Women of Western: Independent Women

Remember that photo of the dad holding his daughter’s homecoming date that went viral last week? The dad captioned, “Whatever you do to my daughter, I will do to you.” Fox News covered the story about this photo shoot and the first sentence in the story is “Dads will be dads!” This seriously ticked off some other boy’s mom. And I can’t say I don’t blame her. The overprotective dad feels the need to threaten his daughter’s date as a way to keep her safe. Women don’t need saving! The dad understands what boys are like at his daughter’s age, but that doesn’t mean he needs to make threats. He should trust that his daughter can protect herself and will make good decisions if she realizes the boy she is on a date with does not have good intentions. The woman makes so many good points in her blog post:

1. It’s not cool to treat your daughter like she’s an idiot by threatening her date and implying she can’t take care of herself.
2. If you want to protect your daughter, teach her to protect herself instead of doing it for her.
3. Young women are just as curious about sex as young men. Dads shouldn’t assume she was pressured to have sex or blame her date if they do have consensual sex.
4. Teach both genders to practice safe sex and to respect each other’s sexual decisions rather than encouraging rape culture by saying “boys will be boys” and “I know what boys are like when they’re 16, I was that age once.”

All of these points are dead on. It’s time that men allow women to protect themselves. We don’t need our dads to beat up the guy who broke our heart. We don’t need prince charming to sweep us off our feet for our life to be complete. Women should have the same right to be independent that men have, without needing a man to help. Yes, women do have that right. But, society still places this stigma on women who choose to be assertive, strong, independent, strong-willed or any other sort of characteristic that displays dominance and control. Many men are afraid of women with those characteristics and many dads want their daughter to be “lady-like,” which doesn’t include independence. I think it makes a woman sexier when she can think for herself and doesn’t need a man for protection, stability or happiness.

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