Dad la Soul is a “revolutionary grass roots movement that uses art/tech/music and play to battle social isolation and loneliness. Made by dads for dads.” I really like what they are doing and I think it’s important and sadly quite unique. Based here in Sussex they hold lots of meets ups and events for Dads and it’s very needed. The world is swimming in places for mum, particularly new mums, to meet and make friends and support each other. There isn’t much space there for dads – although rarely purposefully excluded they do end up just not being really welcomed in (unintentionally) most of the time. Some of this is due to new mothers quite rightly needing to share and communicate in a safe space that caters to their new shared experience and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Dad la Soul is creating a space like this for dads. It’s really needed. I know from experience both personally and professionally just how important it is for women and how beneficial. But for reasons I now understand more fully through my exploration of what patriarchy actually is and how it affects us all (- this is a huge unspoken conversation that needs to happen because I don’t think we all really understand this -) that for many reasons men find it hard to make new friends and talk in personal terms about their experiences. This is exacerbated by fatherhood. So what Dad la Soul are doing is simple and very effective and quietly pretty subversive.
I am glad to have found them and had some good chats with the founder who is very interested in the project – I will be doing a session on one of the international live zoom meet ups at the end of March. Initially I had intended to try and streamline a conversation thread taken from the previous Sex Ed for Parents workshops and she some art work but actually now I have changed my mind. Since there is a time constraint element and also knowing that zoom meetings are less conducive to open dialogue that IRL ones I want to maximise the discourse as much as possible. The dads in the previous workshops reacted much more to the 90’s media imagery than the art works I showed them and I think this is a good way to go. I have also been making some really simple text based images that will simply have facts and info on them and I’ll also use these as a starting point. As usual finding’s a good balance that doesn’t demonise porn is really hard though!
There are two things here weighing on my mind however.
1 – Depending on how this intervention goes I am considering this being the end of the line for Dad specific work for now. Whilst I believe its important and necessary the amount of time and effort it takes to engage men in these conversations in a productive and real way (by which I mean beyond the frankly self important platitudes of some previous workshop dads) is something I just don’t want to spend the entire MA focused on. It’s exhausting. I think my being a woman may always be a hindrance to some progress and whilst as I said I have more empathy for the “plight” of men (very much in inverted commas cos lets face it they’re still generally the most privileged in many/most scenarios) when it comes to toxic masculinity and the effects of living in a capitalist patriarchy I still find it very frustrating the amount of hand holding through all this is needed. I see woman all day long willing to self reflect, learn, try and do “the work” and see very little of that from men and I struggle with the idea that creating “better” feminist men is still basically the job of women enraging at times. This is not to say I won’t return to this important work, I can feel Richard in particular would like to see more and I don’t disagree with his reasons. There are some important conversations to be had about power and the flex of it in staying silent in the face of certain situations/conversations that feels very male centric. Also some important work around all this and it’s connections to suicide. However I’m not sure I have the full knowledge (although I am working on that with some interesting reading), experience and frankly stamina yet to come at this the right way.
2- I find it very interesting that Dad la Soul describes itself as “revolutionary”. Don’t get me wrong I’m not denying that it is, as I said I think it’s very important work but I also know lots of women doing similar work who would probably never describes themselves this way no matter how subversive, niche or impactful what they are doing is. This is fascinating, a bit obvious perhaps but equally notable. There are some women in mind I would like to ask this about sometime.