The overprotective Daddy culture. (No ones good enough for my little girl)

Ok well I am on board with you 100% about "these" men. It's a more than a bit hypocritical of them. I can understand the frustration.

OK Dervel fair enough. That wasn't how I read it and I don't think it would have been "what about the mens" to have mentioned you had similar fears for your sons (if you have any). It would show that those fears weren't groundless or biased.

But as I said I don't think is about violence really. It's about these men's shitty attitude towards women.

I fully expect my son to one day be more at risk of violence on a night out. But expect my daughter to be the one more likely to suffer violence and sexual abuse in a relationship (assuming they were both in heterosexual relationships).

I think Dervel is mixing up the genuine gender biased fear for your kids that make sense and what people are discussing which is men practically feeling usurped by a man in their daughter's life. And threatening any man that comes with in an inch of their daughter because they see them all as sleeze bags (that they were/are) or the even stranger need to "protect" their daughter's virginity like it's some precious fucking jewel.

Actually scallop quite the reverse, but this was a topic on daughters so my point was addressing that. Yes I am well aware that there is more violence directed at other men, both in the UK and worldwide. I am happy to discuss that dimension if required, but I didn't realise assumptions would be made about my stance on the topic of violence towards men, by my not mentioning it. I had merely wished to remain on topic, and avoid being "what about the men?" with it.

Oh yes I think we do need to make a distinction between understandable fears for safety/ emotional equilibrium vs a kneejerk assumption that no boy is ever going to be decent.

It's like when men argue that women can stop rape, the assumption being that by doing xyz, they're provoking it. It automatically makes me feel suspicious of them because men who aren't rapists don't assume that they might become one when women do xyz aound them.

But why don't you feel the need to protect your sons in the same way Dervel. We are constantly bombarded with the messages of violence against men, in fact there is more violence against men in the UK, yet it is the violence against women that sticks in your mind and makes you protective?

Also I don't think that this is all about violence. It is about their views of girls/women when they were teenagers. How they viewed them as fuckable objects. And that is misogynistic.

I hesitated to respond on this thread, because I agree with any criticism of the culture of ownership over women, even if it seems relatively benign. Such as "giving away" at weddings etc.

However I do not think it is right to paint all who harbour genuine fears as in possession of a mysoginistic mindset. We are after all bombarded with constant reports of rapes, assaults and violence that women endure the world over from those who are supposed to be their partners/husbands. Isn't there some horrifying statistic that so many women a day are killed by their partners or exes?

I do not think you have to have treated women badly yourself to find stuff like that concerning as a man. I also don't think the instinct to protect automatically switches off the moment your daughter becomes an adult. It may not be your responsibility once someone is of legal age (it is now quite rightly their own), but I am sure many struggle with this with adult children of either gender.

I am happy to concede there will doubtless be men out there who HAVE been shits themselves in the past (or in fact still are!), who won't brook their daughters being treated the way they treat women, but it is also not fair to percieve this as some sort of common flaw in all men. As with a great many things motivation is key, and there are a plethora of those on this subject.

"make him weak"? And you aren't worried about girls being 'weak' because they are being molly-coddled by their fathers?

Who gets to decide what 'weak' is anyway?

i dunno it mirrors over protective mothers of their sons/the MIL commonly thinking the DIl isn't good enough.

Instead of thinking, "I must put a lot of time and effort into helping my son become a decent human being", it's "I must protect my girl from the sexual dominance and violence of boys". The actions of boys and men is seen as uncontrollable and out of our hands. *

I disagree it's more the other way around "a boy should learn to look after himself, and should be protected/mollycoddled because it will make him weak".

It all smacks of poacher turned game keeper. I'm a scum bag to women but I won't allow anyone else be a scum bag to my DD.

All summed up neatly by the wedding ceremony - father of bride gives DD away to groom and only the men make speeches about it.

I have three adult sons and daughters ages 11 and 2, when the girls were born I had lots of "oh they won't be able to have boyfriends with all those big brothers"
I just stared at them before pointing out that my boys wouldn't even be remotely I retested in their adult sisters relationships and if they stuck their noses in my girls would put them straight as they will make their own choices!
I was irritated you see.

Gordon Ramsay's spy camera thing was seriously creepy. He eroded his daughters boundaries giving her the message that they weren't worth anything and taught his son that women's boundaries don't matter.

Abusive behaviour. And not the only abusive behaviour he shows. Tana LTB.

Can't stand the overprotective dad thing- I find it creepy - I see some comments of that type on Facebook and ignore them.

My dad was never like that - always encouraged us girls to get out there and have fun. I expect my dh will be the same.

This is really interesting as I have a DD and I suspect my DH will be an over protective father to her when she is a teen. I had an emotionally absent father so I want her to experience what it's like to have an interested male role model.

But I also see the "daddy's princess" thing as being on the same continuum as subjugation of women. It allows men to categorise women "ones you marry and ones you fuck" and the whole Daddy protective thing is to prevent their DDs from being seen as sluts. It's the same patriarchal bollocks.

Partridge that just made me shudder. Perhaps there is a bit of that in there too.

Berstie, I did kind of mean "the same guy" but it was a tragic joke because of course it was never going to be the same guy... I think it happens a lot. I think it's one of those psychological equivalents of something really common like hypertension; people say things like "well this is a perfectly normal diet, if you weren't supposed to eat like this everyone would be ill" and you are like, well yes I do know a lot of middle aged people with health problems, but you don't actually say this; similarly everything "normal" about how it was ok to treat kids results in fucked up people roaming the streets looking for people to control to ease their pain; bleeding mummies shambling about with their bandages shredding off looking for virgins to use as bandages to staunch the flow form their wounds.... (tails off - getting a bit too into Halloween)

Do you think part of it is that many men realy think that women don't enjoy sex and just do it because they have to?

Their sons want it obviously, but their daughters will just get pushed in to it because women don't like sex

Not that it stops them from fucking their wives.

Oh, panic averted - totally different bloke (I didn't realise you meant "this bloke" as in "generic bloke who acts like that" :))

So weird that it played out in the same way for both of them, and, presumably, others too.

Er - really? Perhaps I should get that deleted then I was actually thinking I'd given too much detail in my post there.

Could you PM me your guy's initials?? I'm slightly freaked out now

Havent rtft yet, but look in to purity rings

Daddy gives you one and helps you keep your virginity till he "gives you away" when you get married.. [vom]

Other people have mentioned TV portrayals, there was a 'real life,' (and British) example on ITV2s 'Freshers,' recently (I watch some trashy TV!). The dad was absolutely gutted his daughter was leaving him to go to uni, and kept saying 'You don't have to go.' He even stayed over the first night in a hotel, and kept encouraging her not to go out or anything. It was striking because he looked fairly young, and, due to this and their behaviour, I think most people would have assumed they were a couple if they saw them in the street.

Also, of course, Gordon Ramsey and his spy camera in her 15y/o room when she had her boyfriend over. Although refreshingly the majority of comments, even on the Daily Mail, tended to be saying how weird and creepy this was, so perhaps there is hope.

It seems very strange to me as I come from a family with all daughters, whenever one of us brought a boyfriend home my father was ecstatic he had another male to talk to!

Weirdly, he seems very nice in real life, lovely and gentle and friendly, but after we split up he joined an online dating site and his profile was SCREAMING with red flags. I wish online dating had been the norm back when I had met him, I would never have gone near him

Berstie:

" One who had a totally toxic mother who would physically abuse him and was emotionally abusive towards his father in front of him on many occasions. Left him with (probably) lifelong suspicion and hatred towards women in general. He is now an abusive prick in relationships, even though he comes across as a lovely guy and a totally gentle person in friendship. He prides himself on being a pacifist and would never hurt anybody. However, he exerts ridiculous control over his girlfriends and greatly hurts them emotionally - he does not seem aware of this. "

OMG I know this guy!

By whims I mean, wanting to go out and inventing elaborate excuses to cover this, deciding the child wasn't allowed contact with a certain member of the family after they had argued, school playground stuff, not the behaviour of adults.

The (very very few in comparison to women) men I have known who have had their lives wrecked or had very bad experiences by women are:

• Two separate people whose girlfriend got pregnant, they were all happy together to be raising the child, and then she suddenly changed her mind and had an abortion. (One of them turned out later to possibly have had a miscarriage instead but it was her sudden exit/silence/change of mind which upset and affected him)

• Two separate people who had a child with a woman who later ended up being funny about contact and using it as a control thing - now, I realise that a lot of men say this when actually the woman has concerns, but in these two examples I saw both sides and it was more about her whims than any actual concerns.

• Two men (one overlaps with my second) who got involved with women who had serious "issues" and effectively suffered DV within the relationship. Both received a lot of sympathy and support on leaving and were not told to "give her another chance". They did not have to go into a refuge to avoid violence. I don't know them well enough to say if there was a lasting emotional after effect, I would guess so.

• One who had a totally toxic mother who would physically abuse him and was emotionally abusive towards his father in front of him on many occasions. Left him with (probably) lifelong suspicion and hatred towards women in general. He is now an abusive prick in relationships, even though he comes across as a lovely guy and a totally gentle person in friendship. He prides himself on being a pacifist and would never hurt anybody. However, he exerts ridiculous control over his girlfriends and greatly hurts them emotionally - he does not seem aware of this. However, this is perhaps an unhelpful example as it is not about a relationship.