{Ed note: My god, the AI text that gets auto-generated for the video cover shots? Ahhhhh “MY DAUGHTER VISITS HER MISOGYNIST” has me on the floor. C’mon Substack, get a better AI tool… or don’t. This is hilarious.}
Today I went live to talk about my newest I Write Out Loud essay, “I Made My Daughter Visit Her Misogynistic Grandfather.”
The story begins with a family visit to see my father in memory care, a man who spent much of my childhood making inappropriate comments about women’s bodies and behaving in ways I learned, over time, to simply endure.
When my eldest daughter didn’t want to go see him, I insisted. It was one hour, I reasoned. Family is complicated. We show up anyway.
But during the visit, as my father repeatedly commented on my daughter’s looks — looping the same “you could be a model” compliment over and over — I watched her shrink in a way that forced me to reconsider the survival strategies my own generation learned.
For many GenX women, the playbook was simple: manage the moment, ignore the comment, move on. We dressed for the weather.
But watching my daughter react made me wonder whether that strategy now looks less like resilience and more like complicity.
In the live conversation we talked about generational differences in tolerance, the uneasy obligations we still feel toward difficult parents, and the moment when our children become adults who get to decide their own boundaries.
Sometimes the hardest part of parenting isn’t teaching your kids what you know — it’s realizing they may be right to reject the rules you grew up with.
You can read the full essay here:
Thank you Jason Odell, Laura Tompkins, Ms.Yuse, Donna Dupont, V for Violet 🆘, and many others for tuning in.
Special thanks to my Founding Members: Suzanne Whitaker, Karen Marie Shelton, Mason/She/Her🩷💜💙, Alan Wiley, Craig Weissman, and Shālah B Pookie. You’re the very best and I’m so grateful for your support.
Thanks for listening.
I’m Dana DuBois, an essayist and GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest — and founder of I Write Out Loud and co-host of The Daily Whatever Show.
Through memoir writing, audio storytelling, and community spaces, I explore the larger cultural forces shaping relationships, feminism, parenting, media, modern dating, and life in mid-flight.
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