This weekend, I watched my dad catch tadpoles with my toddler daughter, explaining how they turn into frogs. I listened to my husband and that daughter, Layla, laughing together over some shared secret. I had dinner with a friend who's so committed to introducing his two-year-old daughter to engineering and science that he bought a quadcopter for them to play with. (She asked him, Is this a toy for you or for me?, so she's already pretty smart.)

But as I witnessed these dads in action, it was so clear that the prevalent notion that feminism and fatherhood are antithetical doesn't just malign feminists – it robs fathers (and feminist fathers in particular), of the recognition they deserve for raising equality-minded sons and daughters.



Many men are just as invested in dismantling sexism systems as women are. In fact, those of you with daughters are even more likely to be feminist, according to a 2009 study. And Congressmen with daughters not only vote more liberally on the issues of reproductive rights – they take more feminist positions all around.



Feminist fathers know that parenting doesn't have to come with a harsh dose of paternalism and reject the father-knows-best ideology that is so harmful to young girls (like purity balls). Girls with fathers who model equality at home are more likely to be ambitious about their future. And feminist fathers with sons are teaching the next generation that being a man does not have to be synonymous with deriding all things female.



Sometimes it's the small things that make a feminist dad, or at least the dad of a feminist – like praising a daughter's ability and intelligence instead of her looks. Sometimes it's a grand gesture – like the German father who wears a skirt in solidarity with his five-year-old son who likes to go out in dresses. Either way, it makes an impact.

For my father, it meant being involved (he was my Girl Scout leader!) and keeping an eye out for bias: when a math teacher in junior high was calling on boys who raised their hands but not girls, for example, he confronted him. The teacher took him seriously, stopped the preferential treatment and ended up becoming a mentor who made me love math and science.



Disliking patriarchy, it turns out, does not mean disliking dads – despite the strange myth that feminists aren't into fathers. Just last week, internet pranksters posed as feminists on Twitter and started a fake hashtag campaign – #EndFathersDay – that trended worldwide (with some help from sock puppet accounts), an indication of just how quick people are to believe the hype. The news site RealClearPolitics, in which Forbes has a majority stake, even used the occasion of the holiday to criticize women's rights advocates by running an article about "Feminists and Their Daddy Issues".

It's hardly a new lie about feminism, but the myth that we're anti-fatherhood – much like the insistence that we're anti-family, anti-men or anti-bra – is as wrong as it is long-standing.

So, let's get this out of the way now: Yes, men can be feminists, and lady-feminists want them to be (despite rumors to the contrary). We don't even need you to qualify yourselves as "male feminists", either – just "feminist" is fine. Too many people are insistent on believing that only women care about gender justice and that men are ancillary in the movement.

In a world that doubts men can be feminists at all, feminist fathers are true blessings – especially because they're making sure that the onus isn't just on mothers to do all the work. So, yeah, maybe feminists have "daddy issues" – mine are wishing that all fathers were as great and committed as my father was and as my husband currently is. I'm biased, to be sure, but I bet others with feminist dads in their lives would say the same.

