One of the best, most liberating feelings you can get as a feminist is to just stop giving your father the respect he doesn’t deserve but you’ve been conditioned to give him since childhood.

Fathers are our first oppressors. They’re the men who value us less because we weren’t born with a dick so we won’t pass on their lineage. They react to our births with disappointment, they raise us feeling burdened by our existence. Fathers teach daughters that we don’t deserve as much as our brothers do, that we come second. Fathers destroy our hopes and dreams by telling us how we were born to be sweet and nurturing, that our emotional feminine brains ensure we won’t be as great at science or math as a boy would be.

Fathers rely on us for emotional support, especially as we get older, but they’re also the first men to teach us how much our feelings don’t matter, that we “should” be feeling a different way, that we are “hysterical” and “over emotional”. Our fathers teach us to accept being dismissed, to disrespect ourselves, to disconnect ourselves from our own interpretation of reality and rely on a male opinion.

Fathers abuse our mothers and set up our low expectations for male behavior. Fathers teach us what level of abuse is acceptable. Fathers teach us to prioritize males.

Stop giving this man the respect he doesn’t deserve after what he did to you.