"RAISING DAUGHTERS IN AN AGE OF FEMINISM"

Major hat tip:  Cellar Door

"Feminism has gripped our culture. Here is some historical perspective. In the nineteenth century, the Queen of England said that feminism was a 'mad wicked folly of women’s rights… feminists ought to get a good whipping..'  There are not a hundred pastors alive today who would read anything like this out loud. We live in a time in history where we are out of sync with historic understandings of manhood, womanhood."

Doug Phillips, the head of an organization called Vision Forum Ministries, uttered these words last weekend on the occasion of Vision Forum's 2006 Father Daughter retreat in Pine Mountain, Georgia.  This event drew more than 500 people at a cost of $595.00 for each father/daughter pair and $185 for each additional daughter. Daughters ranged in age from as young as 5 to women in their 20s.

The purpose of this event seems to be the encouragement and affirmation of a "Biblical" model of the father-daughter relationship.  The father's most sacred duty is "[the daughter's] protection and preservation from childhood to virtuous womanhood . . .  he leads her, woos her, and wins her . . .   he seeks to raise her as an industrious, family-affirming, children-loving woman of God."  The daughter in turn ideally "looks to her father as a loving picture of leadership, of devotion, and of care."

Feminism, needless to say, is seen as the enemy because of course it is the father's vision, not the daughter's, which she must seek to fulfill until the day he hands her over to her husband.  Her vision at no time in her life will take precedence -- and this fact must be impressed on young girls sooner rather than later in "this age of feminism." 

Some of the events of the weekend included:

An "intimacy building" event in which daughters were to comb their father's hair, shave them, tie their ties for them, and tie their shoes.

There were also unity games such as the three legged race and a game in which the daughters were blindfolded to "see how well daughters could follow the voice command of their fathers in and around an obstacle course."  There was also an exercise in fatherly wooing, in which fathers knelt before their daughters and sang songs like "Eidelweiss."

There were picnics, dinners, and "high tea" at which everyone wore their best, with young girls in long flowered dresses and pretty hats.  (I noticed that many sisters seemed to wear identical matching outfits.  Perhaps this is simply meant to be cute, or perhaps it's a matter of frugality, but I can't help seeing the matching outfits as symbolizing a lack of respect for the children's individuality, as they are trained up to adopt one-size-fits all gender roles that are especially specific and restrictive for women.)

There were various talks. Scott Brown, a minister involved in Vision Forum ministries, proclaimed that "Fathers need to prepare their daughters to be wives who are under submission, helpers to their husbands, mothers, keepers at home and domestic entrepreneurs."  A young woman contrasted Biblical womanhood with the poor example of the heroine in the "Princess Diaries" and the "feministic rebellion of Teddy Roosevelt's eldest daughter Alice." Doug Phillips read aloud from a picture book called The Princess and the Kiss, "a story of God's gift of purity."

You can read more about the event and look at pics at Scott Brown's blog starting here and starting again here.  You can also read more on Doug Phillips's blog. (The links directly to the relevant posts didn't work so you'll have to scroll down past the fencing pics and whatever else may get posted in the meantime. Once you get to the father daughter picnic you're in the right place and keep scrolling down.)

Comments

[NorthWest]

Is it just me or is advocating that fathers "woo" their daughters a tad creepy? I'm sensing a rather incestuous subtext in this whole event. Wasn't it Cordelia in King Lear that asked, "If my sisters love their father so much [in the competition Lear sets up for who loves him best], why have they husbands?" Do fathers "woo" all the daughters with equal passion? Are the daughters supposed to compete for their fathers' love? And where do the mothers come in? And how will little princess ever find a prince if all she's allowed to see is Daddy?

Follow fathers' voice commands? Like sheepdogs? Do the fathers get any practice understanding their daughters' subtle (or not so subtle) metacommunications? Do the fathers get to see their daughters as separate from themselves?

I'm all for fathers' involvement in their daughters' lives (being a Daddy's girl myself), but this is way over the top.

[TangoMan]

I think that any event that leads to greater father-daughter bonding is worthwhile. It's too bad that feminists have to focus their opposition to the message and can't simply support the effort, especially when we know that there is a correlation between having a daughter and getting divorced. I hope I'm wrong but the message I get from the criticism is that it is better to cancel the event than let the Christian social conservative message be transmitted to impressionable young girls.

I'd love to see feminists promoting father-daughter picnics which pushed some feminist message and I'd criticize Christian dissenters who objected to the games that the feminist organizers devised which pushed their feminist ideology onto the young and impressionable girls. It's the event and the bonding that are important, not the message.

[TangoMan]

Oops, bad link. Here it is again.

[Patriarch Verlch]

The way feminism works is to take the children from the patriarch and poisen them with anit family and hateful rhetoric.

The statistics prove that 85% of criminals come from single mother households. The divorce rate was 10% and crime was low, survival was the name of the game. Then came bored housewives, upper middle class women, whose government agenda was putting women to work, and destroying the family. They used women to do just that. The divorce rate was 20% prior to women getting the "no fault divorce" pushed through. Within two years, the divorce rate hit 45%. The divorce rate where the women looks after the house, and the man works is still at 10%!

http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Library/Amneus/garbage/index.html

Studies have shown that barren women are miserable, thought they would be fulfilled in a career without children, and a man. They are not happy, now there is a backlash against anything male, because males are happy and women are not. They took a survey of 100k women and men in 1970 and present. What they found was shocking, men are relatively the same in happiness, while women are 20% more unhappy! With a culture that medicates for everything, notice how many boys they give Ritalin to and how many miserable barren women flood their bodies with meds! Yikes! Can't find happiness chasing the socialist dream now can you?

This is free speech and if you women think you live in a free land, prove it by not deleting anything you don't agree with! I challenge you, prove to me you can debate on the issues and not hide behind you ideas, in you buildings, behind your masks! Don't fight like a coward! I challenge you will all my might, to prove to me, that you are not as weak as I suspected!

[The Happy Feminist]

Tango Man, you're beating a strawfeminist. No one's against father-daughter bonding. Feminists are the ones who want fathers to get MORE involved in child care, remember?

[The Happy Feminist]

Patriarch Verlch, you may comment on this site IF your comments relate to the content of the post. This is not a forum for you to post all of your screeds against feminism. Your comments must be RELEVANT.

That having been said, I will be deleting your comments on other posts as irrelevant. You are welcome to stay and participate in the discussion but if you are insulting or violate the basic rule of relevancy again, then I will exercise my free-speech right to ban you from this site.

[TangoMan]

HF,

you're beating a strawfeminist

OK, I'm happy to be wrong. However, what was your take on this part of my comment:

I hope I'm wrong but the message I get from the criticism is that it is better to cancel the event than let the Christian social conservative message be transmitted to impressionable young girls.

Are you supporting this picnic or wanting it to be discouraged?

[mythago]

Is it just me or is advocating that fathers "woo" their daughters a tad creepy?

I found the whole thing ultra-creepy.

TangoMan, I can't believe that you actually missed all the not-so-subtext about daughters being obedient to their fathers and how daddies need to teach their daughters to be "under submission"; therefore I can only assume you're deliberately pretending cluelessness in order to play Bait the Feminists.

[TangoMan]

mythago,

As an athiest the whole issue of crafting women's identity to comport to biblical teachings leaves me cold. I see it as an illogical faith by which people live their lives and the flip side of that illogical coin of faith is feminism. True, each side in these battles of faith thinks that they have the "One True Faith" but just as I won't condemn feminists indoctrinating their children into their faith I won't condemn Christians mainlining their faith into their kids. They have the right to live their lives in the fashion of their choice.

What I think is most important is that fathers are doing something like this with their daughters and I wouldn't advocate that the event be cancelled over a simple faith-based dispute. My question was whether HF, or you, or others, think the message is more important than the event? If it's not a feminism-affirming message is it better that the girls not go to a father-daughter event? Which do you value more - the father-daughter bonding or the "appropriate" indoctrination message? I'm saying that I'm coming down on the side of the bonding event.

[Tara]

For heaven's sakes, TangoMan, of course it's about the message! And it's about the values the message represents. Cancelling the event might not make a difference if the values that motivate and design the event are still present and the daughters are still being indoctrinated in other ways.

"Bonding" is not a good thing when it's more like "bondage." I think it's entirely possible that this event *harms* girls. Girls who might be *better* off if their parents divorces.

That's my sense. Evidently you think differently, and of course, you're entitled to your opinion. But I don't really see how you could actually bring evidence to support your belief that this event does more good than harm.