Everyone Needs Their Daddy!

“Even today we still have the tradition continuing on. So, then you have to wonder: "what good would a father do?" A father, candidly speaking, would only end up encouraging his boy to do gang-like things” (Seven Tense, “No One Has a Dad, and No One Needs One”).

To even consider, let alone pursue this limited ideology is plain dangerous. For one, fathers embody the masculine model which men are able to apply themselves to.

Therefore, I continue with my argument that, “Rather, there is a continuation of the vicious, violent cycle which has made our new, ambiguous masculine ‘model’”. Our masculine model is now ambiguous because no longer is there the Mr. King ‘figures’ or concrete fathers. Instead these children are left to control the model on their own; hence, the ambiguity and overall perversion of masculinity into ‘distorted hooliganism’. The once innocent pranks and safe-guarded rites-of-passage which Stalky and his boys benefitted from are no longer prevalent, much to the reasoning of there no longer being a Mr. King figure—a father type, who is the perfect amalgamation of structured violence as well as a resource of stability. Without the latter characteristic (stability), what society produces are vicious hooligans, ready to ‘take it a step further’ by inverting themselves from structured masculinity into complete chaos, all because of the absence of ‘daddy’.

Next,

“It is encoded into their brains whether or not they will become hooligans simply by the way they are raised and brought up by parents. And the only way to counteract that would be to completely change the way we raise our boys, teaching them that what was once masculine is no longer the way” (Seven Tense, “No One Has a Dad, and No One Needs One”).

For one, this is simply untrue. It is not about changing parenting styles; instead, it is about the father trying to stay true to his pre-figured role as someone who watches from a distance, giving the needed security to his son so that one day he may be able to surpass his own father and achieve his own masculinity. However, this achieved masculinity, because of the father’s presence, is structured, healthy and lasting, oppose to dangerous and limited, as a hooligan proves to be, again, many times because of a lack of this father-son dynamic.

Chavette