I announced my desire to play and was told by my brother that “girls did not play with marbles,” that it was a boy’s game. This made no sense to my four- or five-year-old mind, and I insisted on my right to play by picking up marbles and shooting them. Dad intervened to tell me to stop. I did not listen. His voice grew louder and louder. Then suddenly he snatched me up, broke a board from our screen door, and began to beat me with it, telling me, “You’re just a little girl. When I tell you to do something, I mean for you to do it.”
“…and that allowing rage to provoke him to violence would help him protect home and nation.” This is definitely an example of that. To believe in patriarchal rules so strongly as to enforce it with violence on a five year old and using the same belief to justify your rage.
Never mind that the belief benefits him and enforces his natural inclination to rage while it stifles his daughters natural inclination to be playful and competitive. This is the burden of thought they want to keep from us, in order to continue to benefit from a society structured to empower men.
