A Dad Writes About the Sexism His Daughter Takes for Granted

Hi, everyone. After a nasty incident of sexism, sadly not the first in our daughter's life, our Country Dad is letting off some steam here. Do you see similar things with your daughters? Do you have ideas or strategies for dealing with it? Here's his post.

When all three of your kids have a driver's license and are allowed to drive on their own, a certain level of alertness just comes with the territory. Who's out and about right now? Why isn't he or she home yet? Please, let nothing happen!

All We Needed Was a Tow

A few days ago, our daughter called me. She was parked in a big city, luckily close to her apartment, and the steering wheel was barely turning. The speedometer had also stopped working. That didn't sound right to me, so I told her to call the ADAC, Germany's version of AAA.

We used to call the ADAC men and women the "Yellow Angels" (their trucks are yellow), and they were angels to me once, too. Years ago I got stranded on the autobahn, and an older, experienced master mechanic climbed out of his tow truck and said: Don't worry, we're taking your car now. You ride up front with me. We'll get this sorted out!

Now it was my 20-year-old daughter's turn. After almost two hours, a car guy showed up. The driver introduced himself as M., got behind the wheel of her small car, and diagnosed damage that supposedly made it impossible to keep driving. So: tow.

What happened next had little to do with the Yellow Angels of my obviously rose-tinted memory. M. did bring the car to the shop, but he was a lot more interested in my daughter than in his job. Do you have a boyfriend? Want to take a little detour? Will you give me your phone number?

Keep in mind: my daughter was sitting alone next to him in the cab. She couldn't just get out. The truck had loaded her car onto the flatbed, and M. had told her to ride along to the shop. We talked on the phone afterward. "Hm, yeah, he was a weird guy, kind of pushy."

Creepy Come-Ons: No Surprise to Our Daughter

"But I knew what to expect the second I saw him." Boom. That one landed. Wait, really? She had expected exactly that? Because she'd been through it before? Because she knows that when a roadside assistance guy around 30 climbs out of the truck, this is how it's going to go?

And the story isn't over yet. The next day, when we drove to the shop to find out what would happen with the car, it was sitting in the lot. But the key and the registration papers were missing. M. had taken both home with him.

When an Insurance Claim Becomes a Chance to Hit On Someone

This wasn't the first time something like this happened to our daughter. A few months ago she had a small fender bender, just a few scratches, no big deal. The other driver, only a little older than she is, was very polite and said it was no big deal, we'll sort it out. They swapped numbers and notified the insurance companies. But shortly after, a WhatsApp message arrived. "I'd love to take you to dinner!" And: "Do you have a boyfriend?"

Something else has stuck with her, too. When she got her license more than two years ago, her driving instructor, unbelievably, kept calling her "bunny" or "cutie" and, as if it were nothing, would play an audiobook for her somewhere between a red light and "Okay, right turn signal now," a book with lines like "Then he pushed inside me and I came." My daughter kept quiet through all of it back then. She just wanted to get her damn license. 

When Daughters Absorb Everyday Sexism

I told an acquaintance about it at the time, and I was pretty outraged. She answered that, sadly, this is typical. Only when it happens to their own child, only when their own daughter gets harassed, do many fathers understand what it means to be a young woman in our society. And she's probably right.

It would be different for my son. He'll call the ADAC, and the driver will take him straight to the shop. My son will get his license, and the driving instructor will keep his mouth shut. My son will stand on the train platform, and nobody will comment on his looks, nobody will whistle at him, nobody will harass him.

He won't have to come up with excuses to get rid of a pushy man. He won't have to stay friendly when he stopped feeling friendly long ago. And he won't have to wonder whether a harmless interaction could suddenly turn into a threat.

What scares me even more than the creepy come-ons is that my daughter has long since counted all of these experiences as part of her everyday life. As normal. She's learned to size up these situations, to steer clear of them, to smooth things over. Not because she wants to, but because apparently she has to. While I'm still getting worked up over every single incident, she developed strategies for handling them a long time ago.

And maybe that's the scariest part: my daughter has learned to live with men like this. And I had to learn just how many of them there are.