Feminist Advice Friday: My ex insults my daughter's appearance and slut-shames her.
I can't even come up with a good subtitle because I hate this dude so much.
A reader asks…
How do I help my teenage daughter who is constantly being put down about her looks by her sexist dad? One minute he is saying she is "asking to be raped" by wearing a shirt that shows her stomach and then he tells her he doesn't like her hair and embarrasses her in front of her friends. He insulted her hairstyle in front of a large group, and she often texts me with complaints about his insults.
We share 50/50 custody. She is hurt by his behavior, but doesn’t want to move in full time with me, because she would need to change schools.
My answer
First, I want to emphasize that I do not think there are easy answers to this problem. Even if the father suddenly stops, he’s already done immense damage to the daughter. And it sounds like he’s an incredibly sexist monster who is so comfortable with his own shittiness that he will insult his daughter in front of a group of people—wildly socially unacceptable behavior that almost certainly earns him the judgment and derision of bystanders.
So I’m not sure that anything can stop him, short of someone removing his tongue. Readers, please contribute your words of encouragement, especially for her daughter. And if you have any advice, or any experience with these types of men, please share that as well.
This question is frustrating because you’ve closed off the two most obvious paths for resolving this: having her move in with you and talking to him. Often when women are trapped in cycles of abuse, they assume that the status quo exists for a reason, that the status quo protects them. That’s not always true. So I want you to talk with your daughter, and consider the possibility that making him confront his behavior may be a good option.
If not, I’m going to throw out a bunch of alternative suggestions. Take and leave them as they suit you:
The impulse a lot of mothers have when their daughters face an appearance-obsessed world is to tell their daughter how pretty they are. This seemingly obvious choice is dead wrong.
Because the coded message in countering, “You’re ugly!” with, “You’re pretty!” is that pretty is important. So what about the daughters who aren’t pretty? What about all of us living in a sexist world, where beauty fades and age produces invisibility?
Instead, we need to teach girls that pretty is the least important thing they are. So work really hard on building up your daughter’s self-esteem in other domains. Talk to her about how tragic it is for her father that he is so caught up on superficial things that don’t matter. Point out how disturbing, and frankly sexualizing, it is that her father is so caught up in her appearance. Here are some suggested scripts:
“It’s sick for your father to sexualize you like this. Other dads don’t do that.”
“I feel so sad for your father that he spends so much time thinking about how other people look.”
“I can’t imagine how small his world must feel that he thinks appearance matters so much.”
“The people around your dad must be so embarrassed by his behavior.”
The goal is to aggressively frame this behavior as a sign that he is weak, that something is wrong with him. Because he is and there is.
I wonder also about the possibility of your daughter putting the shame right back on her father. If he can insult her, why can’t she insult him?
Almost certainly, a middle-aged man has many more reasons to be ashamed of his appearance than a teenaged girl.
The goal here would be to make the cost of insulting her very high by delivering mean-spirited blows each and every time he does it. Men insult women’s appearance because they want power over them. She can reclaim that power by ensuring that, every time he speaks about her appearance, he receives a more devastating and accurate blow about his own. The message is clear: your words are powerless, and you are pathetic.
Tell her to insult his body from top to bottom. To make fun of his hair. To shame him for every choice he makes. She should humiliate him as much as he humiliates her (but this is only going to work if she can be physically safe doing so).
Another alternative would be for her to mock him not for his appearance, but for his obsession with hers. “God, Dad, aren’t you embarrassed to behave in such a disgusting way in front of others?” “Dad, I can see that literally everyone here is ashamed of and embarrassed for you.” “Hey guys, does anyone here at all think talking to me this way makes dad look like a good parent?”
I’ve gotten a bit of pushback against my advice to insult him, and so let me add a bit more context: He is insulting her appearance in an attempt to gain power over her. He is weaponizing one of sexism’s most powerful insults in an attempt to control and shame his daughter. But he is also revealing what he cares most about. Like all abusive men, he weaponizes the insults he finds most frightening.
This child does not have the ability to stop seeing her father. She can’t leave. She can’t protect herself. She’s not going to record and report the abuse because she wants access to the school that her father’s house allows her to attend. Her options for fighting back are extraordinarily limited.
But she can ensure there is a cost to insulting her. She can talk to him in the same way he speaks to her, about the subject he apparently cares most about. At the very least, it reduces the sting of his insults. But because she has no other options, no other power, and he doesn’t seem to care what other people think when he publicly abuses her, this may be the only thing she can do to stop the abuse. And stopping the abuse must be the goal. This man does not deserve empathy or kindness. He is actively abusing his child.
Because she is a child, and because she is not willing to stop spending time at his house, she doesn’t really have the ability to set boundaries. But she can refuse to interact with him, or remind him that if this behavior continues, she may not want a relationship with him in adulthood.
Get your daughter therapy. Your ex is abusing her, and if you can’t stop the abuse, you can at least offer her support to deal with it.
Readers, what are your thoughts?
Insulting a child like this is actionable emotional abuse in most states and when you add in the sexual comments (“you’re asking to be raped”) it becomes sexual abuse of a minor child. The daughter should record the instances of this behavior and collect witnesses and report the father to child protective services. She doesn’t need to wait to have evidence to report, but since it’s a contentious divorce situation, having written / recorded evidence will help. It’s better if someone other than the mother reports, because everyone has decided that mothers lie about men abusing their children in order to punish fathers (the illogic of this would take several hundred words to work through) and dismiss it out of hand. The daughter can also report the abuse to a mandated reporter like a teacher, school counselor, nurse or doctor and they will make the report if she doesn’t want to or in addition to her own report or the report of witnesses.
Depending on her location and how School Districting works there, mom MAY be able to get full custody, have the daughter live with her, and retain her registration in her current school. She would need to talk to someone in her area familiar with school districting, but unless she has already done so, I wouldn't dismiss out-of-hand the possibility of Daughter coming to live with her (so long as it is physically feasible to get the daughter to school-- either driving her there, having her take public transit, or getting her a car if she is old enough). It also may be possible to get a custody order that states that mom has sole custody and decision-making, dad has Supervised Visits only, and "for the purpose of school enrollment only, the daughter's Primary Residence is designated as father's address."
I think mom should at least talk to a lawyer in her area to see if any of this is possible.
If not, I advise the daughter to get as vicious as she safely can. She lives with this man at least half the time. Whether she is consciously aware of it or not, she knows exactly where his insecurities are, and she should absolutely take "the nuclear option" when returning his insults. Find the thing that he is MOST insecure about, say the cruelest thing she can think of about it, make sure there are witnesses who hear her, and encourage them to join in.
For example, if he says to her that her haircut is ugly or whatever in front of people, she can say something like "hey has anyone else ever noticed that dad is seriously balding? Is it just me? Aunt Tracy, dad's going bald, right? Like he definitely is losing his hair? I'm not just making that up?" Or if he says she's "asking to be raped," something along the lines of "wow you sure do seem to spend a lot of time thinking about me having sex. That is WEIRD. Isn't that weird to anyone else? I feel like a normal guy wouldn't think about his teenage daughter's vagina this much, y'know... Uncle Jim, do you spend a lot of time thinking about teenagers' vaginas??" Say "teenager's vagina" a LOT. Make it Awkward.
If he's saying these things in front of the same people regularly, maybe mom can ask those people to HELP daughter embarrass him. So the next time he's around that group and says something insulting, a whole other person starts in at him about "wow, Tom, what a weird thing to say. I know you're really having trouble with YOUR weight, but that's no reason to talk to a teenage girl that way" or "Yikes, Tom, I can't believe you're really talking about your daughter's vagina here, in our family dinner. Yuck." Or just ask them to openly disagree with him. If he says "that t-shirt is gonna get you raped," just say something like "the only thing that causes rape is rapists. Lots of rapists think inappropriate things about how women dress or look. Just saying." If he says her haircut is ugly, have them say "I think it's cute. It reminds me of Jenna Ortega" or "Wow Tom, I didn't hear anyone ask you, but since we're talking about it, she's allowed to have any hair she wants."
If mom/daughter can get other people committed to providing the backlash against him, they may be at less risk of him retaliating against Daughter when she is alone with him.