Fathers ... was "Patriotic"

[theindependenteye]

Friends—

I’d just written a sardonic response to Dragonflydreams on the "Patriotic" thread. My apologies for not posting that one — it was entertaining. I’ll use it in one of my plays. But I suddenly realized why I was moved to post on a subject that really isn’t on my agenda. So I need to be honest about this, and then quit the field — the armor is impenetrable. Here’s what gets to me:

The argument, first, is that patriarchy fucks up the world. Secondly, that patronymics are historically linked with patriarchy and reinforce the substratum. Thirdly, the father’s role in the conception & birth of the child is actually minimal and inconsequential.

That hits me in a vital organ, and I don’t mean the testicles. I doubt it’s meant quite in the way I feel it, but then probably the Blackwater guards didn’t actually with malice aforethought try to kill civilians: the civilians just took it the wrong way. But this has to do with my father.

He would have agreed totally with DFD’s view of fatherhood. It wasn’t his fault or his responsibility. He didn’t want kids, so why should he let his life to be fucked up for a five-second ejaculation? He was out drinking while she stayed home pregnant. She gave birth in a Denver hospital, alone. When I was two, he found another lady and disappeared. Mom raised me, starting from extreme poverty, working like a dog. I now live in a nice Sebastopol home, thanks to her slowly-accumulated legacy. As DFD would rightly point out, it’s an irony that I bear my father’s name.

But I’d rather be named Bishop than Pitzer, and my mom wasn’t the kind of gal to change hers to Thor (however much she might have earned it). I don’t give a shit about names or dads claiming false responsibility — my rage is at those fathers who don’t claim responsibility as a full parent. Who don’t share all they can of the work of pregnancy and childbirth. Who’re more concerned about a dent in their car than about their kid. Who leave it all to Mom— I could go on.

Patriarchy and fatherhood are two different things. Patriarchy, to me, is a displacement & perversion of fatherhood, not a natural outgrowth of it. I believe a revisioning of the nature & responsibility of fatherhood is vital to our culture and to an evolution away from patriarchy. That’s not an argument for maintaining the custom of patronymics — it’s an argument that fathers better see themselves as more than a spigot.

So it’s painful and disgusting for me to hear someone minimizing the father’s role and by extension the father’s responsibility. The thought that it’s a man making this point (at least to judge by the “foreskin” comment) is doubly repugnant.

I'd be interested in hearing people's ideas on this subject but won't be reading or responding to DFD — nuffa that.

-Conrad Bishop

[ThePhiant]

Oh Conrad.

there was no need to take it all so personally
but then again we all carry our pain and it comes out unexpectedly
it is obvious that DFD is trying to compensate for something that happened in HIS life, his stance to be right and perfectly right at all times even if it is ( or maybe especially if it is) in the form of self-castigation is clear evidence of his need to punish himself and others.
but I would like to read your sardonic writ.
you can send it to me privately if need be

Friends—

I’d just written a sardonic response to Dragonflydreams on the "Patriotic" thread. My apologies for not posting that one — it was entertaining. ...