Daddy Issues

I really had no intention of posting a Father’s Day post here. I’m not sure if most guy’s really understand the tragic irony of celebrating motherhood and fatherhood in some organized fashion, but it serves as a poignant highlight of the fem-centric society in which we live. This is lost on most people.

The contrast between mother’s and father’s day is perhaps one of the most easily recognizable evidence of the code in the feminine Matrix. As per the preset dictates of the Matrix, Mom is celebrated, loved and respected by default by virtue of her femaleness; Dad, if not outright vilified and publicly excoriated, is always reminded that he should be living up to the servitude that defines his disposable gender. The game is fixed, but do more Daddy, do more.

For children who blame their social ineptitude and psychological hangups on their mother, there is a certain degree of understandability. It’s difficult to blame a mother since the global impression is that mothering is a supreme effort and sacrifice. If she fails to some degree it’s excusable. For a man to blame his life’s ills on Mom smacks of latent misogyny, but lay the blame at dad’s feet and the whole world wails along in tune with you. A mother failing in her charge is negligent, but often excusable. A man failing as a father is always perceived as selfish and evil.

Matrix Fathers

Have a look at postsecret this week. It’ll all be gone by Sunday so have a look while it lasts. This week’s thread is the usual fare for Father’s Day, a hearty “Fuck You Dad!” or “You’re the reason I’m so fucked up!” interspersed with a couple ‘good dad’ sentiments so as not to entirely degrade the feminized ideal of fatherhood – wouldn’t want to discourage men’s perpetual ‘living up’ to the qualifications set by the feminine imperative. There has to be a little cheese in the maze or else the rat wont perform as desired.

I always see a marked difference in attitude between mother’s day and father’s day, especially now that I’ve been one for 14 years. I was listening to a local talk radio show on the ride home Friday that was opening lines for callers to express their ‘gratitude‘ for their fathers, as they’d done the previously in May for mother’s day. Damn near every caller had the same “fuck you dad!” story about how shitty their lives were because of their father’s influence or his lack thereof. One girl had called in to bleat out her story about how her dad had left her mother 30 years ago and for the last 10 years she’d sent him a father’s day card with a big ‘FU’ on it to tell him she’d never forgive him. Another guy called in to say how horrible his dad was for leaving his mom and how he sends her a father’s day card because he thinks she fulfilled a masculine role for him that he owes some gratitude for.

Father’s Day is a slap in the face for me now – not because my wife and daughter don’t appreciate me as a father, but because it’s become a big “fuck you” Mr. Man. It’s now a reminder (as if we needed a special occasion) that masculinity, even in as positive a light as the Matrix might muster, is devalued and debased, and we ought to just take it like a man and get over it.

Personally, when I hear cry-stories like this; the more I hear how crappy fathers perceptions are today only makes me want to be that much better a father to my daughter, and I can’t wait until I’ve got a grandson to help raise as well. That is until the reality sets in. The reality is that the only reason I feel the need to outperform other men in the father department is because a feminized social convention briefly convinced me that it’s my responsibility to compete with other men in a game where the rules are fixed to make better slaves of disposable men. Of course the bar is set so low, and men are so debased, that even the most mediocre of dads can play along too and still get the feeling that they’re marginally qualifying. The social convention plays into the same “not-like-other-guys” identification game most chumps subscribe to in their single years. The desire for uniqueness groundwork is already installed.

After realizing this, I stopped worrying about “being a good dad”. I’m already well beyond the fathering quality non-efforts my own dad embodied, but that’s not the point. A good Father goes about the business of being a father without concern for accolades. For Men, like anything else, it’s not about awards on the wall, but the overall body of work that makes for real accomplishment. A Father is a good father because he can weather an entire world that constantly tells him he’s a worthless shit by virtue of being a Man with a child. He just ‘does’, in spite of a world that will never appreciate his sacrifice and only regard his disposability as expected. And even in death he’ll still be expected to be a good dad.