The painter and Willem stood silently and pointing at the facade, when Cléo appeared at the front door and started shouting her mantra ‘DEAR DAD’. “She does that all the time,” said Willem. “Let’s hope she still does that when she’s 18,” the painter retorted, without missing a beat.
Both Willem and I laughed, loud and cheerful. Partly from the cowardly desire that social situations should be fluid. But why such an eager smile? The sound we produced was completely out of step with how we view father-daughter relationships. When the daughter presented herself, we spent hours eerily naming the ubiquitous one tropes, which relegates young girls to the precious property of the house and the father. The bibs with ‘daddy’s little girl’. The image of the father standing outside the disco until his darling comes out. The apparently progressive wish that the girl might be a lesbian saves a lot of hassle. The bystanders who gloatingly state that a man’s heart is only really touched when a little princess arrives. The battle between mother and daughter that is already raised when the child is in the womb: a girl is said to take away her mother’s beauty and thus, if you draw conclusions, also claim her place within the order of the family. The paternal fantasies about revenge and violence regarding the men who dare not appreciate his precious gem.
And yet that warm feeling that shoots up from the stomach to the throat and finds its way out. Then, but also at other times. When a passerby on the street compliments the boys for helping their mother carry the groceries ‘like real men’. When bystanders are satisfied that two big brothers are the greatest gift for a little girl. When people call Cléo an “just as feisty” mini-Sarah, even though she looks much more like her father. When it is jokingly said that a son is a real mama’s boy, “he would of course prefer to marry you and he will probably never completely get rid of that.”
Conservatism is intensely comforting to those who have a lot to lose.
It offers you a strong place within the system. Sometimes we are even a billboard: a man and a woman, two ‘tough guys’, ‘a beautiful girl.’ The outside world tells us with all the jaded comments that determine our relationships based on our gender: you fit seamlessly into how we have been doing things for centuries.
And in my most inattentive moments, my inner world surrenders with laughter to the comfort of that situation. It is herd behavior, reaffirming the fact that we as a family – and I as an anxious individual – are safe because we fall within the norm.
At the same time, it is impossible to react negatively to every regressive comment, what a hellish day job that would be, and what would that teach children about their place in society. After all, the role of the outsider can just as easily be paralyzing.
But progressivism, which is ultimately nothing other than the inalienable right to desire, is in more serious jeopardy than it has been for the past ninety years. There’s nothing to laugh about at all. When my children are 16, there is a good chance that they will no longer dare to freely explore their sexuality and their dream role in life.
So I’ll keep my cozy VVD grin inside from now on. Better free than safe.
writes a column every week. She is the author of books, essays and plays.