Marcie Bianco on Breaking Free of Fathers

Tell Me About Your Father

Matt Phillp talks with culture writer Marcie Bianco, author of Breaking Free: The Lie of Equality and the Feminist Fight for Freedom about her childhood growing up working class in South New Jersey with a father who, as she puts it “erased himself” and how that foundation informs her perspective on society and politics today. They talk about how her family dynamic shifted when she got a sports scholarship to Harvard, a moment that changed her life forever, how she learned to defend herself at an early age against her father’s violent outbursts, and what it means to throw off the shackles of systemic oppression and create a life of your own making. Given how bleak it is to truly look at systemic, white patriarchal oppression - another manifestation of father-centric culture if ever there was one - and how it continues to play out in myriad ways for anyone who isn’t a straight white man, Marcie’s take on culture and her book are both fundamentally hopeful, even if she initially struggled to find that sense of hope.

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