Daddy From Another Planet

As a young feminist I tried responding to male groping by groping back, pinching male butts at parties, just as I’d been pinched. I treated all men equally, pinching and groping without discrimination. That got me in trouble with male friends who were outraged—partly at my forwardness (women can’t do that!), but also that I’d think they might do that to women. They really didn’t like being treated as objects. Well, neither did I. It’s the opposite of sexy.

So, ok, some men don’t grope women. All men are not afflicted with frotteurism, the psychologists’ word for the desire to grope unconsenting victims. But, as we’re now learning, oh so many are. My father was one.

I saw him do it. One time at the end of a party in the grange hall, he walked up behind a woman who was taking dishes into the kitchen and grabbed her breasts with both hands in a kind of bear hug. She just kept walking and I yelled at him. I don’t think he even knew who that woman was. He was drunk, so that was his excuse, but he didn’t apologize or even seem to think he needed an excuse. WTF Dad!

And there were many other times, when we gathered in groups and alcohol was present. With Dad, alcohol was always present.

In 1978 my parents traveled to visit me in my collective house of four lesbians in San Francisco. I wasn’t yet out to Dad as gay and my mother asked me not to tell him. She made the argument that she would be the one to have to deal with him when they got home and she was only saving herself trouble. That made sense to me, but I refused to take down the lesbo posters or change anything about our lifestyle. Every day I’d ask Mom if Dad had figured it out yet. He never did (I came out to him a few years later).

By the end of the first day my dad had visited all the bars in the neighborhood, made friends with all the barflies and picked out his favorite bar where he would hang while Mom and I went to the theater or did only-in-San Francisco things.

One evening my roommate pulled me aside to tell me my father had groped her. I was stunned. You invite your father into your house and he gropes your housemates?! I struggled to understand. What was motivating him? Who would not see this as totally inappropriate, or at least extremely rude behavior? But, as I remember, he never apologized, even after being confronted. He wanted to pretend it didn’t happen. I wonder if my father would have groped my roommates if he’d known that we were all lesbians, but I doubt that knowledge would have made a difference.

In every other way Dad behaved like a proper gentleman, a courteous guy who seemed to want everyone to be comfortable. He didn’t swear and wasn’t happy when I took up swearing. He used to lecture me that it takes fewer face muscles to smile than to frown. He believed in smiling and I’ve come around to his view. I just hated it when men told me to smile, which happened with regularity in my work as an electrician.

Dad was a working class guy who never finished high school, but he wasn’t closed-minded. He believed in equality of the sexes and was politically progressive. Of course, he and all of us kids were influenced by my mother, an accomplished woman who’d made her own way in the worlds of work and war for many years before marrying.

My father was a product of his times from a generation of men who could be categorized by the female body parts they most ogled. George H.W. Bush is a butt man. Dad was a tit man. They were born ten years apart—GHWB in 1924 and my father in 1914, so I’d say they were of the same generation in which popular culture permitted and encouraged ogling and even physical violence against women. Men aspired to be “David Cop-a-Feel.” Beating wives and children was accepted practice.

We all have a natural curiosity about people’s bodies. I’ve always been fascinated by bodies in the public baths or sauna. They are so varied! And we are usually so clothed! But, although I believe consensual touching is something no human should be without, I never had an unrestrained desire to touch them, men or women.

One theory about groping comes down to something called projective identification. According to psychologists it’s a pretty common process in human nature that basically means you attempt to make others feel a way you don’t want to feel yourself. The desire to grope unconsenting victims, frotteurism, is a paraphilia.  Paraphilia is intense sexual interest and arousal by objects, body parts, fantasies, or situations that do not ordinarily stimulate sexual desires.  Masochism or a foot fetish, for example, are paraphilias. Was groping an affliction that my father could not overcome? Is it really a sickness? Is there a cure? (apparently not–all these rehab programs are bullshit). But of course it’s much more complicated and we all acknowledge there’s an underlying power dynamic. Dad called himself a feminist and I think he truly did like women, but some Neanderthal part of him must have seen women as less than.

I still struggle to understand. Was my father even aware of his reputation as a groper, or did he practice self-deception? Was he ever ashamed? What was going on in his head? How did he rationalize this behavior? Did he know he was causing women discomfort? What did he think was going on for them? I did have some heart-to-hearts with him, but never on this subject.

Women in general don’t get it. We are from different cultures in a way. Men’s behavior is reinforced within their own male culture. But when I ask male friends to explain the disgusting behavior exhibited by their gender, they claim to be as perplexed as I, saying it’s a sickness or that (other) men do it just to see if they can get away with it.

This is some odd tic of the male of the species that just doesn’t resonate with me. It’s like daddy from another planet. The same species, but different. I can’t really explain it and I bet if I could ask my dad, he couldn’t either.

Author: Molly Martin

I'm a long-time tradeswoman activist, retired electrician and electrical inspector. I live in Santa Rosa, CA. molly-martin.com. I also share a travel blog with my wife Holly: travelswithmoho.wordpress.com. View all posts by Molly Martin