The overprotective father
A lot of my guy high school classmates are fathers now. It’s interesting. They were such goofballs back in the day 1 that seeing that they are now responsible for actual living beings is impressive stuff. Many of them have daughters, and things like “Rules for dating my daughter” 2 appear on my Facebook feed every now and then.
I get those rules. They’re a laugh. They’re supposed to be speaking in the voice of a father who is deathly afraid that his daughter will get hurt and will do anything to prevent that from happening. And maybe I’m just a dour, humorless bitch, but what gets my goat about those rules is that they don’t encourage a guy to respect a girl because she is a person and it’s the right thing to do. They tell a guy to respect a girl because he should be scared of the male defender in her life and what that male defender can do to him. It’s “Treat her right or you get hurt,” which is actually kind of selfish, as opposed to, “Treat her right because you shouldn’t hurt her.” 3