- “Angry” Black Woman—father issues
- Slut-shaming/sexually liberated/had some experiences you regret—father issues
- Autonomous individual—father issues
- Outspoken/Political/feminist—father issues
- Can’t clean the house, take care of man and his kids—father issues andit’s your mother’s fault
I’m just not okay with everything to do my upbringing being attached to how identical my family structure was to the Cosby’s or some normative middleclass family model of one dad, one mom, two kids, one dog, and a house. I think it undermines how far I’ve come, raised by a single mother in a world that dictates to us that a male and female parent are necessary and normal.
I am bastard child, so what?
I understand that for some wimmin, growing up without a father figure is a big deal. They attribute fatherlessness to:
- Why they have low self-esteem
- Why they date sorry ass guys
- Why they don’t feel loved
- Why they don’t “behave like a woman should behave towards a man”
- Why they become dependent on [sorry ass] guys
- Why they dress the way they do
- Why they get pregnant by guys they wish they would’ve thought twice about
- Why they end up in abusive relationships
- Why they never get married
I think that this yet another messed-up hand dealt to us by Black heteropatriarchy in Black communities. In trying to uplift Black men, a lot of people believe that subjugating Black women to Black men is the answer because they view the natural order as Black men being in charge. Its sexism and internalized oppression at work as we have been taught to conform to white hegemonic, heteronormative, heterosexist standards of social relations and community-building.
I’m not saying that women don’t need examples of and experiences with Black men who are decent humyn beings. I’m saying I am not defined by my fatherlessness.
Yes, my mother and father were never married. Yes, my father never lived with us. Yes, my father was not involved in my life. Yes, he took the paternity test. Yes, my father has more children. Yes, he’s poor, and he hardly ever paid child support. I don’t care about his reasons and I don’t think his behavior and absence should reflect on me. As a child, I never really wondered where he was and I scarcely thought about him. A parent was taking care of me, that was all that mattered.
I try to imagine what my life would’ve been like if my father had been in it. The only thing I can see is my young, female, Black self being indoctrinated into a culture that teaches me to play the kinds of games that Black men like to play. I don’t think he’s a bad person, but I don’t see what he could have offered me anyway.
I met him when I was either sixteen or eighteen. The last time he said he saw me and my twin is when I was three. I consider my father to be kinda “my friend who happens to be my father”. The last time I talked to him, I ended up hanging on the phone on him because he tried to lecture me about adulthood.
I became an adult without him and it made me angry when he tried to impose himself into my life as anything other than a friend because he’s lucky to have even that type of relationship with me.
But, anyway, that’s just me.
Point again: I grew up without a father figure. Don’t try to construe me or mind fuck me into thinking I have problems that I don’t have because it justifies and validates your ideas about women’s lives, how they’re supposed to work, and how her life should revolve around her father or fatherlessness.
really,
Queen
