Troubling Motherhood: Maternality in Global Politics 0190939184, 9780190939182

Table of contents :
cover
Series
Troubling Motherhood
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Author Biographies
Foreword
1.The Global Politics of Maternality
SECTION I
2.A Mother’s Violence in Global Politics
3.Protestant Paramilitary Mothering
4.Extending Acts of Motherhood
5.Logics of Protection and the Discursive Construction of Refugee Fathers
SECTION II
6.Bearing Peace and War
7.Ideal Citizens and Family Values
8.Mother Knows Best?
9.Queering Reproductive Aid
10.Troubling Conceptions of Motherhood
SECTION III
11.Feminist Politics Still Needs Motherhood
12.Privatized Bodies in Public Locations
13.Raising Children in Strangeness
14.Celebrity Global Motherhood
15.Earthborn
16.Speaking from the Margins of Motherhood
Index

Citation preview

Troubling Motherhood

ii

OXFORD STUDIES IN GENDER AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Series editors: J. Ann Tickner, American University, and Laura Sjoberg, University of Florida Windows of Opportunity How Women Seize Peace Negotiations for Political Change Miriam J. Anderson

Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping Women, Peace, and Security in Post-​Conflict  States Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley

Women as Foreign Policy Leaders National Security and Gender Politics in Superpower America Sylvia Bashevkin

Gender, Sex, and the Postnational Defense Militarism and Peacekeeping Annica Kronsell

Gendered Citizenship Understanding Gendered Violence in Democratic India Natasha Behl Enlisting Masculinity The Construction of Gender in U.S. Military Recruiting Advertising during the All-​Volunteer  Force Melissa T. Brown The Politics of Gender Justice at the International Criminal Court Legacies and Legitimacy Louise Chappell Cosmopolitan Sex Workers Women and Migration in a Global City Christine B. N. Chin Intelligent Compassion Feminist Critical Methodology in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Catia Cecilia Confortini Complicit Sisters Gender and Women’s Issues across North-​South Divides Sara de Jong Gender and Private Security in Global Politics Maya Eichler This American Moment A Feminist Christian Realist Intervention Caron E. Gentry Scandalous Economics Gender and the Politics of Financial Crises Aida A. Hozić and Jacqui True Rewriting the Victim Dramatization as Research in Thailand’s Anti-​Trafficking Movement Erin M. Kamler

The Beauty Trade: Youth, Gender, and Fashion Globalization Angela B. V. McCracken Rape Loot Pillage The Political Economy of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict Sara Meger From Global to Grassroots The European Union, Transnational Advocacy, and Combating Violence against Women Celeste Montoya Who Is Worthy of Protection? Gender-​Based Asylum and U.S. Immigration Politics Meghana Nayak Revisiting Gendered States Feminist Imaginings of the State in International Relations Swati Parashar, J. Ann Tickner, and Jacqui True Gender, UN Peacebuilding, and the Politics of Space Locating Legitimacy Laura J. Shepherd A Feminist Voyage through International Relations J. Ann Tickner The Political Economy of Violence against Women Jacqui True Queer International Relations Sovereignty, Sexuality and the Will to Knowledge Cynthia Weber Bodies of Violence Theorizing Embodied Subjects in International Relations Lauren B. Wilcox

Troubling Motherhood Maternality in Global Politics Edited by Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd

1

iv

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Control Number: 2019039705 ISBN 978–​0–​19–​093918–​2 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

This book is dedicated to all those who mother, in various ways, and all those who work for their right to do so.

vi

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments  ix Author Biographies   xi Foreword  xvii 1. The Global Politics of Maternality   1 Anna L. Weissman and Lucy B. Hall SECTION I:  Performances of Motherhood 2. A Mother’s Violence in Global Politics: An Interrogation of Violent Femininity and Motherhood Narratives   17 Katerina Krulisova 3. Protestant Paramilitary Mothering: Mothers and Daughters during the Northern Irish Troubles   36 Sandra M. McEvoy 4. Extending Acts of Motherhood: Storytelling as Resistance to Stigma  51 Jamie J. Hagen 5. Logics of Protection and the Discursive Construction of Refugee Fathers  67 Lucy B. Hall SECTION II:  Maternality and the State 6. Bearing Peace and War: Sex, Motherhood, and the Treaty of the Pyrenees  87 Laura Sjoberg 7. Ideal Citizens and Family Values: The Politics of Reproductive Fitness  103 Anna L. Weissman

vi

8. Mother Knows Best? Critical Maternal Ethics and the Rape Clause   122 Rebecca Wilson 9. Queering Reproductive Aid   139 Corinne L. Mason 10. Troubling Conceptions of Motherhood: State Feminism and Political Agency of Women in the Global South   156 Anwar Mhajne and Crystal Whetstone SECTION III:  Gendered Labor and Maternality 11. Feminist Politics Still Needs Motherhood   179 Amanda D. Watson 12. Privatized Bodies in Public Locations: C-​Sections, Toddler Meltdowns, and the Neoliberal Gaze   195 Penny Griffin 13. Raising Children in Strangeness: Cosmopolitan Mothering and Domestic Helpers in Expatriate Families   214 Catherine Goetze 14. Celebrity Global Motherhood: Maternal Care and Cosmopolitan Obligation   233 Annika Bergman Rosamond 15. Earthborn: Maternity and Natality on a Hurting Planet   252 Cara Daggett 16. Speaking from the Margins of Motherhood: A Politics (M)otherwise   273 Sara C. Motta Index  291

[ viii ] Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Lucy: Toni Morrison once wrote, “if there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must be the one to write it.” For me, this is that book. From the early conversations with my co-​editors, Laura and Anna, it was clear that this book was destined to be a deeply feminist, collaborative effort, enriched and nourished by bringing together a diversity of scholars. I  have immensely enjoyed co-​editing this book with Laura and Anna and am so grateful for their enthusiasm, wisdom, and sharp editorial eyes. Also deepest thanks and gratitude to those who have contributed. Reading and editing the chapters have brought me many moments of joy, empathy, and despair (directed toward the patriarchy not at the authors), and the tears that come with them. Finally, I would also like to thank my mother-​in-​law, Margo Bonekamp, whose grandmothering of my daughters makes much of this work possible. Anna: I would like to acknowledge my fellow co-​editors, Laura and Lucy, for their endless work throughout this project, creatively collaborating across the world, on three different continents. You women are my inspiration. This volume has been an incredible joy, and it has been my utmost pleasure to work with you both, and with our amazing contributors. It’s incredible to think that this wonderful project initially grew from a discussion at the International Feminist Journal of Politics conference in Ohio! This volume would not have been possible without the immense blood, sweat, and tears that our foremothers have put in before us, and we acknowledge this immeasurable debt. Finally, I would like to thank my partner Chris, without whose love, unending support, and cooking, this work would not have been possible. You remind me that the sky is the limit, and I am forever grateful. Laura: I would, above all, like to thank Lucy and Anna for inviting me to join them on this collaborative journey. It has been a creative, wonderful, and joyous experience. I am continually inspired by the fierce intelligence and

x

commitment of the feminists with whom I work, including the contributors to this volume. I owe an intellectual debt to you all. Lucy, Anna, Laura, and all of the authors are grateful for the thoughtful comments and insights contributed by panel audiences at the International Feminist Journal of Politics conference in San Francisco, 2018, and at the 59th annual convention of the International Studies Association, also in San Francisco, 2018. Many others have been supportive and generous with both time and enthusiasm throughout the process of raising this book—​ too many to name here—​and all have our humble appreciation.

[ x ] Acknowledgments

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

Annika Bergman Rosamond is Associate Professor in International Relations at the Department of Political Science, Lund University. She is also the Director of the MA in Global Studies at the Graduate School, Faculty of Social Sciences at Lund University. Prior to arriving at Lund, she held a permanent post as Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Affairs (DIIS). Her main research interests include cosmopolitan thought, feminism and IR/​ security studies including feminist foreign policy, and celebrity humanitarianism and politics. Annika has written extensively on celebrity activism. Among other things, she is the editor of War, Ethics and Justice: New Perspectives on a Post-​9/​11 World (with Mark Phythian; Routledge, 2012) and has published in journals such as Cooperation and Conflict, International Relations, Internasjonal Politikk, Global Society, Ethics and International Affairs, and International Feminist Journal of Politics. Cara Daggett is an assistant professor of political science at Virginia Tech. Her research centers on feminist approaches to studying technology, science, and environmental politics. Her book, The Birth of Energy:  Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work (Duke University Press, 2019) considers how the science of energy contributed to the imperial governance of work in the nineteenth century. She has also published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics, where she won the journal’s Enloe Award, and Millennium: Journal of International Studies. Catherine Goetze is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Tasmania, which she joined in 2016. Her research focuses on the sociology of globalization, and she has widely published on international relations, refugees, peacebuilding and intervention, and cosmopolitanism. She has recently published a major study on the sociology of United Nations peacebuilding missions, The Distinction of Peace (University

xi

of Michigan Press, 2017). Currently, Dr. Goetze is working on a project on cosmopolitanism, families, migration, and world politics. Penny Griffin is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations in the School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Australia (the University of New South Wales). She works in the areas of international political economy, international relations, gender and feminist studies, and the politics of visual and popular culture, and she published widely on these topics. Her books include Popular Culture, Political Economy and the Death of Feminism: Why Women Are in Refrigerators and Other Stories (Routledge, 2015)  and Gendering the World Bank:  Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundations of Global Governance (Palgrave, 2009). Jamie J. Hagen is a Lecturer in International Relations at Queen’s University Belfast. Previously, she was the 2018–​2019 International Studies Association (ISA) James N. Rosenau Post-​Doctoral Fellow. She received her PhD in Global Governance and Human Security from the University of Massachusetts, Boston in 2018. Her writing at the intersection of gender, security studies, and LGBTQ communities appears in International Affairs (2016) and Critical Studies on Security (2017). Jamie has also written a number of book chapters, including the chapter, “Global LGBTQ Politics and Human Rights,” for the edited collection Human Rights: Interdisciplinary Approaches. She serves as a Member-​at-​Large and Communications officer for the LGBTQA Caucus at the ISA. Jamie also writes about LGBTQ politics, reproductive justice, and feminism for publications including Inside HigherEd, Rolling Stone, and ReWire. Lucy B. Hall is a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam and doctoral researcher at the UNSW Sydney, Australia (the University of New South Wales). Her doctoral research explores the discursive construction of humanitarian protection norms to investigate the ways in which they are underpinned by logics of gender. Lucy has published several coauthored book chapters, in books such as Gender Matters in Global Politics (Routledge, 2015) and Responsibility to Protect and Women, Peace and Security: Aligning the Protection Agendas (Brill, 2013). Katerina Krulisova is a Lecturer in International Relations at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her research interests are in gender and security; discourses of legitimization of international interventionism in Libya and Mali; representations of women perpetrators of political violence in the United States, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia; and Czech approaches to the UN’s Women, Peace, and Security Agenda. As an early-​ career

[ xii ]  Author Biographies

researcher, she has published articles in Politics & Gender and Central European Journal of International and Security Studies. Corinne L. Mason is an Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Sociology at Brandon University. Her research maps how feminist and queer languages and logics are incorporated into institutional and mediated contexts with an emphasis on global LGBTIQ rights, gender-​ based and sexualized violence, and reproductive justice. You can find her work published in Feminist Formations, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Feminist Media Studies, Feminist Teacher, Atlantis:  Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Surveillance & Society, and Canadian Journal of Communication. Sandra M. McEvoy is a Clinical Associate Professor of Political Science and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Boston University. McEvoy’s research interests include the dynamics of political change, including women’s participation in political violence; and gender-​focused strategies that incorporate perpetrators of political violence into long-​term conflict resolution strategies. She has written extensively on the Northern Irish conflict, including the gendered motivations for women’s participation in political violence and the impact that such participation has on notions of men and masculinity. McEvoy’s current project is The Oxford Handbook on Global LGBT Politics (Oxford University Press, 2019), of which she is co-​ editor. The Handbook is one of the first collections that uses sexuality as a critical lens through which to understand global politics. Anwar Mhajne is a political scientist specializing in international relations and comparative politics with a focus on gender and politics. Currently, she is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stonehill College, Easton, Massachusetts. Her research is at the intersection of gender, religion, and Middle Eastern politics. Mhajne focuses on how Islamist beliefs and institutions in the Middle East structure Muslim women’s political understandings, agencies, and opportunities at local, national, and international levels. Mhajne’s work has been featured in The International Feminist Journal of Politics, The Conversation, Middle East Eye, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Sara C. Motta is a mother, critical theorist, poet, and popular educator who currently works in the Politics Discipline at the University of Newcastle, Australia. At present she is co-​facilitating a number of projects, including “La Politica de la Maternidad” (“The Politics of Motherhood”) with militant mothers and grandmothers in Colombia, Brazil, and Australia. She

Author Biographies  [ xiii ]

xvi

has published more than forty academic articles/​chapters covering the topics of decolonial feminism and other feminized politics, emancipatory pedagogies, and prefigurative epistemologies. Her latest books include Constructing 21st Century Socialism in Latin America:  The Role of Radical Education with Mike Cole (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Liminal Subjects: Weaving (Our) Liberation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). Laura J. Shepherd is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sydney, Australia, and also a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security in London, UK. She works at the intersection of gendered global politics, critical approaches to security, and International Relations theory. Laura is the author/​editor of seven books, including Gender, UN Peacebuilding, and the Politics of Space: Locating Legitimacy (Oxford University Press, 2017)  and Gender Matters in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations (Routledge, 2015). She tweets from @drljshepherd and blogs occasionally at The Disorder of Things. Laura Sjoberg is Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida. Her research addresses issues of gender and security, with foci on politically violent women, feminist war theorizing, sexuality in global politics, and political methodology. Her work has been published in more than fifty books and journals in political science, law, gender studies, international relations, and geography. Her forthcoming and recent books include International Relations’ Last Synthesis (with J. Samuel Barkin; Oxford University Press, 2019); The Routledge Handbook on Gender and Security (with Caron E. Gentry and Laura J. Shepherd; Routledge, 2018); and Women as Wartime Rapists (New York University Press, 2016). Amanda D. Watson is teaching faculty in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. Her research examines gendered and racialized citizenship, labor responsibility, paid and unpaid care work, maternal affect, and representation. Her most recent publications explore the status of motherhood in contemporary North American society, including the maternal responsibility to generate good feelings in others. Anna L. Weissman is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Florida and former FLAS Fellow at UF’s Center for European Studies (2013–​2017). Anna’s dissertation focuses on same-​sex reproductive rights in Europe, uncovering the intertwining histories of normative sexuality, traditional procreative gender roles, and the mythology of the nation-​state,

[ xiv ]  Author Biographies

and develops the concept of Repronormativity. She not only explains attitudes toward LGBT parenting but also shows how heteronormative reproduction colors ideas of political belonging. Anna has published in the Journal of GLBT Family Studies, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy, and Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security (Routledge, 2018). In addition to her academic work, Anna has curated several exhibits in local museums related to LGBTQ politics, local women’s social and political contributions, and ethnic, racial, and gender relations during war. Crystal Whetstone is a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati studying comparative and international politics with a focus on political participation and gender in politics. Whetstone’s dissertation explores the gender-​specific form of political participation known as political motherhood and how this mobilization can both further and hinder women’s long-​ term political participation. Her work has been featured in the International Feminist Journal of Politics and The Conversation. Rebecca Wilson is a final year PhD student at the University of St. Andrews. Her thesis focuses on gendered moral agency in stories of evil, concentrating on rape culture. Her research examines how an inclusive feminist relational ontology can be used to challenge dominant narratives. Alongside her PhD, Rebecca works as a Student Developer supporting and enhancing students’ academic skills and as a campaign manager for a women’s rights charity.

Author Biographies  [ xv ]

xvi

FOREWORD FIONA ROBINSON

“I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars” (E.M. Forster, Howards End). This quotation from E.M. Forster’s Howards End is widely understood as a simple but profound statement on the essential link between motherhood and peace. But in the novel, the words appear as businessman Henry Wilcox’s fond, if patronizing, memory of his late wife’s simplistic and innocent view of politics. The reader learns, however, that Ruth Wilcox was anything but simple—she was a complex, spiritual, loving woman, but also a woman who had lost her selfhood in becoming “Mrs. Wilcox”. Ultimately, we see that Ruth Wilcox’s views on mothers, war and politics are not naïve or fanciful, but emblematic of the book’s central theme—connection. It is human relationship  –​including, but not limited to, relations between mothers and their children—that Forster sees as the key to maintaining and repairing the fragile fabric of society, and of the world. The fact that this quotation is so well-​known and well-​used demonstrates how strongly it resonates, even after more than a century. And yet despite the truth it seems to speak to many, for others, it contains contradictions or tensions. Critics insist that “war” and “mothers” occupy different spheres, imagining a bifurcated world in which the “public” world of politics and security is absolutely separate from the ”private” world of the domestic life and the (heteropatriarchal) family. Others suggest that it offers an idealistic view of mothers, glossing over the extent to which mothers can be negligent and even violent towards others, including their own children. Feminists worry about the association of mothers with peace, citing the reification of the public/​private binary and its suggestion of biological essentialism. They also express concern over the apparent association of all women with mothering, predicting a lack of recognition, or stigmatization, for women who—for myriad reasons—eschew this role.

xvi

Lucy B.  Hall, Anna L.  Weissman, and Laura J.  Shepherd’s wonderful volume, Troubling Motherhood, takes on these and many other debates surrounding mothers, mothering and motherhood in global politics. The book begins by preempting the reaction of some readers who will undoubtedly ask: “what does motherhood have to do with the ‘high politics’ of war, security and global political economy?”. One by one, the chapters in this volume demonstrate, using both theoretical and empirical analyses, that the answer to this question is “everything”. But they also remind us that there is no single answer to this question—no singular or overarching lesson to be learned about the performances and practices of motherhood in the terrain of global politics. Motherhood is not a “homogeneous, universal standpoint”; rather, it is “organized, performed and rendered intelligible through hierarchical configurations of femininity, masculinity, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender identity, nationality, and religion” (Weissman and Hall 2019, 1). Feminist theory and gender studies have made great inroads in the field of International Relations over the past three decades. In 1983, Cynthia Enloe published Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s Lives, which used a gender analysis to reveal the fundamental contradictions of militarism. This book paved the way for a stream of further books from Enloe, and for a wave of feminist research—not only on war and militarism, but on all aspects and subfields of International Relations. Enloe’s expert analysis weaves together her exploration of the roles of women—as prostitute, military wife, military nurse, official soldier, guerilla soldier and defense industry worker—while also revealing the structural and ideological role of gender in upholding the hierarchical identities and roles that constitute militarism (Enloe 1983). But as Micaela di Leonardo argued in her 1985 review article, one omission in Enloe’s book is an exploration of the ideology of the “Moral Mother”. For di Leonardo, this is problematic: “we need to analyze the persistence of Moral Mother ideology”, she argued; “. . . the profound symbolic linking of women with children and therefore with superior morality needs to be explored further as it bears on perceptions of women as workers, as soldiers and soldiers’ kin, and as citizens of militarized states” (di Leonardo 1985, 611). But, as di Leonardo goes on to point out, maternalism is not an easy subject with which to work; it is difficult, she explains, “to maintain a distinction between feminist concepts of peace-​oriented maternal thought and the culturally ubiquitous sexist, homophobic, and sentimentalizing constructions of motherhood” (di Leonardo 1985, 613). Clearly, many feminist researchers in IR have felt the same way, as analyses of motherhood in areas of IR have been few and far between, even as feminist IR has flourished. Clearly, motherhood—to use a military analogy—is a minefield.

[ xviii ] Foreword

Ultimately, di Leonardo takes a strong view on the subject in her essay; we should, she argues (quoting Jean Bethke Elshtain), fight to “’junk all received notions of traditional femininity and motherhood,’ because they cannot be transformed and will always be used against women to push them back into full responsibility for home and children”. She insists that we should not give in to the demand to abandon our “selfish” feminist goals for the role of self-​sacrificing nurturer; indeed, we must “retire the Moral Mother from the field” (di Leonardo 1985, 615). Luckily for their readers, Hall, Weissman and Shepherd—along with their many contributors—have refused to “junk” motherhood, or to be constrained by the dichotomy that pits feminists against mothers, painting the former as “selfish” and the latter as “self-​sacrificing”. Rather than choose “sides” in a debate designed to alienate women from each other, and from themselves, the editors and authors of Troubling Motherhood choose instead to dwell in the tensions and contradictions of mothering, focusing their critical attention on the ideology and institutions of patriarchy. One of the most useful theoretical tools found in the book, which helps to propel us beyond dichotomies, is Anna Weissman’s distinction between the patriarchal institution of Motherhood and the activity of “mothering,” (Weissman, this volume). As Weissman explains, mothering describes the “actions and experience of nurturing . . . child-​rearing and development”. Since, as she points out, “anyone can mother”, she prefers the term “parenting” (Weissman, this volume). Weissman relies on Adrienne Rich for her conception of “Motherhood”—a patriarchal institution that is male-​ defined and oppressive, ensuring that women remain under male control (Rich, cited in Weissman, this volume). This institution privileges heterosexual, reproductive sex—reifying a female sexuality that is “necessarily (re)productive and a normative feminine identity that is necessarily tied to heterosexual maternity” (Weissman, this volume). Weissman goes on to demonstrate how normative reproduction—the foundation of the patriarchal institution of Motherhood—defines and limits who can (and should) reproduce or parent, not only enforcing maternity for some, but enforcing non-​reproduction for others (Weissman, this volume). Weissman’s antidote for this disciplinary power is the queering of Motherhood, an approach which is also used by Corinne Mason in her chapter on reproductive aid. Like Weissman, Mason points out that attention to women—this time in Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy—conforms to heteronormative and cisnormative frames that construct women as mothers in the context of reproductive justice (Mason, this volume). Despite the presence of “inclusivity” in policy documents, women with marginalized sexualities, gender identities and expressions, as well as people with

Foreword  [ xix ]

x

non-​binary sex characteristics, are regularly ignored. By queering our lenses, we are troubling the framework through which we are compelled to view reproduction and motherhood. When patriarchy is understood not as “men’s power over women”, but as a hierarchical social system that separates “men from men as well as from women and divides women into the good and the bad” (Gilligan 2011, 177), Weissman and Mason’s strategy of queering is revealed as an important method of feminist resistance. While understanding the disciplinary power of “Motherhood” is crucial for feminists, so too is understanding the critical potential of “mothering”. While “maternal politics” and “maternal ethics” may seem to reconfirm “normative genders using harmful stereotypes”, it is also a “useful tool, borne in opposition to masculine politics” (Wilson, this volume). Indeed, as Rebecca Wilson argues, maternal ethics provides a resistance to these masculine politics that limit and harm those of all genders (Wilson, this volume, italics added). Furthermore, given its global focus, Troubling Motherhood draws us away from the tendency to view mothering and Motherhood through a Western-​centric lens. Mhajne and Whetstone remind us that, in many countries of the Global South, many women’s roles as mothers are an important, even essential, part of their identities, which accounts for much of “their experiences and engagement with the world” (Mhajne and Whetstone, this volume). But again, the experience is double-​edged; “bargaining with patriarchy” in states like Egypt, Argentina and Sri Lanka requires conforming to patriarchal notions of “respectability”, while other women are marginalized and vilified. And while it is crucial to explore the nature and extent of mothers’ political activism, it is equally important to register as political the mundane, physically-​demanding and repetitive work of “mothering”. In patriarchal societies, this work is often, but not always and not consistently, carried out by women. It is privatized, unremunerated and not recognized as “work”, but widely seen as a “labour of love”. Under capitalism, it “counts for nothing” (Waring 1999). Under neo-​ liberalism, as Penny Griffin’s chapter explains, we have witnessed increased privatization of responsibility for families and children, precipitated by the neoliberal asset-​stripping of welfare states and social infrastructures (Griffin, this volume). These changes—giving rise to what Jody Heymann has called a “perfect storm”—have left many households struggling to earn a living wage while caring for children and other family members. In many contexts, this struggle has been exacerbated by the decreased ability—or will—of the public sector to provide solutions (Heymann 2006, 11). As I wrote in 2013, the ability at once to honor and despise the values and activities of mothering derives from a remarkable assemblage of

[ xx ] Foreword

power. This power is exercised willfully by men (and women) who uphold the masculinist values, policies and institutions that simultaneously essentialize women’s reproductive roles and devalue the labor of caring. It is also exercised through the structures and institutions of capitalism and the state and, discursively, through media representations and the daily performances of women and men as “carers” and “workers” (Robinson 2013, 104). In that 2013 article, I relied on the insights of Sara Ruddick’s Maternal Thinking to shed light on the tensions between the discursive constructions of women as “mothers” and the emancipatory goals of feminism. In the early 1980s Ruddick wrote about mothers as thinkers, based on a strong belief that their ways of thinking and acting were different from the dominant ideas of the rational moral agent to which we were accustomed (Ruddick 1980). This work dovetailed with the moral and developmental psychology of Carol Gilligan, who heard a   “different voice” of morality in the women and girls she interviewed. This was a voice that saw the world as “comprised of relationships rather than of people standing alone, a world that coheres through human connection rather than through a system of rules” (Gilligan 1993, 29). This relational ethic is, for Gilligan, a feminist ethic, not because it “belongs” to women or because it is anti-​ men or somehow against the ethics of justice, but because it demands a questioning of the script of patriarchy. Gilligan’s reference to “human connection” brings me back to the writing of E.M. Forster. Less well-​known and cited than the quotation on mothers and wars in Howards End is the novel’s epigraph—“Only connect”. While literary critics debate the meaning of this phrase, I read it as an entreaty to really, finally, see the other—to “care to know”, to be attentive and responsive to that other through the prism of their relation to one’s self. In connecting with the other, one also connects the fragments of oneself. This kind of relational moral response does not belong to mothers or women; rather, a version of it, based on an idealized mother-​child relation—where the mother sacrifices herself, and hence the possibility of real relationship—is ascribed to mothers and valorized in patriarchal societies. As Gilligan argues, in the culture of patriarchy (whether overt or hidden), the different voice with its ethic of care sounds feminine. Heard in its own right and on its own terms, it is a human voice (Gilligan 2011, 25). The reclaiming of this voice—not only for mothers, or women, but for all people—is crucial to feminist transformation. But reclamation without critique—of patriarchy and the disciplinary institution of “Motherhood”— will continue to replicate the hierarchies and binary logics which have valorized and oppressed “good mothers” and excluded and marginalized “bad women”. It is its fine balance between critique and affirmation that

Foreword  [ xxi ]

xxi

makes Troubling Motherhood such an important volume. Addressing topics as fascinating and diverse as celebrity global motherhood (Bergman Rosamond); refugee fathers (Hall) and mothers and daughters in the Northern Irish troubles (McEvoy), the authors refuse to be constrained by prescribed methods or frameworks, revealing the complex yet crucial role played by the discourses and practices of mothers, mothering and motherhood in Global Politics. It is the kind of book that is so sorely needed in the discipline of International Relations. Fiona Robinson November, 2018

REFERENCES Enloe, C. 1983. Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s Lives. Boston: South End Press. Forster, E.M. 2000. Howards End. London: Penguin Books. Di Leonardo, M. 1985. “Morals, Mothers, and Militarism: Antimilitarism and Feminist Theory” Feminist Studies 11, no. 3: 599–​617. Gilligan, C. 1982. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gilligan, C. 2011. Joining the Resistance. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hall, L. B. and Weissman, A. L. “Motherhood and Maternality in Global Politics.” In Troubling Motherhood: Maternality in Global Politics, edited by L. Hall, A. Weissman and L. Shepherd. New York: Oxford University Press. Heymann, J. 2006. Forgotten Families: Ending the Growing Crisis Confronting Children and Working Parents in the Global Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mason, C. 2019. “Queering Reproductive Aid.” In Troubling Motherhood: Maternality in Global Politics, edited by L. Hall, A. Weissman and L. Shepherd. New York: Oxford University Press. Mhajne, A. and Whetstone, C. 2019. “Troubling Conceptions of Motherhood: State Feminism and Political Agency of Women in the Global South.” In Troubling Motherhood: Maternality in Global Politics, edited by L. Hall, A. Weissman and L. Shepherd. New York: Oxford University Press. Robinson, F. 2013. “Discourses of Motherhood and Women’s Health: Maternal Thinking as Feminist Politics” Journal of International Political Theory 10, no.1: 94–​108. Waring, M. 1999. Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Weissman, A. L. 2019. “Ideal Citizens and Family Values: The Politics of Reproductive Fitness.” In Troubling Motherhood: Maternality in Global Politics, edited by L. Hall, A. Weissman and L. Shepherd. New York: Oxford University Press. Wilson, R. 2018. “Mother Knows Best? Critical Maternal Ethics and the Rape Clause.” In Troubling Motherhood: Maternality in Global Politics, edited by L. Hall, A. Weissman and L. Shepherd. New York: Oxford University Press.

[ xxii ] Foreword

CHAPTER 1

The Global Politics of Maternality ANNA L . WEISSMAN AND LUC Y B. HALL

I

n global politics, the procreative potential of women’s bodies is policed, objectified, surveilled, and feared. However, as with so many political phenomena coded “female” in the binary cognitive logics of the West, the diverse ways in which performances and practices of motherhood are constituted by and are constitutive of other dimensions of political life are frequently obscured. To the uncritical eye, motherhood may seem antithetical to high politics (Confortini and Robinson 2014, 28). By illuminating and interrogating representations and narratives of maternity, this volume explores how practices of global politics shape and are shaped by the institution of motherhood. We propose that motherhood as an institution is troubled, complicated, and constructed in diverse ways across diverse settings: maternality is not a homogenous, universal standpoint, and thus performances and practices of motherhood warrant closer and more sustained scrutiny. Inspired by Carole Pateman (1992), Sara Ruddick (1980, 1995), V. Spike Peterson (1992, 1999, 2004, 2014), Carol Cohn (2014), Fiona Robinson (1999, 2011), and Dorothy Roberts (1993, 2000), among many others, this volume shows how motherhood is organized, performed, and rendered intelligible through hierarchical configurations of femininity, masculinity, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender identity, nationality, and religion. Inspired by Sara Ruddick’s ideas on mothering, ethics, and peace, this volume is a continuation of the “waves of feminist research” that Sara Ruddick’s Maternal Thinking (1980, 1995)  set in motion (Confortini and

Anna L. Weissman and Lucy B. Hall, The Global Politics of Maternality In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0001

2

Robinson 2014, 38). Following J. Ann Tickner and Laura Sjoberg, we recognize Ruddick as one of the “founding scholars” in feminist International Relations (IR) (Tickner and Sjoberg 2011, x; Confortini and Robinson 2014, 41). Acknowledging the intellectual debt we owe to Ruddick, it is important to ensure that her work and the purpose of this volume are not interpreted as an attempt to essentialize mothers or motherhood. In this vein, Catia Confortini and Abigail Ruane write that Ruddick’s argument has often been characterized as essentialist, positing the idea that mothers are more peaceful than other political subjects, either by nature or by socialization (2014, 77). However, Ruddick never claimed that mothering necessarily lends itself to peace nor that all mothers are inherently peaceful, as Confortini and Ruane explain; Ruddick argues instead that these claims are disempowering for women (2014, 77). Mothers, as Ruddick’s work remind us, “are not always patient, kind or nurturing; mothers can be violent toward their children” (Confortini and Robinson 2014, 41). She instead proposes that we do not exclude the experience, values, and styles of thinking that are found in maternal practice, which are disparaged and excluded by dominant epistemology. As she wrote, “to claim a maternal identity is not to make an empirical generalization, but to engage in a political act” (Ruddick 1995, 56). We are indebted to Ruddick and those who continue to stimulate and renew engagement with her work. We hope that this volume does justice to the legacies on which we are building and continues important feminist work of rethinking “the ‘traditional’ IR issues of security, war and peace” (Robinson and Confortini 2014, 42) with a view to bringing about a more just and peaceful world. Women’s service and duty to the state have largely been seen through their maternal, reproductive capacities (Pateman 1992, 15–​16). As Pateman writes: “Motherhood, as feminists have understood for a very long time, exists as a central mechanism through which women have been incorporated into the modern political order” (1992, 15–​16). However, this maternally based political standing, defined by the patriarchy, is limited: women remain subordinated to men, incorporated as men’s subordinates in the private sphere, excluded from civil society, the public sphere of the economy, and citizenship of the state (Pateman 1992, 16). There is a separation of the public and private spheres, with the private sphere deemed the “apolitical” domestic abode, outside of politics and economics. Thus, the domestic labor of the private sphere, the daily, laborious tasks of “wife” and “mother,” are excluded from consideration. Though the state has always depended on women’s domestic contributions, financially and socially, women remain largely unacknowledged and excluded from formal economic factoring. V.  Spike Peterson rejects this “conceptual and material constitution of

[ 2 ]  Troubling Motherhood

gendered spheres of social activity” (2004, 41), which fails to take seriously biological and social reproductive activities, explaining that this not only marginalizes women (who make up the majority of care workers in the informal sector) but also occludes the role and systemic linkage of domestic care work in global networks of production and trade. She emphasizes the inclusion of the reproductive economy—​the site of social/​biological reproduction and informal economic work like domestic work or sex work—​as an interrelated and necessary part of society and the formal economy, integral to state-​making (Peterson 2004). Peterson’s work has been instrumental in revealing the gendered and heterosexist imperatives of early and modern state-​making, and the institutionalized appropriation and control over women’s bodies, labor, and knowledge, through the “historically interacting systems of domination (patriarchy, state-​making, instrumentalism, capitalism)” (1992, 56; see also Peterson 1999, 2014). Peterson’s work provides profound insight into the global political economy of maternity and care work because women remain responsible for the majority of domestic and unpaid work (Berman 2018). The burden of this work is most often carried by poorer women, women of color, and immigrants (Nilliasca 2011). Much like Peterson’s intersecting economies, the experience of gender intersects with other forms of oppression, like race and class. The experience of motherhood is also complicated by these forms of oppression:  racism and patriarchy, though interrelated and mutually supporting systems, have different effects on the identity and practices of motherhood. As Roberts writes, “Patriarchy does not treat Black and white motherhood identically. In America [though true in other places as well], the image of the Black mother has always diverged from, and often contradicted, the image of the white mother . . . procreation by Black mothers is devalued and discouraged” (1993, 6, 11). Roberts’s (1993) work highlights the historical constructions of black motherhood—​Jezebel slave women, asexual and maternal black mammies, and undeserving mothers on welfare—​which has historically denied to black women the authority and joy of mothering (1993, 10–​12). Thus, she emphasizes the importance of multiple meanings of motherhood that “do not minimize the critical importance of Black and other mothers’ self-​definition” and experience (1993, 7). It is no temporal accident that this volume was conceived at the present moment in political history. There has been a troubling surge in laws and policies that restrict access to reproductive health. More abortion restrictions in the United States were enacted in the three years between 2011 and 2013 than in the entire previous decade (Guttmacher 2014). Republican legislators in the United States have described pregnant women

T h e G l o b a l P ol i t i c s of M at e r n a l i t y  

[ 3 ]

4

as “hosts” whose bodies no longer belong to them once they are “irresponsible” enough to have sex (Embury-​Dennis 2017). In 2017, US President Donald Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, known as the “global gag rule,” which blocks federal funding or aid to any international nongovernmental organization that provides or “promotes” abortion. This policy has been revoked and reissued a number of times since the Reagan administration in 1984, but Trump’s gag rule goes even further, and the impact will be greatly broadened:  thousands of women across the world will be left without contraception and maternal health services (Sengupta 2017). In Argentina, where abortion is legal in cases of rape or if the pregnancy poses a risk to the woman’s life, the Senate voted down a bill to fully decriminalize abortion during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy (Serhan 2018). Amnesty International recently reported that a proposed law in Guatemala, titled “Law for the Protection of Life and Family,” could “criminalize miscarriages, impose prison sentences on women who suffer them, and impose prison sentences on anyone who ‘promotes or facilitates access to abortion’ ” (Amnesty International 2018). In Poland in 2016, 30,000 women took to the streets in a historic demonstration protesting a proposed bill that would make Poland’s already draconian abortion law a complete ban, removing any current provisions for cases in which the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest or even when the woman’s life is at risk (Guardian 2016). As Human Rights Watch reported on International Safe Abortion Day, women find themselves “questioned, detained, arrested, or even sentenced to lengthy prison terms under laws that treat abortion as a crime” (Wurth 2018). The intense policing of reproductive functions suggests that the maternal body is inescapably political; and too frequently the repercussions of this are violent and lethal. The repeal of a 35-​year constitutional ban on abortion in Ireland indicates that change is possible, and the global trend toward restricting access to abortion is not universal (Wurth 2018). Yet, the overall trend is nonetheless troubling and positions this volume as a timely and urgent contribution to scholarship on reproductive rights and justice. Reproduction is central to the site of maternity and motherhood, negotiating the relationship between women, reproductive bodies, and the state. Power and nationhood are expressed through female-​identified bodies and those who are within the normative identity of “reproducer.” Many aspects of identity play vital roles in the construction of who should (or should not) reproduce, including who is considered a legitimate “mother of the nation” and who is considered a threat. For example, in 2013, Israel admitted to giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth control injections without their knowledge; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had

[ 4 ]  Troubling Motherhood

described these immigrants as “threatening our existence as a Jewish and democratic state” (Dawber 2013). Sexuality plays a vital role as well: many countries maintain sexuality-​based access to reproductive technologies, adoption, and governmental financial support for parenting, even after same-​sex marriage has been legalized (Weissman 2017). These are specific representations and narratives of motherhood that reflect a gendered, racialized, heteronormative ordering. While the politics of maternity and reproductive rights are an important focus of this volume, we also take inspiration from the feminist IR research, which has explored how “war talk” is gendered (Cook and Woollacott 1993). The use of maternal language and imagery in “war talk” to describe bombs and munitions is not new territory for feminist IR. Cohn’s work demonstrated that the technocratic discourse of nuclear defense intellectuals is “rife with images of male birth” (Cohn 1987, 699). Cohn writes that the “idea of male birth and its accompanying belittling of maternity—​the denial of women’s role in the process of creation and the reduction of ‘motherhood’ to the provision of nurturance . . . seems thoroughly incorporated into the nuclear mentality” (1987, 670). Recent examples offer evidence that norms around motherhood provide deep rhetorical resources to political leaders to discuss high politics. For example, the US Massive Ordinance Air Blast weapon, or MOAB, was reported on by its nickname, “the mother of all bombs.” Pope Francis decried the use of the term “mother” in relation to the largest non-​nuclear device deployed by the US military, stating that “a mother gives life and this one gives death, and we call this device a mother?” (Mindock 2017). Contestation over the use of maternal language to describe a bomb follows the unpalatability of seeing motherhood as violent; yet, this stereotype negates the realities of international relations. As Roxanne Krystalli explains, the age-​old idea that “femininity is naturally peaceable and world harmony emanates from our wombs walks us back to that same essentialist dead end from which we seek to escape” (2017). Instead, and following Krystalli, this volume pays “close attention to who uses the discourse and imagery of motherhood . . . and to what end” (Krystalli 2017). Finding a way out of this “essentialist dead end” as Krystalli puts it, is central to the questions asked in this book. The book is divided into three sections, which are loosely based on the individual, the state, and the global domains, although together and separately the chapters demonstrate the complex interconnections between the individual, the state, and the global. As a heuristic device, we recognized that distinguishing between the individual, the state, and the global may obscure more than it reveals as well as the extent to which each domain is

T h e G l o b a l P ol i t i c s of M at e r n a l i t y  

[ 5 ]

6

imbricated in the others. While the contributions that follow are diverse, they all share as a point of departure the idea that motherhood matters in global politics.1 The chapters in this volume support Ackerly et al.’s (2006) assertion that dialogue and diversity are strengths in feminist theorizing (Tickner and Sjoberg 2011).

SECTION I: PERFORMANCES OF MOTHERHOOD

The first set of chapters of the volume considers the performance of maternity and the discursive formations of “Mother,” femininity, masculinity, and gender roles. The performance of femininity is often linked with maternity; this unconscious ideology (Weber 2005) or myth of motherhood (Åhäll 2015) informs the ways in which femininity is normatively defined. Uncovering the figure of Mother and maternal femininity illuminates the ways in which this identity is co-​opted and reproduced in gendered norms of peaceful women/​mothers, by heterosexist bounds, and in discursive constructions of protection, responsibility, and victimhood. Katerina Krulisova’s chapter traces the dominant narratives of motherhood in connection to female violence, using the concepts of twisted motherhood, maternal love, and monstrous mothering, together with maternal naivety about realities of war-​fighting. She moves the debate of female political violence from “a woman has done that?” (Gentry and Sjoberg 2015) to the more transgressive, “a mother has done that?” Using the cases of Biljana Plavšić and Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, both accused of genocide and genocidal rape, she shows how actual or mythical motherhood was used both by the women and the media to view, explain, and justify their violence. Krulisova identifies the primacy of motherhood narratives in the representation of female political leaders who transgress normative femininity through violence. At the intersections of class, femininity, and maternal identity, Sandra McEvoy’s chapter also engages with narratives of maternal violence in discussion of Protestant mothers in Loyalist paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland during the 30-​year conflict known as “the Troubles” (1968–​ 1998). McEvoy contributes to the largely underexplored or minimized definitions of motherhood expressed by working-​class women, especially those developed in the context of war. Through interviews with participants of the paramilitary groups, all working class and most of them mothers, she explores the relationship between fighting mothers and their own interest in encouraging or discouraging their children’s participation. McEvoy finds that the testimonies do not follow traditional notions of

[ 6 ]  Troubling Motherhood

motherhood, but rather contribute to the destabilization of static ideas of mothering, motherhood, and maternal protection. With a focus on reproductive justice, Jamie J. Hagen’s chapter discusses the archetype of “ideal mother” in relation to the ways in which lesbian mothers and mothers who have had abortions experience a different kind of stigma. Both groups of women are marginalized for not performing normative motherhood, seen as either outside of heterosexist bounds or outside of reproductive femininity. Through the practices of storytelling and grassroots community building, Hagen illustrates how lesbian mothers and mothers who had abortions challenge normative ideals of motherhood and the limits imposed on women. Lucy B. Hall’s chapter shifts the analytical focus to paternal subjects in recent depictions of refugee fathers, utilizing logics of idealized masculinity, race, and sexuality. Feminist scholarship has identified the reduction of women to symbolic victims and dependents, the “womenandchildren” (Enloe 1990)  in media coverage of international crises. Hall builds on this construction, extending it to paternal subjectivities in the gendered discursive construction of “refugee” and “asylum seeker.” She finds that perceptions of legitimate vulnerability are reliant on logics of paternal protection and responsibility: refugee men are humanized through their connection to their families. Importantly, Hall shows how this contributes to the maternalization of women as well as the demonization of nonpaternal men—​reproducing the seemingly natural link between women (as mothers) and children and the representation of single refugee men as dangerous.

SECTION II: MATERNALITY AND THE STATE

The second set of chapters explores how nationhood and the power of the state are expressed through reproductive bodies. These topics consider the relationship between reproduction and the state, and the reproduction of the state. State power is reproduced through laws that limit reproductive rights and sexual health, through inequalities and discriminatory state practices. This section emphasizes the role of the maternal and of reproductive politics within the hierarchies of state power. Laura Sjoberg’s chapter focuses on the state, a key marker of modernity, and the reproductive role of royal wives. Taking us back in history to the Franco-​Spanish wars of the seventeenth century, with a focus on the Treaty of the Pyrenees and the marriage of Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Theresa to Louis XIV of France, Sjoberg illustrates how Maria Theresa’s womb (not her personhood) became a necessary condition for

T h e G l o b a l P ol i t i c s of M at e r n a l i t y  

[ 7 ]

8

peace and statehood. The marriage and consummation symbolically sealed the transfer of territory and stabilization of the state, and later, the production of a child would ensure the royal line and the preservation of the state. With great historical nuance, Sjoberg illustrates the integral role that childbearing played in the establishment of early-​modern European states and the ways in which the state is intimately linked to the politics of sexuality and reproduction. Continuing the focus on the state, sexuality, and motherhood, Anna L. Weissman’s chapter explores the politics of reproductive fitness. Weissman first analyzes the development of reproductive difference, which she shows underpins perceptions of sex, gender, biology, and pathology. Through analysis of laws, practices, and norms involving voluntary and involuntary sterilization, the chapter uncovers the figure of Mother who produces “Ideal Citizens,” most often falling along racial and class lines. Weissman shows how many young women find it difficult to find a doctor who will perform voluntary sterilization, whereas certain identity groups are targeted for coercive sterilization practices, including indigenous people; ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities; and indigent women. What unfolds in Weissman’s chapter is a discussion of the institution of motherhood as a site of difference, underwritten by racial codes that reinforce the structures requiring maternity from some and restricting maternity for others. Drawing on maternal ethics in her chapter, Rebecca Wilson offers a way to both recognize and respond to inequalities and discriminatory state practices in reproductive health and sexual violence policies. Analyzing a recent UK tax credit policy, known colloquially as the “rape clause,” Wilson demonstrates how mothers, especially with the lowest socioeconomic status, bear being revictimized by the limited criteria of having a child “conceived without consent.” She demonstrates the strength of a critical maternal theory to destabilize power hierarchies and question moral boundaries that legitimize rape politics and reaffirm the state’s role as an inadequate caregiver. Corinne Mason’s chapter also considers discriminatory state practices regarding reproductive and sexual health rights. Utilizing a reproductive justice frame, she identifies the hardships queer and gender-​nonconforming persons face when seeking reproductive health services and affirms reproductive rights as an LGBTIQ issue. Focusing on Canadian foreign policy and assistance, Mason shows how Canadian foreign aid continues to target only cisgender women and girls in its policy and implementation, leaving out the needs of entire communities. Mason identifies how this reproduces motherhood and parenthood as exclusively cisgendered and heteronormative.

[ 8 ]  Troubling Motherhood

Anwar Mhajne’s and Crystal Whetstone’s chapter examines the utility and limitations that come with the mobilization of normative motherhood as a political identity. A close exploration of the maternal politics in Egypt, Sri Lanka, and Argentina reveals the ways in which maternal identities intersect with religious and cultural conceptions of motherhood to provide women with a degree of social authority, often a politics of respectability. Through this “bargaining with patriarchy” (with its commensurate drawbacks), Mhajne and Whetstone show how maternal political identities enabled women to engage and challenge the state and increase their participation in the political public sphere.

SECTION III: GENDERED LABOR AND MATERNALITY

The third section focuses primarily on global configurations of care work and maternal labor, interrogating citizenship, postcolonial critiques of “global mothers,” and multinational and ecological contexts of belonging, family, and child care. These chapters feature narrative, ethnography, storytelling, and poetry, unearthing concepts of maternal anxiety, inclined bodies, and interruption from the physical, psychological, and emotional labor of mothering. Amanda Watson’s chapter argues that in order to better comprehend the institution of motherhood, feminists must retain and critique its disciplinary nature. In particular, she highlights how the institution of motherhood separates mothers from feminism, and women from each other and themselves. Watson applies the “trap of maternalism” as a lens to explore two representations of motherhood in popular media. She demonstrates the need for both a transnational feminist critique of the institution of motherhood and the retention of the language of motherhood in feminist theory. By deftly weaving the personal with the political, Watson’s contribution to this volume draws on and advances Robinson’s argument (2014) that maternal thinking can be generative of feminist political theory. With a focus on emergency cesarean deliveries and public toddler tantrums, Penny Griffin examines the work—​the labor—​of small, and at times mundane, practices that discipline maternal bodies. She illustrates how the normative neoliberalization of public spaces both reproduces and regulates mothering in neoliberalized societies, and how this neoliberal gaze privileges certain maternal identities, practices, and statuses. Griffin’s chapter provides a timely contribution to the ways in which feminist scholars have surfaced and deconstructed the reproductive foundations of economic practices, structures, processes, and assumptions.

T h e G l o b a l P ol i t i c s of M at e r n a l i t y  

[ 9 ]

01

Consistent with Cynthia Enloe’s adaption of the feminist adage, the personal is political, Catherine Goetze’s chapter is a clear reflection on the ways in which the personal is international and the international is personal (Enloe 2014, 343). Goetze’s chapter is an auto-​ethnography of her experience living in China and employing an ayi (nanny) to care for her child. Drawing from a diverse literature, Goetze explores the “nanny question” (Tronto 2002) in relation to cosmopolitan mothering and the difference-​ equality impasse in the context of migration. While Goetze does not claim that cosmopolitanism is a panacea for global inequality and injustice, cosmopolitanism does offer an avenue that affords individuals the space to “juggle globalization’s multiplicity” (Goetze, this volume). Annika Bergman Rosamond’s chapter retains a focus on cosmopolitan mothering but shifts the lens to global celebrity motherhood in the context of humanitarian care work. Similar to Goetze, Bergman Rosamond acknowledges that cosmopolitan thought comes with limitations. Drawing on the work of Kimberly Hutchings (2007), Bergman Rosamond notes that while cosmopolitan thought prioritizes masculine modes of reasoning over women’s ethical stories and experiences, it is a useful framework for exploring humanitarian celebrities and the ways in which they draw from cosmopolitan narratives to describe their activism. Bergman Rosamond’s analysis of celebrity humanitarian work illustrates the ways in which it is both reproductive of essentialized notions of maternal care and sustains, rather than challenges, “statist practices and discourses of sovereign integrity and capitalism” (Bergman Rosamond 2016, 105). Drawing from and expanding on feminist literature on the ethics of care, Bergman Rosamund’s contribution offers important and timely insights into the limits of cosmopolitan mothering and celebrity humanitarianism. Cara Daggett’s chapter blurs the (masculine) distinction between the philosophical and the personal to explore the ecological debate about maternity in the Anthropocene. Responding to feminists like Donna Haraway who advocate against reproduction, Daggett emphasizes maternity as practice and ethics, and reasserts natality and maternity as critical resources in order to address current population issues. Cautious not to romanticize or essentialize women as mothers, she considers what can be gained if the problem of reproduction is approached without necessarily renouncing natality. Through a collection of birth stories, Daggett adopts Adriana Cavarero’s maternal inclination as a response to Haraway’s non-​natalism, citing this “postural ethics” both as unsettling the dominance of Western philosophy that is oriented around the autonomous, independent self, and as a vital medium for a “multispecies reproductive justice” (Daggett, this volume).

[ 10 ]  Troubling Motherhood

Interlacing political philosophy with poetry, Sara C.  Motta’s chapter brings the volume to a close, with a compelling exploration of the intersections of maternity, race, and colonial oppression. Motta’s chapter proposes an “enfleshed cosmopolitics” to generate healing, homecoming, and (re)connection. More specifically, Motta’s contribution suggests fostering a pluridiversity of what motherhood and mothering mean to recover misrepresented wisdoms and to “honor negated (m)other-​subjects and bring reconciliation and healing to the ways that capitalist-​patriarchy has wounded our maternal ancestral lineages, our communities, and ourselves” (Motta, this volume). For Motta, motherhood and temporality are themes that open up the possibility to envision alternative political philosophies that resist the gendered binaries that “paralyse and impoverish mainstream and critical renditions of the political” (Motta 2016). Through these diverse contributions, this collection demonstrates that global politics cannot be fully understood without troubling motherhood and trying to apprehend and comprehend the ways in which it is hierarchically organized by gender, race, nation, class, sexuality, able-​bodiedness, and gender identity. Our intention was never to craft a theoretically homogenous volume. Instead, we seek to draw attention to the different ways and with what political effects motherhood is enacted, motifs of maternality are mobilized, and the subject of “mother” is constituted across diverse settings. By troubling multiple and diverse configurations of motherhood in global politics, we hope that this volume opens up possibilities to reconceptualize hierarchical orderings of identity, knowledge, and practice.

NOTE 1. The reference to “motherhood matters in global politics” is inspired by the title of Laura. J. Shepherd’s edited volume, Gender Matters in Global Politics (2015).

REFERENCES Ackerly, B., Stern, M., and True, J., eds. 2006. Feminist Methodologies for International Relations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Åhäll, L. 2015. Sexing War/​Policing Gender: Motherhood, Myth, and Women’s Political Violence. London, New York: Routledge. Amnesty International. 2018. “Guatemala: Discriminatory Law Puts at Risk the Lives and Rights of Thousands of Women, Girls and LGBTI People.” https://​www. amnesty.org/​en/​latest/​news/​2018/​09/​guatemala-​ley-​discriminatoria-​pone-​en-​ riesgo-​la-​vida-​y-​los-​derechos-​de-​miles-​de-​mujeres-​ninas-​y-​personas-​lgbti/​.

T h e G l o b a l P ol i t i c s of M at e r n a l i t y  

[ 11 ]

21

Associated Press. 2016. “Polish Abortion Law Protestors March against Proposed Restrictions.” Guardian October 24. https://​www.theguardian.com/​world/​2016/​ oct/​24/​polish-​abortion-​law-​protesters-​march-​against-​proposed-​restrictions. Bergman Rosamond, A. 2016. “The Digital Politics of Celebrity Activism against Sexual Violence: Angelina Jolie as Global Mother.” In Understanding Popular Culture and World Politics in the Digital Age, edited by L. Shepherd and C. Hamilton, 101–​118. London, New York: Routledge. Berman, J. 2018. “Women’s Unpaid Work Is the Backbone of the American Economy.” MarketWatch April 15. https://​www.marketwatch.com/​story/​ this-​is-​how-​much-​more-​unpaid-​work-​women-​do-​than-​men-​2017-​03-​07. Cohn, C. 1987. “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals.” Signs 12, no. 4: 687–​718. Cohn, C. 2014. “ ‘Maternal Thinking’ and the Concept of ‘Vulnerability’ in Security Paradigms, Policies, and Practices.” Journal of International Political Theory 10: 46–​69. Confortini, C. C., and Robinson, F. 2014. “Symposium: Maternal Thinking for International Relations? Papers in Honor of Sara Ruddick.” Journal of International Political Theory 10, no. 1: 38–​45. Confortini, C. C., and Ruane, A. 2014. “Sara Ruddick’s Maternal Thinking as Weaving Epistemology for Justpeace.” Journal of International Political Theory 10, no. 7: 70–​93. Cooke, M., and Woollacott, A., eds. 1993. Gendering War Talk. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dawber, A. 2013. “Israel Gave Birth Control to Ethiopian Jews without Their Consent.” Independent January 27. http://​www.independent.co.uk/​news/​ world/​middle-​east/​israel-​gave-​birth-​control-​to-​ethiopian-​jews-​without-​their-​ consent-​8468800.html. Embury-​Dennis, T. 2017. “US Politician Says Pregnant Women Are ‘Hosts’ Once They Are ‘Irresponsible’ Enough to Have Sex.” Independent February 14. http://​www. independent.co.uk/​news/​world/​americas/​us-​republican-​justin-​humphrey-​ oklahoma-​abortion-​law-​sex-​planned-​parenthood-​pro-​choice-​a7580326.html. Enloe, C. 1990. ‘Womenandchildren: Making Feminist Sense of the Persian Gulf Crisis’ The Village Voice, 25 September. Enloe, C. 2014. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gentry, C., and Sjoberg, L. 2015. Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Thinking about Women’s Violence in Global Politics. London: Zed Books. Guttmacher Institute. 2014. More State Abortion Restrictions Were Enabled in 2011–​ 2013 Than in the Entire Previous Decade. January 2. https://​www.guttmacher. org/​article/​2014/​01/​more-​state-​abortion-​restrictions-​were-​enacted-​2011-​ 2013-​entire-​previous-​decade. Hutchings, K. 2007. “Feminist Ethics and Political Violence.” International Politics 44, no. 1: 90–​106. Krystalli, R. 2017. “Spectacles of Death: Stories of Conflict and Love.” http://​ storiesofconflictandlove.com/​spectacles-​of-​death/​. Mindock, C. 2017. “Pope Criticises US Military for Using Word ‘Mother’ to Describe MOAB Bomb.” Independent May 6. http://​www.independent.co.uk/​news/​ world/​americas/​us-​politics/​pope-​criticises-​us-​bomb-​moab-​mother-​of-​all-​ bombs-​military-​a7722131.html.

[ 12 ]  Troubling Motherhood

Motta, S. C. 2016. “Decolonizing Australia’s Body Politics: Contesting the Coloniality of Violence of Child Removal.” Journal of Resistance Studies, 2: 2. Nilliasca, T. 2011. “Some Women’s Work: Domestic Work, Class, Race, Heteropatriarchy, and the Limits of Legal Reform.” Michigan Journal of Race and Law 16: 377. Pateman, C. 1992. “Equality, Difference, Subordination: The Politics of Motherhood and Women’s Citizenship.” In Beyond Equality and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist Politics and Female Subjectivity, edited by G. Bock and S. James, 17–​ 31. London, New York: Routledge. Peterson, V. S. 1992. Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Peterson, V. S. 1999. “Political Identities/​Nationalism as Heterosexism.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 1, no. 1: 34–​65. Peterson, V. S. 2004. A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive and Virtual Economies. London, New York: Routledge. Peterson, V. S. 2014. “Sex Matters: A Queer History of Hierarchies.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 16, no. 3: 389–​409. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​ 14616742.2014.913384. Roberts, D. 1993. “Racism and Patriarchy in the Meaning of Motherhood.” Faculty Scholarship. Paper 595. http://​scholarship.law.upenn.edu/​faculty_​scholarship/​ 595. Roberts, D. 2000. “Black Women and the Pill.” Family Planning Perspectives 32, no. 2: 92–​93. Robinson, F. 1999. Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory and International Relations. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Robinson, F. 2011. The Ethics of Care: A Feminist Approach to Human Security. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Robinson, F. 2014. “Discourses of Motherhood and Women’s Health: Maternal Thinking as Feminist Politics.” Journal of International Political Theory 10: 94–​ 108. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​1755088213507189. Robinson, F., and Confortini, C. C. 2014. “Symposium: Maternal Thinking for International Relations? Papers in Honor of Sara Ruddick.” Journal of International Political Theory 10: 38–​45. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​ 1755088213507183. Ruddick, S. 1980. “Maternal Thinking.” Feminist Studies 6: 342–​367. https://​doi.org/​ 10.2307/​3177749. Ruddick, S. 1995. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon Press. Sengupta, S. 2017. “Trump Revives Ban on Foreign Aid to Groups that Give Abortion Counseling.” New York Times January 23. https://​www.nytimes.com/​2017/​01/​ 23/​world/​trump-​ban-​foreign-​aid-​abortions.html. Serhan, Y. 2018. “Pro-​Abortion-​Rights Activists Won in Ireland, but Not Argentina.” Atlantic. August 10. https://​www.theatlantic.com/​international/​archive/​2018/​ 08/​abortion-​vote-​argentina-​ireland/​567200/​. Shepherd, L. J., ed. 2015. Gender Matters in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations, 2nd ed. London, New York: Routledge. Tickner, J. A., and Sjoberg, L., eds. 2011. Feminism and International Relations: Conversations about the Past, Present and Future. London, New York: Routledge. Tronto, J. C. 2002. “The ‘Nanny’ Question in Feminism.” Hypatia 17: 34–​51. https://​ doi.org/​10.1111/​j.1527-​2001.2002.tb00764.x.

T h e G l o b a l P ol i t i c s of M at e r n a l i t y  

[ 13 ]

41

Weber, C. 2005. International Relations Theory: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed. London, New York: Routledge. Weissman, A. L. 2017. “Repronormativity and the Reproduction of the Nation-​ State: The State and Sexuality Collide.” Journal of GLBT Family Studies 13: 3. Wurth, M. 2018. “Escalating Global Effort for Safe, Legal Abortion: A Day to Highlight Women’s Struggle.” Human Rights Watch September 28. [https://​ www.hrw.org/​news/​2018/​09/​28/​escalating-​global-​effort-​safe-​legal-​abortion.

[ 14 ]  Troubling Motherhood

SECTION I

Performances of Motherhood

61

CHAPTER 2

A Mother’s Violence in Global Politics An Interrogation of Violent Femininity and Motherhood Narratives KATERINA KRULISOVA 1

I am ready to talk to the person who says I could have killed. I cannot even kill a chicken. If there is a person who says that a woman, a mother, killed then I will confront that person. —​Pauline Nyiramasuhuko (quoted in Hazeley 2011)

T

here is a growing body of feminist scholarship on women’s roles in cessation of hostilities, peace protests, and peace negotiations (Charlesworth 2008; Confortini 2006; Hunt and Posa 2001; McLeod 2015; Skjelsbaek and Smith 2001). The importance of female agency in peace initiatives has now been firmly recognized, both by academics and policymakers (Pratt and Richter-​Devroe 2011). However, the same cannot be said about the popular recognition of female agency in relation to active participation in political violence, despite the clear interest of a number of prominent feminist researchers in the topic (Brown 2014, 2017; Cohen 2013; Coulter 2008; Gentry and Sjoberg 2015; Gertz, Brehm, and Brown 2018; Hogg 2010; Holmes 2013; Linton 2016; Mailänder 2015, Smeulers 2015). Because giving life is often put into stark contrast with taking life, killing remains one of the most unnatural and deviant actions a woman could take. Even childless women are frequently perceived as possessing maternal qualities, a stereotype based on the biological ability of the female

Katerina Krulisova, A Mother’s Violence in Global Politics In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0002

81

body to give birth. This unconscious ideology (Weber 2005), or myth of motherhood (Åhäll 2015), then informs the way that violent women are represented, as well as the ways they represent themselves, in popular, political, and legal narratives. Employing the concepts of twisted motherhood, maternal love, and monstrous mothering, together with maternal naivety about realities of war-​fighting, my discussion of motherhood is organized around three broader aims: first, I trace the feminist theorization of politically violent womanhood and motherhood; second, I discuss the conceptualization of female violence in relation to the dominant motherhood narratives; and, third, I offer an alternative critical reading of mothering as connected representation of oneself when politically violent. I  therefore move debate beyond the question of “a woman has done that?” (Gentry and Sjoberg 2015) to the perhaps more shocking, “a mother has done that?” Here, I hope to provide a nuanced understanding of narratives on violent motherhood and contribute to further development of legal and political debates about murderous and torturous female subjects and their connection to myths of motherhood. Feminist scholarship has traced the history of female political violence, uncovering the ways that the concept of motherhood is used to make sense of female violence (Åhäll 2015; Gentry and Sjoberg 2015; Sjoberg and Gentry 2007). From the ancient myths of the Amazons or Cleopatra to modern tales of Nazi concentration camp guards like Irma Grese (Becker 2015; Mailander 2015), Leila Khaled (Gentry 2011), Lynndie England (Sjoberg 2007), Biljana Plavšić, or Pauline Nyiramasuhuko (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007; Sjoberg 2016; Smeulers 2015), mothering becomes the key conceptual lens through which a woman’s violent action—​both legitimate and illegitimate—​is explained to wider audiences. For example, one of the central narratives around Ilse Koch, the infamous World War II criminal accused of extreme cruelty toward prisoners in Buchenwald, states that Koch was an abusive and neglectful mother, letting her children grow up in abject poverty and sending her illegitimate son to foster care; all of these occurrences were used to further vilify Koch and her “unfeminine” actions in Buchenwald (Becker 2015).2 This chapter focuses on the cases of Biljana Plavšić and Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, who represent a sample of the “token” bad women of modern history, whose actual or mythical motherhood is used as a central and defining trait of their personalities and psychological autopsies by a variety of actors, including themselves. I focus on the ways in which the subjects attempt to justify their actions or claim their innocence through motherhood narratives. In the cases of two women accused of genocide and genocidal rape, self-​as-​mother becomes a prominent

[ 18 ]  Performances of Motherhood

narrative that aims to humanize oneself for respective audiences. This motherhood is narrated differently in the two cases, yet I argue serves the same purpose—​to present oneself as innocent, naïve, and self-​sacrificing and therefore ultimately unable to commit the crimes of which they are accused. I start by reviewing discussions about female stereotypical peacefulness in the political realm as linked to the myth of motherhood. Building on the hypothesis that all actors, irrespective of their gender, are capable of extreme violence under certain circumstances, I move to discuss the myth of motherhood and its uses in representation of political violence perpetrated by women. The concepts of the vacant and deviant womb are closely linked to my understanding of twisted and toxic motherhood as discussed in the existing feminist literatures. After that, I  analyze the narratives of self-​ as-​mother as presented in various contexts by Biljana Plavšić and Pauline Nyiramasuhuko. In the two cases, motherhood is central to both accounts, yet in distinctive ways. While Plavšić represents herself as a devoted, naive, and self-​sacrificing mother of the nation, Nyiramasuhuko claims that her Rwandan motherhood would simply never allow her to kill a living creature, let alone order mass rape and genocide.

(NON)VIOLENT MOTHERS AND GLOBAL POLITICS

In academic circles, the debate concerning female violence in feminist research remains central to interdisciplinary discussions ranging from politics or criminology to international law (Carlen 2013; Linton 2016; Ringrose 2006; Smeulers 2015). Some arguments for gender equality were, and indeed still are, based on the notion that women are morally superior to men and incapable of violence (Charlesworth 2008; Ruddick 2002; Tickner 2014; Tickner and True 2018; Wibben 2004). This has led to a contemporary critique of some feminist projects being themselves guilty of gender stereotyping and simplification of individual characteristics of violent women (Morrissey 2003). Barbara Ehrenreich (2004), in the context of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, famously argues that “a uterus is not a substitute for conscience,” blaming some feminists for creating a purist image of women, by definition incapable of violence. Caron Gentry and Laura Sjoberg challenge this claim, arguing that it was not feminism per se that came up with the idea of women being above male sins, but that such conception is rather a product of a variety of dominant discourses of modern history (2007, 19). While some feminists may have (un)consciously reinforced the stereotype of inherent female

A M o t h e r ’ s V i ol e n c e i n G l o b a l P ol i t i c s  

[ 19 ]

02

peacefulness, contemporary research increasingly recognizes that some women do “commit senseless violence because some people commit senseless violence,” highlighting the urgent need to study female perpetrators of violence (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007, 148).3 These literatures follow the hypothesis that the complexity of political agency of any individual cannot be limited to their biological makeup or wishful political thinking. The increasing visibility of women as perpetrators of political violence shows that women, in essence, might not be any better—​or different—​ than men. In other words, women are not morally superior, biologically differently hard-​wired, or immune to the pressures and stresses of armed conflicts. Even mothers—​a somehow special category of women—​cease to be innocent “Beautiful Souls” (Elshtain 1982).4

Women as Mothers: The Myth of Motherhood and Nonviolence

Contemporary research has focused on the myth of motherhood and its relation to violent women (Åhäll 2015). Mothering/​motherhood becomes what Weber calls an unconscious ideology: an ideology that is not formally named and difficult to identify because it is considered common sense (Weber 2005, 7). Similar to the way in which Cynthia Weber explicates unconscious ideology, Linda Åhäll (2012a, 107) describes the myth of motherhood as being commonly used in writing about women’s heroism in national discourses. Linda Åhäll (2012a, 109) argues that motherhood as such is not natural, but rather is a social and cultural construction, despite being written about as encompassing natural characteristics, or “something that we do not question.” She defines motherhood not in an actual or literal sense—​referring only to pregnant women or mothers—​but rather as the “capacity of female bodies to give life” (2012a, 109). Thus, motherhood appears to be universal, natural, and a purely empirical fact of life that precludes women from becoming violent, particularly in a sexualized way. Maternalism can thus be considered as central to the possibility of writing a heroine-​centered story (Åhäll 2012a, 109), but in its corrupted versions causes often-​extreme violence (Gentry and Sjoberg 2015).5 These heroine-​ centered stories often focus on mothers as peace protesters and peacemakers. From the Women’s International League for Peace, Argentina’s Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Northern Ireland’s Peace People, the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common in the United Kingdom, Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, Nobel Women’s Initiative, and Women in Black to Women Waging Peace, feminist peace studies can provide a number of cases showing feminine and mothering

[ 20 ]  Performances of Motherhood

peace potential and its effects on global politics (Blanchard 2003; Cockburn 2010; Hudson et al. 2012; Pankhurst 2003; Reardon 2015; Sylvester 2010). At the same time, women commit unspeakable acts of violence worldwide. Indeed, Sjoberg and Gentry (2007, 1) open their investigation into female violence by arguing that “women are capturing hostages, engaging in suicide bombings, hijacking airplanes, and abusing prisoners. . . . Moreover, they are doing so on the front page of . . . major international newspapers.”6 The use of the motherhood narratives that narrate these acts of violence is central to understanding of the role of gender in global politics and international law.

Representation of Mothers’ Violence

Focusing on the key aspect of feminist poststructural critique and representation, the stories told about violent women are often traced to motherhood impulses or failures. The instincts to protect one’s children, to sacrifice oneself for those children, or the fatal disappointment in losing one’s family are some of the central themes found in the existing representations of violent women in popular narratives. Caron Gentry and Laura Sjoberg’s (2015) work represents one of the most comprehensive analyses of the representation of female violence in the media. Their discussion groups popular discourses on politically violent women into three categories: “mothers,” women who are fulfilling their biological destinies; . . . “monsters,” women who are pathologically damaged and therefore drawn to violence; and/​ or . . . “whores,” women whose violence is inspired by sexual dependence and depravity. (2015, 12)

They argue that even recent political theories attribute female violence to the notion of revenge “driven by maternal and domestic disappointments” (2015, 71–​72). The biologically determinist arguments lead to the notion that the failure of women to become mothers drives them to violence because it represents a traumatic dehumanizing/​de-​womanizing experience (2015, 73). The authors identify two types of narratives encompassing violent motherhood: the nurturing mother and the vengeful mother. Whereas the nurturing mother is mostly nonviolent and serves in support roles in mostly terrorist organizations, the vengeful mother is “driven by rage because of her maternal losses, maternal inadequacies or maternal incredulity” (2015, 75).7

A M o t h e r ’ s V i ol e n c e i n G l o b a l P ol i t i c s  

[ 21 ]

2

Åhäll (2015) builds on her conceptualization of the myth of motherhood meta-​discourse and identifies two types of construction of female agency in political violence in relation to heroism and monstrosity:  the vacant womb and the deviant womb. For the purposes of this chapter, the discussion about the deviant womb is extremely useful, demonstrating how female agency is seen as monstrous when notions of “natural” femininity are significantly challenged. Here, the subject becomes abject and is portrayed as woman-​as-​monster. Åhäll argues that representations of female agency in political violence “serve the purpose of ‘Othering’ the subject” (2012b, 110). Importantly, childless women are also deemed deviant, performing inadequate femininity. Similarly, Caron Gentry (2009) explores the idea of twisted maternalism.8 In this respect, women are believed to act violently from their maternal imperative, which presumes every female must fulfil her sociobiological role as mother (Gentry 2009. 236). Gentry (2009, 236)  further argues that “whether or not politically active women are mothers or claim their motherhood, a motherhood ideal is applied to them anyway.” Female domesticity, maternal instinct, and belief that women will only fulfill their lives through successful motherhood condition women to think and act differently than men. Consequently, violent political action is often explained through the unsuccessful realization of motherhood, whatever the reason for such failure might be. Linda Åhäll (2012b, 110) argues that “the [female] subject departs from the norms and boundaries of femininity and a naturalized life-​giving identity through being . . . childless by choice, masculine, gay or prostitute.” Here, the lack of motherhood clearly leads to differentiation from the rest of the “proper” women and thus “Othering.” The notion of a “proper” woman is also key for feminist criminologists. Connected to the chivalry hypothesis on leniency toward female criminals, the notion of respectability becomes key in sentencing (Silvestri and Crowther-​Dowey 2008). Good wives and mothers are expected by some researchers to be treated with greater leniency (Kennedy 1993).9 Thus, the question of representation of “good” and “bad” motherhood becomes central to a critical feminist analysis of perpetrators of political violence.

BILJANA PLAVŠIĆ AND PAULINE NYIRAMASUHUKO: THE MOTHER OF THE NATION AND THE PEACEMAKER

Plavšić and Nyiramasuhuko represent two cases of high-​ranking politicians accused of inciting sexualized violence and genocide. Plavšić’s hate toward Muslims and Croats, and Nyiramasuhuko’s involvement in mass murder

[ 22 ]  Performances of Motherhood

of Tutsi women and men, make them two of the most infamous female politicians of the twentieth century. Both tried by special International Criminal Tribunals, the former pleaded guilty to crimes against humanity, while the other was found guilty of seven charges, genocidal rape being one of them. The possible motivations for female involvement in both conflicts have been covered exhaustively (Adler, Loyle, and Globerman 2007; Brown 2014; Hogg 2010; Smeulers 2015). Similarly, critiques of the essentialist portrayals exist in feminist interdisciplinary literature (Gentry and Sjoberg 2015; Hodgson 2017; Sjoberg and Gentry 2007; Sjoberg 2016; Smeulers 2015; Sperling 2006). Here, I develop those debates by discussing the representation of motherhood during the trial proceedings of both women. The primary focus is on representation of self as narrated through mothering and motherhood by both accused during their witness testimony (Nyiramasuhuko) or Plea of Guilt (Plavšić). Studying representation of self is, in this case, a methodologically tricky enterprise. Undeniably, an accused witness testimony of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko is a narrative cautiously crafted by legal teams, similar to Plavšić’s plea of guilt. The original aim of reconciliation through truth telling can thus be overridden by conscious strategies for achieving lighter sentence or greater leniency. Indeed, I agree with Clark (2009, 431) that “truth telling is one thing, deal cutting is another.” At the same time, I argue that despite both the restricted nature of Plavšić’s statement and preceding plea bargaining, as well as its apparent instrumentality to achieve a lenient sentence, the document in question is still worth analyzing. I concur with Tieger and Shin (2005, 671) that “plea agreements can generate a contribution to the historical record of inestimable value—​the indispensable perspective of the perpetrator.” From my understanding, the perspectives of Biljana Plavšić, the only female politician tried in front of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, and Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, perhaps the most prominent female perpetrator of Rwandan genocide, are key to further understanding of discursive possibilities of representation of self-​as-​mother.

Biljana Plavšić: The Mother of the Nation

Biljana Plavšić, the Vice-​President of Republika Srpska and leading political figure during the Bosnian war, pleaded guilty of crimes against humanity—​persecution and ethnic cleansing of thirty-​seven communities during which almost 50,000 people lost their lives (Smeulers 2015, 236). Voluntarily surrendering to International Criminal Tribunal for the former

A M o t h e r ’ s V i ol e n c e i n G l o b a l P ol i t i c s  

[ 23 ]

42

Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2001, Plavšić originally pleaded not guilty, changing her mind in 2002 in exchange for seven charges, including the charge of genocide being dropped. Plavšić was the first, and at this time only, high-​ ranking Bosnian Serb politician to plead guilty, a decision that many applauded as a way to reconciliation. Drakulić (2009) writes that: the judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia took her repentance seriously, hoping that it could influence others awaiting trial. It looked like a brave and moral gesture from a person who understood her crime and who—​as she said—​wanted to spare the Serbian people from collective guilt by admitting her own.10

Reactions like these followed Plavšić’s interview with the Swedish magazine The Local (January 26, 2009), where she stated: I have sacrificed myself. I  have done nothing wrong. I  pleaded guilty to crimes against humanity so I could bargain for the other charges. If I hadn’t, the trial would have lasted three, three and half years. Considering my age, that wasn’t an option.

Born in 1930, Plavšić, originally a Professor of Natural Sciences and Dean of Faculty at the University of Sarajevo, was a highly regarded academic, publishing more than 100 scholarly papers. A  Fulbright scholar, Plavšić often used her academic background in biology and her research to justify and rationalize the crimes committed under her rule; for instance, she regarded ethnic cleansing to be a form of Darwinian natural selection and therefore a biological rather than political matter (Smeulers 2015, 235). In relation to motherhood narratives, the most visible mothering thread can be found in Plavšić’s Plea of Guilt. Inevitably, this narrative is linked to the one of Iron Lady or childless and divorced woman as presented in the media (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007). The perceived lack of empathy she showed was linked by the media to her lack of biological motherhood and her unsuccessful marriage; Plavšić actively resisted this positioning through her self-​stylization as a symbolic mother of a nation in her final appearance in front of the ICTY. Here, Plavšić’s reasoning as to why she engaged in crimes against humanity is closely connected to her version of the story about the fight for the survival of the once victimized nation against its usurpers. Naturally, she does not mention sexualized violence as a crime she was aware of because that would lead to her further moral condemnation and “Othering” and consequent “monsterization” (Åhäll 2012a). The crimes that Plavšić is accused of are explained by her through the logic of survival and self-​defense.

[ 24 ]  Performances of Motherhood

Plavšić opens her guilty plea by stating that she came before the court “to confront the charges and to spare [her] people, for it was clear that they would pay the price of any refusal to come” (Prosecutor v. Plavšić, December 17, 2002). She related to the court that, after two years of court proceedings, she came now “to the belief and accepts the fact that many thousands of innocent people were the victims of an organised, systematic effort to remove Muslims and Croats from the territory claimed by Serbs” (Prosecutor v. Plavšić, December 17, 2002). Plavšić’s reasoning is based on her apparent belief that the war was a matter of survival and self-​defense. She positions herself as a victim of her perception that the life of all Serbs was endangered and needed to be defended by the state. Claiming that this reasoning has led to loss of “nobility of characters” in Serbian leadership, Plavšić explains how she and others have failed to see the truth of being guilty of perpetration of crimes against humanity, a narrative that highlights her momentary moral failure (Prosecutor v. Plavšić, December 17, 2002).11 After proclamation of the collective guilt of the Serbian leadership, Plavšić switches to the first person to justify her role in the conflict, and once again makes case for the collective “survival” reasoning being the motivation behind her neglect of reports of human rights violations. Plavšić thus clearly seeks to change the perspective of her extremist nationalism to a heroic defense of her beloved nation and its inhabitants—​a mother of nation narrative is clearly visible. By stating that she had a living memory of injustice done to Serbs during World War II, Plavšić explains that she was simply worried that history would repeat itself (Prosecutor v. Plavšić, December 17, 2002). Here, the binary between victim and perpetrator is blurred, as Plavšić represents herself simultaneously as both: she claims to regret her blindness to and failure to address the reported crimes, although she is also associated with the Serbian leadership charged with responsibility for the atrocities. In her defense narrative, Plavšić places herself as the mother of the nation who sacrifices herself on behalf of all the Serbians. Careful analysis reveals complex construction of motherhood narratives (Åhäll 2012b). In Plavšić’s case, she represents herself as a deluded mother, who was certain of the imminent death of her beloved nation had she not intervened. Following the hypothesis that motherly violence is acceptable in defense of her family, Plavšić aims to display a positive emotion coupled with naivety and misinformation as her excuse (Bourke 2000, 318). Thus, the violence perpetrated under her watch appears to be considered just and right at the time by her and her witnesses.

A M o t h e r ’ s V i ol e n c e i n G l o b a l P ol i t i c s  

[ 25 ]

62

A heroine narrative invokes the ideal of a Just Warrior, “a human being engaged in the regrettable but sometimes necessary task of collective violence in order to prevent some greater wrong” (Elshtain 1982). Plavšić indeed presents her past crimes as regrettable in her guilty plea. She argues that only after examining the evidence has she “come to the belief and accept the fact that many thousands of innocent people were the victims of an organised, systematic effort to remove Muslims and Croats from the territory claimed by Serbs.”12 In this portrayal, Plavšić allowed atrocities to take place, believing she—​a heroine mother—​prevented much greater wrongs. Only later realizing that she was mistaken in such actions, Plavšić pleads guilty to spare her nation further victimization and enable reconciliation for everybody affected by the war. Thus, from a feminist perspective, Plavšić represents her actions as grounded in inherent protective, maternal instincts. In Ruddick’s (2002) perspective, maternal thinking is described as a way of knowing, not a way of being. Therefore, the fact that Plavšić is not a mother herself does not limit her ability to think like a mother. Here again, the maternal thinking comes into play, together with selflessness and courage to give up one’s own life for the benefit of the family/​nation.

Pauline Nyiramasuhuko: Denial and Peacemaking

Born in 1946 in Butare, Rwanda, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko trained as a social worker, later becoming part of the Ministry of Family and Women’s Affairs, taking over the ministerial role in 1992. Being friends with the former first lady Agathe Kanziga and nicknamed Butare’s favorite daughter, Nyiramasuhuko found herself within the center of power just as the genocide was about to happen. In his guilty plea, Prime Minister Kambanda named Nyiramasuhuko to be “among the five members of his inner sanctum where the blueprint for genocide was first drawn up” (Drumbl 2013, 560). Not only had Nyiramasuhuko played an essential role in the genocide, she was also prominent in the instigation of rape and widespread sexual violence perpetrated during the genocide. Alette Smeulers (2015, 239) notes that “she was present at the crime scene and gave direct orders to erect roadblocks and rape and kill Tutsis, even ordering her own son, who was a leader of [the Hutu paramilitary organization] Interahamwe, to rape women.” Nyiramasuhuko was arrested in 1997 in Kenya and indicted on eleven counts of genocide, crimes against humanity—​including genocidal rape, and war crimes (Smeulers 2015, 240). In court, her defense team denied

[ 26 ]  Performances of Motherhood

all the charges, heavily relying on her gender—​portraying Nyiramasuhuko as a scapegoat for men’s violence and incapable of any violent actions because of her womanhood and motherhood (Smeulers 2015, 240). As Carrie Sperling (2005, 637)  notes, “Nyiramasuhuko stands trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for crimes against humanity and genocide, crimes shocking in their depravity, the press seems more fixated on her gender than the significance of her crimes and her prosecution.” Her husband stated in an interview with the BBC that “it is not culturally possible for a Rwandan woman to make her son rape other women. It just couldn’t have taken place” (Smeulers 2015, 240). Despite statements like those, Nyiramasuhuko was found guilty of seven out of eleven charges:  conspiracy to commit genocide and genocide; crimes against humanity—​ extermination, rape, and persecution; and war crimes—​ violence to life and outrages on personal dignity (Smeulers 2015, 240–​ 241). She was sentenced to life imprisonment and appealed the decision; in 2015 the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) reduced her sentence to forty-​seven years’ imprisonment (United Nations 2015). In Nyiramasuhuko’s case, the analysis of motherhood in media narratives is complex. It follows different, yet interconnected, narratives employed by the commentators and herself in an attempt to make sense of the crimes as well her (in)ability to commit them. Being trained as a social worker, Nyiramasuhuko’s crimes are put into stark contrast of her professional role. For example, the NGO Aegis Trust clearly points out the connection between her motherhood and social work, stating that “[i]‌t is shocking that this mother and former social worker, trained to protect life, could instead have been responsible for such appalling crimes” (June 2011, emphasis mine). Thus, on this view, Nyiramasuhuko is not only biologically predisposed to protect life as a woman, she is furthermore trained to do it. Prominently, the toxic relationship between her and her son is exposed, claiming that Nyiramasuhuko either ordered her son to rape/​turned him into rapist and killer or rewarded him and his men by allowing and encouraging them to commit sexual(ized) violence. Finally, Nyiramasuhuko is portrayed not only as a mother but also as a grandmother, and her age is highlighted in the reporting. As noted, Nyiramasuhuko never admitted her guilt and kept reassuring the court and media that she was incapable of committing such acts she was accused of. Already in 1995, when interviewed for the BBC, she categorically denied any blame: [w]‌hen asked what she did during the war, Pauline replied: “We moved around the region to pacify. We wrote a pacification document saying people shouldn’t

A M o t h e r ’ s V i ol e n c e i n G l o b a l P ol i t i c s  

[ 27 ]

82

kill each other. Saying it’s genocide, that’s not true. It was the Tutsi who massacred the Hutu.” Told that witnesses had accused her of murder, Pauline shot back:  “I cannot even kill a chicken. If there is a person who says that a woman—​a mother—​killed, then I’ll confront that person.” (Landesman 2002)

In her interpretation, Nyiramasuhuko’s denial is based on her motherhood and the idea that mothers are unable to take part in killings and rapes: “I am a mother, like the others  .  .  .  ,” said Nyiramasuhuko, speaking in the Rwandan language. “I was hurt to discover that women were among those behind the imprisonment of myself and my son. But I forgive them. I ask you to restore my rights. . . . Maybe I was prosecuted because I was a minister, because I was a member of the party of the President [Juvenal Habyarimana] who had just been killed.” (Landesman 2002)

Similarly, her lawyer contends the validity of the accusation, claiming that “[i]‌t’s an abomination to claim that Pauline Nyiramasuhuko went so far as to order her son to rape young Tutsi women” (Landesman 2002). The narrative of a good, nurturing, and peace-​loving mother is rearticulated many times to fit Nyiramasuhuko’s range of responses to a variety of allegations.13 For example, she was asked about agreeing to publish the names of people trained by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel organization fighting against the government during the genocide, which would mean certain death for those people. She vehemently replies that “[a]s a parent, as a mother and as someone who is peace-​loving, I could not support such a publication” (Prosecutor v. Nyiramasuhuko et al., September 22, 2005, 58, emphasis added).14 Nyiramasuhuko also directly links her womanhood to her effort to restore peace. When asked about her role in attending the swearing-​in ceremony of the préfet, an event that is considered as a start of mass killings in Butare, she states, “all I did was aimed at restoring peace. In fact, I was playing the role of a woman in the—​in restoring the peace. That was my objective” (Prosecutor v.  Nyiramasuhuko et  al., September 29, 2005, 12, emphasis mine). The narrative of peace-​loving Nyiramasuhuko is directly connected to her womanhood and motherhood throughout the rest of her testimony. Highlighting the physical motherhood as well as a Rwandan construction of proper mothering, Nyiramasuhuko explains that for her to kill and rape is simply unintelligible. Here, Nyiramasuhuko’s motherhood and womanhood are used as the central argument of her defense, categorically denying that any mother

[ 28 ]  Performances of Motherhood

would be able to commit such abominable crimes, or even think about ordering her son to rape. Connecting her actual motherhood to the cultural tradition of motherhood in Rwandan society, her involvement in such actions becomes unimaginable. Thus, in her defense, Nyiramasuhuko is positioned into ideal-​typical motherhood and womanhood, together with being portrayed as a good wife (Morrissey 2003). This clearly contrasts with the media and witness narratives of an evil mother—​one that got her son—​at the time a young and newly married university student—​ involved in sexual(ized) violence and other despicable crimes. In another account, she merely allows her son and militiamen to rape as a reward. The juxtaposition of crimes of genocide and indictment to rape with peaceful womanhood is clearly visible in Nyiramasuhuko’s case. The toxic relationship with her son is highlighted both in the media and during trial proceedings. Nyiramasuhuko chooses to portray herself as a polar opposite to a sexually deranged, cruel murderess. In her own words, she is a victim of a smear campaign and actually is a loving mother and a peacemaker.

CONCLUSION

In the cases of Plavšić and Nyiramasuhuko, feminist lenses provide the ability to critically analyze the importance of motherhood narratives in global politics. Both women employ a motherhood narrative as a way to humanize themselves in response to accusations of violent crimes. A mother’s violence, in their narratives, is both completely unintelligible and impossible, or becomes an unfortunate yet understandable result of a mothering instinct that dictates to protect one’s own mythical child. In this narrative, the mother of the nation realizes too late that she has been blinded by love and willingly ignored the crimes perpetrated by those she was so desperately trying to protect. Plavšić’s lack of actual motherhood and her divorce were highlighted in the press coverage of her case, linked to her lack of empathy; this narrative is complicated by her “mother of the nation” self-​representation, with the nation serving as a substitute for children. This mythical motherhood counter-​narrative is highlighted in her plea of guilt, where Plavšić places herself in the position of the mother of the nation who sacrifices herself on behalf of all the Serbians. Linking the representation of motherhood to the respective feminist literature reveals a complex construction of motherhood narratives in both of the cases (Åhäll 2015). In this case, Plavšić represents herself as a deluded mother, who was certain

A M o t h e r ’ s V i ol e n c e i n G l o b a l P ol i t i c s  

[ 29 ]

03

of the imminent death of her beloved nation had she not intervened. Following the hypothesis that motherly violence is acceptable in defense of her family, Plavšić aims to display a positive emotion coupled with naivety and misinformation as her excuse (Bourke 2000). Thus, the violence perpetrated under her watch appears to be considered just and right at the time by her reasoning. The motherhood narrative is also visible in the case of Nyiramasuhuko, who stood accused of rape as a crime against humanity together with her son, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali. Thus, Nyiramasuhuko’s actual motherhood forms a central narrative of her political (mis)conduct. Since she was found guilty of aiding and abetting rapes, where Shalom and his militiamen perpetrated rapes, her toxic mothering is described as having a corruptive influence over her only son. In her account, however, Nyiramasuhuko equates parenthood, and Rwandan motherhood particularly, with automatic desire for peace, and emphasizes that her womanhood allowed her to negotiate a restoration of peace. This strategy is defining of Nyiramasuhuko’s representation of her motherhood. Denying that any parent could supervise one’s child raping women, her motherhood becomes central to her defense. On top of that, by stating that it would be “impossible” for her to kill or order rape precisely because she is a mother and a woman, who in Rwandan tradition renders such possibilities as unintelligible, she appears to be rather naive about human nature (Elshtain 1982). In the cases of Plavšić and Nyiramasuhuko, I suggest that, no matter what their actions were, these women were predominantly judged by their ascribed capacity to mother/​nurture/​kill for their actual or mythical children. This primacy of motherhood within the representation of the female political figure is troubling because it portrays women in a simplified good/​bad mother frame (Åhäll 2012a). Importantly, it appears to force them into conformity with this frame when representing themselves as innocent, disabling other potential narratives to be employed. Both women base their defense on narrating themselves as good mothers—​ mothers who are caring, self-​sacrificing, and rather naive about the evils of wars. While Plavšić accepts the responsibility for crimes she stood accused of during the trial, she represents herself as less guilty primarily because of her unwillingness to believe her beloved nation would be capable of mass murder. Nyiramasuhuko never ceases to deny her guilt and builds her defense on her Rwandan motherhood identity. This conformity with established mothering frames of representation then dictates all narratives and disables the subject to represent herself as a nonmother, reinforcing motherhood as the most significant role to which a woman can ever aspire.

[ 30 ]  Performances of Motherhood

NOTES 1. Katerina gratefully acknowledges financial support from internal research funding of the Center of Security Studies, Metropolitan University Prague. 2. “The beast/​bitch of Buchenwald” was accused of using the tattooed skin of prisoners as lampshades and other household goods (Becker 2015, 55). The judge concluded that Koch was a “ruthless and hard-​headed woman who had been aware of beating, whippings, and hangings of the prisoners . . . [and] had done everything in her power to worsen the condition of those poor tortured men” (ibid). Koch was also accused of being a nymphomaniac and ordering orgies that led to an illegitimate son (ibid). 3. Patricia Pearson (1997, 32) warns that “we cannot insist on the strength and competence of women in all the traditional masculine areas yet continue to exonerate ourselves from the consequences of power by arguing that, where the course of it runs more darkly, we are actually powerless. This has become an awkward paradox in feminist argument.” 4. Elshtain argues that the broader narrative of Beautiful Soul and Just Warrior strongly permeates popular thinking about women, men, and armed conflicts across cultures and time periods. She concludes that women have been historically cast as society’s beautiful souls and thus “served as the collective projection of pure, self-​sacrificing, otherworldly and pacific Other” (1982, 342). The femininity represented in the Beautiful Soul narrative is fragile and delicate and is naive about the reality of war-​fighting and state conduct. In matters of war and peace, the female Beautiful Soul is strictly bound to her private nonviolent sphere, and “cannot put an end to suffering, cannot effectively fight the mortal wounding of sons, brothers, husbands, fathers” (Elshtain 1985. 45). 5. Linda Åhäll (2012b) highlights that motherhood, similar to gender, is a social construct. She contends that “unconscious ideologies write motherhood as natural, something that we do not question, when it is in fact not natural, but a social and cultural construction” (ibid, 109). She (2012b) further argues that female agency in political violence is communicated and negotiated primarily through motherhood, even in cases where such principle might not be immediately apparent. She discusses the notion of female heroism in battle, armed conflict, or any violent encounter and concludes that the “construction of heroines seems to depend on ideas of female bodies’ association with motherhood; motherhood seems to function as heroism’s constitutive other” (Åhäll 2012a, 287). 6. The presence of women and girls as fighters and war crime perpetrators has been established in many of the post–​Cold War conflicts. Perhaps most prominently, Sierra Leone’s female fighters attracted feminist research. Chris Coulter (2008, 55) estimates that between 10 and 30 percent of all the fighters were women and girls. Most of them have been abducted, raped, tortured, and forced into marriage, becoming so-​called bush wives (ibid). 7. Possible maternal loss can be childlessness, whether chosen or forced on a woman. Åhäll (2012b, 110) argues that “the [female] subject departs from the norms and boundaries of femininity and a naturalised life-​giving identity through being . . . childless by choice, masculine, gay or prostitute.” Here, the lack of motherhood clearly leads to differentiation from the rest of the “proper” women and thus “Othering.” Whereas motherhood is clearly one of the

A M o t h e r ’ s V i ol e n c e i n G l o b a l P ol i t i c s  

[ 31 ]

23

dominant themes (mis)used as a motivational factor for female (non)violence, the understanding of what it means to be a mother in relation to violent world politics is largely fragmented between feminists themselves. 8. This is applied to the case of maternalism in relation to Palestinian female self-​ martyrs and the representation of their decision to kill (Gentry 2009). 9. However, feminist criminological scholarship further highlights the disparity between the rhetoric/​myth of leniency and the actual practice. The argument of (unconscious) chivalry—​or that women are treated more leniently by courts simply because they are women—​has been challenged by many authors (Silvestri 2007). It has been shown that what appears to be a certain degree of leniency is rather an “oppressive and paternalistic form of individual justice” based on “gendered criminal justice system, characterised by gendered organisational logics and gendered agents of power” (Silvestri and Crowther-​Dowey 2008, 33–​34). Also, the concern is that magistrates and judges become harsher in their judgment of women over time (ibid). This is closely connected to the rising panic surrounding the concepts of “mean girls” and “ladettes.” 10. On realizing that Plavšić only admitted guilt to escape almost certain death in prison, Drakulić concludes: “I wrote about Biljana Plavšić as a positive example of a woman who had the courage to admit her wrongdoings during the war. I admired her, because such an act demanded great courage and moral stamina. In my view she also taught a lesson to the Balkan man in hiding: men like Karadžić, Mladic and Gotovina. I was terribly wrong” (2009, emphasis added). 11. Plavšić further states: “I believe, fear, a blinding fear that led to an obsession, especially for those of us for whom the Second World War was a living memory, that Serbs would never again allow themselves to become victims. In this, we in the leadership violated the most basic duty of every human being, the duty to restrain oneself and to respect the human dignity of others. We were committed to do whatever was necessary to prevail” (Prosecutor v. Plavšić, December 17, 2002). 12. Crucially, she adds: “[a]‌t the time, I easily convinced myself that this was a matter of survival and self-​defence. In fact, it was more. Our leadership, of which I was a necessary part, led an effort which victimised countless innocent people. Explanations of self-​defence and survival offer no justification” (Prosecutor v. Plavšić, December 17, 2002). 13. Here, Nyiramasuhuko’s mother also refuses to believe any allegations against Nyiramasuhuko: “[i]‌t is unimaginable that she did these things,” she said. “She wouldn’t order people to rape and kill. After all, Pauline is a mother” (Landesman 2002). Nyiramasuhuko herself continues to claim that she was framed, stating that “people wanted to prove at all costs that a woman, a mother, was involved in the unspeakable” (ibid). She represents herself as a token victim, a woman who is taking the punishment on behalf of all the women who participated in the genocidal violence—​interestingly, at the same time that this is deemed impossible for Rwandan women. 14. Nyiramasuhuko also aims at highlighting her peacefulness through a story about how she chose a rather unusual name for her son, Shalom: “Shalom was born in Israel. In Rwanda, a child is only named by the father; and when I went to Israel, I did not have a name for my baby. And when I had this baby, I was asked to name the baby. I went through all the first names that I knew, and I said to myself that if I gave my son a name which meant peace, it would mean a lot to me” (Prosecutor v. Nyiramasuhuko et al., August 21, 2005, 32). In a similar

[ 32 ]  Performances of Motherhood

tone, Nyiramasuhuko’s husband claims his wife must be innocent: “[s]‌he was committed to promoting equality between men and women,” he said defiantly. “It is not culturally possible for a Rwandan woman to make her son rape other women. It just couldn’t have taken place.” Pauline’s only error, he insisted, was in belonging to the side that lost (Landesman 2002).

REFERENCES Adler, R. N., Loyle, C. E., and Globerman, J. 2007. “A Calamity in the Neighborhood: Women’s Participation in the Rwandan Genocide.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 2, no. 3: 209–​233. Åhäll, L. 2012a. “Motherhood, Myth and Gendered Agency in Political Violence.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 14, no. 1: 103–​120. Åhäll, L. 2012b. “The Writing of Heroines: Motherhood and Female Agency in Political Violence.” Security Dialogue 43, no. 4: 287–​303. Åhäll, L. 2015. Sexing War/​Policing Gender: Motherhood, Myth and Women’s Political Violence. London: Routledge. Becker, J. 2015. “The Cruelty of Nazi Women: An Examination of the War-​Time Trials of Irma Grese and llse Koch.” New Views on Gender 15: 52–​58. Blanchard, E. M. 2003. “Gender, International Relations, and the Development of Feminist Security Theory.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28, no. 4: 1289–​1312. Bourke, J. 2000. An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in 20th-​Century Warfare. London: Granta Books. Brown, S. E. 2014. “Female Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 16, no. 3: 448–​469. Brown, S. E. 2017. Gender and the Genocide in Rwanda: Women as Rescuers and Perpetrators. London: Routledge. Carlen, P. 2013. Women, Crime, and Poverty. Devon: Willian Publishing. Charlesworth, H. 2008. “Are Women Peaceful? Reflections on the Role of Women in Peace-​Building.” Feminist Legal Studies 16, no. 3: 347–​361. Clark, J. N. 2009. “Plea Bargaining at the ICTY: Guilty Pleas and Reconciliation.” European Journal of International Law 20, no. 2: 415–​436. Cockburn, C. 2010. “Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War: A Feminist Standpoint.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 12, no. 2: 139–​157. Cohen, D. K. 2013. “Female Combatants and the Perpetration of Violence: Wartime Rape in the Sierra Leone Civil War.” World Politics 65, no. 3: 383–​415. Confortini, C. C. 2006. “Galtung, Violence, and Gender: The Case for a Peace Studies/​ Feminism Alliance.” Peace and Change 31, no. 3: 333–​367. Coulter, C. 2008. “Female Fighters in the Sierra Leone War: Challenging the Assumptions?” Feminist Review 88, no. 1: 54–​73. Drakulić, S. 2009. “The false repentance of Biljana Plavsic.” Eurozine. https://​www. eurozine.com/​the-​false-​repentance-​of-​biljana-​plavsic/​. Drumbl, M. A., 2013. “‘She Makes Me Ashamed to Be a Woman’: The Genocide Conviction of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko.” Michigan Journal of International Law 2012–​2032. Ehrenreich, B. 2004. “What Abu Ghraib Taught Me.” AlterNet May 20. http://​www. alternet.org/​story/​18740/​what_​abu_​ghraib_​taught_​me.

A M o t h e r ’ s V i ol e n c e i n G l o b a l P ol i t i c s  

[ 33 ]

43

Elshtain, J. B. 1982. “On Beautiful Souls, Just Warriors and Feminist Consciousness.” Women’s Studies International Forum 5, no. 3–​4: 341–​348. Elshtain, J. B. 1985. “Reflections on War and Political Discourse: Realism, Just War, and Feminism in a Nuclear Age.” Political Theory 13, no. 1: 39–​57. Gentry, C. E. 2009. “Twisted Maternalism.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 11, no. 2: 235–​252. Gentry, C., and Sjoberg, L. 2015. Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Thinking about Women’s Violence in Global Politics. London: Zed Books. Gertz, E. A., Brehm, H. N., and Brown, S. E. 2018. “Gender and Genocide: Assessing Differential Opportunity Structures of Perpetration in Rwanda.” In Perpetrators and Perpetration of Mass Violence, edited by T. Williams and S. Buckley-​Zistel, 145–​162. New York: Routledge. Hazeley, J. 2011. “Profile: Female Rwandan Killer Pauline Nyiramasuhuko.” BBC African Service June 24. Available via: Nexis UK. Hodgson, N. 2017. “Gender Justice or Gendered Justice? Female Defendants in International Criminal Tribunals.” Feminist Legal Studies 25, no. 3: 337–​357. Hogg, N. 2010. “Women’s Participation in the Rwandan Genocide: Mothers or Monsters?” International Review of the Red Cross 92, no. 877: 69–​102. Holmes, G. 2013. Women and War in Rwanda: Gender, Media and the Representation of Genocide. London: I. B. Tauris. Hudson, V. M., Ballif-​Spanvill, B., Caprioli, M., and Emmett, C.F. 2012. Sex and World Peace. New York: Columbia University Press. Hunt, S., and Posa, C. 2001. “Women Waging Peace.” Foreign Policy  38–​47. Kennedy, H. 1993. Eve Was Framed: Women and British Justice. New York: Vintage Books. Landesman, P. 2002. “A Woman’s Work.” New York Times September 15, p. 82. Available via Nexis UK. Linton, S. 2016. “Women Accused of International Crimes: A Trans-​Disciplinary Inquiry and Methodology.” Criminal Law Forum 27, no. 2: 159–​226. Mailänder, E. 2015. Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence: The Majdanek Concentration Camp, 1942–​1944. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. McLeod, L. 2015. Gender Politics and Security Discourse: Personal-​Political Imaginations and Feminism in “Post-​Conflict” Serbia. London: Routledge. Morrissey, B. 2003. When Women Kill: Questions of Agency and Subjectivity. London: Routledge. Pankhurst, D. 2003. “The ‘Sex War’ and Other Wars: Towards a Feminist Approach to Peace Building.” Development in Practice 13, no. 2–​3: 154–​177. Pearson, P. 1997. When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence. New York: Viking Press. Pratt, N., and Richter-​Devroe, S. 2011. “Critically Examining UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 13: 489–​503. Prosecutor v. Biljana Plavšić. December 17, 2002. Sentencing Hearing. ICTY, IT-​00-​ 39 & 40/​1-​S. Prosecutor v. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, Arsène Shalom Ntahobali, Sylvain Nsabimana, Alphonse Nteziryayo, Joseph Kanyabashi, and Élie Ndayambaje. September 22, 2005. Trial Chamber. ICTR-​98-​42-​T. Prosecutor v. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, Arsène Shalom Ntahobali, Sylvain Nsabimana, Alphonse Nteziryayo, Joseph Kanyabashi, and Élie Ndayambaje. September 29, 2005. Trial Chamber. ICTR-​98-​42-​T.

[ 34 ]  Performances of Motherhood

Prosecutor v. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, Arsène Shalom Ntahobali, Sylvain Nsabimana, Alphonse Nteziryayo, Joseph Kanyabashi, And Élie Ndayambaje. August 21, 2005. Trial Chamber. ICTR-​98-​42-​T. Reardon, B. A. 2015. “Feminist Concepts of Peace and Security” In Key Texts in Gender and Peace, edited by B. A. Reardon, 61–​7 1. London: Springer International. Ringrose, J. 2006. “A New Universal Mean Girl: Examining the Discursive Construction and Social Regulation of a New Feminine Pathology.” Feminism and Psychology 16, no. 4: 405–​424. Ruddick, S. 2002. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon Press. Silvestri, M., and Crowther-​Dowey, C. 2008. Gender and Crime. London: Sage Publications. Sjoberg, L. 2016. Women as Wartime Rapists: Beyond Sensation and Stereotyping. New York: New York University Press. Sjoberg, L., 2007. Agency, Militarized Femininity and enemy Others: Observations from the War in Iraq. International Feminist Journal of Politics 9, no. 1: 82–​101. Sjoberg, L., and Gentry, C. E. 2007. Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics, 1st ed. New York: Zed Books. Skjelsbaek, I., and Smith, D., eds. 2001. Gender, Peace and Conflict. London: Sage. Smeulers, A. 2015. Female Perpetrators: Ordinary or Extra-​ordinary Women? International Criminal Law Review 15, no. 2: 207–​253. Sperling, C. 2005. “Mother of Atrocities: Pauline Nyiramasuhuko’s Role in the Rwandan Genocide.” Fordham Urban Law Journal 33: 637–​664. Subotić, J. 2012. “The Cruelty of False Remorse: Biljana Plavšić at The Hague.” Southeastern Europe 36, no. 1: 39–​59. Sylvester, C. 2010. “Tensions in Feminist Security Studies.” Security Dialogue 41, no. 6: 607–​614. Tickner, J. A. 2014. “Retelling IR’s Foundational Stories.” In Feminist Voyage through International Relations, edited by J. A. Tickner, 162–​174. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tickner, J. A., and True, J. 2018. “A Century of International Relations Feminism: From World War I Women’s Peace Pragmatism to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.” International Studies Quarterly 62: 221–​233. Tieger, A., and Shin, M. 2005. “Plea Agreements in the ICTY: Purpose, Effects and Propriety.” Journal of International Criminal Justice 3, no. 3: 666–​679. Unattributed. 2005. Rwanda: Former Woman Minister Denies Role in Genocide. BBC Monitoring Africa August 31. Available via: Nexis UK. Unattributed. 2011. Former Minister Becomes First Ever Female Genocide Convict. Aegis Trust June. Available via: Nexis UK. United Nations, International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. 2015. “Appeals Chamber Delivers Judgement in the Nyiramasuhuko et al Case.” December 14. http://​unictr.unmict.org/​en/​news/​ appeals-​chamber-​delivers-​judgement-​nyiramasuhuko-​et-​al-​case. Weber, C. 2005. International Relations Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge. Wibben, A. T. R. 2004. “Feminist International Relations: Old Debates and New Directions.” Brown Journal of World Affairs 10, no. 1: 97–​114.

A M o t h e r ’ s V i ol e n c e i n G l o b a l P ol i t i c s  

[ 35 ]

63

CHAPTER 3

Protestant Paramilitary Mothering Mothers and Daughters during the Northern Irish Troubles SANDR A M. MCEVOY

I would say that I am a very warm, loving mother of three and grandmother of four. When I was needed I was there. I am not a cruel person. I mean, if we’ve got Republican people that’s willing to kill our [Protestant] people for their cause, I mean, you just can’t sit back and let it happen. —​Karen, interview with the author, Belfast, June 2006

I

met with “Karen” and “Nessa”1 in a small back office of a storefront that served as a community outreach center in an urban part of Belfast. Karen was a small-​framed woman with a kind voice who described herself in our interview as a “good Loyalist.”2 Later in this chapter I will return to further discussion of Karen and women like her, who have engaged in political violence in support of Loyalist paramilitary organizations (LPOs)3 in Northern Ireland, but suffice it to say at this juncture that Karen’s identification of herself as a “loving mother and grandmother” is consistent with many of the women that I have interviewed in Northern Ireland over the past two decades. That is, her concurrent performance of traditional gendered scripts of wife, mother, and grandmother exist alongside a more masculinized role in which she is willing to engage in political violence to defend her community and country. Karen’s simultaneous embodiment of

Sandra M. McEvoy, Protestant Paramilitary Mothering In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0003

particular forms of femininity and particular forms of traditional masculinity is central to my analysis of politically violent Protestant mothers in LPOs in Northern Ireland. I have previously written about several other dimensions of women LPO members’ lives (see McEvoy 2009, 2015, 2018), and again here I  rely on interview data personally collected from almost a dozen visits to Northern Ireland from 2006 to 2017. I  analyze the relationship between women who are mothers and their reflections on their service to LPOs during the 30-​year conflict known as “the Troubles.”4 I  discuss how the women perceive their children’s real or hypothetical participation in such groups. Also included in the analysis are women’s reflections on their own mothers’ awareness of their service and how they concealed or embraced their participation in LPOs from their mothers. In total, their reflections reveal that these women members frequently eschew traditional, highly gendered and romanticized notions of motherhood in ways that emphasize the importance of their paramilitary service. It is my hope that this multidirectional and candid examination of motherhood as experienced by combatant women exposes the sometimes onerous impact of motherhood. Moreover, I hope that especially feminist examinations like this one can contribute to a more robust conversation about the full range of women’s experiences of motherhood—​even when doing so feels like a betrayal to (some forms) of womanhood. As Martin (2015, 352) suggests, perhaps we can move toward a view of maternal representation that reflects the “proliferation of a growing countercultural voice that resonates with the authenticity of women’s lived experience.” A  central tenet of this representation is that motherhood, like all other domains of lived experience, is classed. Working-​ class definitions of motherhood, especially those developed in the context of war, are often underexplored or minimized.5

METHODOLOGICAL ORIENTATION

The research orientation of the project is grounded in feminist research principles that recognize the participants as the experts in their own experiences. Throughout the interviewing process, I  encouraged my participants to help me appreciate their understanding of phenomena, events, and ideas. My intention was to listen closely, ask questions, and learn from them. The participants in the study ranged in age (33–​64 years) and were also differentiated by degree of violent participation, by educational background, and by paramilitary group affiliation. They came from both rural and urban areas; were married, divorced, and single; and

P r o t e s ta n t Pa r a m i l i ta r y M o t h e r i n g 

[ 37 ]

83

included those who were convicted for their activities and those who were not. With the exception of two participants, all women in the study self-​identified as mothers. In one case, a mother and her daughter were interviewed, which provided a unique intergenerational perspective on the exploration of women’s participation in political violence. All of the women whom I spoke to came from the working class. To place the ideas and experiences of participants into an analytical context, it is important to note that these early interviews were conducted eight years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in 1998 and more than thirty years after the official start of the Troubles in 1968. Interviewees were thus asked to reflect on their experiences of membership in groups as many as two decades earlier and following a series of somewhat dramatic shifts in the political landscape of their country. Feminist methodologists have cautioned about the tendency of some social science approaches that perceive data, especially interview data, collected by researchers as being “owned” by the researcher. My research seeks to restructure the inequality that often exists between the researcher and participant and to minimize the notion of the ownership of knowledge. Potts and Brown (2015) refer to this conscious engagement in the research process as “anti-​oppressive” research (see also Cockburn 1998; Kampwirth 2002). In Northern Ireland, I have been especially aware of the tendency of other researchers to make their own, selective meaning of the ways in which current events and general history of the province may, or may not, have affected their participants. All of the women with whom I  initially spoke in 2006, and those with whom I continue to engage, are keenly aware of such research and describe these interpretations as “insulting.” With this in mind, I make every attempt to allow these Loyalist women’s insights and ideas to stand on their own. This chapter is written in consultation with a key informant, “Chloe White.” My relationship with Chloe has been invaluable throughout these many years as I  have sought to understand LPO women. She has facilitated contacts with participants, offered important insights, and served as a kind of check for me, where her position “on the ground” has validated, shaped, and co-​constituted this scholarship. A highly significant asset in my ability to access and become trusted by my participants is my familial connections to Northern Ireland. My parents immigrated to Southern California in 1959, and our family often jokes that we were the only Irish immigrants never to stop in Boston or New York. From early in my life I had a deep interest in Northern Ireland, partly from my parents’ own homesickness, partly because of their own steadfast pride in their troubled homeland, and partly from our own isolation as a Northern Irish family in a place where the only Northern Irish

[ 38 ]  Performances of Motherhood

people were the few that we were related to. I  found myself particularly aware of the intricacies of Northern Irish life. By the time that I arrived in Belfast in 2006 for eight months of fieldwork, I had already visited the city many times, and I had a familiarity with the history, streets, and even the vernacular of Belfast. I was aware of Protestant-​identified street names in Loyalist areas and of communities where Roman Catholics were the majority. Moreover, because my parents lived on specific Protestant-​aligned streets and my grandfather was both a well-​respected member of a large number of Protestant-​dominated cultural organizations known as “Orange Lodges” and a former member of the disbanded B. Specials,6 my credibility in Loyalist areas was all the more reliable. As Dwyer and Buckle (2009) describe, my familiarity with the people that I would eventually work with made me an “insider–​outsider” in the qualitative research process. Still, I never took my access for granted and still feel grateful for it. In writing this chapter, I suggested to Chloe that I might reduce the degree to which I discussed my familial connections to Northern Ireland. As Chloe reviewed the section she emphatically stated, “Don’t! It is an important part of the story. I  would never have trusted you if you had been just another American.  .  .  . Keep it in!” She further explained that these details were important considerations for her in her own thinking about whether she could develop trust in me when we first began discussing women’s service to LPOs, now twelve years ago. She stated: You talked about what your parents were like. . . . They were typical Ulster7 folk especially your dad. . . . I was a bit dubious at first about saying too much as I just thought this is probably just another know-​it-​all from Boston thinking she knows all about us and how we thought. —​Exchange with author, September 2018

Knowing my concern for representing women’s ideas authentically, Chloe finished this exchange by emphatically stating, “If you need to quote what I am saying—​do!”

PARTICIPANTS AS MOTHERS

While assessing overall responses to the question of whether participants would condone their own children’s participation in LPOs, a concern for their child’s safety emerged as a salient theme. I  wondered how these women, who had lived through more than three decades of intensely violent

P r o t e s ta n t Pa r a m i l i ta r y M o t h e r i n g 

[ 39 ]

04

conflict, and who were themselves members of LPOs, would perceive their children’s interest in pursuing membership with an LPO. I was aware that literature from many disciplines documented women as mothers to nonstate and state combatants in conflicts around the world (see de Volo 2004; Mhajne and Whetstone 2018; Peteet 1997; Slattery and Garner 2014). I was also aware that my investigation of these mothers was distinctly different. Rather than exploring mothers’ relationships with their fighting children, this study explores the relationship between fighting mothers and their own interest in encouraging or dissuading their children from participation in paramilitary groups. I was also curious about whether a traditional script of motherhood would emerge that discouraged participation as a form of maternal protection (Ruddick 1995), what such protection might look like in war (see Halevi 2016), and whether the respondent’s own participation in violence would mimic the “mother narrative” that Sjoberg and Gentry (2007, 13) describe as “motherhood gone awry,” where my participants express their violence as being a product of a “need to belong” and as a way of “being loyal to men.” Approximately three-​fourths of the women interviewed had teenage children during the Troubles. Of this subset of the sample, women were asked, “What would your feelings have been if your daughter wanted to be a member of the group?” and, “Did any of your daughters want to be a member of the group?” Those women who were too young to have children at the time of the Troubles were asked, “If your daughter were old enough during the Troubles to participate in the group, what would your feelings be about her being a member?” In response to these questions, three themes emerged: (1) approval and encouragement; (2) disapproval; and (3) acquiescence.

Approval and Encouragement

Only two women (both former members of a large LPO) articulated that they would support their own daughters’ desire to become a member of an LPO. In the first case, “Gloria” spoke honestly about her positive feelings about her daughter’s potential interest in being a member of an LPO. Gloria was a very active member of the largest LPO in Northern Ireland and remained active in Loyalist-​related causes until a number of health concerns unrelated to her activism prevented her from further participation. She admitted that if any or all of her three daughters had an interest in becoming a member of a paramilitary organization, she would not oppose their desire to join a group. With an unassuming tone, she stated, “I

[ 40 ]  Performances of Motherhood

probably would not say too much.” During this and other parts of the interview, a sense of nostalgia about her participation was palpable and may have contributed to her own positive opinions of her daughter’s potential interest in joining an LPO. However, as Gloria thought further about the possibility of one of her daughters participating, it became apparent that she had more to say on the issue. Reflecting on what role she would play should her daughters want to become members of an LPO, she stated with a fierce determination: Put it this way, if they did, I would teach them the art . . . of not getting caught! “If you must do it, here is how!” (Interview with the author, June 2006)

In this exchange, Gloria demonstrates the kind of skill and sophistication in paramilitary activity not often associated with traditional motherhood. Instead of encouraging her daughter to reject membership, Gloria believes that she can protect her daughter by sharing skills she has honed during her service to help keep her out of jail. A similar sense of commitment to paramilitary service was echoed by Chloe. In the following excerpt from our interview, she asserts a resolute sense of the importance of membership. When asked, “If your daughter had been of age during the time that you were active, would you have wanted her to also be part of the LPO you served?” She states: Yes. Because I  believed in what I  was doing, and we needed women because women were very reluctant to come forward. And we needed women . . . and if she believed enough in it. . . . So, I would have encouraged her, you know? (Interview with the author, Belfast, June 2006)

Despite Chloe’s status of being a mother, she asserts the group “needed women” because many were hesitant to join LPOs. In this way, Chloe appears to consider her daughter as an equal cadre in the fight against violent Republicanism. Focusing only on her status as a woman, and not as her daughter, Chloe asserts that the group was “in need of women,” and it was clear to me that Chloe also knew that this was a violation of traditional gender roles. As an extension of the idea of necessity, Chloe asserts that all that would be needed for her to support her daughter for LPO service would be her daughter’s “belief” in the defense of Ulster. Noticeably absent in this portion of the interview is an expression of concern about her daughter’s safety, but given my ongoing exchanges with Chloe, I know that to be true. However, I  also know of Chloe’s staunch support for

P r o t e s ta n t Pa r a m i l i ta r y M o t h e r i n g 

[ 41 ]

24

her LPO, and in some ways, I  think the idea of fighting alongside her daughter would be gratifying. What is also notable in these women’s endorsements of their daughters’ hypothetical participation is their unwavering support for LPOs—​ organizations whose leadership are entirely composed of men. Stoner (2003, 207)  reveals this same dedication of “stalwart” Cuban nationalist women who are “willing to sacrifice [their] home, family, and wealth for their nation and its patriarchal leaders.” It is not my assertion that these women would in some way sacrifice their daughters for an LPO victory. Instead, I mean to identify the many different ways in which mothers, in a war zone like Northern Ireland, have come to extend the idea of protection of their children in ways that may seem foreign to those whose understanding of motherhood8 is confined to peacetime.9 In fact, not discussing the realities of their lived experiences with their daughters, including the conflict, the violence, and the struggle, may, according to these women, have been a kind of abandonment and exposing their children to harm. Some readers may find these mothers’ approaches to protecting their children strange. However, in the minds of these women and many others like them, these are necessary lessons in raising and supporting their daughters and in teaching them how to survive. The thwarting or transgression of gendered norms in relation to motherhood is especially poignant in the work of MacDonald (1991). The women of the Intifada were the first in MacDonald’s work to express a sense of responsibility toward the war—​almost as if the war itself was their children (MacDonald 1991, 96). MacDonald also explores the ways in which women of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) expressed an attitude of responsibility to help sustain the war effort, protect it, and assist it in any way necessary, even if it meant their own demise. MacDonald’s research supports the idea of women’s ability to invoke their own mothering responsibilities to justify their participation in violent organizations. Disapproval

In my interviews with the remaining twenty-​ five women, eighteen women expressed opposition to their daughters joining an LPO. One particular expression reflected the women’s general willingness to use physical force against their daughters if they became members of an LPO. When asked, “How would you respond to your daughter if she told you she had become a member of an LPO?” one woman stated emphatically, “I would break her legs.”

[ 42 ]  Performances of Motherhood

Initially, I  was amused by the woman’s choice of words. Perhaps the woman’s dry, almost monotone delivery (typical of the wonderful Northern Irish working-​class sense of humor) contributed to my interpretation of this response as a joke. In additional instances where this expression was used, a morbid sense of humor honed through decades of war accompanied the comment. However, in this and subsequent interviews, women used similar language to convey a fierce sense of opposition to the idea that their children would join an organization that could physically harm or even kill them. Of course, it was not my impression that she would have actually broken her daughter’s legs, but the irony of this scenario is striking, mostly in the use of violent language. First, these mothers, in an effort to protect their children from harm, consistently used violent language in order to prevent such an eventuality that they would themselves (arguably figuratively) inflict enough physical harm on their children (“breaking their legs”) so that such participation would be impossible. This is also a feature of working-​class motherhood (Mcintyre 2002). The second ironic component of these mothers’ figure of speech is that this behavior (like their own participation in and support of LPOs) fully violates the gendered script that confines women to the singular role of housewife, tea and sandwich maker, and peacemaker—​images so carefully and faithfully cultivated in Northern Ireland (Ward 2004).

Acquiescence

Finally, while the importance of mothers in influencing their children’s decisions to join LPOs has been evidenced here, it is worth noting that some mothers were aware that their influence may not be significant enough to dissuade their children from joining an LPO. This awareness was the topic of conversation between “Holly” and me. “Holly” lives in Belfast and identified as a supporter of a small LPO. A married mother and grandmother, Holly had a quiet, extremely polite and gentle demeanor. Rather than overtly threatening her daughter with physical force, Holly calmly and with almost a sense of anguish stated, “I would try and talk her out of it.” When probed, Holly explained that she would have a difficult time dealing with the emotional and psychological anguish that a prison sentence would bring her daughter and her family if caught by authorities engaging in LPO activities. Shortly after this statement, Holly shared that her brother had been incarcerated for many years as result of LPO offenses. The pain of her brother’s incarceration and the sadness that it brought to Holly’s own

P r o t e s ta n t Pa r a m i l i ta r y M o t h e r i n g 

[ 43 ]

4

mother were tangible as she responded to the question, “Why would you not want your daughter to join an LPO?” She stated: You see the heartache where their people [family] are concerned, you know? When my brother went to prison, I end up saying to my children, “Don’t youse join any organization.” Because my mother, running up to that prison for all them years? I  do not want to be doing that. (Interview with author, Belfast, May 2006)

Again, unlike other women I  spoke to, Holly’s hope that her daughter would not join an LPO did not appear to be driven by her concern for her safety (although this was likely also a factor). As a family committed to Loyalism, it might be assumed that any involvement would be a service to Ulster. Instead, Holly’s concern was that her daughter’s service would bring additional family suffering, and this seemed too much. The centrality of this concern was reaffirmed when I asked Holly, “Would there be any other reasons why you would not want her to join [an LPO]?” Holly responded with the same sense of restrained calm that had characterized much of our interview. She stated, “No, just more because you see the heartache.”

PARTICIPANTS’ MOTHERS

Feminist scholars have made mother–​ daughter relationships—​ in all their diversity, complexity, and dynamism—​a subject of serious scholarly exploration (see Buysse 2000; Gillison et al. 2015; Hollenstein 2017). Increasingly, some scholars are exploring the existence of mothers inside armed insurgent organizations (see Nilsson 2018); however, this research into the endogenous dynamics of mothers in nonstate armed groups remains scant. My participants’ responses show that this omission is an analytical failure and that these women’s frequent references to their mothers solidified the importance and influence of motherhood in their minds. Two especially significant themes related to the participants’ mothers’ views of their participation emerged: (1) protection, noted if the woman described intentionally keeping information about her membership/​support of the LPO from her mother in the belief that that this knowledge would cause her mother worry or concern for her daughter’s safety; and (2) shared interest, noted when a participant discussed her mother’s mutual support/​membership of the particular LPO with which the participant also was affiliated.

[ 44 ]  Performances of Motherhood

Protection of Their Mothers

The desire to be protective of their mothers went beyond wanting to hide the fact that they were involved with LPOs not only because of how it defied traditional gender roles but also because the women felt that concealing this information was a way to protect their mothers from worrying about their safety. Returning again to Karen (who described her mother and father as “true Loyalists”):  she explained that she had never considered telling her mother that she was an active member of an LPO. Overall, Karen speaks compassionately and thoughtfully when she describes the reality of daily living in Belfast during the violent Troubles. She also references her husband, who was a prominent member of an LPO, a fact known to Karen’s mother: I didn’t want her to know, why should she? It was just something that I  was doing. . . . And it was only a few friends that knew what I was doing. . . . But why give her the worry? Why give her the worry? There was enough at the time. There was enough to worry about—​my husband, and everything else, and me being pregnant, and knowing what I was doing. So why give her extra worry? So everything I did was sort of kept secret and just a few of immediate friends, close friends. (Interview with the author, Belfast, June 2006)

It seems especially important to highlight, in Karen’s desire to protect her mother from worrying (she mentions it four times in this short passage), that Karen was pregnant while she was actively involved in an LPO. While we cannot be certain what Karen’s mother might have thought about her daughter’s involvement during her pregnancy, we could surmise that her concern would have intensified, given that her daughter was carrying her future grandchild. In this way, it is notable that Karen felt that she could confide more in friends than in family.

Shared Interest in Support for LPOs

For many of the women, support for Loyalism and opposition to Republicanism ran very deep in their families. Indeed, a number of women had siblings and extended family members who were also members of LPOs. Nevertheless, only one woman of the thirty whom I  interviewed expressed that her mother approved of her participation in an LPO. As a scholar of gender and political violence, finding an instance of intergenerational women’s participation in an LPO was especially significant,

P r o t e s ta n t Pa r a m i l i ta r y M o t h e r i n g 

[ 45 ]

64

and I  immediately wanted to learn more.10 “Lynn” stated not only that her mother was aware of her involvement in LPO activity but also that her mother was very supportive of her affiliation. Throughout the interview, Lynn was resolute about her participation and spoke with pride that it was known to her mother and throughout her immediate community. Lynn shared that she and her mother regularly worked in tandem to conceal weapons and ammunition in their homes by shifting these materials across the street to one another’s houses in a well-​orchestrated routine to avoid detection. When asked, “What did your mother think of your participation?” Lynn stated: My mom knew I was [affiliated with this LPO]. . . . She was willing to do anything, for it was a cause. She went out and barricaded the street and stood like a vigilante in the streets. . . . We stood side-​by-​side. (Interview with the author, Belfast, June 2006)

While not designed to elicit information about Lynn’s mother’s activities on behalf of the group, as the conversation continued about her mother’s awareness of her participation, Lynn recalled the day when the British Army came to her house to arrest her husband (who was also affiliated with an LPO). She tells of her great concern that if the Army searched her house, they would find a store of ammunition that she was hiding for the organization. Also present at the time of the search was Lynn’s mother, who played a pivotal role in keeping Lynn and her husband out of jail that day. In response to the question, “What were your family’s feelings about your participation?” like other participants, Lynn spoke first of her mother (not her father, aunts, uncles, or siblings) in this retelling of her mother’s efforts to hide the ammunition: My family knew. My mother knew . . . my mother knew it. She knew what I was doing. My mother actually . . . the soldiers came to the door . . . and it was on a Tuesday morning, and I will never forget it—​to arrest him. He was away to work so there was nobody there. So my mother knew that there was stuff in my house, and she took a toy belonging to my child, she actually took the head off it and filled it [with ammunition] and sewed the head back on and set it back. (Interview with the author, Belfast, June 2006)

In this story and others that she shared, she conveyed a belief that she and her mother were a team in their service to an LPO. Chloe shared that it was widely understood that the Army would enter homes unannounced and that their entry into the home was very violent. These warrantless

[ 46 ]  Performances of Motherhood

searches often turned houses upside down, and it was not uncommon for the paneling to be pulled from the wall. Lynn’s description of how her mother hid the ammunition in her daughter’s doll may have occurred before the Army arrived but nevertheless emphasizes that she not only prevented her daughter from being arrested but also saved ammunition that was important to the LPO “cause.” Unlike the well-​financed IRA, guns and ammunition were in short supply in LPOs, and any confiscation would be considered a significant loss. My impression was that, while Lynn’s mother cared for her daughter, she also saw this ammunition as equally important to the Protestant/​Loyalist community. It was this shared belief between mother and daughter that kept the ammunition from being confiscated.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Feminist researchers continue to examine war in ways that make women and gender central figures in our ongoing understandings of war. In the case of LPOs in Northern Ireland, we see that the ways female members embrace and simultaneously contest traditional notions of motherhood represent a complex and context-​specific endeavor. We are also reminded of the critical importance of creating opportunities for politically violent mothers to share their own accounts of war, describing not only the ways in which they nurture their children but also how they nurture their country during its most violent and vulnerable period. The women interviewed here also offer reflections from a working-​class perspective that disrupt prevailing narratives of maternal protection. We note that the motherhood narrative is dominant enough to pervade societies plagued by war, even when so many other cultural norms are commonly abandoned. Finally, the testimony of these LPO women illustrates, relying on their own very straightforward language, that traditional notions of motherhood simply do not reflect their wartime experiences as mothers. In association with my key informant Chloe White, I have offered insight into the ways in which mothers protected their children and themselves during decades of conflict in Northern Ireland. Chloe and I  are hopeful that researchers continue to ask questions about working-​class  Loyalist women in Northern Ireland, especially as the United Kingdom continues its negotiations with the European Union ahead of its withdrawal in October 2019.

P r o t e s ta n t Pa r a m i l i ta r y M o t h e r i n g 

[ 47 ]

84

NOTES 1. All interviews were conducted in confidentiality, and the interviewees have been assigned pseudonyms by mutual agreement. 2. The term “Loyalist” is a contested term. It is most often used to describe the portion of the Protestant population in Northern Ireland that seeks to maintain the political, economic, and cultural union between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom. Underpinning Loyalism is an affirmation of a Protestant cultural identity. While not all self-​identified Loyalists endorse the use of violence to defend this union, some do (see Taylor 2000). 3. Dozens of violent paramilitary organizations emerged over the course of the conflict. The two main Protestant-​aligned groups that my interviewees support/​ ed are the Ulster Defense Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force. To further protect the women’s identities, group affiliations have been omitted from their testimonies. 4. The political, religious, and cultural conflict in Northern Ireland began in 1968 and officially ended with the signing of the GFA in 1998. The GFA allowed most paramilitaries from both sides of the conflict early release from prison. It is important to note that some members of violent Republicanism and some members of violent Loyalism remain in a conflict-​like posture toward one another despite 20 years of “peace.” 5. I do not mean to suggest that class is the only lens through which explorations of motherhood are needed. US black feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins (1993) provides one of the best critiques of motherhood from the perspective of social class, race, gender, and colonization. 6. The B. Specials were a Belfast-​based, British Army–​affiliated unit that served as an antiterrorism police force. Under scrutiny for the use violent tactics, the unit was disbanded in 1970. The action dismayed many Loyalists but was welcomed by the Republican community. 7. The term “Ulster” is frequently used by Protestants living in the province to refer to Northern Ireland. Outside of Northern Ireland, some confusion is created when Ulster is used to refer to the six counties of the northern portion of the island of Ireland. In many ways, it is used as a regional term. 8. Although it is outside the scope of this chapter, Sardadvar and Miko (2004) explore the queering of motherhood wherein they destabilize binary constructions of the roles of mother and father to problematize the implicit assumptions of heterosexuality and sexual reproduction. 9. One of the earliest feminist-​informed examinations of motherhood in conflict affected areas is Lorentzen and Turpin’s 1998 edited volume, The Women and War Reader. While the examination does not address mothers as fighters, it takes seriously the role of mothers in what they refer to as the “military and war complex.” 10. I later learned that there was a precedent for this intergenerational participation in LPOs. Throughout December 1974 and then again in July 1975, the Irish Press reported that a woman named Louise Davey and her daughter Eileen were both members of the UDA. In addition to the Irish Press, the Sunday Press and the Daily Mail reported that the Daveys were attempting to blackmail the UDA by threatening to reveal sensitive information about the organization’s operations.

[ 48 ]  Performances of Motherhood

The case was largely written off by many LPO members and the larger Loyalist community, but at the very least the case did serve to publicize this mother and daughter’s membership in the UDA.

REFERENCES Buysse, T. M. 2000. The Mother-​Daughter Relationship and the Development of Daughters’ Feminist Consciousness. Ph.D. thesis. Berkeley, CA: The Wright Institute. de Volo, L. 2004. “Mobilizing Mothers for War: Cross-​National Framing Strategies in Nicaragua’s Contra War.” Gender and Society 18, no. 6: 715–​734. Cockburn, C. 1998. The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict. London and New York: Zed Books. Dwyer, S., and Buckle, J. 2009. “The Space between: On Being an Insider-​Outsider in Qualitative Research.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 8, no, 1: 54–​63. Halevi, G. 2016. “Risk and Resilience Trajectories in War‐Exposed Children across the First Decade of Life.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 57: 1183–​1193. Gillison, S. 2015. “Mother-​Adolescent Daughter Identity Interplay Processes.” Journal of Consumer Marketing 32, no. 4: 234–​244. Hill-​Collins, P. 1993. “Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood.” In Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, edited by E. Nakano, G. Chang, and L. Forcey, 45–​66. New York: Routledge. Hollenstein, T. 2017. “Emotional Development in the Context of Mother–​Child Relationships.” Current Opinion in Psychology 17: 140–​144. Kampwirth, K. 2002. Women & Guerrilla Movements: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lorentzen, L., and Turpin, J., eds. 1996. The Women and War Reader. New York: New York University Press. MacDonald, E. 1991. Shoot the Women First. New York: Random House. Martin, B. A. 2015. “Go the Fuck to Sleep Prince George: Juxtaposing Cultural Representations of Motherhood and Exploring the Politics of Authenticity.” In Natal Signs: Cultural Representations of Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting, edited by N. Burton, 351–​371. Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press. McEvoy, S. 2009. “Loyalist Women Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland: Beginning a Feminist Conversation about Conflict Resolution.” Security Studies 18, no. 2: 262–​286. McEvoy, S. 2015. “Queering Security Studies: Problem, Practice and Practitioner.” In LGBTQIA Politics and IR Theory: New Perspectives on Sexual Justice in World Politics, edited by M. Picq and M. Thiel, 139–​154. New York: Routledge. McEvoy, S. 2018. “Gender and Paramilitaries.” In Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security, edited by C. Gentry, L. Shepherd, and L. Sjoberg, 396–​405. New York: Routledge. Mcintyre, A. 2002. “Women Researching Their Lives: Exploring Violence and Identity in Belfast, the North of Ireland.” Qualitative Research 2, no. 18: 387–​409.

P r o t e s ta n t Pa r a m i l i ta r y M o t h e r i n g 

[ 49 ]

05

Mhajne, A., and Whetstone, C. 2018. “The Use of Political Motherhood in Egypt’s Arab Spring Uprising and Aftermath.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 20, no. 1: 54–​68. Nilsson, M. 2018. “Muslim Mothers in Ground Combat against the Islamic State: Women’s Identities and Social Change in Iraqi Kurdistan.” Armed Forces and Society 44, no. 2: 261–​279. Peteet, J. 1997. “Icons and Militants: Mothering in the Danger Zone.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 23, no. 1: 103–​129. Potts, K. and Brown, L. 2005. “Becoming an Anti-​Oppressive Researcher.” In Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous, & Anti-​Oppressive Approaches, edited by L. Brown and S. Strega, 255–​286. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Ruddick, S. 1995. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon Press. Sardadvar, K., and Miko, K. 2014. “Shifting Families: Alternatives Drafts of Motherhood.” In Queering Motherhood: Narrative and Theoretical Perspectives, edited by M. Gibson, 141–​158. Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press. Sjoberg, L., and Gentry, C., eds. 2007. Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics. New York, London: Zed Books. Slattery, K., and Garner, A. 2014. “News Coverage of U.S. Mothers of Soldiers during the Vietnam War.” Journalism Practice 2: 265–​278. Stoner, L. 2003. “Militant Heroines and the Consecration of the Patriarchal State: The Glorification of Loyalty, Combat, and National Suicide in the Making of Cuban National Identity.” Journal of Cuban Studies 34: 71–​96. Taylor, P. 2000. Loyalists. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Ward, R. 2004. “‘It’s Not Just Tea and Buns’; Women and Pro‐Union Politics in Northern Ireland.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 6: 494–​506.

[ 50 ]  Performances of Motherhood

CHAPTER 4

Extending Acts of Motherhood Storytelling as Resistance to Stigma JAMIE J. HAGEN

Many kinds of maternal stories need to be told: by heterosexual, gay and lesbian mothers; by mothers who are coupled, single or live in groups; by mothers separated from their children’s female or male biological parent; by mothers who are celibate or monogamous or who have many sexual partners. It is only by collecting our many stories that we can address the urgent task of rethinking the connection between sexual and mothering lives. —​Ruddick (1995, 54)

M

othering, perhaps more than anything else, illustrates just how political the personal is for women. Though there are as many different ways to mother as there are to be a woman, those who do not fit an ideal version of motherhood may be viewed by their communities as failures or, worse, as unfit mothers. Two groups of women stigmatized for different acts of motherhood—​lesbian mothers and mothers who have abortions—​ are finding ways to rewrite the script about how to mother and share these stories without shame. Rather than be silenced by those who would say they are inappropriate mothers, these mothers are openly sharing their stories as a way to shift this stigma while also challenging the legitimacy of the so-​called nuclear family. As Sara Ruddick suggests, we need to collect many more stories about motherhood to allow for more complex narratives about motherhood beyond “good” or “bad” mothers. With an interest in continuing Ruddick’s Jamie J. Hagen, Extending Acts of Motherhood In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0004

25

project, this chapter begins with an examination of the stories told about who is an ideal mother in modern Western society. To better understand what it means to be labeled a “bad” mother, I  review Erving Goffman’s conception of stigma. A closer look at both the myth that mothers do not have abortions and the myth that lesbians cannot be mothers illustrates the way stigma is a part of the stories told about ideal motherhood. The chapter then turns to ways that mothers have engaged in storytelling to resist abortion stigma and sexual stigma.

CONSTRUCTING THE IDEAL MOTHER

The stories told about mothers are foundational stories to our society. Mothers are held up as symbols of peace as well as justifications for war (Cohn 2013). Embedded within stories told about mothers are gendered logics governing why women mother as well as what it means to be a mother. Bound up in the social relations of gender are norms about reproduction where a “good” mother reproduces children, fulfilling her duty as wife and citizen (Petchesky c1990). The familiar tropes of “bad” mothers are readily available as well. The “bad” mother is a mother who resists, who is selfish, who acts out, and who is in discord with the state (Gumbs et al. 2016; Kinser 2010). The idealized mother presents a challenging figure in feminist discourse. Ruddick’s work on maternal thinking raises this point, stating that “[t]‌he myth that mothers are naturally good or wickedly bad inspires ignorant contempt for the actual work that mothers do” (1995, 32). Ruddick is interested in those who have found a way to neither “fear nor romanticize” mothering, or what she refers to as “maternal power” (1995, 39). Yet, in response to Ruddick, bell hooks warns feminists that, “employing the same terminology that is used by sexists to suggest that women are inherently life-​affirming nurturers, feminist activists reinforce central tenets of male supremacist ideology” (2000, 135). Underlying the story about the “good” mother is the myth of a superior nuclear family model. In the compilation Revolutionary Mothering, Ariel Gore outlines this vision of the family: The idealized nuclear family is Mother + father + kids. Parents are mid-​twenties to late thirties when the first kids are born (idealized age increases over the course of the 20th century). All family members are straight, middle class, middle-​to high-​income, able-​bodied, mental illness free, pretty, happy, successful, and white identified. (2016, 142)

[ 52 ]  Performances of Motherhood

This Western idealized narrative of motherhood contains mothering within a patriarchal, heterosexist family structure, raced white, and middle class (Collins 2009; Davis 1983). State actors and policymakers continue to treat mothering as something that not only is but should be done by heterosexual women, based in the home, supported by the primary income of an able-​ bodied man working outside the home (Petchesky c1990; Ruddick 1995). The division between who is an ideal mother and who is a “bad” mother also falls along race and class lines (Davis 1981; Moraga and Anzaldua 2015; Roberts 2017; Silliman et  al. 2004). The possibility of living up to the ideal mother is limited to only a minority of women, and as bell hooks articulates, is in contradiction to a liberatory feminist politics.

UNDERSTANDING STIGMA AND THE POWER OF MYTH

One practice used to uphold the myth of the ideal mother is stigma. Popularized by Goffman, stigma is a way of understanding shame and discrimination systematically (1959). He describes stigma as an “attribute that is deeply discrediting” and in turn creates a “tainted, discounted one” in society (Goffman 1963). Stigma can occur on the individual level, within the family, within the medical community, and on a social or political level. Types of stigma include perceived stigma, experienced stigma, and internalized stigma (Cook and Dickens 2014, 89). Perceived stigma refers to the negative way an individual perceives others to feel about them related to a particular act; experienced stigma refers to the suffering experienced because of this negative discrimination; and internalized stigma refers to the incorporation of these negative perceptions or beliefs, into one’s own self-​assessment (Cook and Dickens 2014, 89). There are direct linkages between stigma and discrimination, prejudice and violence. Stigma is something that can be “strategically deployed by persons in power” (Stuber et al. 2008, 353). This is evident in how maternity is racialized, resulting in violence against black mothers and their children (Bridges 2011; Collins 2008; Craddock 2015; Ross and Solinger 2017). Confronted with severe stigma, black women not only have been told that they are “bad” mothers but also have at times been denied the right to mother completely. A historical example of this is the forced sterilization of women of color at the hands of the state (Washington 2006). In America, black women were sterilized at a much higher rate than white woman, punished for being poor, and seen as unfit to mother by racist doctors who denied them birth control (Roberts 2017, 97; see also Chapter  7). More recently, scientists have measured the impact of stigma on motherhood

E x t e n di n g Ac t s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 53 ]

45

by researching the gap in the infant mortality rate in the United States between black and white mothers. The once radical idea that racism is the cause for the death of a number of black babies in the United States is now proved to be true; the widely believed story proposing that these deaths were a result of the genetics of black women has thankfully been challenged (Villarosa 2018). The racist myth of black women as inferior mothers in the United States has resulted in powerful and lasting stigmatizing structures resulting in the death of black infants as well as mothers. Black infants are currently more than twice as likely to die in America than white infants (Villarosa 2018). How women mother is heavily scrutinized and regulated. Those women perceived as “bad” mothers may endure all three types of stigma (perceived, experienced, and internalized) in different aspects of their life. This stigma is in part a result of the limited stories society allows for what it means to be a “good” mother and who is in turn marked by society as a “bad” mother leading to other forms of discrimination, marginalization, and physical violence. Two types of stigma used to ostracize some mothers are abortion stigma and sexual stigma; each is reviewed in more detail in the following sections.

Abortion Stigma and the Myth that Mothers Do Not Have Abortions

Despite the fact that one in four women in the United States will have an abortion by the age of 45  years, the medical procedure continues to be treated differently than other aspects of women’s reproductive health care (Guttmacher Institute 2018). Few statistics are available about the rate at which mothers have had abortions.1 Lack of transparency about women’s experiences in seeking abortion services, in part due to this abortion stigma, has resulted in misinformation about which women seek abortions and when. Expanding on Goffman’s work on stigma, researchers Anuradha Kumar, Leila Hessini, and Ellen M H Mitchell began investigating the power structures related to stigma specific to abortion in the late 2000s. Abortion stigma is “a negative attribute ascribed to women who seek to terminate a pregnancy that marks them, internally or externally, as inferior to ideals of womanhood” (Kumar et al. 2009, 628).2 To help illustrate this, the authors visualize the different levels of abortion stigma, shown in Figure 4.1, using a circle expanding outward, with different layers of the levels where stigma occurs (Kumar et al. 2009, 630). The center of the ring is individual abortion stigma, surrounded by community abortion stigma, surrounded by

[ 54 ]  Performances of Motherhood

Individual Community Organizational Structural Framing Discourses

Figure 4.1.  Levels of abortion stigma.

organizational abortion stigma, surrounded by structural abortion stigma, and finally surrounded by the framing discourses of abortion stigma. Abortion stigma presents differently in different communities, at times motivated by religion, medical misinformation, and pronatalist politics (Kissling 2018, 6). As a result of this stigma, in some parts of the world it is not safe or affordable for women to receive an abortion even though it is a simple medical procedure. In 26 countries, abortion is illegal (Guttmacher Institute 2018). Structural stigmas pertaining to abortion include the “Global Gag Rule,” a US law banning the use of foreign aid money for abortion-​related activities, and the Hyde Amendment, a US amendment that limits taxpayer money for abortion services. Stigma around abortion can limit the ability for communities to spend money allocated to sexual and reproductive healthcare on abortion-​related education or care (Human Rights Watch 2018; Salganicof 2017). I have witnessed the individual and community levels of abortion stigma firsthand in the US while volunteering as a clinic escort in Boston, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. As a clinic escort, I  walk patients to the door of a reproductive healthcare facility that provides abortions in addition to other services like birth control, Papanicolaou (Pap) tests, and breast exams. The purpose of serving as an escort is to minimize the contact patients have with those who shame and harass them on the way to their appointment. This harassment may take the form of screaming, presentation of violent images, and handing out flyers with misinformation about the dangers of abortion. It is not uncommon to hear antiabortion protesters outside the clinic harass patients walking to the door of the clinic by playing on what a “good” mother does for her child.

E x t e n di n g Ac t s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 55 ]

65

The harassment does not reflect how most of those who seek abortions have previously given birth or would like to in the future. Little consideration is given to those clients who may suffer medical complications without the termination of their pregnancy. Because of abortion stigma like this, women who have had an abortion may experience internalized stigma, often feeling alone on this journey. The stigma women face for seeking an abortion is in part tied to their perceived failure to achieve certain biological roles as women (Htun and Weldon 2018; Jones et  al. 2008; Luker 1984; Petchesky c1990; Ruddick 1995). A mother choosing to have an abortion is viewed as a contradiction to the story told about women as givers of life and protectors of children (Ruddick 1995). The idea that the same woman might at one point in her life choose to have an abortion and at another be an excellent mother excited to give birth complicates the oppositional categorizing of a “good” mother and a “bad” mother. In Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, Kirstin Luker argues how the advocacy of pro-​choice3 women “strips the veil of sanctity from motherhood” and in the process demotes motherhood “from a sacred calling to a job” (1984, 205). Others argue that for a mother to choose not to give birth is viewed as deeply threatening (Kumar et al. 2009, 628). Conversations about abortion are often reduced to a narrative with two competing sides, placing feminists on one side of the debate and traditional housewives on the other (Luker 1984, 193). In this story, feminists are the “bad” women who want abortions, and the “good” housewife is a sacrificing mother who places her children first, above all else. But the simple story that “good” women have babies and “bad” women have abortions becomes more complicated when women are asked the reasons they choose to have an abortion. In a 2008 study involving conversations with 38 women who had abortions, the two broad considerations for motherhood that shaped their decision are first, responsibilities related to already existing children, and second, wanting the “ideal” conditions of motherhood (Jones et al. 2008). Many mothers who have abortions already have children or want to have children at a different point in their life under different financial, emotional, familial, or political circumstances. The study by Jones et al. found that “women avail themselves of abortion throughout their reproductive years and in many instances do so because they are motivated to be a good parent” (Jones et al. 2008, 98). A 2014 study found that the majority (59%) of abortion patients had already had at least one previous birth (Jerman et  al.). In other words, contrary to what antichoice protestors present, choosing to have an abortion is something many mothers do because of the “material responsibilities of motherhood,” choosing an abortion knowing they want

[ 56 ]  Performances of Motherhood

to be able to be better mothers to the children they already have or wanting to wait to give birth at a time in their life when they are better able to provide and care for their child (Jones et al. 2008, 79).

Sexual Stigma and the Myth that Lesbians Cannot Be Mothers

Sexual stigma is the “social and structural processes of devaluation, power inequalities, and negative attitudes and stereotypes towards LGBQ persons, relationships and communities” (Logie and Earnshaw 2015, 2). Sexual stigma for lesbian mothers4 occurs within the family in the form of familial homophobia, on an institutional level from the courts and medical profession, or in the form of internalized stigma, which in turn regulates how open lesbian mothers are about their sexual orientation with their community. Lesbian motherhood is still viewed by some as an oxymoron in a heterosexist society. Lesbian mothers challenge configurations of motherhood and femininity by rejecting compulsory heterosexuality. As Adrienne Rich observes, “lesbian existence compromises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on male right of access to women” (1984, 416). Researcher Ellen Lewins interviewed single lesbian mothers and single nonlesbian mothers in the 1980s for her book Lesbian Mothers. Lewin believed it could be important to illustrate the similarities between the two communities, especially as she witnessed the damage done to lesbians who were stigmatized as unfit to mother by society and by the American judicial system. When she began her research in the 1970s, people were perplexed as to how a lesbian could even be a mother, viewing it to be a contradiction in terms. Part of the reason for this confusion, Lewin argued, is that American culture “conflates ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ and defines lesbians as neither” (Lewin 1993, 15). Sarah Schulman draws attention to the shunning gay and lesbian people experience from their heterosexual family members as the site where homophobia is often learned for the first time. Schulman views what she labels “familial homophobia” as a “pathological manifestation of heterosexual culture” (2009, 23). This familial homophobia and shunning may leave lesbian mothers questioning whether they really deserve to be parents at all. There are also forms of stigma that can come from within one’s own family. Nancy J. Mezey considers the way different race and class dimensions affect the coming-​out process for lesbian mothers as well as a stigma that can affect their children. Mezey argues, “by lesbians not proudly and publicly coming out, their children may develop a sense of

E x t e n di n g Ac t s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 57 ]

85

shame and lead to heightened internalized homophobia” (2008, 261). But the ability to come out publically as a lesbian mother differs depending on one’s social location. The fear lesbian mothers feel regarding the risks of coming out to family, coworkers, and heterosexual friends is supported by Mezey’s research, where she found that people are not as willing to accept lesbian mothers as they are to accept lesbians (2008, 261). Lesbian mothers are confronted with stigma on a structural level, too, facing additional social, financial, and emotional hurdles when it comes to pregnancy, childbirth, adoption, and parenting. Unlike heterosexual families, lesbian families must also contest with disclosure management of their sexual identity, the possible need for second-​parent adoption, and the shifting legislation and protections for same-​sex families. Concerned about the stigma their children might experience as a result of their identity, some lesbian mothers do not reach out for resources or support services such as help from school systems, healthcare providers, or psychologists (van Dam 2004, 477). Beginning in the family, many lesbians get the message that lesbian mothers either do not exist or are not appropriate mothers. In the face of this sexual stigma, more lesbian mothers are opening up about how and why they parent. This is, in turn, changing the shape of what families look like in the process and presenting new models for parenting.

BUSTING STIGMA THROUGH STORYTELLING

Consciousness-​raising initiatives based on storytelling, motivated by the US women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, continue today in new ways through platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and other websites. As reproductive justice activist Renee Bracey Sherman writes: The goal of storytelling in any movement is to normalize a stigmatized experience, to connect the stigmatized people who often live in isolation, and to increase understanding about a taboo issue. In my research, I’ve found that the majority of people who have shared have done so to change the existing narrative and connect with others. Think of it as the Batman symbol flying high above the streets of Gotham:  We want people to know that we’re here and that we matter. Cultural shift, along with policy shift, is a byproduct of that connection. (2015)

Sherman is among those activists working for reproductive justice, learning from activists before her such as Loretta J. Ross. Ross is one of

[ 58 ]  Performances of Motherhood

the founding members of SisterSong, a group that describes itself as a Southern-​based, national membership organization working to build an effective network of individuals and organizations to improve institutional policies and systems that affect the reproductive lives of marginalized communities (SisterSong n.d.). The group defines reproductive justice as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities” (SisterSong n.d.). It is the reproductive justice philosophy that has inspired many of those groups working in the reproductive health and reproductive rights communities on behalf of families that will never be the idealized nuclear family. Reflecting on organizing with other women of color as a young feminist, Ross writes, “We needed to find each other and, beyond that, find each other in each other” (Gumbs et al. 2016, xiii). Community-​based advocacy on behalf of those stigmatized because of their sexual and reproductive choices provides support as well as a platform for advocacy. It requires power to stigmatize, and it is with this in mind that activists seek to create new bases of power to provide support for one another.

Moms Who Have Had Abortions Speak Out

Abortion stigma targeting mothers who have abortions can keep them from speaking out about their experience. However, when mothers feel supported enough to share their personal experiences, this can humanize those who have abortions and also destigmatize this aspect of women’s healthcare. There is a “stigma-​busting” power in storytelling, and this is exactly why storytelling has been taken up by abortion access advocates (Kissling 2018, 23). One example of this is the Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP) conference which provides a space for sharing these stories at their annual conference and abortion speak-​out. The CLPP conference website explains, “This is a space for people who have had abortions to share their stories in a safe and supportive environment. Listening to such personal stories frames the weekend and grounds conference conversations in lived experiences” (2018). I was in the room at CLPP in 2018. During the CLPP abortion speak-​out, I was reminded how powerful a community of women supporting women can be. A room full of hundreds of women sat in a hushed auditorium, waiting for those who wanted to write their own narratives of abortion to step forward. There was no script, no prepared list of speakers, no moderator. Many shared the experience of being a mother

E x t e n di n g Ac t s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 59 ]

06

now with gratitude that they were able to choose when to parent and when not to parent. As one participant, Sarah U., writes, “It puts a human face on this polarized and politicized question, and deepens again our awareness that this freedom is central to the ability of women to control our lives” (CLPP 2018). As a member of the audience during the speak-​out, I felt like I was a part of making space for people to tell their stories in a society that tells us to keep our experiences of abortion to ourselves, be ashamed, deny that “bad” thing we did, and move on. At the CLPP conference, people work together to find ways to live in a world that does not stigmatize mothers who have abortions. The conference is also a hub for other organizations committed to full-​spectrum reproductive justice work, including groups like the Boston Abortion Support Collective and All-​Options based in Portland, Oregon. These organizations are committed to providing services following the reproductive justice model and supporting mothers in every aspect of their reproductive life, whether it is carrying a pregnancy, parenting, abortion, adoption, or miscarriage. Reproductive justice is a global movement. Internationally there have now been three convenings of the conference Abortion and Reproductive Justice:  The Unfinished Revolution to “provide a platform for delegates to explore, identify, share and pursue learning and research opportunities on a range of issues relating to abortion and reproductive justice in context, including access to abortion, activism and abortion politics” (2018). The conference met in Canada in 2014, Northern Ireland in 2016, and South Africa in 2018. Advocates around the world have also developed abortion storytelling projects. One project, YouACT, developed the toolkit Speak My Language in 2016. The toolkit is by and for young people with input from people in Georgia, Lithuania, Republic of Macedonia, Poland, and Romania. The document includes information about abortion stigma, storytelling techniques in the context of abortion stigma, how to talk about abortion, and how to reach out to young people who face or could face abortion stigma. The toolkit states, “We believe sharing these experiences can empower youth to create a different human reality by eliminating abortion stigma. Stories have a power of their own telling and sharing them, can help us develop profoundly, as well as give people the chance to see what abortion stigma can mean to others” (2016, 5). Other abortion storytelling projects include the 1 in 3 Campaign, Breaking the Silence, I’m Not Sorry, and Voices of Courage. The motivation for mothers who have had an abortion to speak out is sometimes linked to specific legislation, especially in the case of the threat of loss of access to abortion services. Such was the case for some mothers during the Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment in Ireland. The

[ 60 ]  Performances of Motherhood

campaign was organized leading up to the public referendum in Ireland for a vote to repeal the Eighth Amendment, which restricted the right to an abortion. Before the 2018 referendum, two hashtags on Twitter in support of repeal were trending:  #Repealthe8th (221,511 tweets) and #Together4yes (29,569 tweets) (Sweeney-​Burke 2018). The vote for the repeal of the amendment was successful, lifting the restriction on abortion in Ireland and giving other countries hope that they, too, may be able to push for a change to their restrictive abortion laws (Time 2018). During the campaign, women from all over Ireland shared their stories of having to travel to access abortion in other countries. Janet Ní Shuilleabháin, an Irish woman in her forties and a mother of two, spoke out about her experience flying to London to obtain an abortion when she was eighteen. Janet echoes the stories of many mothers when she shares that the ability to have the abortion she had when she was younger allowed her to live the life she has today. “When my son was born and I got to hold him for the first time, I was just absolutely overjoyed. It absolutely made me even more pro-​choice” (Hoddinott 2018). In some ways, those mothers who have had abortions are the most likely to speak out about the need to destigmatize abortion, wanting to be sure their children are able to make reproductive decisions free of stigma. Creating community with those who support and work to protect all aspects of reproductive care for mothers has been a compelling way to resist abortion stigma. Advocacy from the community of women affected by the discrimination for the community of women affected by the stigma is a powerful form of resistance.

Sharing Stories of Revolutionary Lesbian Motherhood

Storytelling is a way of “coming out,” or openly and proudly proclaiming an experience or identity. In search of narratives of mothering that are more affirming, many lesbian parents are going online. Blogs like Mutha and Mombian, YouTube videos like the Queer Mama series, and art such as Stacyann Chin’s play Motherstruck! are all examples of the ways women are finding to tell their stories of lesbian motherhood.5 As Amber Kinser explains, “Online communities center mother expertise in women’s lives and work to affirm maternal agency and experience, and they offer tools for coping with the myriad challenges of mothering in these times.” (2010, 144). Dana Rudolph, a lesbian mother herself, launched the website Mombian blog: Sustenance for Lesbian Moms in 2005 to provide a lifestyle site for lesbian moms after seeing a lack of any blogs from this perspective

E x t e n di n g Ac t s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 61 ]

26

(Mombian n.d.). The website includes a list of family blogs, coverage of political events, and a resource directory. Rudolph has also created a space where the experience of being a queer parent is centered and normalized, something generally absent from mommy blogs targeting heterosexual readers. Michelle Tea, a lesbian mother who started the website about mothering Mutha, explained in an interview with author and fellow lesbian mother Andrea Lawlor, “Queer people have used the Internet to find each other, more so possibly than any other group who are reaching out for real life-​saving connections. I like this idea of the Internet being able to provide people with something that’s life-​sustaining in a material and physical way, like you find your soulmate” (2016). Haley Jude and her wife Simone Jude created the YouTube Series Queer Mama in 2015 to allow viewers to follow their journey through lesbian conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood. One of the most viewed of the Queer Mama videos, with more than 8,000 views, is the “Our Baby Doesn’t Have Two Moms” episode. In this episode Simone Jude, who is genderqueer, explains that she does not identify as mom/​mother/​momma because of her gender identity and instead she would like to simply be referred to as a parent by friends and family. Simone Jude also speaks of the possibility of having her child refer to her as the gender-​neutral Baba rather than mommy or daddy. Simone continues: It’s interesting when you relate gender to parenthood and the roles that are typically carved out for us. This is all another example of us writing our own story as a family. And I really love that about us, that we always write our own story and we don’t accept the prescribed way of doing things. I’m so excited to be a parent and to kind of present a very complex version of myself that I am to my child because I think children have a lot of capability and intelligence, so much more than we give them credit for. (Queer Mama August 6, 2015)

In their second video in the series, Jude shares her experience getting pregnant using in vitro fertilization (IVF) twice, with the first pregnancy resulting in a miscarriage. “We were told we had about, at best, a 50% chance of having a baby at the end of IVF” (Queer Mama April 23, 2015). Simone adds, “It’s like putting a bunch of money down and flipping a coin.” The whole IVF process involved four embryos, 132 injections, and more than $20,000 per round. Jude is also open about how difficult the IVF experience was for her, especially when it came to handling the fluctuating hormones. Haley Jude acknowledges her experience may not be the same as others but ends all her videos by inviting viewers to send her questions, making herself available as a resource to other lesbian parents.

[ 62 ]  Performances of Motherhood

In the same year that the Judes started documenting their story, Chin wrote the play MotherStruck! about her struggle to get pregnant as a lesbian. Chin never loses her sense of humor about her rollercoaster ride to pregnancy, explaining, “I was blogging about the IVF process and trying to get pregnant while being a lesbian, and the ridiculous nature of trying to hunt down sperm. When you’re not having sex with someone but you’re trying to broker sperm, it can be quite hilarious and ridiculous, which of course leads itself to so much humor” (Jordan 2016). After sharing her story, Chin began to recognize her struggles with fertility connected with many mothers, not just lesbians. “What’s surprising to me now is that now that I’m talking to a lot of women about this, so many women are doing this. Straight women, lesbian women, bisexual women, poor women, White women, immigrant women. This does not affect one group. I think women are deeply interested in a conversation around fertility. It’s not a conversation just for one age group of women, a conversation if you’re post 30 or post 35. This [is] a conversation about reproduction, about taking your own power with you and deciding for yourself” (Jordan 2016).

CONCLUSION

Whether it is through comment spaces below videos on YouTube or by making time to talk to the women coming up to speak in person after a performance, lesbian mothers are providing a space to support women who may not have anywhere else to go to meet mothers like themselves. In those spaces designed for and by these marginalized lesbian mothers, I find what it looks like to celebrate the possible futures for revolutionary mothers. Lesbian mothers and mothers who have had abortions are finding ways to resist stigma through storytelling. In doing so, they are also finding strength, support, and power. Advocacy for mothers on behalf of mothers is a particularly persuasive way of breaking the false construction of an ideal “good”/​“bad” mother dichotomy that is so often used to tear mothers down. Community-​based initiatives informed by the principles of reproductive justice make possible new narratives of maternity. These new narratives provide ways to envision a future without stigma, while also celebrating and complicating different ways to mother. Yet, the burden for this change can not only be with those who are marginalized. Those in power must also center stories of stigmatized mothers, embracing them as equally valid representations of ways of mothering beyond the nuclear family.

E x t e n di n g Ac t s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 63 ]

46

NOTES 1. One exception to this is attention to sex-​selective abortions. 2. Abortion providers also face abortion stigma. 3. Luker uses the language of pro-​choice to indicate those who are in support of legal access to abortion and antichoice to indicate those who are against access to abortion. I use the language of antiabortion protestor rather than antichoice. 4. Some lesbians prefer a gender-​neutral label such as parent instead of mother. 5. It is important to recognize that online spaces are always limited to those privileged enough to access them, something that also informs which stories are told and shared.

REFERENCES Abortion and Reproductive Justice: The Unfinished Revolution. 2018. “About the Conference.” http://​www.repjusticeconference3.co.za/​about/​about-​the-​ conference. Accessed August 25, 2018. Bridges, K. 2011. Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racializations, 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP). 2018. “Abortion Speak Out.” https://​clpp. hampshire.edu/​conference/​program/​abortion-​speak-​out. Accessed August 21, 2018. Cohn, C. 2013. Women and Wars, 1st ed. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Collins, P. H. 2009. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 1st ed. New York: Routledge. Cook, R. J., and Dickens, B. M. 2014. “Reducing Stigma in Reproductive Health.” International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics 125: 89–​92. Craddock, K. 2015. Black Motherhood(s): Contexts, Contours and Considerations, 1st ed. Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press. Davis, A. Y. 1983. Women, Race and Class. New York: Random House. Goffman, E. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gore, A. 2016. “Queering Family.” In Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines, edited by A. P. Gumbs, C. Martins, and M. Williams, 142–​146. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Gumbs, A. P., Martins, C., and Williams, M. 2016. Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Guttmacher Institute. 2018. “Induced Abortion in the United States.” January. https://​www.guttmacher.org/​fact-​sheet/​induced-​abortion-​united-​states. Hoddinott, H. 2018. “‘I Had an Abortion’: Irish Mother-​of-​Two Reveals What It’s Like to Travel to England for a Termination.” Independent May 13. https://​www. independent.co.uk/​news/​uk/​ireland-​abortion-​referendum-​eighth-​amendment-​ travel-​london-​video-​a8347221.html. hooks, b. 2000. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Htun, M., and Weldon, S. L. 2018. The Logics of Gender Justice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

[ 64 ]  Performances of Motherhood

Human Rights Watch. 2018. “Trump’s ‘Mexico City Policy’ or ‘Global Gag Rule.’” Updated February 8. https://​www.hrw.org/​news/​2018/​02/​14/​ trumps-​mexico-​city-​policy-​or-​global-​gag-​rule. Jerman, J., Jones, R. K., and Onda, T. 2016. “Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients in 2014 and Changes Since 2008.” Guttmacher Institute May. https://​www. guttmacher.org/​report/​characteristics-​us-​abortion-​patients-​2014. Jordan, N. 2016. “Staceyann Chin Deals with Mommyhood in ‘MotherStruck!’” Ebony January 22. https://​www.ebony.com/​entertainment-​culture/​ staceyann-​chin-​deals-​with-​mommyhood-​in-​motherstruck. Jones, R. K., Forhwirth, L. F., and Moore, A. M. 2008. “ ‘I Would Want to Give My Child, Like, Everything in the World’: How Issues of Motherhood Influence Women Who Have Abortions.” Journal of Family Issues 29, no. 1: 79–​99. Kinser, A. E. 2010. Motherhood and Feminism. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press. Kissling, E. A. 2018. From a Whisper to a Shout: Abortion Activism and Social Media. New York: Random House. Kumar, A., Hessini, L., and Mitchell, E. M. H. 2009. “Conceptualising Abortion Stigma.” Culture Health and Sexuality 6, no. 11: 625–​639. Lewin, E. 1993. Lesbian Mothers: Accounts of Gender in American Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Logie, H., and Earnshaw, V. 2015. “Adapting and Validating a Scale to Measure Sexual Stigma amoung Lesbian, Bisexual and Queer Women.” PLos One 10, no. 2. Luker, K. 1984. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mezey, N. J. 2008. “The Privilege of Coming Out: Race, Class and Lesbians’ Mothering Decisions.” International Journal of Sociology of the Family 34, no. 2: 257–​276. Mombian. n.d. “About Mombian.” https://​www.mombian.com/​about-​mombian/​. Accessed August 25, 2018. Moraga, C., and Anzaldúa, G. 2015. This Bridge Called My Back, 4th ed. Writings by Radical Women of Color. Albany: State University of New York Press. Mutha. 2016. “Ruthless Honesty—​Michelle Tea Talks to Andrea Lawlor about BLACK WAVE.” November 2. http://​muthamagazine.com/​2016/​11/​ruthless-​honesty-​ michelle-​tea-​talks-​to-​andrea-​lawlor-​about-​black-​wave/​. Petchesky, R. P. c1990. Abortion and Woman’s Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom. Longman Series in Feminist Theory. New York: Longman. Queer Mama. 2015. “Queer Mama for Autostraddle: Our Baby Doesn’t Have Two Moms.” YouTube August 6. https://​www.youtube.com/​ watch?v=FO-​7MEScVO4. Queer Mama. 2015. “Queer Mama for Autostraddle: Shots and Credit Cards, an IVF Story” YouTube April 23. https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=HDmk7Iayygw. Rich, A. 1984. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” In Feminist Frameworks: Alternative Theoretical Accounts of the Relations between Men and Women, 2nd ed., edited by A. M. Jagger and P. S. Rothenberg, 416–​420. New York: McGraw-​Hill. Roberts, D. 2017. Killing the Black Body. New York: Penguin Random House. Ross, L., and Solinger, R. 2017. Reproductive Justice: An Introduction, 1st ed. Oakland: University of California Press. Ruddick, S. 1995. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon Press. Salganicof, A., Rosenzweig, C., and Sobel, L. 2017. “The Hyde Amendment and Coverage for Abortion Services.” KFF October 16. https://​www.kff.org/​

E x t e n di n g Ac t s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 65 ]

6

womens-​health-​policy/​perspective/​the-​hyde-​amendment-​and-​coverage-​for-​ abortion-​services/​. Schulman, S. 2009.Ties that Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences. New York: The New Press. Sherman, R. B. 2015. “Sharing Abortion Stories Isn’t Just about Changing Policy.” Rewire April 15. https://​rewire.news/​article/​2015/​04/​20/​policy-​change-​end-​ goal-​abortion-​stories/​. Silliman, J., Fried, M. G., Ross, L., and Gutiérrez, E. 2016. Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice, 2nd ed. Chicago: Haymarket Books. SisterSong. n.d. “Reproductive Justice.” https://​www.sistersong.net/​reproductive-​ justice/​. Accessed August 25, 2018. Stuber, J., Meyer, I., and Link, B. 2008. “Stigma, Prejudice, Discrimination and Health.” Social Science and Medicine 67, no. 3: 351–​357. Sweeney-​Burke, J. 2018. “The Role of Social Media in the Eighth Amendment Referendum.” Digital Training Institute April 4. http://​digitaltraininginstitute. ie/​role-​of-​social-​media-​eighth-​amendment-​referendum/​. Time. 2018. “Irish Vote by Landslide to Repeal Abortion Ban, According to Exit Polls.” May 25. http://​time.com/​5291882/​ireland-​abortion-​ban-​vote-​results/​. YouACT. 2016. “Speak My Language: A Toolkit Developed by and for Young People.” http://​youact.org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2016/​01/​YOUACT_​ABORTION_​ STORYTELLING_​IN_​EE.pdf. Van Dam, M. A. 2004. “Mothers in Two Types of Lesbian Families: Stigma Experiences, Supports and Burdens.” Journal of Family Nursing 10, no. 4, 450–​484. Villarosa, L. 2018. “Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-​or-​Death Crisis. New York Times April 11. https://​www.nytimes.com/​2018/​04/​11/​ magazine/​black-​mothers-​babies-​death-​maternal-​mortality.html. Washington, H. 2006. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, 1st ed. New York: Random House.

[ 66 ]  Performances of Motherhood

CHAPTER 5

Logics of Protection and the Discursive Construction of Refugee Fathers LUC Y B. HALL

F

eminists scholars of International Relations (IR) have long been attuned to, and critical of, the ways in which media coverage of international crises typically reduce women to “symbols, victims or dependents” (Enloe 1992, 96). In this chapter I turn my feminist curiosity toward a shift in media coverage of the migration or refugee “crisis” away from “womenandchildren” (Enloe 1990)  and toward “refugee fathers.” Expanding on the work of Jennifer Allsopp (2018) and Jill Walker Rettberg and Radhika Gajjala (2016), I  trace the emergence of the discursive construction of refugee fathers in the media coverages of the so-​called crisis. Exploring visual representations of refugees, following Roland Bleiker, David Campbell, Emma Hutchinson, and Xzarina Nicholson, creates an opportunity to consider how “[i]‌mages reinforce how language frames public attitudes and the possibility of policy approaches to refugees” (2013, 400). Taking inspiration from the work of Bleiker et  al. (2013), this chapter argues that treating text and image as a discursive formation reveals that the ordering and (re)production of the heteronormative family are an intrinsic feature of the gendered displacement story. As Allsopp has demonstrated, new norms of masculinity and what it means to be a man have emerged as a consequence of the predominance of men in refugee movements to Europe in the past two years (Allsop 2018, 155). This is a notable departure from the predominant use of images of women and children to represent displaced populations (Baines 2004; Lucy B. Hall, Logics of Protection and the Discursive Construction of Refugee Fathers In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0005

86

Johnson 2011; Malkki 2012; Rajaram 2002). At first glance, the increase in representations of refugee men in caring roles may be read as a rupture in the prominent “womenandchildren” (Enloe 1990)  discourse. In this chapter, however, I  argue that, instead of disrupting this discourse, these images instead rely on and reproduce the assumed, natural, self-​ evident link between women (as mothers) and children. I  identify existing [womenandchildren (Enloe 1990)] and emergent [refugee fathers] discourses and explore their attendant logics of gender, race, and sexuality. Although an interesting departure from the predominant women and children discourse, the discourse of refugee fathers remains troubling for several reasons. Rather than representing a discursive rupture, the emergence of “refugee fathers” leaves intact the essentialist discourse of “womenandchildren” (Enloe 1992). This has troubling ramifications for how logics of protection, authenticity, and deservingness can be made meaningful in the discursive construction of refugee fathers. First, it suggests that men seeking asylum can only be rendered intelligible as deserving of protection in relation to their children and families. This construction reinforces not only essentialist hierarchies of masculinity and femininity but also hierarchical constructions of masculinities, organized by and through logics of race and sexuality. Linked to the logic of “deserving” and “authentic” refugee fathers is the construction of single refugee men as dangerous and/​or lacking courage and therefore not deserving of protection. In other words, the construction of refugee fathers also leaves undisturbed the logics that inform the construction of single refugee men as threatening and/​or cowardly. Nonpaternal refugee men are then rendered undeserving of refugee protection. The consequence is that authentic “refugee-​ness” can only be read onto the bodies of refugee men through the logic of paternal protection and responsibility. In other words, fatherhood constructs genuine refugee men through logics of paternity, responsibility, and bravery. The discursive construction of refugee fathers, therefore, does not interrupt the salience of the “womenandchildren” discourse (Enloe 1990)  but instead reproduces essentialist discourses of femininity and masculinity that (re)produce some bodies as deserving of protection and some bodies as dangerous and/​or weak and therefore not deserving of protection. This chapter unfolds over five sections. First, I  discuss feminist research that has identified and critiqued the “womenandchildren” (Enloe 1990)  discourse. Second, I  turn my attention to recent literature on the refugee crisis and masculinities. Third, I outline the theoretical and methodological orientation of this chapter and what I mean by discourse, logics, and intersectionality. Fourth, I describe and discuss two images of refugee

[ 68 ]  Performances of Motherhood

fathers before concluding and addressing the question that organizes this chapter: to what extent do images of refugee men as paternal subjects challenge or disrupt the salience of feminized images of displaced populations? In the fifth and final section, I draw this chapter to a close.

FROM WOMENANDCHILDREN TO CHILDREN AND FATHERS?

Megan MacKenzie has illustrated that, despite a long history of women’s participation in liberation struggles, including organized resistance movements, protests, and bearing arms, “the message that ‘men are natural soldiers and women are not’ remains prominent in many mainstream messages about war, including the media, government, and NGO reports” (2009, 248). The discursive construction of war-​affected populations as predominantly composed of “women and children” has been subjected to feminist critique, primarily because it is contingent on “the essential and obvious link between women and motherhood” (Jacobs, Jacobsen, and Marchbank 2000, 13). The obvious link between women and maternity that is prevalent in gendered discourses of forced displacement relies on the conflation of femininity with motherhood, which implies maternity and further assumes that women’s maternal identity takes precedence over other forms of identity. The essentialist link between women’s reproductive capacities and their innate preference for peace assumes that in times of armed conflict, women are more likely than men to flee and seek protection. This is what I refer to as the logic of maternity: the presumed “natural” and obvious link between women and children, and the primacy of women’s maternal identity. The conflation of women and children and their majority status in war-​affected populations stems from a longer history of granting protection to women, not because they are women but because they are actual or potential mothers (Barrow 2010; Carpenter 2006; Chappell 2015). Women are positioned primarily as mothers, and the violence they experience is qualified by defining women according to their biology and potential to procreate. In the context of refugee protection, this culminates in the protection of refugee women qualified as protection of women as (actual or potential) mothers. The provision of refugee protection is discursively linked to the construction of good or bad parenthood. It cannot be assumed that the discursive construction of women-​ as-​ mothers in the context of refugee protection will result in granting them protection. Refugee women can be constructed as both deserving and undeserving of protection through discourses of “good” or “bad” mothering or parenting. Jane Freedman’s

L o g i c s of P r o t e c t i o n  

[ 69 ]

07

work shows how refugees are discursively constructed as either ideal subjects, deemed worthy of protection, or nonideal subjects, represented as “false,” “bogus,” and “fraudulent” through their positioning as either good or bad mothers (Freedman 2015, 217). For example, when maritime vessel SIEV 4 was intercepted by Australian authorities in 2001, it was (falsely) alleged that asylum seekers onboard tried to emotionally blackmail naval officers by throwing their children overboard (Toohey 2013). Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard remarked that “There’s something, to me, incompatible between somebody who claims to be a refugee and somebody who would throw their own child into the sea” (Radio interview, 2UE, October 2001, in Slattery 2003, 95). In relation to this case, Sharon Pickering highlights that the discourse of bad motherhood in the children overboard fabrication was a “convenient and familiar discursive repertoire for a government set on discrediting those seeking protection” (2003, 18). In the “children overboard” case, authentic (genuine) refugee-​ness was linked to good parenting (protecting children rather than throwing them overboard). As Maryanne Dever and Jennifer Curtain note, despite its fabrication, the “Children Overboard Affair” was effectively used by the Australian government to discredit asylum seekers by presenting them as “reckless and unsuitable parents prepared to sacrifice their children in order to gain entry to Australia” (2007, 51–​52). The gendered construction of real and deserving refugees relies on and reproduces logics of good versus bad maternity and paternity. What remains unclear is the extent to which the emergence of a “responsible” paternal subject contests the ways in which gendered discourses of bad parenting are constitutive of inauthentic refugee-​ness. Allsopp writes that although the “refugee crisis” has largely served to reproduce familiar tropes of men and violence, the portrayal of migrant fathers is “something genuinely new” (2018, 163). I agree that the refugee “crisis” is the first case in modern history in which images of pacifistic, protective, nurturer men have been used to represent populations in flight (Allsopp 2018, 163). Based on extensive fieldwork and semistructured interviews with more than forty unaccompanied young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-​five, Allsopp identifies what she refers to as three “norms of refugeehood and masculinity” (2018, 158). First, the militarized masculinity norm, Allsopp writes, draws on discourses of hypermasculinity, violence, and nationalism that converge to associate refugee men by default with the violence they have fled (Rettberg and Gajjala 2015, in Allsopp 2018, 162). The second norm concerns men as fathers and providers, and the third norm is the “threat of the strong, young, male” (Allsopp 2018, 166) who is a hypersexual, violent, potential terrorist. While

[ 70 ]  Performances of Motherhood

Allsopp refers to these constructions as norms, in my view they are discursive formations constructed by and through logics of gender. Allsopp’s work is nonetheless helpful, as I discuss later, in relation to hierarchies of masculinity that the paternal refugee subject is (re)productive of. Although the emergence of a paternal refugee subject is indeed a recent addition in the visual landscape of displaced populations, the meaning ascribed to this subject is discursively constituted through hierarchically organized logics of gender, race, and sexuality, which require further exploration. As outlined in this section, protection is gendered. Within the context of refugee protection, gendered discourses of good and bad parenting are constructive of discourses of deserving and undeserving refugees. This returns me to the question that organizes this chapter: to what extent do images of refugee men as paternal subjects challenge or disrupt the salience of feminized images of displaced populations? Before exploring this question in relation to a number of images of refugee fathers, I first discuss the theoretical and methodological approach to images, discourse, and logics.

A DISCOURSE THEORETICAL APPROACH TO IMAGES

The interplay between text and image does not distinguish between discourse as purely linguistic and discourse as image. In the analysis presented here, I treat the images and their attendant linguistic texts as discursive formations. Discursive formations rely on rules or logics to function and (re) produce meaning. This approach to discourse and logics draws on work on the concept of security by Laura Shepherd, who argues that discourses are organized around particular logics of security (2008a, 293). Logics are the “ways in which various concepts are organized within specific discourses” (Shepherd 2008a, 294). I understand discourse to be that which is said or articulated, whereas logics or rules are implied or assumed but necessary for the discourse to be intelligible. Logics are also gendered, meaning they rely on assumptions and presumptions about male and female bodies and the (presumed) corresponding masculine and feminine attributes of those bodies. For example, the assumption is that women are “naturally” more inclined to “life-​giving” or “life-​preserving” activities, rather than the “life-​ taking” activities associated with war and violence. Women, according to this logic, are more inclined to be peaceful given their purportedly “natural,” maternally driven preference for peace. Logics act “within our cognitive frameworks to attribute certain characteristics to certain object and subjects and also to posit relationships between them” (Shepherd 2013,

L o g i c s of P r o t e c t i o n  

[ 71 ]

27

12). Logics function to construct particular policy options as viable, reasonable, and legitimate, while others are not. While my primary focus so far has been on gender, I am interested in how images of refugee men are rendered intelligible through the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality. Owing a significant intellectual debt to the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw, by focusing on the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality I  seek to highlight “the need to account for multiple grounds of identity when considering how the social world is constructed” (1991, 1245). I conceptualize gender, race, and sexuality as interacting and interrelated rather than separate discourses. This follows from Avtar Brah and Ann Phoenix, who write that intersectionality as a concept “emphasizes that different dimensions of social life cannot be separated out into discrete and pure strands” (2013, 76). Furthermore, adopting an intersectional lens here is critical to avoid obscuring how “assumptions about gender are racialized and how cultural othering is modulated by gender” (Bilge 2010, 18). For example, the discourses of masculinity—​the militarized, radicalized, hypersexual potential rapist and/​or terrorist, the coward, the protective father—​would not be intelligible without underlying racialized and gendered logics that animate and reproduce the broader discourses of protection. In the following analysis of the images, I draw out these logics how they intersect and consider their implications.

IMAGE AS DISCOURSE: REPRESENTATIONS OF REFUGEE FATHERS

I have selected two photos that appeared in two media outlets (Guardian 2015; Frej 2016)  and were retweeted upward of 200 to 400 times on Father’s Day 2017. These two images also appear in a Google Image search using the keywords “refugee” and “father.” On Father’s Day 2017, Image 1 was retweeted 399 times and Image 2,479 times (Yannis Behrakis, @ yannisBehrakis, June 18, 2017).1 Both photographs were taken by Reuter’s photojournalist Yannis Behrakis, who was also awarded the Guardian’s Photographer of the Year Award in 2015 (Guardian 2015).2 Although Willa Frej’s article in the Huffington Post contained more images of refugee fathers, I chose these two in particular because of the high degree of circulation they have achieved through both Twitter and mainstream Western online news outlets. Image 1 shows a man holding onto two children: one arm is around an older child, whose face is not visible, and the other arm is around a baby, whose eyes are tightly closed and whose mouth is open. Immediately

[ 72 ]  Performances of Motherhood

behind the man is the edge of a black, rubber boat. The man is standing in water that is coming up to his chest. He holds both children as far out of the water as possible, his eyes focused on the smaller child. In their immediate surrounds are bright orange life jackets. There are other people in the photograph, but only their legs or feet are visible. The faces of the man and the baby are at the center of the image. The caption accompanying this photo on the Guardian’s website is, “A Syrian refugee holds his children as he struggles to leave a dinghy on Lesbos” (2015).3 The Huffington Post uses a similar caption, “A Syrian refugee holds onto his children as he struggles to walk off a dinghy on the Greek island of Lesbos, after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from Turkey” (Frej 2016, emphasis added).4 Both photos are captioned by the photographer on his Twitter feed by the words, “Happy Father’s Day!” (@yannisBehrakis, June 18, 2017). The second image is of a man carrying a young child: the man is kissing the child’s cheek, and it appears that the child is asleep. The man is walking along a wide, relatively empty road. They are flanked in the background by a car on one side and a small group of indiscernible people and another car. The sky is gray, and as the accompanying text confirms, it is raining. The man appears to have some kind of makeshift rain protection on his back. The text describes the image as: A Syrian refugee kisses his daughter as he walks through a rainstorm towards Greece’s border with Macedonia, in September. The village of Idomeni has been a key point on the Balkan route from Greece to the Schengen region of Europe. In November, large numbers of refugees were left stranded when Macedonian authorities began to turn away migrants not fleeing war in Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan. (Guardian 2015)5

A slightly different image of the same man and child appears on the Huffington Post’s website. The main difference in this image is that the man appears to be calling out, not kissing his daughter’s cheek. He is holding his free hand to his mouth to call or shout, possibly to someone ahead of them. This photo “headlines” the series of photographs and is not captioned like the rest of images. As the opening photo, the text cited here appears immediately below the image, introducing the photo series: Some of the dads who deserve particular recognition this Father’s Day are those who day in and day out risk their own lives to protect their children and seek out a safer future for them. . . . [T]‌hese fathers display unbounded courage and stoicism, all in the name of offering their families a better life. Scroll down to see

L o g i c s of P r o t e c t i o n  

[ 73 ]

47

some of the heartwarming moments caught on camera of dads protecting their kids along this often perilous and terrifying journey. (Frej 2016)

In both images described here, the paternal relationship between the man in the photo and the child(ren) is explicitly stated and visually a focal point.

TO CARRY AND TO HOLD: CONSTRUCTING AUTHENTIC REFUGEE-​N ESS THROUGH PHYSICAL STRENGTH

The paternal relationship is manifested through physical strength; in both images, the men are carrying and holding up children in situations that already cause physical duress. The physical exhaustion of the children being carried or hauled out of boats through the water contrasts with the physical endurance of their fathers. This is interesting in contrast to the previously mentioned “Children Overboard” fabrication, in which the authenticity of refugees was discursively linked to their (falsely stated) inability to “hold onto” their children, whereas in these images and the descriptions, emphasis is placed on holding, carrying, and lifting of children. The discursive resonance is interesting, given that in the “Children Overboard” context, authentic refugee-​ness was also linked with not holding onto children. To illustrate this in more detail, I again cite the former Australian Prime Minister: I don’t want in Australia anyone who would throw their own children into the sea. There’s something to me incompatible between someone who claims to be a refugee, and somebody who would throw their own children into the sea. It offends the natural instinct of protection, and delivering security and safety to your children. (Howard, in Slattery 2003, 95)

There is a discursive repertoire at work here that positions “real” refugees as those who hold onto their children and false refugees as willing to act against the “natural” bonds of paternity and not hold onto their children. To hold or not to hold and to carry or not to carry your child becomes part of the discursive construction of real refugees as good paternal, protective men versus false refugees as bad, irresponsible men.6 There is also a gendered physicality at work here. The actions of carrying, holding, and protecting are also central to these images. The physical strength of refugee men as fathers contrasts significantly with that

[ 74 ]  Performances of Motherhood

of images of refugee women(andchildren) who are depicted as less active and less strong, brave, and able to endure physical exertion. At work here are logics of masculine “action” and feminine “passivity.” Heather L.  Johnson’s research on visual images and the construction of “female refugees” (2011) is illustrative of the gendered positioning of action and inaction. Johnson writes that, “[m]‌igrant populations who ‘spontaneously’ arrive at European borders, for example, are overwhelmingly male. Refugee camp populations, by contrast, are overwhelmingly female and/​ or children” (2011, 1032). Feminine agency here is linked with seeking protection with and for their children by only moving short distances and crossing only a few (maybe one) border to seek safety (Johnson 2011, 1032). Women(andchildren), by remaining encamped in the Global South, are positioned as “nonthreatening” to the Global North (Johnson 2011, 1032). Men, by contrast, are constructed as agential, able to cross multiple boarders, seas, and even continents to end up on the doorstep of the Global North. While Johnson does not explore this explicitly (her focus remains more so on the helpless victim construction of refugee women), there is a gendered logic here linking agency, masculinity, and threat. Women in refugee camps far from the shores of the Global North are presumed nonthreatening, whereas the “spontaneous” arrival of men is by contrast a threat. What is different about the agency of men as fathers is that the construction of men as threat is diffused through the logic of paternal protection. Physical exertion (the holding or carrying of children) is discursively constructed as a natural expression of paternal protection and therefore unthreatening. I return to this point later because the link between agency, threat, and masculinity, although not a feature of the discursive formations of refugee fathers, does leave in place discourses of single men as threatening.

HIS DAUGHTER/​H IS CHILDREN: EXPLICATING THE PATERNAL RELATIONSHIP

Logics of “natural protective instinct,” visible in discourses of strength, endurance, sacrifice, courage, and bravery, are constitutive of the refugee father subject. There is no masculine equivalent to the presumed natural—​or essential—​link between women and children. Indeed, as I continue to explore, the co-​articulation of men and children is outside of the discursive limits of intelligibility (Butler 1990). As there is no assumed natural linked between men and children, paternal relationships require an explicitness

L o g i c s of P r o t e c t i o n  

[ 75 ]

67

not required by maternal relationships. The images are accompanied by captions that refer to the child(ren) as “his daughter” (Guardian 2015) or “his children” (Frej 2016). Unlike refugee womenandchildren, refugee men cannot simply be read as “men and children.” Men’s role as fathers requires explicit articulation to highlight their paternal role. Rather than disrupting the womenandchildren discourse, discursive formations of refugee fathers further illustrate that in the context of refugee protection, maternal women remain a central signifier around which other gendered constructions are articulated (Shepherd 2008b, 119–​120). While paternity requires articulation—​his children/​his daughter—​maternity remains the assumed natural bond between women and children. This is underpinned by a gendered logic of maternalism that links women with children. The conflation of women with children is virtually unremarkable, whereas the co-​articulation of men and children reads immediately as “not right” or worse:  suspect or suspicious. It is remarkable—​it is in need of remark: his children/​his daughter. The discursive construction of refugee fathers, therefore, does not replace or challenge the prevailing discourse of refugee women and children. For refugee parents, femininity functions to attribute maternity to a woman with child, whereas masculinity requires explication to attribute paternity to a man and a child. Although I agree that there is something novel about the emergence of the refugee father in the visual representation of forced displacement, it simultaneously reproduces gendered logics of maternity and paternity that are not new and that leave in place the gendered assumptions underscoring the remarkability of images of refugee fathers and their children. The troubling consequence of this is that authentic refugee-​ness can only be read onto the bodies of refugee men through the logic of paternal protection. In other words, the assumption of fatherhood constructs refugee men as genuine refugees and as worthy beneficiaries of protection. In the case of refugee fathers, they are (albeit not consistently) constituted as “real” refugees, and their claims to asylum are discursively constructed as genuine through logics of paternal responsibility. The implications of the discursive construction of a responsible, paternal subject are, however, not unambiguous. While refugee protection is constructed through performances of good paternity, good fathers will be granted protection, whereas bad fathers will not (Griffiths 2015, 479). Melanie Griffiths’ research on gender and asylum in the United Kingdom further demonstrates this point. Griffiths highlights: The [UK] Home Office has an ambiguous approach to migrant fathers. It accuses immigration detainees (and others) of being irresponsible fathers but also leaves

[ 76 ]  Performances of Motherhood

them little opportunity to behave otherwise. In making asylum and detention decisions, Home Office representatives routinely dismiss the importance of the men’s role as fathers and husbands. (2015, 479)

Evident here is the contradictory ways in which fatherhood can be read from the bodies of refugees. Although images of refugee men as fathers are a significant departure from the salient womenandchildren (Enloe 1992) discourse, the discursive formation of refugee fatherhood remains within the deeply gendered confines and hierarchical ordering of gendered subjects—​some deemed deserving of protection, others not. Having now outlined the ways in which paternal responsibility and the “good,” deserving refugee father are constructed through logics of fatherly protection, masculine strength, and endurance, I turn now to consider how this construction functions within a broader discursive milieu to reproduce and maintain a hierarchy of masculinities. The construction of the good, deserving refugee of (Western) protection constructed through logics of paternal strength and responsibility is further amplified through discourses of weak, cowardly, irresponsible, dangerous, threatening masculinity. This returns me to Allsop’s (2018) militarized masculinity discourse and Rettberg and Gajjala’s (2016) analysis of refugee masculinities in social media. The hierarchical organization of the responsible, paternal refugee over the “terrorist” and the “coward” relies on and reproduces a series gendered, racist, and sexist logics. The discursive formation of “militarized Middle Eastern masculinities” and “coward masculinities” are constructed through logics that sexualize and racialize non-​Western men. Rettberg and Gajjala (2016) highlight this by drawing on Jasbir Puar’s (2007) work on homonationalism. The discursive construction of refugee men as either cowards or militarized relies on the assumption that Middle Eastern men are either weak and feminized or hypersexual and violent (Rettberg and Gajjala 2016). This is part of the “normative script of the US war on terror, in which the terrorist ‘other’ is constructed as ‘queer, non-​national, perversely racialized’ . . . and feeds into a world-​view about Middle-​Eastern non-​Jewish men, who are assumed to be Muslim by default” (Rettberg and Gajjala 2016, 180). I first discuss the “coward” discourse in relation to intersecting logics of gender, race, and sexuality and then turn my attention to the “terrorist” discourse, which is also organized through and reproductive of intersecting logics. The “coward” subject that Rettberg and Gajjala identify (2016, 180)  is discursively constructed as nonpaternal and detached from family relationships. Rettberg and Gajjala’s describe the following image and caption:

L o g i c s of P r o t e c t i o n  

[ 77 ]

87

[C]‌rowd of men in a train station, walking between two blue trains, some with their hands up in a way that looks more anxious than threatening, with the text: “2200 immigrants arrive in Munich. No women no children. Apparently only men flee “war zones”? (2016, 180, emphasis added)

This example is interesting because the absence of women and children assumes a lack of or avoidance of paternal or familial responsibility, clearly positioning the coward in opposition to the father. The coward lacks the strength, responsibility, and paternal identity that afford a degree of legitimacy to refugee fathers. The coward discourse operates through logics that simultaneously racialized and feminized the coward subject by assuming weakness, passivity, and conflict avoidance. Fleeing and avoiding conflict, which are usually exclusively associated with women and children (Freedman 2015), contradict the essentialized assumption that men are naturally predisposed to protect and defend, using force and violence if necessary. For example, another tweet that Rettberg and Gajjala cite emphasizes that men leaving behind women and children and fleeing violence are not really deserving of refugee protection and, in this example, their fleeing disqualifies them from becoming American (2016, 180).7 Men fleeing war zones are described as “cowards” and “not real refugees” (Rettberg and Gajjala 2016, 180); they are feminized for fleeing war zones and not staying to “fight.” The coward discourse makes sense through logics of (hetero)sexuality (or lack thereof) and logics of race/​orientalism that operate together to feminize non-​Western, nonwhite men. Through logics of gender, sexuality, and race, the coward discourse feminizes men and delegitimizes their protection claims. Because they allegedly “leave behind” their women and children and are therefore not following logics of paternal responsibility, strength, and protection, they are underserving of protection. Evident in the militarized, potential terrorist and rapist discourse are linked, though divergent, logics of gender, sexuality, race, and age. Again I build on Rettberg and Gajjala’s observation that these discourses, although contrary, operate to construct Middle Eastern men as “simultaneously effeminate (in comparison with Anglo-​ Saxon men) and threatening to women” (2016, 180). This is not a new discourse, as Berents, Munro, and Pruitt illustrate, although in the current migration context, it has become uniquely prominent (2018, 699). The potential terrorist discourse is constructed through logics of deviant, aggressive sexuality, in opposition to the sexuality of refugee fathers, which is presumed to be reproductive and heterosexual. As Maryam Khalid writes, a gendered, orientalist logic “marks” enemy bodies as dangerous, irrational,

[ 78 ]  Performances of Motherhood

and barbaric, which is frequently equated with the oppression of and violence toward women (2011, 20). Age configures and compounds these intersecting logics of gender, race, and sexuality by further positioning young men, often referred to as “military age males” (Rettberg and Gajjala 2016, 180) as inherently violent and oppressive. The discursive construction of young, non-​Western, single men as dangerous potential terrorists and/​or rapists animates alarmist reporting that the disproportionate number of migrants being “young, unmarried, unaccompanied males” could prompt a European “Man Problem” that might “radically change the gender balance in European countries in certain age cohorts” (Hudson 2016). The media portrayal of the 2016 New Year’s Eve assaults on women in Cologne and other German cities, as Berents et al. explain, were deployed to legitimize the perceived threat of young, unaccompanied migrant men (2018, 698).8. This also resonates with Griffith’s work that in asylum spaces in the United Kingdom, intersecting logics discursively construct “Middle Eastern men” “as illiberal, religious, and authoritarian, or hypersexual, hyper fertile, and feckless” (Griffith 2015, 473). It also reaffirms the idea that “Muslim nations are places where there are oppressed women to be rescued” (Rettberg and Gajjala 2016, 179). These intersecting logics discursively construct a series of hierarchically ordered subjects of paternal, legitimate, refugee fathers over “cowards” and potential “terrorists/​rapists.” This leaves intact essentialized conceptions of gender, sexuality, race, and age and (re)produces the construction of non-​Western women(andchildren) as inherently passive (left behind), oppressed objects of protection.

“REAL REFUGEES HOLD ONTO THEIR CHILDREN”

In this chapter I have explored how images of refugee fathers are made meaningful through discourses of masculinity and logics of gender, race, and sexuality. While I agree that the emergence of images of refugee men as fathers is something new, it remains intelligible through discourses that position “Middle Eastern” men as deserving of protection only with reference to their families and paternal responsibilities. In relation to the refugee father subject, discourses of protection operate on two levels. First, the refugee father is discursively constructed as a legitimate beneficiary of protection through his actions (strength and endurance) to protect his children. Second, the protective agency of the refugee father positions him (and presumably his children), through logics of paternal responsibility and courage, as deserving

L o g i c s of P r o t e c t i o n  

[ 79 ]

08

refugees. This leaves intact the logics that sustain and reproduce discourses of single refugee men as either dangerous and violent or lacking courage. This reproduces a hierarchy of deserving and undeserving refugees—​those who are “real” and who “hold onto their children” are discursively constructed as deserving of protection, whereas those who do not hold onto their children, by throwing them overboard, or leaving them behind or arrive at the borders of Europe unaccompanied by their families, are underserving of protection. Instead of being discursively constructed as in need of protection, the inverse occurs, and the cowards and terrorists are positioned as a threat: the refugees are not the object of protection, Europe is. Further to the reproduction of hierarchies of masculinities, I have also illustrated that the discursive construction of refugee fathers does not disrupt the more salient “womenandchildren” discourse (Enloe 1990). Instead, we see the reproduction of essentialist logics of femininity and masculinity that construct some bodies as deserving of protection and some bodies as dangerous and/​or weak and therefore not deserving of protection. This reproduces the natural, self-​evident link between women (as mothers) and children. While maternity continues to be unremarkable—​ literally requiring no remark—​paternity conversely becomes remarkable, both in the sense that it requires articulation (his daughter/​his children) and that it is something new. However, what is not new in this discursive terrain is the gendered dichotomy between protector and protected (Peterson 1992). As Peterson explains: the protector/​protected dichotomy is “embedded in constructions of masculine autonomy (freedom, control, heroics) and feminine dependency” (Peterson 1992, 54). With the emergence of the refugee father subject, this dichotomy remains undisturbed as refugee fathers are associated with masculine “characteristics such as rationality, agency, autonomy, strength, while the protected is associated with feminized dependency, passivity, weakness, irrationality, and vulnerability” (Eichler 2015, 59). In the context of refugee protection, the gendered discourse of protection and the logics that organize its meaning constitute who is recognized as a real or deserving refugee and who is recognized as a potential threat. The discursive reproduction of protection and the ways in which logics of gender, race, and sexuality make protection meaningful reflect a broader post-​structural feminist argument that gender in global politics is violently reproduced (Shepherd 2008a, 2008b, 2013). In relation to the images of refugee fathers, it is clear that logics of gender, race, and sexuality oragnize how “societies reward [provide protection] or punish [deny protection] different forms of behavior depending on the bodies that perform those behaviors” (Shepherd 2013, 20). To paraphrase Dianne Otto (2006, 135), just as maternal gender identity remains

[ 80 ]  Performances of Motherhood

trapped in the protector/​protected dichotomy on which it relies, so, too, does the paternal subject.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to my co-​editors for their patience and supportive engagement with this chapter. A draft version of this chapter was discussed at a panel on masculinities in IR at the 2018 International Studies Association Annual Meeting, in San Francisco. A number of comments from both the discussant and audience members were enormously useful in preparing this chapter for publication. NOTES 1. I am unable to reproduce the image here, but it is easily accessed online by using the title as the enquiry terms in your preferred search engine. I also provide the links to the Guardian and Huffington Post articles in note 2. 2. The Huffington Post article and images can be viewed here: https://​www. huffingtonpost.com/​entry/​fathers-​day-​refugees_u ​ s_5 ​ 751706ce4b0ed593f140f1e [last access July 8, 2019]. 3. I am unable to reproduce the image here, but it is easily accessed online by using the title as the enquiry terms in your preferred search engine. 4. There is a curious resonance here, with the discursive construction of those deserving refugee protection being linked to whether or not one “holds onto their children.” Earlier, I mentioned that during the “Children Overboard” fabrication, it was stated that “real refugees hold onto their children.” Similarity in language is striking in this more recent image, with the explicit reference to the man holding onto his children. 5. I am unable to reproduce the image here, but it is easily accessed online by using the “guardian photographer of the year 2015” as the enquiry terms in your preferred search engine. 6. Allsop also identifies a similar parallel between the “Children Overboard” scandal in Australia and the representations of refugee parents and children at the Hungarian border (2018, 7). Allsop writes, “This otherness may be exaggerated for political effect, as in the Children Overboard scandal that hit Australia in 2001 when politicians falsely accused migrant men of the barbaric act of throwing their children into the water to prompt their own rescue. As one survivor explained to the media, ‘Mr John Howard said we threw the kids in the water, but were just showing them for help” (cited in Toohey 2013). The episode recalls another powerful image from the Hungarian border: a baby, caught in a cloud of tear gas is screaming and its eyes stream with tears. “Look at this!’ shouts the father to the news camera” (Allsop 2018, 7). 7. The tweet reads: “If you’re a military age male who flees violence and leaves behind his women and children, you’ll never be an American! #refugeesnotwelcome” (Rettberg and Gajjala 2016, 180).

L o g i c s of P r o t e c t i o n  

[ 81 ]

28

8. I agree and wish to reiterate Berents, Munro, and Pruitt here, who so importantly write: “We acknowledge the real violence and trauma of the attacks and support victims’ rights to justice. This does not preclude critically interrogating the manner in which the characteristics of those perpetrating the violence came to be portrayed as an inherent feature of all migrants and asylum seekers from the global South, prompting attacks on immigrants and refugees in Germany in the days afterward” (2018, 698).

REFERENCES Allsopp, J. 2018. “Agent, Victim, Soldier, Son: Intersecting Masculinities in the European ‘Refugee Crisis.’” In A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis, edited by J. Freedman, Z. Kivilcim, and N. Özgür Baklacioglu, 155–​174. New York: Routledge. Baines, E. K. 2004. Vulnerable Bodies: Gender, the UN and the Global Refugee Crisis. Gender in a Global/​Local World. Aldershot, Hants, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Barrow, A. 2010. “UN Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820: Constructing Gender in Armed Conflict and International Humanitarian Law.” International Review of the Red Cross 92, no. 877: 221–​234. Bilge, S., 2010. Beyond Subordination vs. Resistance: An Intersectional Approach to the Agency of Veiled Muslim Women. Journal of Intercultural Studies 31, no. 1: .9–​28. Bleiker, R., Campbell, D., Hutchison, E., and Nicholson, X. 2013. “The Visual Dehumanisation of Refugees.” Australian Journal of Political Science 48, no. 4: 398–​416. Brah, A., and Phoenix, A. 2013. “Ain’t I a Woman? Revisiting Intersectionality.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 5, no. 3: 75–​86. Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Carpenter, R. C. 2006. Innocent Women and Children: Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians. Gender in a Global/​Local World. Aldershot, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Chappell, L. 2015. The Politics of Gender Justice at the International Criminal Court: Legacies and Legitimacy. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Crenshaw, K. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6: 1241–​1299. Dever, M., and Curtin, J. 2007. “Bent Babies and Closed Borders: Paid Maternity Leave, Ideal Families and the Australian Population Project.” Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 13, no. 2: 33–​62. Eichler, Maya, ed. 2015. Gender and Private Security in Global Politics. Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations. New York: Oxford University Press. Enloe, C. 1990 “Womenandchildren: Making Feminist Sense of the Persian Gulf Crisis.” The Village Voice, 25 September. Enloe, C. H. 1992. “The Gendered Gulf.” In Collateral Damage: The New World Order at Home and Abroad, edited by C. Peters. Boston: South End Press. Freedman, Jane. 2015. Gendering the International Asylum and Refugee Debate. Springer. Frej, Willa. 2016. Powerful Images Show Fathers Caring For Their Children On The Refugee Trail. The Huffington Post. Viewed 28.08.2019. https://​guides.lib. monash.edu/​c.php?g=219786&p=1454231#NpaperOnline

[ 82 ]  Performances of Motherhood

Griffiths, M. 2015. “ ‘Here, Man Is Nothing!’: Gender and Policy in an Asylum Context.” Men and Masculinities 18, no. 4: 468–​488. Guardian photographer of the year 2015: Yannis Behrakis. 2015. The Guardian. Viewed 28.08.2019. https://​www.theguardian.com/​artanddesign/​ng-​ interactive/​2015/​dec/​21/​photographer-​of-​the-​year-​2015-​yannis-​behrakis. Hudson, V. 2016. “Europe’s Man Problem.” POLITICO January 5. https://​www.politico.com/​magazine/​story/​2016/​01/​ europe-​refugees-​migrant-​crisis-​men-​213500. Jacobs, S., Jacobson, R., and Marchbank, J. 2000. States of Conflict: Gender, Violence and Resistance, edited by S. Jacobs, R. Jacobson, and J. Marchbank. London: Zed Books. Johnson, H. L. 2011. “Click to Donate: Visual Images, Constructing Victims and Imagining the Female Refugee.” Third World Quarterly 32, no. 6: 1015–​1037. Khalid, M. 2011. “Gender, Orientalism and Representations of the ‘Other’ in the War on Terror.” Global Change, Peace and Security 23, no. 1: 15–​29. MacKenzie, M. 2009. “Securitization and Desecuritization: Female Soldiers and the Reconstruction of Women in Post-​Conflict Sierra Leone.” Security Studies 18, no. 2: 241–​261. Malkki, L. H. 2012. Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Otto, D. 2006. “Sign of Weakness: Disrupting Gender Certainties in the Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325, A.” Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 13: 113. Peterson, V. S. 1992. Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory. Gender and Political Theory. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Pickering, S. 2003. “Vulnerable Customers.” Australian Women’s Book Review 15, no. 1: 17–​19. Puar, J. K. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rajaram, P. K. 2002. “Humanitarianism and Representations of the Refugee.” Journal of Refugee Studies 15, no. 3: 247–​264. Rettberg, J. W., and Gajjala, R. 2016. “Terrorists or Cowards: Negative Portrayals of Male Syrian Refugees in Social Media.” Feminist Media Studies 16, no. 1: 178–​181. Shepherd, L.J., 2008a. “‘To Save Succeeding Generations from the Scourge of War’: the US, UN and the Violence of Security.” Review of International Studies, 34 no. 2: 293–​311. Shepherd, L. J. 2008b. Gender, Violence and Security: Discourse as Practice. London: Zed Books. Shepherd, L. J. 2013. “Feminist Security Studies.” In Critical Approaches to Security: An Introduction to Theories and Methods, edited by L. J. Shepherd, 11–​23. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge. Slattery, K. 2003. “Drowning Not Waving: The ‘Children Overboard’ Event and Australia’s Fear of the Other. Media International Australia Incorporating.” Culture and Policy 109, no. 1: 93–​108. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​ 1329878X0310900110. Toohey, P. 2013. “2001 Children Overboard survivors back Tony Abbott’s boat policy,” The Australian, published September 16 2013, available at: http://​ www.theaustralian.com.au/​news/​children-​overboard-​survivors-​back-​tony-​ abbott8217sboat-​policy/​story-​e6frg6n6-​1226719521717.

L o g i c s of P r o t e c t i o n  

[ 83 ]

48

SECTION II

Maternality and the State

68

CHAPTER 6

Bearing Peace and War Sex, Motherhood, and the Treaty of the Pyrenees L AUR A SJOBERG

Making states is making sex. —​Peterson (2013, 57)

T

he gendered nature of the state has been linked to sexuality and reproduction explicitly in a number of contexts. Some feminist scholars of global politics (e.g., Weissman 2017)  have brought concepts of repronormativity (Franke 2001)  and reproductive futurism (Edelman 2004) to bear on the relationships between states. Edelman (2004, 2, 3), for example, identifies “reproductive futurism” as “the pervasive invocation of the Child as the emblem of futurity’s unquestioned value and purpose” such that reproductive success becomes an unquestioned good and serves to “impose an ideological limit on political discourse as such, preserving in the process an absolute privilege of heteronormativity by rendering unthinkable . . . the possibility of queer resistance.” Weissman has suggested that this sort of repronormativity is “legitimized, state-​ sanctioned heteronormative acts of reproduction specifically through the patriarchal, heteronormative family, and service to this reproduction of the heteropatriarchal nation-​state” (2017, 279). Similarly, Spike Peterson has accounted for state control of female reproduction explicitly, arguing that “nationalist policies involve regulating under what conditions, when, how many, and whose children women will bear” (Peterson 2013, 61).

Laura Sjoberg, Bearing Peace and War In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0006

8

Peterson (2013, 58) explains that the “normalization of heteropatriarchal relations in early states” has reverberated throughout the construction and perpetuation of the modern state system, where compulsory heterosexuality becomes a self-​fulfilling prophecy. As such, “existing birthright citizenship and inheritance patterns in effect sustains heteronormativity and its problematic politics” (Peterson 2013, 58). This body of research suggests that state borders, state identities, and state militaries are built on a particularized notion of what a family is and therefore what sort of state contains families. Parallel to the constitution of the state through particular understandings of the family–​state relationship is the constitution of the family itself through those understandings (e.g., Enloe 2010; MacKinnon 1989; Young 2003). Feminist work has, for decades, analyzed the relationship between the heteropatriarchal state and reproduction, gender, and sexuality. “ ‘Heteropatriarchy’ combines the twin processes of heterosexualization and patriarchy” (Peterson 2013, 65n1, citing Alexander 1997, 65). Heterosexualization is the rooting of state construction, state identity, and interstate relations in heterosexual sexual relations; patriarchy is the organization of these things in a power structure that prizes masculinities over femininities. Feminist scholars have pointed out that the processes of nationalism (e.g., McClintock 1995; Peterson 1999), securitization (Hansen 2000; MacKenzie 2009), militarism (Enloe 1989; Sjoberg and Via 2010); and state-​building (Holt 2013)  are interrelated, sexist, and heterosexist over a wide variety of temporal, geographic, and demographic contexts. Less frequently analyzed from a feminist perspective on global politics is the role of elite family-​making, family structure, and family relationships in the territorial, normative, and conceptual formation and reification of states. This chapter puts forward a feminist analysis of marriage and family generally, and motherhood specifically, in the Peace of the Pyrenees and its aftermath. In so doing, the chapter provides empirical and theoretical insight into the ways that marriage, marriage consummation, and motherhood made the state, both territorially and representationally. Suggesting that, quite literally, “making state is making sex” (Peterson 2013, 57), this chapter argues that seventeenth-​century Spain and France were in part made in the (imaginaries of and then the physical instantiation of) the uterus of Maria Teresa, Hapsburg princess of Spain and Archduchess of Austria until her marriage in 1660 to Louis XIV of France (Fraser 2010). While the national symbolism of the marriage was well-​documented, few histories situate reproductive demands on Maria Teresa in the general pronatalist pressures of seventeenth-​century France or in the context of royal wives’ explicitly reproductive roles (Tuttle 2010, 7). This chapter looks

[ 88 ]  Maternality and the State

to begin changing that. It begins with a brief discussion of the historical context of the conflict between France and Spain and the circumstances of the marriage (and the Peace of the Pyrenees). A second section theorizes the relationship between marriage, sexuality, and territory evidenced in the politics around Maria Teresa’s marriage, her sexual relationship with Louis XIV, and (political concerns about) her (actual and potential) offspring. A third section discusses the lineage of Maria Teresa and its role in constituting the state, with attention to the War of Spanish Succession. A  fourth section addresses the rumors of Maria Teresa’s illegitimate daughter and their role in the state imaginary. The conclusion considers the relationship of dynastic motherhood to the making of the state, and the depersonalization of the figure of the mother in state-​making.

SPAIN, FRANCE, THE FRANCO-​SPANISH WAR, AND MARIA TERESA

This chapter focuses on the particular war between Spain and France that started in 1635 and ended in 1659, growing out of France’s involvement in the Thirty Years’ War and then continuing past the end of that broader conflict (Bonney 1991). As Bonney (1991, xxvii, xxix) recounts, in 1635, France declared war on Spain—​a declaration that was overdetermined by the constellation of conflicts in which the two states were involved. Overarching tensions included the long clashes between the Bourbon and Valois dynasties and the Habsburg houses, border disputes between French and Spanish monarchies, and the Thirty Years’ War (Bonney 1991). France had played a minimal role in the early fighting of the Thirty Years’ War, supplying monetary support but not actively engaging in combat. The settling of the disputes between different branches of the Habsburg rulers of the Holy Roman Empire occurred around the same time that the Spanish Habsburgs scored major victories over Swedish forces (Bonney 2006). Spain and France largely fought to a standstill during the remainder of the Thirty Years’ War proper, and both states participated in the negotiations that produced the treaties now known as the Peace of Westphalia (Gross 1948). Accounts of the Peace of Westphalia as establishing the modern state system (Schmidt 2011), ending the European wars of religion,1 and even forming the basis for modern constitutions (Straumann 2008) tend to overshadow that the several treaties that made up that peace did not actually end all of the hostilities among Thirty Years’ War belligerents. Indeed, France and Spain continued to fight about borders and sovereignty for more than two decades after the question had, in many histories, been solved once and for all by the Peace of Westphalia (Koenigsberger 1971).

B e a r i n g P e ac e a n d   Wa r  

[ 89 ]

09

In decades of fighting, Spain made inroads against France, and in 1655, France asked Spain for terms to end the conflict, only to have Spain reject the French proposal because it included the marriage of princess Maria Teresa to the French King Louis XIV. A  combination of French military gains and the English joining the fighting on the French side led Spain to seek a resolution to the conflict in 1659. In the negotiations, Spain was in a disadvantageous position compared with France, where France, “victorious on the battlefields, dominated the negotiations” (Sahlins 1991, 26). In addition, the birth of a son to Philip IV of Spain made the marriage of Maria Teresa to King Louis XIV more acceptable to Spain, given that the son could inherit the throne (Strading 2002). The two states reached an agreement called the Peace of the Pyrenees in late 1659. The Peace of the Pyrenees was negotiated by the first ministers of France and Spain, Cardinal Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro (Sahlins 1991, 25). The agreement included 124 articles addressing a wide variety of issues between the two kingdoms, including but not limited to “princely alliances, commercial agreements, and the cession of jurisdictions along the French frontier of the Spanish Netherlands and the Franche-​Comte” (Sahlins 1991, 29). Perhaps the most well-​known provision of the Peace of the Pyrenees was the provision establishing the Pyrenees as the border between Spain and France (Sahlins 1991, 26), but the actual terms were significantly more complicated (and perhaps less clear). Perhaps the most visible term of the peace at the time, however, was the marriage of Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Teresa to King Louis XIV of France (her first cousin).2 This marriage was a condition of the peace that France insisted on but Spain resisted. Spain’s resistance was multifaceted but centered around the fact that Maria Teresa was in line to inherit the Spanish throne (Strading 2002). If Maria Teresa remained a potential ruler of Spain, then her marriage to Louis XIV threatened to unify France and Spain under French rule. Spanish negotiators then looked to relieve Maria Teresa and her descendants of their eligibility to inherit the Spanish throne (Rule 1999, 43). Ultimately, Maria Teresa was stripped of her inheritance rights conditional on the payment of a very large dowry (Rule 1999, 44), but that dowry was never paid, and therefore Maria Teresa and her descendants remained eligible to inherit the Spanish throne. As Fraser (2010, 57) notes, “few would have predicted the consequences of this apparently not-​unreasonable provision.” In all of these accounts, Maria Teresa had no choice in her marriage, her inheritance rights, or the bargaining over her body and her womb. Historians of the Franco-​Spanish war almost universally describe the marriage as key to the peace. Sahlins (1991, 25) characterizes the marriage

[ 90 ]  Maternality and the State

as “an elaborate ritual of royal alliance.” As Abby Zanger (1997, 4) explains, “the marriage ritual” of “Louis XIV’s 1660 treaty marriage” to Maria Teresa “offers a particularly striking example of how social groups engage in symbolic activities for social ordering.”3 The marriage ceremony was a symbolic and actual consummation of the negotiated deal between the two kingdoms as much as it was (or perhaps even more than it was) a union between two people, neither of whom had chosen the other as their mate.4 Accounts of the marriage were accounts of family and state, where “narratives of the treaty and marriage were inextricably related” (Zanger 1997, 1).

MARRIAGE, SEXUALITY, AND TERRITORY IN MARIA TERESA’S MARRIAGE, CONSUMMATION, AND (POTENTIAL) OFFSPRING

As discussed earlier, the marriage of Louis XIV and Maria Teresa was the actual conclusion of, as well as the symbolic celebration of the resolution of, the war between Spain and France.5 There were actually two ceremonies of the wedding between Louis XIV and Maria Teresa. A  proxy ceremony took place in Spain, where a Spanish dignitary played the role of Louis XIV as the King of Spain gave away his daughter, and then a marriage between the bride and bridegroom took place later in the south of France (Fraser 2010, 56, 57). These public displays were themselves at the center of the symbolism that announced peace and made the boundaries of the states, but the ritualization went far beyond the wedding ceremony. Particularly, the consummation was highly discussed at the time and has made its way into a number of historical accounts. How the consummation was to take place, what was required for it, and what it meant for the state were all contested topics in the politics of the construction of the state at the time. Zanger (1997, 46) recounts that the Queen Mother of France believed that Maria Teresa had to be transformed from looking Spanish to looking French in order to make the consummation possible. The reclothing apparently worked—​Fraser (2010, 60)  explains that “the wedding night was a success, unlike most royal wedding nights throughout history.” Indeed, “when love-​making took place, Marie-​Therese made it clear that she was ‘well content with the husband she had chosen’ ” (Fraser 2010, 60). The marriage consummation appeared to finalize the status of the marriage and the status of the peace. Historians of global politics and IR scholars interested in history alike tell a story of the importance of marriage in how the state came to be and how it came to be perpetuated. For example, Daniel Nexon (2009) makes the argument that the current instantiation of the state could not be

B e a r i n g P e ac e a n d   Wa r  

[ 91 ]

29

imagined without its construction by and around marriage. Nexon (2009, 6)  recounts that marriage was one of the principles on which European dynasties operated. As a result, “marriage and inheritance played, unsurprisingly, a central role in interdynastic alliance formation” in early modern Europe (Nexon 2009, 94). This is because “dynasts cobbled together composite polities through conquest, marriage, and inheritance” (Nexon 2009, 67). In other words, the territorial boundaries of proto-​states and then states were in large part dictated by who married whom, who had children with whom, and whose children laid claim to what land. Marriage and reproductive networks among the leaders of early states became so complex that “European politics, in consequence, involved a patchwork of hereditary claims to kingdoms, counties, and principalities” (Nexon 2009, 94). The compilation of territory through marriage and reproduction was a normal practice as European states came into existence. Nexon (2009, 97) suggests that wars and conflicts were often solved (or at least put on hold) using the tool of “marriage alliances,” where governments would agree on the marriage of a member of the royal family of one state to a member of the royal family of the other state as a simultaneous demonstration of the seriousness of their intent to pursue peace and an insurance policy that the leadership of the (former) opponent state would have an interest in keeping its end of the deal. Yet, if “marriage alliances” were used to solve conflicts, they also could cause or exacerbate them. As Nexon (2009, 85, 127) explains, “dynastic marriages and the likelihood that, over time, dynastic families would face succession crises also facilitated the dynastic-​imperial pathway of state formation” because those marriages meant that “there were often no shortage of individuals with secondary or tertiary claims to dynastic holding.” As the dynasties of Europe of the Middle Ages grew into the modern state system, the successes and failures of marriage alliances continued to have serious consequences. As Daniel Philpott (2001, 91; cited in Nexon 2009, 277) suggests, “the monarchies of Europe remained richly connected with marriage and family ties, which often governed succession within their realm, shaped their alliance commitments, and even acted as a cause of war.” Marriage has been “a ritual that has helped establish and preserve dynastic power both because it often played a role in international relations by settling territorial disputes and because it provided a means of producing legitimate heirs” (Zanger 1997, 4). Zanger (1997, 49) argues that Maria Teresa’s marriage6 was set up such that it would “allow not only the adjudication of violence between men, but would, from that violence, (re)produce the nation state.” If a fertile king was “symbolic of a fertile and successful country” (Fraser 2010, 85),

[ 92 ]  Maternality and the State

a fertile queen was necessary to produce legitimate offspring and continue the inheritance of the throne. Maria Teresa the person was not framed as having any potential influence over war or peace, but Maria Teresa the womb was a necessary condition of peace and statehood. The “marriage alliance” between Louis XIV and Maria Teresa adjudicated the violence of the Franco-​Spanish War as a part of a Peace of the Pyrenees heavily favorable to France. In doing so, the marriage and its consummation made both France and Spain, with the borders that had been agreed on in the Peace of the Pyrenees both symbolizing and sealing the transfer of territory between the two states. The consummation of the marriage symbolized the success of not only the marriage but also the territory transfer and the stabilization of the state. This marriage alliance, like others before and after, was not a static political moment but instead reverberated through the construction of the state. Its significance was in substantial part about the possibility that the new Queen of France would become a mother—​that she would have children. The potential for progeny was a significant part of the symbolism of the marriage from the very beginning. Descriptions of the meeting of King Philip of Spain and Queen Anne of France at the wedding are particularly instructive on this point. The siblings, who had not seen each other in more than four decades, during which their respective countries were at war, reportedly briefly touched on the conflict before discussing family matters (Fraser 2010, 58). Philip is credited with breaking the talk of politics with talk of grandchildren: “At this rate,” said Philip, “we shall soon have grandchildren.” “Yes indeed,” replied the Queen. “But I  want a son for my son more than I want a bride for my nephew.”

The two were assuming that a daughter of the French King and new Queen would marry the heir-​apparent of the Spanish throne, even though the former did not yet exist and the latter was only three years old. The stakes of the consummation of the marriage and the production of offspring were heavily implicated in the construction and maintenance of the state. Accordingly, the continued conjugal relationship received significant attention in anticipation of a royal child, from Maria Teresa and those observing her marriage. Indeed, Maria Teresa would “ritually take communion to indicate a royal conjunction the night before, with prayers that the result might be a child in nine months’ time” (Fraser 2010, 62). The production of the child would mean the maintenance of the royal line and therefore the maintenance of the state in the form in which it was

B e a r i n g P e ac e a n d   Wa r  

[ 93 ]

49

perceived and understood at the time. The progeny would provide the potential not only for dynastic maintenance but also for dynastic expansion. The prospect of an heir that might have claim to the thrones of both Spain and France was appealing to the French monarchy, and a matter of significant fear and anxiety to France’s competitors and enemies. The suspense of Maria Teresa’s (potential) offspring was a suspense of the making of the state(s):  Who would lead? What territory would belong to whom? What would the states become?

THE LINEAGE OF MARIA TERESA AND THE MAKING OF THE STATE

The suspense of potential offspring did not last long because, soon after the wedding, the potential for progeny became a reality. As Fraser (2010, 63–​64) explains, “the Queen duly fell pregnant in early 1661, thus fulfilling what many, if not Louis XIV, might have thought was her only function.” She gave birth in November, and then within a few months was pregnant again (Fraser 2010, 77). Maria Teresa’s first child, Louis, would be the only one who is known to have survived to adulthood, but she went through five pregnancies. Louis held the title of Dauphin (Sternberg 2014, 176). His father Louis XIV ruled from 1643 to until his death in 1715 (Lynn 1999). Dauphin Louis was never the King of France on account of being survived by his father—​Dauphin Louis died in 1711 of smallpox (Sternberg 2014, 106). Dauphin Louis had an arranged engagement to Maria Anna of Bavaria (his second cousin), which began when she was eight years old and he was seven (Acton 1908, 41). They were married in 1690, when Dauphin Louis was 19 (Sternberg 2014, 76). Dauphin Louis and Maria Anna had three children: petit Dauphin Louis, Philip, and Charles (Watanabe-​O’Kelly 2016). Given that the dowry was never paid from Spain to France for Maria Teresa, the French queen’s children had a claim (or argued that they did) to the Spanish throne (Collins 1995, 95). The French government (still under Louis XIV, but with the cooperation of Dauphin Louis) argued that it should be Philip, the second son of Dauphin Louis, who should inherit the Spanish monarchy, rather than the Dauphin or his first son (Falkner 2015, 6). This would preserve both a Bourbon claim to the Spanish throne and the separation of the Spanish and French monarchies. The Dauphin’s first son, like the Dauphin himself, never became the King of France (Wolf 1972, 194). Petit Dauphin Louis died of the measles (with his second son) when he was 29 (Montpensier 1848). He only had one son who survived to adulthood, and that son would become King Louis XV of France in 1715 when he was five years old (Bernier 1984).

[ 94 ]  Maternality and the State

Maria Teresa was then grandmother to the King of Spain and great-​ grandmother to the King of France. But the process of both successions was messy and showed many of the ways in which marriage and reproduction were at the time constitutive of and constituted by the state. In France, the death of both Dauphin Louis and petit Dauphin Louis at relatively young ages and the seventy-​two-​year rule of Louis XIV combined to cause fear about a possible succession crisis, especially since the other two children of petit Dauphin Louis died in childhood. Louis XV’s survival into adulthood solved many of those anxieties, but there was still significant tension about who would advise the young King (see, e.g., Pinot-​Duclos 1910). Philip’s succession to the Spanish throne was significantly more fraught. Several treaties partitioning Spain were concluded before Charles II’s death (Falkner 2015, 3–​5). Charles II, however, fearing the breakup of Spain, bequeathed his throne to Dauphin Louis’ second son, Philip (Kamen 2001, 1). While Dauphin Louis was at the time of Charles II’s death the closest biological heir to the throne, a combination of concerns about uniting the thrones of Spain and France and Austrian claims to the Spanish throne made a claim by Dauphin Louis politically infeasible (Kamen 2001, 2; Ashley 1965). The diplomatic compromise fell apart, however, on the question of whether Philip V retained claims to the French throne (Mckay and Scott 2014, 57).7 Despite the thrones not officially uniting, Louis XIV celebrated that Spain and France were to become one people: “There are no Pyrenees: two nations that have for so long been rivals will in the future be a single people: the lasting peace between them will assure the tranquility of Europe” (Kamen 2001, 5). Fears around these sorts of claims inspired the War of Spanish Succession, which began in 1701 and ended in 1714 (Falkner 2015; Frey and Frey 1995). In 1714, the Peace of Utrecht was signed, which included a provision that the monarchies of Spain and France could never be combined in one person (Falkner 2015; Frey and Frey 1995; Lynn 1999). Many histories tell the story of the reproduction of dynastic families and the inheritance of thrones without significant attention to the role of motherhood in those stories. And yet understanding how motherhood plays a role in the relationship between the Treaty of the Pyrenees and the War of Spanish Succession illuminates dynamics that are often invisible in gender-​blind histories of the era. Yet, the story cannot be told without telling motherhood. Writing about a picture of the wife of Dauphin Louis, Tuttle (2010, 24) explains that the reproductive role of the dauphine is simultaneously defining of her and invisible to others: it “is emphasized in the image’s title, but in every other way the foreign princess is literally upstaged by and rendered a passive observer to the

B e a r i n g P e ac e a n d   Wa r  

[ 95 ]

69

Bourbon dynastic pageant her fecundity has made possible.” A  similar account can be given of Maria Teresa’s experience as Queen of France. As the wife, her role (as distinct from other women who had relationships with the King) was to produce legitimate offspring for dynastic inheritance. The progress of her marriage to Louis XIV was judged on her ability to bear offspring; the marker of their claim to the throne was not their father’s paternity (which was not unique to Dauphin Louis) but their mother’s maternity. Maria Teresa matters as a figure of motherhood for her maternal bloodline, but the value of her motherhood was framed as in the product/​production of her womb and those of her heirs rather than as a personal relationship. As such, though it is Louis XIV’s fertility that shapes his image as King, Maria Teresa’s fecundity shapes not only her image as Queen but also the actual fate of the state—​its leadership, its borders, and even its existence. The Queen as a person becomes invisible, personally and politically important only in the function of her bearing offspring. The Queen as mother is literally mother to the state—​it is her children (and grandchildren and great-​grandchildren) to whom the state will fall, and her failure to produce offspring that could cause the state itself to fall. It is childbearing rather than childrearing that constitutes the essential role of motherhood for the constitution of the state. This is how motherhood becomes the function of the Queen and yet also makes her invisible. Maria Teresa’s motherhood is not just a necessary part of the constitution of the French state and the inheritance of the French throne, however. She is also the (maternal) source of the Bourbon claims to the Spanish throne. In other words, being Maria Teresa’s grandson was Philip V’s claim to the Spanish throne (as well as the basis for the surrendered claims of Grand Dauphin Louis and Petit Dauphin Louis); being Maria Teresa’s grandson was Philip’s claim to be second in line to the French throne; being Maria Teresa’s great-​grandson was Louis XV’s claim to the French throne. Legitimacy in inheriting dynastic rule was through the maternal line; none of Louis XIV’s other children or grandchildren could either rule the state or constitute its borders. Maria Teresa’s making sex literally made the leaders of the state; trading in her potential to make sex/​produce offspring made the borders of the state; her offsprings’ maternal bloodline created claims to leadership and caused conflict over power consolidation. Yet, Maria Teresa’s actions, agency, and person—​as relate to her children or more generally—​are unnecessary tangents in the story of the production of the state. Maria Teresa’s motherhood was a symbolic referent and an actual constructor of what seventeenth-​century France and Spain were—​the states were made in her womb and in the public imaginary of it.

[ 96 ]  Maternality and the State

AFFAIRS OF THE STATE AND RUMORS OF THE BLACK NUN OF MORET

The public imaginary of Maria Teresa’s womb was not limited to her legitimate children and the way that they shaped the statehood of Spain and France. Instead, the court at the time and historical gossip propounded a story that Maria Teresa bore a second child, other than Dauphin Louis, who survived to adulthood. The story of Maria’s second child suggests that her 1664 pregnancy did not end with a child who died in infancy, but instead with a child whose death was declared and whose existence was hidden. The most public face of this story is Lynn Nottage’s (2003) play Las Meninas, a play written around the idea of the Queen’s illegitimate motherhood, though the story has been documented many other places. The rumor goes like this: Maria Teresa had a romance with a courtier African dwarf named Nabo and gave birth to a black child, who was hidden in a convent for her entire life.8 The gossip suggests that “the baby girl  .  .  .  resembled a small Moor that Monsieur de Beaufort had brought, who was very pretty, the one that was always with the queen; that when it was remarked that her baby resembled [the Moor], he was removed; that the little girl was horrible.”9 As the memoirs of Madame de la Marquise de Montespan (a mistress of the King) explain, “the queen delivered a dine little girl, black as ink from head to foot . . . it was sent away to Gisors district to be suckled as a Negro’s daughter, and the Gazette de France contained an announcement to the effect that the royal infant had died” (Sharpley-​Whiting 2015). The story then suggests that the still-​living child was put into a convent, where she became a nun some decades later. The implication is that the combination of the child’s illegitimacy and her race would have brought shame on the Queen. Historians agree that Maria Teresa had a child called Marie-​Anne in 1664 and that the child was of dark complexion (Fraser 2010, 96). Most historians suggest the official account of the child is the true one: Marie-​ Anne was dark because her mother was ill, the infant was premature, and her body was oxygen-​deprived (Fraser 2010, 96; Chevé 2008). Some maintain that the child survived, but, as Sharpley-​W hiting (2015, 111) explains, “the seventeenth-​and eighteenth-​century sources of the Nabo/​Augustin-​ Marie-​Thérèse affair are not especially numerous, but some are questionable.” Particularly, the truth of Madame de Montespan’s “memoir is dubious, as it was not written by Montespan but ghosted some 150 years later” (Sharpley-​W hiting 2015, 112). Sharpley-​W hiting (2015, 113) doubts that Marie-​Anne survived because attending physicians noted her sickness and nothing else about her appearance, and both her birth and death were subject to public viewing.

B e a r i n g P e ac e a n d   Wa r  

[ 97 ]

89

Still, a woman called the “Black Nun of Moret” is the subject of the various explanations. Her name was Louise Marie Thérèse (Steintrager 2015, 360n9). Most accounts of her life agree that she was financially supported by Louis XIV; they differ on why. Some accounts that do not believe that she was the daughter of the Queen suggest that it is more likely that she was instead one of many illegitimate daughters of the King (Voltaire 1751).10 Others suggest that the Nun made up the story (Harper and von Goeth 2018). What is clear is that motherhood of an illegitimate child and fatherhood of an illegitimate child were different things for the purposes of royal lineage. Countries often did legitimate the illegitimate children of male royalty, but only for civil purposes, not for inheritance of the throne. If illegitimate children of kings were so common that there was legal precedent for their treatment, illegitimate children of queens were so uncommon that we still cannot be sure whether one existed or not. Rumor flew—​the imaginary of affairs of the state in the imaginary of the Queen’s womb—​but confirmation was not to be had. The King’s fatherhood did not determine the inheritance of the dynasty. In theory, an heir needed to be the child of the King and of the Queen. In practice, however, the Queen’s motherhood was understood to be a proxy for the child belonging to both monarchs because the Queen’s womb was assumed to belong purely to the King and his children, whereas the King was expected to reproduce widely. The state, then, was born in and borne by the queen’s womb, and it was to be assumed that the state was limited to her womb and that her womb limited the state. Her (legitimate) motherhood was, then, not only the potential of the state but also the limit of the potential of the state.

CONCLUSION: DYNASTIC MOTHERHOOD AND THE STATE

If it is well-​known that dynastic marriages were a key part of the construction of the dynastic state and the continuation of dynasties, less attention is paid to the role of motherhood. Looking at dynastic motherhood suggests another way in which making sex is making the state:  the inheritance of the dynasty passes through the motherhood of the queen, whose symbolic purpose is wrapped up in that motherhood, and on whose lineage dynastic survival is conditioned. Maria Teresa is an important historical figure in two ways:  her marriage was both symbolic and constitutive of the peace ending the Franco-​Spanish War, and her lineage was a key cause of the War of Spanish Succession. These events were linked by her role in treaty marriage and consummation and by her (potential, then actual) motherhood of kings and of their states. Whether cementing territorial deals or causing

[ 98 ]  Maternality and the State

dynastic tensions, Maria Teresa’s motherhood was a transactional aspect of the constitution, perpetuation, and disruption of the making of France and of Spain. The imaginary of the heteropatriarchal state and the state itself were thus inextricably linked to the imaginary of the queen’s womb and its actual production of offspring. In this symbolic representation, however, the Queen becomes the object of historical narrative rather than a subject—​ her womb is detached and depersonified, and she becomes reduced to her (potential and actual) function of bearing offspring.

NOTES 1. See, e.g., discussion in Onnekink (2016), who argues that the wide understanding of the Peace of Westphalia as the end of the European wars of religion is incorrect, and goes on to detail all of the wars of religion that this interpretation misses. 2. When she married Louis XIV, infanta Maria Teresa became Queen Marie-​ Thérèse—​her “maiden” name is used here for consistency. 3. This social ordering was gendered (as discussed in the rest of the chapter), but also racialized—​one of the reasons Maria Teresa was an ideal bride was because of her thick, blonde hair and “translucent white skin, the protected white skin of a supreme aristocrat on which no ray of common sun would fall” (Fraser 2010, 55, 56). 4. Though it is said that Maria Teresa was in love with/​desired Louis XIV (e.g., Fraser 2010, 55). 5. See discussions in Coontz (2006) and Miller (1999). 6. In her characterization, Maria Teresa was the subject of “ritual rape” “meant to occupy the same position in the scenario of her marriage that previous queens had occupied” (Zanger 1997, 48–​49). 7. Many blame this on Louis XIV, but other accounts suggest it was Philip’s desire to keep a claim to the French throne. 8. This story is frequently told in plays and novels, but infrequently in historical accounts. 9. Credited to the memoirs of La Grande Mademoiselle. 10. Voltaire claimed to have met the woman in question.

REFERENCES Acton, L. L. 1908. The Cambridge Modern History, Volume V: The Age of Louis XIV, edited by A. W. Ward, G. W. Prothero, and S. Leathes. New York: Macmillan. Alexander, M. J. 1997. “Erotic Autonomy as a Politics of Decolonization: An Anatomy of Feminist and State Practice in the Bahamas Tourist Economy.” In Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, edited by M. J. Alexander and C. Mohanty, 63–​100. New York: Routledge. Ashley, M. 1965. Louis XIV and the Greatness of France. New York: Simon and Schuster. Bernier, O. 1984. Louis the Beloved: The Life of Louis XV. New York: Doubleday.

B e a r i n g P e ac e a n d   Wa r  

[ 99 ]

01

Bonney, R. 1991. European Dynastic States: 1494–​1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bonney, R. 2006. “France’s ‘War by Diversion.’” In The Thirty Years’ War, 2nd ed., edited by G. Parker. London: Routledge. Chevé, J. 2008. Marie-​Thérèse d’Autriche: Epouse de Louis XIV. Paris: Pygmalion Editions. Collins, J. B. 1995. The State in Early Modern France. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Coontz, S. 2006. Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Penguin. Edelman, L. 2004. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Enloe, C. 1989. Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Enloe, C. 2010. Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War. Berkeley: University of California Press. Falkner, J. 2015. The War of Spanish Succession. Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword. Franke, K. M. 2001. “Theorizing Yes: An Essay on Feminism, Law, and Desire.” Columbia Law Review 101, no. 2: 181–​208. Fraser, A. 2010. Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. Frey, L., and Frey, M. 1995. The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession: An Historical and Critical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Gross, L. 1948. “The Peace of Westphalia, 1648–​1948.” American Journal of International Law 42, no. 1: 20–​41. Hansen, L. 2000. “The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School.” Millennium 29, no. 2: 285–​306. Harper, J., and von Goeth, A. 2018. Louis XIV, the Real Sun King. Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword. Holt, M. 2013. “State-​Building in the Absence of State Structures: Palestinian Women in the Occupied Territories and Shi’I Women in Lebanon.” In Women and the State: International Perspectives, edited by S. Rai and G. Lievesky, 61–​77. London: Taylor and Francis. Kamen, H. 2001. Philip V of Spain: The King who Reigned Twice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Koenigsberger, H. G. 1971. The Habsburgs and Europe, 1516–​1660. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lynn, J. A. 1999. The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667–​1714. London: Routledge. MacKenzie, M. 2009. “Securitization and Desecuritization: Female Soldiers and the Reconstruction of Women in Post-​Conflict Sierra Leone.” Security Studies 18, no. 2: 241–​261. MacKinnon, C. A. 1989. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McClintock, A. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Context. London: Routledge. Mckay, D., and Scott, H. M. 2014. The Rise of the Great Powers, 1648–​1815. London: Routledge. Miller, C. 1999. “Go Down, Moses: Zora Neale Hurston and Sigmund Freud on Race, Nation, and Political Representation.” Race and the Production of

[ 100 ]  Maternality and the State

Modern American Nationalism, edited by R. J. Scott-​Childress, 247–​273. New York: Routledge. Montpensier, A. 1848. Memoirs of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Volume 1. London: Henry Colburn. Nexon, D. H. 2009. The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change. Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press. Nottage, L. 2003. Las Meninas. New York: Dramatists’ Play Service. Onnekink, D. “The ‘Dark Alliance’ between Religion and War.” In War and Religion after Westphalia, 1648–​1713, edited by D. Onnekink, 1–​16. New York: Routledge. Peterson, V. S. 1999. “Sexing Political Identities/​Nationalism as Heterosexism.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 1, no. 1: 34–​65. Peterson, V. S. 2013. “The Intended and Unintended Queering of States/​Nations.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 13, no. 1: 57–​68. Philpott, D. 2001. Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pinot-​Duclos, C. 1910. Secret Memoirs of the Regency: The Minority of Louis XV, translated by E. J. Meras. New York: Sturgis and Walton. Rule, J. C. 1999. “The Enduring Rivalry of France and Spain ca. 1462–​1700.” In Great Power Rivalries, edited by W. R. Thompson, 31–​59. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Sahlins, P. 1991. Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schmidt, S. 2011. “To Order the Minds of Scholars: The Discourse of the Peace of Westphalia in International Relations Literature.” International Studies Quarterly 55, no. 3: 601–​623. Sharpley-​Whiting, T. D. 2015. Bricktop’s Paris: African American Women in Paris between the Two World Wars. Albany: State University of New York Press. Sjoberg, L., and Via, S., eds. 2010. Gender, War, and Militarism. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International. Steintrager, J. A. 2015. The Autonomy of Pleasure: Libertines, License, and Sexual Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press. Sternberg, G. 2014. Status Interaction during the Reign of Louis XIV. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strading, R. A. 2002. Philip IV and the Government of Spain, 1621–​1665. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Straumann, B. 2008. “The Peace of Westphalia as a Secular Constitution.” Constellations 15, no. 2: 173–​188. Tuttle, L. 2010. Conceiving the Old Regime: Pronatalism and the Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern France. New York: Oxford University Press. Voltaire. 1751. Le Siècle de Louis XIV. Paris: Librairie Garnier Fréres. Watanabe-​O’Kelly, H. 2016. “Afterword: Queens Consort, Dynasty, and Cultural Transfer.” In Queens Consort, Cultural Transfer, and European Politics, c.1500–​1800, edited by H. Watanbe-​O’Kelly and A. Morton, 231–​261. London: Routledge. Weissman, A. L. 2017. “Repronormativity and the Reproduction of the Nation-​ State: The State and Sexuality Collide.” Journal of GLBT Family Studies 13, no. 3: 277–​305. Wolf, J. B. 1972. Louis XIV: A Profile. London: Macmillan.

B e a r i n g P e ac e a n d   Wa r  

[ 101 ]

02 1

Young, I. M. 2003. “The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29, no. 1: 1–​25. Zanger, A. E. 1997. Scenes from the Marriage of Louis XIV: Nuptial Fictions and the Making of Absolutist Power. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

[ 102 ]  Maternality and the State

CHAPTER 7

Ideal Citizens and Family Values The Politics of Reproductive Fitness ANNA L . WEISSMAN

M

otherhood is political. Far from just the biological replication of human beings, reproduction is also the social (re)production of values, norms, and culture. There are different perceptions of birth depending on identity; not all births are equally celebrated, and not all wombs are considered capable of the “preservation” of society. For example, the baby born to a single mother may be seen as part of the perpetuation of poverty, as illegitimate or deviant without the legitimating connection to a father. The American single mother could also be vilified as a “Welfare Queen,” reproducing for the “wrong reasons.” The baby born to undocumented immigrant parents in the United States is derided as an “anchor baby.” Demographic wars are being fought over national perceptions of “overpopulation” of particular religions or nationalities that are seen as threats to national identity. For example, Polish right-​wing commentators claimed that there was a cultural war in which “Muslims will combat us, not with terrorism, but with uteruses of their women” (Wigura 2016; Fronda 2015). Similarly, the right-​wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AFD) maintains that the only way to solve the declining German birth rate is through a higher birth rate by the “native” population; their main platform is anti-​immigration. However, they also argue that the wrong Germans—​women from the “socially underprivileged class”—​tend to have more children rather than “highly qualified” educated women (Fleming, Anna L. Weissman, Ideal Citizens and Family Values In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0007

0 41

Gilloz, and Hairy 2017). This demographically focused anti-​immigration rhetoric is found in many of the far-​right-​wing parties in Europe. Thus, it is not an unqualified pronatalism but rather a selective reproduction that is privileged and legitimized. There are some individuals who are encouraged to reproduce, to add to the number of the nation (the identity-​based “in-​group”) and its perceived strength. Their babies are seen as embodying the identity and values of their group; they are real and symbolic, unproblematic expansions of the body politic. This can be called “repronormative” reproduction: the reproduction of those who are in the social/​political in-​group and, therefore, the reproduction of the values and identities of the hegemonic culture. Social and/​or legal limits on certain reproduction identify “legitimate” or repronormative reproducers; these are delineated by certain gender/​sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, class, and ability. By identifying who is legally able or socially encouraged to reproduce or parent, it is clear who is seen as a legitimate reproducer and who can produce “Ideal Citizens.” The patriarchal institution of Motherhood (re)produces an Ideal Citizen, a member of the nation, dictated by the in-​ group identity. More often than not, the Ideal Citizen is whiter, richer, cisgender, and heterosexual. This chapter aims to show how the institution of Motherhood, “family values,” and traditional gender roles have been coopted by the rhetoric of the nation and institutionalized by the state as a site of difference, (re)producing Insiders and Outsiders, exclusionary logics of collectivity, and embodied national boundaries. Normative reproduction is vital to our perception of the political. Particularly, it is reproductive difference that underpins the social differentiation seen as universal. In other words, perceived reproductive biological dimorphism—​the two-​sex/​gender system—​is what is seen as the natural basis of masculinity and femininity as well as the foundation of society. To be “female,” therefore, is to have a certain role in reproduction, and normative femininity requires a reproductive sexuality. This culminates in Motherhood. This chapter puts forward a core argument: that normative reproduction—​or repronormativity—​is the foundation of the patriarchal institution of Motherhood, which, far from empowering women, defines them by their biological reproductive capabilities. It defines and limits who can (and should) reproduce or parent, not only enforcing maternity for some but also enforcing non-​reproduction for others. This chapter first identifies “biological” reproductive difference as the foundation of traditional sex/​gender roles. I  demonstrate how defining biological sex in this way is functional, normative, and teleological. Reproductive difference is foundational to Western patriarchal society and its definitions of kinship, family, and sociopolitical belonging. I differentiate

[ 104 ]  Maternality and the State

the patriarchal institution of Motherhood (signified with a capital “M”) and the active “mothering,” showing how the institution of Motherhood reifies a normative maternal female identity, limiting who is considered legitimate to reproduce or parent. Motherhood privileges heterosexual, reproductive sex and essentializes the (cisgender/​heterosexual) female body as necessarily reproductive. However, normative Motherhood is also based on racialized identity; I  analyze this through differences in sterilization laws and practices across the globe. Sterilization is accessible and/​or enforced differently based on one’s identity; gender/​sexual orientation, race, class, and ability dictate both historically and in modern society voluntary and involuntary sterilization practices. Ultimately, I demonstrate that one of the products of the institution of Motherhood is a normative model of raced female sexuality: a necessarily reproductive, white female sexuality.

SEX, GENDER, AND REPRODUCTIVE DIFFERENCE: BIOLOGY, PATHOLOGY, SOCIETY

Western biology has historically followed an essentialist interpretation of human biology—​that sex is binary and deterministic. Biological sex is defined functionally, by the “two causal roles of non-​assisted reproduction”: to be “female” is to produce fewer, larger gametes (eggs), and to be “male” is to produce many small, highly motile gametes (sperm) (Carlson 2016, 21). It is not just inner or outer genitalia but also the functions of these in nonassisted reproduction. This classification has a long history.1 Aristotle, for example, distinguished between male and female in this way: They [the sexes] differ in their logos, because the male is that which has the power to generate in another . . . while the female is that which can generate in itself. . . . Very well then: they are distinguished in respect of their faculty, and this entails a certain function. (Generation of Animals I.ii, 716a in Carlson 2016, 21)

The ability to procreate in certain ways—​to generate within or in—​is how the sexes have historically been dichotomized. Aspects of Aristotle’s model provided the foundation for the way that human anatomy and reproduction were understood, from the fourth century b.c.e. until the seventeenth century (Fisher 2011, 6). The first observation of spermatozoa in the seventeenth century catalyzed a new understanding of the mechanics of reproduction that cemented the binary view of the sexes; by the eighteenth century, the “essence” of femininity was seen as within the womb, and

I de a l C i t i z e n s a n d Fa m i ly   Va l u e s  

[ 105 ]

06 1

in the ovaries by the nineteenth century (Fisher 2011, 9). There was an embodied sense of womanhood, and it was centered in the reproductive organs. This is not just historical artifact; reproductive difference is the way in which sex/​gender roles are still defined today. This can be seen in regard to intersex individuals, who are born with undeveloped or ambiguous genitalia. Reproductive differentiation is so ingrained that for years, common medical practice was for doctors to “fix” intersex babies in whichever way facilitated reproductive capability. Fausto-​Sterling (2000, 5) explains, “If a child is born with two X chromosomes, oviducts, ovaries, and a uterus on the inside, but a penis and scrotum on the outside, for instance, is the child a boy or a girl? Most doctors declare the child a girl, despite the penis, because of her potential to give birth, and intervene using surgery and hormones to carry out the decision.” Biological sex is therefore dictated by reproductive function; it is more than just genitalia. Dreger (1998, 28) concurs that “genetic females (that is, babies lacking a Y chromosome) born with ambiguous genitalia are declared girls—​no matter how masculine their genitalia look. This is done chiefly in the interest of preserving these children’s potential feminine reproductive capabilities and in bringing their anatomical appearance and physiological capabilities in line with that reproductive role.” This affects a significant amount of people: Fausto-​Sterling (2000) suggests that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7 percent of the population. Even though sex is often considered “natural” and uncomplicated, there is concerted medical effort to keep within the binary. As Valentine and Wilchens (1997, 215) describe, though the genitals account for only 1 percent of the surface area of the body, “they constitute nearly 100% of what we, as both cultural members and as producers of cultural knowledge, come to understand and assume about the body’s sex and gender.” More than just appearance, there is a real sense that genitals presume certain (inter)action; this is the case for intersex and non-​intersex individuals, and contributes to the discursive emergence and subsequent naturalization of the sexual/​sexed other. It is necessary to think about the social construction of the body and of sexuality in wider fields, for both people “othered by their bodily practices or makeup” (Valentine and Wilchens 1997, 221) and those who are within the binary: “For it is this requirement that naturalizes nontransgender and nonintersex bodies and obscures the processes whereby all bodies are understood through complex systems of meaning. It is this understanding that may allow some new insights into what it means to say that all bodies are discursively produced” (Valentine and Wilchens 1997: 221).

[ 106 ]  Maternality and the State

This chapter aims to do just that, in the excavation of reproductive difference. It is the idea of reproductive difference—​that is, procreative gender roles—​that affirms the basis of normative sexuality, of what defines certain sexual practices as problematic and pathological. Downing (2015, 1142) traces Western development of the concept of sexual perversion, which for modern sexologists like Richard von Krafft-​Ebing and Sigmund Freud was defined as pathological when it “replaced rather than accompanied” sexual intercourse leading to reproduction. Homosexuality—​that is, non-​ reproductive sex—​was seen as “contrary sexual instinct,” and from the late Victorian period symbolized sterility, madness, and decadence (Fisher 2011, 12; Terry 1995, 132). Procreation, in essence, legitimizes certain sex acts. The purpose of sexuality is realized as reproduction, and reproductive sex is the “guarantor of normality” (Downing 2015, 1144). Normalizing and privileging reproductive sex (and demonizing non-​reproductive sex) has reified procreative sex/​gender roles. By the nineteenth century, women were seen as having a lesser sexual appetite and instead viewed as wifely, maternal, and a “civilizing force” for male passions (Groneman 1995, 225–​ 226 in Fisher 2011, 12). This maternalization of women’s identities had great influence in reinforcing a necessarily reproductive female sexuality. The foundation of the institution of Motherhood is cisgender heteronormativity—​the sex/​gender binary and the man–​woman dyad. But it is particularly the result and reproduction of this dyad—​children—​which are seen as the foundation of society. Edelman (2004) writes about the symbolic figure of the Child and how reproductive futurism characterizes our ideas of the political and political belonging. Society’s sociopolitical structures rely on and privilege this repronormative mandate:  “That Child remains the perpetual horizon of every acknowledged politics, the fantasmatic beneficiary of every political intervention” (Edelman 2004, 3). Edelman references the book and 2006 adapted film Children of Men in describing how non-​reproductive sex is viewed as “almost meaningless acrobatics” (2004, 13, 64). Reproductive sex—​the Child—​on the other hand, is seen as shaping the meaning of collective narrative, and collective narrative of meaning (2004, 12). Anything outside of this is a threat to the social order itself. For example, when one is perceived as a heterosexual and does not procreate within what is deemed the ideal fecundity window, there is a social backlash. Research has shown that voluntarily childfree individuals elicited significantly greater moral outrage than those with two children (Ashburn-​Nardo 2017). Childfree individuals were perceived to be “significantly less psychologically fulfilled” than parents (Ashburn-​Nardo 2017). This is in large part because traditional gender roles are functional: they are fundamentally procreative. This is why infertility is seen as a serious

I de a l C i t i z e n s a n d Fa m i ly   Va l u e s  

[ 107 ]

0 8 1

malfunction. Ashburn-​ Nardo reported that, when evaluating childfree couples, respondents reported reactions like disgust, disapproval, annoyance, outrage, and anger; she explained that these emotions are responding to a lack of upholding societal gender expectations (Barcella 2017). Repronormative values are an intrinsic aspect of traditional gender roles; normative femininity and masculinity are fundamentally procreative. In this way, it can be proposed that we can know and define the normative concept of sex through gender, rather than understanding gender as the culturally constructed ideals that sit atop the “natural,” unproblematic “coat rack” of biological sex. Butler’s famous maxim is that gender is performative. As she writes, the gender hierarchy serves a compulsory heterosexuality, and (procreative) gender norms are policed precisely in the service of shoring up heterosexual hegemony (Butler 1999, xiii). The normativity of sexual practices reflects procreative gender roles. The patriarchal institution of Motherhood follows this, confirming a normative, reproductive femininity.

MOTHERING VERSUS MOTHERHOOD AND NORMATIVE SEX/​ GENDER ROLES

It is important to understand the difference between the act of mothering and the institution of Motherhood. Mothering describes the actions and experience of nurturing, the actions of childrearing and development. Anyone can mother, and any groups of people can contribute to mothering, which throughout history has included the extended family, the tribe and village, the young and the old. In light of this, I prefer to use the term “parenting.”2 It is important to remember that there is no homogenous, universal, or even apolitical3 conception of mothering/​parenting; I  use the term here as delineated from the institution of Motherhood and with a focus on the actions of protecting and nurturing dependents.4 As Rich describes in her influential work, Of Woman Born, “Motherhood” refers to the patriarchal institution that is male-​defined and oppressive, ensuring that women remain under male control (1995 [1976], 13). She differentiates Motherhood from mothering, referencing the convergence of Motherhood and the institutionalization of heterosexual relations: The institution of motherhood is not identical with bearing and caring for children, any more than the institution of heterosexuality is identical with intimacy and sexual love. Both create the prescriptions and the conditions in which

[ 108 ]  Maternality and the State

choices are made or blocked; they are not “reality” but they have shaped the circumstances of our lives. (Rich 1995, 42)

Other feminist theorists highlight the structural definition of Motherhood, historically determined and limited by patriarchal values. Roberts (1993, 10)  defines Motherhood as compulsory, as society exerts structural and ideological pressures on women to become mothers. Chodorow says it is “a central and defining feature of the social organization of gender and is implicated in the construction and reproduction of male dominance itself” (1978, 9). Fineman describes motherhood as “[a]‌colonized [concept] . . . an event physically practiced and experienced by women, but occupied and defined, given content and value, by the core concepts of patriarchal ideology” (1991, 289–​290; in Roberts 1993, 6). Motherhood is an elaborate cultural practice that is continuously redesigned in response to changing social and economic factors (O’Reilly 2010, 4). As Rich explains, This institution has been a keystone of the most diverse social and political systems. It has withheld over one-​half the human species from the decisions affecting their lives; it exonerates men from fatherhood in any authentic sense; it creates the dangerous schism between “private” and “public” life; it calcifies human choices and potentialities. In the most fundamental and bewildering of contradictions, it has alienated women from our bodies by incarcerating us in them . . . for most of what we know as the “mainstream” of recorded history, Motherhood as institution has ghettoized and degraded female potentialities. (1995 [1976], 13)

Some of the most harmful aspects of Motherhood are the assumptions not only that mothering is natural to women but also that it is the sole responsibility of women; there is a reification of the woman-​mother. This results in the maternalization of women’s identities and bodies, denying identity outside of Motherhood. Even if a woman decides to be childfree, she is still subject to social pressures and scorn and may suffer from the myriad consequences of gender role stereotyping.5 As Roberts (1993, 10)  describes, all women are socially defined as mothers or potential mothers. Furthermore, this constructs identities that are non-​Mothers; anyone outside of normative Motherhood is socially or legally deemed unfit to mother. This is the corollary to the maternalization of women’s identities, the (re)production of difference, Other, Outsider. The idealized figure of Mother can be seen through negative public opinion and discriminatory laws regarding certain parenting and reproduction. Through these discursive and legal barriers, the non-​Mother is

I de a l C i t i z e n s a n d Fa m i ly   Va l u e s  

[ 109 ]

0 1

revealed. For example, there are international and European polls that show there is less public support for same-​sex parenting than same-​sex unions (Eurobarometer 2006; Institut Francais d’Opinion Publique [IFOP], 2011, 2013, 2014; Ipsos Global @dvisor 2013). For example, the 2013 Ipsos poll found that 91  percent of Swedish respondents supported same-​sex unions, but only 78 percent supported same-​sex adoption. A 2009 EU-​wide study from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) showed that attitudes toward LGBTQ people vary, but “the most negative results surface when [respondents are] asked if homosexuals [sic] should be allowed to adopt children” (FRA 2009, 35; Weissman 2017, 2). In essence, more people support gay or lesbian people having formal unions than these same couples having children. This difference in support holds for many countries around the world and across time, and in countries with and without legalized same-​sex marriage (Weissman 2017). The gay father and lesbian mother are considered outside of normative sex/​gender roles and therefore outside of Motherhood, or normative parenting. Motherhood is reliant on cultural conceptions of normative sex/​gender roles; it is this cis/​heteropatriarchal tethering of sex to gender roles that limits reproductive rights. For example, there have been laws existing for decades in Europe that ban trans reproductive rights. As of 2015, eighteen European countries6 still required trans people to undergo sterilization before the state will formally acknowledge their legal gender change (Karaian 2013, 11; Pasulka 2012; TGEU 2014). There is no medical reason for this requirement. The impetus is to control the reproduction of individuals who are deemed deviant and “protect” the nuclear heteronormative family. The normalization of procreative sex/​gender roles can also be seen in assisted reproductive technology laws. For example, France legalized same-​ sex marriage and same-​sex couple adoption in 2013, but in vitro fertilization (IVF) laws remain based on sexual orientation; since 1994, French lesbians are barred from IVF. Only opposite-​sex couples, married or unmarried, can access IVF treatments, and these are even covered by the national healthcare system. As of 2013, only nine countries in Europe have no laws prohibiting lesbians from IVF treatments. Sociocultural values that link normative (heterosexual) feminine identity and Motherhood thus restrict both the range of reproductive behavior and reproductive desire itself (Denbrow 2014, 108). The institution of Motherhood privileges heterosexual, reproductive sex and links the (cis/​heterosexual) female body with reproductive desire. This results in a sociolegal rejection of non-​normative parenting. In other words, by seeing who is not allowed to reproduce/​participate in the institution of Motherhood, one reveals who can (and must) mother. The very

[ 110 ]  Maternality and the State

definition of non-​normative reproduction relies on a conception of normative reproduction. The idea of “family values” actually relies on the institution of Motherhood; procreative gender roles are foundational. Upholding the institution of Motherhood, therefore, requires and reifies a female sexuality that is necessarily (re)productive and a normative feminine identity that is necessarily tied to heterosexual maternity.

(RE)PRODUCING DIFFERENCE: REPRODUCTIVE FITNESS, RACE, AND STERILIZATION

This essentialization and maternalization of women is especially enforced for cisgender, heterosexual women: normative Motherhood is limited by sexual/​gender orientation. However, the normative Mother figure is also limited by race, ethnicity, nationality, ability, and other axes of identity. This can be seen through the differing laws, practices, and accessibility to sterilization. Sterilization (i.e., vasectomy or tubal ligation) is one of the most utilized forms of contraception in the world; when done with consent in an appropriate clinical venue, it is a safe and effective means of permanently controlling reproduction (World Health Organization [WHO] 2014, 1). However, certain identity groups are targeted for coercive sterilization practices. These include indigenous people, ethnic and racial minorities, and people with non-​normative sexual/​gender orientation. Both men and women are implicated in these practices, but women and girls in particular are disproportionately affected (Frohmader 2012; Grover et al. 2002; Mallet 2008; WHO 2014, 1). Forced sterilization has been deemed by national, regional, and international human rights organizations as a violation of fundamental human rights, from the right to information, privacy, and freedom from discrimination, to freedom from torture, degrading treatment or punishment, and violence against women (WHO 2014, 1). Practices of forced sterilization can provide insight into who is considered a socially acceptable reproducer, one who is part of the normative identity of Mother and member of the nation. This definition is often state-​controlled, shaped by legal population policies and regulations, but also seen in the practices of societal values and culture. The difficulties in accessing voluntary sterilization for some is juxtaposed against the crimes enacted against these population groups. Numerous studies and personal experiences have shown that many women have a very difficult time finding doctors who will perform sterilization that is not deemed medically necessary; this reality uncovers the maternalization of women’s bodies and identities. Forced sterilization, however, demonstrates

I de a l C i t i z e n s a n d Fa m i ly   Va l u e s  

[ 111 ]

2 1

how the institution of Motherhood is limited by a normative identity; there is a long history of racist conceptions of “reproductive fitness” throughout the world. I juxtapose these two realities to uncover the normative figure of Mother and how it reproduces difference. Denbrow (2014) details the significant barriers to and inaccessibility of voluntary sterilization for women in the United States. Younger, childfree women especially have stated that doctors routinely reject their request for the surgery, telling them to “come back when they’re older,” that they will “change their minds,” and to “wait until a man came into their life” (Campbell 1999; Richie 2013). The situation is similar in Canada, where fewer than 1 percent of sterilizations are performed on women who never want to have children, and doctors give similar reasons for their refusals (Ritchie 2013, 4; Wallace 2011). Some physicians even require the woman to have a minimum number of children before they will perform the sterilization (Orr and Forrest 1985; Richie 2013). This may be a holdover from the “120 rule,” which restricted sterilization to women whose age multiplied by their number of children totaled at least 120; this was promoted by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists until 1969 (Denbrow 2014, 111). Denbrow cites sociologist Suzanne Day, who analyzed how voluntary sterilization was addressed in medical textbooks and contraceptive guides from 1987 to 2007. Day found that medical discourse is largely characterized by the view that reproduction is “fundamental to women’s bodies”; for example, most of the literature characterizes the ideal candidate for sterilization as a woman who has had children already, and timing of the procedure was only discussed in terms of the woman’s most recent pregnancy (Denbrow 2014, 112). The textbooks reference outcomes of the procedure in terms of “loss, regret, and dysfunction: a loss of identity that was rooted in a woman’s reproductive capacity, a regret at the inability to fulfill a woman’s ‘primary desire’ to reproduce, and a dysfunctional body responding to the medical intervention in woman’s ‘natural’ state of reproduction” (Day 2007; Denbrow 2014, 113). Considering the absence of discussion or research on “post-​vasectomy regret,” this clearly suggests that men and their reproductive capacity are not seen in the same way; there is no proposed male identity crisis connected to reproductive incapability (Denbrow 2014, 113). However, these rules are enforced more strictly on women whose reproduction is deemed socially desirable. Throughout the world, the twentieth century saw eugenic policies shaping reproductive rights and practices. People deemed socially disadvantageous were discouraged or forcibly kept from procreating. Repronormativity is not only heteronormative and

[ 112 ]  Maternality and the State

reproductive but also co-​opted by discourses of reproductive fitness and racism, identifying and controlling legitimate and illegitimate reproducers. These ideals still dictate who is considered fit to parent. One of the clearest ways that the idealized racial figure of Mother is seen is through coerced sterilization. From blatant coercion, deception, and structural incentives, women of minority races and ethnicities have experienced the lion’s share of discriminatory population control. Sterilization practices demonstrate the differences in which repronormativity is enforced, based on race, class, sexual/​gender orientation, nationality, ability, and other axes of identity. For example, much of the restrictive rules in the United States against sterilization were specifically enforced for “mentally competent white women,” “whose childbearing was valued” (Richie 2013, 39). This comes from a long history of pursuing eugenic ideals of normative reproduction and normative Motherhood. The American eugenics movement of the twentieth century was one of the first and most extensive and provided a model for other countries. Some Nazi laws on heredity were actually influenced by the 1922 California sterilization laws (Kuhl 1994, 32). Federally funded sterilization programs took place in 32 US states (Ko 2016). In most of these state programs, women of color were targeted disproportionately. For example, Mexicans made up 4 percent of the state population in California in 1920, but 8 percent of those sterilized were Mexican women (Stern 2005, 1131). Similarly, the rise of sterilizations in southern American states like North Carolina and Virginia in the 1950s and 1960s were aimed at African Americans and poor women (Stern 2005, 1132). In the American South, unconsented sterilization was so widespread that there was a euphemism: a “Mississippi appendectomy” (Roberts 2000, 93). Various studies found that the US Indian Health Service (IHS) sterilized 25 to 50 percent of Native American women between 1970 and 1976 (Lawrence 2000, 410); a 1974 study found that the IHS was particularly singling out full-​blooded Native women7 (Lawrence 2000, 411). These reproductive ideals remain today. Studies confirm that in the United States, women of color are more likely to receive medical care that impedes fertility and less likely to receive care that facilitates it (Greil et al. 2011, 493; King and Meyer 1997). The “implicit fertility policy” of the United States promotes births among white and middle-​class women (Bell 2009, 2010; Greil et al. 2011; King and Meyer 1997; Sandelowski and de Lacey 2002). This underlying racial bias can also be seen in differences in maternity care; studies show that black women face a significantly higher maternal mortality risk in the United States, at three to four times the

I de a l C i t i z e n s a n d Fa m i ly   Va l u e s  

[ 113 ]

4 1

rate of white mothers (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017; Martin 2017). Poor, working-​class, and undereducated women are often targeted by coercive sterilization. For example, there were reports in 1999 that 20,000 poor women were herded into unhygienic sterilization camps in the Indian state of Anadhra Pradesh, under the auspices of the World Bank–​funded Indian Population Project (IPP), convinced by incentives like gold chains to undergo sterilization (Kumar 1999). The program was originally meant to provide healthcare for people living in urban slums. India is the world’s top sterilizer of women, funding about four million tubal ligations per year, mostly for poor, lower caste women (Barry and Dugger 2016; Mohanty and Bhalla 2016). Similarly, in Peru between 1996 and 2000, more than 250,000 were forcibly sterilized; the “overwhelming majority” of the women were poor and indigenous (Mirand and Yamin 2004). These people were also promised food and medicine and threatened with fines if they refused (BBC 2002). The Roma have been marginalized for centuries in Europe and are one of the most discriminated minority groups in Europe. Roma women in the Czech Republic and Slovakia were victims of the communist-​era government sterilization programs in the 1970s, though there have been reports of involuntary sterilization even into 2005 (Holt 2005; Zampas and Lamackova 2011). Romani women constituted up to 36.6 percent of all female sterilizations from 1972 to the 1990s, even though they were only about 2 percent of the Czechoslovak population (Albert and Szilvasi 2017, 26). The Roma were seen as deviant, degenerate, uncivilized, and not part of the Czechoslovak nation; especially when the national media alleged a Roma population “explosion,” national measures were taken to limit this reproduction (Albert and Szilvasi 2017, 26; Solokova 2008). Even today, the ten to twelve million Roma in Europe are pathologized as thieves and beggars, defined as having a cultural disposition for criminality (Jaroka in Bilefsky 2013). In 2012, a Czech mob, referring to the Roma, chanted “gas the [racial slur]!”; in January 2013, a far-​right group in Romania called for the sterilization of Roma women (Der Spiegel 2014). This “cultural” characterization of pathology comes from the pseudoscience of “race science,” which sees race or ethnicity as discrete and biologically predisposed to certain characteristics or behaviors. It sees social inequality as the result of genetic inferiority rather than a history of structural discrimination (through colonization, enslavement, and exploitation). Scientific racism was incredibly influential in the “racial hygiene” movements of the twentieth century and has tied traditional notions of public health with heredity (see Foucault 1997). Far from historical artifact,

[ 114 ]  Maternality and the State

these ideas of scientific racism were revived in the late 1980s within North American academia (see Kuhl 1994) and can be found today in the rhetoric of many far-​right-​wing political parties in Europe and the United States (see Weissman 2017). These eugenic ideals still affect public perception of and legal restrictions to normative reproduction, and they contribute to the definition of Motherhood.

CONCLUSION

There are many examples of forced sterilization across the world, of indigenous women, women of color, trans people, women with disabilities, women of lower castes, prisoners, and indigent women. Ultimately, these practices are driven by a normative idea of Motherhood, of legitimate reproduction, of increasing the nation. What this chapter aimed to uncover is the underlying social foundation of reproductive difference and how these sex/​gender norms reify traditional procreative sex/​gender roles. In this way, women’s identities and bodies are maternalized and essentialized. However, access to reproduction and to the normative ideal of Motherhood is not open to all. Limitations exist based on sexual and gender orientation—​same-​sex couples denied the ability to adopt children, lesbians barred from accessing the same assisted reproductive technologies as heteronormative couples, trans people required to give up reproductive capability if they want formal recognition of their gender. Limitations exist based on race, ethnicity, and class—​poor women of color have historically been discouraged or outright kept from having children. The patriarchal institution of Motherhood is a site of difference, co-​ opted by patriarchal ideals and national rhetoric that enshrines an ideal—​ an ideal Woman-​Mother, who (re)produces an Ideal Citizen-​Child of the nation. These are underwritten by racial codes that highlight the racial difference of ideal Motherhood. Far from empowering, negotiating solely from the place of Motherhood reifies the difference that Motherhood produces, the non-​Mothers it constructs, and the maternity it enforces. It reinforces the existing power structures that require maternity from some, and delimit others. There is an alternative, however. If society moves beyond these normative, procreative sex/​gender roles—​if we queer Motherhood—​these limiting categories could dissolve. Parenting could be unsexed and ungendered, freer to whomever is inclined to nurture. This would expand the concept and spectrum of reproductive rights to include the right to procreate (for all who do not fit the normative mold) and the right not to

I de a l C i t i z e n s a n d Fa m i ly   Va l u e s  

[ 115 ]

6 1

procreate (for all who do fit but choose not to). This would include same-​sex couples adopting children and lesbian couples accessing IVF and full access to abortion, contraception, and voluntary sterilization. To queer reproduction is to eliminate the assumption of reproduction (ability or desire) based on sexual/​gender orientation, race, national identity, and perceptions of “ability.” It starts from identifying and questioning the social and legal forces that, based on identity, (dis)incentivize, privilege, subsidize, and require maternity.

NOTES 1. Before Aristotle, the prevailing view of the sexes was based on a one-​sex model; female was perceived as defective male (Fisher 2011, 6; Laqueur 1987). 2. Though I do concede that the majority of caretaking is done by women (and most often, poorer women of color; see Chapter 11). The use of the word parenting does not aim to minimize this, but rather focuses on a future wherein care work is done by all, regardless of gender. 3. It is an oversimplification to assume that mothering is done in a sociopolitical void or that all mothering is similar. A black or gay parent confronts numerous challenges mothering/​parenting in racist and homophobic societies that a white and/​or cisgender, heteronormative parent would never encounter. As Audre Lorde wrote, “Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying” (Roberts 1993, 5). In this case I am using mothering as a verb that differs from the patriarchal institution of Motherhood itself, though I concede that there is no neutral, apolitical conception of mothering. 4. The term mothering/​parenting can also be used to denote care for any dependents, which can include, for example, elderly parents, differently abled siblings, as well as children. 5. For example, even when they first enter the workplace, women start off at a lower salary than men; studies suggest that this could be in anticipation of maternity leave (Budig and England 2001). This becomes especially apparent during perceived fertile years between ages twenty-​five and forty-​five, wherein the gender pay gap for college graduates in the United States widens by 55 percent (Miller 2014; Barth, Kerr, and Olivetti 2017). Numerous studies uncover the Motherhood Wage Penalty: that mothers suffer a childbirth earnings penalty, whereas fathers may see an increase after having children (Budig and England 2001; Correll, Bernhard, and Paik 2007; Harkness and Waldfogel 2003; Kleven, Landais, and Sogaard 2018; Lundburg and Rose 2000). 6. As of 2015, these countries include Finland, Norway, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, and Latvia (TGEU 2015).

[ 116 ]  Maternality and the State

7. Some Native Americans assert that these sterilizations may be motivated by federal economic considerations as well. There are biological requirements (like certain blood quantum) for some tribes that dictate whether one is federally recognized as a tribe member and has access to certain natural resources, land treaties, or other tribe-​based benefits. The sterilizations greatly diminish those with enough native “blood” to lay claim to these (see Lawrence 2000).

REFERENCES Albert, G., and Szilvasi, M. 2017. “Intersectional Discrimination of Romani Women Forcibly Sterilized in the Former Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic.” Health and Human Rights Journal 19, no. 2: 23–​34. Ashburn Nardo, L. 2017. “Parenthood as a Moral Imperative? Moral Outrage and the Stigmatization of Voluntarily Childfree Women and Men.” Sex Roles 76, no. 5–​6: 393–​401. Barcella, L. 2017. “Americans Are Having Fewer Kids. But Child-​Free People Are Still Stigmatized.” Washington Post March 7. https://​www.washingtonpost.com/​ news/​soloish/​wp/​2017/​03/​07/​americans-​are-​having-​fewer-​kids-​but-​child-​free-​ people-​are-​still-​stigmatized/​?utm_​term=.3411428b918a. Barry, E., and Dugger, C. W. 2016. “India to Change Its Decades-​Old Reliance on Female Sterilization.” New York Times February 20. https://​www.nytimes.com/​ 2016/​02/​21/​world/​asia/​india-​to-​change-​its-​decades-​old-​reliance-​on-​female-​ sterilization.html. Barth, E., Pekkala Kerr, S., and Olivetti, C. 2017. “The Dynamics of Gender Earnings Differentials: Evidence from Establishment Data.” National Bureau of Economic Research, working paper no. 23381. http://​www.nber.org/​papers/​ w23381. BBC. 2002. “Mass Sterilization Scandal Shocks Peru.” July 24. http://​news.bbc.co.uk/​ 2/​hi/​americas/​2148793.stm. Bell, A. V. 2009. “It’s Way Out of My League”: Low-​Income Women’s Experiences of Medicalized Infertility.” Gender and Society 23: 688–​709. Bell, A. V. 2010. “Beyond (Financial) Accessibility: Inequalities within the Medicalisation of Infertility.” Sociology of Health and Illness 32: 631–​646. Bilefsky, D. 2013. “Are the Roma Primitive, or Just Poor?” New York Times October 19. http://​www.nytimes.com/​2013/​10/​20/​sunday-​review/​are-​the-​roma-​primitive-​ or-​just-​poor.html?pagewanted=all&_​r=0. Budig, M. J., and England, P. 2001. “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood.” American Sociological Review 66, no. 2: 204–​225. Butler, J. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London, New York: Routledge. Campbell, A. 1999. Childfree and Sterilized, Women’s Decisions and Medical Responses. London: Wellington House. Carlson, A. 2016. “Sex, Biological Functions and Social Norms: A Simple Constructivist Theory of Sex.” NORA—​Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 24, no. 1: 18–​29. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2017. “Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System.” Reviewed on June 4, 2019. https://​www.cdc.gov/​reproductivehealth/​ maternalinfanthealth/​pmss.html.

I de a l C i t i z e n s a n d Fa m i ly   Va l u e s  

[ 117 ]

8 1

Chodorow, N. 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press. Correll, S. J., Venard, S., and Paik, I. 2007. “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?” American Journal of Sociology 112, no. 5: 1297–​1339. Day, S. 2007. Fitness, Fertility and Femininity: Making Meaning in the Tying of Tubes: A Feminist Discourse Analysis of Women’s Sterilization. Master’s thesis, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Denbrow, Jennifer. 2014. “Sterilization as Cyborg Performance: Reproductive Freedom and the Regulation of Sterilization.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 35, no. 1: 107–​131. Der Spiegel. 2014. “The Plight of the Roma: Europe’s Unwanted People.” January 7. http://​www.spiegel.de/​international/​europe/​europe-​failing-​to-​protect-​ roma-​from-​discrimination-​and-​poverty-​a-​942057.html. Downing, Lisa. 2015. “Heteronormativity and Repronormativity in Sexological ‘Perversion Theory’ and the DSM-​5’s ‘Paraphilic Disorder’ Diagnoses.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 44, no. 5: 1139–​1145. Dreger, A. D. 1998. “ ‘Ambiguous Sex’—​or Ambivalent Medicine?” Hasting Center Report 28, no. 3: 24–​35. Edelman, L. 2004. No Futurity: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). 2009. “Homophobia and Discrimination on Grounds of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the EU Member States: Part II—​The Social Situation.” June. https://​fra.europa. eu/​en/​publication/​2011/​homophobia-​and-​discrimination-​grounds-​sexual-​ orientation-​and-​gender-​identity-​eu. Eurobarometer. 2006. “Public Opinion in the European Union.” TNS Opinion and Social December. http://​ec.europa.eu/​public_​opinion/​archives/​eb/​eb66/​eb66_​ highlights_​en.pdf. Fausto Sterling, A. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books. Fineman, M. L. 1991. “Images of Mothers in Poverty Discourses.” Duke Law Journal 2: 274–​295. Fisher, J. A. 2011. “Gendering Science: Contextualizing Historical and Contemporary Pursuits of Difference.” In Gender and the Science of Difference: Cultural Politics of Contemporary Science and Medicine, edited by J. A. Fisher, 1–​26. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Fleming, M., Gilloz, O., and Hairy, N. 2017. “Getting to Know You: Mapping the Anti-​Feminist Face of Right-​Wing Populism in Europe.” Open Democracy May 8. https://​www.opendemocracy.net/​can-​europe-​make-​it/​matilda-​flemming/​ mapping-​anti-​feminist-​face-​of-​right-​wing-​populism-​in-​europe. Foucault, M. 1997. “Society Must Be Defended.” In Lectures at the College de France. 1975–​1976, edited by M. Bertani and A. Fontana; translated by D. Macy. New York: Picador. Frohmader, C. 2012. Moving Forward and Gaining Ground: The Sterilisation of Women and Girls with Disabilities in Australia. Rosny Park, Tasmania: Women with Disabilities Australia. Fronda. 2015. Terlikowski: Celem islamistów jest zajęcie Europy [Terlikowski: The Aim of Islam Is to Take Over Europe]. In Polish. http://​www.fronda.pl/​a/​ terlikowski-​celem-​islamistow-​jest-​zajecie-​europy,60477.html.

[ 118 ]  Maternality and the State

Greil, A. L., McQuillan, J., Shreffler, K. M., Johnson, K. M., and Slauson-​Blevins, K. S. 2011. “Race-​Ethnicity and Medical Services for Infertility: Stratified Reproduction in a Population-​Sample of US Women.” Journal of Health and Society 52, no. 4: 439–​509. Harkness, S., and Waldfogel, J. 2003. “The Family Gap in Pay: Evidence from Seven Industrialized Countries.” Research in Labor Economics 22: 369–​414. Holt, E. 2005. “Roma Women Reveal that Forced Sterilization Remains.” Lancet 365: 927–​928. Grover S, Brady S, and Chondros P. 2002. “Sterilisations in Girls and Young Women: Is It Still Happening?” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 26, no. 2: 273–​275. Institut Francais d’Opinion Publique (IFOP). 2011. “Les Français et les droits des couples homosexuels [in French].” June. Institut Francais d’Opinion Publique (IFOP). 2013. “Les Francais face a la PMA, la GPA et l’homoparentalite. [in French].” March. Institut Francais d’Opinion Publique (IFOP). 2014. “Les Français et les droits des couples homosexuels deux ans après la 1ère manifestation de la manif pour tous [in French].” November. IPSOS Global @dvisor. 2013. “Same-​Sex Marriage: Citizens in 16 Countries Assess Their Views on Same-​Sex Marriage for a Total Global Perspective.” June. Karaian, L. 2013. “Pregnant Men: Repronormativity, Critical Trans Theory and the Re(conceive)ing of Sex and Pregnancy in Law.” Social and Legal Studies 22, no. 2: 211–​230. King, L., and Meyer, M. H. 1997. “The Politics of Reproductive Benefits: U.S. Insurance Coverage of Contraceptive and Infertility Treatments.” Gender and Society 11: 8–​30. Kleven, H., Landais, C., and Sogaard, J. E. 2018. “Children and Gender Inequality: Evidence from Denmark.” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 24219. http://​www.nber.org/​papers/​w24219. Ko, L. 2016. “Unwanted Sterilization and Eugenics Programs in the US.” PBS January 29. http://​www.pbs.org/​independentlens/​blog/​unwanted-​sterilization-​and-​ eugenics-​programs-​in-​the-​united-​states/​. Kuhl, S. 1994. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kumar S. 1999. “Health-​Care Camps for the Poor Provide Mass Sterilisation Quota.” Lancet 353: 1251. Laqueur, T. 1987. Making Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Lawrence, J. 2000. “The Indian Health Service and the Sterilization of Native American Women.” American Indian Quarterly 24, no. 3: 400–​419. Lundberg, S., and Rose, E. 2000. “Parenthood and the Earnings of Married Men and Women.” Labour Economics 7: 689–​710. Mallet, J., and Kalambi, V. 2008. “Coerced and Forced Sterilization of HIV-​ Positive Women in Namibia.” HIV AIDS Policy Law Review 13, no. 2–​3: 77–​78. Martin, N. 2017. “Black Mothers Keep Dying after Giving Birth. Sharon Irving’s Story Explains Why.” NPR December 7. https://​www.npr.org/​2017/​12/​07/​ 568948782/​black-​mothers-​keep-​dying-​after-​giving-​birth-​shalon-​irvings-​story-​ explains-​why.

I de a l C i t i z e n s a n d Fa m i ly   Va l u e s  

[ 119 ]

201

Miller, C. C. 2014. “The Motherhood Penalty vs. the Fatherhood Bonus.” New York Times September 6. https://​www.nytimes.com/​2014/​09/​07/​upshot/​a-​child-​ helps-​your-​career-​if-​youre-​a-​man.html. Miranda, J. J., and Yamin, A. E. 2004. “Reproductive Health without Rights in Peru.” Lancet 363: 68–​69. Mohanty, S., and Bhalla, N. 2016. “Indian Activists Welcome Top Court Ban on ‘Sterilization Camps’ after Women’s Deaths.” Reuters September 16. https://​ www.reuters.com/​article/​us-​india-​women-​sterilisation/​indian-​activists-​ welcome-​top-​court-​ban-​on-​sterilization-​camps-​after-​womens-​deaths-​ idUSKCN11M1YT. O’Reilly, A., ed. 2010. Twenty-​First-​Century Motherhood: Experience, Identity, Policy, Agency. New York: Columbia University Press. Orr, M. T., and Forrest, J. D. 1985. “The Availability of Reproductive Health Services from U.S. Private Physicians.” Family Planning Perspectives 17, no. 2: 63–​69. Pasulka, N. 2012. “Forced Sterilization for Transgender People in Sweden.” Mother Jones January 25. http://​www.motherjones.com/​mixed-​media/​2012/​01/​ sweden-​still-​forcing-​sterilization. Rich, A. 1976. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: W. W. Norton. Richie, C. 2013. “Voluntary Sterilization for Childfree Women: Understanding Patient Profiles, Evaluating Accessibility, Examining Legislation.” Hastings Center Report 43, no. 6: 36–​44. Roberts, D. 1993. “Racism, Birth Control, and Reproductive Rights.” In Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, edited by R. Lewis and S. Mills, 353–​367. New York: Routledge. Roberts, D. 2000. “Black Women and the Pill.” Family Planning Perspectives 32, no. 2: 92–​93. Sandelowski, M., and de Lacey, S. 2002. “The Use of a ‘Disease’: Infertility as a Rhetorical Vehicle.” In Infertility around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies: A View from the Social Sciences, edited by M. C. Inhorn and F. van Balen, 33–​51. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sokolova, V. 2008. Cultural Politics of Ethnicity: Discourses on Roma in Communist Czechoslovakia. Stuttgart, Germany: ibidem-​Verlag. Stern, A. M. 2005. “Sterilized in the Name of Public Health: Race, Immigration, and Reproductive Control in Modern California.” American Journal of Public Health 95: 1128–​1138. Terry, J. 1995. “Anxious Slippages between “Us” and “Them”: A Brief History of the Scientific Search for Homosexual Bodies. In Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture, edited by J. Terry and J. Urla, 129–​ 169. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. TGEU (Transgender Europe). 2014. “Trans Rights Europe Map, 2014, 21 Countries Requiring Sterilisation in Gender Identity Recognition.” http://​www.tgeu.org/​ sites/​default/​files/​Trans_​Map_​Index_​2014.pdf. Valentine, D., and Wilchins, R. A. 1997. “One Percent on the Burn Chart: Gender, Genitals, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude.” Social Text no. 52/​53, Queer Transexions of Race, Nation, and Gender Autumn–​Winter: 215–​222. Wigura, K. 2016. “Poland’s Islamaphobia.” Carnegie Europe June 23. http://​ carnegieeurope.eu/​strategiceurope/​?fa=63892.

[ 120 ]  Maternality and the State

World Health Organization (WHO). 2014. Eliminating Forced, Coercive and Otherwise Involuntary Sterilization: An Interagency Statement. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO. http://​www.unaids.org/​sites/​default/​files/​media_​asset/​201405_​sterilization_​ en.pdf. Wallace, A. 2011. “Childless by Choice through Sterilization.” Toronto Star May 6. http://​www.thestar.com/​news/​insight/​2011/​05/​06/​childless_​by_​choice_​ through_​sterilization.html. Weissman, A. L. 2017. “Repronormativity and the Reproduction of the Nation-​ State: The State and Sexuality Collide.” Journal of GLBT Family Studies 13: 3. Zampas, C., and Lamačková, A. 2011. “Forced and Coerced Sterilization of Women in Europe.” International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics 114: 163–​166.

I de a l C i t i z e n s a n d Fa m i ly   Va l u e s  

[ 121 ]

21

CHAPTER 8

Mother Knows Best? Critical Maternal Ethics and the Rape Clause REBECC A WIL SON

I

n 2017, the UK government introduced a new tax credit policy that limited parents to claiming and receiving benefits for only two children, as part of new austerity measures. The new policy made exceptions for extenuating circumstances; such exceptions included cases, for example, where the child had been adopted or, more controversially, had been “conceived without consent” (HM Revenue and Customs and Department for Work and Pensions 2017a, 1). The UK government considers conception without consent to have occurred in cases of rape or in the context of a coercive/​controlling relationship, defined by a list of certain behaviors (HM Revenue and Customs and Department for Work and Pensions 2017a, 1). This new policy sparked outrage, especially because of the insensitive definitions surrounding what came to be known, colloquially, as the “rape clause” (Browning 2017). This controversial policy shows the often thoughtless and abstract politics of reproductive and sexual rights. A critical intersectional maternal theory is used to examine rape politics and, particularly, children born from forced sex, focusing on the 2017 UK “rape clause.” In this chapter, I highlight the tension between the state, as the patriarchal caregiver, and the citizen, constructed as an inadequate carer. This chapter examines the “rape clause” as part of a larger understanding of control of bodies. Maternal politics was popularized in the 1980s, largely by Sara Ruddick (Robinson and Confortini 2014, 38). Although its

Rebecca Wilson, Mother Knows Best? In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0008

essentialist roots are still problematic, seemingly reconfirming normative genders using harmful stereotypes, maternal ethics is a useful tool, borne in opposition to masculine politics. Using the moral epistemology of critical maternal ethics, which focuses on the virtues of care, this chapter reveals the moral boundaries that align with power hierarchies to produce harmful policies like the rape clause. The guilt, shame, and entitlement that surround sexual violence give rise to heightened tension around the phenomenon that I call “rape politics.” Using the strength in moral epistemology found in critical maternal ethics, I  have been able to unpack the ways in which moral boundaries are formed, highlighting their exclusionary tendencies to inflict a notion of good from a gendered Western perspective. This can be extended further through implementation of a moral epistemology, born from a relational ontological understanding of ethics, in order to challenge moral power, understand how that power is legitimized, and focus on moral authority. Moral epistemology can be understood as a critique on how ethical judgments and, thus, moral knowledge in society have been created and accepted. This is important because society should question not only how and why moral decisions are being made but also why they are accepted in their context, who is accepting them, and whose voice is being ignored. Instead, maternal ethics provides a resistance to these masculine politics that limit and harm those of all genders. As maternal virtues challenge these politics through their strength in moral epistemology, they allow the resultant power structures and silenced voices to be identified. Furthermore, by rejecting binaries, particularly the idea of the just/​unjust and the self/​other, these policy lines can be redrawn to become more inclusive. Using maternal theory’s rejection of binaries, specifically the juxtaposition of just/​unjust, it is possible to unpack the moral authority that establishes this policy and the control of the body. This policy is set in a larger global patriarchal context with perceived ownership over women’s bodies. Therefore, a critical maternal theory can enact resistance by uncovering the moral boundaries that legitimize rape politics. Furthermore, it can continue to emphasize the need to recognize each individual, regardless of reproductive organs. The chapter is divided into three sections. First, I provide a brief overview of the larger global patriarchal context of perceived ownership over women’s bodies. Subsequently, I outline how a critical maternal theory is a powerful tool of critique for masculine politics and explain how maternal virtues produce metaphysical attitudes, offering a moral epistemology that enables us to reflect on binaries and power. The final section outlines the “conceived without consent” policy and highlights how critical maternal

M o t h e r K n o w s  B e s t ?  

[ 123 ]

2 4 1

ethics can be seen as resistance against masculine politics. I argue that the power hierarchies established in the definition of this policy create moral boundaries that legitimize rape politics, identifying the state as an inadequate caregiver.

GLOBAL PATRIARCHAL STRUCTURES

The starting point of this exploration is to identify the larger global patriarchal context of perceived ownership over women’s bodies. There is a need to identify the attitudes and policies that entrap women, and so we must ask: how do power hierarchies that control the womb create unfair rape policies and contribute to patriarchal societal norms? “Masculine politics” create and enforce structures that endorse gendered values, at multiple levels, from local cultural norms to international law (Frye 1983). One product of these value frameworks is the relegation of women to the private sphere, removing the opportunity to engage in decision making (Elshtain 1993). I do not advocate for a single category or understanding of “women.” Instead its starting point is the lived experience of many women, who are also rape survivors and mothers. This means that the definition of rape, often associated with shame and victim blaming, must be challenged (Westmarland and Gangoli 2011), and the individual survivors must be identified as agents with their own voices. The definition of what constitutes rape has affected millions of lives. Rape, as a legal issue, is relatively new, and the sociopolitical attitudes toward sexual violence mean that laws have been slow to change (D’Cruze 2012). Here, there is a need to challenge this attitude and open a new conversation on the definition of rape. A starting point for this conversation is to accept that rape happens in the private sphere, including the home. This is particularly important when considering sexual violence and reproductive rights at a global level, as “the home has been considered to fall outside the state-​based system of international law because that system is primarily concerned with inter-​state relations, rather than international relations” (Edwards 2011, 94). These boundaries inform policies that protect women’s control over their bodies at an international level. Here, the focus is largely in conflict situations and ignores the “everyday” experience of rape, especially in countries that are seen to have higher standards of gender equality (MacKinnon 2006, 181). This is further entrenched by the enforcement of women’s issues being relegated into the private sphere, where they are not considered to be of public or international importance.

[ 124 ]  Maternality and the State

Within these global patriarchal structure is the states’ control of the bodies, especially governmental rules that construct expected behavior and, thus, moral norms. Iris Marion Young explores the state as the protector, using gender as tool for interpretation. She argues: An exposition of the gendered logic of the masculine role of protector in relation to women and children illuminates the meaning and effective appeal of a security state that wages war abroad and expects obedience and loyalty at home. In this patriarchal logic, the role of the masculine protector puts those protected, paradigmatically women and children, in a subordinate position of dependence and obedience. (2003, 2)

Here, the state becomes a source of protection and also control, embedded within the constructed norms of women (and children) as vulnerable and thus in need of protection from the heroic male (Elshtain 1995). This enables the masculine state to assert power through the notion of protection. But this power is a pastoral one in which the state exploits its citizens for its own gain (Young 2003, 6).

THE NEED FOR A CRITICAL MATERNAL ETHICS

In forming power hierarchies (e.g., in definitions of rape), women have been portrayed as external to morality. As women have been excluded from moral theory, and a masculine approach to knowledge production has been favored, there is a focus, within moral theory, on rationality; the autonomous male playing the central actor of concern. Thus, patterns emerge that have decoupled the relationship between morality and gender, specifically women, in paradoxical ways. A prominent example of this is the repeated rhetoric of women as passive victims, which affects societal norms and constructs further narratives. As women have traditionally been excluded from moral theory, their voices and perspectives have been lost. I do not argue that there is a collective unified voice of women, but that the exclusion of women is dangerous because it only allows for a limited perspective of moral theory and lived experience. Therefore, it affects how moral decisions are seen and challenged, such as who has the power to define rape. Thus, a feminist critique of moral knowledge embedded in power hierarchies is needed to question pure objectivity found in Kantian or Cartesian thought, which would be to argue against the belief that there can be “true” or “pure” knowledge (Hirschman 1992, 167). This is embedded in a rational approach that values logic and reason. This masculine

M o t h e r K n o w s  B e s t ?  

[ 125 ]

261

knowledge becomes socially accepted and understood as the human experience (Hirschman 1992). A primary example of how a feminist ontology is useful in International Relations is the rejection of classical theory. Classical theory portrays a masculinist knowing of the world that draws on “male-​identified roles as the basis for political identity” (Steans 2012, 53). This is embedded within traditional notions of the pursuit of instrumental interests and the importance of the “sovereign man” as both an actor and knowing subject (Steans 2012, 53). In exposing these gendered roots to traditional theory, a feminist ontology has great strength in challenging a monolithic view point. Thus, it is important to acknowledge how moral epistemology is formed by viewing how knowledge is regulated, exploring epistemic violence or authoritarian knowledge. This deconstruction of knowledge is essential in understanding how moral boundaries are formed. Maternal theory is recognized as a powerful tool for critiquing masculinized policies. By focusing on the metaphysical attitudes that are formed out of caring for a child, the theory has great strength in moral epistemology. Here, metaphysical attitudes can be understood as values that are core to any individual. These metaphysical attitudes are pivotal to the maternal theory because they emerge out of gendered notions; as Ruddick explains, “[w]‌omen are said to value open over closed structure, to eschew the clear-​cut and unambiguous, to refuse a sharp division between inner and outer or self and other” (Ruddick 1980, 352). The rejection of these binaries shows that the ontology’s strength in moral epistemology enables it to unpack how moral boundaries are formed and highlights their exclusionary tendencies to inflict a notion of the good from a gendered Western perspective. Ontological questions are fundamental because they concentrate on the nature of being (Furlong and Marsh 2010, 185). Therefore, a feminist perspective explores not only knowledge but also how this knowledge has formed. Maternal ethics argues that through the practice of mothering, certain values are created. Thus, mothering creates a “pattern of practical reasoning that foreground the protection of life, the creation of social structures that permit and enhance practices of care and concern for the wellbeing of vulnerable others” (Groenhout 2003, 11). Therefore, maternal ethics focuses on concrete, interdependent relationships. The most influential maternal thinker is Sara Ruddick, who claims that we should “speak about a mother’s thought—​the intellectual capacities she develops, the judgments she makes, the metaphysical attitudes she assumes, the values she affirms” (Ruddick 1980, 347). Therefore, the primary actor of maternalism is shifted from the autonomous male to a focus on interdependent relationships.

[ 126 ]  Maternality and the State

Yet, this traditional approach to maternal theory is limited because it can be perceived as essentialist.1 I argue there are three interlinking reasons that a traditional understanding of feminist ethics is problematic. The first is that traditional materialism prescribes behavioral norms to women. The second is that the theory associates motherhood with peace, and, therefore, the third implies the relegation of women to the private sphere through the limited narration of women as wives and mothers. First, maternal ethics prescribes certain behavioral norms to women, especially mothers. The traditional theory categorizes all women or mothers using the same collective identity. This prescription is particularly problematic because, within the historical development of maternal ethics, there was a focus on white, middle-​class mothers and their values (Tronto 2009, 12). This is problematic because not only will white, middle-​class mothers hold a variety of values and behaviors, but also it silences numerous mothers in the intersections of race, sexuality, class, and wealth. Here, marginalized mothers’ narratives can easily be ignored if they do not fit the dominant stereotype. Furthermore, it reinforces the idea that all women want to be mothers and that parental roles between genders are prescribed in a certain way. This narrative is heteronormative and cisgendered and does not allow for the multiple ways families exist. A second fundamental problem is that traditional maternalism argues that there is an association of motherhood with peace. On the most practical level, we can see how this is misguided because there is a large spectrum of peace and violence that has little correlation with gender and parental status. This narrative is highly linked with the final problem: the conflation of the woman as the mother and vice versa, which further entrenches the relegation of women to the private sphere (as wives and mothers). Because a feminist ontology emerges from knowledge of multiple and dichotomous lives, its origins must encompass diverse understandings of women. There is a way of engaging with the promising concepts of maternal ethics, which challenges masculine politics through its ontological strength in moral epistemology by focusing on the underlying principles of maternalism. In this method, a critical maternalism must allow complex narratives of all agents, not simply women, while focusing on the virtues of care through a relational ontological approach to reject binaries. A critical maternal theory rejects these binaries by looking at how they have been constructed, such as the forming of power hierarchies within moral boundaries. Tronto uses an ethic of care2 to explore moral boundaries and argues that women are excluded from the creation of these boundaries on a meta-​theoretical level and a concrete political level (2009, 20). Tronto argues that the “current boundaries of moral and political life

M o t h e r K n o w s  B e s t ?  

[ 127 ]

2 8 1

are drawn such that the concerns and activities of the relatively powerless are omitted from the central concerns of society” (2009, 20). Therefore, a critical maternal ethics lens will use these moral boundaries to break down the barrier between politics and morality. By dissolving this barrier and no longer considering morality and politics as separate entities, we can approach ethical issues in a new way and ask new questions. It is important to see how politics and morality are relational3 in order to understand that margins, of what is and is not considered ethical, are formed from places of power and constructed according to specific cultural norms. Therefore, it is possible to ask how moral authority emerges because only a privileged few have contributed to moral theory. By focusing on the actual lived experience in which all interdependent individuals are vulnerable, a critical maternal ethics is able to highlight how moral boundaries are formed as well as how the power hierarchies and binaries within them are constructed. Maternal ethics has particular strength in rejecting constructed binaries because within the metaphysical attitudes of caring for a child, there is a refusal of sharp divisions (Ruddick 1980). This contrasts traditional accounts of morality, which enforces a synthesis of binaries; usually good/​bad or right/​wrong. Within this binary, exclusion is easy because decisions are meant to fit into either category. A critical maternal ethics pushes for a multifaceted understanding of morality that cannot simply result in a binary of right/​wrong (just/​unjust). Here, we must understand that morality has many layers and must be understood in contexts specific to concrete circumstances. A critical maternal theory rejects prescribed moral boundaries and moves away from essentialist notions by not relying solely on maternal values. Instead, it offers a different analytical perspective to a masculine understanding of justice, born from a focus on caring and relationships. This highlights critical maternal ethics’ strength in moral epistemology and rejection of binaries by focusing on the virtues of care. By rejecting the essentialist foundations of maternalism to focus on the metaphysical attitudes formed from caring, I will now uncover the power hierarchies in the UK government’s “rape clause” policy.

THE RAPE CLAUSE

Following the financial recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s and the election of the Conservative government, great austerity measures have been implemented within the United Kingdom. One of the largest welfare reforms has been to tax credits: a child tax credit is a benefit given to the

[ 128 ]  Maternality and the State

parent or guardian of a child up to the age of sixteen (or up to twenty years old if still in education or training) and can be worth up to £2,870 per child per year depending on mean of income (gov.uk 2018). Those from the lowest socioeconomic division of society have been affected the most from these measures, with large cuts to welfare polices (Fikfaf 2016). The Conservative government has traditionally been associated with representing the upper class in society. The austerity measures have been seen as antagonistic to the working class not only because of the policies introduced but also because of an accompanying rhetoric of laziness and poverty, infixed in a narrative that those who are the poorest in society have options to change their situation (Portes 2018). As part of these ongoing austerity measures, in April 2017 the UK Conservative government introduced a policy under which parents must declare that their child was conceived without consent in order to be exempt from the new two-​child limit for tax credits. The limitation of only two children to receive tax credits is part of the government’s plan to end the child tax credit, which will be replaced with a universal credit system (gov.uk 2018). The UK government argues that conception without consent is considered to be rape or a coercive/​controlling relationship, and the policy maintains that the parents must be no longer living with the rapist. This policy is informally known as the “rape clause” (HM Revenue and Customs and Department for Work and Pensions 2017a). The policy was announced in 2015 by then-​Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. The rape clause is at the nexus of reproductive rights and rape policy.4 Although the Conservative government argues that the policy was designed to protect women and their children from having their tax credit removed, it has come under much scrutiny for lack of sensitivity (Brindley and Scott 2017; Revesz 2018, Walker and Butler 2017). Here, moral boundaries are formed: even if the policy was designed to benefit the most vulnerable, this does not take place. Instead, mothers at the lowest socioeconomic divide bear the brunt of their rape as well as this policy because they must meet the defined criteria of the patriarchal state, within the illusion of the caregiver. As a result, in order to receive benefits, women must reluctantly accept the victim narrative, while claiming that they were raped, to argue that their child was unwanted. Furthermore, moral boundaries are drawn in the “conceived without consent” clause. Most notable are the lines drawn around the definition of rape; those who do not conform to this definition are restricted because they will not have access to additional financial support for their child and, therefore, will be at a disadvantage as a result of the policy. Here, considerable moral authority is given to those who classify what

M o t h e r K n o w s  B e s t ?  

[ 129 ]

301

rape is. Although governments aren’t moral authorities, they inflict moral power when they create these laws, which outlines the parameters of what is seen as acceptable behavior. Maternal ethics shows this through moral boundaries; thus, it teaches us to focus on interdependent relationships and the creation of social structures that nurture them. A critical understanding of maternal ethics pushes this further and allows us to see these relationships consisting of interdependent bodies regardless of reproductive organs or gender identity. This distinct starting point (for caring) is directly opposed to the aforementioned austerity measures and, therefore, offers a powerful critique of them. In the remainder of this chapter, I will outline six interlinking ways power hierarchies have formed within these moral boundaries. This policy disproportionately affects mothers, as women, because it demands that women bear the burden of their rape, their subsequent child. Embedded in a societal narrative of shame and guilt when women experience sexual violence, mothers are expected to assume the responsibility of their rape, and consequently the rape clause. Here, victim blaming is expanded from inadequate norms and legal protocol relevant to sexual violence to a situation in which women, particularly from a specific socioeconomic sect, must meet the precise definition of rape, drawn by a government that does not have the moral authority to do so. Here, the male rapist is not needed. By proving the rape, and consequently that the child was unwanted, a moral boundary forms because the mother must meet the external criteria defined by the government. The rape clause is problematic when we see these boundaries. First, the “conceived without consent” policy is highly problematic from the outset because women must relive the experience by evidencing the rape, which may be years after it took place. The UK government has tried to reduce any upset by using a third-​party professional such as a healthcare professional or social worker (HM Revenue and Customs and Department for Work and Pensions 2017a, 2). However, this may trigger re-​traumatization for women. It also puts them in a vulnerable position if other family members or friends, who have not previously known about the rape, find out when mothers are completing the application. This position could be even more problematic if the children discover that they were born without consent. A code will be placed on the tax file of the mother, highlighting that she was raped. Here, the third child is seen as unwanted, undesired, and a byproduct of the irresponsibility of the mother, especially for those who are in need of financial support from the state. This narrative, produced by the state, enforces a moral boundary that is far beyond its authority and remit.

[ 130 ]  Maternality and the State

Although it should not be presumed that mothers will experience triggering, a large proportion of rape victims do experience post-​traumatic stress or other mental health issues (Temkin 2002, 2), even years after the attack. This is coupled with the shame and stigma that are still attached to sexual violence, meaning that it is already acknowledged that rape is difficult for survivors to discuss (Westmarland and Gangoli 2011, 6). Furthermore, no additional training has been offered to the healthcare professionals to deal with completion of such sensitive documents. Here, then, there is a great moral power involved when determining whether a child was born from coercion, and, as a result, this austerity policy resonates with traumatic experiences for many victims. The policy does not think of the lived experience of mothers as rape victims, or care for those mothers who will have to meet the government’s criteria in order to gain financial support for their child. A prior condition is that the rape which led to the conception of the child must have been reported. This is concerning because it is thought that only 10 percent of rapes that occur annually in Britain are reported to the police (McGregor 2012, 70). It is believed that a significant percentage of rape survivors will tell no one of their attack (Brown and Walklate 2012a, 3). Even those who choose to report the attack to the police risk not being taken seriously because those who report spousal rape claims are most likely to be dissatisfied with their police experience (Felson and Pare 2007, 215). In particular, rape allegations that are not reported immediately are further neglected (Brown and Walklate 2012b, 16). Although the clause allows rapes to be reported to healthcare professionals or rape charities instead, it would be easy to see how a “rape-​condoning culture” would limit a mother from wanting to report or even recognize her own rape, particularly where rape myths enforce victim blaming functions at societal, organizational, and individual levels (Horvath and Brown 2010, 558). The starting point of this policy is, therefore, highly problematic because it does not acknowledge societal and institutional norms that limit the recognition and reporting of rape. From the standpoint of a critical maternal ethics critique of traditional notions of morality, this is a clear infliction of what is just. The internal masculine mechanisms exclude a relational approach to the understanding of law and further enforce the norms of victim blaming and the permitting of rape culture that evidences the control over women’s bodies and defines who is included within the definition of rape. One of the most problematic aspects of the policy is that, in order for the child to be considered “conceived without consent,” the accused rapist and father of the child must no longer be living with the mother. This informs and is informed by a powerful narrative about the illegitimacy

M o t h e r K n o w s  B e s t ?  

[ 131 ]

321

of spousal rape. Here, the limited definition of rape and family within the government’s criteria is powerful. This is drawn from the historical conceptualization of wives as property of their husbands, which is still highly problematic in recognizing nonconsensual sex (McGlynn and Munro 2011, 1). This problem is highlighted by the fact that only in 1991 was it made illegal for husbands to rape their wives in England and Wales (McGregor 2012, 72), and the problem is still not taken seriously (McGlynn and Munro 2011, 1). Among many, two fundamental problems occur. First, the mother may not have recognized that she was raped. Societal norms and policies, such as “conceived without consent,” which discount spouses as rapists, me an that women often do not acknowledge sexual coercion took place (1988). The second problem occurs when mothers who would identify the conception of their child as the result of rape choose to stay with the father, which may be for numerous reasons. We must question who has the authority to draw such a definition, which is exclusionary and entraps all mothers in a collective understanding of the parameters of expected behavior. Instead, we should aim to move beyond this “one size fits all” account of any event, but especially a traumatic one such as rape. The removal of the binary of the inner/​outer within a critical maternal ethics framework further challenges the idea that the perpetrator of sexual violence must be external to the family and the mother. Additionally, the policy reinforces gender binaries and stereotypes, which is challenged by critical maternal ethics:  it presupposes that the parent who experienced the rape is a particular kind of victim, affording the parent little agency in the story, and outlines that the parent must claim victimhood in a specific narrative in order to receive exemption from the new austerity measures and access tax credits. Moreover, although not specified in the guidelines, it is set up to support mothers, which is a dangerous oversimplification because this relegates them to a place of victimhood, rather than seeing mothers as voicing agents. Here, women must acknowledge that their child was unwanted and evidence how they fit within the government’s criteria of rape. A  critical maternal ethic challenges these binaries within power hierarchies, instead, by arguing that we must see all individuals as having multiple identities and stories, and not trivialize a mother’s experience. Within these sterile forms, there is no room for rape survivors to voice their own narrative, and instead they must comply with the definition embedded in a language of fear and distress. Another moral boundary within the policy that the critical maternal ethics framework can highlight is the definition of “conceived without consent.” Although the definition is marginally successful in widening the definition beyond nonconsensual sex to include controlling coercive behavior

[ 132 ]  Maternality and the State

from either the father or an immediate family member (HM Revenue and Customs and Department for Work and Pensions 2017a, 1), it also requires evidence of the controlling or coercive behavior from the professional who is signing the form. In this case, the professional must identify either fear of violence on at least two occasions or “serious alarm or distress” that is measured by having “substantial adverse effect on the claimant’s day to day activities” (HM Revenue and Customs and Department for Work and Pensions 2017b, 2). This focus on fear and distress does not allow for the “everyday” patriarchal control of a woman’s body and womb, or the normalization of such in society. Therefore, this definition does not include a wider understanding of how a child may be conceived without the mother’s desire, such as forced social pressures that are not violent, but still influence the mother. For example, although not explicitly excluded, the guidelines of the policy do not include scenarios involving a lack of access to birth control, owing to blocking by the spouse. These measures may affect women’s control in conception of a child and must be noted. This is particularly problematic because psychological abuse or coercion is not considered to be part of rape in the United Kingdom, despite it being included in the definition in other EU states (Kelly 2012). Here, the policy does not identify specific patriarchal norms that may limit a mother’s control over if and when she would like to conceive a child. By focusing a definition beyond physical force or distress/​threats, the policy does not recognize more subtle forms of control over women’s bodies. As a result, power hierarchies are further enforced, rather than challenged. This further evidences the action of the state beyond its moral power, for example, as the government’s patriarchal norms dismiss patriarchal behavior at a household level. The final moral boundary we must consider is how the “conceived without consent” clause will disproportionately affect certain individuals. Those who are reliant on these benefits, in the lowest socioeconomic division, must endure the completion of this form, while those individuals who are more privileged and wealthy need not. The rape clause only applies to the third (or more) child (because the first two children automatically qualify for the tax credit in the new policy), meaning that the mother is applying for about £55 per week. The opportunity cost of taking the time to understand and complete the form, plus the accompanying emotional stress, are significant compared with the small amount of money received. Additionally, further economic division is emphasized in the rape clause because individuals with an income of more than £50,000 must opt out of the Child Tax Credit system or pay an annual High Income Child Benefit Charge (gov.uk 2018). This clearly implies a division based on wealth, reinforcing power hierarchies that exist and echoing historical dynamics of

M o t h e r K n o w s  B e s t ?  

[ 133 ]

341

the relationship between wealth and rape. For example, historically, rape of poorer and lower status women would receive lower penalties than the rape of virgin-​heiresses (D’Cruze 2012, 26). Although this links back to an understanding of women’s bodies as property, we cannot ignore the moral boundaries that have continued to affect women, especially ones that have further silenced and confined women to a lower economic class. Instead, a critical maternal ethics framework emphasizes the need to see each individual as a unique yet interconnected person. The power hierarchies in the insensitive “rape clause” policy, largely emerging from the limited definition of what is considered conceived without consent, have been elucidated through these six interlinking factors. By focusing on the virtues of care, the moral boundaries constructed through critical maternal ethics’ strength in moral epistemology and the rejection of binaries can easily be identified. Here, the state, through the Conservative government, can be seen to impose moral norms without authority. This shows the state as the patriarchal caregiver while providing inadequate care.

CONCLUSION

In this essay, I have examined the control of women’s bodies using a critical maternal theory as a lens and have questioned how moral boundaries are formed and permitted. Critical maternal ethics’ strength in moral epistemology, by valuing the virtues of care, is crucial in communicating how these moral boundaries are constructed through power hierarchies. Thus, the theory provides a powerful method of revealing the moral boundaries within the rape clause and highlights the power in the policy, particularly through the limited definition of rape. The chapter explored these power hierarchies in three sections, first by contextualizing how the rape clause is part of a larger problem of global patriarchal values that normalize a perceived ownership over women’s bodies. Within this patriarchal structure, we must identify the attitudes that entrap individuals of all genders. One of these structures is the limited definition of rape that often silences victims and excludes the everyday and private sphere as a site of sexual violence. Therefore, this chapter showed how a critical maternal theory is a powerful technique that can be used to challenge these patriarchal structures and masculine politics. The theory is convincing because it allows us to reflect on binaries and hierarchies through its strength in moral epistemology, formed by focusing on maternal virtues that produce metaphysical attitudes. Yet, there is a need to

[ 134 ]  Maternality and the State

ensure that these maternal attitudes are not reliant on essentialist notions that reinforce gender binaries and prescribe behavioral norms, for example, that women are inherently peaceful. Instead, there is a need to focus on maternal values through a critical intersectional approach that sees all individuals as important and embedded in interdependent relationships. The final section in this chapter outlined the April 2017 UK rape clause policy, which imposes new rules stating that in order to be exempt from the new two-​child tax credit limit, parents must prove that their child was conceived without consent. Critical maternal ethics can be used as form of a resistance to this and other masculinized politics by acknowledging the power hierarchies within the policy and the moral boundaries that legitimize rape politics. Here, six interlinking power hierarchies were highlighted: (1) the danger of triggers, (2) the problem of reporting rape, (3)  the need to consider spousal rape, (4)  how gender stereotypes and binaries are enforced, (5) the limited and confused understanding of consent, and (6) how the policy reinstates socioeconomic divides. This is especially useful when dealing with highly masculinized politics but also when dealing with issues that directly confront women, such as the United Kingdom’s “conceived without consent policy.” Thus, patterns of powers are visible through the lens of maternal ethics. The definition of rape carries with it significant power, for example, the ability to determine who can identify as a survivor of the act, but also who is eligible for the tax credit benefits. By enforcing an account that must have already been registered and imposing strict rules (i.e., that the mother may no longer be living with the assaulter), this imposes an unrealistic account that creates a policy based in abstraction, an extremely exclusionary and dangerous policy. Further research within these power hierarchies is needed, especially to see the intersectional impacts of the policy. By focusing on maternal ethics, and with a starting point of care and relationship, a new system emerges. This system must identify beyond the self in order to focus on a comforting way to deal with this traumatic issue. The binary between perpetrator and father/​spouse should be dissolved to highlight the notion that they are often one and the same person, allowing us to identify violence in the home. This builds on previous discussion within international law, highlighting the need to see human rights violations within the private sphere (Edwards 2011). Maternal ethics pushes for an inclusive and holistic approach to understanding social problems that emerge from within the home, as a bottom-​up approach. Maternal ethics offers a new way to both recognize and react to unfair reproductive health and sexual violence policies. I hope that, as the struggle against unfair rape policies and equal reproductive politics continues even

M o t h e r K n o w s  B e s t ?  

[ 135 ]

361

in highly liberal countries such as the United Kingdom, the strength of a critical maternal theory can provide new reflection on the problem. This will include a rejection of the state, visible here as an inadequate caregiver that enforces norms beyond its moral authority. Moving forward, maternal ethics must continue to evolve in order to provide a powerful critique to contemporary problems. The fundamental virtues established by care and vulnerability, rejection of binaries, and departure from the self are a much needed resistance to increasingly masculine politics that are encapsulated in the autonomous, hypothetical, and self-​centered understanding. Yet, in order to resist, maternal ethics must move away from its essentialist origins, which, in themselves, are greatly limiting. These original virtues prescribe gendered norms, which are damaging to all genders and entrap women in stereotypes by associating them with peace, maternity, and the private sphere. Instead, by opening this conversation to one that doesn’t come from a standpoint feminist perspective, but is still inclusive of all genders and identities, we can learn greatly from these maternal values.

NOTES 1. Gender essentialism can be understood as the perceived notion that sexes/​ genders have set essential behaviors and qualities that are biological and, thus, universal (Steans 2013, 10). 2. Care ethics has developed from maternal theory, which moves from the autonomous, rational figure, who is centred in mainstream theories, to one which highlights that humans have a mutual reliance on other individuals, placing the importance on caring, empathy, and relationships (Robinson 1999). 3. This is also reflected in other contemporary feminist works. For example, Judith Butler highlights that when we meet the other in the external, we are vulnerable. We can choose to share this vulnerability or become defensive toward the other (Butler 2009). 4. Although this policy of limiting tax credits is inherently problematic, this short chapter only investigates the problem of the policy rather than challenging the larger perspective. However, maternal theory and, more broadly, care ethics have already offered a critique in austerity and poverty politics (Robinson 2006).

REFERENCES Brindley, S., and Scott, M. 2017. “‘The Rape Clause.’ Yes, It’s as Bad as It Sounds.” Rape Crisis Scotland April 6. rapecrisisscotland.org.uk/​news/​blog/​ e28098the-​rape-​clausee28099-​yes-​ite28099s-​as-​bad-​as-​it-​sounds.

[ 136 ]  Maternality and the State

Brown, J. M., and Walklate, S. L. 2012. “Legacies and Setting the Scene.” In Handbook on Sexual Violence, edited by J. M. Brown and S. L. Walklate, 13–​22. London: Routledge. Browning, C. 2017. “What Is the ‘Rape Clause’?” Full Fact May 5. fullfact.org/​ economy/​what-​rape-​clause. Butler, J. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso. D’Cruze, S. 2012. “Sexual Violence in History: A Contemporary Heritage?” In Handbook on Sexual Violence, edited by J. M. Brown and S. L. Walklate, 23–​51. London: Routledge. Edwards, A. 2011. “Defining Rape under the European Convention on Human Rights: Torture, Consent and Equality”. In Rethinking Rape Law: International and Comparative Perspectives, edited by C. McGlynn and V. E. Munro, 109–​121. London: Routledge. Elshtain, J. B. 1993. Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought. Chichester, UK: Princeton University Press. Elshtain, J. B. 1995. Women and War. Chicago: University of Chicago. Felson, R. and Pare P. 2008. “Gender and the Victim’s Experience with the Criminal Justice System.” Social Science Research, 37, no. 1: 202–​219. Fikfaf, V. 2016. “Protecting Human Rights in Austerity Claims.” Hague Journal of the Rule of Law 8: 205–​226. Frye, M. 1983. The Politics of Reality, Essays in Feminist Theory. New York: Crossing Press. Furlong, P. and Marsh, D. 2010.  “A Skin not a Sweater: Ontology and Epistemology in Political Science.” In Theory and Methods in Political Science, edited by D. Marsh and G. Stoker. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Gov.uk. 2018. “Child Tax Credit.” https://​www.gov.uk/​child-​tax-​credit. Accessed February 1, 2018. Groenhout, R. E. 2003. Theological Echoes in an Ethic of Care. Occasional Papers of the Erasmus Institute. Notre Dame, IN: Erasmus Institute. Hirschmann, N. 1992. Rethinking Obligation: A Feminist Method for Political Theory. London: Cornell University Press. HM Revenue and Customs and Department for Work and Pensions. 2017a. Support for a Child Conceived without Your Consent (England, Scotland and Wales). Ref: NCC1. https://​gov.uk. HM Revenue and Customs and Department for Work and Pensions. 2017b. Guidance for Third Parties: Support for a Child Conceived without Your Consent (England, Scotland and Wales). Ref: NCC1 Guidance. https://​gov.uk. Horvath, M., and Brown, J. M. 2010. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place.” Psychologist 23: 556–​559. Kelly, L. 1988. Surviving Sexual Violence. Feminist Perspectives Series. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kelly, L. 2012. “Preface.” In Handbook on Sexual Violence, edited by J. M. Brown and S. L. Walklate, xvii–​1. London: Routledge. MacKinnon, C. 2006. Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McGlynn, C., and Munro, V. E. 2011. “Rethinking Rape Law: An Introduction.” In Rethinking Rape Law: International and Comparative Perspectives, edited by C. McGlynn and V. E. Munro, 1–​14. London: Routledge. McGregor, J. 2012. “The Legal Heritage of the Crime of Rape.” In Handbook on Sexual Violence, edited J. M. Brown and S. L. Walklate, 69–​90. London: Routledge.

M o t h e r K n o w s  B e s t ?  

[ 137 ]

381

Portes, J. 2018. “Austerity Really Has Hit Poor People Hardest: The Figures Prove It.” Guardian March 14. theguardian.com/​commentisfree/​2018/​mar/​14/​ austerity-​poor-​disability-​george-​osborne-​tories. Revesz, R. 2018. “The Damaging Legacy of the Rape Clause for Three or More Children.” Independent April 6. https://​independent.co.uk/​news/​long_​reads/​ rape-​clause-​three-​more-​children-​policy-​scotland-​ireland-​alison-​thewliss-​ a8289651.html. Robinson, F. 1999. Globalizing Care, Ethics, Feminist Theory and International Relations. Oxford: Westview Press. Robinson, F. 2006. “Care, Gender and Global Social Justice: Rethinking ‘Ethical Globalization.’” Journal of Global Ethics 2: 5–​25. Robinson, F., and Catia, C. 2014. “Symposium: Maternal Thinking for International Relations? Papers in Honor of Sarah Ruddick.” Journal of International Political Theory 10: 38–​45. Ruddick, S. 1980. “Maternal Thinking.” Feminist Studies 6: 342–​367. Steans, J. 2013. Gender and International Relations. Theory, Practice and Policy. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Temkin J. 2002. Rape and the Legal Process. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tronto, J. C. 2009. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. Oxford: Routledge. Walker, P., and Butler, P. 2017. “Government under Fire over New Child Tax Credit Form for Rape Victims.” Guardian April 6. https://​theguardian.com/​society/​2017/​apr/​06/​ government-​under-​fire-​over-​new-​child-​tax-​credit-​form-​for-​victims. Westmarland, N., and Geetanjali, G. 2011. International Approaches to Rape. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Young, I. M. 2003. “The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29: 1–​25.

[ 138 ]  Maternality and the State

CHAPTER 9

Queering Reproductive Aid CORINNE L . MA SON

I

n 2017, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) released the Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP). Claiming to center women and girls, 95  percent of Canada’s bilateral international development assistance will target the achievement of gender equality by 2021–​22 (GAC 2017). As its first major act, GAC publicized a $650 million commitment to a “comprehensive approach to address gaps in funding for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR)” (GAC 2017b). Women and girls’ reproductive health is presented as key to eliminating poverty in FIAP, which claims that unwanted and early pregnancies make it difficult to work, which perpetuates cycles of poverty. Significantly, FIAP also claims to be an inclusive approach to development by taking into consideration the diversity of women and girls through an intersectional lens (GAC 2017). As seen in an introductory message from the Minister of International Development, Marie-​Claude Bibeau, the policy makes clear that a feminist approach to development is “one that takes into account all forms of discrimination based on sex, race, ethnicity, place of birth, colour, religion, language, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, ability or migrant or refugee status” (GAC 2017, ii, emphasis added). And yet, the diversity of women and girls’ sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) was completely absent from GAC’s 2017 SRHR commitments. Rather than pay attention to the complexities of women, girls, and other genders’ experiences of wanted and unwanted pregnancy, reproduction, and sexual and bodily autonomy, FIAP operates in a heteronormative and cisnormative frame—​an epidemic in development policy and programming (Bedford 2009; Gosine 2015; Jolly 2000; Lind 2010). Corinne L. Mason, Queering Reproductive Aid In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0009

4 0 1

By taking seriously GAC’s claim to provide an “inclusive feminist” approach to development, in this chapter I “que(e)ry” (Lind 2010) Canadian SRHR commitments by paying specific attention to questions of intentional mother/​ parenthood through a reproductive justice frame. 1 According to Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger, reproductive justice has three major tenets: the right to have children, the right to not have children, and the right to parent children in a safe and healthy environment (2017, 233). In this chapter, I focus on the first two tenets of a reproductive justice approach by considering the impact of a Canadian SRHR commitment to comprehensive sexual health education and abortion access that does not explicitly address the needs of minoritized gender and sexuality communities. To provide a historical context to understand my concerns with FIAP, I  offer a brief outline of Canada’s international assistance for gender equality, especially around reproductive aid. Pairing a content analysis of FIAP with research interviews with development and human rights practitioners from government and civil society in Canada, I illustrate how the language of inclusivity functions as a new “motherhood term” in FIAP. For Parpart, Rai, and Staudt (2002), empowering and supporting motherhood is a comfortable, unquestioned, and palatable tenant of gender and development. They suggest that “motherhood terms” like “empowerment” and “participation” are discursive mechanisms that function like motherhood in that they are easily digestible and unchallenging because they function without fixed meaning and are not harnessed to particular feminist commitments. I argue that “inclusivity” creates an entry point to taking LGBTIQ rights more seriously by GAC, but without fixed meaning or funding commitments, this new “motherhood term” does radically alter the government’s approach to international assistance. Instead, heteronormative and cisnormative frames with which to understand sexual and reproductive health and rights are concretized.

GENDER DISCOURSE IN CANADIAN AID

In Obligations and Omissions:  Canada’s Ambiguous Actions on Gender Equality, Rebecca Tiessen and Stephen Baranyi (2017) illustrate how, before 2006, the Canadian government had a strong, albeit imperfect, record on women’s issues globally. During an almost decade-​long conservative rule under Prime Minister Stephen Harper (2006–​2015), funding for global gender equality was decreased, shifted, eroded, and weakened by three main shifts: (1) new policy frames and aid targets; (2) the merger of the former Canadian International Development Agency with the Department

[ 140 ]  Maternality and the State

of Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Development; and (3)  shifting discourses from a more robust promotion of “gender equality” to “equality between men and women” (see also Collins 2009; Tiessen and Carrier 2015). Within this collection, Swiss and Barry (2017) claim that the discursive shift did not have the disastrous effect on gender quality programming that was expected. However, the kind of programming that was admissible under the conservative government was at odds with what one might assume gender equality programming should look like. Canada’s $2.85 billion in funding for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (GAC 2015), coined the “Muskoka Initiative,” replaced “gender equality” with “pregnancy outcomes” and “infant health.” Keast (2017) argues that, while organizations may have used maternal health funds for transformative programs, the Muskoka Initiative did not include abortion access and did not address socioeconomic determinants of health (see also Auld and MacDonald 2010; Haussmann and Mills 2012). In her textual analysis, Keast found that references to “gender” were rare, and gender was never conceptualized as intersecting with race, ability, or sexuality (2017, 57). Instead of focusing on access to health, the Muskoka Initiative was preoccupied with the building of clinics, a results-​or outcomes-​based approach to “aid effectiveness” (see also Brown 2012). The $650 million commitment to SRHR marks a clear and decisive shift away from Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health but does not reflect transformative funding changes. In my interview with a civil society practitioner at a feminist development organization (unattributable interview 2017), she described the $650 million as stemming from “lapsed or unallocated” funds and suggested that GAC went back to their partners receiving Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health and “added SRHR” to what was already being funded. While this means that what was once “made invisible in the Harper years,” namely sexual rights and access to abortion, is on the agenda, “this commitment doesn’t represent entirely new programming.” “Gender equality” is now back on the agenda for Canadian aid. In fact, the term is used seventy-​one times in FIAP. Furthermore, the term “empowerment,” which was eradicated from policy discourses in the Harper years (Keast 2017), is made central in FIAP (used thirty-​eight times). While discursively significant given the historical context, as feminist analysis of empowerment reminds us, the language of empowerment is not particularly radical. Parpart, Rai, and Staudt (2002) claim that the term empowerment functions as a “motherhood term”—​ one that is “comfortable and unquestioned, something very different institutions and practices seem to be able to agree on” (Parpart, Rai, and Staudt 2002, 1). Here, these scholars are referencing the ways in which development and

Q u e e r i n g R e p r o d u c t i v e  A i d  

[ 141 ]

421

humanitarian industries can “all agree” on the importance of protecting and supporting mothers and motherhood, and they extend this analysis to buzzwords like “empowerment” and “participation.” Such terms are made fuzzy: “smoothed out, stripped of any disruptive meanings, and incorporated” (Cornwall 2010, 12). FIAP’s use of “inclusive” is a discursive shift for GAC policy, but not necessarily a radical one. “Inclusive” is used 26 times in FIAP, and I consider it a new “motherhood term” in the industry. In my interviews with GAC officials, they claimed that the language of inclusivity is being used broadly at the national and transnational levels, especially among donors in conversations about official international assistance. Given the fuzziness of the term, GAC officials suggested that it is used differently by various practitioners and policymakers. For some, “inclusive” stands in for political inclusion and representation, while for others it means more extensive and intensive human rights work that necessarily involves LGBTIQ rights (GAC 2017). When “inclusive” is being used, and even when it is agreed on as essential to development, the meaning of the term is not fixed. In FIAP, “inclusive” functions as a motherhood term because it is fuzzy enough to fly under the radar as inconspicuous and unthreatening. However, because GAC is positioning itself as a leader in LGBTIQ rights, the way in which inclusivity language shows up as a motherhood term in FIAP is problematic. In FIAP, the term “inclusive” is used twenty-​six times, but only once does “sexual orientation and gender identity” appear alongside the term. The lack of explicit connection to an SOGI agenda means that meaningful changes for marginalized gender and sexuality communities, especially in relation to SRHR aid, are uncertain. From a civil society perspective, there is a sense that the lack of explicit focus on LGBTIQ rights in FIAP reflects “tension across the board,” where organizations are working on more controversial (or less “motherhood”) issues like LGBTIQ and sex worker rights and may receive governmental funding to do so, but remain quiet about this work (unattributable interview, 2017). Of course, global LGBTIQ rights are controversial in the development and human rights industry. As Altman and Symons (2016) so clearly outline in their book, Queer Wars, there is an international polarization over sexual rights alongside the incorporation of LGBTIQ rights in domestic legislation and foreign policies. This simultaneous and complex progression in transnational rhetoric and suppression in some local contexts might explain the lack of explicit language around LGBTIQ rights in FIAP. According to a former civil society worker, “the reality is that from a marketing perspective we can’t saying that ending poverty begins with women, and LGBTI persons and other marginalized groups.” She noted

[ 142 ]  Maternality and the State

that this language “doesn’t fit easily into a soundbite and it won’t necessarily get money from grandma” (unattributable interview 2017). She continued, “So, we say ‘the most marginalized.’ We can’t spell it all out.” In my conversation with another civil society practitioner at a development organization, she stated: “You see all these images of stereotypical mothers. I try poking at it a little, but it always comes back to gender was the main thing, and specifically women. We don’t want to steer away from our main message: women,” ultimately suggesting, “We have to sell it” (unattributable interview, 2017). A former GAC official told me in an interview in 2017 that the success of the FIAP policy is in its “communicability” and that the mandate is “easy to express.” Furthermore, GAC has little experience in supporting LGBTIQ rights. Aylward and Vance (2017) maintain that “Canada has never committed funding within its development budget to LGBT rights” and that Canada’s development aid has “never explicitly included a single LGBT project.” The inclusion of SOGI in FIAP is a welcome surprise to some in civil society, but not an uncomplicated one given Canada’s limited experience and support for the issues and because of the fuzziness of the inclusivity language offered by FIAP. Some civil society workers were more satisfied with this language than others. One development practitioner suggested that a feminist development approach is necessarily inclusive. He maintained, “I’ve always felt a strong affinity between feminist movements and LGBT—​ close cousins—​because it is the same issues around access to power, patriarchy and the destructive nature of patriarchy” (unattributable interview, 2017) And yet, others were deeply disappointed by the lack of explicit language around LGBTIQ rights. In my 2017 interview with a LGBTIQ human rights organizer, he suggested that he felt “a little bit of disappointment that it wasn’t so expressly explained. Some of us expected something a little more clear.” When we discussed the inclusion of SOGI with other identifiers, he criticized FIAP for “listing us as a part of a list” and “expected a deeper analysis” (unattributable interview, 2017). For another human rights practitioner, the inclusion framework without explicit language might not be enough to radically transform the aid agenda. Is vague good or bad in this case? It means that we could get some really cool stuff funded, but it is too early to know. . . . It is not like there are open calls; it is all very closed. But they are going to the usual subjects and if the usual subjects are working on women’s rights and not LGBTI rights, the vagueness is a risk. Some explicit guidance is needed. . . . Without mapping of who are the civil society actors on the ground, there will not be new [LGBTIQ] partners (unattributable interview, 2017).

Q u e e r i n g R e p r o d u c t i v e  A i d  

[ 143 ]

41

Continuing, she told me that feminism in FIAP will mean that traditional development partners will “see feminist, assume it means women, and [will] go to the same people. This isn’t transformative. If this is going to be transformative, how explicit does it need to be?” (unattributable interview, 2017). Given the gutting of a gender equality agenda in Canadian aid, as detailed previously, she suggested that there is an incredible lack of knowledge on LGBTIQ issues at GAC, which is why “we end up with ‘women and girls’ [and] ‘men and boys.’ ” In another interview with a development practitioner, she described FIAP is a “catch up” document that represents GAC “only now becoming more inclusive and aware” (unattributable interview, 2017). The newness of GAC’s awareness of diversity issues might explain the lack of clarity in the positioning of LGBTIQ rights in FIAP, which is ultimately devoted to cisgender and heterosexual women and girls. Here, civil society members articulate their concerns with the framework offered by FIAP and point to the potential pitfalls of implementing a truly intersectional feminist assistance policy. Such a concern for on-​the-​ ground possibilities of inclusive aid projects—​given the buzziness and fuzziness of the language of inclusion—​are also reflective of the uneven and shaky past of Canadian experiences with aiding and defending global LGBTQ rights. SEXUAL RIGHTS AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

As noted previously, in June 2017, GAC committed $650  million to initiatives related to sexual rights and reproductive health. Given US President Trump’s resurrection of the “global gag rule” on his first full day in the White House (Ford 2017; Singh and Karim 2017), Canada’s explicit commitment to supporting organizations providing abortions was a welcomed and much desired gap-​filler in a funding and moral vacuum. According to Planned Parenthood International, the “global gag rule” or Mexico City Policy “[blocks] aid to foreign organizations who use their own non-​U.S. funds to provide information, referrals, or services for legal abortion or to advocate for access to abortion services in their own country” (2017, 1). In terms of impact, the organization cites the dismantling of health services, including the closing of clinics with HIV testing and counseling services, and the limiting of access to sexual health information and contraceptives, which has resulted in more untended pregnancies and unsafe abortions (Planned Parenthood International 2017, 1). In my

[ 144 ]  Maternality and the State

interview with GAC officials, they suggested “civil society organizations are now turning to Canada” in the wake of uncertainty in US international assistance for SRHR. Of course, Canada’s $650 million commitment to SRHR over three years does not match the $600 million per year the US spent on family planning before Trump’s presidency (Ford 2017). In my 2017 interviews with GAC about sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression, sex characteristics (SOGIESC) analyses in FIAP, officials maintained that this SRHR funding was a “big commitment” and presents an “opportunity and an opening” where GAC “needs to come up with the new initiatives and try to build LGBT rights into new programming.” They suggested that the “sexual rights” of SRHR presented an obvious “entry point to raise more awareness of how existing policy and programming efforts can be more inclusive of LGBT2QI rights.” Given the context of a recent and almost exclusive focus on maternal rights in global policy and programming (as described later), GAC officials referred to this SRHR commitment as “a shift to integrating more comprehensive SRHR where there has necessarily been a lag” and called it “a new direction,” suggesting “there is learning to happen.” Learning needs to happen because SOGI analyses are relatively new to the development industry. In the international arena, SOGI questions are beginning to occupy a prominent place once held by what is known to feminist scholars as “the Woman Question” (Puar 2011, 139). According to Rahul Rao (2014), the “Homosexual Question” is a new marker of modernity, where campaigns, images, and news stories of LGBT rights, rather than women’s rights, circulate to mark “a temporal phase of wider acceptable of LGBT rights and conjuring up visions of progress” (2011, 2). The “Homosexual Question” (Rao 2014) within the mainstream development industry is often answered with mappings of the criminalization of same-​sex acts and same-​sex marriage equality, which have become primary markers of inclusion and progress, although other social, political, and economic indicators are emerging in the industry (see Cortez 2017). Claiming a leadership position in the newly “homotolerant” aid industry (Klapeer 2018), the Canadian government recognizes the importance of aid that takes sexual orientation and gender identity into account. And yet, in addition to continuing to only target women and girls in its policy and implementation, GAC has limited experience in defending and aiding global LGBTIQ rights. To understand why LGBTIQ inclusion (the “Homosexual Question”) is both central and absent in FIAP, it is important to first understand dominant gender discourses (the “Woman Question”) operating across the terrain of the Canadian aid environment.

Q u e e r i n g R e p r o d u c t i v e  A i d  

[ 145 ]

46 1

QUE(E)RYING SEXUAL RIGHTS AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

In the 2017 Canadian $650 million SRHR commitment, cisgender women and girls’ sexual and reproductive lives remain central. Of course, access to contraception, safe abortions, and maternal healthcare are essential for women and girls, but an inclusive development approach must identify the differences among and between women. To truly be inclusive, FIAP, both as a policy and in its implementation, must explicitly consider marginalized sexualities, gender identities and expressions, and people with nonbinary sex characteristics who are also affected by patriarchal power relations. In this final section of the chapter, I offer two examples of reproductive issues that intersect with the questions of SRHR, and specifically on questions of reproduction that que(e)ry Canada’s cisnormative and heteronormative aid commitments. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines sexual rights as “all people’s rights to fulfill and express their sexuality and enjoy sexual health, with due regard for the rights of others and within a framework of protection against discrimination” (WHO 2006). For scholars Ali, Kowalski, and Silva, expanding the work of Sexuality Policy Watch, “the concept of sexual rights enables us to address the intersections between sexual orientation, discrimination and other sexuality issues—​such as restrictions on all sexual expression outside marriage or abuses against sex workers—​and to identify root causes of different forms of oppression” (2015, 32). They identify women and girls as benefiting from such a working definition, but the emphasis on identifying the root causes of sexual oppressions opens up possibilities for addressing the needs of LGBTIQ populations. They write: Indeed it is the attempts to control women’s and girls’ sexuality that result in many of the human rights abuses they face daily. . . . The same holds true for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people, sex workers, and others who transgress sexual and gender norms and who face greater risk of violence, stigma and discrimination as a result. Sexual rights underpin the enjoyment of many other human rights and are a prerequisite for equality and justice. (Ali, Kowalski, and Silva 2015, 32)

As made clear by queer development scholars, the “Homosexual Question” is often relegated to SRHR because there is a historical relationship between policy and programming around HIV/​AIDS, but this has been one of the only places where questions of sex and sexuality have shown up in development and where gay men and men who have sex with men (MSM) have been key targets of policy and programming in development (see, e.g.,

[ 146 ]  Maternality and the State

Jolly 2000; Lind 2010). Such a narrowing of SOGI questions to death and disease leaves questions of sexual identities and practices—​beyond gay men and MSM—​and gender diversity unaddressed and pathologizes so-​ called deviant sexualities (Cornwall, Corrêa, and Jolly 2008). Questions of pleasure and “real love” have existed beyond the frame development entirely (Gosine 2015). Sexuality and gender diversity have rarely made it to the forefront of reproductive justice questions in the industry. For Drucker (2009, 829), “this kind of tunnel vision helps to account for what Kleitz (2000) calls the ‘incapacity of development theory to imagine a functional role for sexual minorities’ and helps to ensure that ‘queer women and non-​traditional heterosexual women remain invisible’ ” (see also Lind and Share 2003). Accordingly, the following examples offer a brief overview of pressing concerns for LGBTIQ people globally that must be made visible in dialogues about the politics of reproduction, mother/​parenthood, and matern-​/​ parent-​ality. This section does not represent the complexities of these issues, nor does my outline pay adequate attention to LGBTIQ activists and civil society organizations in the Global South who are organizing around, and offering solutions to, these SRHR issues in and outside the field of international development. I aim to offer these examples to que(e) ry the ways in which Canada’s 2017 SRHR aid committment is reductively relegated to the “Woman Question,” and I  offer an explicit mapping of how Canadian international assistance will continue to ignore the needs of LGBTIQ communities if they are not explicitly included in GAC’s implementation of FIAP.

Sterilization

As Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger (2017) outline, the right to have children (including biological children) is a central tenant of reproductive justice and is not only an issue for cisgender women. According to an interagency report published by the WHO (2014), transgender and intersex individuals are at higher risk for forced, coerced, or involuntary sterilization than their cisgender counterparts. As defined by people who identify as intersex, “intersex is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male” (ISNA 2008). Approximately 1.7 percent of people are born intersex globally (Open Society Foundations 2017). Intersex people are regularly subjected to involuntary “sex-​normalizing” procedures to ensure that their sex characteristics, including reproductive

Q u e e r i n g R e p r o d u c t i v e  A i d  

[ 147 ]

4 8 1

organs, fit neatly into the sex/​gender binary. Children too young to consent to surgeries or understand their implications have been traumatized by their experiences with medical systems (Open Society Foundations 2017). Some intersex people report that they have had their intersex status withheld from them by doctors and parents only to find out, when they reach the peak of their reproductive lives, about the variations of their bodies or the medical interventions they underwent (Open Society Foundation 2017). A form of gender-​based violence, these surgeries that are often conducted without consent are irreversible. Often, such surgeries are completed without any of discussion of alternative solutions, such as nonintervention, that ensure intersex individuals retain the ability to procreate (WHO 2014, 7). In many countries, gender affirmative treatments or gender-​marker changes on identification require sterilization surgeries, which inhibit transgender people’s rights to reproduce. In many cases, the possibility of family planning before undergoing hormone replacement therapy or surgery is not regularly discussed with transgender patients, nor is egg or sperm freezing always made available or accessible to transgender people. Sterilization requirements “run counter to respect for bodily integrity, self-​determination and human dignity, and can cause and perpetuate discrimination against transgender and intersex persons” (WHO 2014, 7). WHO and co-​signing agencies recommend that healthcare professionals be trained and educated about bodily diversity, contraception, and family planning, as well as informed and voluntary consent procedures, for gender-​ and sex-​nonconforming2 individuals (2014, 8). The possibilities of becoming pregnant or biologically reproducing are central reproductive concerns that seems to fit squarely within an SRHR commitment to inclusivity, and yet, cisgender bodies are the only bodies considered by GAC in their 2017 aid commitment.

Abortion

While Canada’s commitment to SRHR funding in the wake of the US “global gag rule” on abortion is essential, abortion services are required by more than women and girls. Again, women and girls are an obvious target of such funding measures and their access to safe abortions, but the context in which individuals find themselves in need of abortion services transcend cisgender and heterosexual women and girls. Access is too often conceptualized around cisnormative and heteronormative assumptions about who might require such medical services. “Repronormativity,”

[ 148 ]  Maternality and the State

employed by Weissman (2017; see also Chapter 7) and originally developed by Franke (2001) and Edelman (2004), offers a way of que(e)rying reproductive aid focused on abortion services. Thinking through what is legally and culturally permissible for LGBTQ individuals, Weissman (2017) argues that same-​sex marriage is becoming more tolerated globally (what Klapeer [2018] calls “homotolerance”), while reproduction remains a stigmatized issue. Calling into question strict abortion laws, bans on lesbians accessing fertility assistance, bans on same-​sex couples adopting children, and laws sterilizing transgender individuals, Weissman shows how the control of sexuality is inexplicably entrenched in reproductive health access. While Weissman is concerned with the link between the state and normative reproduction, my primary concern here is with the circumstances in which people who do not conform to gender or sexual expectations may require LGBTIQ-​competent abortion services and how repronormativity in FIAP obscures LGBTIQ-​specific needs. For Nixon (2013), reproductive justice is an LGBTIQ issue. Nixon maintains that “reproductive health issues for lesbians and bisexual women extend beyond achieving parenthood through access to adoption, second parent adoptions, and affordable reproductive technologies” (2013, 103). In the US context, lesbians are more likely to experience an unintended pregnancy than their heterosexual peers. Nixon claims that LGBTIQ youth are vulnerable to inadequate sexual education, substance abuse, and homelessness and are often involved in sex work (2013, 104). Abortion services for lesbian and bisexual women, as well as all gender diverse people, are too often inaccessible globally. Expansions and repressions of abortion access globally affect all those who can become pregnant, and while heteronormative and cisnormative conceptions of femaleness are often deployed in debates around abortion, sex-​and gender-​diverse communities are equally affected by reproductive legislations, policies, and programs—​including SRHR aid commitments. Writing for the Coalition of African Lesbians, advocate Marion Stevens (2016) maintains that in South Africa, abortion is legal but not accessible. For example, in 2014, less than 40 percent of designated surgical abortion facilities were operational, with no or little training for health professionals. In addition, many women report being forcibly sterilized following an abortion, and overall sexual and reproductive healthcare continues to be inattentive to the needs of LGBTIQ populations. Stevens (2016) writes, “Stigmatising attitudes in relation to abortion are a challenge from managers and leaders in the Health Department to health care providers on the ground.” LGBTIQ discrimination is a major barrier for gender nonconforming and sexually diverse communities to access healthcare.

Q u e e r i n g R e p r o d u c t i v e  A i d  

[ 149 ]

501

Lesbian and bisexual women as well as queer and gender-​nonconforming persons who can become pregnant face incredible hardships when seeking abortion services. While there are many reasons for LGBTIQ individuals to require access to care, one major issue facing LGBTIQ communities is “corrective rape.” Lock Swarr (2012) argues that because lesbians, especially “butch” lesbians, challenge gender expectations through their performativity of gender, their visibility creates a context in which they are vulnerable to violence. For Lock Swarr, butch lesbians are targeted because they pose a threat to heterosexuality (relationships with women), gender norms (performance of masculinities), and sex (“challenging expectations surrounding somatically female bodies”) (2012, 963). Such violence against lesbians, but also against bisexual women, queers, and other gender-​nonconforming folks, is deeply rooted in perceptions of homosexuality as un-​African or a Western import (Epprecht 2008, 2013). These perceptions have resulted in backlashes against increased legislative protections for LGBTIQ people in South Africa, continued racial inequities experienced by black South Africans (Mclean 2018), and cultural and religious intolerance (often the real Western import; see Weiss and Bosia 2013) (Lock Swarr 2012, 962). For members of the LGBTIQ community who can become pregnant in the context of sexualized violence, access to safe and affirming abortion care and counseling is paramount. Of course, collapsing the complexities of sexuality and gender diversity to the issue of “corrective rape” is terribly problematic, and the issue is not limited to South Africa. For activists and advocates from within black LGBTIQ communities in South Africa, the hypervisibility of “corrective rape” has meant that the complexity of people’s lives is often narrowed to this one issue. Mkhize, Bennett, Reddy, and Moletsane ask: If diverse black lesbians’ experiences of pain and violence get circulated within public space as one story, so that black South African lesbians come to be talked of (by researchers, politicians, activists) simply as raped victims with HIV, unable to walk down their own streets, what happens to the truth of their vitalities, creativities, individuality, complexities and—​indeed—​lives? (2010, 30)

And yet, while “corrective rape” does not reflect the complexity of the lives of LGBTIQ people, sexualized violence motivated by heteropatriarchal and cisgender norms remains a prominent issue faced by LGBTIQ communities globally—​and is a reproductive justice issue. While Canada’s support of abortion access through their 2017 SRHR commitment means that lesbian and bisexual women may have increased access to termination services,

[ 150 ]  Maternality and the State

without funding healthcare training and civil society advocacy, they may not be LGBTIQ-​competent services. As explored elsewhere in this volume, cisgender and heteronormative representations and narratives of motherhood and maternality do not reflect the wide-​ranging experiences of reproduction, and without explicitly naming LGBTIQ rights as central to SRHR aid, inclusive development continues to answer the “Woman Question” without considering its intersections with the “Homosexual Question.”

CONCLUSION

Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy provides an opening for including SOGI analyses and programming that explicitly target LGBTIQ populations. Even without a strong historical record on supporting global LGBTIQ rights, my interviews with GAC officials reveal that there is momentum within GAC to diversify their understanding of gender and sexuality to support LGBTIQ-​affirming development programming. In fact, GAC hosted a “LGBT2QIA Roundtable” in October 2017 about SRHR featuring prominent global civil society experts. There seems to be momentum on LGBTIQ rights at GAC, especially with an SRHR commitment that is understood by GAC as the entry point. However, as I explored in this chapter, the term “inclusive” in FIAP functions as a “motherhood term”—​one that is palatable but perplexing because of its fuzziness (Cornwall 2010; Rai, Stuadt, and Parpart  2002). As an interview participant expressed, “it sounds generally positive,” and he was hearing “positive noises, but [there is] no clarity.” He continued: What does this mean for the work that gets done on the ground around the world? Are we going to see Canadian dollars go to groups doing work with an LGBTI perspective? We don’t expect to hear an announcement of an LGBT program, but on the ground, there should be support for organizations that work with LBTI women (unattributable interview, 2017).

Similarly, another participant claimed that FIAP has “nice words” but asked: “will the practice change? At the practical level there are a lot of things that impede this feminist policy from really taking route right now. . . . [In terms of] the policy itself, [you] couldn’t ask for a better orientation. Many organizations felt they have been heard, but the proof is in the pudding” (unattributable interview, 2017). Without explicit guidance and funding, there is a significant concern from interested parties in civil society that GAC will not diversify its partners and that programming that could

Q u e e r i n g R e p r o d u c t i v e  A i d  

[ 151 ]

521

support LGBTIQ populations will not transpire. As I argue in this chapter, the fuzziness of inclusivity language in FIAP, the overarching commitment to cisgender and heterosexual women and girls, and an SRHR approach that does not specifically address SOGI-​specific reproductive oppressions will leave the needs of minoritized sexual and gender communities unmet.

NOTES 1. This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant funded by the Government of Canada. During the research, I recruited officials of GAC using the Government Electronic Directory Services (GEDS) by “cold-​call” emailing Canadian civil society organizations about my research and by the snowball method, in which participants were asked to recommend their colleagues or people in their networks for the project. The interviews presented in this chapter were collected in 2017 as part of a larger project about the mainstreaming of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, sex characteristics (SOGIESC) analyses into the development industry. In my interviews with Canadian practitioners, FIAP was the focus of our discussion. The total number of current and former GAC officials interviewed was four. In this chapter “GAC officials” refers to these three current employees of GAC. I also interviewed a former GAC official who was only other person at the time to have held an LGBTIQ-​focused portfolio at GAC in Foreign Affairs. Given the lack of explicit programming and funding for SOGIESC-​specific issues in the Canadian development industry, many civil society organizations in both the development and LGBTIQ sector declined to be interviewed because of lack of expertise in SOGIESC, development, or both. In total, I interviewed seven civil society practitioners, although I only offer insights connected to sexual rights and reproductive health. As requested by each participant, this chapter does not include identifying information. 2. Sex nonconforming refers to individuals whose sex characteristics (primary and/​or secondary) are incongruent with binary expectations of male and female bodies. Some individuals who are sex nonconforming may identify as intersex. Gender nonconforming refers to individuals whose gender identity and/​or gender expression are incongruent with binary expectations of gender roles and aesthetics mapped onto male and female bodies. Some individuals who are gender nonconforming may identify as transgender or as a gender beyond the binary of girl/​boy or woman/​man.

REFERENCES Ali, S., Kowalski, S., and Silva, P. 2015. “Advocating for Sexual Rights at the UN: The Unfinished Business of Global Development.” Reproductive Health Matters 23, no. 46: 31–​37.

[ 152 ]  Maternality and the State

Altman, Dennis, and Jonathan Symons. 2016. Queer Wars: The New global Polarization over Gay Rights. Cambridge: Polity Press. Auld, A., and MacDonald, M. 2010. “Canada Wants Flexible Approach to G8 Plan on Maternal and Child Health.” Centre for International Governance Innovation April 28. https://​www.cigionline.org/​articles/​ canada-​wants-​flexible-​approach-​g8-​plan-​maternal-​and-​child-​health. Aylward, E., and Vance, K. 2017. “If Canada Truly Wants to Advance LGBT Rights, It Should Earmark Funding.” OpenCanada.org. March 23. https://​www. opencanada.org/​features/​if-​canada-​truly-​wants-​advance-​lgbt-​rights-​it-​should-​ earmark-​funding/​. Bedford, K. 2009. Developing Partnerships: Gender, Sexuality, and the Reformed World Bank. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Brown, S. 2012. Struggling for Effectiveness: CIDA and Canadian Foreign Aid. Montreal and Kingston: McGill–​Queen’s University Press. Collins, M. 2009. “‘Gender Equality,’ ‘Child Soldiers’ and ‘Humanitarian Law’ are Axed from Foreign Policy Language.” Embassy Magazine July 29. http://​embassymag. ca/​page/​view/​foreignpolicy-​7-​29-​2009. Cornwall, A. 2010. Deconstructing Development Discourse: Buzzwords and Fuzzwords. Warwickshire, UK: Practical Action and Oxfam. Cornwall, A., Corrêa, S., and Jolly, S. 2008. Development with a Body: Sexuality, Human Rights and Development. London: Zed Press. Cortez, C. 2017. “Is Your Country LGBTI Inclusive? With Better Data, We’ll Know.” World Bank blogs December 11. http://​blogs.worldbank.org/​opendata/​psd/​ your-​country-​lgbti-​inclusive-​better-​data-​we-​ll-​know. Drucker, P. 2009. “Changing Families and Communities: An LGBT Contribution to an Alternative Development Path.” Development in Practice 19, no. 7: 825–​836. Edelman, L. 2004. No Futurity: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Epprecht, M. 2008. Heterosexual Africa? The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS. Athens: Ohio University Press. Epprecht, M. 2013. Sexuality and Social Justice in Africa: Rethinking Homophobia and Forging Resistance. London: Zed Books. Ford, L. 2017. “Gagged: Trump’s Global Assault on Family Planning.” Guardian July 27. https://​www.theguardian.com/​global-​development/​2017/​jul/​27/​ families-​fertility-​feminism-​landmarks-​in-​womens-​rights-​timeline. Franke, K. M. 2001. “Theorizing Yes: An Essay on Feminism, Law, and Desire.” Columbia Law Review 101: 181–​208. Global Affairs Canada (GAC). 2015. “Partnerships for Strengthening Maternal, Newborn and Child Health: Call for Proposals.” http://​www.international. gc.ca/​development-​developpement/​partners-​partenaires/​calls-​appels/​psmnch-​ prsmne.aspx?lang=eng. Global Affairs Canada (GAC). 2017b. “Canada’s Leadership on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.” https://​www.canada.ca/​en/​global-​affairs/​news/​2017/​07/​ canada_​s_​leadershiponsexualandreproductivehealthandrights.html. Global Affairs Canada (GAC) Officials. 2017. Interview with author. September 20. Ottawa, Ontario. Gosine, A. 2015. Rescue, and Real Love. Same-​Sex Desire in International Development. Brighton, UK: IDS Sexuality and Development Programme. Haussmann, Melissa and Mills, Lisa. 2012. “Doing the North American Two-​step on a Global Stage: Canada, its G8 Muskoka Initiative, and Safe Abortion Funding.”

Q u e e r i n g R e p r o d u c t i v e  A i d  

[ 153 ]

541

In How Ottawa Spends, 2012-​2013: The Harper Majority, Budget Cuts, and the New Opposition, edited by G. Bruce Deorn and Christopher Stoney, 242–​272. Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). 2008. “What Is Intersex?” http://​www. isna.org/​faq/​what_​is_​intersex. Jolly, S. 2000. “What Use Is Queer Theory to Development?” Queering Development Seminar Series. IDS Discussion Paper. Brighton, UK: Institute for Development Studies. Keast, J. 2017. “Missed Opportunities: A Discursive Analysis of Canada’s Commitments to Maternal Health under the Muskoka Initiative.” In Obligations and Omissions: Canada’s Ambiguous Actions on Gender Equality, edited by R. Tiessen and S. Baranyi, 49–​68. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-​ Queen’s University Press. Klapeer, C. M. 2018. “Dangerous Liaisons? (Homo)Developmentalism, Sexual Modernization and LGBTIQ Rights in Europe.” In Routledge Handbook of Queer Development Studies, edited by C. L. Mason, 102–​118. London, New York: Routledge. Lind, A. 2010. Development, Sexual Rights and Global Governance. London, New York: Routledge. Lind, A., and Share. J. 2003. “Queering Development: Institutionalized Heterosexuality in Development Theory, Practice and Politics in Latin America.” In Feminist Futures: Re-​Imagining Women, Culture and Development, edited by K. Bhavnani, J. Foran, and P Kurian, 55–​73. London: Zed Books. Lock Swarr, A. 2012. “Paradoxes of Butchness: Lesbian Masculinities and Sexual Violence in Contemporary South Africa.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 37, no. 4: 961–​986. Mclean, N. 2018. “Disrupting Jo’burg Pride: Exploring the Depoliticisation of Africa’s First Pride March.” In Routledge Handbook of Queer Development Studies, edited by C. L. Mason, 264–​276. London, New York: Routledge. Mkhize, N., Bennett, J., Reddy, V., and Moletsane, R. 2010. The Country We Want To Live in: Hate Crimes and Homophobia in the Lives of Black Lesbian South Africans. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press. Nixon, L. 2013. “Reproductive Justice Is an LGBTQ Issue.” LGBTQ Policy Journal 3: 101–​105. Open Society Foundations. 2017. “What Are Intersex Rights?” https://​www. opensocietyfoundations.org/​explainers/​what-​are-​intersex-​rights. Parpart, J. L., Rai, S., and Staudt, K. 2002. Rethinking Empowerment: Gender and Development in a Global/​Local World. London, New York: Routledge. Puar, J. K. 2011. “Citation and Censorship: The Politics of Talking about the Sexual Politics of Israel.” Feminist Legal Studies 19, no 2: 133–​142. Planned Parenthood International. 2017. “Coalition Statement Opposing the Global Gag Rule 2017.” https://​www.plannedparenthood.org/​files/​9814/​8486/​3032/​ Coalition_​Statement_​Opposing_​the_​Global_​Gag_​Rule.pdf. Rao, R. 2014. “Queer Questions.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 16, no. 2: 199–​217. Ross, L., and Solinger, R. 2017. Reproductive Justice: An Introduction. Oakland: University of California Press. Singh, J. A., and Karim, S. S. A. 2017. “Trump’s ‘Global Gag Rule’: Implications for Human Rights and Global Health.” Lancet: Global Health 5, no. 4: e387–​e389. Stevens, M. 2016. “Intersections and Continuums in Reproductive Justice—​ Abortion, Girls and Young Women and Gender Queer Folks.” Coalition of

[ 154 ]  Maternality and the State

African Lesbians August 30. http://​www.cal.org.za/​2016/​08/​30/​intersections-​ and-​continuums-​in-​reproductive-​justice-​abortion-​girls-​and-​young-​women-​ and-​gender-​queer-​folks/​. Swiss, L., and Barry, J. 2017. “Did Changes in Language Lead to Spending Shifts?” In Obligations and Omissions: Canada’s Ambiguous Actions on Gender Equality, edited by R. Tiessen and S. Baranyi, 23–​48. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-​ Queen’s University Press. Tiessen, R., and Carrier, K. 2015. “The Erasure of ‘Gender’ in Canadian Foreign Policy under the Harper Conservatives: The Significance of the Discursive Shift from ‘Gender Equality’ to ‘Equality between Women and Men.’ ” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 21, no. 2: 95–​111. Tiessen, R., and Baranyi, S. 2017. Obligations and Omissions: Canada’s Ambiguous Actions on Gender Equality. Montreal and Kingston: McGill–​Queen’s University Press. Weiss, M. L., and Bosia, M. J. 2013. Global Homophobia: States, Movements, and the Politics of Oppression. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Weissman, A. L. 2017. “Repronormativity and the Reproduction of the Nation-​ State: The State and Sexuality Collide.” Journal of GLBT Family Studies 13, no. 3: 277–​305. World Health Organization (WHO). 2006. “Defining Sexual Health.” http://​www.who. int/​reproductivehealth/​topics/​sexual_​health/​sh_​definitions/​en/​. World Health Organization (WHO). 2014. Eliminating Forced, Coercive and Otherwise Involuntary Sterilization: An Interagency Statement OHCHR, UN Women, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF and WHO. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO. http://​www.unaids.org/​sites/​default/​files/​media_​asset/​201405_​sterilization_​ en.pdf.

Q u e e r i n g R e p r o d u c t i v e  A i d  

[ 155 ]

561

CHAPTER 10

Troubling Conceptions of Motherhood State Feminism and Political Agency of Women in the Global South ANWAR MHA JNE AND CRYSTAL WHETSTONE

M

otherhood has been described as “embarrassingly mainstream, ostensibly apolitical, ‘essentialist’ and a red-​rag to . . . intersectional, queer, trans-​feminist” work (Bueskens 2016, xvi). While we acknowledge these challenges to women’s political mobilization as mothers, we argue here that this form of political engagement has been useful to women in many contexts, including spaces in which it is typically difficult to carry out oppositional or controversial organizing, such as authoritarian regimes, illiberal democracies, and postcolonial/​neoimperial environments. Since the institution of motherhood is widely (if not unproblematically) respected, women mobilizing as mothers often receive at least a window of opportunity, however limited, from which they are spared criticism and physical attacks—​a window in which they can carry out political work (Carreon and Moghadam 2015; Orleck 1997). Likewise, motherhood’s association with positive ideals, such as being caring, peaceful, and moral, has inspired many women, as we show later. Although all stereotypes, these ideals are a form of strategic essentialism, used by women to justify their political participation in the public sphere and enabling them (at least temporarily) to avoid criticism and backlash by embracing so-​called traditional maternal characteristics (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 2013; Helmes 2003). Through

Anwar Mhajne and Crystal Whetstone, Troubling Conceptions of Motherhood In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0010

referencing their roles as mothers, many women have been endowed with greater legitimacy in their political organizing through an overt acknowledgment of their femininity, rather than being accused of “imitating” men (Orleck 1997, 4). In ethnically or religiously divided societies, motherhood has sometimes united women across intersectional divides, particularly in class-​based and ethnic-​based societal and/​or armed conflicts (Franceschet 2004; George 2010). Many women never previously involved in politics have been motivated to enter the political sphere by emphasizing their roles as mothers (Mhajne and Whetstone 2017). In this chapter, we examine the ways in which, in certain contexts, motherhood has afforded women cultural and social respect and, in some instances, political power. To do so, we explore the ways in which political institutions in three countries—​Egypt, Sri Lanka, and Argentina—​interact with religious and cultural conceptions of motherhood to provide women with social authority, often through respectability politics. We argue that this interaction allows women to utilize motherhood as a tool to “bargain with patriarchy,” mobilizing both women and men into political activism and legitimizing such political activity. Bargaining with patriarchy is a term we borrow from Deniz Kandiyoti (1988), referring to women’s negotiation and navigation of their identities as mothers to legitimize their political participation. With these three cases, we demonstrate how, in certain political and cultural contexts where religion and women’s roles as the foundation of the family significantly structure the lives of women, motherhood has been utilized as a powerful tool for political mobilization and contestation.

MOTHERHOOD IN WOMEN’S POLITICAL LIVES

Many women’s lives have been constrained because of intense social pressures to be wives and mothers and to place others’ needs before their own (de Beauvoir 2009). In claiming a role in civil society specifically as mothers, women may inadvertently reinforce the notion that all women should be mothers or that women’s proper place is the home (DiQuinzio 1993). Women’s involvement in political movements that stressed women’s identities as mothers have, in some cases, led to the re-​confinement of women to the home (Baron 2005; Thompson 2000). Furthermore, women endure a heavy burden as they struggle to complete their motherly duties in addition to political activities, alongside any income-​generating activities they may need to perform, creating a triple burden (Moreno 2017). Such juggling of roles can limit women’s ability to participate in activism even

T r o u b l i n g C o n c e pt s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 157 ]

581

if women are inspired by motherhood, and women face extra pressure to perform their maternal duties well if this is the source of their political legitimacy (MacGregor 2006; Moreno 2017). Maternal discourses have been used by many regimes to justify state control over women’s lives by stressing the importance of mothers in preserving traditions and maintaining societal stability (Carreon and Moghadam 2015; Orleck 1997). Moreover, using women’s familial role as mothers in political mobilization raises concerns for some feminist scholars because of maternalism’s reliance on traditional gender norms and nationalist and religious fundamentalisms, much of which is rooted in gender essentialism, heteronormativity, and transphobism (de Beauvoir 2009; DiQuinzio 1993; Enloe 2000). Globally, however, and despite these tensions, many women’s roles as mothers are an important, even essential, part of their identities, which accounts for a large part of their experiences and engagement with the world. To downplay motherhood in these women’s lives downplays their agency (Helmes 2003; O’Reilly 2016). In contemporary West Africa, for example, motherhood may not lead to women’s servitude the way that it has historically in the Anglo Global North. Instead, it has been argued that motherhood in this context entails “an elevated and symbolic form of service through protection and collaboration,” which is seen to influence women’s leadership abilities and has allowed many West African women to become important members of civil society and government (Steady 2011, 8). Women have broken down all kinds of barriers using motherhood as a political tool by deploying it subversively, often through a strategic essentialism that uses the maternal identity to create a political movement (Anderlini 2007; Ashcroft et  al. 2013). By explicitly articulating their roles as mothers, some women have been empowered to enter the male-​dominated political public sphere. This form of “bargaining with patriarchy” allows women a familiar context from which to participate in activism and has proved to be advantageous to women’s mobilization under authoritarian regimes and illiberal democracies as well as in postcolonial/​ neoimperial contexts (George 2010; Helmes 2003; Noonan 1995). Mothers in certain contexts have used respectability politics relying on privileged aspects of their identities as a resistance and a bargaining strategy with the state and society. Being labeled as a “respectable” woman is tied to participating in, and preserving conduct consistent with, a “patriarchal bargain.” As a form of bargaining with patriarchy, respectability is an effective tool in contexts where states hypervisibilize certain bodies such as women. Paul Amar coined the term “hypervisibility” to address the “processes whereby racialized, sexualized subjects, or the marked bodies of subordinate classes, become intensely visible as objects of state, police

[ 158 ]  Maternality and the State

and media gazes and as targets of fear and desire” (Amar 2011, 305). To navigate hypervisibility, activists mobilize respectability politics to bargain with patriarchal social and political structures. Respectability, however, can result in restricting women’s opportunities and justify abuse of women (Hungwe 2006; Jefremovas 1991; Mungwini 2008). As various feminist scholars have shown, respectability can sustain gender inequality (e.g., Fernando and Cohen 2014; Hungwe 2006; Radhakrishnan 2009). It normalizes patriarchal classist social and political power structures, which draws distinctions between racialized and sexualized morally corrupt individuals, such as the dishonorable dissident woman, and those with virtue, such as mothers, through processes that can naturalize social hierarchies (Amar 2011, 2013; Nasr 2017). Respectability might become a tool for enforcing the state’s desired definition of respectable behavior and traits by shaming and ostracizing unrespectable women, while providing protection and openings for political participation for women who perform respectability (Fox 1977; Hungwe 2006; Jefremovas 1991; Johnson-​Hanks 2006; Khumalo et al. 2015; Mungwini 2008). For example, in 2011, the Egyptian state used respectability politics through sexual assault to delegitimize non-​married female protestors after the Egyptian uprisings (Tadros 2013). According to Amnesty International (2011), on March 11, 2011, the military police arrested and held seventeen of these women for four days and forced them to go through virginity tests after threatening them with prostitution charges. The military publicly confessed to their action and tried to explain it by claiming that the military did not want these women to claim that they lost their virginity because of sexual assault or rape by the military personnel (Tadros, 2013). A  military general told CNN, “The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine. These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and [drugs]” (Rice 2011). This statement marked these women as deviant women who are not worthy of sympathy or protection. They are promiscuous and lack respectability. These women are no longer legitimate protestors who can question the acts of the security state. Female protesters were marked through sexual assault as sexualized bodies who lack respectability. The aim, however, is to challenge the image of the “respectable, pious woman who is a legitimate protestor against the police rather than a victim protected or rescued by the police” (Amar 2011, 311). It was a “clear move to delegitimise women’s political activism and discourage society from ‘allowing their women’ to participate in street politics” (Tadros 2013, 10).

T r o u b l i n g C o n c e pt s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 159 ]

6 0 1

However, some women’s groups in conservative patriarchal cultures have used the politics of respectability to bargain with patriarchy to achieve immediate political gains, especially during periods of political unrest. Women using motherhood in the political sphere can portray themselves as politically neutral or “above” partisan politics, which been used advantageously in many difficult political environments (Carreon and Moghadam 2015). Further, to discredit feminists and women’s rights activists, the state and conservative forces in postcolonial countries have criticized these activists, labeling their work on gender equality an imported imperialistic practice aiming at destroying the cultural fabric of society. Maternalist activism in such contexts has therefore provided cultural legitimacy to justify women’s involvement in politics and to work to improve women’s lives (George 2010; Moreno 2017). To develop the arguments presented here, we next focus on three cases of maternalist activism that were successful in garnering political gains in Egypt, Argentina, and Sri Lanka, discussed in turn. Egypt

Historically, Egyptian women relied on the cultural and religious context in Egypt, which views the family—​with mothers at the center—​as the most important unit in society, to gain support for their participation in the 1919 revolution against British colonial rule. They connected their participation to the stereotypical gender role of girls and women as future “Mothers of the Nation” who would embed a sense of national belonging in their children. The discourse of “Mothers of the Nation” was strategically useful because mothers, unlike wives, sisters, or daughters who must submit to their husbands, parents, and brothers, possess an authoritative moral power over younger men and women in the household (Mhajne and Whetstone 2017). This discourse gave women a maternal authority to publicly participate in society and politics (Baron 2005). Later in the same century, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s welfare state (1956–​ 1970), which emerged in the 1950s, contributed to the formation of state feminism in Egypt. State feminism refers to state programs that aim to alter women’s reproductive and productive responsibilities in society (Hatem 1992). As Hatem (1992) notes, the welfare state made a commitment to the public equality of women by institutionalizing state feminism as a legal, economic, and ideological tool to change gender relations in Egyptian society. State feminism served as a tool to increase the legitimacy of Abdel Nasser’s government and its progressive image (Hatem 1992). The welfare state in

[ 160 ]  Maternality and the State

Egypt retreated because of the economic crisis in the 1970s “as part of the shift to a market economy where Egyptian, regional, and international capital played a leading developmental role” (Hatem 1992, 233). The retreat of the welfare state and Anwar el-​ Sadat’s (1970–​ 1981) support of the Islamists early in his regime (owing to their challenge to the Nasserite student leadership in different student unions elections) strengthened the Islamist narrative in Egypt. Cooperation between Islamists and Anwar el-​Sadat’s government did not, however, last for long (1971–​1977). The signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978 strengthened the Islamists and the opposition, who were against the treaty with Israel. Women’s issues during both the cooperation and contestation periods between the government and Islamists were at the center stage of the relationship between Islamists and Anwar el-​Sadat’s regime. They both used women’s issues “to distinguish themselves from one another and to score ideological and political victories” (Hatem 1992, 240). Anwar el-​Sadat’s co-​optation of women’s rights started with the 1971 constitution. The 1971 constitution addressed the state’s obligation to help women in their roles in the family in Articles 10 and 11. Article 10 stated: “The State shall guarantee the protection of motherhood and childhood, take care of children and youth and provide suitable conditions for the development of their talents.” Likewise, Article 11 held: “The State shall guarantee the proper coordination between the duties of woman towards the family and her work in the society, considering her equal status with men in the fields of political, social, cultural and economic life without violation of the rules of Islamic jurisprudence.” This provision ensures the compatibility of woman’s responsibilities to her family with her role in society and emphasizes the role of the state in supporting women to reconcile their roles in the family and in society. Article 11 utilized Sharia in a restrictive way because it made women’s equality with men vulnerable to more conservative readings of Islamic law. The co-​optation of women’s rights by the state, and women’s vulnerability to the negotiations and contentions between the Islamists and the ruling party, continued throughout Hosni Mubarak’s regime. International pressure, especially from the United States to democratize, and internal pressure to Islamicize because of the rise of the Islamists and the popularity of their agenda shaped the political context in Egypt at the beginning of the twentieth century. This led the regime to tolerate some women’s activism in controlled democratic spaces such as associations (Tadros 2016). However, the government controlled these associations by requiring them to be registered with the “General Department of Women’s Affairs of the

T r o u b l i n g C o n c e pt s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 161 ]

621

Ministry of Social Affairs, which supervises their activities and deals with the implementation of the above-​mentioned law” (Karam 1997, 104). In 1991, Hosni Mubarak’s government banned feminist political organizations (Karam 1997). Between 2000 and 2010, the women’s agenda became part of the state’s agenda through the formation of national women’s machineries, the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), and the National Council for Women (NCW), headed by the First Lady. These women’s apparatuses “relied on combination of state funds and Western donor support” (Tadros 2016, 15). They “marginalized the role of feminist groups in civil society and pursued state feminism at the service of the ruling regime and made possible through the support of foreign donors” (Tadros 2016, 84). The NCW reduced political empowering “to a set of technical inputs involving training and networking” (Tadros 2016, 89). Similarly to Hosni Mubarak’s government, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) government in 2012 attempted to control gender issues by creating state institutions responsible for addressing women’s rights. The Muslim Brotherhood did so by creating “a select corps of women whose agenda was congruent with that of the Muslim Brotherhood, even if they were not organizationally part of the movement” (Tadros 2016, 226). The MB and other Islamists viewed national machineries created under Mubarak as a “symbol of regime’s import of Western imperialist values to ruin Egyptian families” (Tadros 2016, 183). The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) replaced the NCW with the National Council for Family Affairs, which framed women’s rights in terms of “protecting motherhood” and “supporting the family” (Tadros 2016). During the drafting of the 2012 post-​uprisings constitution, debates over women’s rights became prominent among various political factions and civil society organizations. Political power-​sharing deals between Islamist and non-​Islamist factions influenced the debates on women’s rights in the constitution. These debates also became catalysts for the collective mobilization of civil society groups against the regime in 2013, which resulted in the ousting of the MB government and the elections of a new government headed by General Abdel Fatah el-​Sisi, with similar agendas toward women as Hosni Mubarak’s government. Motherhood remains an important tool for women in resistance movements in Egypt to this day. A  large number of female participants used their maternal identities and traditional gender roles as a way to emphasize their moral authority to shame Mubarak’s government during the 2011 uprisings, the MB government (2012–​2013), and el-​Sisi’s government (2013 until the time of writing). For instance, in the Arab uprisings of

[ 162 ]  Maternality and the State

2011, women used maternality to shame the security forces, even stopping them from attacking the protesters (Mhajne and Whetstone 2017). This enabled women “to achieve a substantial political presence through the state’s own demarcation of women and mothers as hypervisible” (Mhajne and Whetstone 2017, 8). The participation of women in protests was impactful because the state had invested so intensively in defining respectability through “hypervisibilizing women as subjects of piety, self-​policing, moralization and cultural security” (Amar 2011, 309). The state’s efforts to mark itself as the protector of pious, moral, and respectable women, combined with the moral authority of mothers, made the use of respectability politics by some of the protestors extremely powerful. In this sense, the presence of mothers, which the state had invested in labeling as respectable, in demonstrations made it difficult for the state to portray the protesters as immoral terrorists and not worthy of state protection. Some of the women in the January 25 uprisings and in the aftermath became familiar with resistance politics through their children’s participation in the uprisings and later in the anticoup demonstration, which started in 2013. Such newly developed political consciousness is evident in the activism of the mother of Ammar El-​Beltagy, the son of MB senior leader Mohamed El-​Beltagy, whose seventeen-​year-​old sister, Asma El-​Beltagy, was one of at least 525 people who were killed in the Rabaa Massacre of August 2013. The massacre dispersed protest camps against the military’s ousting of the first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, in July 2013. In an interview with Ammar in 2017, he stated that before his sister’s death, his mother was mainly focused on social work; she began taking a more public and active role against the government that formed after the coup headed by President el-​Sisi. Moreover, mothers used their loss to continue the mobilization of resistance in the years after the January 25 uprisings. The mothers relied on maternal suffering as a tool to utilize the Egyptian state’s labeling of women as mothers of the nation against itself (Mhajne and Whetstone 2017). The mothers used respectability politics, which imbues them with moral authority and gives them a special status in society, enabling action against the government. For example, some mothers of the martyrs who were killed during and after the uprisings of 2011 organized and mobilized various protests opposing the state. In these demonstrations, the mothers of the martyrs remembered their children killed by the security forces and asked for retribution against the state. In the Egyptian case, the state’s institutionalization of respectability politics forced some women to rely on their respectability as mothers to challenge and bargain with the state. This bargain through politics of respectability enabled women to assert some

T r o u b l i n g C o n c e pt s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 163 ]

641

agency and led to an increase in the political participation of women, at least those who conform to notions of respectability because of their label as mothers, from many socioeconomic sectors in Egypt during the January 25 uprisings and beyond.

Argentina

Argentina transitioned from an oppressive military dictatorship (1976–​ 1983) responsible for the torture and death of thousands to a democracy in the mid-​1980s. In 1991, Argentina became one of the first countries to enact a national gender quota, which mandated that women compose at least 30 percent of all political parties’ candidate lists; it went into effect during the 1993 general elections, where it had an immediate result, causing women’s representation to jump from 4.7 percent in the election just after transition to 16.3  percent in 1993 (IPU 2015a, 2015b). Today, Argentina ranks sixteenth in the world in terms of women’s legislative representation, a success attributable to the quota, which has fast-​tracked women into Parliament, in part owing to women’s civil society groups that lobbied for it (Franceschet and Piscopo 2008; IPU 2017). In Argentina, as in Egypt, the wife-​mother has been considered the foundational part of the family, responsible for caring for the children. This understanding has been encouraged by state forces under both authoritarian and democratic regimes and has recently been used to justify the state’s reduction of social services, part of the neoliberal turn, which has shifted a heavy burden onto mothers (Bouvard 1994; Sutton 2010). Since the 1990s, Argentina has been a site of state feminism marked by national gender quotas and a women’s national machinery that includes the National Women’s Council within the Ministry of Social Action (Cosgrove 2010; Lopreite 2015). Despite state feminism and societal discourses on gender equality, Argentinian female legislators and political activists have continued in the tradition of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, one of the most famous cases of women’s politicization of their maternal role, which formed under a military dictatorship that took over in 1976 and enacted a state-​led campaign of terror against citizens involved in Leftist politics, most of whom were young adults. These young people were targeted by the fundamentalist nationalist government, which saw itself as a bulwark against communism and an upholder of “civilization.” An estimated 20,000 and 30,000 citizens were ultimately “disappeared,” tortured, and killed by state forces (Kohut, Vilella, and Julian 2003). Men were vulnerable to state torture because they were assumed by the junta to embody masculine virility.

[ 164 ]  Maternality and the State

Young women who violated traditional gender norms by abandoning their “proper” station in the domestic sphere or becoming romantically involved with Leftist men were tortured equally harshly, but in gender-​specific ways that targeted their wombs and used their roles as mothers against them (Sutton 2010). However, the regime’s sexist views gave mature women maneuverability under an oppressive system that had outlawed freedom of expression and freedom of assembly because they were assumed by the state to be married, apolitical housewives and mothers and thus respectable. While fathers of the missing young people feared drawing attention to themselves, the mainly middle-​aged mothers of the disappeared sensed a window of opportunity. In the eyes of a regime, they were “harmless” housewives, and therefore politically ineffective, women who put their families and the Church at the center of their lives, who had never been previously politically active, and who seemed to constitute no threat at all (Bouvard 1994; Kohut et al. 2003). In contrast, through the failure to uphold the politics of respectability, the regime portrayed female guerrillas as sexually promiscuous and therefore “monstrous” women who were not “real” women and so deserved death (Taylor 1997, 80). As young women involved in Leftist politics found themselves disappeared, tortured, and often killed, respectability politics, unquestionably rooted in derogatory and sexist assumptions, conversely allowed the Madres to be perceived as inept old women, giving them temporary protection from the dictatorship to begin organizing (Bouvard 1994; Sutton 2010). In April 1977, fourteen women began meeting on the Plaza de Mayo, a famous square in Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires, to hold a silent protest demanding the whereabouts of their missing children, which soon became a weekly occurrence (Kohut et  al. 2003). The group, which became known as the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo), was initially dismissed by the junta as inept. Yet, as the group grew in numbers, jumping from an initial fourteen in April 1977 to 150 women by October that same year, the regime became rattled (Bouvard 1994, 75). To discredit the women, the government called the mothers “the Mad Women” and even enacted physical retribution against some of them, the worst of which entailed the disappearance—​and subsequent murder—​of twelve of the Madres and their supporters, including their leader, Azucena Villaflor (Bouvard 1994, 77–​79). Undeterred, the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo continued organizing and joined in solidarity with human rights groups around Argentina and outside the country. Through these networks, the Madres became a catalyst for drawing domestic and international attention to the abuses of the state and helped to pressure the junta to step down and allow for the return to democracy (Bouvard 1994; Kohut et al. 2003).

T r o u b l i n g C o n c e pt s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 165 ]

61

Political opportunities are gendered, and within many Latin American authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century, a politics of respectability resting on complementary gender roles that labeled women’s “natural” strengths in familial love a counterpoint to men’s “natural” aggression and public personas were integral to regimes’ ideological outlook; this was the case in Argentina in 1976 to 1983 (Howe 2006; Noonan 1995). For those women who participated in “subversive” organizations, their “unfeminine” and therefore “unnatural” characteristics marked them as deserving of death, while those activists such as the Madres, who conformed to the regimes’ gender ideals, were considered respectable (Taylor 1997). Respectability politics may empower some women, but the manufacturing of respectability comes at the expense of those women who refuse to hold up the bargain. The gendered political opportunities that initially enabled the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo to enter politics under authoritarianism disappeared as Argentina transitioned to a democracy (Jaquette 1994). The group split into two factions in 1986, with one group having a name that loosely translates as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Association and another known as the Founding Line Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo; the two groups have since continued with their political work and remain a mainstay in Argentinian politics (Bouvard 1994; Sutton 2010). In the late 1980s and early 1990s after transitioning, Argentina moved toward state feminism, as mentioned, including the adoption of a national gender quota and a national women’s machinery (Waylen 2000). At the same time, gender equality has continued to grow in acceptance among the general public (Franceschet, Piscopo, and Thomas 2016). These developments suggest that women might begin to explore alternative forms of mobilization because other opportunities for participation have been opening up for women. Despite the strong state feminism and societal discourses on gender equality, however, many female Argentinian legislators and civil society activists have still chosen to follow the example of the Madres, which shows the political purchase of this form of mobilization in Argentina. In parliament, for example, “supermothers” or “supermadres” have historically likened their legislative duties to women’s maternal duties, claiming, for example, that developing legislative budgets is a natural task for housewives used to drawing up household budgets. They have also emphasized societal understandings that deem women less corrupt than men based on the notion of respectable femininity to make the case for their political careers (Franceschet et al. 2016). While the supermadre frame has evolved to include less obvious use of women’s navigation of their maternal roles—​what Franceschet

[ 166 ]  Maternality and the State

et  al. (2016, 3)  call the technocratic caretaker and the macho minimizer—​these framings nevertheless emphasize a particular construction of female subjectivity that is anchored in maternal roles. Such bargaining with state and socially sanctioned constructions of feminine respectability places limitations on women, even creating specific risks for women in formal politics, by disciplining those women who refuse to participate in the bargain. Even in democratic Argentina, women must be mothers to be deemed “real” women, and female politicians must stress their “softer” side to appeal to the electorate, thereby confining and limiting women’s options and opportunities (Franceschet et al. 2016; Sutton 2010). That motherhood continues to play a role in women’s political mobilization in Argentina may again relate to the politics of respectability that comes with the maternal role, which emphasizes women’s moral authority. “True womanhood” is understood to be achieved when a woman becomes a mother, which grants women elevated status in Argentina (Sutton 2010). As Sarah Radcliffe (1993) has pointed out, the logic of maternalism used by the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo was the same logic propounded by the military junta that they were resisting, which suggests its social conservatism. Yet while the state, under both the military dictatorship and subsequent democratic governments, has often sought to enact a top-​down pressure on women to conform to subordinate practices based on “proper” womanhood, many Argentinian women have in turn deployed these same concepts from the bottom up to challenge the government (Carreon and Moghadam 2015). Most recently, the leader of the Association line of the Madres threatened to “blow up” the Casa Rosada, the seat of the Argentine executive, because their organization opposes the right-​leaning, neoliberal government of Macri and believed that the government was trying to suppress the group (McCay 2017). Such actions are far from the “proper” ideals of a mother according to the state, suggesting that the Madres seek to embody a maternal respectability but one of their own construction. It is noteworthy that, in a solidly democratic environment that embraces state feminism and discourses on gender equality, women’s mothering identities still inform many women’s political mobilization and contestation. Nevertheless, the hypervisibility that comes with the politics of respectability, which mature maternal figures can navigate to get away with “unrespectable” acts, may limit the long-​term effectiveness of maternalism by not only leaving out those women who are not mothers but also even limiting the kinds of issues in which mothers are permitted to engage (Shepherd 2010). Despite the many drawbacks of maternalism, similar constructions of women’s maternal moral authority based on respectability politics are apparent in our discussion of Sri Lanka’s Mothers’ Front.

T r o u b l i n g C o n c e pt s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 167 ]

6 8 1

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s Civil War (1983–​2009) was an armed conflict, commonly portrayed as an ethnic conflict, between the country’s two largest communities:  the majority Sinhala, who are mainly Buddhist and reside mostly in the south of the country, and the minority Tamils, most of whom are Hindu and live in the north/​northeast (Thiranagama 2011). Despite a smooth transition to democracy in 1948, largely owing to seventeen years of self-​rule before independence, tensions mounted between the Sinhala and Tamil communities in subsequent decades, as the previously economically marginalized majority Sinhala used electoral democracy to favor their own community (International Crisis Group  2007). Buddhism and Sinhala became the official state religion and language, which symbolically marked Tamils as second-​class citizens and caused a hardening of the lines between these communities (International Crisis Group  2007). As negotiations failed to address growing interethnic problems, many Tamils felt that they had no choice but to form militias to create a separate state for Tamils, Tamil Eelam. One guerrilla group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), eventually prevailed over other armed groups for control of the north/​northeastern Tamil-​majority region of the island (Thiranagama 2011). After three decades of intermittent fighting between LTTE and state forces, in May 2009 the government used military force to defeat the LTTE, in the process killing an estimated 40,000 Tamil civilians (Thiranagama 2011). During the war, Sri Lanka failed to function democratically and was at best an illiberal democracy. Religion was manipulated by both the Sinhala-​Buddhist state and the Tamil-​Hindu LTTE, which controlled the north/​northern enclave of the country, to generate support during the war and to justify violence against non-​co-​religionists/​non-​co-​ ethnics (International Crisis Group  2007; Thiranagama 2011). For both Sinhala Buddhist and Tamil Hindu women, religion was wielded by the state and LTTE to, respectively, manipulate women’s nationalist support and emphasize women as producers and sustainers of their communities (Samuel 1998; Thiruchandran 2012). Besides boasting the world’s first democratically elected female prime minister in 1960, Sri Lanka was one of the first states to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and state feminism has sought to assert itself through a national women’s machinery architecture consisting of the National Committee on Women, the Women’s Bureau, and the Ministry of Women and Child Affairs. However, Sri Lanka has one of the lowest regional rates of women’s representation and low levels of women’s involvement in civil

[ 168 ]  Maternality and the State

society (Jayawardena and Kodikara 2002). It is remarkable that a mass movement mobilized by women’s strategic deployment of their maternal identities was instigated during the civil war and a violent internal insurrection in an environment that severely curtailed political rights and civil liberties. The group, the Mothers’ Front, remains one of the largest civil society mobilizations in Sri Lanka’s modern history (de Alwis 1998, 2012). The large number of women involved in the southern branch of the maternal group the Mothers’ Front was astonishing for a society with a women’s movement dominated by elites, normally seeing little involvement on the part of ordinary citizens (de Alwis 1998, 2012; Wickremagamage 1999). Sri Lanka’s theater of war was mainly the north/​northeastern Tamil-​ majority region of the country. In 1984, the government detained hundreds of Tamil young men in a village near Jaffna, the most populous city in the north, arresting them without warrants. In response, the mothers and wives of these individuals, along with women who stood in solidarity with them, formed the Mothers’ Front and held a march that ended at the local government building, which the mothers stormed. At the government office, the mothers demanded the return of their sons, deploying a politicized identity that emphasized the group as mothers looking after their children and upheld a politics of respectability that they sought to use as protection against state backlash (Thiruchandran 2012). Over the next few years, women with the Northern Mothers’ Front (NMF), as it came to be known, continued to speak out against the state and to demand peace from both the state and northern militias. The LTTE valued the group’s criticisms of the state but not of its own conduct, which after the mid-​ 1980s became increasingly violent. Once the LTTE solidified its hold in the northeast, they ceased allowing the NMF to be autonomous, and in 1987, the core leadership of the NMF disbanded rather than submitting to the authority of the LTTE. What remained of the group was co-​opted into an LTTE-​run charity organization, thereby revealing the limitations of a politics of respectability, even when wielded strategically (Thiruchandran 2012); if the top-​down powers disapprove of women’s use of respectability politics, women may find themselves with few remaining options. Although the main theater of war was the north, in the late 1980s, the southern, Sinhala-​dominated region of the country experienced intense violence in a political insurrection carried out by the People’s Liberation Front (JVP), a socialist, Sinhala-​nationalist group. The uprising, which began in 1987 and lasted into 1991, involved JVP attacks on state forces, which the state responded to with a violent counterattack that made all young men in the south a target of warrantless arrest and disappearance (Perera 1999). Two male politicians with the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP), members

T r o u b l i n g C o n c e pt s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 169 ]

701

of which had been affected by the insurgency and counter-​insurgency, created another Mothers’ Front, known as the Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF), to bring attention to the state’s abuses. Inspired by the NMF, the SMF held protests against the state for failing to protect citizens. This occurred in a fraught environment, where the government did not hesitate to threaten, harm, and even kill critics. The human rights movement was virtually paralyzed (Jayawardena and Kodikara 2002; Samuel 1998). However, through a politicized maternal identity, the SMF called attention to the disappearances, consciously incorporating Buddhist religious practices in their protests. Because a hegemonic Sinhala-​Buddhist nationalism dominates the south, the use of Buddhism by these women to critique the state embodied the notion of “good” mothers caring for their children and upholding religious traditions that the government claimed to value and that rested solidly on a politics of respectability. Like the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, members of the Mothers’ Front relied on constructions of the respectability of mothers, which enabled the human rights movement to continue when no other activist could contest the state without risking their life (Jayawardena and Kodikara 2002). The state worked furiously to discredit the women of the SMF, seeking to portray them as “bad” mothers unworthy of the respect typically reserved for motherhood because their children were viewed as “subversives” by the state (de Alwis 2001; de Mel 2001). However, the general public was largely sympathetic to the women; the Sinhala Buddhist identity of the women likely accounts for this (de Alwis 2001). Relying on their status as mothers from the hegemonic ethnic identity, the women of the SMF gained integral support from the public to allow for their continued organizing despite resistance from the state. Yet, the price of purchase was high because the southern branch of the Mothers’ Front remained relentlessly ethnically exclusive, failing to take on the issues of Tamil women (de Alwis 1998, 2001, 2012; de Mel 2001). As discussed, the politics of respectability is often tied to processes that naturalize social hierarchies, which in the case of the SMF meant the dismissal of Tamil women’s concerns (Amar 2013). After rallying an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 women, making it the greatest women’s movement in Sri Lankan history, the Mothers’ Front helped elect the SLFP politician Chandrika Kumaratunga to the presidency. In return, her platform reflected the group’s main demands: a political end to the war and a commission to investigate the disappearances (Jayawardena and Kodikara 2002). However, not long after Kumaratunga’s entrance into office, the SMF disbanded, apparently satisfied that they had achieved all that was possible. Respectability politics, which rests on idealizations of women’s proper station in the domestic sphere, likely

[ 170 ]  Maternality and the State

contributed to women’s full return to the private sphere (de Alwis 1998, 2012). The dangers of bargaining with patriarchy are clear when patriarchy insists that women are ideally suited to focus their attention on domestic concerns. Sri Lanka’s women’s movement has remained elite-​dominated, a fact sometimes blamed on the lack of attention to class and ethnicity issues and a focus on “women-​specific” issues such as rape. This may explain why groups such as the Mothers’ Front, which used women’s familial identities and concerns around economic issues, became such a success in a country with low women’s representation and low involvement by women in civil society (Jayawardena and Kodikara 2002). The Mothers’ Front sought to address women’s daily problems such as the loss of a husband or son after being disappeared and the economic repercussions of these disappearances (Wickremagamage 1999). While the Mothers’ Front ultimately failed to last or to develop significant cross-​ethnic solidarities, it was an important part of women’s political participation in Sri Lanka and could provide inspiration to future generations of female activists interested in creating a mass-​based women’s movement (de Alwis 1998, 2012).

TOWARD A CONCLUSION

In each of these three cases from different geographical regions of the world, our analysis has revealed how women’s “bargaining with patriarchy” by employing patriarchal discourses on respectable femininity and maternal identities enabled some women to engage, challenge, and resist the state. By using respectability politics centered around maternalism and the institution of motherhood, women have helped to advance democratization by challenging human rights abuses and have furthered women’s participation in politics. Political institutions in these three countries interact with religious and cultural conceptions of motherhood to provide women with social authority, often through respectability politics. In Argentina, Sri Lanka, and Egypt, women’s historically important roles as mothers foreground the view of women as pious upholders of religion and as being foundational to the stability of the family as well as the state. The political and social institutions in these contexts explain why motherhood remains an important feminized site of women’s political activity. The state’s politics of respectability, which marked mothers as more respectable than other women and other feminine identities, resulted in the co-​optation of women’s rights through state institutions responsible for addressing these rights. This gave the state the power to control

T r o u b l i n g C o n c e pt s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 171 ]

721

respectability discourses and thus the power to control women’s bodies and rights. The state reinforces respectability by extending protections, services, and political participation to women who conform to the norms of respectability, whereas it excludes these rights from the unrespectable women who breach these norms. State and societal dynamics in each case forced women to bargain with patriarchy in order to secure political gains in the cases we covered in this chapter, using—​and therefore reproducing—​ respectability politics. Because of the prominence of the politics of respectability, and in line with religious and ideological groups viewing women as the center of the family, motherhood became a powerful tool for political mobilization and contestation. State feminism can play an important role in women’s access to the political sphere. However, it can also be poorly funded by state regimes that seek merely to pay lip service to women’s rights. From the studies presented in this chapter, it seems that many women connect with their maternal identities and find “bargaining with patriarchy” through the navigation of their maternal roles an effective means of political mobilization and contestation. In drawing on religious and cultural narratives that emphasize women as mothers, women have been able to increase their participation in the political public sphere. As other chapters in this book point out, claiming motherhood as a political identity can be problematic in many ways because it can reinforce the same patriarchal structures that it is trying to challenge. It can also reinforce the superiority of motherhood over other feminine/​female-​identified subject-​ positions. Mobilizing as mothers allows women who fit the patriarchal state and society’s definition of respectable, pious women (e.g., the mothers) to occupy and engage in the political space (at least temporarily), whereas those who are not considered respectable are marginalized and vilified. However, we have presented here examples of political movements that have drawn on the politics of respectability to navigate and negotiate with patriarchal structures in order to slowly gain more visibility and to pry open those political spaces that might otherwise remain closed. REFERENCES Amar, P. 2011. “Turning the Gendered Politics of the Security State Inside Out? Charging the Police with Sexual Harassment in Egypt.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 13, no. 3: 299–​328. Amar, P. 2013. The Security Archipelago: Human-​Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Amnesty International. 2011. “‘Virginity Tests’ for Egyptian Women Protesters: Amnesty International USA.” https://​www.amnestyusa.org/​virginity-​tests-​for-​ egyptian-​women-​protesters/​.

[ 172 ]  Maternality and the State

Anderlini, S. N. 2007. Women Building Peace: What They Do, Why It Matters. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., and Tiffin, H. 2013. Post-​Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, 3rd ed. New York: Routledge. Baron, E. 2005. Egypt as a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bouvard, M. G. 1994. Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefiel. Bueskens, P. 2016. “Foreword: Matricentric Feminism Is a Gift to the World.” In Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism and Practice, edited by A. O’Reilly, xi–​ xvii. Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press. Carreon, M. E., and Moghadam, V. M. 2015. “ ‘Resistance Is Fertile’: Revisiting Maternalist Frames across Cases of Women’s Mobilization.” Women’s Studies International Forum 51: 19–​30. Cosgrove, S. 2010. Leadership from the Margins: Women and Civil Society Organizations in Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. de Alwis, M. 1998. “Motherhood as a Space of Protest: Women’s Political Participation in Contemporary Sri Lanka.” In Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, edited by P. Jeffery and A. Basu, 185–​202. New York: Routledge. de Alwis, M. 2001. “Ambivalent Maternalisms: Curing as Public Protest in Sri Lanka.” In The Aftermath: Women in Post-​Conflict Transformation, edited by S. Meintjes, A. Pillay, and M. Turshen, 210–​224. London: Zed Books. de Alwis, M. 2012. “Feminist Politics and Maternalist Agonism.” In South Asian Feminisms, edited by A. Loomba and R. A. Lukose, 162–​180. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. de Beauvoir, S. 2009. The Second Sex, translated by C. Borde and S. Malovany-​ Chevallier. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. de Mel, N. 2001. Women and the Nation’s Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Sri Lanka. New York: Rowman and Littlefield. DiQuinzio, P. 1993. “Exclusion and Essentialism in Feminist Theory: The Problem of Mothering.” Hypatia 8, no. 3: 1–​20. Enloe, C. 2000. Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fernando, W., Anuvinda, D., and Cohen, L. 2014. “Respectable Femininity and Career Agency: Exploring Paradoxical Imperatives.” Gender, Work and Organization 21, no. 2: 149–​164. Fox, G. L. 1977. “ ‘Nice Girl’: Social Control of Women through a Value Construct.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2, no. 4: 805–​817. Franceschet, S. 2004. “Explaining Social Movement Outcomes: Collective Action Frames and Strategic Choices in First-​and Second-​Wave Feminism in Chile.” Comparative Political Studies 37, no. 5: 499–​530. Franceschet, S., and Piscopo, J. M. 2008. “Gender Quotas and Women’s Substantive Representation: Lessons from Argentina.” Politics and Gender 4, no. 3: 393–​425. Franceschet, S., Piscopo, J. M., and Thomas, G. 2016. “Supermadres, Maternal Legacies and Women’s Political Participation in Contemporary Latin America.” Journal of Latin American Studies 48, no. 1: 1–​32. George, N. 2010. “ ‘Just Like Your Mother?’ The Politics of Feminism and Maternity in the Pacific Islands.” Australian Feminist Law Journal, 32: 77–​96.

T r o u b l i n g C o n c e pt s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 173 ]

7 4 1

Hatem, M. F. 1992. “Economic and Political Liberation in Egypt and the Demise of State Feminism.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24, no. 2: 231–​251. Helmes, E. 2003. “Gender Essentialisms and Women’s Activism in Post-​War Bosnia-​ Herzegovina.” In Feminists under Fire: Exchanges across War Zones, edited by W. Giles, M. de Alwis, E. Klein, et al., 181–​198. Toronto: Between the Lines. Howe, S. E. 2006. “The Madres de la Plaza de Mayo: Asserting Motherhood, Rejecting Feminism?” Journal of International Women’s Studies 7, no. 3: 43–​50. Hungwe, C. 2006. “Putting Them in Their Place: ‘Respectable’ and ‘Unrespectable’ Women in Zimbabwean Gender Struggles.” Feminist Africa 6: Subaltern Sexualities 6: 33–​47. International Crisis Group. 2007. “Policy Report: Sri Lanka: Sinhala Nationalism and the Elusive Southern Consensus.” Asia Report N*141. Inter-​Parliamentary Union (IPU). 2015a. “Argentina Date of Elections: 30 October 1983.” http://​www.ipu.org/​parline-​e/​reports/​arc/​ARGENTINA_​1983_​E.PDF. Inter-​Parliamentary Union (IPU). 2015b. “Argentina: Parliamentary Chamber: Cámara de Diputados: Elections Held in 1993.” http://​www.ipu.org/​ parline-​e/​reports/​arc/​2011_​93.htm. Inter-​Parliamentary Union (IPU). 2017. “Women in Politics: 2017.” https://​ beta.ipu.org/​resources/​publications/​infographics/​2017-​03/​women-​in-​ politics-​2017?utm_​source=Inter-​Parliamentary+Union+%28IPU%29& utm_​campaign=550dedbec7-​EMAIL_​CAMPAIGN_​2017_​02_​23&utm_​ medium=email&utm_​term=0_​d1ccee59b3-​550dedbec7-​258891957. Jaquette, J. 1994. “Conclusion: Women’s Political Participation and the Prospects for Democracy.” In The Women’s Movement in Latin America: Participation and Democracy, 2nd ed., edited by J. Jaquette, 223–​238. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Jayawardena, K. P., and Kodikara, C. 2002. “Sri Lanka: International Centre for Ethnic Studies.” In Women and Governance in South Asia: Reimaging the State, edited by Y. Tambiah, 421–​497. Colombo, Sri Lanka: International Centre for Ethnic Studies. Jefremovas, V. 1991. “Loose Women, Virtuous Wives, and Timid Virgins: Gender and the Control of Resources in Rwanda.” Canadian Journal of African Studies/​La Revue Canadienne des Etudes Africaines 25, no. 3: 378–​395. Johnson-​Hanks, J. 2006. Uncertain Honor: Modern Motherhood in an African Crisis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kandiyoti, D. 1988. “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender and Society 2, no. 3: 274–​290. Karam, A. 1997. Women, Islamisms and the State: Contemporary Feminisms in Egypt. London: Macmillan Press. Khumalo, K. E., McKay, K. H., and Freimund, W. 2015. “Who Is a “Real Woman”? Empowerment and the Discourse of Respectability in Namibia’s Zambezi Region.” Women’s Studies International Forum 48: 47–​56. Kohut, D, Vilella, O., and Julian, B. 2003. Historical Dictionary of the “Dirty Wars” of the Historical Dictionaries of War, Revolution and Civil Unrest, no. 24. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press. Lopreite, D. 2015. “Gender Policies in Argentina after Neoliberalism: Opportunities and Obstacles for Women’s Rights.” Latin American Perspectives 42, no. 1: 64–​73. MacGregor, S. 2006. Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and the Politics of Care. Vancouver: UBC Press.

[ 174 ]  Maternality and the State

McCay, K. 2017. “Hebe de Bonafini Reacts to Signs Placed on Plaza de Mayo: ‘I Will Blow Up the Casa Rosada.’ ” Bubble. March 17. http://​www.thebubble.com/​ city-​govt-​places-​sings-​covering-​madres-​de-​plaza-​de-​mayo-​headscarves-​hebe-​ threatens-​to-​blow-​up-​the-​casa-​rosada/​. Mhajne, A., and Whetstone, C. 2017. “The Use of Political Motherhood in Egypt’s Arab Spring Uprising and Aftermath.” International Journal of Feminist Politics 3: 54–​68. doi: 10.1080/​14616742.2017.1371624. Moreno, M. 2017. “On Andariegas, Carishinas and Bad Mothers: Challenges to the Political Participation of Indigenous Women in the Ecuadorian Andes.” In Mothers in Public and Political life, edited by S. Bohn and P. M. Y. Parmaksiz, 141–​166. Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press. Mungwini, P. 2008. “Shona Womanhood: Rethinking Social Identities in the Face of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe.” Journal of Pan African Studies 2, no. 4: 203–​214. Nasr, H. 2017. “Gender Justice and the Politics of Sexual Harassment in Cairo.” In Women, Urbanization and Sustainability: Practices of Survival, Adaptation and Resistance, edited by A. Lacey, 221–​245. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Noonan, R. K. 1995. “Women against the State: Political Opportunities and Collective Action Frames in Chile’s Transition to Democracy.” Sociological Forum 10, no. 1: 81–​111. O’Reilly, A. 2016. Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, Practice. Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press. Orleck, A. 1997. “Introduction. Tradition Unbound: Radical Mothers in International Perspective.” In The Politics of Motherhood: Activist Voices from Left to Right, edited by A. Jetter, A. Orleck, and D. Taylor, 3–​20. London: University Press of New England. Perera, S. 1999. Stories of Survivors: Socio-​Political Contexts of Female Headed Households in Post-​Terror Southern Sri Lanka, Vol. 1. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Women’s Education and Research Centre. Radcliffe, S. A. 1993. “Women’s Place/​el Lugar de Mujeres: Latin America and the Politics of Gender Identity.” In Place and the Politics of Identity, edited by M. Keith and S. Pile, 102–​116. London: Routledge. Radhakrishnan, S. 2009. “Professional Women, Good Families: Respectable Femininity and the Cultural Politics of a ‘New’ India.” Qualitative Sociology 32, no. 2: 195–​212. Rice, Xan. 2011. “Egyptians Protest over ‘Virginity Tests’ on Tahrir Square Women.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. May 31. https://​www.theguardian. com/​world/​2011/​may/​31/​egypt-​online-​protest-​virginity-​tests. Samuel, K. 1998. “Gender Differences in Conflict Resolutions: A Case of Sri Lanka.” Options 14, no. 2: 8–​16. Shepherd, L. J. 2010. “Sex or Gender? Bodies in World Politics and Why Gender Matters.” In Gender Matters in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations, edited by L. J. Shepherd, 3–​16. New York: Routledge. Steady, F. C. 2011. Women and Leadership in West Africa: Mothering the Nation and Humanizing the State. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sutton, B. 2010. Bodies in Crisis: Culture, Violence, and Women’s Resistance in Neoliberal Argentina. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Tadros, M. 2013. Politically Motivated Sexual Assault and the Law in Violent Transitions: A Case Study from Egypt. No. Evidence Report; 8. Institute of Development Studies (IDS).

T r o u b l i n g C o n c e pt s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 175 ]

761

Tadros, M. 2016. Resistance, Revolt, and Gender Justice in Egypt. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Taylor, D. 1997. Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War.” Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Thiranagama, S. 2011. In My Mother’s House: Civil War in Sri Lanka. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Thiruchandran, S. 2012. Women’s Movement in Sri Lanka: History, Trends and Trajectories. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Social Scientists’ Association. Thompson, E. 2000. Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon. New York: Columbia University Press. Waylen, G. 2000. “Gender and Democratic Politics: A Comparative Analysis of Consolidation in Argentina and Chile.” Journal of Latin American Studies 32, no. 3: 765–​793. Wickremagamage, C. 1999. “Sri Lankan Organisations for Women: A Critical Appraisal.” In Women and Politics in Sri Lanka: A Comparative Perspective, edited by S. Kiribamune, 143–​180. Kandy, Sri Lanka: International Centre for Ethnic Studies.

[ 176 ]  Maternality and the State

SECTION III

Gendered Labor and Maternality

78 1

CHAPTER 11

Feminist Politics Still Needs Motherhood AMANDA D. WATSON

W

hen I  found out I  was pregnant, even though it was intentional, I felt ambivalent. I wanted to have a family, but I did not want to become a mother. After some anxious reflection, made more unsettling by the precarity of being a pregnant body on the academic job market, I attributed my doubt to both a lifetime of responsibly tended internalized misogyny, and fear that gendered labor and related resentment would defeat me on having a baby. Acknowledging this could not mitigate the numbness of postpartum depression that came in dense waves following the birth of my first child. For the first year of my son’s life, I was unable to accept my unique new skillset as springing from my experience as a birthing person. Perhaps I worried that doing so would compromise my ability to think and theorize in an abstract, objective, academic way. Sadly, I suspected that becoming known as a mother might undermine my reputation as a feminist. My anxieties were reasonable. Maternal knowledge, and experiential knowledge in general, as feminists like Rich (1976) and Collins (1990) have tirelessly argued, is vital and devalued in the masculinized spheres of international relations, formal politics, medicine, and academic knowledge production. It is even overlooked in feminist critiques of these disciplines and literatures. As Robinson (2013) argues, “maternal thinking” should not be dismissed as gender essentialist or oppositional to intersectional feminist political aims. In fact, for Robinson, Ruddick’s (1989) Maternal Thinking, often dismissed by feminists as asserting some “essential” feminine Amanda D. Watson, Feminist Politics Still Needs Motherhood In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0011

8 01

nature, can serve as feminist political theory that “provides feminists with a critical resource for considering the ways that masculinist power can drive a wedge between ‘mothers’ and ‘feminists’ ” (Robinson 2013, 96). My reflections on the childbearing and rearing process now animate my scholarly work in feminist theories of care and motherhood, particularly when it comes to how to pursue short-​term strategies that improve access to support for women, nonbinary folks, and their families. In this chapter, I aim to make clear why feminists must retain and critique the institution of motherhood in order to better understand its disciplinary nature, and how it separates mothers from feminism, and women from each other and themselves. I proceed by outlining the constitution of care in global politics and what I  call the “trap of maternalism.” I  then apply this lens to two representations of motherhood that have appeared recently in popular media to show the need both for transnational feminist critique of motherhood as institution and for retaining the language of motherhood in order to democratize care and account for the needs of birthing people. Finally, I reflect further on the potential of maternal thinking to expand feminist notions of care in masculinized spaces. Messages about gendered responsibilities to care come from myriad venues—​from the clinical and policy-​driven sites of biomedical and public health prescription to the popular representation of “average moms” in the cinematic life of film, television, and advertising. Popular representation of the institution of motherhood presents an opportunity for feminist politics to critique and occupy motherhood as a strategy for rendering visible the stubbornly heteropatriarchal and colonial norms of care work. Here I provide a reading of two short film commercial advertisements that explicitly lay claim to motherhood: Fiat automobiles (2012) and Similac infant formula (2015). These ads are part of the discursive terrain that makes up the imaginary and disciplinary institution of motherhood. As Barthes (1957) offers in Mythologies, the symbols and interactions depicted and circulated through mass culture texts like advertisements do the work of producing and transmitting cultural values and language. For this reason, I stage a reading of popular and widely circulated advertisements and bring their signifiers to the surface for critique. The argument I  am offering, to stay with motherhood, is complicated by the disciplinary and exclusionary work done by the gender essentialist visions that mother evokes. Gender-​neutral language of parentage and birthing people importantly resists heteropatriarchal and white supremacist visions of nuclear family values in both national and global development arenas. But this de-​gendering also risks obfuscating the gendered and racialized realities of care work and the global care chain. Because care

[ 180 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

work is feminized, racialized, and devalued, moving on from motherhood may have the unintended consequence of erasing the unique needs and positions of maternal bodies. The institution of motherhood harbors so much disciplinary power and privilege that possibilities for resistance will be generated by engaging the institution and taking the needs of mothers seriously. Failure to do so may only further depoliticize motherwork and continue driving a wedge between mothers and feminists in our communities and politics.

THE POLITICS OF CARE

Care is a contested concept and an important place to start. Williams (2006b, 103) defines care work as the “activities and practices associated with meeting the needs of those who are unable to care fully for themselves, for example, younger people, older frail people, or people whose illness or disability is such that they need support for daily living.” The activities might be unpaid and carried out by a relative or friend inside the home, or they might be paid and provided through institutions or home-​ based services and volunteers. Care providers are mostly women, and through globalization and the marketization of care, middle-​class, often white families increasingly outsource care from racialized migrant workers, whose reproductive labor forms the foundation of their global citizenship (Parrenas 2015). Referred to as the global care chain, feminists critique the racialized and gendered logics implicated in the transfer of care labor from poor to rich nations and the fixing of care to female, brown bodies (Nyugen, Zavoretti, and Tronto 2017). Given different women’s disparate relationships to power, women’s incitement to care or outsource labor is embedded in the colonial legacy of the contemporary global care chain (Williams 2006b). Policies, government programs, and advertising that target the sexual division of labor (e.g., those that incentivize mothers and fathers to reduce their unpaid labor burden or expand their “leisure time” to account for care) have exploited migrant labor to fill the gap. Because of this, “care work has private, public, and global ramifications” (Williams 2006b, 105), which affect national citizenship relations and exploitative, colonial, international labor circuits. Complicating care chain literature, ethics of care scholars examine the concept and practice of care for its moral contradictions and its power to instate local and transnational forms of inequality (Nyugen, Zavoretti, and Tronto 2017). In both global care chain and ethics of care literatures, care is considered fundamental to feminist visions of autonomy and empowerment.

F e m i n i s t P ol i t i c s St i l l N e e d s M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 181 ]

821

Williams (2006a) makes plain that the way a society organizes care reflects its sense of the boundary between public and private responsibility. This conception has been useful for theorists of feminist citizenship who aim to centralize care and carers in theories of democracy (Tronto 2013). Williams’s definition has been problematized by disability scholars, though, who assert that this focus on the carer over those who receive care, as well as attention to the gendered nature of care labor, gives insufficient attention to the power inherent to the care relationship (see Fine 2007). As Kelly (2013) theorizes in her auto-​ethnographic study of her “frien-​tendant” (friend and attendant) relationship with a friend with physical disabilities, support activities can blur the lines between informal private service and formal publicly outsourced activities, and, given power imbalances and abuse, care can be defined as a form of oppression. Following feminist disability scholars (Clare 1999; Kelly 2013), I  approach the definition of care with some ambivalence. I  understand care to include the less easily measurable emotional and management practices associated with meeting others’ needs and, in some ways, meeting one’s own needs. Remembering this about care allows for feminist politics to engage literatures of wellness, self-​care, and home economics and to reject one-​dimensional notions of care between giver and receiver. The legacy of the heterosexual two-​ parent family structure also underlies beliefs about domestic versus paid labor, even as family and kinship structures and cultural values around families are changing (Williams 2004). This legacy stems from the normative sense that two-​ parent families are best for children, which hinges on a male-​centric and homophobic understanding of independence—​where nuclear families represent independent economic units (Young 1995). This ideology provides the foundation for endorsing state-​sponsored marriage promotion (while discouraging divorce) and devalues queer families as well as individuals who need support from others to survive. Even as, for example, gay couples are normalized and granted marriage rights and thus folded into the family group deemed deserving of certain entitlements, queer and racialized family forms are excluded—​sometimes socially and sometimes from material provisions (Halberstam 2012; Puar 2007). The inclusion of same-​sex couples in responsible family life is predicated on the exclusion of any real challenges to the private, nuclear family responsibility for care. While some theorists of feminist citizenship and care have advocated for a de-​gendering of care in order to improve women’s access to formal political and economic power (see Lister 2003), transnational feminists have underscored the contributions of community and social movements and protests to political action, even if those in power tend to term these

[ 182 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

demonstrations “disruptive” (Young 2000). I advance my analysis of the institution of motherhood with a fuzzy notion of what counts as women’s access to political participation because I cannot help but want to retain the importance of women’s access to both formal and informal political power as a necessary short-​term feminist goal. It is with this fuzziness in mind that I examine representations of mothers in popular advertising and ultimately argue that we need to “stay with the trouble” (Haraway 2016) of explicit sexist, heterosexist, and white supremacist tropes that characterize the institution of motherhood. In doing so, this project can disrupt white, cis, middle-​class notions of responsible motherhood and center the needs and experiences of mothers and birthing people.

THE TRAP OF MATERNALISM

Maternalism is the promotion of the essential values of mothers. The concept consistently emerges in popular discussions of women’s contemporary social roles and labor responsibilities. In postwar welfare settlements, women’s contribution to citizenship was through providing (unpaid) care, and their political contribution was to support male citizens’ political participation (by providing unpaid domestic labor). Working out of the binary between male-​citizen-​breadwinner and female-​noncitizen-​carer, theorists of feminist citizenship have been caught in what is known as the Wollstonecraft dilemma: the debate over whether to advocate for women’s equality through “gender-​neutral” prescriptions of citizenship or gender-​ differentiated responsibilities and rights of citizenship. Lister (2003), among others, argues for “collapsing dichotomies” of equality and difference in order to reveal their overlap, and inclusion for trans* identities and nonmaternal and disabled bodies. She suggests that feminists cannot afford to discard the principles of either equality or difference, but need to stop seeing them as opposing. Still, feminists are divided over the issue of diminishing gender and sexual difference in attempts to either raise women’s status as universal citizens or advocate women’s rights according to their essential, presumably shared, traits. I suggest that feminists may see the importance of conceiving of women’s needs and skills in series, where some forms of labor require a recentering of natal and intergenerational caring. Antimaternalism holds that women’s citizenship rights and responsibilities should not be linked to their reproductive status. Fiona Robinson’s (2013) work aims to close the divide between maternalists and critical feminist political theorists. Examining Conservative Prime

F e m i n i s t P ol i t i c s St i l l N e e d s M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 183 ]

8 4 1

Minister Stephen Harper’s Muskoka Initiative on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, which received a $7.3 billion endorsement from the G8 countries, Robinson argues that feminists reconsider Ruddick’s work as giving insight into the discursive construction of women globally, rather than as a normative ethic that asserts the authority of mothers. Collapsing women’s right to care and women’s gendered responsibility for care is a nuanced theoretical project—​but it is a necessary project for a number of reasons, including the fact that women who wish to or are made to have children currently engage in unsupported, unwaged labor, and women who do not reproduce for any number of reasons are framed in terms of their lack of reproductive labor or in terms of their (failed) potential to reproduce. In my examination of two commercial advertisements, I wonder how critique of the institution of motherhood and feminist and queer visions of kinship can be reconciled in both retaining and resisting gendered notions of motherhood. Bringing signifiers of motherhood to the surface here, I aim to bring feminist attention to how popular motherhood circulates in dominant cultural myths in order to effectively occupy and resist its techniques.

THE MOTHERHOOD

In December 2012, the Italian automobile manufacturer Fiat mobilized the “juggling mom” motif in a YouTube video advertisement1 that received more than 2  million hits in its first month. The three-​minute spot went viral across news and social media in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. “The Motherhood,” a hip-​hop parody about a professional woman encountering the adversities of mothering young children, features a slender, blonde, white, British woman. She is managing three blonde children, who are mostly contained to a living room furnished entirely in white. The spot fades into a spilling cereal bowl, continues with nods to countertop stickiness, laptop destruction by yogurt, and the slow erosion of glamour by leaking breasts, spit-​up, and “infant defecation,” and wraps up in stylish relief with the hip, practical, reputation-​saving Fiat 500L. The glistening (white) automobile reflects the mother’s sophisticated taste while containing her domestic chaos and her two (white) terrier “bitches.” Despite its popularity and somewhat polarized reception, this advertisement can be viewed as typical in the genre of “modern mom” media representations, and in fact was purported to represent the typical life of a mom. The most curious thing about the representation is, in fact, how it is deemed quintessential or representative when we know from distilling

[ 184 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

the content down to its component parts that “The Motherhood” only epitomizes our expectations of mothers in cinematic life. Outside of popular visual culture, we might expect the ins and outs of this mother’s day to look very different—​less white in a number of ways. This version of motherhood is distinctive and exclusive, particularly in terms of the privileged identity of the cis-​woman and her obvious affluence—​both of which we are encouraged to see and indeed relate to as typical and plainly middle class. The Fiat advertisement can be conceived as an entry point into a genre of media representations of white motherhood that construct motherhood as both exclusive to thin, white, wealthy, heterosexual, married women and common to the middle class. “The Motherhood” typifies what I have elsewhere called the “juggling mom” (Watson 2016), whose role friction and sense of dissonance we celebrate and satirize—​as the respectable story of a responsible woman who was once a self-​sufficient worker and is now, among some farcical obstacles, redirecting her devotions toward her family. For all that we understand recent representations of the juggling mother as standard (Basset 2005; O’Reilly 2010), this particular style of mothering and its myriad signifiers are out of reach for most women.

Signif iers

Pulling apart the symbols contained by a representation of motherhood tells us something about how we imagine mothers, and what this has in common or not with mothers in real life, as many others have noted in their discourse analysis of media motherhood (Collins 1990; Douglas and Michaels 2005; Hancock 2004; Stitt 2012). The Fiat advertisement’s obviously white and upper-​middle-​class prejudice is common in advertising where “the needs of capitalism and the traditional values of patriarchy are happily married” (Bartky 1990, 28). In addition to these facets, its compilation of symbols, all strategically assembled with the aim of selling a car to a newly discovered target audience, tells a detailed story of what it means to be a young parent today and plays on the idiosyncrasies of how this has shifted. From her modern living-​room decor to her Facebook activity, the mom of “The Motherhood” portrays a scrambling mother as the contemporary mothering ideal and, according to some critics, “gets real” with the “essence” of “modern motherhood.” It is easy to imagine how this portrayal is validating to many mothers who find themselves in the comedic throes of jugging labor, particularly when caring for young children is involved. But “The Motherhood” contains and plays on harmful tropes that reproduce status quo inequality

F e m i n i s t P ol i t i c s St i l l N e e d s M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 185 ]

8 61

and gendered responsibility to care in a number of ways. In the Fiat ad, we see the rapping mother in three outfits, two of which are pyjama sets. Her other outfit—​jeans and a cropped jacket—​show that she is (or at least was) casually stylish even though motherhood has made this look less comfortable. As she explains, “Still got my wardrobe, but my thong now itches.” Her casual wardrobe and the fact that she is breastfeeding (“I express like the best from these holes in my chest”) put this mother in the home doing domestic labor in the daytime, implying that she is taking at least some time off work, or her work responsibilities are taking backseat to her family at this time. Her laptop is shown in the living room with the children’s toys to signal that she now prioritizes the domestic setting but that her work and family responsibilities are intertwined. It is clear that her primary devotion at the moment is breastfeeding her baby, and when that is through, the dutiful mother has “a blender out the back” so she can responsibly “start up the weaning” with her homemade baby food. We do not see the mother dressed professionally, only knowing her juggling issues by the admittance that “work versus home is a mental combination.” Here she broadcasts how juggling labors puts strain on mental faculties, with “mental” doubling as ableist slang. In addition to her responsibility to her two children (a boy and a girl), this mother is presented as responsible to her pre-​childbirth figure. She riffles through current trends in diets (Atkins, Keto) and exercise (yogalates, Zumba, Pilates) to get her “bod back,” and links this expensive fitness regimen to her smart consumer choices:  “I try [to] avoid the bread so I  nearly never buy it.” These types of popular exercise routines are commonly couched in “fitspiration” mantras in other spaces (Hodler and Lucas-​Carr 2015; Nash 2011), and, as Lianne McTavish (2013) explains in her academic popular culture blog Fitspiration Brouhaha, are grounded in the neoliberal, fatphobic, and ableist ideology of individuals “taking care” of themselves. This ableist “taking care” is particularly feminized. As Bordo (1993) explains, discourses of “traditional femininity” include self-​mastery, denial of appetite, temporary embodiment of masculine toughness in the public sphere, suffering, and bodily transformation. Even though the Fiat advertisement encourages us to laugh along to this mother’s trial and error through dieting and exercise, we are still affirmed that she knows her responsibility to fitness, thinness, and nutrition despite becoming a mother. At its foundation, “The Motherhood” commandeers racialized tropes of criminality, rebellion, and risk from the hip-​hop genre; these include mention of holes in her chest, a bullet-​proof vest, time behind (crib) bars, house arrest, and the club in the ’hood. Within this cultural appropriation of genre and identity, the contents of the advertisement also invoke a white

[ 186 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

colonial sensibility in another way: through the mother’s turn to sterilization, cleanliness, and civility (Jacobs 2009; McClintock 1995). We see this mother as ultimately hygienic within the temporary mess of spilled cereal bowls: her “sterilizers so dope, all [her] bottles be gleaming.” The slang in this line in particular reminds us that this hip-​hop spot is ironic, calling up the recent trend of thin, rich, white women (e.g., Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Lily Allen, Katy Perry) to culturally appropriate hip-​hop by mocking black masculinity. At the heart of this satire is ridicule. The staging of the Fiat ad as a hip-​hop music video mocks in this vein: leaning on the car with her arms crossed and chin tilted upward looking tough, pelvic thrusts (although resignified, in this case), the popping of the hoodie, and gang signs. While satirizing the genre, “The Motherhood” mom affirms the class privilege and hypercivilized nature of white, responsible motherhood, and she does so in several explicit moments in case we miss it. Perhaps the subtlest signifier for contemporary motherhood in the Fiat advertisement is the presentation of the mother’s appropriate obsession with her children, which O’Reilly (2010) explains is unique to the context of recent intensive mothering. On the one hand, the mother escapes the motherhood prison for a book club, a metaphor that brazenly likens this affluent white woman’s domestic labor to being jailed in the context of the unprecedented size and scope of criminalization and incarceration of communities of color by the prison industrial complex (see Brewer and Heitzeg 2008; Sudbury 2004). On the other hand, she is also “flooding up your [Facebook] timeline with [her] baby news,” and proudly, though sarcastically, noting her new expert knowledge:  the difference between her child’s toy tractor and toy digger. She is attuned enough to be in on the joke of how silly is all-​consuming motherhood, but she accepts this devotion as par for the course and quips with reference to gang culture about it holding her captive: “once you’re in the club, you’re here for good.” Once again, this representation teeters on respecting a mother’s newfound expert knowledge as a carer, but only through mocking the knowledge and skills as beneath that of a formerly independent adult.

THE MOTHER ’HOOD

Fiat’s “The Motherhood” is not unique in style or strategy. In 2015, Similac, a popular brand of infant formula, released a hip-​hop parody with the nearly identical title—​“The Mother ’Hood,” making its racialized reference to the “hood” undeniable—​which received a stunning 4.5 million views in its first week. Similac’s umbrella campaign is called “Welcome to the sisterhood of

F e m i n i s t P ol i t i c s St i l l N e e d s M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 187 ]

81

motherhood”—​language that represents a commodification of feminism. The language also calls to mind the white feminist desire to achieve “sisterhood” by grafting all women’s experiences onto their white ones in pursuit of a “common cause,” raising a history of shattered partnerships between white and racialized women, able-​bodied and disabled women, and queer and cis women (see Williams and Chau 2007). The campaign strategy shows awareness of women’s role burdens as demonstrated in the seductive video tagline: “Feel judged as a mom? Now you can finally laugh about it. Watch and share if you can relate.” With this one candid phrase, giving women permission to have a laugh about their experience of surveillance and discipline, the campaign appreciates that mothers are on the brink of falling apart, and leverages women’s anxiety to appear the benevolent and sympathetic formula company. “The Mother ’Hood” is scored to a commercialized hybrid of hip-​hop and house music. It opens with eight frames, showing eight groups of parents with corresponding stereotypical “parenting styles” converging at a playground, including a group of breastfeeding mothers, formula-​feeding mothers, “executive” mothers in suits, “alternative” mothers with short haircuts (raising lesbian possibilities for these mothers), baby-​wearing mothers doing yoga, and formula-​ feeding fathers (shown barbequing meat!2). The cast exchanges stereotypical quips—​the script of the mommy wars (see Akass 2012; Crowley 2015), writ large—​until the “showdown” escalates and everyone charges toward the play equipment to fight each other. Caught up in the offensive, one mother accidentally lets go of her stroller, and the stroller and baby are shown tipping over the crest of the hill. The music cuts as a few characters notice the runaway stroller. All at once, the troop of parents rushes down the hill, forgetting their quibbles to save what really matters to all of them—​the baby.

Signif iers

Like the Fiat ad, Similac’s “The Mother ’Hood” reinforces and mocks intensive parenting at the core of contemporary motherhood. The ad reaches out to mothers, who are toiling under an emotional burden of juggling multiple labors while ultimately respecting the primacy of child wellness, and who can relate to the all-​encompassing feeling that the baby’s safety is paramount. The ad portrays the consumer accouterments—​breastfeeding covers; birthing pools; the newest in slings, carriers, and strollers; and cloth diapers—​of motherhood labor as comical. But the Similac ad joins the Fiat ad in separating motherwork from actual labor—​reproducing the

[ 188 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

1970s framing of caring about as a “labor of love” (see Williams 2006b) and relegating care work invisible to the economy (Federici 1975, 2012). The ad ends with the tagline, “No matter what our beliefs, we are parents first,” telling the story that women’s ways of juggling their labor burdens, especially the way they are under each other’s surveillance, are mere accessories to their real responsibility for the baby’s well-​being. The closing scene zooms out of a crowd of beaming parents around a safe baby in a stroller. Now that the baby is safe, their differences, which we now see as petty, no longer matter. Parenting work is effectively depoliticized.

STAYING WITH MOTHERHOOD

These ads provide enough ick factor for feminists that it is tempting to write off the institution entirely, but they contribute to the cultural imaginary of motherhood that women, including myself, cannot simply choose to ignore. I was afraid of becoming a mother for reasons related to the content of these ads, reasons that I now suspect might be common. I was afraid of what the concomitant new responsibilities might mean for my career, my friendships, my relationship with my partner, and my identity. I had been studying gendered responsibilities to citizenship for years, including the insidious and disciplinary features of contemporary motherhood, yet the word mother stuck to the roof of my mouth like a moth. Motherboard. Mothership. Motherload. Mother Earth. Mother Nature. Mothers against Drunk Driving. MADD, anxious, worried mothers. Doting mothers: women without a sense of the formal political arena or current affairs. Women who vote with their husbands. People who know the inputs and outputs of a household. Home economists. People who shop. It felt impossible to embrace the term “mother” in the context of these sexist stereotypes, even though I knew better. And despite having examined how neoliberal economic policies offload responsibility for health and wellness from the state to individual women, engendering public feelings of anxiety and depression that mothers are positioned to absorb, I hoped to distance myself from the real norms and roles that accompany “mothers” in the public imaginary. For example, I refused to accept needing to leave the office before other people—​at least, not on account of child care responsibilities. I  thought it might be more suitable and politically generative to be known as a gender-​neutral and less nuclear and biologically determinant–​sounding term like parent. Perhaps then my reputation as a productive worker would not be as tarnished. Perhaps then I could retain some part of my feminist, childfree, publicly activist self.

F e m i n i s t P ol i t i c s St i l l N e e d s M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 189 ]

9 01

My experience coming to terms with being known as a “mother” urged me to stay with the trouble of the institution of motherhood enough to critique its pillars and occupy its pathways in the context of various other patriarchal institutions. I tell this personal story to provide testimony that mediates the personal, social, and scholarly. The way that Cvetkovich’s (2012, 24) depression journals are the “formative crucible” for her scholarly work on depression as a public feeling, and how Ahmed (2014, 18) draws on her own experience of being charged with willfulness to develop the willful subject as a “sweaty concept,” my experience becoming a mother as I became a scholar has elucidated my conceptual work on the institution of motherhood, and helped clarify the political stakes of motherhood, scattered across local and global fields. The signifiers of contemporary maternal responsibility reflected in both ads are irritatingly familiar, only made strange by considering how far from “average” are the representations of lifestyle and struggle. It is no wonder feminists have distanced themselves from tropes of responsible motherhood that imply an apolitical complicity in status quo hierarchies of power and divisions of labor—​even as the burden of juggling paid and unpaid labor or devoting oneself to impossible standards of intensive parenting are mocked. It is not surprising that I wished to shirk the “mother” label in favor of language that will not implicate me in these scripts. But at the heart of my own refusal of, and even disgust with, the term mother was a deeply internalized misogyny—​reminding me that as a mother, I am primarily responsible to the domestic sphere. This responsibility would not be such a terrifying prospect if care work were valued or considered even proximate to a healthy democratic process and equitable civil society. In a recent (2018) lecture at the University of British Columbia, Anne-​ Marie Slaughter reminded an audience of mostly white-​haired, male political scientists that her liberation to pursue a career in leadership in International Relations came at the expense of valuing the care work of her own mother. Slaughter confessed her own sexism as she admitted that she has avoided referring to her mother as a “homemaker,” favoring instead the story of her mother as a professional artist. Both stories are true. Indeed, her mother’s homemaking allowed Slaughter to pursue training as a scholar and life as an intellectual and mother. In reflecting on how the intuitive pulls, labors, and rewards of motherhood and care work are not only ignored but also sniffed at in the field of formal political leadership, Slaughter was able to underscore the importance of a political project that challenges women’s own internalized misogyny with respect to their roles as mothers. A feminist aim to support the needs of birthing people irrespective of gender identity, while also centering alternative kinship structures

[ 190 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

and natality in discussions of health, law, and policy, benefits from this consideration. In the Q&A period following her talk, most questions related to statements she made about her family life, even though her talk pertained mostly to her recent academic book on statecraft.

CONCLUSION

Sometime before the birth of my second child in 2018, I  stopped being afraid of being known as a mother. Not only did I  begin taking pride in my intimate, though sometimes enervating, connection with a toddler, I developed a sense of my own needs related to my role as a mother that pertained to the health of my body, the intricacies and intimacies of my style of care work, my ambitions as a feminist scholar and activist, and my responsibilities as a parent, partner, and community member. Some needs were medical, others emotional, and others financial—​all political. Through participation in online communities of mothers, I came to value my own devotion to both my scholarly passions and the health and well-​ being of two tiny humans, and I realized the most surprising thing: though I’m more terrified of everything in the world, I  think more courageously since becoming a mother. Even as I write this, I fumble over the term mother and its undeniable implication of biological parentage and a gender binary (despite the fact that many moms do not relate to either). But in staging an interpretation and critique of popular representation of motherhood in Western advertising, alongside my reflections on the term, I  advance Robinson’s notion that maternal thinking can be generative of feminist political theory. Thinking critically through the language of motherhood helps us understand and destabilize the sociopolitical foundations that maintain a sexual and racial division of care labor, and hierarchies of power within households, despite feminist attempts to shift assumptions and social policy toward gender-​ neutral approaches to parenting and working for pay. Rejecting mothers results in a lost opportunity to educate those who are disciplined by the institution of motherhood, and who are participating in disciplining parents in general. There are two significant limitations to the argument I  am making, both of which echo the Wollstonecraft dilemma faced by feminist theorists of citizenship:  First, advocating for retaining the institution of motherhood as I  have represented it risks centering the experiences of white middle-​class women, rather than women of color, women in poverty, and queer and trans* women and families. Similarly, the argument to retain

F e m i n i s t P ol i t i c s St i l l N e e d s M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 191 ]

921

and occupy existing institutions echoes the classically white liberal feminist movement in its retention of the master’s house. To be clear, I am not advocating for a revision of white liberal motherhood ideals. The normative institution of motherhood is a target, not a starting point. As Indigenous scholar Sarah Hunt recently commented with respect to the Canadian federal (in)justice system, we can use existing institutions for short-​term protection of communities, bodies, and territory, but we cannot pretend that these institutions will serve radical ends (2018, personal communication, January 16). We can retain the institution of motherhood to unpack its implications and challenge both its power to exclude already disenfranchised parents and its power to resist patriarchal demands on mothers and parents. Maternal needs are yet unmet, particularly among black women in the United States and Indigenous women in Canada, and heteropatriarchal and colonial notions of the nuclear family reject, police, and threaten the survival of queer families who might be best positioned to dismantle punishing motherhood tropes.

NOTES 1. Retrieved on January 15, 2015 from http://​www.youtube.com/​ watch?v=eNVde5HPhYo. 2. The ad was lauded for including fathers, but by depicting the only men in the spot alongside a barbeque, the ad affirms the masculinity of these fathers as they partake in parenting. It invokes both the construction of masculinity using meat (Adams 2010; Nath 2011) and the barbeque in particular as a masculine leisure hobby (Deutch and Elias 2014; Molina 2014), safely aligning the possibility of fatherhood with traditional masculinity.

REFERENCES Adams, C. 2010. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-​Vegetarian Critical Theory. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group. Ahmed, S. 2014. Willful Subjects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Akass, K. 2012. “Motherhood and Myth-​Making: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the US Mommy Wars.” Feminist Media Studies, 12: 137–​141. Barthes, R. 1957. Mythologies. Paris: Les Lettres Nouvelles. Bartky, S. 1990. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge. Bassett, R. 2005. Parenting and Professing: Balancing Family Work with an Academic Career. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Bordo, S. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press.

[ 192 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

Brewer, R., and Heitzeg, N. 2008. “The Racialization of Crime and Punishment.” American Behavioral Scientist 51: 625–​644. Clare, E. 1999. Exile and Pride. Brooklyn, NY: South End Press. Collins, P. H. 1990. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Crowley, J. 2015. “Unpacking the Power of the Mommy Wars.” Sociological Inquiry 85: 217–​238. Cvetkovich, A. 2012. Depression: A Public Feeling. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Deutch, J., and Elias, M. 2014. Barbecue: A Global History. Chicago: Reaktion Books. Douglas, S., and Michaels, M. 2005. The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women. New York: Free Press. Federici, S. 1975. “Wages against Housework.” Published jointly by the Power of Women Collective and the Falling Wall Press. https://​caringlabor.files. wordpress.com/​2010/​11/​federici-​wages-​against-​housework.pdf. Federici, S. 2012. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. Oakland: PM Press. Fine, M. 2007. A Caring Society? Care and the Dilemmas of Human Service in the 21st Century. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave. Halberstam, J. 2012. Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal. Boston: Beacon Press. Hancock, A. 2004. The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen. New York: New York University Press. Haraway, D. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press. Hodler, M., and Lucas-​Carr, C. 2015. “ ‘The Mother of All Comebacks’: A Critical Analysis of the Fitspirational Comeback Narrative of Dara Torres.” Communication and Sport. doi: 10.1177/​2167479515583480. Jacobs, M. 2009. White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia 1880–​1940. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Kelly, C. 2013. “Building Bridges with Accessible Care: Disability Studies, Feminist Care Scholarship, and Beyond.” Hypatia 28: 784–​800. Lister, R. 2003. Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives, 2nd ed. New York: New York University Press. McClintock, A. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. London: Routledge. McTavish, L. 2013. “Fitspiration Brouhaha.” Feminist Figure Girl October 31. http://​ feministfiguregirl.com/​2013/​10/​21/​fitspiration-​brouhaha/​. Molina, H. 2014. “The Construction of South Texas Masculinity: Masculine Space, the Pico de Gallo, and the Barbecue Grill.” Identities 21: 233–​248. Nash, M. 2011. “ ‘You Don’t Train for a Marathon Sitting on the Couch’: Performances of Pregnancy, ‘Fitness,’ and ‘Good’ Motherhood in Melbourne, Australia.” Women’s Studies International Forum 34: 50–​65. Nath, J. 2011. “Gendered Fare: A Qualitative Investigation of Alternative Food and Masculinities.” Sociology 47: 261–​278. Nyugen, M., Zavoretti, R., and Tronto, J. 2017. “Beyond the Global Care Chain: Boundaries, Institutions and Ethics of Care.” Ethics and Social Welfare 11: 199–​212. O’Reilly, A. 2010. Maternal Theory. Toronto: Demeter. Parrenas, R. 2015. Servants of Globalization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

F e m i n i s t P ol i t i c s St i l l N e e d s M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 193 ]

941

Puar, J. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rich, A. 1976. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: W. W. Norton. Robinson, F. 2013. “Global Care Ethics: Beyond Distribution, Beyond Justice.” Journal of Global Ethics 9: 131–​143. Ruddick, S. 1989. Maternal Thinking. Boston: Beacon Press. Stitt, J. F. 2012. “Postpartum Depression as Bad Mothering in Popular Culture.” Mediating Moms: Mothers in Popular Culture 339. Sudbury, J. 2004. Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-​Industrial Complex. New York: Routledge. Tronto, J. 2013. Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice. New York: New York University Press. Watson, A. 2016. Women, Whiteness, and Responsible Reproduction in Neoliberal Times. Unpublished dissertation. University of Ottawa. Williams, F. 2004. Rethinking Families. London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Williams, F. 2006a. “ ‘The Personal and Political Ethics of Care,’ Concept.” Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory 16: 3–​7. Williams, F. 2006b. “Care Work.” In International Encyclopedia of Social Policy, edited by T. Fitzpatrick, H. Kwon, N. Manning, J. Midgley, and G. Pascall, 103–​106. London: Routledge. Williams, C., and Chau, S. 2007. “Notes on Feminism, Racism and Sisterhood.” In Under the Gaze: Centering Black Feminist Discourse in the Canadian Feminist Landscape, edited by N. Wane and N. Massaquoi, 285–​295. Toronto: Inanna Publications. Young, I. M. 1995. “Mothers, Citizenship, and Independence: A Critique of Pure Family Values.” Ethics 105: 535–​556. Young, I. M. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[ 194 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

CHAPTER 12

Privatized Bodies in Public Locations C-​Sections, Toddler Meltdowns, and the Neoliberal Gaze PENNY GRIFFIN

U

nderstanding motherhood as practices of mothering not necessarily limited to women’s or birthgiving bodies, I set out in this chapter to examine some of the ways in which the (normative) neoliberalization of public spaces enables, encourages, and reproduces motherhood. Choosing the examples of cesarean deliveries (C-​ sections) and public toddler tantrums to explore the function, form, and effects of the “neoliberal gaze” on motherhood, I  deploy a poststructural, political discourse analysis to deconstruct the implications of this gaze for motherhood and mothering. I  ask, specifically, how, where, and why human, mothering bodies are subjected to the neoliberal “gaze,” how this gaze on motherhood privileges certain forms of identity and practice over others, and how this influences, overtly and indirectly, the moral status of “mothers” in neoliberal societies. Neoliberal governmentality has been vastly effective in enacting its own self-​reproduction across divergent societies. The neoliberal gaze is “an invasive viewing, and in strong conflict with local culture and free expression,” and yet this gaze “maintains an uncanny ability to restructure individuals’ ” own value systems (Valentine 2015). This can be seen, I argue, in the normalization of highly invasive and potentially damaging medical procedures on mothering bodies; in the proliferation of public, regulatory techniques of surveillance; and in the individualization and social segregation of “mothers” themselves. I take as my starting point here those “small” Penny Griffin, Privatized Bodies in Public Locations In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0012

961

things about life as a mother (or as someone who practices mothering) in a neoliberal society in terms of how they represent two interwoven social elements: the achievement of an apparently limitless neoliberal reach, and the impacts of the prejudiced gaze of neoliberal authorities, including hospitals, supermarkets, cafés, trains, and day care centers.

SITUATING MOTHERHOOD IN THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

I begin in this chapter with the assumption that the intimate, commonsensical, mundane, and small things about life as a parenting body are intrinsically significant to, and essentially political in, the global political economy (GPE). As part of a broader project of feminist International Political Economy (IPE),1 discussion here considers how mothering bodies are positioned, through practices of exclusion, regulatory inclusion, and discipline classification, across the GPE, and in various ways. This is not just important work in IPE but also absolutely essential to understanding how the GPE functions and makes sense. Feminists and gender scholars have been asking how and why the labor of social reproduction matters in and to the GPE for many years now. While the meaning of “economy” derives from ancient understandings and practices of household management,2 somewhere in the mid-​twentieth century Economics became a “science” of knowledge, concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth. Officially, Economics has cast out the reproductive foundations on which it has developed historically and as discipline and practice. Reproductive labor, however, lies at the heart of our economic systems, practices, and processes. That it is unaccounted for, undervalued, and attributed only to women across the GPE is especially interesting to feminist researchers. Feminists have spent some time and care revealing the reproductive foundations of economic practices, structures, processes, and assumptions. Such foundations have gone almost entirely unaccounted for across not only mainstream (i.e., nonheterodox, nonfeminist) Economics but also in IPE, economic governance, and the politics and practices of development, including national systems accounting (see, e.g., Bedford and Rai 2013; Bezanson and Luxton 2006; Hoskyns and Rai 2007; Luxton 2018; Montgomorie and Tepe-​ Belfrage 2017; LeBaron 2010; Rai et al. 2014; Steans and Tepe 2010). Bedford and Rai (2013) outline three key components to social reproduction in feminist analysis: biological reproduction is “the production of future labour, and the provision of sexual, emotional, and affective services,” which

[ 196 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

are “required to maintain family and intimate relationships”; the “unpaid production of both goods and services in the home, particularly of care, as well as social provisioning” means that bodies work “voluntarily” to meet needs in the community; and the “reproduction of culture and ideology” acts to stabilize “dominant social relations” (Bedford and Rai 2013). As such, social reproduction sits at the heart of economic practice at all levels of social, political, and economic life and is “institutionalised through gendered labour, discourses, and the organisation of everyday life” (Bedford and Rai 2013, citing Laslett and Brenner 1989). As Elias and Roberts note, the concept of social reproduction has been especially significant in identifying and analyzing “the structural links between the global political economy and the everyday,” where both the experiences of economic power relations and the political economies of “smaller” pleasures, joyful acts, and everyday moments play a central role in the “living of gendered lives” (2016, 788–​791). Within feminist engagements with social reproduction, the sexual divisions that surround mothering are significant. While “motherhood” is often represented in reference only to women’s bodies, representations of mothers as “naturally loving and necessarily female” are, as Ruddick has so influentially described, cultural constructions (1994, 30). Mothering is “a kind of work,” or practice, but one that challenges conventional binary divisions “between work and feeling, labour and love” (1994, 34). Feminists have eschewed essentialist idealizations of women as mothers, focusing instead on mothering as a part of the (unpaid, undervalued) systems sustaining physical and emotional existence, where the “values of mothering attach to the performance of the task, not to the biology of the performer” (Mellor 1992, 52–​53). As a caring labor, mothering “is a relational work in which others’ responses serve as an intrinsic and primary measure of achievement” (Ruddick 1994, 34). In patriarchal societies, this work is often, but not always and not consistently, carried out by women, while women’s work as or identification with the role of mothers and nurturers has “justified their marginalisation within economic relationships” because their work simply does not count (Mellor 1992, 53). The following section explores some of the content of the neoliberal measuring of parenting and its implications for understanding mothering in neoliberalized spaces.

GOVERNMENTALITY, BIOPOLITICS, AND (NEOLIBERAL) MOTHERING

This chapter understands neoliberalism—​its structures, practices, and effects—​as discursive, embedded in social, economic, and political relations

P r i vat i z e d B o di e s i n P u b l i c L o c at i o n s  

[ 197 ]

9 8 1

that can be deconstructed through discourse analysis (Griffin 2009, 23–​ 24). Poststructural discourse analysis does not assume that all the world is either written or spoken, nor does it reduce “discourse” to language alone; rather, it presents the reader with theoretical frameworks based on interpretation, understanding discourse in political terms. Language “is not a transparent ‘window’ or ‘fact’ ” (Carver and Hyvärinen 1997, 2), and poststructural critique necessitates “understanding discourse beyond language, as both product and producer of social, political and cultural formations” (Griffin 2009, 23–​24, emphasis in original). The power relations of particular discourses manifest through a “governmentality,” in the Foucauldian sense, of biopolitics, or the play of technologies of discipline and regulation as they are experienced by bodies. Neoliberalism is a constructed discourse, invested in the regulatory control of social, economic, legal, medical, and governmental authorities that regulate people’s bodies. Although Foucault did not offer a gendered analysis of the procedures, or relations, that manipulate and regulate bodies, his work has become significant to gender and queer work in politics, international relations, and international political economy because, for Foucault, the body’s sex, gender, and sexuality are cultural constructs, rather than natural facts. This has been especially important to queer approaches and feminist critiques of gender essentialism.3 Foucault’s biopolitics understands and deconstructs the practices and processes through which bodies are governed (by various regimes of knowledge, power, and authority). The constant analysis, stocktaking, classification, specification, and quantification of human bodies are exercises of power. Biopolitics is, then, how we are governed: in fact, governance only works by regulating human bodies (although a good deal of academic discussion on world politics forgets that human bodies are essential elements). A highly intrusive but commanding discourse of acceptable sex ensures that a population behaves itself: this entails substantial effort, saying and not saying things about sex, allowing and disallowing types of speaker, authorizing and prohibiting types of discussion. A lot of work goes into making something, like sexuality, sex, and, in the case of this chapter, motherhood, seem invisible, so much a basic function of society that they are simply “common sense.” This is perhaps the biggest clue as to how much apparently trivial details preoccupy the structures of authority. In the case of motherhood, or practices of mothering, in neoliberalized societies, bodies are endlessly checked, tested, and modified, regularly and constantly, and through precepts, opinions, observations, medical advice, clinical cases, outlines for reform, plans for ideal institutions, and so on.

[ 198 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

Neoliberalism is, as Springer et al. note, a slippery concept: as a means of identifying a “seemingly ubiquitous set of market-​orientated policies” responsible for “a wide range of social, political, ecological and economic problems,” neoliberalism is often used both indiscriminately and pejoratively, without great clarity or critical purchase (2016, 27–​28). Preferring not to articulate particular countries, or states, as neoliberal per se, I adopt Dean’s approach, understanding neoliberalism as thought practice, embodied in the crucial distinction between the state and what we might call “the regimes of government of and by the state” (2014, 155, emphasis in original). Contra neoliberalism as “a pure and static end-​state” (Springer et al. 2016, 28), I prefer the term “neoliberalization,” concentrating on the governmental processes into which bodies are socialized. Thus, different regimes of governance adopt neoliberal measures in varying and distinct ways, such that bodies may be caught in practices, in institutions, or across spaces that are not strictly “neoliberal” but that may deploy neoliberalized understandings, habits, or meanings.4 While neoliberal governmentality is not necessarily evenly spread and experienced throughout the world, neoliberal practices constitute a broad arrangement of public and private discourses across space, time, and place. Some societies are more neoliberalized than others; bodies cross various spaces and pass in and out of variously regulated regimes of neoliberal governmentality. As the dismantling of welfare states in postindustrial societies and the widespread compliance with recognizably neoliberal precepts across country examples attest, neoliberal governmentality can be found, I argue, almost everywhere. Importantly, the powerfulness of the regulation, medicalization, and institutionalization of people’s bodies in and across neoliberalized spaces has made it profoundly difficult to engineer satisfying alternatives in political societies founded on foundational distinctions between public and private, productive and reproductive. Understood as dynamic, thought-​based, and process-​driven, what, then, does neoliberal governmentality mean for motherhood and mothering? In the following section, I analyze how and where human, mothering bodies are subjected to the neoliberal “gaze” and to what effect. I have chosen in this chapter two practical examples through which to interrogate the function, form, and effects of this gaze: the first entails the regulatory efforts of various industries on women’s bodies; the second involves the experience of internalized but publicly reproduced “shame” and shaming in spaces subject to neoliberal governmentality. In both cases, the biopolitics is similar, but the experience differs.

P r i vat i z e d B o di e s i n P u b l i c L o c at i o n s  

[ 199 ]

02

IMPLICATIONS OF THE “NEOLIBERAL GAZE” FOR MOTHERHOOD AND MOTHERING: MOTHERHOOD AS A TECHNOLOGY OF (NEOLIBERAL) GOVERNANCE

The “rules” of motherhood are sharply delimited by the subject-​position of “mother” in neoliberal societies (Shepherd 2013, 109–​111). Examining the subject-​position that mothering bodies are then allowed to occupy is significant:  the rules of motherhood dictate mothers’ “appropriate emotions” and the circumstances by which mothering bodies should mother (including appropriate childrearing environments, such as the nuclear family), and they also “apply constraints to the behaviours of” mothers, “in an effort to affect (and effect) productive socialisation of future generations” (Shepherd 2013, 110). Motherhood in neoliberalized societies is often drenched in sentimentality, moralizing, and anxiety, evoking an ethical positioning for mothering bodies, who have a “duty not only to [their] child(ren) but also to society as a whole to ‘mother’ ” effectively (Shepherd 2013, 110). As Cain argues, “post-​austerity” neoliberalism has further contributed to the politicization of children and their care, with existing anxieties around child safety, nutrition, health, and education positioned as “of vital public importance, despite the increasing privatisation of responsibility for families and children precipitated by the neoliberal asset-​stripping of welfare states and social infrastructures” (2016). Child welfare has thus become something of a “crisis” discourse, with experts, politicians and the public seemingly uncertain whether to blame parents for being “overanxious” or simply incompetent. As financial language creeps into the terminology of our closest relationships, the middle-​class child is a parental investment—​while others, such as migrant children and the children of benefit claimants, even working parents claiming tax credits—​are treated as social costs only. The terror behind the frantic aspiration of “intensive” middle-​class parenting is a fall into the social abyss reserved for “losers.” (Cain 2016)

While motherhood remains “inescapably linked to birth” and the act of birthgiving, feminists have also extended their conceptualizations of maternal subjects, as Shepherd notes, “to include those that do not physically gestate or deliver infants” and, more generally, the “bodies that undertake the emotional labour of forming attachments” (2013, 110). Since, across neoliberalized societies, more bodies than those that have given birth “mother,” many bodies are subjected to the regulatory, governing machinery of neoliberal politics. But not only this, since bodies outside

[ 200 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

the space of mothering occupy biopolitical roles: judging parenting behavior; allowing and disallowing types of speech, practice, or approach; and creating or closing the space for alternative configurations of parenting.

The “Neoliberal Gaze”

Valentine defines the “neoliberal gaze” as “prying, self-​serving, and reductive,” capable of restructuring an individual’s own value system to fit its requirements (2015). As “an invasive viewing,” the neoliberal gaze identifies, categorizes, and seeks to profit from or subdue what it sees (2015). In line with Foucauldian thinking, I articulate the neoliberal gaze as both subjectifying and subjecting: simultaneously subjecting bodies to a powerful, regulatory gaze, but also creating bodies that are self-​directing, internalizing neoliberal values to be replayed on themselves and others. How people are told to breastfeed, to have a C-​section, or to silence their unruly offspring is a political enactment of social approval, with punitive consequences. What, then, is, or might be, “neoliberal mothering” under the neoliberal gaze? As Rose notes, Foucault’s work maintains a concern for two interrelated dynamics: the knowledges related to large populations (such as public health) and the practices related to individual bodies (such as diagnosis and evaluation) (Rose 1994, 48). Different “discourses and technologies of medicine,” Rose argues, are “inseparable from distinctive ways of constituting the human body,” and the “eyes of the medical gaze” and the “cognition of the individual subject” are thus inherently interconnected (Rose 1994, 48). Since neoliberal governmentality overwhelmingly understands and uses “gender” as coterminous with the category “woman/​women,” various bodies are routinely excluded from the spaces of mothering. This results in the overburdening of women’s bodies, as the “authentic” carriers of motherhood and mothering, and the frequent exclusion of unauthorized bodies from the practices entailed in and assumptions made about everyday mothering. In the sections that follow, I turn to C-​sections and toddler meltdowns as examples of how to read the neoliberal gaze. These are powerful illustrations of opportunities, both for the individualized governance of bodies and for the possibilities for resisting the gaze and all that it implies. Such opportunities are evidenced in the normalization of highly invasive medical procedures on mothering bodies and in the regulatory (dis) approvals of the neoliberalized public/​private spaces through which parenting bodies and their unruly offspring pass.

P r i vat i z e d B o di e s i n P u b l i c L o c at i o n s  

[ 201 ]

0 2

Motherhood as a Technology of Neoliberal Governmentality, Part One: Birthgiving and the Cesarean Section

Motherhood is intrinsically political. It is also, of course, social, economic, cultural, mediated, and (heavily) regulated. Consisting of practices “owned” but also troubled by gendered bodies, motherhood is not necessarily limited to women’s bodies or those bodies assigned the signification of mothering. What is made significant for this analysis are the many and various ways in which neoliberalized public spaces enable, encourage, and reproduce “motherhood” and what effects this has on bodies themselves. Thus far, neoliberal mechanisms of governance have fared poorly at imagining motherhood beyond the feminization of caring, nurturing, and maintaining families. Men in Australia, for example, are very rarely, if ever, invited to attend, or made to feel that they can ask to be present in, “mothers” groups. While mothers in Australia are individualized and located (actually regulated to remain) primarily in the home, literally, in the first months after a child is born, men are expected to treat parenting as a brief hiatus to lives centered on work and production. This is if men have access to parental leave at all, which in Australia is two weeks paid leave at the national minimum wage. Often, men in Australia take no parental leave at all. Birthgiving, often perceived as a task that is “women’s alone,” is connected to, but not interchangeable with, the task of mothering. As Ruddick notes, there are good reasons to separate mothering and birthgiving (1994, 36). Most obviously, to perform one activity is not necessarily to perform the other, though Ruddick also suggests that birthgiving has been much minimized in neoliberalized societies (1994, 36). As acted on women’s bodies, invariably through medicalized technologies, or as part of biological cause and effect, birthgiving remains “the one aspect of child care that men cannot undertake” (Ruddick 1994, 36). Perhaps more important to Ruddick is that the analytical separation of the categories creates a space in which “men can no longer excuse themselves—​any more than they can be excluded from—​mothering work” (1994, 36). The fatal link between birthgiving and mothering as a “natural” female destiny is thereby broken. Ruddick is critical of the “avoidable” maternal powerlessness of societies wherein “women of all classes are less able than men of their class to determine the conditions in which their children grow” (1980, 343). C-​sections are, in this analysis, a type of violence inflicted on birthgiving bodies that is both avoidable and so socially prevalent as to seem normalized. In this sense, they are the perfect opportunity to think about the biopolitics of neoliberal governmentality through the hospital’s treatment of parenting

[ 202 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

bodies. While women undertake the physical labor of birthgiving, male and nonmale partners are no longer excluded from the processes and practices of birthgiving. The increasing rates of cesarean births in the past thirty years and in many countries point to the removal of women’s ability to successfully execute their labor (in this case, birth) and the imposed powerlessness of birthing partners (who may or may not be the partner of the birthgiver). But this growth may also indicate a variety of additional factors, all of which interconnect and, often, reinforce each other: the need for hospitals, as corporate and legal entities, to control birthing outcomes; the disinformation circulated among women and men in birthing environments; and the disempowerment of everyday people in the face of high-​technology, medicalized environments. In Australia, the C-​section rate is 32 percent of live births, about 60 percent of which are planned. In comparison, C-​section rates in New Zealand and the United Kingdom are 20 and 22 percent respectively, 33 percent in the United States, and 16 percent in Sweden (SBS 2015). In China, while the C-​section rate peaked at a staggering 46 percent in 2008 (70 percent in some urban hospitals), the dismantling of China’s One Child Policy in 2013 has seen the rate of C-​sections fall to 35 percent in 2017.5 Australia’s rate far exceeds the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation of no more than 10 to 15 percent of live births, to be performed only “when medically necessary.” In fact, Australia has “one of the highest rates of caesarean births in the world” (SBS 2015). In 2017, Australia had also dropped to a paltry 104 out of 144 for health and survival in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index (from seventy-​two in 2016). This may also be because women’s longevity in Australia is decreasing (Robson 2017). In other countries, women continue to extend their life expectancy over men. No evidence exists to show that either maternal or newborn mortality rates improve when the rate of C-​sections exceeds 10 percent (WHO/​HRP 2015). Rather, the increased rate of surgeries exposes mothers and babies only “to increased risks of complications and injuries” (McCulloch 2018). A  C-​section is major surgery, carrying all the risks of this, including ongoing (physical and psychological) consequences:  pain, bruising, stitches, blood loss, blood clots, enforced immobility, infections, adhesions, bowel problems, problems with future fertility, the dangers of the anaesthetic, possible nerve damage, complications, damage to other bodily organs, breathing difficulties in babies, skin problems, damage caused to babies during the procedure, increased likelihood of requiring C-​section for future births, increased risk for various placenta complications, uterine rupture, hysterectomy, increased likelihood of early postnatal depression, and difficulties

P r i vat i z e d B o di e s i n P u b l i c L o c at i o n s  

[ 203 ]

4 0 2

with early bonding and breastfeeding (BabyCenter Australia 2015; WebMD 2015). Approximately two in 100,000 surgeries result in maternal death (WebMD 2015), increasing a woman’s chance of dying in childbirth by four in emergency surgery and three in elective surgery (McCulloch 2018). While the growing (global) rate “can be attributed to many factors, including more births among older women, multiple births through assisted reproduction, technological advances, as well as personal preference” (McCarthy 2016), increasing numbers of C-​sections are not improving maternal or infant mortality. Mothers often feel “bullied and coerced” into C-​ sections in Australia, according to Professor Hannah Dahlen, spokesperson for the Australian College of Midwives (quoted in SBS 2015). This can “be very, very subtle,” withholding from mothers “the full information” in order to move them in a direction preferable for medical professionals (Dahlen, quoted in SBS 2015). Private hospitals in Australia have a higher C-​section rate than public hospitals:  the increased caseload of patients for a private obstetrician-​gynecologist, estimated at around 300 patients per year, is “an incentive to manage through scheduled surgical births,” allowing professionals to take on more patients (and earn more money) while maintaining a “business hours” schedule (Dahlen, quoted in SBS 2015)). A C-​section also entails a prolonged period of care in the hospital subsequent to the procedure, for which the health funds of private patients pay handsomely. Obstetricians train, of course, for years to be surgeons, not midwives. While 98 percent of midwives in Australia are female (according to Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia data 2017), 51 percent of obstetricians are male, a repetition of gendered divisions of labor in the medical professions that have endured for centuries. Surgeons in Australia also enjoy one of the highest gender pay gaps in the country, at a whopping 63  percent (Irvine 2016). In countries “where midwifery-​led models of care are the norm, c-​section rates are low, or within the recommendations” of the WHO (McCulloch 2018). When we look at the countries in the world that have both low caesarean section rates and excellent outcomes for mothers and babies we find three things in place: firstly, midwives are the cornerstone of care, and obstetricians are only involved where there are complications; secondly, evidence-​based care is actually taken seriously; and thirdly, there are strong social policies supporting parenting in place. We could improve in all three areas in Australia. (Dahlen, quoted in McCulloch 2018)

While medically focused rather than midwifery-​led models of maternity care create an increased likelihood of C-​sections, most women in Australia

[ 204 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

also give birth in hospitals, which means that they will encounter “hospital policies that increase the risk of interventions during labour” (McCulloch 2018). These include inductions for “overdue” women and time limits on labor. In private hospitals, “where obstetricians manage care,” the rate of C-​sections “is double the rate in the public hospital system” (McCulloch 2018). Women and their families have little choice and are given limited options when giving birth in hospitals, and women often “feel pressured, or coerced, into procedures that are not necessarily evidence based, but exist because of hospital policy” (McCulloch 2018). C-​sections can save lives in the right situations and under the right circumstances: for emergency procedures, however, both mothers and birthing partners are effectively powerless, with no say in how their own or their partner’s bodies are monitored and intervened in. A Foucauldian engagement with neoliberal governmentality would consider this deployment of (increasing numbers of) surgical procedures to regulate birthing a core part of the “technical machinery” regulating people’s lives. The next section further explores some of the ways in which the neoliberalization of (this time, nonmedical) public spaces enables, encourages, and reproduces appropriate motherhood, and what some of the consequences of this might be. MOTHERHOOD AS A TECHNOLOGY OF NEOLIBERAL GOVERNMENTALITY, PART TWO: TODDLER MELTDOWNS AND THE (WITHERING) NEOLIBERAL GAZE

Foucault’s “technical machinery” of governmentality includes all kinds of institutions of governance, including schools, universities, hospitals, prisons, welfare systems, the judiciary, police, and so on. A  project of unsettling embedded and privileged systems of authority creates, itself, substantial opposition. Alternatives to neoliberal, heteronormative assumptions around creating, producing, and bringing up children tend to work well only when they complement, rather than challenge, core regulatory efforts to maintain productive neoliberal workforces. As such, the privatization of alternative caring, embodied, for example, in community-​based parenting support programs designed to enhance parent “functioning” and encouraging appropriate child development (see, e.g., Trivette and Dunst 2014), may help parents cope: it remains worth asking, however, what kind of capacity is being built, in both children and parents, by these initiatives and what assumptions are therefore reproduced by practices designed to make bodies respond “productively” to neoliberal demands.

P r i vat i z e d B o di e s i n P u b l i c L o c at i o n s  

[ 205 ]

0 62

While prisons, workhouses, and asylums have been well-​documented examples of regulatory apparatuses designed to punish and remodel the character of those who clearly transgress the rules of (neo)liberal governmentality, liberal civility has also been instituted through everyday strategies of “well-​regulated liberty,” especially because these strategies depend on subjects’ own internalization of their duties and responsibilities (Rose 1999, 72). The invention of technologies, such as town planning, to govern spaces and gazes is decisively important in the liberal and neoliberal governance of individuals who are otherwise at “liberty.” Mothering bodies cross and are subject to a variety of these projects of governance at all turns. Town and country spaces have been transformed into “well-​ordered topographies for maintaining morality and public health” (Rose 1999, 73), requiring a variety of self-​reproductive, normative gazes on people. In this, the modern-​day, middle-​Australia, semi-​urban toddler meltdown is a perfect example of the “diversity of inventions” that have allowed space to be opened to visibility and “locking each ‘free’ individual into a play of normative gazes” (Rose 1999, 73). Here, behavior is regulated not so much through direct custodianship but rather through the placement of a “grid of norms of conduct” over urban space, involving the imposition of clearly normative assumptions of normality and respectability. The family has long been targeted as “a site for political intervention” in neoliberalized societies, and parenting is a familiar scapegoat across neoliberal political strategies to reduce inequality and child poverty, as Gillies (2014) notes in relation to the UK’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission (now the Social Mobility Commission). Contemporary neoliberal governmentality is not out of sync with past efforts in this regard. Family life, though presented as private, has increasingly been placed in a position of public concern under the technical machinery of neoliberal governmentality, with state intervention in intimate family relations an “explicit and determined effort to mold and regulate individual subjectivity and citizenship at the level of the family” (Gillies 2008, 1080). Identified as a “prominent causal factor in poverty and social disorder” (Gillies 2008, 1079), “bad parenting” induces a bounty of neoliberal policy solutions for regulating and controlling childrearing practices and the bodies that labor them. While “bad parenting” is, in reality, the failure of institutional efforts to regulate parents and normalize appropriate parenting, it is easily packaged as the individually targeted criticism of parental bodies themselves. While “good parenting” constitutes the core of civil society, “fostering and transmitting crucial values to children, which protect and reproduce” notions of the common good, “poor parenting has come to be held accountable for a wide range of social ills, establishing an enduring

[ 206 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

link between the wellbeing and rearing of children and the welfare of society as a whole” (Gillies 2008, 1079–​1081). The abstract thinking that allows for gratification to be delayed (resisting an immediate reward for the promise of a future reward) is entirely absent from the imaginary of a toddler of any class, background, or location.6 Moreover, the concept of delayed gratification does not sit well in advanced consumer, neoliberalized societies. While the ability to delay gratification is linked to socially advantageous skills such as patience, impulse control, self-​control, willpower, and, ultimately, self-​regulation, none of these skills are the prized attributes of neoliberal consumers. In the United States, for example, the purchase of “discretionary” items (i.e., things that people do not strictly need but have decided they want) accounts for, at least, 70 to 80  percent of all retail (Danziger 2017). Higher levels of impulse buying have been found to be associated with “some” college (or other post–​high school) educational experience (Wood 1998). The tensions between (liberal) social acceptability and (neoliberal) consumerism run strong here. The toddler having a public meltdown in a shopping center because something was denied or not provided is an apposite study because they both challenge and co-​opt existing social mores. While a toddler cannot be expected to navigate and adhere to social niceties in neoliberalized spaces in the same way as an adult, the toddler’s parents are not excused. More than this, the parent is effectively responsible in that moment for the toddler’s disruption of liberal nicety and neoliberal consumption. Interestingly, although small people’s ability to learn self-​regulation is linked to positive separation experiences and practices, in public spaces, the parent should never be seen to remove themselves from their child. Whether a strategy to diffuse an extremely emotional toddler, or simply an attempt at preserving one’s own sanity, a parent who walks away from a screaming toddler commits the double larceny of (1) releasing a screeching, uncontrollable, slathering youngster within a regulated public space, and (2) failing to commit themselves to maximum due diligence in conducting their parental “duty” and thereby flouting the rules of (liberal) social decorum. While kidnapping by a stranger remains one of the rarest crimes, this normative, socially reproduced irrationality regarding children not being attended to adequately in public is compounded by the heavily mediated fear of “stranger danger,” a bottomless pit of stories of child abduction “near misses,” and even video-​making “pranksters” who publically shame unaware mothers by kidnapping their children while they pay for petrol. This “shame-​ spreading” and “fear-​ mongering” almost always attach to judgment of mothers, who are often (but of course, not always) the

P r i vat i z e d B o di e s i n P u b l i c L o c at i o n s  

[ 207 ]

8 0 2

primary caregivers of young children in societies where men’s parental leave remains something of a luxury.7 The function of shame and the stigmatization of “careless” mothers are a powerfully normalizing strategy of and for social regulation, clearly based in the shared assumption that “any mom who isn’t handcuffed to her kids 24/​7 doesn’t give a darn if they’re kidnapped or not” (LetGrow 2018).8 And so, in a situation where a small child is having a meltdown in public, parents have very few options, all of which will incur some level of social disapproval.9

CONCLUSION

I have used in this chapter two examples—​emergency C-​sections and public toddler tantrums—​to show how the neoliberal gaze reproduces and influences, overtly and indirectly, the regulation of “mothering” in neoliberalized societies. It is only through examining the work that is being done, at the most mundane levels possible, that the intricate regulation and reproduction relationship between the parental body, the child, and the neoliberalized space in which they are located is revealed. As such, this chapter takes its place among a body of feminist work that has exposed to proper scrutiny the “small” things about life, as a mother or as someone who mothers in a neoliberal society, showing how these matter, and intensely so. Both examples reveal characteristics of the neoliberal regulation of “private” bodies in “public” spaces that are generalizable and worth restating. First, both examples betray the intrinsic politicality of motherhood as practices subject to social scrutiny and public regulation. Second, both examples demonstrate the poverty of the technical machinery’s imagination of motherhood beyond the feminization of caring, nurturing, and maintaining families. Third, both examples reveal the tensions that characterize the relationship between liberal values of civility, individual liberty and protection, and the function of neoliberal governmentality in building in parents and children appropriately productive, consumption-​ based practices. In the case of surgical procedures replacing labor, the overuse of C-​ sections highlights the subjectification of the human body at the hands of medicalized interventions, and the “avoidable powerlessness,” to return to Ruddick’s analysis, of parental bodies therein. When hospitals offer a mother a C-​section (in Australia, but elsewhere also), it is likely that they have reached a critical point for liability: this “offering” is steeped in the regulation of women’s bodies as objects of the neoliberalization of medicine,

[ 208 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

rather than as the subjects of their own physical autonomy. The example of the increasing use of C-​sections casts in strong relief the locations of power and responsibility in contemporary neoliberalized healthcare. It also exposes the pain that can be inflicted on lived bodies as they attempt to locate themselves in private, often corporate, heavily medicated and mediated practices over which they have little or no control. In situations of public toddler meltdowns, the internalized power of social disapproval and the stigma of shame, collectively enforced, weigh heavily. This example affirms the extent to which parenting is scapegoated by neoliberal political strategies, and the intimacy of political intervention in the site of the family. The “misbehaviors” of small people reveal no less than the workings of prisons, hospitals, and schools the reach of regulatory apparatuses in punishing transgressors of liberal civility. The apparent tensions here between (liberal) social acceptability and (neoliberal) consumerism attest to the fundamental tensions, and the actual bodily trauma these create, between the labor of social reproduction and the value limitations of neoliberal governmentality.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks are due the editors of this volume for their support and encouragement. A  draft version of this chapter was discussed at a wonderful panel organized by the volume editors for the 2018 International Studies Association Annual Meeting, in San Francisco. A number of audience comments have been most helpful in the setting out of this chapter, and I am hugely grateful for this engagement.

NOTES 1. Scholars differ in how they refer to their fields of research in the areas of international/​global political economy. I use “International Political Economy” (IPE) to designate the discipline in which I work, while the “global political economy” (GPE) I use to signal the locations of the relationships I analyze. 2. “Economy” descends most directly from the Old French word, économie, meaning “household management.” This was in turn adopted, of course, from the Latin word oeconomia, originating in the Greek word oikonomia. Oikonomia itself is a derivative of oikonomos, which combines oikos, or house, with nomos, which means managing. One of the oldest recognized written works in the field of economics is Greek philosopher Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, a book on farming and household management, considered a significant source for the social and intellectual history of Classical Athens. Oeconomicus emphasizes not only

P r i vat i z e d B o di e s i n P u b l i c L o c at i o n s  

[ 209 ]

0 21











household economics but also relationships between men and women, rural and urban life, slavery, religion, and education. Interestingly, and despite the Greek origins of the term, economics was not often a significant field of study for the ancient Greeks, who, despite the odd reference to matters economic, tended to be more interested in philosophy and ethics. 3. Or the attribution of a fixed essence to women and men, based on the assumption of core femininity or masculinity. 4. A private school in Australia that is also tax payer–​funded, for example, may seek to instill both traditional and modern values and appropriate social practices in its students, or subjects. While the school itself is not simplistically “neoliberal,” it embodies practices of neoliberalization that cultivate individual responsibility, competitive practice, or the assumption of the naturalness of markets to sit alongside “older,” but still liberal, ideas about civic virtue, community-​mindedness, mutual respect, and so on. 5. In China, medical malpractice is a criminal offense, and doctors have frequently performed scheduled surgeries rather than risk vaginal births (McNeil 2017). 6. Experts suggest that some children learn delayed gratification around the age of four, some suggest five. This is not a uniform and predictable developmental milestone among children, and many children struggle with this concept at all ages. 7. Kilgore (2018), a stay-​at-​home dad living in the United States, recounts a tale of being made to feel like a “hero” every time he took his two children to the supermarket. Kilgore suggests here that it is worth thinking about “the complexity of privilege,” including “how it operates on different levels—​ individual, interpersonal, institutional and structural.” This necessitates acknowledging the work that women have been so unappreciated in bearing the burden of for so long, while also “challenging sexist beliefs about parenting.” Numerous studies have linked maternal responsiveness during highly demanding times as crucial for the development of self-​regulation, self-​control and emotional competency. As far as I can tell, far fewer have examined paternal responsiveness, or assumed that male parents play a formative role in the child’s earliest social engagements or experiences of separation. 8. The point that “parenting” is often coterminous with women, especially in early childhood, and why this might be problematic, is not to argue that women should be deprived of spaces and resources that are theirs alone. The tagline, for example, for www.kidspot.com.au, a page about parenting, is “Millions of Mums. One Spot” (Kidspot 2018). Rather, it is only to point out that society mostly assumes that mother = woman = sole responsibility for the upbringing of responsible (neoliberal) citizens. This onus of responsibility, for both the normative input into and the socially desirable outcomes of children’s lives, places a ridiculously heavy burden on women, unaccounted for in all measures of national productivity. 9. BabyCenter Australia (written for the United Kingdom and published also in India with cursory modification) offers this advice to the parents of youngsters having tantrums: “When you must force your child to do something unpleasant or forbid something she enjoys, do it as tactfully as you can. When you can see that she is getting angry or upset about something, try to make it easier for her to accept” (n.d.).

[ 210 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

REFERENCES BabyCenter Australia. 2015. https://​www.babycenter.com.au/​a1029062/​ caesarean-​birth-​what-​are-​the-​risks-​and-​benefits. BabyCenter Australia. n.d. https://​www.babycenter.com.au/​a539847/​coping-​ with-​tantrums. Originally written for the UK by Penelope Leach. Accessed March 2018. Bedford, K. and Rai, S. M. 2010. “Feminists Theorize International Political Economy.” Signs, 36:1–​18. Bezanson, K., and Luxton, M. 2006. Social Reproduction: Feminist Political Economy Challenges Neo-​Liberalism. Kingston, Ontario: McGill–​Queen’s University Press. Cain, R. 2016. “Bringing Up Neoliberal Baby: Post-​Austerity Anxieties about (Social) Reproduction.” Open Democracy July 15. https://​ www.opendemocracy.net/​uk/​austerity-​media/​ruth-​cain/​ bringing-​up-​neoliberal-​baby-​post-​austerity-​anxieties-​about-​social-​repro. Carver, T. and Hyvärinen, M. 1997. Eds. Interpreting the Political: New Methodologies. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Danziger, P. N. 2017. “Why Instant Gratification Isn’t So Gratifying.” Forbes September 19. https://​www.forbes.com/​sites/​pamdanziger/​2017/​09/​19/​why-​ instant-​gratification-​isnt-​so-​gratifying/​#2978a1325725. Dean, M. 2014. “Rethinking Neoliberalism.” Journal of Sociology 50, no. 2:150–​163. Elias, J., and Roberts, A. 2016. “Feminist Global Political Economies of the Everyday: From Bananas to Bingo.” Globalizations 13, no. 6: 787–​800. Gillies, V. 2008. “Childrearing, Class and the New Politics of Parenting.” Sociology Compass 2, no. 3: 1079–​1095. Gillies, V. 2014. “Parenting is Not the Key to Tackling Inequality.” The Conversation. October 23. https://​theconversation.com/​ parenting-​is-​not-​the-​key-​to-​tackling-​inequality-​33260. Griffin, P. 2009. Gendering the World Bank: Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundation of Global Governance. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Hoskyns, C., and Rai, S. 2007. “Recasting the Global Political Economy: Counting Women’s Unpaid Work.” New Political Economy 12, no. 3: 297–​317. Irvine, J. 2016. “Australia’s Top 10 Jobs with the Biggest Gender Pay Gap Revealed.” Sydney Morning Herald June 9. https://​www.smh.com.au/​ opinion/​australias-​top-​10-​jobs-​with-​the-​biggest-​gender-​pay-​gap-​revealed-​ 20160609-​g pezg8.html. Kidspot. 2018. https://​www.kidspot.com.au. Accessed May 2018. Kilgore, B. D. 2018. “I Didn’t Understand Male Privilege Until I Became a Stay-​at-​ Home Dad.” Washington Post March 26. https://​www.washingtonpost.com/​ news/​parenting/​wp/​2018/​03/​26/​being-​a-​stay-​at-​home-​dad-​raised-​my-​ awareness-​of-​male-​privilege-​and-​i-​cant-​ignore-​it/​?noredirect=on&utm_​ term=.4607d53a54af. LeBaron, G. 2010. “The Political Economy of the Household: Neoliberal Restructuring, Enclosures, and Daily Life.” Review of International Political Economy 17, no. 5: 889–​912. LetGrow. 2018. “Dad Wants to Teach Wife a Lesson about Baby Snatching. Here Is the Horrible Way He Did It.” February 25. https://​letgrow.org/​dad-​wants-​teach-​ wife-​lesson-​baby-​snatching-​horrible-​way/​.

P r i vat i z e d B o di e s i n P u b l i c L o c at i o n s  

[ 211 ]

21

Luxton, M. 2018. “The Production of Life Itself: Gender, Social Reproduction and IPE.” In Handbook on the International Political Economy of Gender, edited by J. Elias and A. Roberts, 37–​49. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. McCarthy, N. 2016. “Which Countries Have the Highest Caesarean Section Rates?” Forbes January 12. https://​www.forbes.com/​sites/​niallmccarthy/​2016/​01/​ 12/​which-​countries-​have-​the-​highest-​caesarean-​section-​rates-​infographic/​ #2631c1365b19. McCulloch, S. 2018. “The Cold Hard Truth: Why Australia’s C-​Section Rate Is so High.” BellyBelly April 1. https://​www.bellybelly.com.au/​birth/​why-​australias-​c-​ section-​rate-​is-​so-​high/​. McNeil, D. G. 2017. “Study Finds Lower, but Still High, Rate of C-​Sections in China.” New York Times January 9. https://​www.nytimes.com/​2017/​01/​09/​health/​c-​ section-​births-​china.html. Montgomerie, J., and Tepe-​Belfrage, D. 2017. “Caring for Debts: How the Household Economy Exposes the Limits of Financialisation.” Critical Sociology 43, no. 4–​5: 653–​668. Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia. 2017. “Registrant Data, 1 October to 31 December 2017.” http://​www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/​About/​Statistics. aspx. Rai, S. M., Hoskyns, C. and Thomas, D. 2014. “Depletion” International Feminist Journal of Politics 16, no. 1: 86–​105. Robson, N. 2017. “What in the World? Australia’s Dramatic Drop in Women’s Health.” BroadAgenda November 10. http://​www.broadagenda.com.au/​home/​what-​in-​ the-​world-​australias-​dramatic-​drop-​in-​womens-​health/​. Rose, N. 1994. “Medicine, History and the Present.” In Reassessing Foucault: Power, Medicine and the Body, edited by C. Jones and R. Porter, 48–​72. London, New York: Routledge. Rose, N. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ruddick, S. 1980. “Maternal Thinking.” Feminist Studies 6, no. 2: 342–​367. Ruddick, S. 1994. “Thinking Mothers/​Conceiving Birth.” In Representations of Motherhood, edited by D. Bassin, M. Honey, and M. Mahrehr Kaplan, 29–​45. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. SBS. 2015. “Women Are Feeling Bullied and Coerced”: Australia’s Rising C-​ Section Rate.” SBS July 7. https://​www.sbs.com.au/​news/​thefeed/​story/​ women-​are-​feeling-​bullied-​and-​coerced-​australias-​rising-​c-​section-​rate. Shepherd, L. J. 2013. Gender, Violence and Popular Culture: Telling Stories. London, New York: Routledge. Springer, S., Birch, K., and MacLeavy, J., eds. 2016. Handbook of Neoliberalism. London, New York: Routledge. Steans, J., and Tepe, D. 2010. “Introduction. Social Reproduction in International Political Economy: Theoretical Insights and International, Transnational and Local Sitings.” Review of International Political Economy 17, no. 5: 807–​815. Trivette, C., and Dunst, C. J. 2014. “Community-​Based Parent Support Programs.” Encyclopedia of Early Childhood Development December. http://​ www.child-​encyclopedia.com/​parenting-​skills/​according-​experts/​ community-​based-​parent-​support-​programs. Valentine, B. 2015. “Masking against the Neoliberal Gaze.” UX: Art+Tech December 8. https://​openspace.sfmoma.org/​2015/​12/​masking-​against-​the-​neoliberal-​ gaze/​.

[ 212 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

WebMD. 2015. “What Are the Risks of a C-​Section?” https://​www.webmd.com/​baby/​ tc/​cesarean-​section-​risks-​and-​complications. Wood, M. 1998. “Socio-​Economic Status, Delay of Gratification, and Impulse Buying. Journal of Economic Psychology 19, no. 3: 295–​320. World Health Organization/​Human Reproduction Programme (WHO/​HRP). 2015. “WHO Statement on Caesarean Section Rates.” http://​www.who.int/​ reproductivehealth/​publications/​maternal_​perinatal_​health/​cs-​statement/​en/​.

P r i vat i z e d B o di e s i n P u b l i c L o c at i o n s  

[ 213 ]

4 21

CHAPTER 13

Raising Children in Strangeness Cosmopolitan Mothering and Domestic Helpers in Expatriate Families C ATHERINE GOETZE

F

or seven years I lived as an expat in China. It was my job, and associated visa, which brought me and my family to what we called a “small provincial town” with five million inhabitants, the city of Ningbo. I and my family were commonly regarded as an exception. Most expatriations are expected to depend on the man’s job; only a few expatriate families were led by female household heads (in research, too, skilled female migrants are underresearched; see Kofman 2004; Kofman and Raghuram 2015). Being an expat mother poses particular challenges to harmonizing mothering and working, as it does to negotiating life as a foreigner. Mothering in expatriate working contexts multiplies the fundamental sexual politics dilemma of difference (we’re mothers) and equality (we’re equal to men) (Pateman 1992). The chapter discusses cosmopolitan mothering as an attempt to negotiate the multiplication of this difference–​equality dilemma that occurs in migration. Some of these dilemmas are ubiquitous because they are structurally embedded in capitalist and patriarchal economies. In capitalist Western societies mothering is often individualized and leaves the mother with difficulties of situating herself as claiming equal rights as citizen and worker while also claiming her difference as mother and woman (DiQuinzio 2013, 1993). However, some of these dilemmas are specific to

Catherine Goetze, Raising Children in Strangeness In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0013

migration when difference and equality need to be negotiated across cultural, linguistic, national, and social boundaries. Mothering implies raising children into what Sara Ruddick called “social acceptability,” that is, “the production of a young adult that is acceptable to [the mother’s] group” (Ruddick 1980, 349). However, for expats (and migrants more generally), there is no natural and obvious group to which these mothers and their children belong. The “home country” might offer little orientation since the children also are often strangers in their parents’ home country: they might have never lived there (for thorough discussion, see Sander 2016). Inside their family there might also be contradictory and multiple standards of culturally defined social acceptability if the parents are again from different cultural and social backgrounds. For these children, and their parents, the native, locally rooted, and nation-​state constituted question, “Where are you from?” has no simple answer except for “The world is my home” (Gaspoz 2013; Grimshaw and Sears 2008). “The world is my home,” on the other hand, is the classical trope of cosmopolitanism. I  argue in this chapter that cosmopolitan mothering constitutes a response to the multiple dilemmas of equality–​difference: the feminist dilemma between mothering and work, the dilemma of being a privileged expatriate migrant but whose options to significantly shape her environment are largely out of her control, and the dilemma of homing in strangeness. Cosmopolitan mothering specifically allows bridging sociocultural divides because it requires translating between different and varying subjectivities: of the mother and child, but also of the family and its environment. Such translation or bridging experiences can be enabled and facilitated through a widening of family relationships with the strange environment as, for instance, represented by the integration of an other-​ cultured helper, a nanny, into the family. Yet, the “nanny question” (Tronto 2002)  represents another layer of the difference–​equality conundrum of feminism in general and in expatriation contexts in particular. Since families where women are main breadwinners do not simply inverse the traditional female–​male division of labor, working mothers are confronted with the difficulty that their professional work depends on the care work of another woman. Joan Tronto argues that the asymmetric relationship between nannies and mothers can have a deeply political effect on children. She warns that children will be “immersed into a racist culture” if these ethnic or national differences are translated into a tyrannical situation for the nannies (Tronto 2002, 39). Given the particularities of care work, such family tyrannies are much more likely to develop (Tronto 2002, 40). In expat situations this dilemma is reinforced through the enormous wealth differentials between the working

R a i s i n g C h i l dr e n i n St r a n g e n e s s  

[ 215 ]

621

mother and the nanny. This socioeconomic asymmetry can rapidly turn into a racialized inequality. Such a racialization might counteract the cosmopolitanism of expatriation. Instead of fostering respect for diversity and the capacity to tolerate ambiguity, having a nanny might lead to justifying and cementing global inequalities. I discuss in this chapter whether cosmopolitan mothering can prevent this. Cosmopolitan mothering has yet not been thought through, or empirically analyzed, despite the importance that has been attached to education in cosmopolitan studies (Igarashi and Saito 2014; Matthews and Sidhu 2005; Nussbaum 1994; Todd 2008). Yet, there the focus commonly has been on formal education in schools and universities. This reflects the habitual silencing of the home, family, and women/​mothers in political theory, where childhood and home experiences are either not considered at all or relegated to the status of illustrative anecdotes. These studies elude the question of where respect for diversity and tolerance should come from if not from family, early childhood, and “home.” Studies of expatriation, on the other hand, have also neglected and minimized the dilemmas of mothering in strangeness. A  number of studies have considered the question mainly under the angle of the socioeconomic asymmetry between hiring families and helpers, arguing that these practices are neocolonial. With this discussion of cosmopolitan mothering, I wish to nuance and rectify those analyses that see the hiring of domestic helpers by expatriates as reproduction of colonial practices. As will be argued further later, despite pointing correctly to the inequalities of global capitalism, such views are nevertheless flawed in the ways they see both expatriation and mothering. The observations of this chapter rely on an auto-​ethnography of my experience of hiring a nanny (“ayi” in Chinese) for my second child who was born during my seven-​year stay in China. In 2007, I was seconded by the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom to the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) campus to build up the School of International Studies. I  was accompanied by my partner and my eldest daughter. We lived on the university campus with colleagues from approximately thirty other countries. My eldest daughter went to an international day school. I  gave birth to my second daughter in Shanghai in 2011. Throughout the seven years, I kept a “field journal,” a personal diary, in which I noted my observations of living and working in China. When I was pregnant, my journal was dedicated to my concerns and observations about organizing day care. My notes reflect the cultural, ethical, and social conflicts that I confronted when my family hired an “ayi” for one and a half years. My personal experience of cosmopolitan mothering adds an inside

[ 216 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

voice to thinking about the role of mothering in globalization processes, specifically in expatriation, and with specific respect to the “nanny question.” As Adams, Ellis, and Jones point out, personal narratives are a method of choice to “inform readers about aspects of cultural life that other researchers may not be able to know” (2017, 2). My personal experience can illuminate practices and processes of mothering that outside accounts have either ignored or inadequately rendered.

CONTEXTUALIZING STRANGENESS, UNDERSTANDING EXPATRIATION

There are many terms to capture the familiarity of strangeness that comes with global mobility:  third spaces, transculturation, limbus or liminal spaces, or with respect to children, “third culture kids” (Anderson 1999; Bell-​Villada and Orr 2011; Hoerder, Hébert, and Schmitt 2005; Pascoe 1990; Pollock, Van Reken, and Pollock 2010; Trigo 2000). All of these signify how settled cultures flow into each other in the life space of a person and keep a migrant’s identity fluid. Most of these notions are predicated on the assumptions of a binary that postulates a “home” versus a “foreign” culture. They situate the migration experience somewhere in-​between and predominantly as an experience of “lack of . . .”: home, belonging, or roots, and tend to associate expatriation with traumatic experiences of loss (Cason 2018). All these notions exactly do not assume that a person can experience this space as one of belonging and of one’s own; one for which the contrast of home and foreign is not reducible to a binary and which is filled with a plentiful life experience of its own. The notion of home in English has a double meaning1: home can mean the country that the family is from with its culture, language, cuisine, customs and costumes, flag and anthem; and the site of everyday experiences, of the mundane, repeated, habitual practices of daily life, of the daily routines and interactions with immediate family and friends as well as the relevant institutions (e.g., school, workplace). Both understandings of home can, again, be multinational and multilayered. Because the meaning of “home” as the home country often slips through the fingers and memory of migrants, and is extremely difficult to transmit to children who do not experience that far-​away country as their home country, the other meaning of “home” as the site of everyday gains great importance (Hatfield 2010). Whether within the house or outside, this everyday homing is necessarily multinational, most often multilingual, and infused with many different cultural influences (Franke 2008).

R a i s i n g C h i l dr e n i n St r a n g e n e s s  

[ 217 ]

8 21

The difficulties of finding an appropriate name for this everywhere-​and-​ nowhere situation are similar to the difficulties of finding an appropriate term to describe the experience of families who have come to foreign countries settling temporarily and mainly for work (Farrer 2018; Kunz 2016). Much of the ethnographic research on expatriation insists that white people reproduce a sort of neocolonial whiteness and are associated with (unjustified) privilege (Coles and Fechter 2008; Debnár 2016; Fechter 2010; Fechter and Walsh 2010; Lundström 2013, 2014; Beaverstock 2002, 2012). This finding is often predicated on singling out and observing one particular high-​income group of expatriates who are sociologically, financially, and often nationally/​ethnically apart, like US managers in global oil industries (Fechter 2016)  or British bankers in Singapore (Beaverstock 2002). This specific socioprofessional group might be contrasted with “local” defined groups that are perceived and represented as poor and underprivileged. The focus on highly elitist forms of expatriation downplays the social, cultural, and professional differentiations among expatriates, and it ignores that expatriation is significantly conditioned by local laws, customs, social expectations, and authorities. Expatriation is voluntary and enabled through legal provisions that encourage and regulate temporary settlement in a foreign country. Thus, expatriates have sought-​after professional skills, and it is the host country’s demand that allows for their mobility (notwithstanding that the definition of necessary skills and qualifications relies in itself on a hierarchical world order of professions and training). This means that there is far larger diversity of expatriate professions than only high-​income managers and bankers. It also means that the migration process is conditioned by authorities external to the migrating family. A large variety of visa regimes exist for professional expats, depending on their professions, whether the employment is sponsored by a company or self-​initiated, whether the migrant is alone or with a family, and sometimes also depending on factors like health or age of the migrant (in China, for instance, different age restrictions applied to different professions, and certain health conditions were barred from visa). Contrary to the assumption of privilege, expatriates’ living conditions in the country are precarious because they depend on their work contracts (which are commonly fixed-​term) and often obscure and arbitrary immigration policies. Through the tight connection between residence permit and jobs, state, regional, and local authorities strictly control and manage migration flows, settlement, and living conditions of expatriates, particularly in China (Leonard and Lehmann 2019; Lehmann 2014). The large variety of working conditions and visa and residence permits that allow expats to stay in a country make it impossible to treat them

[ 218 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

as a homogenous group (Kunz 2016). Rather, expats form part of the urban middle and, if income allows, upper classes of global and globalizing cities—​what Hagen Koo has termed the global middle class, and this also with respect to their income (2016). The temporary upward social mobility that expatriates experience has to be seen in this context because it is more often the result of disparities between the purchasing power of their “home” salary and the local economy than by their salary as such. If their home country is an Organization for Economic Co-​operation and Development (OECD) high-​income country, and if their host country is a low-​income country, then an expat’s income locally allows good or even very high quality of life; but, the same income might situate them at the lower or middle income section of the middle class in their home country, and moving back home may imply a substantial loss of disposable income and a diminished sociofinancial status. Most accounts of expatriation fail to account for the family dynamics of navigating the precarities and uncertainties of expatriation, and they neglect in particular the role and importance of mothering (Cooke 2001). If expatriate mothering is reduced to “white mothers reproducing colonialism” (Coles and Fechter 2008; Fechter 2010; Lundström 2013), then the trailing spouses’ and children’s agency is reduced to being a reproductive accessory to the male breadwinner; their own agency—​of having to position themselves, negotiate and mediate their situations, and arrange themselves with their expatriate lives—​is obliterated. Such reduction further downplays the importance of mothering as caring, nurturing, raising, orienting, and socializing children and ignores the multiple dilemmas of expatriate women and mothers. Because expatriates are often acutely and even anxiously aware of the fixed term of their stay, “integration” and “assimilation” are not desired. Rather, the objective for the family is to be able to (re)connect to any future destination and/​or their home country (Ma 2019). This explains, for instance, the attraction of international schools that offer curricula in English or home languages because these are seen as less disruptive of the child’s educational trajectory than local schools with their foreign curriculum and language.2 Families will also more often engage in national holiday celebrations than they would back home in an attempt to infuse their family with “home traditions,” or participate in nationalizing activities like cultural days organized by their home country’s embassies or cultural organizations. These attempts to (re)connect represent the difficulties of juggling the many nonunitary references that define an expatriate’s family’s life at the same time as they often constitute ironic subversions of precisely the multiple strangeness of a multinational migrant family.

R a i s i n g C h i l dr e n i n St r a n g e n e s s  

[ 219 ]

0 2

COSMOPOLITANISM AND MOTHERING

Much of this process of navigating, translating, and mitigating strangeness is the responsibility of mothers, a task adding to already existing dilemmas and difficulties women experience when they need to position themselves as spouses, mothers, daughters, and former, future, or current working women in multinational and multicultural contexts. What Ulrich Beck called “cosmopolitan competence” is a crucial social practice of living the many dilemmas and conflicts that this positioning process brings (Beck cited in Bielsa 2016, 6). Cosmopolitan mothering means navigating the strangeness into which the family has been thrown, and it means also managing the strangeness that will, over time, settle within the family when the children develop their own communication and integration with the external world. Cosmopolitanism is, from a sociological point of view, a practice and a habitus of establishing a dialogical relationship between oneself and the other (Beck 2002; see also Beck and Grande 2007; Mau, Mewes, and Zimmermann 2008; Olofsson and Ohman 2007). Kwame Anthony Appiah calls it “a conversation across boundaries” (Appiah 2005, 267; 2007, 85). Contrary to universalism, cosmopolitanism reposes on the idea that differences between people, cultures, individuals, and ideas and norms exist, that eventually there is an impossibility of resuming or synthesizing these differences in a whole, and that, yet, understanding is possible. As Appiah says: I’m using the world “conversations” not only for literal talk but also as a metaphor for engagement with the experience and the ideas of others. And I stress the role of the imagination here because the encounters, properly conducted, are valuable in themselves. Conversation doesn’t have to lead to consensus about anything, especially not values; it’s enough that it helps people get used to one another.” (Appiah 2007, 85)

When conceived as a social practice of dialogue, cosmopolitanism is fundamentally relational, and it requires the capacity of the individuals in conversation to accept difference. It also requires the capacity to be silent over potential cultural value conflicts that would turn out as incommensurable if made explicit. The cultural clashes and dilemmas that need to be absorbed, mediated, and somehow solved in cosmopolitan mothering quite often interweave with the work–​life balance and female autonomy dilemmas that expatriation brings for working mothers. Mothering in expatriate contexts poses

[ 220 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

strenuous demands of negotiating and maintaining fragile balances within the family and between the family and its environment, and juggling a large variety of differences on many levels (e.g., family, work, culture). In my case, for instance, I was exposed to the typical women-​at-​work dilemma of balancing mothering with work (in a British-​Chinese institution with colleagues from more than thirty countries), and I had to balance mothering in a French-​German family in an internationalized (for my daughters’ live worlds) and Chinese environment. When women are the main breadwinners, traditional family divisions of labor are not simply inversed. Working mothers are not exempt from household duties in the same way as the traditional male breadwinner is. My household is no exception to this rule, and my partner and I  shared work and child-​raising duties. As with most trailing spouses, my partner had given up his job to join me in China. Yet, he did not intend to stay idle despite not having a work permit and soon found himself occupied with projects that were not salary work but nevertheless professional work. This is common for expat partners. Many engage in professional training charity work or in unsalaried work. Opportunities for spouses to find “their place” are crucial to the success of expatriations; in the absence of these, the expatriation is likely to fail and the family with it (Harvey 1998; Harvey and Wiese 1998; Lysova et al. 2015; McNulty and Moeller 2018). Consequently, when our second daughter was born in 2011, stay-​at-​ home dad “mothering” was not an option, and the question how to organize day care quickly became pressing. Nursery or preschool was nonexistent. Chinese and international preschool were both available only from the ages of three and two years, respectively; my maternity leave ended after the statuary three months. Our own family could not be mobilized, even if my partner’s mother had offered to come for some time. However, visitor visas to China were restricted to three months, and she was becoming too old to look after a baby or toddler. Initially, my partner and I  had resisted hiring a domestic helper. Our first daughter went straight away to school when we moved to China, despite this involving a two-​hour return bus ride on which my partner accompanied her every day for a year. We cleaned our house ourselves and did our shopping and cooking ourselves. We had mainly two reservations about following the very common practice of Chinese middle-​class families hiring a helper. For one, we were very aware of the political economy of care chains that exist in China nationally between cities and rural areas. My partner had participated in a summer student volunteer program where our university students would go to remote rural areas to teach in schools over summer. He had witnessed the difficulties and miseries of China’s

R a i s i n g C h i l dr e n i n St r a n g e n e s s  

[ 221 ]

2

so-​called “left-​behind children”; children who were raised by their usually overwhelmed grandparents because their parents had moved away to take up factory jobs. In China, inner migration from the Western rural areas to the Eastern coastal cities commonly allows for a substantial increase of income, but it leaves the left-​behind families highly vulnerable. We did not want to participate in this ambiguous economy. Another reason for our reluctance to hire a nanny was our awareness of the many cultural differences that we would need to overcome. Engaging with children, especially babies and toddlers, caring for house and family, and entering into our domestic intimacy would crystallize the culture clash in our encounter with China and the Chinese-​as-​other. The cultural shock to be expected would be not only between Westernness and Chineseness but also between very different social milieus. Most women working as ayis are rural women, most of the times barely literate, sometimes not even Mandarin speakers (or with a heavy accent),3 parochial, and generally poorly educated. We, on the other hand, are urbanites, mobile, globalized, multilingual but not Chinese speakers, and highly educated. Yet, all options considered, there was no alternative to hiring a domestic helper despite our disapproval of the hierarchical socioeconomic system that enables such employment. Cultural conflicts often niche in the very tiny happenings, the mundane decisions of the everyday, and the fuzzy inner space of the intimate. Consequently, care for little human beings consists of a continuous string of opportunities for cultural misunderstandings and disagreements. For outsiders, these cultural encounters often go unnoticed or are not recognized in the importance they have for the families and mothers living them because they happen in an infinitesimally small universe where everyday life is absorbed entirely by utterly ordinary life practices like keeping children clean and their environment hygienic, testing the temperature of the bathwater, providing food and comfort, monitoring sleep patterns and digestive behaviors, or picking up dropped toys. In practice, our cross-​cultural differences would play out over questions like whether the ayi should use the pram or carry babies and toddlers instead, whether children should sleep in the parents’ or ayi’s bed instead of their own cot, at what times children should be sleeping (six o’clock in the evening or whenever they’ll fall asleep) and for how long (one-​hour or three-​hour afternoon nap), whether the children should be fed while seated at the table or running around the house (with the ayi running behind them), what to feed them (carrot puree or rice congee), how often and at what times, whether to wash children in the morning or in the evening, or whether to let them play in the dirt or to keep their clothes clean and dry, whether cold weather requiring padded

[ 222 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

woollen jumpers and beanies means temperatures below 24º C or below 14º C, whether constant photographing of the children and spreading the photos on social media is acceptable or not, whether baby girls need to wear dresses and hairbows and baby boys blue clothes and miniature pistols to indicate their sex, whether babies should play on phones or on playgrounds, whether sweets are a treat for babies or should be avoided at all. These are just a few of the many socioculturally different viewpoints on raising children that popped up in our shared parenting with the ayi. Every single one of these daily problems potentially represents, in all their banality, a range of cross-​cultural misunderstandings and differences. These can become enormous if they become symbolic tokens of much wider issues like “good” motherhood or the value of a (new) human life, or, as particular to migration contexts, human belonging. They may become symbolic of the other dilemmas sketched out earlier, namely the family’s internal division of labor or the contradictory integration of expatriate families in the local economy. No matter what the family arrangement is, whether the mother has given up her job to follow the male breadwinner, or, like in our case, if the woman is the main income earner but the family arrangement avoids a reproduction of a traditional sex division of labor, there is a strong possibility that a mother will be accused of not appropriately caring for the child if she hires an ayi. Conflicts over appropriate daily practices of care, hence, may touch raw nerves because “talk of values, then, is really a way of talking about certain of our desires” (Appiah 2007, 21). Most particularly, when it comes to mothering strange children, we are talking about desires of caring adequately for children and being recognized for the efforts of making cultural shocks and dissonances less painful and disorienting for children. Mothering in strange contexts, therefore, requires defining terms of living together that prevent cultural conflicts from becoming conflicts over values and desires.

COSMOPOLITAN MOTHERING AND THE RELATIONAL SITUATING OF THE SELF IN SOCIETY

Because cosmopolitanism as a practice of living together is nonessentialist, it lends itself as an intellectual and moral framework for mothering in strangeness. Cosmopolitanism requires the acceptance of diversity and multiplicity. Cosmopolitan mothering is, hence, fundamentally based on the idea of de-​essentializing motherhood. This means that the value of the love and care brought to the child and family cannot be measured by some abstract, arbitrarily yet most often patriarchally defined yardstick of

R a i s i n g C h i l dr e n i n St r a n g e n e s s  

[ 223 ]

4 2

“good” motherhood. Cosmopolitan mothering has strangeness built into the challenge of giving love and care; it is entirely about navigating the family’s and child’s environment in order to be able to give love and care despite the fluidity and strangeness of the situation the family is in. Such an openness allows overcoming most conflicts over the myriad of small cultural conflicts that mark the daily lives of mothers, children, and ayis in China; such conflicts are overcome not by solving them but by letting them, on the contrary, stand as conflicts and contradictions. If cultures and care are not essentialized, the question of dressing, feeding, hugging, encouraging, and educating a child becomes a mere question of practical habits but not of values and desires. These processes of what I call navigating strangeness are nothing other than processes of learning and acquiring skills and knowledge in order to make bearable the conflicts that may arise out of these intersecting dilemmas. As the notions of conversation and dialogue imply, this involves positioning oneself in a wider web of social relations and communicating between differences. An important part of this was, in our case, the acceptance of the ambiguous position of being part of China’s economic and social fabric and to have only limited options to act on this situation. An important first step in accounting for the ambiguity of our position was to seek to hire an ayi under the best legal and economic conditions possible. The relationship between an employer and an ayi is by its very nature asymmetric, and ayis are, as most domestic workers, vulnerable to exploitation. In China, in particular, ayis can find themselves in an ambiguous residence situation. Officially, Chinese require a permit to move to other cities than their “hometown,” that is, their birthplace where they have residence status (hukou). Without this residence permit, workers do not have access to public services and can be “deported” at any time. Commonly, the hukou can only be moved from one place to another through the demand of the employer and under specific work contract conditions. Most low-​skill or unskilled jobs (like nannies) do not fulfil these. Yet, most cities tolerate migrant workers without hukou. In some cities, like in Ningbo when we lived there, migrant workers had access to local public services, and their residence status was recognized de facto. In other cities or at other times, migrants are expelled and “resettled.” Unskilled migrant workers are essential for cities to function, yet the precarity of their status is essential to their exploitation, too. Hence, our attempt to find an ayi with hukou was quickly frustrated because it conflicted with another necessity of employing a helper: the helper’s proficiency in Mandarin. Yet, unskilled women who had hukou in Ningbo were local from birth and with little formal education and hence were not Mandarin speakers. Mandarin-​speaking ayis with

[ 224 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

hukou simply did not exist, and ayi agencies do their best to obfuscate the question to such a point that it is, as a foreigner, impossible to know the exact residence status of the domestic helper. Our other attempt to act on the precarity of domestic helpers’ work was to ensure adequate pay and working conditions. Tronto (2002, 39) warns that “given the low levels of pay, the working conditions, and the high level of arbitrariness that employers can exercise, domestic servants are highly vulnerable to abuse.” The economic asymmetry of ayis and their employers, as well as their precarious residence status, indeed puts them, in principle, in a weak position to negotiate their salaries or working conditions. In terms of law, domestic workers have few resources to strengthen their position. Independent worker unions are not allowed in China, and the state-​or party-​managed worker unions are bound to certain industries and state-​owned enterprises. Since educational certificates and professional qualification are, among others, a prerequisite for party membership, very few unskilled workers are party members (which gives access to a number of services and, importantly, legal-​political backing). When we were staying in China, however, an additional factor bolstered the position of ayis. The supply of unskilled female labor was becoming short, and this put nannies locally in a favorable position to negotiate their contracts, working conditions, and salaries. With the growing demand and decreasing availability of unskilled workers, expatriate families were rivaling among each other, with Chinese families, and with factories or other service sector jobs. For us, this meant that in the time of one and a half years, we employed three ayis: the first left after two months when her husband found a better paying job in another city, and the second left after another six months for a job as cleaning personnel, which she found easier to manage than child care. Our third ayi left after our daughter enrolled in preschool at the age of two. All three had been hired through the intersecting channels of the local community network of ayis (of the families of UNNC staff) and the local expat agency. The agency provided a simple background check, basic training, and a pro forma contract and facilitated the initial interview. All three ayis spoke to other ayis in the neighborhood before or after the interview to obtain as much information as possible about us. For us, too, the community of ayis in the neighborhood was a crucial conduit of information on the ayi to be recruited and, after her departure, on her whereabouts and motivations. Given the difficulties of communication between ayis and families, and the overall precarious situation of the employing families’ stay in China, departures of ayis were a common cause of anxiety, distrust, and conflict. As with all care work, a particular bond is woven between the ayi

R a i s i n g C h i l dr e n i n St r a n g e n e s s  

[ 225 ]

6 2

and the children in her care, and this affective-​emotional bond is at odds with the market logic of competitive recruitment. This is a dilemma that complicates the employment situation not only for the employing family but also for the ayi, who has to seek to establish a close relationship with the child but who also has to keep a “professional distance.” Writing about nannies in Chinese middle-​class families in Shanghai, Su, Ni, and Ji (2018, 385) comment that “Raising urban babies often brings joy and a new sense of purpose to their (the ayis’) life. . . . Yet, building relationships with the children of urban families requires professionalism and caution, as not to invade the guarded territory of urban mothers. With work and life compressed into a single space, many boundaries are tested, and occasionally negotiated, between nannies and urban mothers.” The same need for caution and negotiated boundaries exist for nannies in expatriate families, except that the commonly shared affection and care for the child offer what is often the only line of communication for the parents and the ayi, given the language and cultural barriers. Offering a wage and working conditions that could rival factory or service sector jobs was therefore not only a matter of maintaining a decent employer relationship with the ayi but also a necessary condition of retaining the ayi over a longer time frame. Hence, we first offered a five-​day week with nine working hours (9 to 6) and a thirteenth month payment for Chinese New Year; the ayis insisted on a six-​day working week, and our third ayi moved her working hours to 8 to 5.  Her wage was comparable to a well-​paid factory job, and whenever we employed her overtime we offered her a higher rate of pay. Her wage and working hours were carefully negotiated with her and in consultation with other parents on campus in order to avoid undue competition between ayis in the neighborhood. Offering reasonable working conditions did, indeed, establish a relationship of respect between us, the employing family, and the ayi that eased the hierarchical relationship between employer and employee. Another important aspect of equalizing the relationship was to respect the ayi as a professional of child care in China, which in practice meant not essentializing linguistic and cultural differences and accepting that my mothering was necessarily incomplete, maybe inappropriate, and in need of outside help. The fact that I recognized my incapacity to stay in full control of my mothering practices placed the ayi into a relationship in which she could gain a position of (albeit limited) power over me and my family; recognizing the incompleteness of our motherhood also enabled solidarity among the two of us as working mothers. Beyond the recognition of us being women who have set children into this world, we also recognized each other in our vulnerability as mothers and as migrants.

[ 226 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

The ayi’s dilemmas were, indeed, situationally similar to mine in that her work (enabled through equal migration constraints to men) allowed her to live up to her (particular) mothering expectations:  her salary allowed her to bring her daughter to the city to go to school in Ningbo. Cultural differences and socioeconomic hierarchies do not disappear in such relationships, nor are they absorbed or silenced. On the contrary, they might be revealed even more sharply; yet, this makes awareness possible, which is, in turn, a condition of their toleration. As Appiah argues, cosmopolitanism does not make the strangeness go away, but it makes it familiar and, hence, tolerable (Appiah 2007, 78). The familiarity of strangeness and the practical enactment of contextualized togetherness take the stereotypical sting out of these interactions. Over time, the ayi’s and my differences in parenting appeared less and less as essentialist, cultural differences and more and more as individual caring styles, predicated and conditioned by our very different contexts of caring. Hence, the question of whether an outside temperature of 23° C required two or one pair of tights for the baby could not be resolved, other than through the practical experience of our ayi going out of the house with a one-​pair-​of-​tights baby to please us, and we, in return, pretending not to see when she sneaked into the house an hour or so later, after having born the reproaches of the other ayis on the playground, to get the second pair. Children, too, grow into this multiplicity, and not only in purely linguistic terms (my second daughter’s first words were in Chinese). The dialogue about the translation between and the daily lived experience of differences allows integrating this multiplicity and enables cultural code-​switching4. The simple fact that an ayi is of a different cultural, national, and eventually ethnic background is not enough to raise children in racist attitudes of othering; contrary to Tronto’s concern, the inclusion of an other-​cultured carer can provide a space for children to develop and feel accepted in their own multiplicity (similar to other mult-​national and multilingual spaces; see Moore and Barker 2012, Sears 2011).

CONCLUSION

Cosmopolitan mothering requires a certain capacity to “foreignize” one’s own situation, that is, to perceive, understand, and accept that my “I” is the extraordinary that requires translation into a familiar other (Venuti 2013). For me as a Western expat, this meant also to “minoritize” my position and to situate myself in a transitory, transnational, and ambiguous situation with respect to the ayi who would, should, or could take a dominant

R a i s i n g C h i l dr e n i n St r a n g e n e s s  

[ 227 ]

8 2

position as being the one who is “at home” (the concept of minoritizing oneself in translation is taken from Bielsa 2016). The ayi, on the other hand, was equally confronted with the requirement of “ceding” to our demands that might have seemed strange, incomprehensible, or even cruel in terms of caring for the child (e.g., the demand not to carry the child but to make her walk even if she was requesting to be picked up). Cosmopolitan mothering means situating oneself, one’s family, and the encounter with the other into a wider context of dialogue, exchange, and recognition. It smoothens the edges of the multiple dilemmas of equality and difference that are bestowed on working mothers in foreign lands because as mother, I  situate myself into a complex web of social relations. Consequently, cosmopolitan mothering allows for the coexistence of multiple facets in each of the multiple personalities one takes up: a mother, a working woman, a partner, and a culturally, socially, and also politically different person. Cosmopolitan mothering, therefore, provides an alternative to individualist feminist conceptions that represent all too often the choices between motherhood and work and between being at home and being a foreigner, as essential either/​or choices as if our identities were one, indivisible and atomistic. Since cosmopolitan mothering allows inscribing oneself, the ayi, and the children into a larger web of social and cultural links, it postulates individual incompleteness and complementation through the other, however defined. Cosmopolitanism recognizes the importance of maintaining and constantly renewing these communications across social or cultural boundaries without essentializing either individuals or communities. Mothering “in strangeness”—​in expatriate (or, more generally, migration) contexts—​ means navigating these relations for the sake of others. Cosmopolitanism is no panacea to globalized problems of structural socioeconomic hierarchies and injustice, but it offers ways and practices that allow individuals to juggle globalization’s multiplicity because it allows for incommensurability. Cosmopolitanism includes the possibility of silence because it imparts the necessity to accept the untranslatable as untranslatable. Particularly for migrants, cosmopolitanism offers the possibility to mediate between their many different life worlds and to establish relationships that integrate constant negotiations of the cultural clashes, conflicts, and encounters without requiring an absolute solution of the unsolvable. In the past, cosmopolitan political theory had been starkly criticized for its Eurocentrism and its liberalism, which make it appear deeply steeped in liberal and individualist traditions and give rise to universalist normative claims about world politics (see Fine 2007; Scholte 2014; for critique, see Bhambra and Narayan 2017; Calhoun 2002; Glenn 2000). Cosmopolitan practices like

[ 228 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

cosmopolitan mothering, however, emphasize the contextual and relational aspect of cosmopolitanism as a social practice or habitus of communication. The critique of political cosmopolitanism is certainly correct that it cannot rid the world of the socially stratifying effects of global capitalism or of the social, cultural, and racial segregation of global institutions (Bhambra and Narayan 2017); yet, social cosmopolitanism involves a strong reflexivity that opens up the possibility for critically questioning and rethinking precisely these dynamics.

NOTES 1. Other languages use separate words for the different meanings. In German, for instance, we use two different words for “home”: Heimat to designate the place of origin and Heim or zu Hause as the place of familiar, everyday life. 2. In China, the parents’ reluctance to school their children locally was additionally matched by the resistance of many local schools to enroll foreign children (even though they are legally obliged to do so) because they lack the resources to offer catch-​up or English-​medium classes. This was particularly the case for elder foreign children who do not speak, read, or write Mandarin. According to the national curriculum (https://​baike.baidu.com/​item/​全日制义务教育语文课程标准#2_​2), pupils should be able read 1,600 characters, and write 800 characters in grades 1 to 2; read 2,500 characters and write 2,000 characters in grades 3 to 4; read 3,000 characters and write 2,500 characters in grades 5 to 6; read 3,500 characters and write 3,000 characters in grades 7 to 9. 3. Mandarin Chinese is officially the national language of China; however, it actually is the language spoken in Beijing and surroundings (普通话，putonghua). Most Chinese speak local languages or dialects that have little to do with Mandarin. 4. Originally, code-​switching designates a habit of multilingual people to switch from one language to another within one sentence in order to use the most fitting words for the situation they are talking about. Commonly, the words of the minority language are fitted into the grammar of the dominant language.

REFERENCES Adams, T. E., Ellis, C., and Holman Jones, S. 2017. “Autoethnography.” In International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods, edited by J. Matthes, 1–​11. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Anderson, M. 1999. “Children in-​Between: Constructing Identities in the Bicultural Family.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5: 13–​26. Appiah, A. 2005. Ethics of Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Appiah, A. 2007. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Issues of Our Time. New York, London: W. W. Norton.

R a i s i n g C h i l dr e n i n St r a n g e n e s s  

[ 229 ]

0 32

Beaverstock, J. 2002. “Transnational Elites in Global Cities: British Expatriates in Singapore’s Financial District.” Geoforum 33, no. 4: 525–​538. Beaverstock, J. V. 2012. “Highly Skilled International Labour Migration and World Cities: Expatriates, Executives and Entrepreneurs.” In International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities, edited by B. Derudder, M. Hoyler, P.J. Taylor, and F. Witlox, 240–​250. Cheltenham, UK: Edgar Elgar Publishing. Beck, U. 2002. “The Cosmopolitan Society and Its Enemies.” Theory, Culture and Society 19: 17–​44. doi: 10.1177/​026327640201900101. Beck, U., and Grande, E. 2007. “Cosmopolitanism.” European Journal of Social Theory 10: 67–​85. doi: 10.1177/​1368431006068758. Bell-​Villada, G. H., and Orr, E. N. 2011. Writing Out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads and Third Culture Kids. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Bhambra, G. K., and Narayan, J. 2017. European Cosmopolitanism: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Societies, International Library of Sociology. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Bielsa, E. 2016. Cosmopolitanism and Translation: Investigations into the Experience of the Foreign. Translation Theories Explored. London: Routledge. Calhoun, C. 2002. “The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travelers: Toward a Critique of Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism.” South Atlantic Quarterly 101: 869–​897. doi: 10.1215/​00382876-​101-​4-​869. Cason, R. 2018. “Third Culture Kids and Paradoxical Cosmopolitanism.” In Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies, edited by G. Delanty. London: Routledge. Coles, A., and Fechter, A. 2008. Gender and Family among Transnational Professionals. Routledge International Studies of Women and Place. New York: Routledge. Cooke, T. J. 2001. “‘Trailing Wife’ or ‘Trailing Mother’? The Effect of Parental Status on the Relationship between Family Migration and the Labor-​Market Participation of Married Women.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 33: 419–​430. doi: 10.1068/​a33140. Debnár, M. 2016. Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DiQuinzio, P. 1993. “Exclusion and Essentialism in Feminist Theory: The Problem of Mothering.” Hypatia 8: 1–​20. DiQuinzio, P. 2013. The Impossibility of Motherhood: Feminism, Individualism and the Problem of Mothering. New York: Routledge. Farrer, J. 2018. “Critical Expatriate Studies. Changing Expatriate Communities in Asia and the Blurring of Boundaries of Expatriate Identity.” In Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations, edited by G. Liu-​Farrer and B. S. A. Yeoh, 196–​ 207. London: Routledge. Fechter, A. 2010. “Gender, Empire, Global Capitalism: Colonial and Corporate Expatriate Wives.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36: 1279–​1297. doi: 10.1080/​13691831003687717. Fechter, A. 2016. Transnational Lives: Expatriates in Indonesia. London: Routledge. Fechter, A., and Walsh, K. 2010. “Examining ‘Expatriate’ Continuities: Postcolonial Approaches to Mobile Professionals.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36: 1197–​1210. Fine, R. 2007. Cosmopolitanism. New York: Routledge. Franke, A. 2008. “A Transcultural Home? An Investigation into Notions of Home and Belonging among Third Culture Kids.” In Transkulturelle Praktiken: Empirische Studien zu Innovationsprozessen, edited by G. Koch, 127–​154. St. Ingbert, Germany: Röhring Universitätsverlag.

[ 230 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

Gaspoz, D. G. 2013. Une jeunesse au souffle de la mobilité internationale répétée. Etude exploratoire et descriptive de l’impact de l’itinérance géographique sur le développement à l’adolescence. Thèse de doctorat. Docteur ès sciences humaines et sociales, Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines, Haute Ecole Pédagogique Lausanne. Glenn, E. 2000. “Citizenship and Inequality: Historical and Global Perspectives.” Social Problems 47: 1–​20. Grimshaw, T., and Sears, C. 2008. “‘Where Am I from?’ ‘Where Do I belong?’:The Negotiation and Maintenance of Identity by International School Students.” Journal of Research in International Education 7: 259–​278. doi: 10.1177/​ 1475240908096483. Harvey, M. 1998. “Dual-​Career Couples during International Relocation: The Trailing Spouse.” International Journal of Human Resource Management 9: 309–​331. doi: 10.1080/​095851998341116. Harvey, M., and Wiese, D. 1998. “The Dual-​Career Couple: Female Expatriates and Male Trailing Spouses.” Thunderbird International Business Review 40: 359–​388. doi: doi:10.1002/​tie.4270400404. Hatfield, M. E. 2010. “Children Moving ‘Home’? Everyday Experiences of Return Migration in Highly Skilled Households.” Childhood 17: 243–​257. doi: 10.1177/​ 0907568210365747. Hoerder, D., Hébert, Y., and Schmitt, I. 2006. Negotiating Transcultural Lives: Belongings and Social Capital Among Youth in Comparative Perspective. Toronto, Canada: Toronto University Press. Igarashi, H., & Saito, H. 2014. “Cosmopolitanism as Cultural Capital: Exploring the Intersection of Globalization, Education and Stratification.” Cultural Sociology 8: 222–​239. doi: 10.1177/​1749975514523935. Kofman, E. 2004. “Gendered Global Migrations.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 6: 643–​665. doi: 10.1080/​1461674042000283408. Kofman, E., and Raghuram, P. 2015. Gendered Migrations and Global Social Reproduction. Migration, Minorities and Citizenship. Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Koo, H. 2016. “The Global Middle Class: How Is It Made, What Does It Represent?” Globalizations 13: 440–​453. Kunz, S. 2016. “Privileged Mobilities: Locating the Expatriate in Migration Scholarship.” Geography Compass 10: 89–​101. doi: doi:10.1111/​gec3.12253. Lehmann, A. 2014. Transnational Lives in China: Expatriates in a Globalizing City. London: Springer. Leonard, P., and Lehmann, A. 2019. “International Migrants in China: Civility, Contradiction, and Confusion.” In Destination China: Immigration to China in the Post-​Reform Era, edited by A. Lehmann and P. Leonard, 1–​17. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. Lundström, C. 2013. “ ‘Mistresses’ and ‘Maids’ in Transnational ‘Contact Zones’: Expatriate Wives and the Intersection of Difference and Intimacy in Swedish Domestic Spaces in Singapore.” Women’s Studies International Forum 36: 44–​53. Lundström, C. 2014. White Migrations: Gender, Whiteness and Privilege in Transnational Migration. New York: Springer. Lysova, E. I., Korotov, K., Khapova, S. N., and Jansen, P. G. W. 2015. “The Role of the Spouse in Managers’ Family-​Related Career Sensemaking.” Career Development International 20: 503–​524. doi: 10.1108/​CDI-​10-​2014-​0142.

R a i s i n g C h i l dr e n i n St r a n g e n e s s  

[ 231 ]

2 3

Ma, X. 2019. “Educational Desire and Transnationality of South Korean Middle Class Parents in Beijing.” In Destination China: Immigration to China in the Post-​ Reform Era, edited by A. Lehmann and P. Leonard, 67–​90. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. Matthews, J., and Sidhu, R. 2005. “Desperately Seeking the Global Subject: International Education, Citizenship and Cosmopolitanism.” Globalisation, Societies and Education 3: 49–​66. doi: 10.1080/​ 14767720500046179. Mau, S., Mewes, J. A. N., and Zimmermann, A. N. N. 2008. “Cosmopolitan Attitudes through Transnational Social Practices?” Global Networks 8: 1–​24. doi: 10.1111/​ j.1471-​0374.2008.00183.x. McNulty, Y., and Moeller, M. 2018. “A Typology of Dual-​Career Expatriate (Trailing) Spouses: The ‘R’ Profile.” In The Management of Global Careers, edited by M. Dickmann, V. Suutari, and O. Wurtz, 257–​290. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Moore, A. M., and Barker, G. G. 2012. “Confused or Multicultural: Third Culture Individuals’ Cultural Identity.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36: 553–​562. doi: 10.1016/​j.ijintrel.2011.11.002. Nussbaum, M. 1994. “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism.” Boston Review October 1. http://​bostonreview.net/​ martha-​nussbaum-​patriotism-​and-​cosmopolitanism. Olofsson, A., and Ohman, S. 2007. “Cosmopolitans and Locals: An Empirical Investigation of Transnationalism. Current Sociology 55: 877–​895. doi: 10.1177/​ 0011392107081991. Pascoe, P. 1990. “At the Crossroads of Culture.” Women’s Review of Books 7: 22–​23. Pateman, C. 1992. “Equality, Difference, Subordination: The Politics of Motherhood and Womens’ Citizenship.” In Beyond Equality and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist Politics and Feminist Subjectivity, edited by G. Bock and S. James, 17–​ 31. London: Routledge. Pollock, D. C., Van Reken, R. E., and Pollock, M. V. 2010. Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up among Worlds. London: Hachette UK. Ruddick, S. 1980. “Maternal Thinking.” Feminist Studies 6: 342–​367. doi: 10.2307/​ 3177749. Sander, M. 2016. Passing through Shanghai: Ethnographic Insights into the Mobile Lives of Expatriate Youths. Heidelberg, Germany: Heidelberg University Publishing. Scholte, J. A. 2014. “Reinventing Global Democracy.” European Journal of International Relations 20: 3–​28. doi: 10.1177/​1354066111436237. Sears, C. 2011. “Integrating Multiple Identities: Narratives in the Formation and Maintenance of the Self in International School Students.” Journal of Research in International Education 10: 71–​86. doi: 10.1177/​1475240911399262. Su, Y., Ni, A., and Ji, Y. 2018. “In the Middle of Two Separated yet Overlapped Spheres: Rural Nannies in Shanghai.” Chinese Sociological Review 50: 1–​23. Todd, S. 2008. Toward an Imperfect Education. Facing Humanity, Rethinking Cosmopolitanism. New York: Routledge. Trigo, A. 2000. “Shifting Paradigms: From Transculturation to Hybridity. A Theoretical Critique.” Unforeseeable Americas: Questioning Cultural Hybridity in the Americas 2: 85–​111. Tronto, J. C. 2002. “The “Nanny” Question in Feminism.” Hypatia 17: 34–​51. Venuti, L. 2013. Translation Changes Everything: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.

[ 232 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

CHAPTER 14

Celebrity Global Motherhood Maternal Care and Cosmopolitan Obligation ANNIKA BERGMAN ROSAMOND

T

he rise to prominence of celebrity culture and society is a key feature of our times. Mass audiences are exposed to photographic and textual projections of celebrities going about their everyday lives, taking trips abroad, appearing at award ceremonies and on TV shows, and engaging in humanitarian endeavors. As humanitarians and diplomats, celebrities are granted unique opportunities to shape the direction of the global ethical agenda and to determine who is to benefit from their activism. Common media narratives constitute female celebrities, who are wedded to the welfare and happiness of their own children and those of other nations, using the language of maternal care. Angelina Jolie, for example, is depicted not only as the mother of her own family, composed of biological and adopted children, but also a carer for all the children of the world. To be a celebrity increasingly comes with the expectation that you show cosmopolitan care and compassion for citizens and noncitizens alike. A key defining feature of such celebrity humanitarianism is the celebrity’s location within white and racialized privilege, while the recipients of her activism reside in the Global South. Celebrity global motherhood, then, is not innocent, nor is it entirely other-​regarding; rather, it could be defined as an exercise in cosmopolitanism that exhibits neocolonial undertones. In this chapter, I expand on my research on global motherhood—​a conceptual label that I employ—​to understand the ethical underpinnings of Annika Bergman Rosamond, Celebrity Global Motherhood In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0014

4 3 2

female celebrities’ global undertakings (Bergman Rosamond 2016; Shome 2011). This is an idea that I have previously used in the context of Angelina Jolie’s humanitarianism by noting that her lived experiences as a mother of six children (biological and adopted) combined with her mega stardom and privileged position in the world economy place her well to intervene in discourses and practices on global justice, rights and violence. Jolie is what we might define as a global mother seemingly having a dual sense of obligation to her own family and a notional family of humankind—​this narrative is strengthened by the online circulations of photographic images of the Jolie-​Pitt rainbow family holding hands at airports on their many travels across the world. (Bergman Rosamond 2016)

I locate the study of global motherhood within the ethics of care, broadly conceived, in particular by noting that that global expressions of the theory provide particularly fertile ground for thinking through celebrities’ maternal practices beyond borders. The research gaze here is on the maternal practices and discourses of Cate Blanchett (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] Goodwill Ambassador since 2016)  and Angelina Jolie (UNHCR Special Envoy since 2012), in particular their tendency to relate to refugees, through their personal experiences as mothers, their sense of cosmopolitan obligation, and the racial implications of their global engagements. Here my position is that cosmopolitan thought is abstract, is gendered, and prioritizes men’s moral reasoning rather than women’s ethical stories and experiences (Hutchings 2007). Nonetheless, cosmopolitanism can provide a productive framework for studying celebrity humanitarianism, in particular because famous people themselves resort to cosmopolitan-​ minded language in describing their activism (Bergman Rosamond 2015, 2016). The study of the other-​regarding acts of individual celebrities can reduce the abstraction inherent in liberal cosmopolitan theory by drawing attention to the persons who are ethically charged with various global transformative processes as well as the racialized (and neocolonial) implications of their global activism. This requires adopting an approach to cosmopolitanism that is “embedded” (Erskine 2007, 125) and sensitive to cultural difference and to the relationality of human life. At the center of maternal theory, by contrast, is the assumption that morality and ethical dialogue are relational and located within actual human interactions. Inspired by Fiona Robinson’s (2011, 2016) thought on the ethics of care and its application to global politics and human security, I here introduce the concept of maternal cosmopolitanism to define the global ethical underpinnings and domestically shaped maternal sentiments of celebrity motherhood.

[ 234 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

The chapter commences by contemplating the defining features of global motherhood and then goes on to survey feminist debates on the ethics of care, in particular efforts to globalize maternal theory (Robinson 1999, 2011). I note that the relationality of maternal theory provides a solid starting point for critically engaging with the flaws of universal ethical schemes that do not fully account for the moral stories and experiences of individuals, let  alone women. This is not to dismiss the ethical potential of cosmopolitanism, but rather to posit that it lacks sensitivity to women’s grounded moral storytelling and experiences as well as the ethical agendas of global activists, of which celebrities are one category. Drawing on feminist philosophy (Nussbaum 2000), I argue that cosmopolitanism can be rescued from its male bias and high-​level abstraction by studying the very individuals that adhere to its universalist logic and principles. More specifically, I note that cosmopolitanism tends to be the ethical and discursive platform on which celebrity global motherhood sits. In the latter part of the chapter I  unpack select texts that center on celebrity global motherhood, as pursued by Angelina Jolie and Cate Blanchett in the area of refugee policy. In particular, I focus on the ethical relationality of global motherhood—​a relationality that is mitigated within a dual cosmopolitan commitment to the celebrity mother’s own children and those of other nations. This involves investigating the discursive mechanisms employed by the two celebrities in relating to the stories of the inhabitants of the camp and seeking to disperse these to global audiences, and, as such, defying the abstraction of liberal cosmopolitanism in some way. After analyzing motherhood narratives, I offer a set of final reflections on celebrity care work, among other things, noting that though it appears to be motivated by care for others, it is often self-​ promotional and situated within the status quo of world politics as well as an essentialist notion of maternal care.

THE ETHICS OF CARE AND GLOBAL CELEBRITY MOTHERHOOD

Despite the growing awareness of gender being a social construction, celebrity mothers are visually and textually represented in popular culture as natural-​born carers of the vulnerable and displaced, and as such are assumed to possess unique caring skills. Women, and mothers in particular, are often depicted as innately peaceful, an assumption that has been robustly challenged by feminist International Relations (IR) scholars (Alison 2004, 2007; Åhäll 2015; Sjoberg and Gentry 2007). The essentialization of women’s peaceful qualities is rooted in the Western “tradition that

Celebri ty Global Motherhood 

[ 235 ]

6 3 2

assumes an affinity between women and peace, between men and war, a tradition that consists of culturally constructed and transmitted myths and memories” (Elshtain 1995, 4). Hence, there is a tendency among the world’s nations and leaders to assume that the ideal woman is a peaceful mother helping to sustain the nation by giving birth to its children and nursing its fragile citizens. The caring, peaceful mother narrative is also a representation reproduced and circulated in cultural representations of women, famous or not (Åhäll 2015), with Sjoberg and Gentry (2015, 71)  noting that “in academic and media accounts of women engaged in political violence, the women’s violence is often attributed to vengeance driven by maternal and domestic disappointments” rather than by “ideology.” As I  discuss later, celebrity global mothers are visually portrayed, across media, as other-​regarding souls wedded to the idea of global peace and security. What sets the caring global celebrity mother apart from her fellow women is her situatedness within financial and often racialized privilege, which affords her an ability to freely travel across the globe and spread the word of good international conduct, often in tandem with the international organization to which she is linked. To do so, she presumably relies on a (female) nanny or childminder, or several, who take charge of the celebrity family while she embarks on her humanitarian travels (Ehrenreich and Russell Hochshild 2003). The global celebrity mother, moreover, is part of a growing phenomenon of “white western women saving, rescuing or adopting international children from underprivileged parts of the world” whereby “white women’s bodies are spilling into the global community and offering visions and hopes of a multicultural global family” (Shome 2011). Thus, global mothers such as Jolie, Mia Farrow, and Madonna not only seek to vocalize the pledge of distant vulnerable others beyond borders but also actively seek to include those others into their own family structures (Mubanda Rasmusen, 2015). Global mothering is therefore both an other-​regarding act and an expression of neocolonial logics, the latter of which is a key marker of celebrity humanitarianism more broadly (Kapoor 2013). Next, I situate this discussion against the backdrop of a range of ethics of care arguments, in particular the ways in which some scholars have sought to globalize such contentions.

The Ethics of Care Revisited

Ethics of care arguments assume a strong link between the mother’s care for her children and her concern for individuals located beyond that

[ 236 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

immediate sphere (Ruddick 2002). According to this logic, the mother’s care for her children places her well to make moral judgments about the needs of nonmembers of her family. As I have noted elsewhere, the digital projections of Angelina Jolie’s mothering qualities across media settings center on her maternal care of her own family, composed of three biological children, all of American descent, and of her adopted offspring (Bergman Rosamond 2016). What is more, Jolie herself skillfully draws on her own experience as a biological and adopted mother in highlighting the experiences of children and their parents living in refugee camps. In line with ethics of care arguments, Jolie and those telling stories about her assume that there is a co-​constitutive link between maternal care for her own family and her ability to make moral judgments that often transcend her immediate emotional sphere. This logic is deeply racialized, with Jolie taking on board the role of white Western saviour not only of her own adopted children but also of those of refugee camps and conflict zones worldwide (Bergman Rosamond 2016). Though maternal care is strongly associated with women’s bodies, Ruddick and others insist that mothering is not a practice confined to women (Confortini and Ruane 2013; Ruddick 2002). Ethics of care scholarship has been inspired by social psychology, with Nancy Chodorow (1978) and Carol Gilligan (1993) being key figures. The broad idea within such work is that the morality of women and girls differs from that of men because it is pronouncedly situated within genuine social relations of care and nurturing and as such is less abstract and grounded in practice (Hutchings 2007). Gilligan (1993, 100) posits that “the moral imperative that emerges in interviews with women is an injunction to care, responsibility to discern and alleviate ‘the real and recognizable trouble’ of this world.” This challenges the largely male Kantian cosmopolitan assumption that we all belong to a universal moral order in which we have a shared capacity to conduct moral reasoning and, thereby, arrive at ethical judgments that are independent of our relational, intersectional attributes and subjective positioning (Bergman Rosamond 2013). At the heart of cosmopolitan ethical reasoning is also the idea that morality is universally applicable, rather than confined to a select few people living in our immediate locality, and, as such, national and other boundaries are artificial. Though caring for humanity at large is an admirable ambition, it is grounded in a notion of morality that is largely void of subjectivity and localized knowledge. In this context, “[c]‌are feminists argue that the apparently generic conception of humanity underlying the cosmopolitan ethics of enlightenment feminisms, is based on a masculine model of humanity.” (Hutchings 2007, 96) To get a little closer to the ethical deliberations of actual individuals, we need to situate our analysis within genuine social

Celebri ty Global Motherhood 

[ 237 ]

8 32

relations and listen to and seriously consider the contents of women’s and other historically silenced moral stories. Ethics of care scholarship provides good opportunities to investigate moral relations between individuals because it rests on a relational ontology that facilitates critical investigation of the constitution of ethical obligation through human interaction and practice (Robinson 2011). Though maternal theorists are vocal in their criticism of grand universalist schemes, they have themselves been critiqued for making essentialist assumptions about women’s caring qualities and distinct morality. Onora O’Neill (1992) criticized ethics of care scholarship for holding back women by assuming that women’s ethical aptness is particularly employable in the family sphere. As a consequence, women’s contributions to global justice, peace, and security are disregarded. Maternal care, if not reinterpreted within global ambitions, tends to read too much into the distinctiveness of women’s moral reasoning and experiences. Ethics of care arguments can reduce the abstraction of universalist ethical schemes by taking meaningful account of individual and localized moral stories and knowledge harbored by women and postcolonial subjects. This involves challenging the false association between women and care work by recognizing that men and those with a fluid gender identity are just as capable of global care work (Confortini and Ruane 2013; Ruddick 2002). As alluded to earlier, Ruddick never envisaged mothers to be the only caregivers, rather, as Carol Cohn (2013, 47) has noted, she wished to “develop a distinctive form of thought which arises from maternal practice.” Here Fiona Robinson notes that concerns over the essentialism of care ethics must be taken seriously, I would argue that it is only a narrow, orthodox, ethics of care—​the view of care as essentially a morality for women, belonging in the private sphere and valorising “dependence” over “independence”—​ to which these criticisms actually apply  .  .  .  clearly, the importance of an ethics of care, and its transformatory potential, does not, and indeed must not, rest on its association with women. While it is crucial to avoid undermining its feminist origins . . . the ethics of care is significant because it represents an alternative view of ethics which is relevant beyond the role of women within the family . . . ‘it’ extends beyond the personal to the political and, ultimately, to the global context of social life. (1999, 20–​23)

Hence, the ethics of care is more than “a morality for women”; it is a platform for thinking through domestic and global injustices by contending that “those who are powerful have a responsibility to approach moral

[ 238 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

problems by looking carefully at where, why and how the structures of existing social and personal relations have led to exclusion and marginalization” (Robinson 1999, 46). In the family setting, this might involve the mother caring for her offspring’s clothing and feeding her or listening to her concerns, while at the global level it might involve being attentive to the victims of violence, conflict, and poverty by uncovering their stories of exclusion and hardship. The ethics of care, moreover, builds on our ability to “recognise persons as concrete and unique” (Robinson 1999, 46) rather than as abstract and loosely connected through humanity. In her 2011 monograph, Robinson builds on her previous work by situating the ethical analysis within human security in order to explore “how our view of security in global politics would change once we recognize and accept not just interdependence among states but the ways responsibilities and practices of care grow out of relations of dependence and vulnerability of people in the context of complex webs of relations of responsibility” (Robinson 2011, 4). By contrast, purist positions on universal justice assume that we are all connected through our membership of a shared moral order, in which we adhere to the same generalizable moral principles of how to conduct ourselves ethically globally (Bergman Rosamond 2013). Lived everyday experiences, cultural variation, and subjectivities, as well as intersectional characteristics, have little significance in an ethical system defined by such universal rights and principles. However, “[a]‌feminist care ethics approach to security compels us to attend to the insecurities of ‘the everyday’ ” and in so doing asks us to take account of the ethical plight of marginalized groups (Robinson 2016, 117). Celebrity humanitarians often lack a concrete connection to the people on the ground, residing far away from the sufferers of war, conflict, and violence. In the absence of such close personal bonds, celebrities take up appointments in international organizations or embark on humanitarian journeys to show their sympathies and connect with local populations. Such visits figure in digital representations of Angelia Jolie on her many trips abroad: “[f]‌or many years I have visited camps, and every time, I sit in a tent and hear stories. I try my best to give support. To say something that will show solidarity and give some kind of thoughtful guidance. On this trip I was speechless” (CBS News 2015). Such texts and images add a personal touch to celebrity motherhood, when in actual fact there is little human connectedness between the star and those she seeks to help. However, as Fiona Robinson (2011) has argued, ethical dialogue requires the act of listening as much as talking. Angelina Jolie is often portrayed as a good listener, paying attention to the localized stories of those she encounters on her travels, and in so doing “realized how sheltered” she has been (Jolie

Celebri ty Global Motherhood 

[ 239 ]

0 42

2015a). In sum, an analytical framework, building on maternal theory, with the purpose of ethically evaluating the global ambitions of celebrity mothers has to include careful consideration of the individual’s ability to listen and take on board the moral stories and experiences of those she encounters, rather than limiting her discursive input to speaking on behalf of a notional humanity at the UN or elsewhere. Rather than discarding the ethical ambitions of cosmopolitanism, including world peace, sustainable development, human rights, and security, we might ask how the theory can accommodate local stories and experiences of morality to a greater extent.

CONTEXT AND ANALYSIS

Most scholarly accounts of global celebrity politics lack feminist analysis of global maternal care, though such studies carefully dissect the cosmopolitan (Cooper 2008; Bergman Rosamond 2016), neoliberal, privileged, and colonial (Chouliaraki 2012; Kapoor 2013; Richey and Bull Christiansen 2018)  underpinnings of celebrity interventions and celebrity diplomacy (Cooper 2008; Chouliaraki 2012). Seeking to develop my previous work on celebrity global motherhood, the objective here is to unpack the discursive links between the domesticity of maternal care and its global applications, which is the task in the second part of the chapter.

Cate Blanchett and Angelina Jolie: Celebrity Global Mothers

Both Cate Blanchett and Angelina Jolie are critically acclaimed artists known for their acting skills, star status, and humanitarian work. In addition, Jolie is a film director, often combining her artistic and humanitarian passions in her art. As highly visible celebrities, both actors have access to global mass audience and, as such, are able to influence the constitution of world politics, a process that has been amplified by the digitalization of media, politics, and celebrity culture (Bergman Rosamond 2016). Moreover, they both enjoy immense privilege within the capitalist global economy and global entertainment industry and also have elevated status within the United Nations (UN) framework through their appointments as UNHCR celebrity diplomats (Cooper 2008). Those roles within the UN add impetus and legitimacy to their diplomatic status (Cooper 2008). Both stars are frequently portrayed in global media outlets in stories depicting their many humanitarian trips to refugee camps and conflict zones under the flag of the UN. On those trips, they gather testimonies from the inhabitants

[ 240 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

of the refugee camps they visit, with the view of spreading awareness of the global refugee crisis across discursive fields. Judging from the sheer number of online articles, photographs, and video clips, there appears to be a growing appetite among global audiences for such stories. The speedy circulation of iconic images of the celebrity mother, caring for her own family while embarking on trips to foreign lands to bring attention to the suffering of distant other refugees, lends credence to her role as global care worker (Bergman Rosamond 2016). Cate Blanchett notes: “From my perspective, I feel an obligation to use my voice to speak up for those who are voiceless. It just so happens that my voice is able to reach a larger audience because of the fact that I have a public profile” (Town and Country 2017). In what follows, I will deconstruct a select few texts telling the stories about humanitarian ventures of Blanchett and Jolie. In doing so, I cast light on the ethical underpinnings of their efforts to care for and nurture refugees living in camps across the world.

The Cosmopolitan Discourse

Angelina Jolie and Cate Blanchett employ maternal discursive mechanisms in describing their cosmopolitan commitment to the refugees of the world. The semiotic distance between their pursuits of private and global mothering is seemingly reduced by their professed dual commitment to their own families and the children of other nations, which in turn lends ethical credibility to their activism. As I  have argued in the context of Jolie, “her maternal instincts are not visibly governed by biology alone, with several of her children being adopted, but rather a more universal notion of care, nurturing and protection” (Bergman Rosamond 2016, 107). In 2007 Jolie confessed that the birth of her biological daughter Shiloh left her less emotionally touched than the arrival of her adopted children Maddox, Zahara, and Pax, who “were survivors” while “Shiloh seemed so privileged from the moment she was born.” As such she had to remind herself of her biological daughter’s needs despite her lack of obvious vulnerability (nzhearld.co.nz 2007). Jolie’s commitment to the children (and other vulnerable subjects) of the world is reproduced, albeit on a smaller scale, within her own family structure. This is suggestive of a complex co-​ constitutive relationship between biological, adopted, and global forms of motherhood in the context of celebrity activism. In sum, adoption adds to the cosmopolitan celebrity narrative of engaging in borderless global mothering. Celebrity global motherhood, then, is a “discursive and inherently contested practice” (Managhan 2012, 4), and, as such, it “lacks

Celebri ty Global Motherhood 

[ 241 ]

4 2

definite boundaries and is open for redefinition” (Bergman Rosamond 2007, 2016). Though Jolie and Blanchett appear to view humanity at large as their moral constituency, their activism often centers on the welfare and security of women and children (Ruddick 2002). Global motherhood, then, is a key discursive theme constituting their global refugee activism, with Jolie (2017) noting: As the mother of six children, who were all born in foreign lands and are proud American citizens, I very much want our country to be safe for them, and all our nation’s children. But I also want to know that refugee children who qualify for asylum will always have a chance to plead their case to a compassionate America. And that we can manage our security without writing off citizens of entire countries—​even babies—​as unsafe to visit our country by virtue of geography or religion.

Jolie’s dual commitment to the maternal care in her family sphere and globally is present in her ethical reflections surrounding her 2016 visit to refugee camps in Jordan: “[t]‌here are children here who remember no life other than this harsh, desert environment and barbed wire fences. . . . There are teens here who bear terrible physical and mental wounds of the conflict—​over half of all refugees in Jordan are under 18. My own children are of that age. Like any other parent, it is impossible for me not to imagine what it would be like for my own children in this situation, and it breaks my heart” (International Business Times 2016). By identifying with the suffering of the camps through her own location within a large family composed of fairly young children, three of whom have been adopted from abroad, Jolie morally adheres to a broad cosmopolitan sense of obligation that disrupts national ethical boundaries. Yet, it is specifically maternal care for her children that helps her identify with the experiences and stories of the children of the camps in Jordan, in effect putting the relationality of the ethics of care into practice. However, this does not disrupt Jolie’s belief in cosmopolitan conceptions of rights and obligation, with Jolie noting that “[i]‌f we divide people beyond our borders, we divide ourselves” (Jolie 2017). What is more, Jolie’s children are increasingly written into the activist’s humanitarian travel stories:  several of them have accompanied her on her humanitarian trips to refugee camps. In 2018, her daughters Zahara and Shiloh came with her on a trip to Jordan, with the activist reporting that “[t]‌hey’ve spent time today speaking and playing with children their own age who have been forced from their homes, whose family members have been killed or have disappeared, and who are struggling with trauma

[ 242 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

and illness, but who at the end of the day are just children, with the same hopes and rights as children in any other nation” (UNHCR 2018a). Hence, Jolie identifies a strong link between her own children and those of the camp and, in doing so, reiterates her commitment to maternal cosmopolitanism. Further, Jolie’s narrative of self centers around not only the children and babies in refugee camp but also their mothers. Writing in the New  York Times, Jolie (2015b) expresses sympathy with the mothers of refugee camps, employing discursive mechanisms pertaining to maternal solidarity, with Jolie sharing the reflections offered to her by a mother in a camp: “What do you say to a mother with tears streaming down her face who says her daughter is in the hands of the Islamic State, or ISIS, and that she wishes she were there, too? Even if she had to be raped and tortured, she says, it would be better than not being with her daughter.” In keeping with the insights of the ethics of care, in particular in its global expressions (Robinson 2011), Jolie employs her maternal logics to grasp the hardships and suffering of the mothers in the camps. The discursive practices that Jolie employs are also present in Cate Blanchett’s personal reflections on her engagement with displaced people and refugees of various camps. The key nodal point of global motherhood is at the center of the Blanchett’s humanitarian story, with the activist expressing a clear preference for cosmopolitan justice and rights. In her words, “[a]‌s an artist, I’ve never been more conscious about the type of work one wants to make in times of crisis and in the face of moral repugnance—​which we are currently witnessing around the world. There is a huge disconnect from the human collateral in this overly hostile and aggressive political climate” (Town and Country 2017). Moreover, Blanchett identifies a link between her maternal experience and her sympathy with young refugees and displaced people: “[a]ctually, being a mother was, for me, undeniably a central point of connection to the refugee crisis. Learning that more than 10 million of the world’s refugees are children, and then meeting refugee parents in Jordan and Lebanon who had fled to protect the lives and futures of their children—​well, that was personally heartbreaking and galvanizing” (Town and Country 2017). The maternal care for those children comes through strongly in Blanchett’s self-​reflections and, like Jolie, she identifies with the parents of the refugee camps: “[a]‌s a parent I connected with their desire to protect their children and provide them with every possible opportunity in life: a safe home, an education—​but most important, a childhood free from the horrors of war” (Town and Country 2017). Furthermore, she employs the discursive idea of the home as a normative platform that enables her to connect with displaced people: “The idea of home. That was what I found

Celebri ty Global Motherhood 

[ 243 ]

42

to be the most profound point of connection with the people I met. Their memories of home—​the natural beauty, the smells, the tastes, the feelings. It was the sense of fondness and longing when they spoke of home that I connected to” (Town and Country 2017). Moreover, Blanchett ensures that her children get to meet children who live in camps, with the hope of such encounters fostering human connections across borders. She brought her son to the Azraq refugee camp in Jordan, recounting that he was nervous but that feeling went away quickly, with the boy playing football with the children of the camp. In her words, “it is wonderful to see my son experience that” (Marie Claire 2018). Hence, Blanchett wishes to instill empathy and care in her own children by exposing them to the hardship of others, noting: “As a mother, I want my children to go down the compassionate path. There’s much more opportunity, there’s much more optimism and there is a solution down that path” (UNHCR 2015). Thus, she not only derives strength and compassion from her personal experiences of maternal care, but also those emotions and practices are themselves governed by a cosmopolitan sense of obligation, ensuring that her own children are instilled with compassion for distant others.

The Retelling of Local Stories

So far I have identified the discursive mechanisms that underpin cosmopolitan notions of celebrity global motherhood, and here I will focus in on the semantic constitution of Blanchett’s and Jolie’s commitment to the local communities and their stories, in a fashion consistent with Fiona Robinson’s efforts (1999, 2011a, 2011b) to globalize the ethics of care by listening to the stories of those situated at the margins of world society. Both Blanchett and Jolie are ethically committed to the retelling of the forgotten stories of those who live in the camps—​stories that hitherto have been unheard. Indeed, quite a few of the stories told about Angelina Jolie focus on her personal encounters with refugees and victims of sexual violence, with the star habitually sharing those stories across discursive settings. During a trip to Jordan, she met refugee families and girls, who were enrolled in a UN-​supported community program: “It is heartbreaking to return to Jordan and witness the levels of hardship and trauma among Syrian refugees as this war enters its eighth year” (Sky News 2018). Such celebrity narratives about the caring humanitarian who sits down in camps to engage in dialogue with its refugee inhabitants are

[ 244 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

intertextually circulated across social and digital media, not the least on the UNCHR website: Wanting to learn first-​hand about the plight of more than 4  million people uprooted by the conflict in Iraq, Jolie visited a UNHCR registration centre in Damascus on Monday and later spent hours hearing moving stories from refugees in their homes. Some had fled kidnapping and murder attempts and are now struggling to make ends meet and recover some hope for the future. Later she visited the same family in a small rented room shared by 13 people, aged between eight months and 67 years. (UNHCR 2007)

The construction of Angelina as the good listener is a key component in UNHCR accounts, and, moreover, these accounts are often discursively located within Jolie’s personal notions of maternal care. In this context, the UNHCR reports that “Jolie, a mother of four, listened intently as one of the women told her that the extended family used to live in a spacious house in Baghdad. Now she can’t even afford diapers for her babies” (UNHCR 2007). In response to the woman’s narrative, she concluded: “I can’t imagine how I could manage to take care of my children in these circumstances” (UNHCR 2007). Such travel narratives often retell the personal encounters that the celebrity has engaged in on a visit to a camp, and they are intertextually reproduced across genres such as women’s glossy magazines. In 2014, Vanity Fair reported that “[i]‌n the past 14 years, beginning as a U.N.H.C.R. goodwill ambassador, [Jolie] has gone on more than 50 such missions, which have become a huge part of her life. She sits in refugee camps for hours on the hard ground, notebook in hand. Studying maps and documents, she can pinpoint precisely where Syrian exiles are seeking shelter. She can shift from talking about ISIS in Iraq to the famine facing South Sudan to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. These regions, over time, have become her turf.” Here, Jolie is constructed as a careful listener taking on board the experiences and stories of the people she encounters and, in doing so, employing a relational approach to the ethics of care. Similarly, Cate Blanchett sees it as her ethical obligation to “bring those stories back, to bring the human face back to those enormous numbers (of refugees). . . . I think that’s part of my role and also advocacy and helping to fundraise for the organizations” (CNBC 2018). During a visit to the Middle East, Blanchett “shared a meal in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan with one family whose 13-​year-​old son limped around in the dust with my eight-​year-​old son, playing soccer. I asked why he was limping, and his parents told me that he still had shrapnel in his leg from a sniper attack” (Town and Country 2017). This tells us that she

Celebri ty Global Motherhood 

[ 245 ]

4 62

seeks out human encounters during her journeys and that she uses those occasions to gather information about local hardship, which she then reports back to the UN and global audience. In a quote on the UNHCR website, she states that “[o]‌nce you have borne witness, you cannot turn away,” indicating at least a modicum of long-​term commitment in her role as a global mother of distant other refugees (UNHCR 2018b). Moreover, she professes to being emotionally affected by those encounters: “I’ve been shocked, and I’ve been profoundly moved by the stories of refugees that I’ve heard, and also, like you, been frustrated and angered by the lack of global momentum to permanently reverse the factors that contribute to the global displacement crisis” (UNHCR 2018b) This indicates Blanchett’s commitment to listening and retelling the many stories of trauma and displacement to global audiences and not being afraid of expressing her own emotions in so doing, with the public display of such feelings making newspaper headlines, but also running the risk of overshadowing the lives and suffering of those she seeks to help. This tendency is augmented by the two celebrities’ position within racialized white privilege and wealth, giving them power and influence in their humanitarian dealings with the people of refugee camps. What is more, the global care work conducted by the two female celebrities cannot easily escape the racialized, gendered, and neocolonial undertones of celebrity activism more broadly (Bergman Rosamond 2016; Kapoor 2013; Richey 2015).

SOME CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS

Being a global celebrity mother entails challenging prevalent injustices in world politics through one’s activism and narration of the stories told at the margins of global society. By dissecting the connectedness between maternal care, at home and abroad, we can begin to think critically about the ethics, gendering, and racialization of global motherhood and the ways in which celebrities narrate their exposure to the hardships of the world. Both Blanchett and Jolie habitually share their experiences and impressions across texts and visuals on a global scale, and, as such, they contribute to the uncovering of local experiences in the refugee camps. This, however, does not necessarily foster long-​ lasting links with the subalterns of the camps but only somewhat loose connections. Thus, global care work differs from maternal practice within one’s own family because it does not typically stretch across a long period of time (Ruddick 2002).

[ 246 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

The pursuit of global motherhood is, in many cases, short term, self-​ promotional, and steeped in neoliberal ideology (Kapoor 2013, 1)  and does not necessarily further the interests of those at the receiving end of celebrity humanitarianism. In the case of Blanchett and Jolie, those celebrity brands are, in part at least, tied to their roles as UN spokespeople and the official narratives, policies, and structural power of that organization. Moreover, celebrity global motherhood is tainted by gendered and racialized assumptions about the helplessness of “distant vulnerable others,” with the visited refugees being assumed to have little quality of life or agency in the camps. The (neo)colonial subjects of the refugee camp are thus key to the narration of celebrity stories of rescue and protection and, though Blanchett and Jolie are committed to recounting the experiences of the camps’ inhabitants, their stories often relate to their own sense of cosmopolitan maternal obligation. Yet, Blanchett and Jolie do not seek to transform the world in a wholesale fashion, but rather to expose global audiences to the hardships of those living in harsh conditions in refugee camps. As I  have noted elsewhere, “most celebrities do not fundamentally challenge statist practices and discourses of sovereign integrity and capitalism . . . but reproduce these through their privileged position in celebrity society” (2016, 105). Celebrity activism is more rooted in “personal diplomacy” (Chouliaraki 2012) than collective action and, as such, perhaps inspires “narcissistic solidarity obsessed with our own emotions” rather than those of “suffering others” (Chouliaraki 2012). However, Blanchett and Jolie recount at least some of the untold experiences, moral stories, and emotions of those living in the camp, many of whom are women, and as such, they expose the inadequacies of masculine universalism as a platform for moral engagement, which tends to neglect such situated experiences and ethical reflections of the locality. Yet, their activism is also caught up in practices of Western gendered protection of vulnerable distant others, whereby the subjects of the celebrity’s rescuing efforts are assigned the label of victim with no, or little, agency. Without dismissing the traumatizing effects of conflict and displacement, such individuals might not view themselves not only as victims but also as individuals with some ability to exercise agency in their everyday lives. What is more, the ethical legitimacy of celebrity care work might be strengthened if this insight is heeded to a greater extent, which is a position endorsed by a range of critical scholars (Bergman Rosamond 2015; Kapoor 2013; Richey 2015; Van den Bulck 2018). Aside from the aforementioned ethical dilemmas of global motherhood, we might also ask: who is granted the privilege of becoming a global mother? Might it be the case that only those who enjoy racialized, gendered, and

Celebri ty Global Motherhood 

[ 247 ]

8 42

financial privilege can partake in global care work? Oprah Winfrey’s establishment of a Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa is an instructive example of a humanitarian project launched by a nonwhite celebrity care worker who is not a mother herself but who has access to immense wealth and influence. Sara Ruddick (2002) and other maternal theorists are adamant that care practice should not be equated with the morality and work conducted by actual mothers alone; there is a tendency to assume such gendered linkages. Here, it might also be worth asking whether those celebrity mothers who have personally engaged in overseas adoption are more qualified than others to combat the injustices of the world. It is also interesting to note that digital and traditional media representations of celebrity mothers tend to identify a strong link between maternal care and an actual (biological or adopted) mother, rather than a caring, childless, other-​regarding individual. One might ask, then, if somebody like Jennifer Aniston, a celebrity who is childless and whose childlessness has often been the subject of much speculation, could ever qualify as a global mother in the eyes of mass audiences? Can Aniston ever claim the same level of ethical legitimacy as Blanchett and Jolie, should she embark on a similar humanitarian journey? What is more, does global motherhood require beauty, fame, and glamour? Most actors who have been appointed as UN goodwill ambassadors are exceptionally attractive and far from anonymous. The other-​regarding caring acts of mothers living in conflict zones, slums, shanty towns, and refugee camps rarely make newspaper headlines. As noted previously, celebrity global motherhood relies on a support network of nannies, tutors, and private assistants enabling the star mother to travel to faraway places in the name of humanity. Finally, there is reason to cast doubt on the assumption within maternal theory that the mother’s care for her own child equips her to relate to the moral dilemmas beyond her immediate family sphere. Indeed, such an assumption builds on communitarian principles of care and ethical obligation, sustaining the thesis that charity and empathy start at home, rendering cosmopolitan obligation in world politics redundant and disrupting the ethical underpinnings of maternal cosmopolitanism.

REFERENCES Åhäll, L. 2015. Sexing War/​Policing Gender: Motherhood, Myth and Women’s Political Violence. Oxford: Routledge. Alison, M. 2004. “Women as Agents of Political Violence: Gendering Security.” Security Dialogue 35, no. 4: 447–​463.

[ 248 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

Alison, M. 2007. “Wartime Sexual Violence: Women’s Human Rights and Questions of Masculinity.” Review of International Studies 33, no. 1: 75–​90. Bergman Rosamond, A. 2013. “Protection beyond Borders: Gender Cosmopolitanism and Co-​Constitutive Obligation. Global Society 27, no. 3: 319–​336. Bergman Rosamond, A. 2015. “Humanitarian Relief Worker Sean Penn—​A Contextual Story.” In Celebrities as New Development Actors: When Does Context Matter? edited by L. A. Richey, 149–​169. Oxford: Routledge. Bergman Rosamond, A. 2016. “The Digital Politics of Celebrity Activism against Sexual Violence: Angelina Jolie as Global Mother.” In Understanding Popular Culture and World Politics in the Digital Age, edited by L. Shepherd and C. Hamilton, 101–​118. Oxford: Routledge. CBS News. 2015. “Angelina Jolie Left Speechless by Visit to Iraqi Refugee Camp.” January 18. http://​www.cbc.ca/​news/​entertainment/​ angelina-​jolie-​left-​speechless-​by-​visit-​to-​iraqi-​refugee-​camp-​1.2934548. CNBC. 2018. “Cate Blanchett Calls on World to Show More Compassion to Refugees.” January 24. https://​www.cnbc.com/​2018/​01/​24/​actress-​cate-​blanchett-​on-​ being-​a-​unhcr-​goodwill-​ambassador-​and-​raising-​awareness-​about-​refugees. html. Cohn, C. 2013. “Maternal Thinking and the Concept of “Vulnerability in Security Paradigms, Policies and Practices.” Politics and Ethics Review 10, no. 1: 46–​69. Chodorow, N. 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California. Chouliaraki, L. 2012. The Ironic Spectator—​Solidarity in the Age of Post-​ Humanitarianism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Confortini, C., and Ruane, A. 2013. “Sara Ruddick’s Maternal Thinking as Weaving Epistemology for Just Peace.” Journal of International Political Theory 10, no. 1: 70–​93. Cooper, A. 2008. Celebrity Diplomacy. London: Paradigm. Ehrenreich, B., and Russell Hochshild, A. 2003. Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Henry Holt. Elshtain, J. 1995. Women and War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Erskine, T. 2007. “Qualifying Cosmopolitanism? Solidarity, Criticism and Michael Waltzer’s View from the Cave.” International Politics 44, no. 1: 125–​149. Hutchings, K. 2007. “Feminist Ethics and Political Violence.” International Politics 44, no. 1: 90–​106. Gilligan, C. 1993. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. International Business Times. 2016. “Angelina Jolie Gives Touching Speech during Visit to Jordan Refugee Camps.” September 13. http://​www.ibtimes.com.au/​angelina-​ jolie-​gives-​touching-​speech-​during-​visit-​jordan-​refugee-​camps-​1528499. Jolie, A. 2017. “Angelina Jolie: Refugee Policy Should Be Based on Facts, Not Fear.” New York Times February 2. https://​www.nytimes.com/​2017/​02/​02/​opinion/​ angelina-​jolie-​refugee-​policy-​should-​be-​based-​on-​facts-​not-​fear.html. Jolie, A. 2015a. “I Don’t Know Why This Is My Life and That Is Hers.” Art and Science July 8. https://​medium.com/​art-​science/​ i-​don-​t-​know-​why-​this-​is-​my-​life-​and-​that-​s-​hers-​6ac630a22268. Jolie, A. 2015b. “A New Level of Refugee Suffering.” New York Times January 27. https://​www.nytimes.com/​2015/​01/​28/​opinion/​angelina-​jolie-​on-​the-​syrians-​ and-​iraqis-​who-​cant-​go-​home.html. Kapoor, I. 2013. Celebrity Humanitarianism: The Ideology of Global Charity. London: Routledge.

Celebri ty Global Motherhood 

[ 249 ]

0 52

Managhan, T. 2012. Gender, Agency and War: The Maternalized Body in US Foreign Policy. London: Routledge. Marie Claire. 2018. “Exclusive: Cate Blanchett Speaks Out about the Refugee Crisis.” March 12. https://​www.marieclaire.co.uk/​reports/​ cate-​blanchett-​refugee-​crisis-​583114. Mubanda Rasmusen, L. 2015. “Madonna in Malawi: Celebritized Interventions and Local Politics of Development in the South.” In Celebrities as New Development Actors: When Does Context Matter? edited by L. A. Richey, 48–​69. Oxford: Routledge. Nussbaum, M. 2000. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Nzherald.co.nz. 2007. “Angelina Jolie: My Biological Daughter Is an Outcast.” December 12. https://​www.nzherald.co.nz/​entertainment/​news/​article.cfm?c_​ id=1501119&objectid=10481903. O’Neill, O. 1992. “Justice, Gender and International Boundaries.” In International Justice and the Third World, edited by R. Attfield and B. Wilkins, 47–​72. London: Routledge. Richey, L., ed. 2015. Celebrities as New Development Actors: When Does Context Matter? Oxford: Routledge. Richey, L. A., and Bull Christiansen, L. 2018. “Afropolitanism, Celebrity Politics, and Iconic Imaginations of North–​South Relations.” African Affairs 117, no. 467: 238–​260. Robinson, F. 1999. Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory and International Relations. Oxford: Westview Press. Robinson, F. 2011. The Ethics of Care: A Feminist Approach to Human Security. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Robinson, F. 2016. “Feminist Care Ethics and Everyday Insecurities.” In Ethical Security Studies: A New Research Agenda, edited by J. Nyman and A. Burke, 116–​ 130. Oxford: Routledge. Ruddick, S. 2002. Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon Press. Shome, R. 2011. “ ‘Global Motherhood’: The Transnational Intimacies of White Femininity.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 28, no. 5: 388–​406. Sjoberg, L., and Gentry, C. E. 2007. Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics. London: Zed Books. Sky News. 2018. “Angelina Jolie’s ‘Heartbreaking’ Visit to Syrian Refugee Camp in Jordan.” January 28. https://​news.sky.com/​story/​angelina-​jolies-​ heartbreaking-​visit-​to-​syrian-​refugee-​camp-​in-​jordan-​11227033. Town and Country. 2017. “Cate Blanchett Sounds an Alarm about the Global Refugee Crisis (Interview with David Miliband). May 9. https://​www. townandcountrymag.com/​society/​a9586721/​cate-​blanchett-​interview-​david-​ miliband/​. UNHCR. 2018a. Angelina Jolie says respect for human rights key to Syria Peace. January 28. http://​www.unhcr.org/​afr/​news/​latest/​2018/​1/​5a6e15c14/​ angelina-​jolie-​says-​respect-​human-​rights-​key-​syria-​peace.html. UNHCR. 2018b “Goodwill Ambassador Cate Blanchett ‘Shaken and Enriched’ by Work with Refugees.” January 17. http://​www.unhcr.org/​news/​latest/​2018/​ 1/​5a5f51164/​goodwill-​ambassador-​cate-​blanchett-​shaken-​enriched-​work-​ refugees.html. UNHCR. 2015. “Goodwill Ambassador Cate Blanchett.” https://​donate.unhcr.org/​ gwa/​cate-​blanchett.

[ 250 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

UNHCR. 2007. “Angelina Jolie Hears Stories of Suffering, Courage from Iraqi Refugees.” August 29. http://​www.unhcr.org/​news/​latest/​2007/​8/​46d544c16/​ angelina-​jolie-​hears-​stories-​suffering-​courage-​iraqi-​refugees.html. Van den Bulck. 2018. Celebrity Philanthrophy and Activism: Mediated Interventions in the Global Public Sphere. Oxford: Routledge.

Celebri ty Global Motherhood 

[ 251 ]

2 5

C H A P T E R   1 5   

Earthborn Maternity and Natality on a Hurting Planet C AR A DAGGET T

A

s the atmosphere warms and the seas rise, humans are also depicted in oceanic terms:  a surging population, tidal waves of migrants, the Earth swamped by babies. Since Thomas Malthus (2008) predicted that food supplies would be unable to match the exponential population growth characteristic of the early industrial period, human numbers have been depicted as a particularly modern problem to be managed and solved, whether they are perceived as a threat to food supply, to land availability, to economic growth, or now, to the Earth itself in the face of the crises of the Anthropocene. Population predictions have often fed into conservative fears of “overbreeding” among the poor, but the problem of population in a time of global warming has been embraced more broadly, from popular media to environmentalists. With the global population at about 7.3 billion, some have called for a public movement to limit or give up having children, coining the term G.I.N.K. (Green Inclinations, No Kids) as an ethically oriented version of D.I.N.K. (Dual Income, No Kids) households. Others have called for more systemic “population engineering” to address climate change, meaning “the intentional manipulation of the size and structure of human populations” that might involve taxing procreation, paying for birth control, and funding public information campaigns (Hickey, Rieder, and Earl 2016). This follows from research that estimates that each child born in a developed country is equivalent to emitting

Cara Daggett, Earthborn In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0015

58.6  tonnes CO2-​equivalent (tCO2e) per year, which far outweighs other individual green measures like going car-​free (2.4 tCO2e per year) (Wynes and Nicholas 2017). Donna Haraway (2016) furthers this sentiment in Staying with the Trouble, where she pleads for the ethical motto, “Make kin, not babies!” and envisions a world in which non-​natalism becomes the norm, where “babies should be rare, nurtured, and precious” (208). Haraway abjures coercive reproductive governance and instead calls on humans, and especially Western humans, to shift toward an ethos of “kinnovation” and to compose queer families of multispecies oddkin, rather than to keep reproducing in hetero-​nuclear families. With little more guidance than this, she hopes that the human population might be reduced from the 11 billion projected in 2100 to “2 or 3 billion or so” in just a couple of centuries (103)—​which would amount to an astounding decrease of 70 to 80 percent. In focusing on population figures, Haraway and others have (re)ignited a debate about whether such concerns can ever be separated from the long history of racist and imperialist reproductive governance. Sophie Lewis, a long-​time devotee of Haraway’s, penned a mournful review of Staying with the Trouble, titled “Cthulhu Plays No Role for Me,” where she marvels at “how the removal of 8 billion heads from the total headcount over the next century or so could be non-​coercive—​indeed, non-​genocidal,” even if Haraway might hope otherwise.1 For Lewis, Staying with the Trouble represents a disappointing turn away from Haraway’s earlier themes: “though she started off championing the cyborgs of class struggle against the goddesses of technophobia (her immortal closing line: ‘I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess’), my suspicion is that, now, she’s gone over to the goddesses.”2 In addition, as a motto, “Make Kin, Not Babies!” narrows our gaze to women’s reproductive choices, drawing much-​needed attention away from the dominant capitalist and financial forces that are chiefly responsible for the ongoing ruination of multispecies lifeworlds. This chapter takes up the ecological debate over maternity in the Anthropocene, a time in which feminists like Haraway are advocating against reproduction and natality. There is more work to be done surrounding the racist and imperial risks involved in population engineering. However, here I want to focus on feminist debates over maternity itself—​ as practice and ethics—​and to reassert maternity and natality as important critical resources for living in the Anthropocene. What might we gain if we could approach the problem of reproduction without renouncing natality? Thinking with maternity and natality presents just as many risks as thinking with population, given the common tendency to essentialize women-​as-​mothers and to romanticize maternity to the detriment of

E a r t h b or n  

[ 253 ]

4 52

women. To help wend my way through the thicket of maternal stereotypes, I turn to Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero, whose recent book, Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude (2016), proposes maternal inclination as a founding moment for a postural ethics. The chapter proceeds through a familiar maternal genre, offering a collection of birth stories that begin to weave Cavarero’s inclination into Haraway’s non-​natalism. I  conclude by arguing that maternal inclination is an important conduit for achieving multispecies reproductive justice.

ECO-​M ATERNALISM

Maternity and natality continue to be sites of conflict in ecological politics. Early ecofeminists often celebrated women’s experiences as caregivers and mothers, drawing on motherhood as a model for an ethics of “earthcare” (Merchant 1995). However, many prominent feminists who followed, including Haraway, have rejected eco-​maternalism as a dangerous form of gender essentialism. The connection between women and nature, and between human mothers and Mother Earth, trades in stereotypes that reinforce gender norms in which women are subordinated. Moreover, motherhood is problematic in that it has been privatized and exploited in modern capitalist systems, which especially hurts women of color; it excludes those who do not want to be, or cannot be, mothers; it is overly invested in the heteronormative family; and it romanticizes mothering, which is not always a positive experience for mothers, for children, or for the planet. Nevertheless, despite these ample critiques of maternity and natality in feminist scholarship, the figure of the mother—​as metaphor, narrative, ethic, and political subjectivity—​remains widespread and influential, both in environmental movements and in ecological scholarship, in the West as well as in indigenous and peasant environmentalisms in the Global South. Maternal identities continue to be central to many women who engage in environmental struggles (Bell and Braun 2010). Sherilyn MacGregor (2007, 49) ponders the ongoing “persistence” of eco-​maternalist rhetoric in Beyond Mothering Earth, in which she advocates eco-​citizenship as a preferable alternative to eco-​maternalism:  “Why has [eco-​maternalism] continued in spite of a growing uncertainty that surrounds efforts to identify the universal and naturally occurring traits of women? Why retain such a focus in the face of feminist arguments that maternalism limits the ability of ecofeminism to be inclusive and democratic?”

[ 254 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

Such conflict over motherhood goes to the heart of the experience of mothering itself; in Sherilyn MacGregor’s words, “care and motherhood represent a paradox for feminists: they can be both personally rewarding and oppressive” (2007, 56). Indeed, MacGregor notes that the labor of caring can often be at odds with the demands of political action: “Caring for people at home and looking after communities as political activists are not always compatible, especially in societies in which women are expected to place more value on the former than on the latter” (2007, 164). Moreover, bodies continue to need care, and yet today’s liberal democratic orders are built on spaces and temporalities that render care work as an invisible background or precursor, which has contributed to uneven distributions of care work and political status by race and gender. Capitalism, too, exploits care work that reproduces bodies and worlds within which market economies function. Audre Lorde (2015, 96) sharpened this paradox of care in her still pertinent challenge to white women: “what do you do with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor and third world women?” We might just as easily extend this observation to consider those people who serve our food or clean our hotel rooms at the conference centers where we travel to think and act together. This underlines the need for feminists to focus on the political economy of care, to resist its privatization and the exploitation of care workers. While making care invisible is necessary to the ongoing-​ness of capitalist systems, at the same time, Cavarero shows how making maternal care invisible is necessary to the ongoing-​ness of a geometry of rectitude, the geometry that structures our political life. Cavarero engages maternity as a “postural ethics.” By focusing on posture, she is interested in unsettling the dominance of rectitude, which orients Western philosophy around the autonomous, independent self, understood as a straight line planted firmly on its base, needing only itself to anchor its erect stance. From the perspective of the righteous and rectilinear self, childhood, dependency, disability, illness, and vulnerability appear as embarrassments that threaten to bend, topple, or tip the subject and thus need to be overcome, outgrown, straightened out, or rectified. In contrast, Cavarero analyzes the iconography of the Virgin Mary with child (Figure 15.1) and the repeated depiction of inclination—​the maternal figure’s bending over or toward the child—​as a posture around which an entirely new geometry might emerge. Despite the omnipresence of inclination in Mary icons, as well as in other maternal imagery, Cavarero (2016) argues that this maternal posture has been largely ignored: “at the same time that the infant, as the emblem

E a r t h b or n  

[ 255 ]

6 5 2

Figure 15.1.  The Virgin and Child with St. Anne. Oil on poplar wood. Louvre Museum, Paris. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

of a unilateral and absolute dependence, often appears at center stage to exemplify relational ontology, the mother because of the burdensome self-​ sacrificing stereotype that is draped over her, is often absent” (13). In addition to the “tendency to censor” maternal stereotypes, there is also the tendency in biopolitical thinking to reduce birth and parenting to “the domain of mere procreation.” And then there are the problems posed by theologically inflected uses of motherhood (121). But Cavarero insists that, despite the “emotional and sentimental baggage” that must be excised from maternal stereotypes, and the risk they run of reinforcing patriarchal assumptions about women’s self-​sacrificing tendencies (124), stereotypes

[ 256 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

do not necessarily “function as stumbling blocks” for critical thinking and can “have a great critical potentiality that risks remaining concealed precisely because they are too exposed” (14). In other words, mothers are so omnipresent as a saccharine cultural trope, draped in the language of sexism and heteronormativity, that we risk overlooking their potential. Here, we should pause to note the strange resonances between Haraway’s claim that the subject of population is “forbidden” on the left and Cavarero’s claim that maternality tends to be censored. In both cases, the topic is deemed to pose too many risks, whether of racist governance or of patriarchal domination. And in each case, there is a long history of racist and sexist practice, based on population fears or maternal adoration, to justify the concerns. However, both Haraway and Cavarero insist that the stakes are too high to continue overlooking population and motherhood. By following Cavarero’s line of inquiry, it is possible to address Haraway’s concerns from a natalist perspective and therefore to better avoid its dark potential. Cavarero’s strategy for excising the sentimental baggage of maternality is to analyze it as posture and to consider its ability to herald a different phenomenological orientation. In doing so, Cavarero aims at something more ontologically radical than what she finds in the “ethics of care,” the field in which most recent thinking on motherhood has occurred (care also features prominently in multispecies ethics). Much of care ethics strives for a “reconciliation” that would integrate care into the modern, democratic self in a way that transcends gendered bodies. The result would be to “render the relational paradigm of care complementary with the paradigm of individualistic autonomy . . . within which the two paradigms, instead of being opposed, could temper one another” (2016, 124). Instead, inclination does not refer itself to rectitude, and its geometry does not “take for granted the notion that erect posture is somehow special” (Cavarero 2016, 128). Inclination involves a project of exiting one geometry and entering another:  “in light of the verticality that dominates the history of ontology, the task is to change our register or reposition our gaze, trying to imagine ontology as a geometry of variable postures inside of which inclination may assume a ‘modular’ role” (128). The geometry of inclination is exemplified by—​though not necessarily exhausted by—​ maternal iconography, which serves as its “leitmotif or prevailing posture” (128). In other words, rather than bring maternalism or care into the world of a rectilinear geometry, wherein its disalignment might still appear as “otherwise” from the perspective of vertical corporeality, Cavarero wants corporeality itself to tilt on its axis, where inclination organizes our sense of space. By tilting, we inhabit a posture “that is relational, originary, and

E a r t h b or n  

[ 257 ]

8 52

asymmetrical, capable of evoking a common vulnerability” (127) and that “permits a shift of attention from a subject modeled on the idea of autonomy to a subjectivity structurally characterized by dependence” (122).

BIRTH STORY 1: ARENDT, THE ABSENT MOTHER, AND THE FROZEN BABY

Maternity is crucial to the postural ethics of inclination because of its insistence on uneven relationality. Maternal inclination, or the movement of the mother leaning over the vulnerable and entirely dependent infant, is a founding moment for relational ontology. The vulnerability of the infant, and the infant’s uneven dependence on a(n) (m)other’s care, is what Western thought misses—​indeed, what it cannot think, as the infant/​child’s dependence is a supreme embarrassment to those like Kant, for whom autonomy is the necessary prerequisite for the possibility of morality (Cavarero 2016, 119). Even Arendt, the philosopher of natality, overlooks the mother–​child relationship, despite pronouncing the primacy of birth for philosophy: “that men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin” (Arendt 1998, 246). For Arendt, political action, or the capacity for new beginnings among a plurality of other humans, is secured by the fact of birth, the miracle “of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born” (247). But although natality provides the foundation for Arendt’s political vision, her treatment of the concept remained underdeveloped. In particular, Cavarero (2016) notices a glaring absence in Arendt’s discussion of birth: the mother never appears at all, while the infant remains frozen in that first moment of appearance, seemingly never to become a child (“it stops, as it were, being born”) (116). Arendt is more interested in natality than infancy, which is “seen as an ontologically annoying and meaningless stage—​not unlike birth, a natural event that is also seen as uninteresting” (119). It is as if the baby is born alone, into a void. This is no accident, Cavarero reflects: the mother must remain absent because the actuality of the mother–​infant relation and the extreme vulnerability of the infant are in opposition to Arendt’s notion of political action, which excludes the labor of care (and likely babies as well). If the mother were part of the story of natality, she would “fracture [action’s] fundamental structure.” Arendt can only use natality as the founding analogy for political action “if the newborn is construed methodologically as an orphan and limits itself to playing the beginner’s part. . . . [J]‌ust like Adam before a companion was placed at his side, the Arendtian newborn

[ 258 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

evokes an inhuman loneliness” (Cavarero 2016, 120). Cavarero’s insight is to ask what happens if political action emerges from the messy, unequal, and vulnerable mother–​child relationship, rather than out of the sheer novelty of the newborn. This would shake the vertical geometry of modern democracy itself, with its notion of bounded selves operating on a horizontal plane of equality (130).

BIRTH STORY 2: BABIES INCLINE ME

The posture of the Virgin Mary is highly contrived as a visualization of maternity. But once Cavarero drew my attention to it, the inclined plane of the mother’s torso felt deeply familiar. Inclination is a visual trope that recalls—​in an aestheticized oversimplification—​a common gesture of infant care. Looking through photos from my early mothering days, the inclined posture repeated itself across the sea of thumbnails, both in my bent body and in anyone engaging with my kids. Whether diapering, bathing, feeding, or holding infants, or simply leaning over to meet their gaze and talk to them, it seems that inclination did indeed capture not only a religious tradition of iconography but also the bulk of care postures among the caregivers I knew (Figure 15.2). What my photos suggested to me, more so than the stylized Virgin Mary paintings, was that inclination should not be understood primarily as a posture chosen by, or offered by, the adult to the infant as a gesture of attention and care. Rather, it is more apt to understand inclination as a bodily conversation induced by the infant. The infant’s body necessitates inclination as a result of her own physical capacities; in her first months, she is herself forced to recline. For the very young infant, self-​supported rectitude is impossible (making her terribly embarrassing to Kant), but even achieving an inclined posture is out of the question. An infant’s body tends toward the horizontal and is entirely at the mercy of the pillows, breasts, cribs, car seats, and arms that enfold her, much to her frequent chagrin. The infant’s life is encompassed by klinè, Greek for bed, and the etymological root for inclination (Cavarero 2016, 3). To meet an infant’s eyes and interact with them, or simply to take care of the infant’s bodily needs, one must almost always incline to come into better alignment with the infant’s horizontal tendency. Anyone who has spent time with an infant, with any success, knows this instinctively. Babies prefer (demand) fluid bodies that bend, lean, sway, and bounce in relation to their own moods. Adults who refuse to incline toward the infant and who try to hold a baby with an erect, straight posture, will almost certainly be rewarded with crying.

E a r t h b or n  

[ 259 ]

0 62

Figure 15.2.  A Baby Inclines Me: the author with her son. Source: Cara Daggett, 2012.

This is important in moving us away from a romanticized notion of motherhood and toward a more conflictual, relational understanding of maternity. The mother, as the purportedly “higher” body that offers care to a vulnerable other, is not in control of the relationship, despite her more individuated self and capacity for rectitude. Inclination is less a gift from a self-​sacrificing mother than it is a learned response to an infant’s demands, a mimetic engagement with the klinè of the infant. The mother does not offer inclination; the infant inclines her. Maternal care, therefore, is not only a question of an adult’s agency or individual choice in extending stylized gestures of care; it is determined by the infant’s own needs and capacities. In the picture of me bathing my newborn second child (Figure 15.3), with my two-​year-​old looking on, the conflictual nature of maternal inclination is far more evident than it is in the Virgin Mary iconography. The photo brings us an image of a little vortex of a world that the baby has set spinning around himself, with every detail an effect of the tilt-​a-​whirl of newborn life: my unkempt hair and days-​worn nursing tank, the unmade

[ 260 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

Figure 15.3.  Everyday Inclinations. Source: Cara Daggett, 2012.

bed in the mirror behind me, where I  have enjoyed very little sleep, the screaming newborn who hates my care work because it leaves him cold and naked, and the toddler at my elbow who is momentarily curious about the camera in the mirror, but mostly eager for his own share of maternal inclination. It is almost certainly a world that Kant or Leonardo da Vinci or all the other Madonna painters spent very little time in, but that women the world over have inhabited for millennia. There are many pictures of my children that leave me feeling nostalgic and that might support a more romanticized, Instagram-​ready scene of motherhood, but this picture is not one of them. It reminds me of the trance-​like haze of sleep deprivation and anemia, resulting from significant blood loss during labor, in which I spent those early months. And yet this picture, which captures the messy and banal work of relationality and care and of “a sure and practical love, so everyday and spontaneous that it does not express signs of suffering or self-​sacrifice” (Cavarero 2016, 174), is perhaps the truest depiction of maternal inclination in my collection. While this might seem like a subtle shift in emphasis—​noticing the infant’s contribution to constituting the postural ethics of inclination—​it

E a r t h b or n  

[ 261 ]

2 6

is important in thinking about inclination as a more general posture of care, and especially in thinking about inclination as a leitmotif for multispecies politics. Focusing on inclination as an effect of the infant’s demands and interests reminds us that even the most unequal relations of care are reciprocal as well as conflictual. Successful care requires the caregiver to adopt appropriate bodily arrangements and to pay attention in a sensory mode demanded by the other, both of which represent a practice of multisensory listening, especially in the case of relations with others who do not speak our words. The failure of care can thus be a result of a refusal, or inability, to listen well, rather than a bad moral choice. Inclination is almost always necessary for good listening, especially when differently abled bodies are involved. From the perspective of care, rectitude becomes the awkward and rare position, the posture held by those who are made uncomfortable by others’ vulnerability, and who refuse to care. Or, an insistence on rectitude presents an obstacle to good listening and good care. Relations with bodies that are ill or elderly or differently abled; relations with lovers who make their bodies vulnerable to our touch and gaze; and also relations with nonhuman bodies and their own different sizes and capacities—​all seem to require inclination in order to attend to, and listen to, an other who does not appear as a perpendicular, autonomous, two-​legged, adult human self. Approaching a dog with rigid posture would be just as unwise as holding a baby with rectitude. Likewise, spaces that idealize rectitude become spaces where caring is marginalized or impossible. Dogs and babies are disruptive and suspect bodies when they appear in courtrooms, parliaments, and office buildings. Parents can become erect, but children and dogs cannot—​or will not—​ conform to the norms of rectitude, and they resist those who will not bend to them. This is why inclination is as much about maternality as it is about natality, disability, childhood, and interspecies life, for it is the child, the animal, or the plant that insists on our bending. The mother is an icon in the geometry of inclination because she is by tradition the first who bends. Moreover, even if we want to care, and we try, we are not in control of whether that care will be helpful or successful for the other. Even if we want to care, we may not always want to care in the way that the other demands. Even if we want to care, taking care of one critter or child will sometimes require not caring or caring less for others, or even hurting or killing others. The relationship is unequal but complicatedly so; the infant is the most vulnerable, but other things can be hurt in the name of the infant’s thriving. The mother can be (and often is) hurt, too:  she is vulnerable to losing the child she loves; she is vulnerable to losing the child’s

[ 262 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

love; the care responsibilities are burdensome and can be obstacles to engaging in other activities; and the mother can, and will, fail in moments of caregiving.

INTERLUDE: MATERNITY AND MULTISPECIES CARE

But is motherhood necessary to a phenomenology of inclination? Given the danger of maternal stereotypes, would it not be preferable to become tilted through other postural examples of inclination, modeled in other relations of care and vulnerability? Bonnie Honig (2017), for example, takes up Cavarero’s insights about inclination, but proposes “agonistic sorority” (23) as an alternative framework to maternity, reflecting that “inclination calls attention to maternity, altruism, pacifism, and heterotopia; but it can be turned to sorority, agonism, violence, and heterotopia as well” (2). Sorority resonates better with democratic politics, Honig argues, because sorority denotes a relatively egalitarian, and more agonistic, relationship than does the mother–​infant pair. Haraway (2016), too, favors sisterhood; she ends a letter to her population critics with, “Sisterhood (intersectional and of all genders) is powerful! Cyborgs for Earthly Survival!” In contrast, the inherently unequal relationship of maternity, along with its overarching mood of altruism, seems fundamentally opposed to democratic relations. However, from the perspective of multispecies relations, it is precisely the assumption of egalitarianism, premised on relations between subjects interacting on a horizontal plane where they appear as relatively equal (human) selves, that poses the greatest challenge to making space for more-​than-​humans in democratic politics. Nonhuman capacities for agentic action and thought are ontologically distinct from human modes of agency and thought. Even if we shed the anthropocentric assumptions that position nonhuman capacity as below or less than, it is still the case that the geometry of interspecies politics cannot be conceived as occurring on a horizontal plane of equality, but rather will involve traveling across planes of difference, through slant-​wise movements that induce postures of inclination. Not only does this imply humans inclining toward nonhumans (an inclination that still risks collapsing into a reductive version of eco-​ maternalism, in which humans only provide mothering care to nature in a one-​way direction), but it also attends to how plants and critters can, and also do, incline to each other and to us. Placing more-​than-​human politics and maternal inclination into conversation can generate reciprocal benefits. Maternal inclination can be

E a r t h b or n  

[ 263 ]

4 6 2

helpful for thinking about multispecies political communities, in that maternal inclination is rooted in an ontology of unequal relations of vulnerability and care. Maternal inclination inaugurates a geometry in which more-​than-​human relations of care, and multispecies politics, could conceivably function. In contrast, the geometry of rectitude, where all things are judged according to the erect human body, and where politics proceeds between citizens on a horizontal plane (Cavarero 2016, 118), almost certainly renders multispecies politics impossible. And while there could be multiple pathways through which to enter a geometry of inclination, including sisterhood or pet relationships, the overexposure of maternality makes it particularly potent as a mechanism that induces human slanting. Despite the many risks of invoking maternity, it would therefore be unwise to overlook its potential as a leitmotif given that, in Cavarero’s words, “What other image of radical altruism could serve as a better example, while also remaining familiar and credible? What infinite responsibility for the other could lower itself, in spite of the self, into a more docile hostage? What subjectivity, which figure or character or theme from the real world, could compete with this?” (167). BIRTH STORY 3: CHILDREN OF COMPOST

Having repopulated Arendt’s birth story with babies, mothers, and inclination, I  now want to put inclination into conversation with a multispecies (re)birth story: that of compost, a concept taken up in the allied work of Haraway and anthropologist Kristina Lyons. Composting is meant as an alternative visionary both to heteronormative reproduction and to posthumanism (a term that Haraway is widely associated with, but that she has often rejected in favor of what she deems as more relational concepts like companion species, string figures, and com-​post.)3 While ecological practices like compost disavow maternity and natality, I aim to show that if maternality is shorn of its sentimental baggage and approached through the geometry of inclination, these do not have to be mutually exclusive ethical postures. This is important because although compost suggests new ways of being on a hurting planet, Haraway’s and Lyons’ birth stories are politically underdeveloped; they need to be better integrated into social movements and organized resistance to authoritarianism and capitalism. Compost in Haraway’s stories takes the place of the womb and of the manger. It is the site of gestation, birth, and growth, the setting for multispecies relations, where death and decay can bring forth life

[ 264 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

through strange combinations: “Staying with the trouble requires making oddkin; that is, we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles” (Haraway 2016, 4). In a similar vein, Lyons (2016) proposes “decomposition as life politics” based on an ethnography of a Colombian family that has been displaced by aerial fumigation campaigns to prevent coca growing. She narrates their efforts to revive a small plot of land that had been depleted by herbicides, and how they relied on composting, or hojarasca, “rot, decay, and regeneration.” Lyons writes that decomposition and renewal may tell us about the everyday practices through which not only people but entire ecologies—​trees, soils, plants, seeds, insects, chickens, microbes, and farmers—​strive to collectively change the conditions of their lives. They do so not by transcending these conditions, but rather by sinking into them, slowly turning them over, aerating, and breathing in new life that also potentiates different possibilities for and relations to death. (2016, 65)

The farmers form a partnership with the poisoned soil in order “to resist violent modes of death by becoming into death rather than working against it in the pursuit of a better life. By becoming into death, I refer to a mode of dying that is an aspect of the transformation of being, an emerging into many other living and dying things much like the regenerative decay of hojarasca or decomposing leaves.” (Lyons 2016, 68). Becoming-​into-​death takes the place of being born or birthing. The miraculous transformation of the hot compost pile takes the place of the miraculous newness of the baby that so captivated Arendt. Compost and its filiation with death echoes Haraway’s own denunciation of “pro-​Life” policies that make many humans and critters killable in support of the ever-​expansion of some human life and progress. Lyons and the farmers instead cultivate multispecies kinship out of their existing, imperfect, and depleted materials. While compost offers imaginative possibilities for ecological theory, its politics need further articulation. Compost, as the embrace of death and the abandonment of natality, often seems to be practiced as a politics of retreat. The farmers that Lyons meets are in literal retreat from paramilitary threats against them. They were once activists who contested aerial fumigation, but after being chased away, they are now lying low on their small plot, carefully nurturing life out of decomposition. According to Lyons, the family is no longer “working against [death] in pursuit of a better life,” as a developmentalist ideology would have them do, but rather sinking into death to see what comes up in the soil. One family’s retreat in the face of militarized violence and extractivist development projects is certainly

E a r t h b or n  

[ 265 ]

62

understandable. As a political model, however, composting, and its quiet mood of resignation, or sinking into the soil, bodes a rather bleak future for all those who begin by resisting violent, capitalist forces. A similar mood of political unease travels through Haraway’s (2016) speculative fiction about Camille, a daughter of the Children of Compost. Camille is born in retreat, amid an intentional community of those who have given up on structural change, as “people everywhere found themselves profoundly tired of waiting for external, never materializing solutions to local and systemic problems” (137). The Children of Compost do more than quietly attend to their soil, though. They intend to practice a way of life that makes space for multispecies flourishing, however limited. What is their novel, planet-​changing invention? It is not about devising new economies; capitalism and other economic matters are absent from the story. Nor does it have to do with new modes of democratic politics that would include other-​than-​human interests; we do not hear about institutions or the details of how decisions are made in these communities. Nor does it lie in new patterns of consumption, or more sustainable provision systems for food and other goods; we are told the Children of Compost are green communities, but we also hear about Camille’s frequent globe-​ trotting without any mention of its carbon impact. If it is not about political economy, technology, or democracy, how, then, do the Children of Compost change the world? They make kin, not babies. The key impulse around which the community forms—​consistent with Haraway’s non-​natalist motto—​is a desire to reconceptualize kinship and to voluntarily reduce the number of babies born. It is this new norm of non-​natalism that then becomes “infectious,” spreads worldwide, and leads to massive population reduction. The birth stories of five generations of Camille to the Children of Compost represent Haraway’s attempt to envision how this might enfold without coercion or racism. However, the narrative itself at times undermines Haraway’s careful and sensitive intentions and ends up demonstrating the inherent violence of population politics, especially when oriented around non-​natalism. First, it is worth noting that, just as in Arendt’s birth story, mothers, babies, and children, and most especially the lifeworld of maternal care as depicted in my own newborn bath picture, are mostly absent from the Children of Compost stories. This despite the fact that the stories “gestated” out of a writing workshop that asked participants to “fabulate a baby, and somehow to bring the infant through five human generations” (Haraway 2016, 135). Haraway tells us about all five generations of Camilles, each of whose birth is planned by a community decision, and

[ 266 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

each of whom is altered to carry the genes of a symbiont creature chosen by the parents (each new planned baby has at least three parents). For Camille, it is the Monarch butterfly. But we only meet the first Camille as a child, and then only briefly, and mostly in order to describe her education, that process of becoming-​adult, and too often of straightening into rectitude. I believe that Haraway is interested in play and the idea of children, but as always, actual children prove too disruptive for theory. They are silly, messy, noisy creatures who are, above all else, needy and vulnerable. Babies, parents, and children are almost as absent in the Children of Compost stories as they were in Arendt’s birth story. Instead, we mostly meet the Camilles as teenagers and grown-​ups, having fast-​forwarded through their births and childhoods just as Arendt flashes from the lonely newborn baby to the instantaneously grown-​up political agent. The grown-​ up Camilles are independent and able-​bodied; they fit into a geometry of democratic rectitude. Their care work is oriented toward their symbiont, the Monarch butterfly, but we do not see much of the quotidian, unequal care heralded by inclination. Instead, they care for the butterflies as multispecies academics, by becoming butterfly scholars and globe-​trotting diplomats. As in Arendt, we have lost the critical purchase that an ontology of maternal inclination might bring us. There are even some unsettling political moments in the Camille stories, belying that reproductive control could ever occur without disturbing coercive pressures on women. These pressures bubble up around the word “must,” which appears devoid of political context:  every child “must have at least three parents” and “new children must be rare and precious, and they must have the robust company of other young and old ones of many kinds” (Haraway 2016, 138). And also, “the decision to bring a human infant into being is strongly structured to be a collective one for the emerging communities” (139, emphasis mine). Finally, people can still have babies if they choose, but only births approved by the community receive a symbiont. Not surprisingly, Haraway writes that this results in “hierarchical caste formations” (140) that lead to violence and, by the third Camille’s lifetime, “terrors of transition” (160) as symbionts and nonsymbionts clash worldwide. I  owe my allergy to the word “must” to William Connolly, who taught me to pay attention to its frequent appearance in Kant. Must is a command, and it betrays the ongoing struggle that both Kant and his readers must face in order to straighten their bodies into an ethics of rectitude. Who is commanding that new children “must” be rare in the Children of Compost? How is it enforced? And how is the

E a r t h b or n  

[ 267 ]

8 62

inevitable agonism handled during these “strongly structured” collective decisions about reproduction? My wager is that some of the problems arise because we are still lodged within a geometry of rectitude, for all the radical weirdness of the symbiont idea. The Camilles and the Children of Compost are mostly adults, and although we hear little about their institutions and political orders, they appear to be doing politics between individual, erect bodies on a horizontal plane. The Camilles care for butterflies mostly by studying them, and this may involve some inclination. But we do not hear much about postures of inclination involving violent, agonistic care relations with butterflies (for choosing to conserve one species inevitably involves choosing against others). Instead, the Camilles’ relationality to the Monarch butterfly largely comes about by ingesting butterfly parts into their own selves, by a Deleuzian becoming-​butterfly as symbionts. But here we have butterfly traits incorporated into an adult, autonomous human self that is still compatible with rectitude. More ontologically radical would be to pursue relations of vulnerability between inherently different and unequal bodies—​a relationship also captured, as Cavarero insists, in the mother–​child posture. In this light, maternity and natality can offer important political resources toward Haraway’s goal of multispecies reproductive justice. First, as Cavarero reminds us, maternity is a popular posture of care through which to explore a relational ontology: “precisely this gesture [the mother bent over the child] allows inclination to be deployed strategically as a good point of departure for rethinking ontology of the vulnerable, together with its constitutive relationality that . . . arranges the human along multiple coexisting lines, which may be contingent and intermittent, and at times even random” (2016, 129). While neither Cavarero nor Arendt extends this line of thought beyond the human, those “multiple coexisting lines” of human rearrangement can also be deployed to affectively orient people toward multispecies care and politics. Second, maternality and natality provide a powerful nexus through which to combine critiques of capitalism with ecological ethics. Rectitude is a conceivable goal only if a person’s many inclined support beams are made invisible (Cavarero 2016, 130), just as capitalist profit relies on the unpaid labor of social and human reproduction. Rejecting maternity, and especially natality, out of hand cedes too much to authoritarianism and its essentialist exploitation of motherhood. Also, as Arendt recognized, non-​ natalism flirts with a nihilist politics of retreat that likewise cedes terrain to violent orders, as “only the full experience of this capacity [natality] can bestow upon human affairs faith and hope” (1998, 247).

[ 268 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

CONCLUSION: UN-​B IRTH STORIES

The goal of this chapter has been to propose that we pursue multispecies reproductive justice alongside a critical appreciation of natality and maternality. I  embrace Haraway’s visions of “com-​posting” but question the necessity (and wisdom) of non-​natalism in pursuing climate justice. Drawing on Cavarero, I show how natality and maternity induce a postural ethics of inclination that is important to engaging in multispecies care and politics, as these are also relations of difference and vulnerability. We can witness how maternity, natality, and multispecies care can benefit each other by considering another collection of birth stories, which are really un-​birth stories. I  want to conclude by turning to testimonies collected by a grassroots movement called Conceivable Future, which was founded by two women for whom climate change was a factor in their choice not to have children. Conceivable Future collects testimonies from others who are also grappling with their own reproductive choices in light of climate change. The organization pointedly insists on reproductive autonomy and does not advocate for population control. Their FAQ section asks, “Is Conceivable Future against having babies?” and answers, “No! We are fighting for the right to make reproductive choices free from massive, avoidable, government-​supported harm. We are NOT advocating a particular choice, be it having or not having children. We are simply drawing attention to the fact that the climate crisis is a big, negative factor in many of our generation’s view of our future.” Instead of a “Make Kin, Not Babies!” motto, they have chosen to focus their organizing efforts against US fossil fuel subsidies. Conceivable Future thus opens up a space for recognizing reproduction as an ethical problem for the planet, especially in the United States where carbon footprints are astronomically larger than in the Global South. But it directs its mobilized groups toward combating fossil capitalism, rather than toward building Children of Compost communities with “strongly structured” reproductive decision-​making. Meera Sanghani-​Jorgensen, for example, shares that she is not sure she will have a second child, given “what’s happening to our planet.” She concludes on a different register, based on her interactions at a group meeting: [T]‌he narrative that I’ve had for so long is there is a direct relationship between reproduction, consumption, and the climate crisis. And for me it was, more people, more consumption, more CO2 emission. And what I’m hearing is, there’s been a clear and pervasive effort on the parts of industry to sort of forge this narrative, that it’s on the individuals, it’s on the reproductive couples that, you

E a r t h b or n  

[ 269 ]

0 72

know, have less children. And what I’m hearing tonight is that the conversation is really about what we want these industries to do which is to stop behaving in a way that is egregiously affecting our planet.4

Some of the testimonies feature mothers like Meera, who are wrestling with fears for their children’s futures and with the difficulty of facing the onslaught of consumerist pressure surrounding child care, from diapers to toys to birthday party favors. Other testimonies are from people who are childfree for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to climate justice. One climate activist shares that she prefers, rather than raising children, to have more time to give to her community and to environmental organizations. But many testimonies fall somewhere in between, coming from people who are deeply ambivalent about having children and for whom climate change adds yet another layer of complexity. Although these stories are about not having children, what I  want to highlight is how they repeatedly make use of gestures of inclination, as the speakers relate a practice of becoming-​parents and of imagining future children and the future earth, even if in order to decide against conceiving. One woman writes a sorrowful letter to a future child (“Dear child,”) that she has long anticipated but that she may not have, given the state of the planet, and closing with, “may the loss of you make us better lovers and better family for all those already here.”5 Similarly, Madeline Ostrander, an environmental journalist, recalls her own uncertainty after a miscarriage and addresses an imaginary child: “now that it was spring again, I wondered if I would try once more to conceive. I imagined my hypothetical child walking alongside me. What would I say about this place, the renewal of faith, the seasons of life, and whether we could rely on them as we always had? Would I know how to prepare someone for what lay ahead? There was no calculation I could make to tell me the right thing to do” (2016). Some of the testifiers seem like they might have been ideal first recruits to a Children of Compost community. But rather than embracing non-​ natalism as an ethical norm to be celebrated, or insisting on the rarity of babies as a troubling must, I want to instead appreciate how decisions not to have children—​or to have fewer children—​can emerge from a posture of maternal and natalist inclination. In other words, these handful of testimonies suggest that one need not forswear natalism in order to forswear making babies on a hurting planet. By imagining themselves as future parents, even if to decide against parenthood, they become tilted toward the care work of making worlds that are fit for life, a goal that

[ 270 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

Haraway also shares. But they do so by acknowledging that for many, these are mournful choices, even losses, made through postures of inclination. Going further, we might interpret the decision not to have children, or to have fewer children, on a warming planet as a political act of refusal—​as a maternal/​parental inclination that refuses to reproduce a world of violent rectitude in a way that is analogous to a strike or boycott. It bears some similarities to the women in the ancient comedy Lysistrata, who try to end the Peloponnesian War by refusing to have sex with Greek men until they agree to stop fighting. While Lysistrata is satire and did not necessarily intend to advance feminist or pacifist values, we can interpret the women’s plan as an effort to force the masculinist affairs of rectitude (organized violence, state security) into the inclined geometry of desire and bodily care. The women of Lysistrata and Conceivable Future insist on inclination as the geometry for thinking war and fossil fuels, putting children, sex, oil, and combat onto the same plane. Finally, by staying with the trouble of natality and maternity, we also benefit from the ontological rupture heralded by the mother–​child relationship. If we root our politics on an originary dependency and vulnerability (Butler 2004), rather than on upright, autonomous adults, then we have gone some way toward making room for multispecies democracy. Already inclined, one has adopted the right posture to pursue multispecies well-​being and to appreciate an ethics of entanglement. As Ostrander (2016) recalls of her own grief following a miscarriage, “at times, the grief was like a strange new power—​I was as sensitive to the world around me as a barometer. . . . I felt like I finally understood what was at stake in these conversations about the future of the planet: the value of what we create and of those we choose to love.”

NOTES 1. Such projections of intense population declines have racialized dimensions, as the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs predicts that “more than half of the anticipated growth in global population between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa.” See https://​esa.un.org/​unpd/​wpp/​ Publications/​Files/​WPP2017_​KeyFindings.pdf. 2. Taking up Lewis’s concerns, Jenny Turner, in the London Review of Books, also refers to Haraway’s non-​natalism as “radical and disturbing” and points out that the “discussion comes mainly in a two-​page endnote, as though Haraway herself isn’t quite sure of what she is saying.” 3. Haraway is keen to avoid the techno-​optimist strands of posthumanist thought, more aptly called transhumanism. She explains that “I’m with zoontologies more than posthumanism because I think that species is in question here big time

E a r t h b or n  

[ 271 ]

2 7

and species is one of those wonderful words that is internally oxymoronic. . . . ‘Companion species’ thinking inquires into the projects that construct us as a species, philosophical or otherwise. ‘Species’ is about category work. The term is simultaneously about several strands of meaning—​logical type, taxa characterized through evolutionary biology, and the relentless specificity of meanings” (Gane 2006, 140). 4. Taken from the Conceivable Future blog: http://​conceivablefuture.org/​post/​ 170805808993/​meera-​sanghani-​jorgensenage-​43-​chicago-​il. 5. Taken from the Conceivable Future blog: http://​conceivablefuture.org/​post/​ 131844860413/​ash-​temin.

REFERENCES Arendt, H. 1998. The Human Condition, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bell, S., and Braun, Y. 2010. “Coal, Identity, and the Gendering of Environmental Justice Activism in Central Appalachia.” Gender and Society 24, no. 6: 794–​813. Butler, J. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso. Cavarero, A. 2016. Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Gane, N. 2006. “When We Have Never Been Human, What Is to Be Done?: Interview with Donna Haraway.” Theory, Culture and Society 23, no. 7–​8: 135–​158. Haraway, D. J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hickey, C., Rieder, T. N., and Earl, J. 2016. “Population Engineering and the Fight against Climate Change.” Social Theory and Practice 42, no. 4: 845–​870. Honig, B. 2017. How to Do Things with Inclination (Lecture Notes). Lorde, A. 2015. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” In This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by C. Moraga and G. Anzaldúa, 94–​103. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Lyons, K. 2016. “Decomposition as Life Politics: Soils, Selva, and Small Farmers under the Gun of the U.S.-​Colombia War on Drugs.” Cultural Anthropology 31, no. 1: 55–​80. MacGregor, S. 2007. Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and the Politics of Care. Vancouver: UBC Press. Malthus, T. 2008. An Essay on the Principle of Population, edited by G. Gilbert. New York: Oxford University Press. Merchant, C. 1995. Earthcare: Women and the Environment. New York: Routledge. Ostrander, M. 2016. “How Do You Decide to Have a Baby When Climate Change Is Remaking Life on Earth?” Nation April 11–​18. https://​www.thenation.com/​ article/​how-​do-​you-​decide-​to-​have-​a-​baby-​when-​climate-​change-​is-​remaking-​ life-​on-​earth/​. Wynes, S., and Nicholas, K. A. 2017. “The Climate Mitigation Gap: Education and Government Recommendations Miss the Most Effective Individual Actions.” Environmental Research Letters 12, no. 7.

[ 272 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

CHAPTER 16

Speaking from the Margins of Motherhood A Politics (M)otherwise SAR A C. MOT TA

T

rauma is a systematic experience, not exceptional, for the raced and feminized subjects on the margins of political power and theoretical production (Motta 2018; Levins Morales 1998). Capitalist modernity, based as it is on colonization and (ab)use of the mind, body, soul, and land of the feminized and racialized less-​than-​human other, leaves us with epistemological and ontological soul-​wounds (Duran et  al. 2008; Gill et  al. 2012; Motta 2017a; Mendoza 2011). Within this, the politics of motherhood sits center stage, even as the black, Indigenous, and racialized mother is marked by her absence, the negation of her as a knowing-​subject and as a subject fit to care, dignified to gift be-​ing-​knowing to others (Bradley 2016; Cruz 2001; Davis 1972; Roberts 2012; Walker 2004; Motta 2016). Our experiences, historical and contemporary, are those of violent exile from each other and ourselves as we face separation from our kin, state and police brutality, and social, economic, and cultural exclusions. We are marked as nonsubjects, stains on the body politic, able to care for the kin of White elite women, able to service the power-​sex desire of Man (Hartman 2003; Collins 1990). As Gloria Anzaldúa (2002, 118) describes: [T]‌his system and its hierarchies affects people’s lives in concrete and devastating ways and justifies a sliding scale of human worth used to keep humankind Sara C. Motta, Speaking from the Margins of Motherhood In: Troubling Motherhood. Edited by: Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190939182.003.0016

4 7 2

divided. It condones the mind theft, spirit murder, exploitation and genocide de los otros.

These woundings are not only external but also seep into the fabric of our communities, social relationships, and selves. We can come to deny our subjectivity and capacity of gift as a speaking/​knowing subject and thus internalize the logics that we are unfit, uneducated, undeserving of love, unable to care. The systemic abuse to which we are subjugated is at its most powerful when it succeeds in dispossessing us of our dignity as raced mothers and the logics of abuse colonize our communities and families (Anzaldúa 2002; hooks 1990). For centuries, the knowledge of raced women and feminized subjects on the margins has been denigrated, denied, and misrepresented. From Lilith, the insubordinate first wife of Adam who refused to lie under him and submit (Koltuv 1986), to Xoachiquetzal, the Mexican indigenous deity who ascended to the upper world (without permission) to seek knowledge from the “arbol sagrada,” the tree of life whose freedom, and “carnal” and serpentine knowledges are re-​presented as the root of all evil. However, in these stories, in our herstories, lie “not the root of all evil but instinctual knowledge and other alternative ways of knowing that fuel transformation” (Anzaldúa 2002, 119–​120). What might it mean, then, to bring to thought and to “speak” epistemologically and politically from this place of (m)other absence? How might we enchant together this space (mis)represented as a black stain on the body politic into a place, subject, and possibility of endarkened wisdoms, maternal ethics, and the wholeness of homecoming to ourselves and each other? Interruption 1—​lungs in pain, hands and knees on the floor to clean up my children’s toys, increased teaching load, guilt to say no, doubt of the value of my work, internalized thoughts that I have no right to speak, no right to be here . . . absent presence, denial. Who am I? What do I represent?

INTERRUPTION AND/​A S FAILURE

Between November 2017 and January 2018, I  co-​facilitated a series of diálogo de saberes (dialogues of knowledge) with a group of movement educators and community organizers in Cali, Colombia. This is a group whom I collaborated with in participatory research projects and strategic pedagogical practices for more than a decade (Bermudez 2013; Motta

[ 274 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

2017b; Motta and Cole 2014). What links us is our experience in popular education (see Freire 1997, 2000)  and participation in feminist and decolonizing social movements (Neigh 2014). Accordingly, the dialogues were organized combining my work with prefigurative epistemologies and methods of critical pedagogy (CP) developed by members of the group (Bermudez 2013; Motta 2011). These dialogues of knowledges sought to visibilize, and then critically reflect in relation to, key themes in our political practice. In particular, we hoped to visibilize/​bring to thought the tensions and complicities of our practices with(in) patriarchal capitalist-​coloniality. We also hoped to continue to nurture each other, and like this deepen an integral and consistent practice able to include and foster ever-​deepening relationalities and realities of a postpatriarchal and decolonizing politics. A key theme that emerged from our initial dialogue was the role of time and temporality. This was particularly salient because it felt, on initial reflection, like an unthought, yet significant, element of our praxis. By remaining unthought, it could lead, we reflected, to tensions, exclusions, and the reproduction of hegemonic narratives, infrastructures, and practices of valuing and criteria of value and to resultant practices of temporal judgment and exclusion (see Motta and Bermudez, forthcoming for further details). Two dialogues were planned to explore this theme. Interestingly (and something we realized in the doing), the sessions were planned within a temporal linearity based on key steps, objectives, and desired outcomes (with implicit valuations and measurements of what constituted a successful dialogue). We had imagined beginning with an initial mapping of our awareness of the role of time and temporalities in our practices, to be followed by deepened embodied exploration through the modality of rhythm and drum work, to then move to the generation of key themes, and from this deeper reflection, to action and a return to reflection. We undertook the initial mapping of hegemonic temporalities and times, including their impact on our bodies, communities, and political practices and the practices of resistance and transgression that we attempted to embody. However, the reality of the presence of unruly and untimely bodies tested us to put into practice other, less controlled, more open-​ended practices of relating, knowing, and creating. Two of us had our children present (with two younger than five years), and their interruptions and “out-​of-​time” rhythms and temporalities almost immediately began to disrupt our planned afternoon of activities. Running in and out, climbing on tables, exploring nooks and crannies we hadn’t seen, blowing out the sacred candle, giggling as spilt water dribbled off the table, finding a hidden

Sp e a k i n g f r o m t h e M a r g i n s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 275 ]

6 7 2

stash of sweets! At first, we attempted to continue, even as one mother was unable to participate while she tended to the children. Irritation and laughter emerged at the same time, with a desire from the other mother to keep going because of her experiences “of the preciousness of the time and this time in particular” and “of never having time to engage in these kinds of activities, relationality and dialogues” because of her isolation as a single parent. Eventually we stopped trying to order ourselves and dialogue into the predetermined script. We opened to the out-​ of-​time playfulness of the children. The drums we had bought to mark out the beat of our own autonomous and resistant temporalities became the instruments with which some played with the children in the courtyard, while others talked and laughed, until we were all called to work out a way of saving a broom that a little one had dropped down onto a lower rooftop. The patience, concentration, and shared thinking-​doing it took to rescue the broom brought more laughter, compassion, and connection. These interruptions meant we didn’t achieve the imagined outcomes of the afternoon and “failed” to follow our pre-​thought rhythms and pre-​determined beats. However, this enabled an opening to other affective temporal registers of being and knowing (Boler and Zembylas 2003; Mitchell 2013). Importantly, tenderness and lived compassion for the mothers that were present rippled between us. For that time we shared the care, and the care, as opposed to being experienced or expressed as a drain or a secondary moment to the overall temporal narrative, expectations and objectives, became a fertile moment of untimeliness (Motta and Amsler 2017; Sharma 2014). This moment was a ripple on an otherwise unthought(ful) preordering of the time of our dialogues, which had been without attention to our differential experiences of temporal possibility. As Gloria Anzaldúa (2002, 117) notes, interruption “has the power to startle you out of tunnel vision and habitual patterns of thought.” These tensions of maintaining the unthought(ful)ness of temporalities became palpably felt, not as usual by the carers as guilt and shame or exclusion, but by all participants. The affectivities were untimely and uncontrolled:  laughter, playfulness, and forgetfulness of the order and ordering of political things, bodies, and relations. This brought to our attention the importance of play, laughter, and spontaneity for the possibilities of rendering present other temporalities, temporal narratives, and criteria of value (Firth and Robinson 2014; Motta and Cole 2014: Motta and Bermudez 2019). In particular, it deepened reflection about the kinds of (dis)embodied subjectivities that undergird the implicit rendering of political knowing in both hegemonic and critical spaces of the political:  particularly, the detached, all-​knowing, tight-​bodied, symbolic

[ 276 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

representation and material actuality of the performance of the radical or the revolutionary (Motta 2017a, 2018). This suggested to us that rendering present other temporalities through untimely interruption and conscious visibilization of the absent impacts on the kinds of subjectivities that become valued and visible in our politics (Hartman 2003). It also foregrounded the importance of dedicating political time to play and playfulness, to the unplanned and disorganized (Firth and Robinson 2014:  Starodub forthcoming), and to be open to the onto-​epistemological possibilities that attentiveness to this might nurture. Our experience also stimulated reflections about the implicit temporal infrastructure and narrative constraining of our dialogue, and the kinds of exclusions and hierarchical orderings of particular bodies we could become complicit in reproducing (Sharma 2014). Such attentiveness emerged out of the silencing of the implicit temporal script with which we had attempted to organize our dialogues through the noise of the unruly interruptions and rhythms of children and their mothers. This enabled us to make explicit this unthought temporal infrastructure and normative valuing of time-​space. The openness and willingness of the collective to explore these otherwise silenced or devalued untimely subjects and bodies brought to thought the importance of recognition of differential and unequal experiences of time and temporal expectations. It led us to make a collective commitment to embed this recognition in our co-​organizing of time (Sharma 2014). We agreed to actively encourage the participation of participants’ children, to dedicate time to creating a rota of care and of activities so that both the children and their carers could be present with their out-​of-​time bodies and relationalities and centrally not judged or shamed but welcomed and held as epistemologically and politically sacred. Interruption and/​as failure, in which the messiness of motherhood and the untimely, unruliness of children becomes present in our space-​times of political encounter, can allow the unseen and unthought of our hegemonic temporal narratives and normative and material orderings of time to emerge. In particular, it foregrounds the possibilities of other affectivities of play and wonder and other rhythms of spontaneity and nonlinearity to enter as underpinnings of our shared collaborations and creation of an inclusive and pluridiverse (geo)politics. It suggests that hegemonic linear temporalities assume particular disembodied and careless subjectivities and can result in the exclusion of out-​of-​time and untimely bodies, subjects, and knowledges. Beginning from the absence-​presence of mother-​subjects and their children foregrounds other values and practices of valuing, which center the private, intimate, familiar, and domestic as space-​times of political and epistemic possibility. It brings the question and embodied reality

Sp e a k i n g f r o m t h e M a r g i n s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 277 ]

8 72

of care(lessness) to thought and raises reflections about the consequences of this for the types of political relationalities, subjects, and practices that become valued or devalued and negated in our politics. Interruption 2 Raw-​edged1 I sit dreaming in silent, stubborn vision, refusing submission into despairing silence and often in whispers or as a kind of add on to our conversations barely audible unacknowledged like a fleck of dust in the eye, I vision our possibilities in, and as, community maintain the flame of wondrous hope, alive and like this, I can commit to live even as my tiresome companion of loneliness, loyal beyond compare wears me down, as I pace around the lounge strewn toys interrupting, my steps, my children’s voices, interrupting the silence. Sometimes I turn to the sweetness of a deep, red old wine realising almost at once that this cannot quench my thirst for togetherness nor my desire for a mysterious, as yet unknown, homecoming;

[ 278 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

a yearning that does not let me sleep and instead has me imagining who will work with who on the collective (child)care, searching through examples of such living-​loving otherwise, sending the odd email, hoping that there are still believers not even sure if there were ever believers at all. Tending the hearth of our collective joy and I say collective, with a deep long breath, with a pause through which the real meaning of such togetherness, or the vision of such togetherness seeps through my cells down to the core of my bones. Ancestors, I call, beseech, as baby comes to sit on my head with pooey nappy bringing me back to crashing, yet humorous reality; interrupted in my insistent, even nagging, perhaps grasping, dreaming. There’s piss on the floor and rubbish overflowing and the garden’s plants are half-​alive, and all I want right now is to have a bath in peace, in tenderness, a being alone which is not a form of torturous aloneness and through which I can hear my children being care for, and loved and cherished nurtured by our little tribe of heretics, witches, queers, all of us impure, all of You who fill my life with sheer delight. Writing in the cracks, baby runs off to watch ABC for Kids, I notice the bath has overflown and the water trickles over the edges of the tub across the floor, like my vision and dreaming

Sp e a k i n g f r o m t h e M a r g i n s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 279 ]

0 8 2

that can’t be contained, nor stopped in its flow even if it leaves an uncomfortable, somewhat comical mess on the clean floor of hegemonic living; a non-​living which has never been, and never will be mine to own or cherish, or embrace or yearn for. I’ll go clean up the bathroom now, turn off the taps perhaps grab five minutes in the warm waters of life, and keep dreaming asking, can sheer will tend the flame of our visions, nurturing a fire around which we might lay our weary heads and worn out bodies, come to a place where we might touch each other, create an other kind of rooting, rootedness and come home to our selves?

FRAGILITY

The dialogues of knowledges continued our exploration of time and temporality, and also began to explore a new theme: motherhood. At the interstices of these two encounters we increasingly began to unravel our normal performances of self—​as activist, academic, mother, professional—​and in the process embraced mutual processes of fragilization. Bracha Ettinger (2009) names this a process of self-​fragilization in which we embed and reimagine the political and contours of political subjectivity through a maternal ethics of care for self and other into a third space beyond the patriarchal gaze and Phallic reason. Gloria Anzaldúa (2002, 122) names a commensurate experience-​process as Nepantla, a time-​space bridging between certainties of self/​other and an unknown becoming in which: you are exposed, open to other perspectives, more readily able to access knowledge derived from inner feelings, imaginal states, and outer events, and to “see through” them with a mindful, holistic awareness. Seeing through human acts both individual and collective allows you to examine the ways you construct knowledge, identity and reality.

[ 280 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

Both seek to bring to thought a third space, a borderlands beyond the private/​public, feminine/​masculine, mind/​body, thought/​feeling hierarchical dualisms that paralyze and impoverish mainstream and critical renditions of the political (Motta 2016, 2018). In one of our circles, we began to give testimony to the stories, struggles, and experiences that had brought us here, brought us to the commitment to co-​create a postpatriarchal and decolonizing politics of everyday life. Violence—​ intimate, structural, symbolic, emotional, physical, physic, cultural—​flowed out as a thread that connected us through time, place, and history. We began a process of revealing and unveiling in slow tender moments and snippets of conversations, through the telling of stories and moments of shared silence, the internalized traumas that had marked our path as activists, educators, and community organizers. All of us had been victim of and/​or witness to abuse. All of us carried the shame, pain, and post-​trauma of these systemic experiences that marked our births, lives, ancestry, and present. In one of these encounters, I  facilitated a deep listening exercise that involved being silent for five minutes. Participants were given a piece of paper on which they were asked to draw what looks like a fried egg, a small circle nested within a bigger circle. The smaller circle represents what is internally heard during their silence, the larger what is heard outside of themselves. The women dispersed across the space, some going outside to stand or sit in silence, eyes closed. Each represented in whatever way she chose what she heard through the silence: her heartbeat, her fear, the voice in her head, the flies buzzing, some beautiful birds landing on the branch outside, the breeze entering through the window, its caress on her cheek. There was a softening of the energy between us, a slowing of the rhythms of the hegemonic times of everyday life, a (re)rooting into our selves and the place we stood: a tentative coming into being of a new quality of relationship, sensing, knowing-​be-​ing (Motta 2018). We (re)turned to a form of intuitive knowing “untouched by mental constructs—​what inner eye, hearts, and gut tell you  .  .  .  [a]‌direct knowledge (gnosis) of the world” (Anzaldúa 2002, 120). As we sat in circle and shared our mappings, it became obvious that our embodied re-​turn to being of the world and our bodies does not take one form, is not experienced as sameness but as difference. Some shared their circles full of words, others with images, others with colors flowing across the page; one woman had no separation between inner and outer worlds. Some shared the richness of what they could now hear and what they had become aware of through silence and stillness. These were the sensations, feelings, and awareness that otherwise remain

Sp e a k i n g f r o m t h e M a r g i n s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 281 ]

8 2

hidden and absent-​present, silent streams running beneath our “normal” and often unthought performances of self and other. Hegemonic (and often critical) renditions of Political Speech are premised on the word without pause, without breath, without the silence of listening. As Luce Irigaray (1996, 122) describes: Speech, instead of bearing breath, takes its place, replaces it, which invariably stifles and preoccupies the place for silence. People who pay no heed to respiration, who breathe poorly, who are short of air, often cannot stop speaking, and are thus unable to listen. Speaking is their way of respiring, or more precisely expiring, of exhaling, in order to take a breath. And so, they stifle the inspiration—​in the strict sense, general or figurative—​of others . . . [and] might well lead to a lack of respect for life; for one’s own life, for the other’s life, for others’ lives. . . . Such traditions substitute words for life without forging the necessary links between the two. Yet these links would be what enables life and language to be reciprocally preserved, regenerated and fecundated, especially in dialogue where breath can either be awakened, engendered, or stifled.

Our practice resisted and transgressed this anti-​life representation through a return of the word to breath and attentiveness to a practice of dwelling in moments of pause and silence. This “break[s]‌you out of your mental and emotional prison” and “challenge[s] official and conventional ways of looking at the world, ways set up by those who benefit from such constructions” (Anzaldúa 2002, 120). Such a pause and descent into embodied deep listening created an expansiveness that allowed us to drop and dwell even more deeply into those out-​of-​time, unruly, and dangerous endarkened territories and into the embodied time-​space Nepantla of mutual self-​fragilization (Motta 2018). Returning to circle, we unraveled further, cracked those parts of ourselves colonized and exiled out of sight and speech. We dwelled in the complexities of re-​rooted relationalities and listening tenderness sharing untold, unthought, and unfelt stories. As Gloria Anzaldúa (2002, 117)  describes, “by redeeming [y]‌our most painful experiences, you[we] transform them into something valuable, algo para compartir, to share with others so they, too, may be empowered.” We began to speak our fear of speech, how and when we had been silenced, our doubts about the worth and power of our voices and to situate these experiences, otherwise rendered irrational, empty, as black stains without (political)meaning, as embodied memories containing pain but also seeds of dignity, strength, resilience, and survival. As Gloria (2002, 122) continues: “Empowerment is the bodily feeling of being able to connect with inner voices/​resources (images, symbols, beliefs, and

[ 282 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

memories) during periods of stillness, silence, and deep listening. . . . [T] his alchemy of connection provides the knowledge, strength and energy to persist. . . . Este modo de capacitar comes from accepting your own authority to direct rather than letting others run you.” Thus, we also disordered and unraveled hegemonic performances of knowing-​subjectivity. The role of facilitator shifted from one of leader or all-​knower sharing insights and analysis to guide political practice and strategizing, to a subjectivity of care, tenderness, and mutual self-​ fragilization, embodying a methodology of stripping (Motta 2018). Lina, daughter and activist-​artist participant, describes such experiences of political co-​knowing as facilitation as opposed to truth-​telling: One begins this path with an intention that is based on respect towards the other, to listen. And to recognise that we do not have the magic solutions and it is simply with respect, with listening . . . doing in a different way, [that] we recognise the other, give space, and not view the process as going from a set beginning to a set end. (Author interview, January 11, 2018)

This also involves an intentionality that recognizes that it is not only in the spoken word that knowledge and possibility for knowing is created; rather, it is in moments of silence, in moments of listening, and through multiple literacies such as art, orality, and spirituality that we might generate the possibilities for knowing our selves and each other (m)otherwise. As Lina continues: It is super important in the first part of the journey to speak of the power of silence, to understand silence as a space that is potent, of the importance of allowing the other to live this moment, and also to allow oneself as the facilitator to live this, to recognise that it is not only in the spoken that knowledge and understanding comes . . . because from the moment(s) of silence, in that silence, the person is connected to an embodied experience and is able to process many things. . . . In this moment silence is greater than speech because it can generate deeper understandings.

Here, there is a merging to self and other, of facilitator and participant, of mind and body, of speech and silence, in which the process as immanent moment of multiple embodied knowings is centered, and in which a maternal ethic of care, mutual self-​fragilization, and surrender to the unknown and unimagined Nepantla becomes the ground of possibility of postpatriarchal and decolonizing praxis. It is from such tenderly and tentatively emergent and embodied time-​space relationalities (beyond the dualisms that have

Sp e a k i n g f r o m t h e M a r g i n s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 283 ]

4 8 2

separated us) that we might re-​create our own myths, piece together integral selves, and disorder the “hegemonic” world. Our politics becomes an attentiveness to the/​our breath and life-​nurturing energies. Interruption 3—​Exiled from lands, separation between mothers and daughters, sisters and fathers . . . hauntings of the hands of abuse clasp at our necks, suffocate, and tear us apart. Wanderings, forlorn, how to be a daughter without a mother? How to be a mother without experience of a mothering that wasn’t torture?

PRESENCE (M)OTHERWISE

Lina Marcela Sánchez and Yajaira Mina, daughters, popular educators, and activist-​scholars with a focus on visual arts and music, respectively, are co-​creators of “la metadologia de sanar linajes maternas” (“methodology of healing maternal lineages”). They developed this methodology as means of re-​rooting and bringing to presence (m)otherwise maternal lineages that have been marked by exile, abuse, and oppression, left to historical neglect, and relegated to political irrelevance and epistemological silence. Their intent is to foster a pluridiversity of what motherhood and mothering might mean, recover hidden and misrepresented wisdoms, honor negated (m)other-​subjects, and bring reconciliation and healing to the ways that capitalist-​patriarchy has wounded our maternal ancestral lineages, our communities, and ourselves. As Yajaira describes recounting the beginning of this project: When we began to reflect on maternal lineages and mothers from within different feminist perspectives I began to see how my mother fell into some of the feminist traditions . . . and I said to myself, could it be that my mother was the first feminist, without calling herself this? She was the first one to speak to me of these themes.

The methodology developed into three steps (steps that can be reinvented, rethought, and reordered according to the participants and facilitators) based around the recovery of narratives and stories, moving between autobiography and biography. The first moment is autobiographical and involves the recognition of “I.” I  as a daughter and a mother, asking questions about which circumstances made me a mother, which circumstances made me into a daughter. It involves recognition of the importance of these roles not from a hegemonic position, about how one

[ 284 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

should be, rather about how the subject feels and remembers her experience of being a mother and a daughter. The second stage involves the recuperation of the histories of the maternal linage, to recuperate the stories of mothers and daughters and bring them to memory and thought. The final part is a reflexion in order to resignify and resymbolize the entire process and the narratives generated in the first two stages, and in this way bring to presence reconciled and healed maternal lineages. Their experiences as popular educators specialized in visual arts and music mean that the methodology and the methods combine multiple literacies: art, movement, symbolism, orality, and music. Their methodology is a manifestation of a feminization of resistance and knowledge (Motta and Seppälä 2017), “one beyond the subject-​object divide, a way of knowing and acting on ese saber you call ‘conocimiento.’ ” Sceptical of reason and rationality, conocimiento questions conventional knowledge’s current categories, classifications, and contents (Anzaldúa 2002, 119). Lina and Yajaira themselves began the process of co-​creating the methodology prefiguratively. They thus recovered their own maternal lineages and worked with their mothers, grandmothers, and other subjects that had been involved in their experience of being a daughter and mother. Such resignification allowed Yajaira to situate her mother’s story in a way that enabled the visibilization of the nonhegemonic, of her mother’s resistances and knowledges that had been rendered as lacking or as absent. As Yajaira continues: There was a healing from piecing together my mother’s story. Many of the memories I had of my mother were what others said about her, that she was a bad mother, that she was different, and crazy and a rebel. They were always negative representations about her way of being and her thinking. This created doubt in me and questions about whether she was good or bad, which were particularly strong in my adolescence., because the parameters of the normal were very strong. My mother was a single parent and had different thoughts and positions in relation to this norm. Yet she always continued with strength and clarity in her different thoughts. During this process when I began to name what had been happening, and to see her story in other ways . . . in this moment my mother came alive to me and I saw that she was one of the first women to give me theories with which to see other possibilities of life. This has allowed a healing step by step between us. . . . This is the search, to know there are other ways of healing and to realise that these steps have become a basis to strengthen my thoughts and actions to keep going. If you ask me about healing, I feel I have healed. I feel that the things I inherited from her make me strong. I feel that to be different as a black woman is not bad . . . and from here things can flow.

Sp e a k i n g f r o m t h e M a r g i n s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 285 ]

8 62

In a society premised on the negation of the wisdoms and creativity of the maternal (Cixous 1976)  and the negation of the raced mother as a mother at all (Bradley 2016; Motta 2017b), subaltern mothers are often left without roots and a deep yearning for belonging, cast aside and unable to grasp a rich maternal heritage from which they might nurture themselves. As Gloria Anzaldúa (2002, 125) so beautifully describes: Every arrebato-​a violent attack, rift with a loved one, illness, death in the family, betrayal, systemic racism and marginalisation—​ rips you from your . . . ‘home.’ . . . Cada arrebatada turns your world upside down and cracks the walls of your reality, resulting in a great sense of loss, grief, and emptiness, leaving behind dreams, hopes and goals.  .  .  . [Y]‌ou feel like an orphan, abandoned by all that’s familiar. Exposed, naked, disorientated, wounded, uncertain, confused, and conflicted, you’re forced to live en la orilla—​a razor-​sharp edge that fragments you.

The methodology developed by Lina and Yajaira does not seek to reproduce the silence or reduce maternal heritages of subaltern women to a romanticized vision of resistance, resilience, and transgression. Instead, their intentionality is to facilitate processes of recuperation and visibilization of the histories of pain, suffering, and survival. Yet, as Gloria argues:  “Challenging the old self’s orthodoxy is never enough; you must submit a sketch of an alternative self . . . and finding no ready-​made story, you trust her light in the darkness to help you bring forth (from remnants of old personal/​collective autohistorias) a new myth” (2002, 559). Thus, Lina and Yajaira also aim to foster the resituating of patterns of abuse or oppression within the contexts of patriarchal capitalist-​coloniality in order to open the possibility of responsibility, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, and empowerment. As part of the resignification and healing process of maternal lineages and relationships between mothers and daughters, one of the practices that Lina and Yajaira have developed is the creation of a bracelet of “the told and the untold.” A mother and daughter each thread beads on a string in relation to some guiding questions; each bead represents a story told, shared, and brought to presence. At the end of the process the mother and daughter gift each other their bracelet, as an offering honoring the sacredness of their connection, their roles, and their dignity. The questions and reflections about the stories told and untold are not spoken but rather materialized through the beads, the bracelet, and the act of honoring through gifting. This is a form of spiritual activism in which we “commence the arduous task of rebuilding (y)ourself(ves) . . . and together begin [ 286 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

building spiritual/​political communities that struggle for personal growth and social justice” (Anzaldúa 2002, 156). Fundamentally, the methodology co-​created by Lina and Yajaira is a path to re-​rooting and reconnection. It is a methodology of the recuperation of the maternal as an energy, a symbol, a memory, a story, a practice of being held, of being mothered, and of mothering. It enables the situating of oneself as mother/​daughter/​grandmother, understood in non-​reductionist terms, and in this way contributes to our homecoming, after centuries of (internal) exile.

A (GEO)POLITICS (M)OTHERWISE

If we take as given the (political) subject, the temporalities and temporal expectations, the normative presuppositions, the official histories, the traditions of thought (as separate from the embodied), the performances of revolutionary and radical, and the affectivities considered proper to politics and critique, then we reproduce the violent negation of the presence of the racialized mother and the maternal as place of epistemological and political possibility. Our (geo)politics (m)otherwise nurtures to thought and knowing-​be-​ ing the black stain of the raced maternal through the power of interruption of these certainties, an opening to processes of mutual self-​fragilization and the bringing to presence of our maternal connection(s). We bring to presence the intricacies and complexities of domination and power as well as the complexities of the wisdoms rooted in resistance, survival, and transgression. Racialized mothers become visible on their own terms as knowing subjects rooted into herstories of wisdom and endarkened knowledges, mothered and mothering and holding the gift of a maternal ethics. In this way, we birth together a (geo)politics (m)otherwise. This, our feminized and decolonizing (geo)politics (m)otherwise, turns the conversation that has structured the geopolitics of patriarchal capitalist modernity on its head, shifting and cracking the hegemonic ways of knowing-​being that reproduce the negation and denial of the raced and feminized other and the endarkened knowledges that she carries. Instead are fostered new languages and literacies of the political, honoring the wisdoms of our foremothers, our mothers, and ourselves as mothers and daughters, and (re)membering how our serpentine and enfleshed be-​ing can provide the alchemical grounds of possibility for becoming (m)otherwise. Such a politics transgresses the borders that have exiled us from each other and ourselves as we embrace a maternal ethics that recognized

Sp e a k i n g f r o m t h e M a r g i n s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 287 ]

82

how “[our] pain might open this closed passage by reaching through the wound to connect. Wounds causes you to shift consciousness.  .  .  . Like love, pain might trigger compassion—​if you’re tender with yourself, you can be tender to others. Using wounds as openings to become vulnerable and available (present) to others means staying in your body. . . . In all great stories  .  .  .  wounding is the entrance of the sacred” (Anzaldúa 2002, 154). Bringing to thought and know-​be-​ing our trauma re-​roots an enfleshed cosmopolitics in which the black void becomes a sacred presence, an enfleshed conocimiento that has the potential to shatter modernity’s certainties and open into the time-​space of Nepantla: an integral politics of healing, homecoming, and (re)connection.

NOTE 1. Author poem, June 12, 2017. REFERENCES Anzaldúa, G. E. 2002. “now let us shift . . . the path of conocimiento . . . inner work, public acts.” In This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, edited by G. Anzaldúa and. L. Keating, 540–​578. New York: Routledge. Bermudez, N. L. 2013. “Cali’s Women in Collective Crossing for Three Worlds: Popular Education, Feminisms and NonViolence for the Expansion of the Present, Memory and for Nurturing Life.” In Education and Social Change in Latin America, edited by S. C. Motta and M. Cole, 239–​260. London/​ New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Boler, M. and M. Zmebylas. 2003. “Discomforting Truths: The Emotional Terrain of Understanding Difference.” In Pedagogies of Difference: Rethinking Education for Social Change, edited by P. P. Trifonas. Londong/​New York: Routledge. Bradley, R. 2016. “Living in the Absence of a Body: The (Sus)Stain of Black Female (W)holeness.” Rhizomes 29. Cixous, H. 1976. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Signs 1, no. 4: 875–​893. Collins, P. H. 1990. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge. Cruz, C. 2001. “Toward an Epistemology of a Brown Body.” Qualitative Studies in Education 14, no. 5: 657–​669. Davis, A. 1972. “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves.” Massachusetts Review, 13. Duran, E., Firehammer, J., and Gonzalez, J. 2008. “Liberation Psychology as the Path toward Healing Cultural Soul Wounds.” Journal of Counseling and Development 86: 288–​298. Ettinger, L. 2009. “Fragilization and Resistance and Neighborhood and Shechina.” Studies in the Maternal 1, no. 2: 1–​31.

[ 288 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

Firth, R., and Robinson, A. 2014. For the Past Yet to Come: Utopian Conceptions of Time and Becoming. Time & Society 23, no. 3: 380–401. Freire, P. 1997. Pedagogy of the Heart. New York: Continuum Publishing Company. Freire, P. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Bloomsbury. Gill, H. Purru, K., and Lin, G. 2012. “In the Midst of Participatory Action Research Practices: Moving towards Decolonising and Decolonial Praxis.” Reconceptualising Educational Research Methodology 3, no. 1: 1–​15. Hartman, S. V., and Wilderson, F. B. 2003. “The Position of the Unthought.” Qui Parle 13, no. 2 (Spring/​Summer): 183–​201. hooks, b. 1990. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. San Francisco: South End Press. Irigaray, L. 1996. I Love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History, translated by Alison Martin. London, New York: Routledge. Koltuv, B. 1986. The Book of Lilith. Bernwick, Maine: Nicolas Hays. Levins Morales, A. 1998. Medicine Stories: History, Culture and the Politics of Integrity. Boston: South End Press. Mendoza, S. L. 2011. “Savage Representations in the Discourse of Modernity: Liberal Ideology and the Impossibility of Nativist Longing.” Decolonisation: Indigenity, Education and Society 2, no. 1: 1–​19. Mitchell, K. I. 2013. “Narrating Resistance through Failure: Queer Temporality and Reevaluations of Success in Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Comparative Literature Graduate Theses & Dissertations. 43. http://​scholar. colorado.edu/​coml_​gradetds/​43 Motta, S. C. 2011. “Notes towards Prefigurative Epistemologies.” In Social Movements in the Global South: Development, Dispossession and Resistance, edited by S. C. Motta and A. G. Nilsen, 178–​199. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan. Motta, S. C. 2016. “Australia’s Body Politics: Contesting the Coloniality of Violence of Child Removal.” Journal of Resistance Studies 2, no. 2. http://​resistance-​journal. org/​product/​decolonizing-​australias-​body-​politics-​contesting-​the-​coloniality-​ of-​violence-​of-​child-​removal/​ http://​resistance-​journal.org/​product/​ decolonizing-​australias-​body-​politics-​contesting-​the-​coloniality-​of-​violence-​ of-​child-​removal/​. Motta, S. C. 2017a. “Decolonising Critique: From Prophetic Negation to Prefigurative Affirmation.” In Social Sciences for an Other Politics: Women Without Parachutes, edited by A. Dinerstein, 33–​48. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan. Motta, S. C. 2017b. “Emancipation in Latin America: On the Pedagogical Turn.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 36: 5–​20. Motta, S.C. 2018. Liminal Subjects: Weaving (Our) Liberation. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Motta, S. C. and Amsler, S. 2017. “The Marketised University and the Politics of Motherhood.” Gender and Education 31, no. 1: 82–​99. Motta, S. C., and Bermudez, N. L. 2019. “Insurgent Temporalities and Decolonial Times.” Globalisations (special issue on anticapitalism). Motta, S. C., and Cole, M. 2014. Constructing 21st Century Socialism in Latin America: The Role of Radical Education. London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Motta, S. C. and Seppälä, T. 2017. “Feminised Resistances.” Journal of Resistance Studies 2, no.1: 1–​29. https://​resistance-​journal.org/​product/​volume-​2-​ number-​2-​2016/​.

Sp e a k i n g f r o m t h e M a r g i n s of M o t h e r h o o d  

[ 289 ]

0 9 2

Neigh, J. 2014. “Dreams of Uncommon Languages: Transnational Feminist Pedagogy and Multilingual Poetics.” Feminist Formations 26, no. 1: 70–​92. Roberts, D. E. 2012. “Prison, Foster Care, and the Systemic Punishment of Black Mothers.” UCLA Law Review 59: 1474–​1494. Sharma, S. 2014. “Because the Night Belongs to Lovers: Occupying the Time of Precarity.” Communication and Critical/​Cultural Studies 11, no. 1: 5–​14. Walker, A. 2004. In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose. Houston: The Woman’s Press, Mariner Books.

[ 290 ]  Gendered Labor and Maternality

INDEX

Note: Figures are indicated by f following the page number For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. abortion global gag rule, 3–​4, 55, 144–​45 queering reproductive aid and, 148 rape and abortion legality, 4 restrictions for, 3–​4 stigma over, 54, 55f Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Luker), 56 Abu Ghraib prison scandal, 19–​20 active “mothering,” 104–​5 adoption rights, 109–​10 affective-​emotional bond,  225–​26 agonistic sorority, 263 Åhäll, Linda, 11, 20, 22 All-​Options,  59–​60 Allsopp, J., 70–​71 Alternative for Germany (AFD), 103–​4 Amar, Paul, 158–​59 Amnesty International, 4 Anadhra Pradesh, 114 anchor babies, 103–​4 Aniston, Jennifer, 247–​48 Anthropocene era, 253–​54 antimaternalism,  183–​84 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 273–​74, 280, 282–​83,  286 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 220 Arab uprisings, 162–​63 Arendt, Hannah, 258–​59, 268 Argentina, 4, 9, 157, 164 Argentina’s Mothers of Plaza de Mayo,  20–​21

Aristotle, 105 austerity measures, 128–​29 Australian cesarean deliveries, 203–​5 ayis (domestic helpers). See cosmopolitan mothering by expats in China bad mother trope, 52, 54, 56–​57,   69–​70 bad parenting, 206–​7 Baranyi, Stephen, 140–​41 bargaining with patriarchy, 157, 158–​59, 160, 171 Beautiful Soul narrative, 31 Beck, Ulrich, 220 Beyond Mothering Earth (MacGregor), 254 bilateral international development assistance,  139–​40 binary cognitive logics, 1 biological reproduction, 196–​97 biological sex, 105–​8 biopolitics and neoliberal mothering,  197–​99 birthgiving perceptions, 202–​3 Black mother image, 3 “Black Nun of Moret,” 97–​98 Blanchett, Cate, 234, 235, 240–​44 Boston Abortion Support Collective,  59–​60 Brah, Avtar, 72 Buddhism, 168, 169–​70 butch lesbians, 150

Camp David Accords (1978), 161 Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment in Ireland, 60–​61 Canadian reproductive aid policies. See queering reproductive aid capitalism, 185, 216, 228–​29, 247, 255, 268, 269 capitalist-​coloniality of patriarchy, 275 care, politics of, 181–​83 Cavarero, Adriana, 253–​54, 255–​59 celebrity global motherhood Aniston, Jennifer, 247–​48 Blanchett, Cate, 234, 235, 240–​44 context and analysis, 240–​46 cosmopolitan discourse, 241 ethics of care, 235–​36 introduction to, 10, 233–​35 Jolie, Angelina, 233–​35, 236–​37,  239–​44 retelling local stories, 244 summary of, 246–​48 Winfrey, Oprah, 247–​48 censoring maternal stereotypes, 255–​57 cesarean deliveries (C-​sections), 9, 195, 202,  208–​9 Charles II, 95 child tax credit, 128–​29, 133–​34 child welfare, 200 childfree individuals, 107–​8 childlessness, 31 Children of Compost, 264–​68, 270–​71 Children of Men (film), 107–​8 “children overboard” case, 69 “Children Overboard” fabrication, 74, 81n6 China, nannies by expats. See cosmopolitan mothering by expats in China China’s One Child Policy, 203 Chinese cesarean deliveries, 203 Chinn, StacyAnn, 61–​62, 63 chivalry hypothesis, 22 Chodorow, Nancy, 237–​38 cisgendered narrative, 127 Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP) conference, 59 classical theory, 125–​26 Coalition of African Lesbians, 149–​50 coerced sterilization, 111–​15 Cohn, Carol, 238

[ 292 ] Index

community-​based parenting, 205 compost and maternity, 264–​68 Conceivable Future movement, 269 conceived without consent. See rape clause Connolly, William, 267–​68 consummation of marriage, 91–​94 contra neoliberalism, 199 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 168–​69 corrective rape, 150–​51 cosmopolitan competence, 220 cosmopolitan mothering by expats in China contextualizing strangeness, 217–​19 introduction to, 214–​17 overview of, 220–​23 relational situating of self, 223–​27 summary of, 227–​29 cosmopolitanism, 10, 215–​16, 220–​29 “coward” subject, 77–​78 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 72 crimes against humanity, 26–​27 criminalization of same-​sex acts/​marriage,  145 critical maternal ethics, 125–​28, 134–​36 Croats, 26 Dahlen, Hannah, 204 Dauphin Louis, 94–​96 Day, Suzanne, 112 de-​gendering of care, 182–​83 decomposition as life politics, 264–​65 delayed gratification, 207 deviant womb, 22 diálogo de saberes (dialogues of knowledge),  274–​80 difference-​equality conundrum of feminism,  215–​16 D.I.N.K. (Dual Income, No Kids) households,  252–​53 disempowerment of women, 1–​2 dominant social relations, 196–​97 dynastic motherhood, 98–​99 eco-​maternalism Arendt, Hannah, on, 258–​59 compost and maternity, 264–​68 introduction to, 252–​54

maternal inclination, 259–​64, 260f, 261f multispecies care, 263–​64 overview of, 254–​58, 256f summary of, 269–​71 economy, defined, 196, 209–​10n2 Egypt, 9, 157, 159, 160 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 19–​20 El-​Beltagy, Ammar, 163 El-​Beltagy, Asma, 163 El-​Beltagy, Mohamed, 163 el-​Sadat, Anwar, 161 emergency cesarean deliveries, 9 England, Lynndie, 18–​19 enlightenment feminisms, 237–​38 essentialization of women, 70–​71, 111 ethics of care, 235–​36 Ethiopian Jewish immigrants, 4–​5 ethnic cleansing, 24 Ettinger, Bracha, 280 eugenics,  112–​13 European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), 109–​10 expat mothering. See cosmopolitan mothering by expats experiential knowledge, 179–​80 Fairbairn, Bill, 151–​52 familial homophobia, 57–​58 family values ideology, 110 female agency, 17–​18 female peacefulness stereotype, 19–​20 female political violence. See violent femininity and motherhood feminine “passivity,” 74–​75 femininity. See also violent femininity and motherhood performances of motherhood, 6–​7 reproductive femininity, 7, 105–​6 traditional femininity, 186 feminism/​feminists criminological scholarship, 32 difference-​equality conundrum of,  215–​16 enlightenment feminisms, 237–​38 gender equality agenda in Canadian aid, 144 inclusive feminist approach, 139 International Political Economy, 196 marriage and family analysis, 88–​89

mothering vs. motherhood, 105–​8 personal, as political, 10 social reproduction, 196–​97 state feminism in Egypt, 160–​61, 162 trap of maternalism, 9 understanding of motherhood, 2–​3, 9 women as symbolic victims, 7 Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP), 139, 141–​44, 148–​49, 151 feminist International Relations (IR), 1–​2, 5, 67, 235–​36 feminist politics of motherhood Fiat automobile commercial, 180,  184–​85 introduction to, 179–​81 politics of care, 181–​83 Similac infant formula commercial, 180,  187–​88 summary of, 191–​92 trap of maternalism, 9, 179–​80,  183–​84 Fiat automobile commercial, 180,  184–​85 fighting mothers vs. fighting children,  39–​40 Fitspiration Brouhaha blog, 186 “fitspiration” mantras, 186 forced sterilization, 111–​16 Foucault, Michel, 198, 201 fragility and marginalization, 280–​84 Franco-​Spanish war, 7–​8, 89–​91,  98–​99 Freedman, Jane, 69 Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), 162 gender binaries/​stereotypes, 132 gender equality/​inequality, 19–​20, 124, 140–​44,  159 gender essentialism, 136n1, 157–​58 gender-​neutral parenting language,  180–​81 gender-​neutral prescriptions of citizenship, 183 gender roles and mothering, 105–​8 gendered labor and maternality, 9–​11 genitalia and biological sex, 106 genocide/​genocidal rape, 6, 18–​19,  22–​26 Gentry, Caron, 19–​20, 21, 22 (geo)politics (m)otherwise, 287–​88 Gilligan, Carol, 237–​38

Index  [ 293 ]

G.I.N.K. (Green Inclinations, No Kids) households,  252–​53 Global Affairs Canada (GAC), 139–​40, 142–​45,  151 global gag rule, 3–​4, 55, 144–​45 Global Gender Gap Index, 203 global middle class, 218–​19 Global North, 74–​75 global patriarchal structures, 124–​25 global political economy (GPE), 196–​97 global politics of maternality gendered labor and, 9–​11 introduction to, 1–​6 nationhood and state power, 7–​9 “neoliberal gaze” on motherhood,  196–​97 performances of motherhood, 6–​7 globalization, 10, 181, 216–​17, 228–​29 Goffman, Erving, 51–​52 Good Friday Agreement (GFA), 37–​38 good mother trope, 52, 56–​57, 69–​70 good parenting, 206–​7 Gore, Ariel, 52 governmentality and neoliberal mothering,  197–​99 Grese, Irma, 18–​19 Griffith, Melanie, 76–​77 guarantor of normality, 107 Guardian,  72–​73 Guatemala, 4 harassment over abortion, 55–​56 Haraway, Donna, 253 Harper, Stephen, 140–​41, 183–​84 Hensen, Jaqueline, 143 heroic male, 125 hetero-​nuclear families, 253 heteronormativity, 107–​8, 127, 157–​58 heteropatriarchal nation-​state,  87–​88 heterosexual mothering, 53, 182 heterosexualization, 88, 150 High Income Child Benefit Charge,  133–​34 his children/​his daughter discourse,  75–​79 HIV/​ AIDS,  146–​47 HIV testing, 144–​45 home, defined, 217 homonationalism, 77 “homotolerant” aid industry, 145 Honig, Bonnie, 263

[ 294 ] Index

Howard, John, 69 Huffington Post,  72–​74 hukou (residence status), 224–​25 human rights abuses, 146 Human Rights Watch, 4 humanitarianism by celebrities, 10, 233–​34,  242–​43 Hyde Amendment, 55 hypermasculinity,  70–​71 hypervisibility, 158–​59, 167 Ideal Citizens, 104, 115 ideal mother construction, 52–​53 idealized mother, 52 implicit fertility policy, 113–​14 in vitro fertilization (IVF), 62, 110 Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude (Cavarero),  253–​54 inclusive feminist approach, 139 Indian Health Service (IHS), 113 Indian Population Project (IPP), 114 individualistic autonomy, 257 individualization,  195–​96 infertility,  107–​8 interdynastic alliance formation, 91–​92 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), 23–​24 International Political Economy (IPE), 196 International Relations (IR), 67 International Safe Abortion Day, 4 interruption as failure, 274–​80 intersex, defined, 147–​48 Irigaray, Luce, 282 Johnson, Heather L., 74–​75 Jolie, Angelina, 233–​35, 236–​37,  239–​44 Jude, Haley, 62 Jude, Simone, 62 Just Warrior narrative, 26 Kant, Immanuel, 258, 267–​68 Kanziga, Agathe, 26 Kerr, Doug, 143, 151 Khaled, Leila, 18–​19 Khalid, Maryam, 78–​79 kinnovation, 253 klinè of an infant, 259–​63, 260f Koch, Ilse, 18–​19

Koo, Hagen, 218–​19 Krystalli, Roxanne, 5 Kumaratunga, Chandrika, 170 Las Meninas (Nottage), 97 “Law for the Protection of Life and Family” (Guatemala), 4 Lawlor, Andrea, 61–​62 Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa,  247–​48 left-​behind children,  221–​22 lesbian motherhood, 57, 61, 149 Lesbian Mothers (Lewins), 57 Lewin, Ellen, 57 Lewis, Sophie, 253 LGBTIQ issues. See also queering reproductive aid adoption rights, 109–​10 corrective rape, 150–​51 discrimination concerns, 149–​50 inclusiveness discourse, 142 queering motherhood, 115–​16 reproduction rights, 8, 147 sexual stigma, 57 sterilization of trans people, 110 LGBT2QI rights, 145 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 168, 169 The Local magazine, 24 Louis XIV, 7–​8, 88–​89, 91–​96 Louise Marie Thérèse (“Black Nun of Moret”),  97–​98 Loyalist, defined, 48n2 Loyalist paramilitary organizations (LPOs), 36–​37,  39–​47 Luker, Kirstin, 56 Lyons, Kristina, 264–​66 Lysistrata (ancient comedy), 271 MacGregor, Sherilyn, 254–​55 MacKenzie, Megan, 69 Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo),  164–​67 male birth discourse, 5 Malthus, Thomas, 252–​53 marginalization and motherhood ethics of care, 238–​39 fragility,  280–​84 (geo)politics (m)otherwise, 287–​88 interruption as failure, 274–​80

introduction to, 273–​74 presence (m)otherwise, 284–​87 Maria Teresa “Black Nun of Moret” and, 97–​98 dynastic motherhood and, 98–​99 Franco-​Spanish war and, 89–​91,  98–​99 introduction to, 7–​8, 87–​89 lineage of, 94–​96 marriage consummation and offspring,  91–​94 marketization of care, 181 Marquise de Montespan, Madame de la, 97 marriage and the state, 87–​89 masculine action, 74–​75 masculine virility, 164–​65 mass killings, 28 mass rape, 19 Massive Ordinance Air Blast weapon (MOAB), 5 maternal cosmopolitanism, 234–​35 maternal ethics, 125–​28, 134–​36 maternal inclination, 259–​64, 260f, 261f maternal knowledge, 179–​80 maternal love, 6, 18 maternal/​maternality. See also cosmopolitan mothering by expats; eco-​maternalism; global politics of maternality antimaternalism,  183–​84 censoring maternal stereotypes,  255–​57 critical maternal ethics, 125–​28,  134–​36 defined, 20, 109 mothering vs.,  105–​8 performances of, 6–​7 maternal theory, 126–​28 Maternal Thinking (Ruddick), 179–​80 maternal violence, 6–​7 maternalism, 9, 167, 179–​80, 183–​84. See also eco-​maternalism maternalization of women, 111 McTavish, Lianne, 186 media representations of motherhood, 180,  184–​85 medical gaze, 201 men who have sex with men (MSM),  146–​47

Index  [ 295 ]

Mexico City Policy, 3–​4 Mezey, Nancy J., 57–​58 midwives, 204 militarism, 88 militarized masculinity, 70–​71, 72, 77 Mina, Yajaira, 284–​87 misogyny, 179, 190–​91 “modern mom” media representations,  184–​85 Mombian blog: Sustenance for Lesbian Moms,  61–​62 monstrous mothering, 18 Morbia, Rita, 141 motherhood. See also celebrity global motherhood; cosmopolitan mothering by expats; feminist politics of motherhood; marginalization and motherhood; “neoliberal gaze” on motherhood; violent femininity and motherhood dynastic motherhood, 98–​99 femininity performances of motherhood,  6–​7 lesbian motherhood, 57, 61, 149 media representations of, 180, 184–​85 mothering vs.,  105–​8 myth of, 17–​19, 53–​58 performances of, 6–​7 queering motherhood, 115–​16 Rwandan motherhood identity, 19, 30 toxic motherhood, 19 transnational feminist critique of, 179–​80,  182–​83 working-​class women and, 6–​7 motherhood politics in Global South Argentina, 164 Egypt, 157, 159, 160 introduction to, 156–​57 Sri Lanka, 9, 157, 168 state feminism, 160–​61, 168–​69, 172 in women’s lives, 157–​71 mothering vs. motherhood, 105–​8 Mothers’ Front, 168–​70, 171 Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, 20–​21 MotherStruck! (play), 61–​62, 63 Mubarak, Hosni, 161–​62 multispecies care, 263–​64 multispecies reproductive justice, 10 Muskoka Initiative (Canada), 141

[ 296 ] Index

Muskoka Initiative on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (Harper), 183–​84 Muslim Brotherhood (MB), 162–​63 Muslims, 26, 79, 103–​4 myth of motherhood, 17–​19, 53–​58 Mythologies (Barthes), 180 nannies and mothering, 215–​17 nanny question, 10 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 160–​61 natality and maternity, 10. See also eco-​maternalism National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), 162 National Council for Family Affairs, 162 National Council for Women (NCW), 162 National Women’s Council (Argentina),  164–​65 nationalism, 88 nationhood and state power, 7–​9 natural protective instinct, 75–​76 neoliberal economic policies, 189 “neoliberal gaze” on motherhood cesarean deliveries and, 195, 202,  208–​9 defined, 201 in global political economy, 196–​97 governmentality and biopolitics,  197–​99 implications of, 200–​5 introduction to, 195–​96 overview of, 201 public toddler tantrums and, 195, 205–​9 summary of, 208–​9 neoliberalization, defined, 199 neoliberalized societies, 9 Netanyahu, Benjamin, 4–​5 New York Times,  242–​43 New Zealand cesarean deliveries, 203 Nexon, Daniel, 91–​92 Nobel Women’s Initiative, 20–​21 non-​natalism,  10 non-​traditional heterosexual women,  146–​47 nonconsensual sex, 131–​32 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),  3–​4 (non)violent mothers, 19–​22 normative sex, 105–​8 Northern Ireland’s Peace People, 20–​21

Northern Mothers’ Front (NMF), 169 Nottage, Lynn, 97 nuclear defense discourse, 5 nuclear families, 182 Nyiramasuhuko, Pauline, 17, 18–​19,  22–​29 Obligations and Omissions: Canada’s Ambiguous Actions on Gender Equality (Tiessen, Baranyi), 140–​41 Of Woman Born (Rich), 108–​9 O’Neill, Onora, 238 Organization for Economic Co-​operation and Development (OECD), 218–​19 Ostrander, Madeline, 270 Oxfam,  142–​43 parenting. See also maternal/​maternality; motherhood bad parenting, 206–​7 community-​based parenting, 205 gender-​neutral parenting language,  180–​81 good parenting, 206–​7 same-​sex parenting,  109–​10 undocumented immigrant parents,  103–​4 patriarchy bargaining with, 157, 158–​59, 160, 171 capitalist-​coloniality of, 275 control of a woman’s body/​ womb,  132–​33 global patriarchal structures, 124–​25 heteropatriarchal nation-​state,  87–​88 media representations of motherhood, 185 as oppression, 3 protestant paramilitary mothering and, 42 Peace of the Pyrenees, 88–​89, 90–​91 Peace of Utrecht, 95 Peace of Westphalia, 89 Peace People, 20–​21 People’s Liberation Front (JVP), 169–​70 performances of motherhood, 6–​7 personal, as political, 10 Philip V, 95, 96 Phoenix, Avtar, 72 Pickering, Sharon, 69 Planned Parenthood International, 144–​45

Plavšic, Bilana, 18–​19, 22–​23, 29–​30 plea agreements, 23, 24, 25 poetry and political philosophy, 11 Poland, 4 political violence and female agency,  17–​18 politics of care, 181–​83 politics of motherhood. See feminist politics of motherhood; global politics of maternality population engineering, 252–​53 post-​austerity neoliberalism, 200 post-​vasectomy regret, 112 postural ethics, 255 power of myth. See myth of motherhood power-​sex desire of Man, 273–​74 presence (m)otherwise, 284–​87 procreation and biological sex, 105–​6,  107 pronatalism, 104 “proper” woman, 22 protestant paramilitary mothering acquiescence, 43 approval and encouragement, 40 disapproval, 42 introduction to, 36–​37 methodological orientation, 37–​39 participants as mothers, 39–​44 participants’ mothers, 44–​47 protection of mothers, 45 summary of, 47 support for LPOs, 45 Puar, Jasbir, 77 public toddler tantrums, 9, 195, 205–​9 Queer Momma videos, 61–​62 Queer Wars (Altman, Symons), 142–​43 queering motherhood, 115–​16 queering reproductive aid abortion and, 148 gender discourse, 140–​44 introduction to, 139–​40 sexual rights and reproductive health,  144–​51 sterilization concerns, 147 summary of, 151–​52 Rabaa Massacre (2013), 163 race and sterilization, 111–​15

Index  [ 297 ]

racialized mothers, 104–​5, 287 racialized privilege, 71–​72 racism and stigma, 53–​54 Radcliffe, Sarah, 167 Rao, Rahul, 145 rape and abortion legality, 4 rape clause “conceived without consent” policy, 130,  131–​32 critical maternal ethics, 125–​28 global patriarchal structures, 124–​25 introduction to, 8, 122–​24 overview of, 128–​34 summary of, 134–​36 refugee fathers discourse theoretical approach to,  71–​72 introduction to, 7, 67–​69 paternal relationship and, 75–​79 refugee-​ness through strength, 74–​75 representations of, 72–​74 summary of, 79–​81 women and children discourse, 69–​72, 76,  80–​81 refugee-​ness through strength, 74–​75 relational situating of self in society,  223–​27 reproduction fitness politics biological sex and, 105–​8 introduction to, 8, 103–​5 mothering vs. motherhood, 105–​8 race and sterilization, 111–​15 summary of, 115–​16 reproduction rights, 4–​5, 8, 52 reproductive differentiation, 106–​7 reproductive economy, 2–​3 reproductive femininity, 7 reproductive futurism, 87–​88 reproductive justice, 7, 149 reproductive labor, 196 repronormativity, 87–​88, 104–​5, 108,  148–​49 Republicanism, 41, 45–​46 resistance to stigma. See storytelling as resistance to stigma respectability politics, 170–​71 Revolutionary Mothering (Gore), 52 Rich, Adrienne, 57 Robinson, Fiona, 238 Romani women marginalization, 114

[ 298 ] Index

Ross, Loretta, 140 Ruddick, Sara, 126, 179–​80, 215 Rudolph, Dana, 61–​62 Rwandan motherhood identity, 19, 30 same-​sex marriage, 4–​5, 182 same-​sex parenting,  109–​10 Sánchez, Lina Marcela, 284–​87 Sanghani-​Jorgensen, Meera,  269–​70 scientific racism, 114–​15 self-​fragilization, 280, 282 “sex-​normalizing” procedures,  147–​48 sex worker rights, 142–​43 sexism,  190–​91 sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), 139–​40, 141, 144–​45, 147, 148–​49,  151 sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression, sex characteristics (SOGIESC), 145 sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), 139, 143 sexual perversion, 107 sexual rights and reproductive health,  144–​51 sexual stigma, 57 Sexuality Policy Watch, 146 Shepard, Laura, 71–​72 Sherman, Renee Bracey, 58–​59 Shuilleabháin, Janet Ní, 60–​61 Similac infant formula commercial, 180,  187–​88 Sinhala, 168, 169–​70 Sjoberg, Laura, 19–​20, 21 Slaughter, Anne-​Marie,  190–​91 Smeulers, Alette, 26 social acceptability, 215 Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission (UK), 206–​7 social reproduction, 196–​97 social segregation of mothers, 195–​96 socially underprivileged class, 103–​4 Solinger, Rickie, 140 Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF), 169–​70 sovereign man, 125–​26 Speak My Language toolkit, 60 Sri Lanka, 9, 157, 168 Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP), 169–​71 state feminism in Global South, 160–​61, 168–​69,  172

state power. See nationhood and state power Staying with the Trouble (Haraway), 253 sterilization concerns, 110, 111–​15, 147 Stevens, Marion, 149–​50 stigma. See storytelling as resistance to stigma storytelling as resistance to stigma abortion stigma, 54, 55f busting stigma through, 58–​63 destigmatizing mothers, 59 ideal mother construction, 52–​53 introduction to, 51–​52 lesbian motherhood, 57, 61 power of myth, 53–​58 sexual stigma, 57 summary of, 63 strangeness in cosmopolitan mothering,  217–​19 stranger danger, 207 Swarr, Lock, 150 Swedish cesarean deliveries, 203 Tamils, 168 Tea, Michelle, 61–​62 territory through marriage, 92 terrorist discourse, 78–​79 third culture kids, 217 Thirty Years’ War, 89 Tiessen, Rebecca, 140–​41 toddler tantrums. See public toddler tantrums toxic motherhood, 19 transnational feminist critique of motherhood, 179–​80,  182–​83 transphobism,  157–​58 trap of maternalism, 9, 179–​80, 183–​84 Treaty of the Pyrenees, 7–​8, 95–​96 “the Troubles” (1968–​1998), 6–​7 Trump, Donald, 3–​4 twisted motherhood, 18, 19, 22 Twitter activism, 60–​61 two-​sex/​gender system, 104 unconscious ideology, 20 undocumented immigrant parents,  103–​4 Unfinished Revolution, 59–​60 United Kingdom cesarean deliveries, 203 US Indian Health Service (IHS), 113

vacant womb, 22 Vanity Fair, 245 violent femininity and motherhood case studies, 22–​29 introduction to, 17–​19 myth of nonviolence, 20 (non)violent mothers, 19–​22 Nyiramasuhuko, Pauline, 17, 18–​19,  22–​30 Plavšic, Bilana, 18–​19, 22–​23 representation of, 21 summary of, 29–​30 voluntary sterilization, 8, 111–​12 war-​affected populations, 69 War of Spanish Succession, 95–​96,  98–​99 “war talk,” 5 “Welfare Queen,” 103–​4 Winfrey, Oprah, 247–​48 Wollstonecraft dilemma, 183, 191–​92 womanhood,  105–​6 women and children discourse, 69–​72, 76,  80–​81 Women in Black, 20–​21 Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace,  20–​21 Women Waging Peace, 20–​21 women’s bodies, global politics of,  1–​6 women’s domestic contributions, 2–​3 Women’s International League for Peace,  20–​21 women’s moral authority, 167 Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common in the United Kingdom,  20–​21 working-​class women and motherhood,  6–​7 working mothers, 220–​21 World Economic Forum, 203 World Health Organization (WHO), 146, 203 Xoachiquetzal (deity), 274 YouACT, 60 Young, Iris Marion, 125 Zanger, Abby, 90–​91, 92–​93

Index  [ 299 ]

03

0 23