Advice columns are a weird combination of well-meant psychology and a gossipy voyeurism, like what people did before they could read and comment on LiveJournals. Of course, this means that I totally love them, because there’s nothing I like more than telling people how to handle their business, especially when it’s scaaaaandalous </squeal>.

There are, of course, some that I enjoy reading more than others. I tend to prefer columnists who are blunt and sassy, like “Dear Caroline” from the Philaldelphia Inquirer (is she still there? I haven’t sullied my hands with print media in years.), although Mums thinks she’s harsh. I’m a fan of “Dear Margo,” who would be like having a less-crazy, still awesome Marlene Dietrich as your grandmother. Mums likes the “Dear Abby”-type, whose brand of wisdom matches her hairstyle. I can appreciate it with an irony that is utterly obnoxious, but really, I can’t actually agree with someone who commiserates with a father who’s annoyed his daughter’s fiance didn’t ask him for her hand before proposing.

Her advice was thus: “While I agree that the formality of asking for a woman’s hand (or whatever) may be outdated, particularly if a daughter is self-supporting and out on her own, it is still a gesture of respect. It would have been nice if she had held your feelings in higher regard, but perhaps she didn’t feel her fiance would pass muster.”

Really? What century is this? What effin’ decade is this, actually, because this sexism is, sadly, not as far in the past as it should be. Why does this question keep coming up, in advice columns, and books, and movies? Abby’s right when she says that asking for permission is outdated, but I think she goes of the rails when she says it’s a “gesture of respect” (not to mention her somewhat condescending supposition that it could have been the daughter’s poor choice of fiance that precluded the formality.).

That’s the argument that people who are in favor of the tradition seem to use most, that it doesn’t mean anything real, that it’s just symbolic. So what’s it symbolic of? It’s a holdover from a time when women were property to be passed from their fathers to their husbands, enacted literally by the father giving his daughter away at the altar. It’s symbolic of a time when women were not allowed to make decisions for themselves or were not allowed to enforce those decisions without the approval of men.

The little interjection “particularly if a daughter is self-supporting and out on her own” is another stinger. The implication is that, beyond the regular development of the parent-child relationship, there are degrees of independence, based on her material achievement, that a daughter has to work to establish. Her autonomy is not assumed but something she has to actively pursue. The tradition has a relative value: the more materially dependent she is, the less inherent is her personal autonomy, as expressed by the greater propriety of a request for her hand.

Do I think that asking a father for permission for his daughter’s hand is the downfall of feminism? No, because I don’t think that most fathers think their blessing is a dealbreaker, or that most women would treat it as such. I do think, however, that it is a loaded tradition: it’s a gesture of disrespect to the woman to act as though her consent alone isn’t enough, that her word as a person means less because her person has a vagina. A relationship has two people in it; everyone else is optional. I would never ask my boyfriend’s mother for permission and none would ever question that. The expectation for him to appeal to my father is pure sexism, even if it’s packaged as just a symbol. Symbols by definition stand for something; the fact that the “something” isn’t on the surface makes it more insidious and does nothing to remove its poison.