — whether that life is on the balance beam or the basketball court, in the kitchen or the newsroom.

When we treat women as humans with dreams, goals, and aspirations that extend beyond their experiences with (and mistreatment by) men, we continue to push toward a society that sees women as fully whole and fleshed out beings.  

Simone Biles is once again teaching us how to be the champion of our own lives: by defining it on our terms.

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Why using comedy to cope with the horrors of the world is nothing to laugh at.

On the surface, "My Favorite Murder" is just another true-crime podcast, a way for people to listen to the highlights of some of the darkest moments in human history.

It attracts listeners — dubbed "murderinos" by co-hosts Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff — who know things like which serial killer built a "murder castle" (H. H. Holmes) and which one dressed up as Pogo the Clown (John Wayne Gacy).

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But there’s clearly more to the story when your fans start cross-stitching memorable quotes and making baked goods with Ted Bundy's face on them. The podcast attracts a certain kind of listener because it offers them the chance to do something they rarely get to do: have a good laugh about murder.

That’s right. "My Favorite Murder" is a comedy podcast.

Kilgariff (left) and Hardstark. Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images.

Blending horror and comedy may seem like an unlikely formula for success, but less than a year after it launched, Entertainment Weekly named it one of the 10 best podcasts of the year.

The desire to talk about true crime is rooted in more than fascination. It’s born from a need to use humor to cope with the horrors of the world.

"Look, I’m scared of dying so … all of this makes me feel better," Kilgariff admitted early on in the podcast. "It’s as if we could ward it off with just our positive verbal energies."

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As the creator and executive producer of MTV’s "Sweet/Vicious," Jennifer Kaytin Robinson knows a little something about finding the humor in hard topics. Her show, which follows two female vigilantes who seek justice for victims of sexual assault and other crimes, is also a comedy (albeit a dark one).

"I don’t know what the world looks like anymore if people stop finding humor in what’s happening," Robinson says. "That’s not to say that you should normalize what’s happening, and that’s not to say it’s not serious and I’m not taking it seriously. I just think nothing can ever be sad all the time. It just can’t."

Although we can turn a blind eye to the injustices around us, there's a case to be made for acknowledging them and laughing when we can.  

Because the reality is horrible things will happen whether or not we’re paying attention.

And these things do happen.If the premise of "Sweet/Vicious" seems absurd to you, ask yourself why two college students — even fictional ones — would have to take this kind of action in the first place. It's not a stretch to believe two girls would get fed up and take matters into their own hands when we live in a country where 1 in 5 women and 1 in 16 men are sexually assaulted while in college and a time in which advocates are concerned about the future of Title IX protections under the current administration.

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Grounding storylines in real issues is what makes shows like "Sweet/Vicious" so powerful. Doing so offers victims comfort because they get to see versions of their stories played out on screen. It gives them something to point to and say, "That happens. I know because it happened to me."

"One woman reached out to me on Twitter and told me she was assaulted (and I would never say this if it was a private message; this was a public message) and could never really talk to her dad about it," Robinson says. "And her father and her watch the show every week together ... she told him what happened, but she doesn’t have to get specific because they can just watch. He just understands. He knows."

By leaning into discomfort and finding humor in those experiences, we learn that feeling vulnerable doesn’t mean living in fear.

The creators of "My Favorite Murder" and "Sweet/Vicious" have seen how audience members have been able to regain control of their narratives and better understand their place in the world.

"The most amazing thing about the show is the amount of people who have reached out and said, 'Because of this show, I have gotten help, and I have felt worthy of getting help and deserving of a life, and I have been able to see that this doesn’t define me and isn’t my fault,'" Robinson says.

At the end of the day (or episode), humor offers us one way to take some power back in a world where many of us feel powerless.

And that’s nothing to laugh at.

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Why Buenos Aires' new catcalling law is a victory for women everywhere.

A new law takes away creeps' free pass to catcall.

On April 2, 2015, Aixa Rizzo posted a video on YouTube about the lewd comments hurled at her on a daily basis.

The video went viral, with over half a million views in just a few days. Rizzo, a student from Buenos Aires, titled the video "Sexual harassment on the street: from a compliment to a violation."

In the video, she describes being subjected to incessant catcalls and lewd comments. She says the male construction workers working on a building near her home unapologetically catcalled her every day. It made her feel uncomfortable. It made her fear for her physical safety.

Rizzo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photo by Natacha Pisarenko/AP.

One day, she recalls in the video, three of the men followed her. She heard one ask another where they should take her. She stood her ground, gripped her pepper spray, and let them have it once they were close enough. She was prepared to defend herself by whatever means necessary.

The men accused her of overreacting. When she later asked police to write a report, the officers suggested the men were simply giving her compliments. They agreed to write up the report only after she told them the explicit nature of their so-called compliments. Finally, after an agonizing month of consideration and denial from other people, she took her concerns public. Enough was enough.

Her words in the video struck an important chord that would lead to tangible change in the right direction in Bueno Aires.

After Rizzo's video went viral, city lawmaker Pablo Ferreyra was inspired to introduce legislation. He told BBC, "Some forms of sexual harassment in public are accepted as a traditional part of our culture. That should not be a reason to tolerate this abuse."

The law would impose a $60 fine to catcallers in Buenos Aires, including anyone who commented about or made reference to a woman's body parts.

Image via iStock.

In a bold and powerful move, the city council in Buenos Aires approved the anti-catcalling measure on Dec. 7, 2016.

After all that Rizzo and women like her have been through, it's a big deal. It means that her story and the stories of others have made a difference.

Violence against women is up in Argentina, with a 78% increase since 2008. The country passed a law against femicide in 2012, making domestic violence and honor killings illegal, but that was less than five years ago. There's still a long way to go when it comes to making things safer for women.

A 16-year-old girl's brutal rape and murder in October could have also played a part in pushing this important law forward: Lucía Pérez was drugged and raped by at least two men before being left at a hospital, where she died as a result of internal injuries. Her death sparked an outrage, and people took to the streets using the hashtag #NiUnaMenos (#NotOneLess).

The passage of this legislation means that people's collective voices were heard, and that's incredible.

In broader terms, this new law also makes it illegal in Buenos Aires to capture images of genitalia without consent, engage in unwanted physical contact, pursue someone, or engage in public masturbation or indecent exposure.

It's true it's only a fine for now; it's not enough just yet. But it is a step in the right direction. This law means men like the ones who made Rizzo feel unsafe might think twice before making lewd comments and threatening bodily harm.

Rizzo recognized this revolutionary legislation in a celebratory tweet, too:

It reads: "The law against sexual harassment on the street is a big step towards getting rid of violence against women from the start."

This new law sends a strong message to the world that this type of behavior is not OK.

It shows that there's hope for all of us: Things can change for the better when people stand up against injustices. That's always something worth celebrating.

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