Much of my life has been spent trying to defend myself from psychological projections. It has to do with the way that masculinity is encoded in our societies. When I think about how I learned to understand my father's true feelings, it was always indirectly and on the basis of having the maturity to distance myself from what he was saying in order to conjecture what he actually meant. I learned, in this manner, to conjecture the content of his feelings, or at least what they seemed to be.
I learned from him that one is reasonably afraid of everything, or that one ought to be afraid of everything, when he asserted, one day, out of the blue, that I was afraid of everything. Before that, I had not been afraid of everything, but only of a dangerous few people. But he informed me that I was "afraid of everything", and so I learned that he was afraid of everything. I also felt that he was warning me to be eternally alert -- to fear imminent disaster if I was not eternally vigilant and fearful of everything.
His conservatism, which conforms without questioning, could speak of fear of everything. My liberalism and adventurism speak otherwise, but those who hear word of my father's past conceptions of me will take his word for it, for our family is still very imbued with 19th Century sensibilities. The father makes pronouncements concerning his daughter, and thus they become true. "Reality", as it is commonly understood, is all too narrowly circumscribed by patriarchal conventions.
Larger society, also, is not free from patriarchal feelings, and will give weight to fatherly pronouncements. Should your own father ever pronounce something negative about you, out of the blue, consider keeping it under wraps. He may be suffering from some kind of madness, or dementia, but that's not for you to say. Society will determine whether it is right or not, and they will do so on the basis of the positive resonance of the word, "father". It has a good tone -- it denotes paternal concern, protectiveness, and the quality of giving. Any negativity must be seen in these lights, as intended positively, and with good will.
A father wishes us well. But a father also has negative emotions he wants to get rid off -- like being afraid of everything. These two aspects are contradictory, and cognitive dissonance urges us to resolve the difference by favouring the former statement over the latter. A father wishes us well. Negativity is his way of wishing us well. Society concurs: "He is trying to straighten you up, dear, to assist you to fly right."
But a father is deathly afraid of everything. This fact also needs to be faced, if one is to understand the meaning of the relationship. One must not shirk from understanding what is palpably in front of one. A father is shell-shocked, profoundly traumatised by his loss of country and home, and a father is too afraid even to honestly express his negative emotions. (He thinks they should be a daughter's emotions -- he wants to bequeath them to her.) A father, therefore, is indirectly asking for help in order to deal with his negative emotions. But he is too afraid to ask for help directly. His own words are "afraid of everything."
How does a daughter help a father who is afraid of everything? She is now becoming afraid, herself. Not yet afraid of everything, but afraid of society's tendency to ascribe to her emotions that rightfully belong to her father. What should she do about it?
She could ask for help. But society in general is not tolerant of much complexity, and is likely to ascribe to her identity her father's words, without proper understanding that they belong to him. And also, she is trying to help him -- isn't that the father's role, to help his daughter?
Society is apt to punish her, for this reversal of roles. She shouldn't be trying to help her father. He should be helping her. She can't be thinking properly, and must be brought back into line.
In line with what, exactly?
In line with patriarchal conventions which determine what is really real, and what isn't real -- in line with what people are already comfortable believing:
"Daughters, not fathers, are likely to be afraid of everything."
6 comments:
I have never been able to figure out how many of my mother's supposed emotions are really my father's. My hypothesis is that the reason he is so protective of at least parts of her irrationality is that these are actually his own, which he desperately nees to ascribe to someone else.
Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
Precisely. Refuse the interpellation. And don't reproduce.
And here is real important piece of advice for you from an old lady: Don't get coerced into caregiving responsibilities. You are the proverbial sitting duck for it.
You can't see it coming, I suppose.
It would indeed be strange if I were a sitting duck of any sort.
I don't think my dad has ever said a negative thing to me my entire life! All the negativity came from my mum, she was fearful of everything. However, once I finished uni, she seemed to relax and is mostly positive now, too.
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