Josh First's Blog

What Father’s Day means to me

When I was nine, my dad gave me a set of small Norlund axes, which I still have today. One was single bit, the other was double bit. My specific job with those was to chop and stack firewood all summer, until Dick Fye’s lumber mill stopped sending us slab wood by twenty-ton dump truck loads dropped in our yard.

Dad also gave me use of the chainsaw, which I probably used as much as he did, or more. By twelve I was felling substantial trees. Probably not expertly, but I am still here today, unscathed from that, so I must have been really lucky or pretty good.

Point being, that one of the most important roles that a father can perform is to raise his son(s) to be not just men, but manly men. Masculine men, as defined by all of the masculine things manly men have done since the emergence of our species. Historically, men defended their families and communities, and hunted food that provided for their families. Those are still critically important roles for men to fill. Today, running a chainsaw, correctly using axes to split and shape wood, hauling firewood, supplying your family with sufficient firewood every day from an early age, these are all traditional manly things that can still be done in modern times. Or you can do the updated sedentary society equivalent.

Yes, I am sure that there are plenty of women who can run a chainsaw and split firewood, and who also enjoy doing these things, and although they are far in the minority of women, I say good for them. But today is Father’s Day and we are focused on the male species X chromosome humans right now, fathers and their sons (which of course applies to the masculine gay men I know). And so I say Thanks, Dad, for raising me to be a masculine man capable of doing traditionally masculine things. My family depends on it, and beyond that America depends on manly, masculine warrior men in the military to defend us from our enemies. Only dads can provide that upbringing.

Thanks, Dad!

(about the memes below: I am sick and tired of being falsely badmouthed and assaulted and coerced and demanded and forced and threatened over someone else’s sexual preference or identity or what-have-you. The truth is that I do not care, and it is my individual right not to care, and to be left alone to not care, and to say F*** off if someone keeps pushing something I don’t care about in my face and demanding that I care, and it is also my individual freedom and right and natural instinct to be repulsed by certain behaviors that other people do, and to be naturally phobic of those behaviors. And so I am just throwing up a few memes to provide my own pushback, even if I do not necessarily agree with 100% of each one. Go ahead and be offended, I do not care. I myself have been offended by this nonsense for years and no one seems to care, so back atcha).