My Father the Feminist

My father spent 20 years volunteering at the local battered women’s shelter, faithfully spending 20 hours per week there. He was the only man who had ever been allowed in the shelter. He made soup, read to children, changed beds. I have been told that for some women and children, he was the first non-violent man with whom they had ever spent time.  When he died, they invited me to a plaque dedication for him. The plaque hangs in the shelter today.

My mother and I used to joke that he was like a slave owner working for the abolition of slavery. He adopted feminism to an extreme. He had good friends from all walks of life at the shelter. He went to a lesbian wedding when he was 81 years old and rejoiced with them. He lectured me constantly about not referring to myself as a “girl”.  And he truly and honestly believed everything he espoused.

At his front door, it all stopped. It was as if he put on his feminist hat when he walked out the door and took it off when he returned. And he seemed completely oblivious to the dichotomy. He sabotaged every attempt my mother made to work outside the home, whether consciously or unconsciously. He was aggressively verbally abusive. When I divorced my first husband, I tried to explain that his best and my father’s worst were the same single point on a continuum. It was a text book case. He was deeply offended. He seemed to literally have no awareness of his behaviour and turned to my mother in complete confusion wondering how I could be so incredibly hurtful to him. Even as I write this I am entirely sure it was unconscious. He lacked emotional awareness because emotions were dangerous and to be repressed at all costs.

At my father’s funeral many women approached me in tears, expressing their grief. Again I heard how lucky I was to have such a man as a father. And I was without words. Because I loved him and I loathed him, and I grieved him and I resented him, and I was blessed to have him as my father and cursed to have him as my father. And I hated him for it even as my grief overwhelmed me.