The Deepest Meaning of Consent

The End of the Patriarchy, Part 2

Lately, I've been in a somber state of mind. A recent death in the family set me to contemplating what's handed down from parents to children. Much has been written about the sins of the fathers, but less about the ripple effects on wives and daughters. So today I'm meditating on generational legacies in the aftermath of the funeral of my younger cousin.  

It's one thing when an older person who lived long and well succumbs to natural causes. Not a beautiful, successful businesswoman in her prime dying of a heart attack in a Manhattan hotel room. But that's what happened. My cousin Katie was found by hotel staff on February 6th. She was 56. She was in town on business and to see her two children, new college graduates starting their lives here. When her older brother called with an urgent tone in his voice, I feared bad news but never imagined the baby of the family, the youngest of seven siblings, had died.

A bit of backstory:  Our families were close when we were young, during the years our fathers worked in a family business. The company was founded by my uncle and my father and later joined by my cousin Tommy, the boss's son. With only ten years between them, my father was like an older brother to Tommy. Our families spent holidays together and we went as a group to conventions. But there were cracks in the foundation. The two brothers were master salesmen, but my father, the creative force behind the enterprise, lacked the chutzpah his brother possessed in abundance. And the instinct for self-preservation: he never demanded his fair share, which his brother was happy to take for himself. My father also lacked the gene for pretense and social climbing that was passed down to Tommy. But unlike my father and my uncle, Tommy lacked the immigrant work ethic. His father rode him mercilessly, but he never became the businessman or had much of a plan for his future. What he did enjoy was shmoozing, body building, fine cars, and country clubs. And expanding his family, which grew beyond the original five rambunctious kids to include two younger girls.

Katie was born when the business was at its peak in 1967. I was a teenager then, and lost touch with the cousins when I left for college a few years later. The company thrived into the 70s. But by 1980, after cuts in state funding, revenues began to slip, and my father's dream of full ownership collapsed. He left, bitter and unappreciated, with $10,000 in his pocket. But he fared better than his nephew. My uncle cashed out and handed the reins of a struggling business to Tommy, whose chances of turning things around were slim to none. A few years later the company folded. When my uncle died in 1999, neither Tommy nor any of his seven children attended the funeral.

The rift finally ended after Tommy's death, when one of his older sons reached out to my father in his later years. The memorial service for their mother in 2014 was a reunion of sorts, and I had a long conversation with Katie. At the back of the room that night, she told me of the struggles to juggle her professional life with raising kids as a single mother, of her custody battle with a cheating ex-husband estranged from two beautiful children. She alluded to an eating disorder and was now pursuing a wellness path in her life and her career.

That sadness was no impediment to eventual success. In piecing together the details of Katie's life, I found a staggering online record of her accomplishments: president of her own brand at a major healthcare corporation; CEO of a national association of providers; and director of two other affiliated entities. Record-breaking performance by her team. Leader of strategic marketing and operational efforts for some of America's most influential entertainment and retail businesses. Founder, chairman and CEO of her own e-company. It was impressive.

At the funeral, her siblings described Katie, their baby sister, as a straight-A student, a magnet for friends, a trophied athlete. Phi Beta Kappa at university; Harvard Business School; businessperson of the year. Her recent gig with the healthcare company ended with a big payout from the parent investment firm. At the time of her death she was set financially.

The outpouring turned into an avalanche. Friends depicted her as a constant light of positive energy. She radiated love, was kind and never judgmental. Again and again, this was the theme, of a perennial cheerleader, a magical mother and friend. She celebrated people, threw fantastic parties, opened her house to others. She gave as much and worked as hard as she could and more. She was a master motivator; employees followed her from company to company, and they came from far and wide to her funeral. One story stood out. A tearful friend told of Katie's generosity of spirit on a ski trip they had taken together. The friend was a terrible skier, but Katie wouldn't let her believe that; even though she had already finished her run, Katie went back up to help the friend down, following with words of encouragement. "You're great! Look how you made that turn," Katie shouted as Beth inched her way along.

There it is, I thought, the snow job that was Katie's real superpower. Amid the excess of accolades, this moment of truth recalled another, unearthed in a disconcerting interview she gave to a digital magazine a few years ago. When asked if there was a particular person who helped her get to where she was, Katie said: "My father was my hero. He was a lifelong athlete, and in his youth, he was the weightlifting champion of northern California. A wonderful entrepreneur with a zest for life, he instilled a mindset that anything was possible, as long as I worked hard and believed in myself." That my cousin Tommy was anyone's hero was hard enough to swallow. But northern California instead of New Jersey? An entrepreneur instead of the boss's profligate son?

Listening to the eulogies, I was sad, my mind elsewhere--on the long conversation nine years ago at the back of the room. On the alarming social media photos of Katie, with stick arms and sagging flesh. On the story her brother and sister told me privately, of the double rejection of Katie's divorce--how her ex-husband demanded visitation with his new wife, and when the court denied him, he abandoned his kids. Another sister spoke of an accident in 2022, when Katie fractured her femur and shattered her pelvis; she had fallen out of her son's bed, where she was sleeping following a romantic breakup.

How could this remarkable woman have drawn so much pain? Were all the successes the work of a shadow self, running from some inner demon? Family history gives clues. Her mother Ellen gave birth five times in five years. I have no doubt she was done with pregnancy and childbirth. Yet in 1965, five years after her fifth child was born, she gave birth again, to a sixth, and in 1966 became pregnant with Katie. Katie was born two months early, with complications that included a blood type incompatible with her mother's.

Taking more than his fair share was another trait my cousin Tommy inherited from his father, my uncle. Men who take are icons of the patriarchy; Western history is full of conquerors who amass land and fortunes and heirs. Men who stick their flag in the dirt to claim ownership. Yet when we elevate taking, we push up against consent. It's tempting to simplify consent into "no means no." That's true--but there's a level of consent that goes beyond the societal and familial and institutional forces that act on a woman to say okay. When a man presses a woman into childbearing against her deepest wishes, it's a violation of consent. Tommy's wife Ellen, a career woman in her own right, could not stand up to the pressures of the Catholic Church and her husband's sexual needs.

The absence of consent on a spiritual level leaves a hole. The unwanted daughter furiously tries to patch it over, pretend it isn't there. But the emptiness is deep and takes a toll. And it comes out anyway, in all-too-common forms, like gravitating toward the father. Overcompensating to achieve and excel. In the perpetual need to please others. And in panic disorders like chronic anorexia, with its premature osteoporosis and heart attacks that leave behind two shattered adult children.

To be clear, the question of consent within marriage is a relatively new idea. For centuries, women were treated as property, to be handed from their fathers to their husbands for purposes of procreation. Married women did not challenge the expectation to fulfill the childbearing role. If you said, "I do," you gave consent; that was all there was to it. But patriarchal assumptions about women's maternal obligations have passed their expiration date. Our world does not need any more half-hearted mothers, who belong in other occupations and leadership roles. And while hers is an extreme example, the senseless death of my cousin Katie should be a cautionary tale. No one should succumb to the generational consequences of yes-not-yes. We have solidarity now, and clarity, about the deepest meaning of consent.