Are Father/Daughter Dances Sexist?

Daddy/daughter dances are almost always creepy. But do they constitute gender discrimination? If you’re in Rhode Island they do.

Cranston, Rhode Island’s school has traditionally held both a father/daughter dance and a mother/son baseball game as a way to promote parent-child bonding, but also (I suspect) because at least one school staffer wants an excuse to make “Motherboy” jokes once a year. But after a single mother complained that she wasn’t able to participate in the father-daughter dance with her child, the district has cancelled both events on the grounds that specifying what gender the participants must be constitutes a form of gender discrimination not exempted from Rhode Island law.

First, let’s anticipate the comments on this news story — “UGH, single mothers! Ruining everything again.” “Blacks! It’s the blacks!” “Obama’s fault!” “GIVE ME A BREAK WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!” “Sluts should keep their legs closed.” “What is WRONG WITH AMERICA?!?!” “Vote for Ron Paul!”

Now that we’ve got that out of the way — Rhode Island’s situation is unique because while at the federal level father/daughter dances are specifically exempted from definitions of gender discrimination, in the state of Rhode Island, they’re not. Which means that a school that continued to hold gender-specific events like mother-son baseball games could be putting itself in a position to get sued, which is pretty much the #1 thing that school districts do not want to happen to them.

Of course, a Republican candidate for public office has vowed that, if elected, he will remedy this egregious violation of a father’s right to embarrass his daughter by trying to do the Dougie in front of her friends. Stay tuned for more details as this game-changer of a story develops.