Women and Children First: Feminism, Rhetoric, and Public Policy 0791482855, 9780791482858

Table of contents :
WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST: Feminism, Rhetoric, and Public Policy
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction:Women and Children First
PART I. (Mis)representationsof the Domestic Sphere:State Interventions
2. Homeland Security and theCo-optation of Feminist Discourse
3. Unsanctioned (Bedroom) Commitments:The 2000 U.S. Census Discourse aroundCohabitation and Single-Motherhood
4. Enemies of the State:Poor White Mothers and theDiscourse of Universal Human Rights
PART II. Medical Discourses and Social Ills
5. Fixing Sex:Medical Discourse and theManagement of Intersex
6. Social Melancholy, Shame,and Sublimation
PART III. Subjects of Violence
7. Predators and Protectors:The Rhetoric of School Violence
8. Battered Woman Syndrome:Locating the SubjectAmidst the Advocacy
Part IV. Mothers, Good and Bad:Marginalizing Mothersand Idealizing Children
9. Bad Mothers as “Brown” Mothersin Western Canadian Policy Discourse:Substance-Abusing Mothers andSexually Exploited Girls
10. Behind Bars or Up on a Pedestal:Motherhood and Fetal Harm
Part V. Protesting Mothers:Politics under the Sign of Motherhood
11. (M)others, Biopolitics,and the Gulf War
12. Love and Reason in the Public Sphere:Maternalist Civic Engagementand the Dilemma of Difference
Contributors
Index
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E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
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Citation preview

women and children first feminism, rhetoric, and public policy

sharon m. meagher and patrice diquinzio, editors

WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST

SUNY series in Gender Theory Tina Chanter, editor

WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST Feminism, Rhetoric, and Public Policy

Edited by

Sharon M. Meagher and Patrice DiQuinzio

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2005 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 194 Washington Avenue, Suite 305, Albany, NY 12210-2384 Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Women and children first : feminism, rhetoric, and public policy / edited by Sharon M. Meagher and Patrice DiQuinzio. p. cm. — (SUNY series in gender theory) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-6539-X (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-6540-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Feminist theory. 2. United States—Social policy—1993– 3. Canada—Social policy I. Meagher, Sharon M. II. DiQuinzio, Patrice, 1955– III. Series. HQ1190.W653 2005 305.42'01—dc22 2004024569

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Contents

Acknowledgments

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1. Introduction: Women and Children First Patrice DiQuinzio and Sharon M. Meagher

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PART I (Mis)representations of the Domestic Sphere: State Interventions 2. Homeland Security and the Co-optation of Feminist Discourse Elizabeth F. Randol 3. Unsanctioned (Bedroom) Commitments: The 2000 U.S. Census Discourse around Cohabitation and Single-Motherhood Kirsten Isgro 4. Enemies of the State: Poor White Mothers and the Discourse of Universal Human Rights Jennifer A. Reich

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PART II Medical Discourses and Social Ills 5. Fixing Sex: Medical Discourse and the Management of Intersex Ellen K. Feder 6. Social Melancholy, Shame, and Sublimation Kelly Oliver

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Contents PART III Subjects of Violence

7. Predators and Protectors: The Rhetoric of School Violence Sharon M. Meagher

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8. Battered Woman Syndrome: Locating the Subject Amidst the Advocacy Sally J. Scholz

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PART IV Mothers, Good and Bad: Marginalizing Mothers and Idealizing Children 9. Bad Mothers as “Brown” Mothers in Western Canadian Policy Discourse: Substance-Abusing Mothers and Sexually Exploited Girls Norma L. Buydens 10. Behind Bars or Up on a Pedestal: Motherhood and Fetal Harm Tricha Shivas and Sonya Charles

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PART V Protesting Mothers: Politics under the Sign of Motherhood 11. (M)others, Biopolitics, and the Gulf War Tina Managhan

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12. Love and Reason in the Public Sphere: Maternalist Civic Engagement and the Dilemma of Difference Patrice DiQuinzio

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List of Contributors

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Index

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Acknowledgments

Both editors would like to thank Tina Chanter, who heard versions of some of the chapters that appear in this book at a Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) conference and encouraged us to develop the panel into a book for her series. We also thank the anonymous reviewers as well as Jane Bunker, SUNY Press Acquisitions Editor, for supporting us in our work and providing suggestions for improvement. We also want to thank each contributing author for their diligence and patience in seeing this project through. Sharon M. Meagher would like to thank her partner Gail McGrew, who consistently has provided the love and support necessary for this project; she knows how to truly put women first. She also thanks student research assistants Sara Shoener and David Fine for their support. She offers this book in dedication and thanks to her parents, Joan and Richard Meagher, on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary. This project was completed in part thanks to support from Dean Joseph Dreisbach, College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Scranton, who provided research release time for this project. Much thanks also to Patrice DiQuinzio, an able and trustworthy coeditor and colleague. Patrice DiQuinzio thanks her family, especially P. J. and Bernice DiQuinzio, who put her first when it mattered, Tom and Brian Waitzman, the children she puts first in her personal life, and Mary DiQuinzio, a sister in every sense. She also thanks Francesca Coppa and Michael Carbone, dear friends and colleagues, for their invaluable support. And thanks very much to Sharon M. Meagher, an insightful and meticulous coeditor, for the pleasure of working together and for the initiative she took on this project.

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CHAPTER

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Introduction: Women and Children First PATRICE DiQUINZIO and SHARON M. MEAGHER

“Women and children first.” James Cameron’s film epic Titanic (1997) reminds us of this phrase that guided the ship’s evacuation policy. History bears witness to the fact that some women and children were saved from the sinking ship when their husbands or fathers were not. But in the film, the women and children are portrayed as ungrateful, and even callous, refusing (except for Molly Brown) to take the lifeboats back to pick up survivors. The essays in this book analyze the rhetoric of a wide range of American and Canadian public policies that propose “to put women and children first.” They uncover a logic of paternalistic treatment of women and children that purports to protect them but almost always also disempowers them and sometimes harms them. This logic is widespread in contemporary policy discourse, and it affects how people understand, and respond to, those policies and the problems they are meant to address. Cultural discourse shapes, and is shaped by, both academic and public policy discourses. At least since the release of the Moynihan Report in 1965 (U.S. Department of Labor) and the ensuing debates surrounding it, we have become increasingly sensitive to the role of rhetoric in public policy as well as the way that policy rhetoric shapes both popular and academic discourses. The Moynihan Report pathologized black family life and culture, arguing that African-Americans were caught in a cycle of poverty fueled by female-headed households, delinquency, and crime. While the report also included a socioeconomic analysis, civil rights advocates rightly understood that such an analysis would likely be ignored in favor of the “culture of poverty” thesis, given the racist society in which it was received (Rainwater and Yancy 1967). Today, the culture of poverty thesis is still popular in conservative discourse, where the socioeconomic analysis is ignored and blacks are assigned complete responsibility for their poverty (Curran 2003). This rhetoric of blame and responsibility

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shapes a wide range of related policy decisions. For example, Nancy MacLean has analyzed the impact of the Moynihan Report in undermining women’s employment programs, because some policy makers were concerned that fostering women’s economic independence would further the culture of poverty by encouraging female heads of households (1999). This reasoning is an excellent example of a double bind, where black women are blamed for being independent and dependent at the same time. White women and children, as well as all peoples of color, often pay very dearly for being “put first,” finding themselves caught in a double-bind logic that undermines the conditions necessary for their real moral and political autonomy. This double-bind reasoning is a logic of masculinist protection, or as Sarah Lucia Hoagland identifies it, a “predator/protector” logic that combines protection and vilification. Hoagland analyzes its development in colonial discourses and traces its use in discourses of male supremacy. Colonists used this logic to provide a paternalistic rationalization of their activities, arguing that native peoples of colonial countries needed to be protected from their own violence and incompetence (1995, 175–189). As the essays in this volume show, much contemporary public policy aims to protect women and children from themselves, from their own evil thoughts and deeds. Their status as victims is often ignored; if it is noted, they are blamed for their own victimization. In an analysis of rape that complements Hoagland’s analysis of predator/protector logic, Susan Rae Peterson argues that the state is a male protection racket. Women are protected by the state from harm by males only if they “pay up” by demonstrating sufficient deference and subordination. “Bad” girls and women, that is, females who refuse to defer and accept subordination, risk losing protection and becoming targets of abuse (Peterson 1977). Recently Iris Marion Young has extended this analysis of masculinist logic to the rhetoric of increased security measures in the U.S. since September 11th. She argues, “Central to the logic of masculinist protection is the subordinate relation of those in the protected position. In return for male protection, the woman concedes critical distance and decision-making autonomy” (2003, 2). The effects of both the logic of protection and the logic of predation are essentially the same: both undermine women’s subjectivity and agency. And both emerge from an ideology of male dominance. This ideology of male dominance is itself based on some of the central elements of modern Western philosophy. Two of these elements most important to the analyses presented in this book are its abstract individualist theory of subjectivity and its dualistic thinking, which privileges essence over difference and dichotomizes human existence into

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public and private realms. According to abstract individualism, the essence of human subjectivity is reason, entailing consciousness and rational autonomy, which enables rational, independent self-determination and action. From the perspective of individualism, having these capacities is the only basis on which persons can claim social and political agency and entitlement. This is the concept of subjectivity that Kelly Oliver has identified as “virile subjectivity” (Oliver 1997). But the social and political conditions characteristic of modernity actually make this kind of subjectivity available only to certain groups of men. This concept of subjectivity, with its explicit universality but implicit masculinity, creates a dilemma for feminism, which Martha Minow (1990) calls “the dilemma of difference.” The dilemma is that, in the individualist ideological context of modern Western political culture, feminism must argue for women’s equality, including women’s equal citizenship, by asserting women’s abstract individualist subjectivity and denying the significance of gender and sexual difference. But feminism must also rely on the concept of difference to analyze experiences and situations specific to or more typical of women, such as women’s traditional roles as mothers and other care givers, and to theorize differences among women. The history of women’s political participation in the U.S. context clearly reflects feminism’s struggle with this dilemma, or what historian Nancy Cott calls, “Feminism’s characteristic doubleness, its simultaneous affirmation of women’s human rights and women’s unique needs and differences” (1987, 49). To compound this problem, in modern Western ideological contexts there is also a dominant conception of proper or good motherhood, or what Patrice DiQuinzio identifies as “essential motherhood” (1999, xiii–xiv, 10). By insisting that motherhood is women’s natural function or role, essential motherhood also in effect defines femininity. But because it emphasizes emotionality, concern and care for others, and self-definition in the context of social relations, this conception of motherhood and femininity is at odds with rational agency, and thus with citizenship, as abstract individualism describes them. In this way essential motherhood perpetuates abstract individualism as virile subjectivity and contributes to the exclusion of women from individualist subjectivity and thus from citizenship. The dualizing tendencies of modern Western philosophy also contribute to the predation/protection logic on which the essays in this book focus. Most significantly, its distinction of public and private dichotomizes human experience. This distinction locates political action in a public sphere of abstract reasoning and the advancement of independently determined interests, while locating the activities of meeting human material

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and psychological needs and taking care of dependent persons in a private sphere where emotion and the maintenance of interdependence are paramount. The public/private distinction is thus crucial to maintaining the structure of gender because it supports the exclusion of women from the public sphere that also follows from abstract individualism and essential motherhood. Virile subjectivity justifies the location of men in the public sphere, while essential motherhood rationalizes the restriction of women to the private realm. This analysis of the dilemma of difference explains how, in a political culture dominated by the rhetoric of abstract individualism, feminist theory and practice, as well as women themselves, get caught in the double binds that the logic of predation/protection produces. To the extent that women claim equal citizenship in abstract individualist terms—the terms of “virile subjectivity”—they risk misrepresenting women’s experiences and situations. This claim also subjects women to criticism and sanctions those who fail to conform to dominant conceptions of femininity and/or motherhood. But to the extent that feminism relies on concepts of difference and alternative conceptions of subjectivity to represent women’s experiences and situations, it jeopardizes women’s claim of equal citizenship by suggesting that women are not really capable of individualist subjectivity and agency. And jeopardizing women’s standing as equal citizens may target them for protection, and—by the logic of predation/protection—to predation. To the extent that individual women conform to the terms of individualist subjectivity, they risk the misrepresentation of themselves and their interests as well as their vilification as bad or unfit women or mothers. But to the extent that they insist on and enact conceptions of subjectivity and agency more consistent with their experience and situations, they undermine their claim to rational autonomy and thus to equal citizenship. The model of citizenship that often develops from an uncritical adoption of abstract individualism, essential motherhood, and the masculinist logic they support is what Lauren Berlant has termed “infantile citizenship” (1997, 25–53). If women and children are defined as that class that requires protection by men, or by the state in loco parentis, then they are demoted to the status of dependents. As Iris Young points out, this logic poses dangers for men, too. For example, she argues, the increase of the security state since September 11th has placed all citizens in the position of women and children, dependent on the state for their protection and thus not on equal footing with the state (2003, 3). Feminist analysis of the dilemma of difference also explains the particular malleability of women’s subject position in modern cultures, and this insight in turn suggests the need for detailed analysis of policy dis-

Introduction

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courses. The interplay of abstract individualism and essential motherhood in Western cultures leads to a fundamentally ambiguous representation of women’s subjectivity and agency and thereby ensures that the representation of women and women’s interests is always contested. Discursive shifts, made possible by this ambiguity, position and reposition women, locating them now as abstract individuals capable of and entitled to equal citizenship, then as women and mothers with a specifically feminine and maternal function to fulfill. Because such discursive shifts contribute to women’s vulnerability to protection and predation, and because they are evident in the discourses of many social policies that impinge on women and children, these policy discourses require careful analysis. Finally, abstract individualism operates to position philosophical analyses, particularly feminist philosophical analyses of women’s situations and experiences, outside of the public sphere and thus as irrelevant to policy analysis. Feminist philosophers, however, have been on the forefront in resisting this characterization of philosophy. They argue that feminist philosophical analysis of public policy is crucial for developing public policies consistent with the interests of women and that the tools of philosophical analysis are greatly improved by applying them to public policy. Feminist philosophers have joined with feminists trained in other disciplines, pushing beyond the limits of philosophy’s tendency merely to interpret canonical texts to also engage in discourse analysis of contemporary cultural and policy discourses. The authors of these essays agree that discourse analysis is of critical import, because public policy is not just shaped by what we do, but also by what we say and how we say it. The essays in this book thus take up where many feminist theorists have left off, extending their critiques of traditional liberalism and the abstract individualism on which it is predicated by exploring the implications of those critiques for public policy. These essays focus on the divergent and sometimes even conflicting ways in which the masculinist predator/protector logic is at work in a wide range of American and Canadian public policy discourses. Hoagland and Peterson have unmasked this logic in the context of analyses of both rape and colonial oppression; here we extend that analysis to seemingly more benign protective policies. If traditional political theory fails to attend to issues of dependency, for example, as feminists such as Eva Kittay have argued (1999; Kittay and Feder 2002), then what are the implications for public policy on child care? If traditional Western politics is based on political theories founded on male constructions of identity and subjectivity that mask issues of power and violence, then what are the implications for domestic violence, school violence, and

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gun-control policies? The essays in this book address these and related questions about public policy discourses. These policies arise in a variety of contexts, from those thought to be profoundly private, such as the treatment of intersexed infants and other instances of mothers’ care of children, to the overtly public realm of national defense, homeland security, and the work of mother-activists. The public policy issues addressed include school violence, gun control, medical treatment of intersexed infants and women’s depression, alcohol and substance abuse, marriage and family law and policy, welfare, reproductive technologies, and domestic violence. Although the rhetoric in each of these policy areas varies, each discourse proposes to “to put women and children first,” and some claim to do so in the name of feminism. But, as the papers in this collection clearly show, women and children often pay very dearly for being “put first.” Challenges and threats to the well-being of all girls, as well as to boys “who do not fit in,” are often made in what appears to be feminist language of protecting and/or empowering children. We see this, for example, in the rhetoric of political and social conservatives who have gone so far as to blame feminists for school violence and the terrorist attacks of September 11th and in the rhetoric of policies purporting to protect children from mothers deemed inadequate or harmful. We consider also women who do not conform to the understandings of “proper” femininity and/or motherhood implicit in these policy discourses. Substance abusing mothers and mothers in marginalized and oppressed groups, for instance, find themselves at the mercy of the law and social welfare agencies that vilify and penalize them for their failure to so conform, rather than supporting them and/or their efforts to care for and raise their children. The papers in this book not only question how mothers and children are invoked in contemporary policy discourse and unpack the public policy rhetoric that raises problems for or causes harm to women and children. They also frame strategies to counter this rhetoric with feminist ethical and practical responses. The strategies they suggest for achieving these goals, while not uniform, challenge liberal political philosophy and test, develop, and refine feminist analyses of intersubjectivity, equality, difference, and civic participation by applying these analyses to contemporary public policy discourse and practice. For instance, recently feminist theorists of care and dependency have sought to develop a model of need and care that rejects the masculinist predator/protector logic. Instead, they conceptualize need, care, and even protection, not as anomalous but as normal. They repudiate the notion of self-sufficient citizenship, arguing that “the well-being of all persons can be enhanced by the care and support of others, and in modern societies,

Introduction

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much of this generalized care and support should be organized and guaranteed through state institutions” (Young 2003, 5; see also Kittay and Feder 2002; Kittay 1999). In criticizing predator/protector logic, then, the authors of these essays are not arguing against protecting those in need. Rather, they argue that we must attend to the context of women’s situations and develop public policies that do not reinscribe models of male dominance or correlative ideals of femininity. Many of these papers also detail how abstract individualist conceptions of subjectivity hinder sophisticated policy analyses. Such analyses require complex understandings of political responsibility and agency that do not simplistically blame either isolated individuals or “the system” for social injustices. More adequately complex conceptual tools can only be developed by bringing to bear a variety of disciplinary perspectives and approaches in analysis of policy discourses. The authors of these essays come from different disciplines, practice different modes of policy and discourse analysis, and do not necessarily agree among themselves on specific policy recommendations. But they agree on the need to think through hidden presuppositions. They recognize the need for a variety of ways around the dilemma of difference and agree that public policies require ongoing reconsideration and revision in light of changing circumstances. Feminist discursive strategies sometimes need to shift over time as unintended consequences are revealed. What are realistic strategies for feminist policy making depends also on opponents’ rhetoric and solutions. Once feminist rhetoric is co-opted, for example, in the discourse of homeland security, then certain rhetorical strategies and approaches to policy, once useful, must be reconsidered. Sometimes a particular articulation outlives its usefulness. For instance, individualist conceptions of women’s subjectivity and agency implicit in some analyses of domestic violence and sexual victimization can be useful for reformulating laws and law enforcement procedures for dealing with these problems. But they may also make it difficult to represent and enhance the agency of women who experience domestic violence and/or sexual victimization, and so may have to be reconsidered. And all of the authors agree that public policy analyses must work to develop concepts of intersubjectivity and social relations that value women’s participation in policy formation and analysis.

Book Structure and Organization These papers work together in a variety of ways, and readers may find their own ways to work through the articles in this book. But each

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chapter investigates specific rhetorical strategies that undermine policies developed for the supposed benefit of women and/or children. Some illustrate the dangers of the reappropriation of feminist discourses for non- or even antifeminist purposes. Others provide ideology critiques of media and policy representations of “bad mothers” and their consequences in shaping public policy. Some essays highlight ways in which rhetoric of protection masks the victimization of women and children. The authors draw out connections between seemingly unrelated discourses to show that rhetoric that purports to put women and children first can often have harmful consequences for their supposed beneficiaries. The authors come from different disciplines and take different approaches to discourse analysis. All agree, however, that different feminist approaches are necessary if we are to be unified in successfully countering the multiple and complicated ways that male supremacy asserts itself in our lives. (Mis)Representations of the Domestic Sphere: State Interventions We begin with three papers that consider issues of state interventions, focusing on how discourses from other domains are appropriated by the state in ways that place women and children in double binds. The language of protection is often used in cases where women need the least protection, and thus masks the state’s failure to protect when really necessary. Furthermore, this language of protection often holds women responsible for those very failures of public policy. In “Homeland Security and the Co-optation of Feminist Discourse,” Elizabeth Randol shows how the discourse of homeland security, much of which, she argues, is co-opted from the feminist antiviolence movement, renders all of us women and children. Post-9/11 political discourse represents the state as having a compelling interest in protecting us, making decisions for us, and curbing our freedoms “for our own good.” But this discourse infantilizes and disempowers all citizens. Kirsten Isgro explores the rhetoric of the decennial U.S. census, particularly that pertaining to cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing, in “Unsanctioned (Bedroom) Commitments: The 2000 U.S. Census Discourse around Cohabitation and Single Motherhood.” She examines the representation of sexuality, motherhood, and family in the discourse of the census, and shows how its rhetoric works to delegitimate and discipline non-normative family formations. As a result, alternative family formations that might be better for women and children are discouraged and women and children are corralled into family formations that might actually be more harmful to them than those that the census dis-

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course delegitimates. In “Enemies of the State: Poor White Mothers and the Discourse of Universal Human Rights,” Jennifer Reich examines the appropriation of penal codes developed in international human rights resolutions to prosecute poor white women for child abuse. She shows how this penal rhetoric not only demonizes mothers by representing their children only as their victims, but also individualizes what might otherwise be recognized as a social problem and then treats the problem by penalizing mothers. Medical Discourses and Social Ills These essays deal with issues often thought to be private, or even secret— the case of intersexed infants and the case of depressed women, especially mothers. Yet each paper demonstrates the social policy function of medical discourse and shows how it covers up this function. In the name of helping women and children, medical discourses that insist on rigid gender demarcations flourish, even though those structures can be harmful to women and children. Ellen Feder’s “Fixing Sex: Medical Discourse and the Management of Intersex” analyzes medical approaches to intersexed infants, demonstrating that medicine’s primary goal has been to ensure the clear categorization of infants as male or female, which it has pursued despite the competing evidence of intersex. As a result, medical professionals often fail to inform parents of options and effects of medical treatment and make it impossible for these parents to imagine their children’s lives in any way except as in need of correction. At the same time medical professionals expect parents, particularly mothers, to carry out much of the treatment protocol. Thus the rhetoric of “fixing sex” double binds the mothers of intersexed children, expecting them to care for their children while at the same time depriving them of the information necessary to make sound care decisions. In “Social Melancholy, Shame, and Sublimation,” Kelly Oliver considers the medicalization of women’s depression. She shows that this medical rhetoric perpetuates stereotypes of passive emotional femininity, masks the social foundations of women’s depression, and naturalizes its origins by locating them in some purportedly essential feature of women’s existence, such as women’s physiology. Oliver argues for an alternative conception of women’s depression as social melancholy and shows how this conception of women’s depression suggests better policies for prevention and treatment than current medical treatments. If depression is reaching epidemic proportions, especially among young women and mothers, then, rather than pathologize women and mothers, we should examine the pathology of patriarchal culture.

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Subjects of Violence As several papers in preceding sections note, when women and children are subject to oppression and violence, it is often because their own subjectivity is overlooked. The essays in this section deal with two cases where violence against women and children is explicitly addressed, but in ways that continue to do harm to those who are supposed to be protected. Sharon Meagher examines the rhetoric of school violence, including school violence prevention programs, in “Predators and Protectors: The Rhetoric of School Violence.” She argues that white, middle-class, suburban males, the supposed “protectors” of women and children, are often the predators. Yet rather than analyzing how the social construction of masculinity shapes these violent behaviors, mainstream media and policy makers often blame feminism, other progressive movements, and even the victims themselves for this violence. And violence prevention programs rarely target likely perpetrators; instead they hold the potential victims responsible for preventing violence, often by subjecting them to increased surveillance and control. In “Battered Woman Syndrome: Locating the Subject Amidst the Violence,” Sally Scholz analyzes the rhetoric of social policy dealing with domestic violence. She suggests that the rhetoric of Battered Woman Syndrome, while helpful to women in some ways, has become problematic because it relies on a notion of the self as a rational, autonomous, and isolated individual to the exclusion of other attributes of subjectivity more consistent with feminist theory and practice. Scholz argues for reconceptualizing subjectivity to include and account for the importance of social relations while also politicizing women’s experiences and interdependence with others. Such a concept of subjectivity makes possible a new approach to understanding relationships of violence, especially their effects on the women involved, and suggests new and better tactics for feminist efforts to prevent domestic violence. Mothers, Good and Bad: Marginalizing Mothers and Idealizing Children The papers in this section demonstrate how medical discourse, when combined with legal or state intervention, can marginalize some mothers and children. While medical discourses pathologize some mothers and children, law and social policy enforce this representation of some forms of motherhood and family life as deviant and then take control of and/or sanction them. Norma Buydens, in “Bad Mothers as ‘Brown’ Mothers in Western Canadian Policy Discourse: Substance Abusing

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Mothers and Sexually Exploited Girls,” shows how Canadian social policy toward aboriginal women has conflated two social problems: drug-addicted mothers and youth prostitution, blaming these mothers for the sexual exploitation of teenagers. Buydens shows that the rhetoric of “toxic moms” disciplines mothers and girls. This rhetoric legitimates the state’s supervision and control of drug-addicted mothers and terrifies other mothers into submission to patriarchal conceptions of good motherhood by insisting that their ceaseless devotion to and supervision of their daughters is required to prevent teenage prostitution. In “Behind Bars or Up on a Pedestal: Motherhood and Fetal Harm,” Tricha Shivas and Sonya Charles explore how conceptions of good motherhood and fetal harm shape public policy regarding motherhood in two cases—the woman who uses illegal drugs during pregnancy and the woman who uses assisted reproductive technology. Both illegal drug use during pregnancy and assisted reproductive technology can threaten fetal harm. But the woman who uses illegal drugs during pregnancy is demonized and punished while the woman who uses medically sanctioned drugs in assisted reproduction is valorized and rewarded. Shivas and Charles show how this contradiction has harmful effects for both groups of women. Women thought to conform to traditional representations of motherhood as selfless and devoted to their children are actually encouraged to undergo procedures that pose risks to fetuses. At the same time, women thought to be “bad mothers”—selfish and unconcerned about their children—are denied assistance that would actually help them care for and raise their children. Protesting Mothers: Politics Under the Sign of Motherhood While in the preceding sections the arguments demonstrate how women and children are constructed as passive objects, the papers in this last section deal with mothers as political agents, specifically mothers who organize to protest violence and war. But both papers argue that women’s active protests, especially when articulated in terms of motherhood, are often read differently than these mothers intend. In “(M)others, Biopolitics, and the Gulf War” Tina Managhan shows that the subversive potential of women’s maternal identities is always subject to other social, cultural, and political instances of the operations of power. Managhan demonstrates that in the 1991 Gulf War, a complex combination of these operations of power aligned maternal identities not with opposition to the war but with support for the U.S. troops serving in the war. In “Love and Reason in the Public Sphere: Maternalist Civic Engagement and the Dilemma of Difference,” Patrice DiQuinzio considers the rhetoric of the

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May 2000 Million Mom March in Washington, DC. DiQuinzio shows that the march’s representation of its participants as “moms” risks the renaturalization of women’s identities solely in terms of motherhood and provides opponents of the marchers’ position on gun control and violence prevention with considerable rhetorical opportunities for delegitimating their position. Critics of the marchers’ position invoke precisely the marchers’ maternal identities to show that the marchers’ position is not supported by objective and rational evidence but rather by the emotionality of the “moms.” Although all of these papers paint a seemingly bleak picture of women and children caught in a double-bind logic that effaces their subjectivity and marginalizes them, the authors also offer some hope. In the last section, for example, Managhan and DiQuinzio analyze not only the factors that minimize the impact of protesting mothers, but also those that can maximize it. Their essays, as well as those of Randol and Scholz, also suggest important cautions for feminist theory and practice with respect to the deployment of apparently feminist discourse in policy contexts. Randol usefully calls attention to the potential for the co-optation of feminist discourse in other policy contexts and Reich points out the risks of importing from other policy domains discourses that, when applied to women and children, are inconsistent with their interests. Scholz reminds feminism itself of the need to reconsider rhetorical strategies and discursive constructions that may have outlived their usefulness. And, like Randol’s essay, the essays by Isgro, Buydens, Shivas and Charles, and Reich all call attention to the potential for representations of motherhood to delegitimate some or all mothers and to pit mothers in opposition to each other rather than to unify them as participants in public policy making. Isgro, Chivas and Charles, Oliver, Buydens, Meagher, DiQuinzio, and Managhan all demonstrate the usefulness of analyses of popular cultural and mass media representations of women and children not only for identifying, but also for resisting and reconfiguring, representations that support problematic policies. In their discussions of medical discourse, Feder and Oliver, like Buydens and Shivas and Charles, present alternative ways of reading what are represented as medical pathologies so as to place them in the context of social ills. Oliver, Meagher, and Scholz offer feminist concepts of subjectivity that not only better address women’s emotional and physical pain and violence in our schools and homes, but also suggest reconceptualizations of women’s citizenship. Taken together, these papers allow us to view contemporary public policy in a new light and suggest strategies for the representation of women and children and for policy making that would truly put women and children first.

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Works Cited Berlant, Lauren. 1997. The Queen of American Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham: Duke University Press. Cott, Nancy. 1987. The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press. Curran, Laura. 2003. The Culture of Race, Class, and Poverty: The Emergence of a Cultural Discourse in Early Cold War Social Work. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 30(3). Online version on RDS Contemporary Women’s Issues, #3995382. DiQuinzio, Patrice. 1999. The Impossibility of Motherhood: Feminism, Individualism and the Problem of Mothering. New York: Routledge. Hoagland, Sarah Lucia. 1995. Moral Revolution: From Antagonism to Cooperation. In Feminism and Philosophy: Essential Readings in Theory, Reinterpretation and Application, eds. Nancy Tuana and Rosemarie Tong, 175–186. Boulder, CO: Westview. Kittay, Eva, 1999. Love’s Labor. New York: Routledge. Kittay, Eva, and Ellen Feder, eds. 2002. Philosophical Approaches to Dependency. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. MacLean, Nancy, 1999. The Hidden History of Affirmative Action: Working Women’s Struggles in the 1970s and the Gender of Class. Feminist Studies 25(1). Online version on RDS Contemporary Women’s Issues, #2554999–2555005. Minow, Martha. 1990. Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Oliver, Kelly. 1997. Family Values: Subjects Between Nature and Culture. New York: Routledge. Peterson, Susan Rae. 1977. Coercion and Rape: The State as a Male Protection Racket. In Feminism and Philosophy, eds. Mary Vetterling-Braggin, Frederick A. Elliston and Jane English, 360–371. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Titanic. 1997. Film directed by James Cameron. Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Policy Planning and Research. 1965. The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Also known as “The Moynihan Report.” Young, Iris Marion. 2003. Feminist Reactions to the Contemporary Security Regime. Hypatia—A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 18(1). Online version on RDS Contemporary Women’s Issues, record #3763892.

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PART

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(Mis)representations of the Domestic Sphere: State Interventions

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Homeland Security and the Co-optation of Feminist Discourse ELIZABETH F. RANDOL

As a feminist scholar and activist, I find the rhetoric of homeland security to be of grave concern. When I first heard the preliminary discussions and justifications for the office of homeland security, I was stunned. I was shocked initially by the idea of establishing an office to defend the “homeland,” but even more so because the language used to defend this new office was hard to argue with. I was hearing that our homes are not safe, that our neighborhoods and children are in danger, that we need more resources and money allocated to our communities for protection and crisis services, and the like. In many ways, this is how feminists argue for heightened awareness and action to address violence against women. How, then, do I disagree with these statements or proposals? To determine why I found this articulation of homeland security policy so disturbing, I had to consider how feminist antiviolence discourse was being appropriated in this representation of homeland security policy. In the rhetoric of homeland security, feminist discourse is taken out of its original context, reshaped, and applied to problems quite different than those it was developed to address. A detailed analysis of these discursive processes shows how feminist discourse can be used to justify policies that are at least questionable, if not counterproductive, from the perspective of feminist antiviolence work. The idea of a domestic security policy is certainly not a new concept to feminists. For decades, feminists have been struggling to put issues of safety at the forefront of policy concerns, health initiatives, funding allocation, and awareness programs. One of the defining cornerstones of feminist organizing has been the struggle to end violence against women, which is characterized by the occurrence of violence in our most intimate spaces—in the home, among acquaintances, and in the workplace. Recent discussions of homeland security in the U.S. also focus on threats to our safety. But in these discussions the threats are always located outside of our intimate spaces and among people we do

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not know. Now the threat is from abroad, it is foreign, alien, and anonymous. We live in fear of when or where the next attack will occur, forgetting that many people’s fear begins in the home. Thus it seems to me that feminist rhetoric has been employed to justify the creation of an office that pays lip service to domestic security by only recognizing threats from abroad. In an even more disturbing way, this rhetoric has successfully used the threat of violence and the struggle for security as a pretext for further violence. The rhetoric of preserving our “way of life,” our family values, and the safety of our children is used as a pretense for reaching outside the boundaries of the United States to “pre-emptively” halt those threats. I am interested in unpacking some of the rhetorical and practical overlaps between the discourse of violence against women and of homeland security. I do not intend to argue that the co-optation of feminist antiviolence rhetoric alone is entirely responsible for the development or shape of specific homeland security policies. However, I do believe that when the rhetoric of homeland security is used to justify specific policies, those policies gain some of their plausibility from its co-optation of feminist antiviolence rhetoric. Therefore, I offer this essay first as a cautionary tale for feminist advocates against violence by illustrating the way in which feminist rhetoric can be used to justify an escalation of violence. In addition, I suggest that we can reclaim the feminist analysis of violence and use it to expose the hypocrisies and dangers within the rhetoric surrounding homeland security. I will first discuss the history of the movement against violence against women and the Department of Homeland Security as well as the mechanisms each uses to resolve their respective concerns. These are not exhaustive or comprehensive histories. Rather, I will focus primarily on how the rhetoric and policies of violence against women and homeland security engage and affect the public and private realms. There are some worrisome similarities between the two discourses but each proposes very different solutions to the problem it addresses. So I will analyze the rhetoric used by the feminist antiviolence movement and the Bush administration’s rhetoric of homeland security to explain and justify their respective proposed solutions, with an emphasis on the effects of the co-optations of feminist antiviolence discourse by the rhetoric of homeland security.

History and Resolution Mechanisms In the 1970s, consciousness-raising groups of the women’s movement developed an analysis of violence against women, largely focusing on

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sexual assault, domestic violence, and frequently including stalking and harassment. Rape and domestic violence became important issues as feminists began to blur the line between the public and private. Feminists argued that “the personal is political,” meaning that issues such as rape and domestic violence were not merely private problems but were, in fact, public crises. Feminist theorists have long argued that the public/private distinction is a false dichotomy (Pateman 1989; Okin 1978; Elshtain 1981). “‘Public/private’ is used to refer both to the distinction between state and society (as in public and private ownership) and to the distinction between nondomestic and domestic life. In both dichotomies, the state is (paradigmatically) public, and the family, domestic, and intimate life are (again paradigmatically) private” (Okin 1991, 117). Early liberal feminists who accepted the public/private dichotomy fought for rights and the inclusion of women in the public sphere, leaving their assigned role in the private, domestic sphere largely unchallenged. During the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, feminists began to interrogate this dichotomy as they became more acutely aware of how the state influences domestic life and how the expectations of women’s role in the home affected their public lives. This critique of the public/private dichotomy led feminists to address the role of civil society. Civil society is commonly understood as a self-regulated space that exists at the crossroads between the state, economic, and private spheres. Many feminists have argued that women’s self-organizing within civil society serves to make the democratic process more inclusive of and receptive to women’s needs, concerns, and perspectives. Civil society provides the space where feminists organized groups, associations, and centers to address the needs of women still unmet by political and economic structures. Feminists engaged civil society by moving discussions about rape and domestic violence out of a private-only framework. They began to address these instances of violence not as issues of intimacy but rather as problems rooted in mechanisms of power and control. The bestknown depiction of the power and control theory was developed as the Power and Control Wheel. This wheel, created by women who had suffered violence at the hands of male partners, puts power and control at the center while the spokes of the wheel represent the ways in which power and control are exercised—through physical, emotional, economic, and sexual abuse (Minnesota Development Program, Inc. 2003). Therefore, “neither the realm of domestic, personal life, nor that of nondomestic, economic, and political life, can be understood or interpreted in isolation from one another” (Okin 1991, 124). Hence, the slogan “the personal is political” was deployed to underscore the connections

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between the private and the public as well as their influence on one another. In particular, “feminists have emphasized how personal circumstances are structured by public factors, by laws about rape and abortion, by the status of ‘wife,’ by policies on child-care and the allocation of welfare benefits and the sexual division of labour in the home and workplace. ‘Personal’ problems can thus be solved only through political means and action” (Pateman 1991, 131). As a result, advocates for women began to respond publicly to the needs of women who had been raped or battered. During the mid1970s, shelters began to appear as safe havens for women. Early shelters were only able to focus on immediate needs, providing hotlines and shelter from harm. But as feminists brought the issues of rape and domestic violence to the public’s attention, shelters have developed more expansive services that go beyond meeting these immediate needs. Shelters both engage in crisis response after an attack has occurred and take preventative measures. For example, the Women’s Resource Center of Lackawanna and Susquehanna Counties in Pennsylvania offers several confidential and free services. These include a 24-hour hotline, shelter for women fleeing their homes, crisis counseling for adults and children, accompaniment to medical, police and court proceedings, a range of support groups for survivors of abuse, rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment, advocacy for survivors, and education programs. The WRC also supports the Barbara J. Hart Justice Center that advocates for reform in the legal arena (Women’s Resource Center 2003b). The most pronounced initiative to address these issues on a systemic level came with the passage of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA). This federal legislation established programs within the Departments of Justice and Heath and Human Services. The Family Violence and Prevention Fund summarizes what VAWA includes: VAWA created new penalties for gender-related violence and new grant programs encouraging states to address domestic violence and sexual assault including: law enforcement and prosecution grants (STOP grants), grants to encourage arrest, rural domestic violence and child abuse enforcement grants, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and grants to battered women’s shelters. (Family Violence Prevention Fund 2003)

VAWA was reauthorized in 2000 and added some new programs. These included civil legal assistance, assistance for transitional housing, supervised visitation centers, enforcement of interstate protection orders,

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VAWA protection for battered immigrant women, funds to address dating violence and sexual assault on campuses, and services for disabled and older women. Feminist analyses of domestic violence as rooted in dynamics of power and control marked a significant departure from historical explanations and justifications for battering and abuse. With the development of the power and control model of violence, domestic abuse was transformed from a private matter to a public crisis. Reconceptualizing domestic abuse as a public crisis allowed feminists to interrogate the public realm for the ways in which it prevented women from getting help and to consider the public policy implications of this understanding of domestic abuse. Homeland security policy, however, traveled in the opposite direction. It began initially as a public initiative that became increasingly intertwined in the private lives of American citizens. The Department of Homeland Security has a much shorter history than the feminist movement against domestic violence. Conceived in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Office of Homeland Security (OHS) was created on September 20th, 2001, with Tom Ridge appointed as the first director. In November of 2002, the OHS became the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Tom Ridge was named Secretary of the DHS. In response to a widespread communication and intelligence breakdown, the Homeland Security Act was passed in Congress July 2002 and the federal government underwent significant consolidation and reorganization. The Department of Homeland Security has four divisions: Border and Transportation Security, Emergency Preparedness and Response, Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Countermeasures, and Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. The DHS encourages collaboration between government agencies, facilitates information sharing between federal, state, and local authorities, and encourages public and private preparedness for a variety of terrorist attacks (Bush 2002c). Although clearly located in the public realm, homeland security (HS) policies and regulations also operate in the private sphere, for instance, by collecting personal information on citizens. Furthermore, these policies can impinge on the successful functioning of civil society, the arena that straddles the political, economic, and private realms, by enlisting civil society organizations as subsidiary government operations rather than distinct and autonomous groups. A further example of the encroachment into civil society is found in the U.S. Department of Defense’s “Short History of Homeland Defense.” It describes the trajectory of defense initiatives throughout U.S. history. Describing the shift that occurred during the Cold War, it states,

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Elizabeth F. Randol In the minds of the average American, “homeland defense” became “civil defense.” And civil defense programs consisted of urging families to take cover and build fallout shelters and directing the development of community air raid shelters. (Garamone 2001)

Here we see national security, which falls squarely within the political/public domain, being addressed by citizen-run programs. Tom Ridge articulates this metamorphosis more pointedly, saying “Terrorists are strategic actors and they act on their timetable, not ours. They seek to turn our neighborhoods into battlefields. That is why individual citizens have such an important role to play” (Ridge 2003b). Bringing the war on terrorism to our individual lives and neighborhoods has resulted in programs like Citizen Corps, created after September 11th. Citizen Corps “helps drive local citizen participation by coordinating Citizen Corps programs, developing community action plans, assessing possible threats and identifying local resources” (Citizen Corps 2003a). Citizen Corps, overseen by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), includes programs such as an expanded Neighborhood Watch program, Volunteers in Police Service, the Community Emergency Response Team, and even a Web site called FEMA for Kids to engage children in disaster preparedness (Citizen Corps 2003b). All of these programs focus on disaster preparation and response and increased citizen surveillance. To some extent, these programs contribute to the militarization of civil society. Both the DHS and the movement against violence against women have recognized threats that affect our personal and public lives and have responded by developing institutions and policies to address those concerns. However, it is important to investigate how each has rhetorically made its case to the public in order to justify its existence and its demands for materials, money, and support.

Identifying the Threat, Assessing Fear, and the Status of Victim/Survivor Movements to combat violence against women developed in response to a very real crisis, one that is far from over. Domestic violence, by definition, is always at the hand of an intimate partner and rape is, more often than not, committed by someone known to the woman. Therefore, the threat is, to some extent, locatable since perpetrators of this violence are known to their victims; frequently they are men. Alternately, the victims of domestic violence and rape are predominantly women. A 1998

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study funded jointly by the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services found that 25% of women, compared with 8% of men, said they were raped or physically assaulted or both in their lifetime by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or date. And 76% of the women, compared to 18% of the men, who were raped or physically assaulted or both since age 18 said the perpetrator was a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or date (U.S. Department of Justice 1998, 2). Because men most frequently victimize women, feminists have had to develop various ways of understanding and talking about both fear of men’s violence and women’s victimization and victimhood. Framing this issue in terms of both of these concerns has been a tense and difficult project. Early feminists focused on women’s pervasive fear of men’s violence, specifically as it concerns rape. Susan Brownmiller most vocally expressed this feeling, stating, “[rape] is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear” (Brownmiller 1975, 5). Early feminists argued that rape and domestic violence are not anomalies in a culture that denigrates women socially, politically, and economically. Violence against women operates as a mechanism of power and control intent on keeping women in their place. In this way, rape and battering are not only commonplace but required if men are to retain their privileged positions. And if such violence is required, it is also justified in a patriarchal culture. However, there are complications with this position. In discussing Brownmiller’s and other feminist analyses that frame violence in this way, Nadya Burton explains: “The rhetoric of these works serves the dual purpose of deindividualizing rape and placing it firmly in the social and political arena, and of rendering fear an essential part of femaleness. The male rapist is also deindividualized. . . . Thus fear operates in these texts as a unifier of women” (Burton 1998, 185). She continues, “The construction of fear as hegemonic, while serving to validate the often private, individual feelings of women, simultaneously serves to establish fear as normative and universal” (Burton 1998, 185). Sarah Hoagland argues that “heterosexualism” and the predator/protector relationship between women and men contribute to the tendency to define or script women only as victims. She writes, “What I am calling ‘heterosexualism’ is . . . an entire way of living which involves a delicate, though at times indelicate, balance between masculine predation upon and masculine protection of a feminine object of masculine attention” (Hoagland 1988, 29). For Hoagland, the relationship of predation and protection is not dichotomous; they do not exist independently of each other.

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Instead, the logic of protection and the logic of predation support and reinforce each other. Protection objectifies women just as much as predation. To protect women, men do things to women and against women; acting “for a woman’s own good,” they violate her integrity and undermine her agency (Hoagland 1988, 31). If we accept Hoagland’s definition of the relationship between predator and protector, it seems, then, that early feminist depictions of women as paralyzed by fear and victimization play into this predator/protector dynamic since the only way out of this cycle for women would be to demand protection from men. Feminist antiviolence advocates began to grow uncomfortable with the way in which their rhetoric represented women as helpless victims, incapable of making decisions on their own. This rhetoric of fear limited the ways in which people could envision women escaping their individual situations. The logical response to fear is to seek protection and in the case of domestic violence, advocates suggested that protection should come from the police, the criminal justice system, and/or the law. However, there were times when these protective measures foreclosed the possibility of recognizing and supporting what women could do and were doing to help themselves. Fortunately, as the antiviolence movement matured intellectually and practically, advocates became increasingly uncomfortable with this framework. If women live in constant fear and are regularly victimized, there is little room for initiating resistance to violence or for moving from “victim” to “survivor” of violence. The early model of “learned helplessness,” articulated most prominently by Lenore Walker (1979), seemed to define women too narrowly as victims. Advocates therefore began to shift their language to reflect how their work began to focus on women’s transformation from victims to survivors. A crucial component of this shift was the distinction between power as oppressive and empowerment as a liberating force. Oppressive power is typically understood as the institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of a person or group of people based on their difference from the perceived norm. Empowerment, therefore, is usually defined as the way in which people counteract, resist, or change oppressive institutions through increased social and economic mobility, increased access to and control over resources, and increased decision-making capacity and opportunities. Feminists began to embrace the concept of empowerment to address violence against women. As a result, they simultaneously began to move away from victim advocacy to a type of advocacy based on a model of women surviving violence. One such model is Edward Gondolf’s Survivor Hypothesis Theory (1998). Important in this shift in feminist discourse of violence against

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women is a focus on women’s agency. Especially in the area of domestic violence, personal narratives as well as research reflected the active role of women in attempting to leave abusive relationships. Domestic violence was no longer represented as a crime perpetrated against a completely helpless and defenseless woman. Instead, women spoke out about family members, clergy, physicians, and friends to whom they had turned for help. In many of the accounts, none of these parties were able, willing, or aware enough to help. For many people, this effectively changed the question from “why does she stay?” to “what prevents her from leaving?” Publicly, this shift in discourse highlighted the extent to which services, both public and private, collude to create an immensely difficult barrier to overcome if a woman is to successfully leave an abusive relationship. The rhetoric surrounding violence against women has developed a more textured and more complex understanding of both the threats that women face as well as women’s victimization. It continues to walk the thin line separating the actual and acknowledged victimization women face while refusing to relegate women to the position of helpless victim. Most feminists understand that the balance between victim and survivor is a precarious one. Yet, this tension is always under revision by feminists who seek to reclaim women’s agency and autonomy. In an apparently similar but ultimately different way, the rhetoric used to explain and justify the Department of Homeland Security has cultivated a climate of fear and has emphasized our status as victims. Americans were certainly victimized in the attacks of September 11th, 2001. There is no question that this was an instance of extreme violence. Soon after the attacks, those responsible, mainly Saudi terrorists trained by al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, were identified. Clearly identifying bin Laden as responsible for coordinating the attacks led to the U.S. invasion in Afghanistan to dismantle al Qaeda camps and to topple the Taliban regime. However, although those immediately responsible were identified, the rhetoric addressing terrorist threats became increasingly vague. The administration repeatedly pointed out that the terrorists can strike at any moment and emphasized the unknown nature of the threat. Bush acknowledged the difficulty of protecting the nation against “a hidden network of cold-blooded killers” (Gilmore 2003). He stated that “no department of government can completely guarantee our safety against ruthless killers who move and plot in shadows” (Lindlaw 2002) and that “we now know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us” (Bush 2002b). Tom Ridge echoes the President’s words, describing the role of the Department of Homeland Security as “protect[ing] American citizens from these shadow-warriors, these shadow

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enemies we’re up against” (Ridge 2001a). I do not intend to argue that terrorists are all known entities and that they are not difficult to find. However, this rhetoric of homeland security suggests that these terrorists are everywhere and nowhere. As I pointed out earlier, Burton warned that feminist antiviolence strategies based on a discourse of fear could have problematic unintended effects. If women are all reduced to victims, men’s responsibility for their violence is deindividualized, and as a result women forge a fleeting bond with each other based on mutual and pervasive fear. The Bush Administration’s images of ubiquitous “shadow warriors” are having this same effect. First, this rhetoric deindividualizes the terrorists. Despite the fact that we have a list of several of the most wanted terrorists who are individual and identifiable, the administration continues to warn of nonspecific and generalized terrorist threats. In addition, fear is constructed as “hegemonic” since the threat can come from anywhere at anytime. In this way, we come to view the fear of a terrorist attack as normative. This point has been stated repeatedly: “Our enemies can strike anywhere in America, and we must be able to respond in a coordinated way” (Bush 2003). Ridge again echoes the President, saying, “The next attack could happen to any community at any time. The random, unpredictable nature of terrorism itself requires hopefully everyone to take our recommendations to be prepared” (Ridge 2003). But terms such as “shadow warriors” certainly do not quell the fear of the American public. The administration talks frequently about the fact that we are not afraid. But the incessant references to the invisible threat we face consistently put the issue of fear in the forefront. On September 15th, 2001, Bush argued “A terrorist attack designed to tear us apart has instead bound us together as a nation” (Bush 2001b). And two years later, Secretary Ridge stated, “Taking charge of your own safety does not mean that you’re charging into this fight alone” (Ridge 2003). In this rhetoric fear is undoubtedly used as a “unifier” in the way Burton warned; somehow if we are all in this together it is not so frightening. But the price we pay for that lessening of fear is precisely that which Burton describes: the deindividulization of terrorists and the hegemony of fear. The cure for this fear, according to the administration, is to be vigilant and prepared. Tom Ridge argues “we’ll never surrender to fear since fear is the terrorists’ most effective weapon,” continuing, “So the threat of terrorism forces us to make a choice. We can be afraid, or we can be ready. And today, America’s families declare that we will not be afraid and we will be ready” (Ridge 2003). But the rhetoric of the public readiness brochures and the Web site www.ready.com plays upon the fear of

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the public to encourage preparation, the first expression of which was the frantic purchasing of duct tape and plastic wrap. In addition, we saw the implementation of the Homeland Security Advisory System, a five-level threat condition indicator ranging from low to elevated to severe (Bush 2002a). This advisory system is strikingly similar to the five-level Defense Condition (DEFCON) system used to indicate the degree of combat readiness required during any given situation. The DEFCON system became widely known during the Cold War and is associated largely with the level of nuclear threat. The U.S. went to DEFCON-2 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the highest it has ever been. The Homeland Security Advisory System has the potential to instill the same sort of elevated fear and anxiety as the DEFCON system but with an added murkiness— the enemies are the terrorists, identified only in the vaguest terms. The DEFCON system was at least a response to an identifiable Soviet threat. Finally, the fear that many people rightfully felt was used to arouse anger and the desire for revenge. Just days after September 11th, President Bush remarked that “Our nation was horrified, but it’s not going to be terrorized. We’re a great nation. We’re a nation of resolve. We’re a nation that can’t be cowed by evil-doers.” He went on to point out that the “administration has a job to do, and we’re going to do it. We will rid the world of the evil-doers” (Bush 2001d). The time for worry and mourning, and perhaps reflection, was rhetorically and actually transformed into a time for retaliation.

Foreign Predation President Bush and Secretary Ridge’s rhetorical response to terrorism transformed our status as a nation of victims into that of a nation of survivors. However, I believe that the administration’s understanding of survival is closely linked, if not identical, to our ability to militarily overwhelm. Indeed, survival seems to mean the capacity to do harm and to mete out “justice” American-style. Bush states, “We will call together freedom loving people to fight terrorism” (Bush 2001d). In a more extensive address to the new employees of the HSD, Bush remarked: The world changed on September 11th, 2001. We learned that a threat that gathers on the other side of the earth can strike our own cities and kill our own citizens. It’s an important lesson; one we must never forget. Oceans no longer protect America from the dangers of this world. We’re protected by daily vigilance at home. And we will be protected by resolute and decisive action against threats from abroad.

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Elizabeth F. Randol We’re tracking down terrorists who hate America, one by one. We’re on the hunt. We got [sic] them on the run. And it’s a matter of time before they learn the meaning of American justice. . . . [W]e’re taking unprecedented measures to defend the homeland with the largest reorganization of our government in more than half a century. (Bush 2003)

Here we see the fully developed use of predator/protector logic articulated by Hoagland, who argues that this logic also extends to the dynamic of colonial relationships: “Colonizers depict the colonized as passive, as wanting and needing protection (domination), as being taken care of ‘for their own good.’ Anyone who resists domination will be sorted out as abnormal and attacked as a danger to society. . . . Thus colonizers move from predation—attack and conquest—to benevolent protection” (Hoagland 1988, 32). The original predator, al Qaeda and bin Laden, prompted the government to respond as protector of the American people. And now firmly in the role of protector, the administration has become predator not only in the private lives of U.S. citizens but also in the lives of Afghanis and Iraqis. Indeed, the mission of the Department of Homeland Security is to “creat[e] a single, permanent department with an overriding and urgent mission: securing the homeland of America and protecting the American people” (Bush 2002b). To achieve this end, Bush targeted Afghanistan and Iraq as subject to predation, in the form of invasion, while simultaneously representing the U.S. military as benevolent liberator. In describing Afghanistan, Bush commented, “As we pursue the enemy in Afghanistan, we feed the innocents. As we try to bring justice to those who have harmed us, we find those who need help” (Bush 2001a). And later he argues, “We acted, and the Taliban no longer is in power in Afghanistan, which is not only good for the security of the Free World, it is incredibly good for the people who suffered in Afghanistan under barbaric rule” (Garamone 2003). The ultimate co-optation of feminist rhetoric came when Bush and First Lady Laura Bush used the plight of women under the Taliban as one of the justifications for the war in Afghanistan. The horrors visited upon women in Afghanistan had long been a focus of feminist antiviolence organizing, but these horrors were otherwise unheeded by U.S. leaders until recognizing them was useful in the justification of the war. Ultimately, Bush rhetorically claimed credit for the liberation of women in Afghanistan. President Bush stated: “The central goal of the terrorists is the brutal oppression of women—and not only the women of Afghanistan. The terrorists who help rule Afghanistan are found in dozens and dozens of coun-

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tries around the world. And that is the reason this great nation, with our friends and allies, will not rest until we bring them all to justice. America— America is so proud of our military and our allies, because like the rest of us here, we’ve seen the pictures of joy when we liberated city after city in Afghanistan. . . . Women now come out of their homes from house arrest, able to walk the streets without chaperones” (Bush 2001c). And Laura Bush put it more succinctly in her radio address to the nation, “Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. . . . The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women” (2003). This tactic was the clearest instance of how feminist antiviolence rhetoric was explicitly co-opted to justify the invasion of Afghanistan. But these arguments undoubtedly gave many feminists pause. If we truly wanted liberation for women under the Taliban, why shouldn’t we support the invasion? Wouldn’t an invasion to overthrow that oppressive regime correct the desperate problems and hideous injustices visited upon Afghan women? The answer to this question is, no. For no one bothered to ask the Afghan women themselves. A group of women that the United States had neither supported nor contacted was RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. “RAWA was founded in Kabul in 1977 (by Meena, who was assassinated in 1987) as an independent political and social organization of Afghan women fighting for human rights and social justice, and was directly involved in the war of resistance against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Since the fall of the pro-Soviet regime in 1992, the focus of the political struggle has been against fundamentalism and the misogynist orientation of the Taliban regime” (RAWA 2002). If the United States government had truly been interested in how we might help women in Afghanistan, we would have found several possible venues already established by RAWA in Pakistan and within Afghanistan. In addition to serving women in crisis, women who have been beaten, raped, tortured, or otherwise victimized by war and conflict, RAWA helps women on three other main fronts. They work to educate women by organizing underground schools and literacy training; they establish mobile health teams to address women’s health needs and train women in first aid so they can help themselves and their communities; and they teach women crafts and trades to establish economic independence. These are RAWA’s major contributions but they are failing due to a lack of funding (RAWA 2004). Funding one or all of these initiatives may have enabled an internal uprising by the Afghan people themselves, sparing them the tragedy of an external and polarizing war. In fact, the women of RAWA denounced the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. They argued:

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Elizabeth F. Randol Now the ‘Northern Alliance’ groups lie in ambush like hungry wolves so they, while riding the guns of the U.S., can assault and swarm into Kabul and . . . gain ground in order to bargain for position in the second ‘emirate,’ and as a consequence again spoil the aspiration of the people for the establishment of a stable and democratic government acceptable to all. . . . The continuation of U.S. attacks and the increase in number of innocent civilian victims not only gives an excuse to the Taliban, but also will cause the empowering of the fundamentalist forces in the region and even the world. (RAWA 2001)

For years, feminists and organizations like RAWA have been raising awareness about the plight of women in Afghanistan. But their understanding of their position and their work were largely ignored until their rhetoric was appropriated by the Bush administration. Then their rhetoric was used to ensure that Bush’s policy of war against the Taliban could be implemented with less public scrutiny and objection than might otherwise have been raised.

Domestic Predation The language of fear and victimization can be used in many ways. There are dangers inherent in depicting any category of people as victims and certain situations as universally frightening. Constructing instances of violence in this way can have two effects: either people are encouraged to become more dependent in response to a perceived threat or they are encouraged to become more autonomous in the face of the threat. Although the Department of Homeland Security has gone to great lengths to educate the public about preparing for an attack, I do not believe that the effect of this education is necessarily to encourage autonomy. In large part, I believe that the focus on disaster preparedness ultimately frightens people, making them more dependent on the government to protect them. Therefore, the administration can subsequently justify continued government intrusion and infringement on civil liberties in the name of protection. Two programs, one defunct (TIPS) and one suspended by Congress (TIA), were central to the concerns about civil rights infractions. The Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS) originally appeared on the Citizen Corps Web page, but public outcry forced the retraction of this program. The Boston Globe and the Washington Times both ran articles warning us of the dangers of the TIPS program. Ellen Sorokin reported that Operation TIPS would have recruited:

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. . . a million letter carriers, utility workers and others whose jobs allow them access to private homes into a contingent of organized government informants. . . . The program will allow volunteers, whose routines make them well-positioned to recognize suspect activities, to report the same to the Justice Department, which is running the project. (Sorokin 2002)

The Total Information Awareness (TIA) program is a project of the Information Awareness Office under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The name of TIA has been sanitized, renamed “Terrorism” Information Awareness to allay fears of citizen surveillance. However, in a widely circulated article by William Safire of the New York Times he explains the potential implications of TIA: Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every web site you visit and email you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend—all these transaction and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as a “virtual centralized grand database.” (Safire 2002)

And finally, in May 2003, we find out that “Republicans in Washington and Austin, Texas apparently used a Homeland Security Department agency to track Texas Democratic legislators who left the state to block passage of a GOP-backed Congressional re-districting bill” (Smith 2003). These are only a few examples of trouble ahead for civil liberties. But these examples, considered in relationship to other troubling legislation such as the U.S. Patriot Act, suggest a matrix of governmental predatory behavior on private lives. In the discourse of homeland security, this predation on the part of the government is represented as being done in the interest of protecting the American people from terrorists. If we accept this argument, we thereby accept a justification of policies that limit and oppress us and therefore undermine, rather than bolster, our power and agency, all in order to be safer. Because feminist antiviolence advocates recognized the theoretical and practical risks of focusing on fear and protection, they began to more strongly reshape their rhetoric and practice to focus on empowerment. Rape crisis centers and battered women’s shelters work to encourage women’s autonomy and self-sufficiency. The Women’s Resource Center of Lackawanna and Susquehanna Counties in Pennsylvania expresses this clearly in their mission:

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Elizabeth F. Randol The Women’s Resource Center’s mission is to provide programs and services that support and uphold the principle that women have the right to choose and maintain a life free from oppression and violence. The Women’s Resource Center supports a feminist philosophy that places a high value on the individuality and equality of women and all persons, and is committed to enhancing the dignity, self-worth, and self-confidence of women. (Women’s Resource Center 2003a)

This mission statement is in many ways paradigmatic of most women’s centers’ mission statements and, coupled with previously mentioned initiatives that focus on crisis response, support, and education, this mission facilitates women’s autonomy. Each step that a woman takes—calling the hotline, staying at the shelter, finding temporary housing, navigating the justice system, receiving counseling, and learning about the cycles of abuse—is constructed in such a way that the woman can slowly regain her independence and agency. The Department of Homeland Security, unfortunately, seeks to reclaim the power and control we feel we lost on September 11th and yet it has been done in a way that reproduces oppressive forms of power and control rather than self-actualizing and affirming empowerment or agency. Homeland Security policies seek to exert power, control, and violence not only over those in the U.S., but also to those people and governments of other nations like Afghanistan and Iraq. Victimization, in this instance, seems to have prompted a response from the federal government that is the opposite of the response of feminist antiviolence efforts. The crucial difference is whether the purpose of either feminist antiviolence organizing or the Department of Homeland Security is to encourage autonomy or dependency.

Conclusion My analysis of the co-optation of feminist antiviolence discourse by the rhetoric of homeland security provides a cautionary lesson. The use of apparently feminist rhetoric to support oppressive policies requires us to think carefully when emphasizing women’s victim status when we seek state involvement. Two such issues that have been debated within feminist circles are using Battered Women’s Syndrome as a legal defense and the implementation of police mandatory arrest policies in domestic violence situations. In this volume, Sally Scholz provides a detailed analysis of the implications of learned helplessness theory and the ramifications of using Battered Women’s Syndrome (BWS) as a psychological and legal defense. She offers a useful and insightful proposal for bolstering

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women’s agency by developing a new feminist concept of subjectivity. Analyses such as Scholz’s are exactly the sorts of critiques that will encourage and sustain tactical and strategic changes in feminist approaches to violence. My analysis of the co-optation of feminist discourse in the rhetoric of homeland security and defense against terrorism also offers us an opportunity to change the direction and substance of homeland security rhetoric. After decades of antiviolence work, feminist theorists and advocates can provide us with the necessary rhetorical and conceptual tools to punch holes in the “seamless” homeland security fable. This may be accomplished on three rhetorical fronts. First, feminist discourse analysis illuminates the ways in which protection can masquerade as predation and predation can masquerade as protection. A recognition of the complexity of their relationship should be employed as a basis for critiquing the Bush Administration’s explanation of why it infringes on our personal and civil liberties as well as why the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. The administration consistently elides the rhetoric of protection and predation to describe the U.S.’s role in these two countries. Rhetorically, we are either there to prey on the terrorists hiding in or ruling those countries or we are there to protect their citizens from the ravages of the likes of Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein. The extended justification of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq ultimately argues that this predation will protect the American public as well. The Patriot Act also functions as a predatory piece of legislation masked in the rhetoric of protection. Second, feminist advocates have worked to articulate an empowering vision of what it means to be a “survivor.” While the United States was victimized on 9/11, remaining in the role of victim has proven to be a dangerous and counterproductive position. A feminist model of survival tends to include two steps. The first is a remembrance, acknowledgment, and understanding of the root causes of the trauma. The second entails developing a productive way of proceeding with one’s new life after the violent experience. We would be well served as a nation to take these steps to frame our transition from victim to survivor. Third and finally, feminist rhetoric enables us to challenge the claim that we are serving as “liberators” in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our unchallenged global power functions largely as an oppressive power that forecloses choices for national and international citizens rather than providing them with more opportunities and choices. Certainly a policy of empowerment consisting of rights such as self-determination, autonomy, and enfranchisement would be far preferable to the U.S.’s empty promises of these rights during periods of extended occupation.

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Brownmiller, Susan. 1975. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. New York: Simon and Schuster. Burton, Nadya. 1998. Resistance to Prevention: Reconsidering Feminist AntiViolence Rhetoric. In Violence Against Women: Philosophical Perspectives, eds. Stanley G. French, Wanda Teays, and Laura M. Purdy, 182–200. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Bush, George W. 2001a. President Launches ‘Lessons of Liberty.’ The White House, October 30, 2001. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/ 2001/10/20011030-7.html. ——— . 2001b. Radio Address of the President to the Nation. The White House, September 15, 2001. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/ 20010915.html. ——— . 2001c. Remarks by the President at Signing Ceremony for Afghan Women and Children Relief Act of 2001. U.S. Department of State, December 12, 2001. http://www.state.gov/g/wi/rls/7246pf.htm. ——— . 2001d. Remarks by the President Upon Arrival. The White House, September 16, 2001. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/ 20010916-2.html. ——— . 2002a. Homeland Security Presidential Directive-3. The White House, March 12, 2002. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/ 20020312-5.html. ——— . 2002b. Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation. The White House, June 6, 2002. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/ print/20020606-8.html. ——— . 2002c. The Department of Homeland Security. Department of Homeland Security, June 2002. http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/book/ pdf. ——— . 2003. President Welcomes Employees to Department of Homeland Security.The White House, February 28, 2003. http://www.whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2003/02/print/20030228-2.html. Bush, Laura. 2001. Radio Address by Laura Bush to the Nation. U.S. Department of State, November 17, 2001. http://www.state.gov/g/wi/rls/7192pf. htm. Citizen Corps. 2003a. Programs and Partners. http://www.citizencorps.gov/programs. Citzen Corps. 2003b. Safety for Kids. http://citizencorps.gov/ready/kids.shtm. Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 1981. Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Garamone, Jim. 2001. A Short History of Homeland Defense. U.S. Department of Defense, American Forces Information Service. October 25, 1999. http://www.dod.mil/news/oct2001/n10252001_200110252.html.

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——— . 2003. Security Needed for Prosperity to Reign, Bush Says. U.S. Department of Defense, American Forces Information Service. June 16, 1999. http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2003/n06162003_200306164.html. Gilmore, Gerry J. 2003. Bush: Homeland Security Department is Critical to Victory Over Terrorism. U.S. Department of Defense, February 28. http: //www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2003/n02282003_200302282.html. Gondolf, Edward. 1998. Battered Women as Survivors: An Alternative to Treating Learned Helplessness. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Hoagland, Sarah Lucia. 1988. Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value. Palo Alto: Institute of Lesbian Studies. Lindlaw, Scott. 2002. Bush Signs Homeland Security Measures. Canoe News, November 25. http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WaronTerrorism/2002/11/ 25/5582-ap.html. Minnesota Development Program, Inc. 2003. The Duluth Model. http://www. duluth-model.org/documents/PhyVio.pdf. Okin, Susan Moller. 1978. Women in Western Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——— . 1998. Gender, the Public, and the Private. In Feminism and Politics, ed. Anne Phillips, 116–141. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press. ——— . 1989. The Disorder of Women. Stanford: Stanford University Press. RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan). 2001. RAWA Statement on the U.S. Strikes in Afghanistan. October 11, 2001. http://www.rawa.org/us-strikes.htm. ——— . 2002. About RAWA. http://www.rawa.org. ——— . 2004. RAWA’s Social Activities. http://www.rawa.org/s-html. Ridge, Tom. 2001a. Tuesday’s Homeland Security Briefing. The White House, October 30, 2001. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/ 2001/20011030-3.html. ——— . 2001. Remarks by Secretary Tom Ridge at the Announcement of the Ready Campaign. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, February 19, 2003. http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?content=475. Safire, William. 2002. You Are a Suspect. Common Dreams News Center, November 14, 2002. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1114-08.htm. Smith, Glenn W. 2003. Homeland Security Department Used to Track Texas Democrats. Common Dreams News Center, May 14 2003. http://www. commondreams.org/views03/0514-07.htm. Sorokin, Ellen. 2002. Planned Volunteer-Informant Corps Elicits ‘1984’ Fears. Common Dreams News Center, July 16, 2002. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0716-01.htm. Walker, Lenore. 1979. The Battered Woman. New York: Harper Colophon Books.

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U.S. Department of Justice. 1998. Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey. Washington. Women’s Resource Center. 2003a. Mission. http://www.womensrescenter.com. ——— . 2003b. Services. http://www.womensrescenter.com.

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Unsanctioned (Bedroom) Commitments: The 2000 U.S. Census Discourse around Cohabitation and Single-Motherhood KIRSTEN ISGRO

Your piece on single parenthood is a sad commentary on American culture and the newly cavalier attitude toward traditional family values. It takes only common sense to know that children need and want both mommies and daddies. —Lynn Hagen, Blarisden, CA Your cover story demonstrates what those of us who deal in reality—and not in ignorant and intolerant absolutes—have long acknowledged: the American family has always had, and will continue to have, many different faces and combinations. Thank you for promoting what I believe will be much-needed discussion and understanding. —Alycia Smith-Howard, S. Hadley, MA When I saw your May 28 cover story on single moms, I thought what a relief that we were finally getting acceptance and recognition for being the resilient nurturers that we are in today’s society. —Name Withheld, NJ I’m a psychologist and like others who treat children or see them in the emergency room for emotional crises, I know how important families, including both mothers and fathers, are for child development. Men play a crucial role in rearing children, and those who say otherwise, regardless of their academic titles, are simply spouting uninformed nonsense. In all measures of outcome (health, academic achievement, emotional adjustment, incidence of abuse), children from traditional

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Kirsten Isgro families, as a group, do better than those from the other arrangements described in your cover story. Traditional families may be contentious, conflict-ridden and stifling for some adults, but messy as they are, there is no better way to rear children. —William Douglas Tynan, Wilmington, DE

These comments were published in Newsweek on June 18, three weeks after the May 28, 2001, issue “The New Single Mom: Why the Traditional Family is Fading Fast. What it Means for Our Kids.” The May Newsweek issue came out shortly after Americans learned that the nuclear family—one mother and one father married with children sharing their own household—was on the decline. On May 15, 2001, the U.S. Census Bureau released information about the American population in 2000. This Census 2000 report revealed that the number of nonfamily households rose from 1990 at twice the rate of family households. The U.S. Census distinguishes married-couple families (51.7% of total population) and married-couple families with their own children under 18 years old (23.5%). Overall, married couple families (heterosexual couples with or without children over or under 18) dropped in 2000 from 55% in 1990. Individuals living alone were at record levels (25.8%), single-parenthood households were on the rise (7.2% female-headed, 2.1% male-headed) and cohabitation was at an all time high (1.9% of the population). Overall, 9% of all “coupled households”—5.5 million couples—were unmarried-partner households; 8% different-sex and 1% same-sex (Simmons and O’Connell 2003, 4). The Census Bureau has been slow to conceptualize and operationalize cohabitation—for both same and different sex partners. While individually these numbers are low, collectively they marked a shift in U.S. demographics, according to the decennial Census; married-couple families with their own children under 18 years old comprised only 23.5% of U.S. American households. The measurable demographic family/household shifts presented in the 2000 Census reports warrant Newsweek’s coverage of this issue as newsworthy. As a newsmagazine—a publication that exists on the axis between information and entertainment—Newsweek is a popular source for technical information, such as the U.S. Census. For many readers, their only access to information about the Census is accounts in such widely read media sources. In typical weekly magazine fashion, the 2001 Newsweek issue presents its discussion of the Census, marriage, family formation, and public policy as objective, nonideological journalism. Yet, as I will argue, while the authors in Newsweek are reluctant to

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make any forceful conclusions, they do contribute to how the topic of “family” is discussed and understood, giving preferred meaning to some family formations over others. After a brief review of how family as a social category has been defined throughout U.S. Census history, I look at the “loss of the traditional family” rhetoric (as framed by Newsweek) as an ideological phenomenon. By analyzing the implications assigned (e.g., by media and social scientists) to these alternative family formations, we gain a broader understanding of the heteronormative family ideology that prevails in the U.S. and has material effects on public policies on women and children. Specifically, marriage is expected of some and denied to others by the state; it is “designed both to reward those inside it and to discipline those outside it” (Warner 2002, 264). Of interest to me is how the shift in American family formations is explained or justified in Newsweek at this historical moment. In particular, how are different-sex cohabitors and unmarried mothers portrayed? In this conjuncture of ideology and representation, what are the perceived social, cultural, religious, economic, and legal implications of these non-normative family formations? The U.S. 2000 Census report prompted much commentary on the meaning of family. While some of this commentary celebrated family diversity, others lamented society’s demise. Still others had mixed reactions, uncertain how to proceed with this new information. This essay explores the national discourse captured and produced in Newsweek around the 2000 Census data, focusing on how marital status and nonmarital childbearing and rearing are understood. Even though the 2000 Census shows that people’s living arrangements and personal relationships are shifting, the sexual representations of cohabitors and “single” mothers in the media reveal the still marginalized status of these family structures in public discourse. Some mainstream media—including Newsweek, the specific object of my analysis—however, do allow for some alternative readings and ideological positions in the name of a more “balanced” and “objective” news story. Nonmarital partnering and parenting may seem unrelated, but these non-normative practices are regularly attacked by the conservative Right as “unsanctioned (bedroom) commitments,” a term coined by Ann Imse (Rocky Mountain News, May 22, 2001). Additionally, sociologist Judith Stacey argues that both Republicans and Democrats alike have embraced a centrist position on family and marriage: The evils of single parenthood became a national dogma, expressed most pointedly in the 1996 welfare law, which diverted federal support from single-mother families to state initiatives aimed at promoting

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Kirsten Isgro marriage and reducing “fatherlessness” as a cure for poverty. Familyvalues rhetoric was shunted to the margins of electoral discourse because it no longer served to differentiate the two major political parties. (2000, 26)

Unmarried parents and different-sex cohabitors are often lumped together because of their marital status in both media representations and public policy, so it is important to address their perceived threat jointly. At the same time, building on Warner’s work, I assert that even though unmarried mothers and cohabitors, queer and straight, may find themselves at odds with heteronormative culture, they cannot be addressed as a homogeneous group. There is great diversity within and between these groups, in terms of their identities and sexual expressions, and each group evokes different levels and types of societal opposition. As other authors in this volume argue, feminists’ views on government interventions into family life are complicated (see in particular, Buydens, Meagher, Randol, Reich, and Shivas and Charles). Marriage is most definitely not a private concern; rather one’s marital status is important to one’s standing in the community and state, requiring legal and public sanctions. As institutions, family and marriage continue to symbolize a great deal about citizenship within the United States. Feminist historian Nancy Cott argues that at the core of American public and economic policies is a particular Christian marriage model, based on fidelity and lifelong monogamy, the mutual consent of a man and a woman, and the expectation that the husband will be the family head and economic provider and the wife the domestic, dependent partner (2000, 11). Marriage, as a legal category and a public institution, fixes socially appropriate sex roles for men and women, perhaps more determinedly than any other social force or institution. “The unmarried as well as the married” states Cott, “bear the ideological, ethical, and practical impress of the marital institution, which is difficult or impossible to escape” (2000, 3). While this marriage model overshadows the discussion of the 2000 Census data, there are also a number of ruptures in the discourse of Newsweek that offer rhetorical visions and strategies counter to the ideal American family.

The Census as a Political Tool in Defining and Controlling “Family” Since 1790, the United States government has been counting its population to apportion political power, as mandated by Article 1, Section 2 of

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the 1787 Constitution. Since the inception of the Census, the group deemed most worth counting has been wealthy and white male heads of households. Martha Farnsworth Riche, the former Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, explains that Census announcements have historically set “in motion a broad-based set of public responses because the constitutional purpose of the Census is to distribute power (and public money) fairly, according to geographically based population numbers” (1999, 933). As historian Margo Anderson and statistician Stephen Fienberg demonstrate, with each Census announcement controversy erupts over population counts and methodological accuracy. It is therefore necessary to understand that Census data gathering and reporting is an inherently politicized project, because so much is at stake in the distribution of political and economic resources (Anderson and Fienberg 1999, 17; Riche 1999). In addition to data gathering methods, social categorizations have also been politicized. Throughout the Census history, the definition of family has changed. Prior to 1850, the Census used “family” as a single unit and reported little data on individual persons (Anderson and Fienberg 1999, 20). The decision to use the household as the unit of measurement essentially rendered women, children, slaves, and indentured servants politically invisible (Riche 1999, 935). Since the 1880 Census, the relationship of each person to the “householder” (the person in whose name the house is owned or rented) has been used to provide information about the make-up of families and households (Simmons and O’Connell 2003, 2). Only in 1940 did the Census Bureau begin explicitly classifying family data. Distinguishing three types of family structure, the Bureau defined the “normal” family with a male provider for his wife (and children if present); all other male-headed families; and all femaleheaded families (Cott 2000, 182). And it was the late 1970s before Census Bureau researchers developed a measure for nonmarital cohabitation relationships, now referred to as POSSLQ—Partners of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters (Casper and Cohen 2000, 237). Currently, the U.S. Census Bureau defines “family” as consisting of two or more people, living together, who are related by blood, marriage, or adoption. The relationship status of household members who are unrelated and who cannot or choose not to marry is unrecognized by the state, which socially marginalizes them. Families are classified as either “married-couple” or “female householder, no husband present.” (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000; in Table DP1, “male householder, no wife present” was not listed.) Nonfamily households include people living alone or with one or more unrelated persons. It was not until 1990 that the decennial census even included “unmarried partner” as a category in the

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“relationship to the householder” question (Casper and Cohen 2000, 23). With the 2000 Census, the category “unmarried partners” includes both same-sex and different-sex couples. These households are self-identified by “people who were sharing living quarters and who also had a close personal relationship with each other” (Simmons and O’Connell 2003, 1). The changes made in the 2000 Census form statistically allocated to the “unmarried partner” category individuals who are in samesex cohabiting relationships. This classification, while better than previous versions, still imperfectly estimates the number of same-sex partners living together (U.S. Census, 2002). These statistics do not capture the sexual identities of those who identify as transgender or bisexual, and are in different-sex or same-sex couples. Thus these definitions impose a classification that may not coincide with the beliefs or realities of the population they describe. And such classifications are not merely descriptive but are also powerfully constitutive—politically, socially, and economically. By the mid-1990s, at the height of a substantial “family values” campaign in Washington, DC, the 104th Congress passed the 1996 Federal Defense of Marriage Act (H.R. 3396). The U.S. Census Bureau altered its 2000 data requirements so that same-sex “spouse” responses were invalidated. Marriage is now defined on the federal level as “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” and spouse as “a person of the opposite sex who is husband or wife.” Therefore, anyone who is living with her/his sexual partner(s) but is not legally married is considered “single” for the purposes of the U.S. Census Bureau. Cultural critic Lauren Berlant calls such definitional acts the “amputation of personal complexity into categories of simple identity” (1997, 19). Marriage is narrowly defined, and one is either married or not, in the eyes of the Census Bureau and the law.

Newsweek’s Case Study: “Traditional Family is Fading Fast” I now turn to the May 2001 Newsweek issue on the American family. Newsweek showcases a number of American families, focusing specifically on “single” mothers—those who may be divorced, never wed, or cohabiting. While the cover story uses the release of the 2000 Census data as its springboard, the Newsweek authors also draw on U.S. Census data from the last 50 years. The Census as a political document frames the discussion of households and families and speculates on the future of America. While there are a number of discursive and nondiscursive strategies that help sanctify motherhood and family, there are

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also a number of examples of people’s lived experiences that contradict these sanctities in Newsweek. Iconic images and a carnival of statistical graphs and factoids are provided throughout the nine-page spread. I use the term “iconic” in Hinds and Stacey’s sense of a figure or image “that accrues such a powerful set of associations as to be immediately recognizable, as to produce a visceral reaction, and as to condense a complex history of contested meanings in one gesture or sentence” (2001, 156). The Newsweek issue includes three separate, but related, stories pertaining to the “new” American family. This perceived new and interesting phenomena is highlighted with graphs comparing Hispanic, black, and white families from 1970 to 1998. Whereas two-parent households dropped from 78% to 64% for Hispanics and 58% to 36% for blacks, the white households dropped from 90% in 1970 to 74% in 1998. Of the six families photographed, there are no visibly African-American or Asian-American women or children; at least four of the women are Caucasian. The first story, “Unmarried with Children,” profiles a number of women and explains how they became unmarried mothers. The second is a short essay by former U.S. Vice President, Dan Quayle, entitled “Why I Think I’m Still Right: Since the flap over ‘Murphy Brown,’ American families have come under even more pressure.” In this essay, Quayle returns to his 1988 debate with the television character Murphy Brown (played by Candice Bergen). The third essay, by Karen Springen and Pat Wingert, focuses on unconventional families and asks in its title the question “Is it healthy for the kids?” The subtitle claims “Unconventional families can give children the love, stability and support they need—but it’s much tougher” (54). Supplementing these three articles are 10 distinct sets of pie charts that evoke empirical evidence as authority, coinciding with photographs of five specifically profiled nontraditional families. These five families include cohabitors Susannah Wolverton and James Hoefert with their newborn child and Wolverton’s four-year-old daughter from a previous marriage; Laura Carroll, a mother of three; Gwen Baba and Nicole Conn, a lesbian couple with their one-year-old daughter, Gabriella; previously married Melaney Mashburn with her two children, who is currently dating a man with two children of his own; and Natashya Brooks, a mother of three kids from three different fathers who is on public assistance. Statistics compiled by several sources (such as the U.S. Census, the American Association for Single People, and Ameristat) are treated as unproblematic, avoiding the methodological quagmire of population undercounts that have haunted the Census process since its inception. An elaborate sidebar “The Family Test Tube,” chronicles the

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various nontraditional television families that have “always been ahead of the curve when it comes to depicting unconventional households.” These images of widowed or divorced parents span two pages, highlighting shows and characters such as Diahann Carroll as “Julia” (1968), “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (1969), The Partridge Family” (1970), “One Day at a Time” (1975), “Full House” (1987), “Murphy Brown” (1988), and “Once and Again” (1999). Newsweek’s claim that these television programs are “ahead of the curve” assumes that all viewers understand the two-parent heterosexual family to be the norm. It also is a preposterous assertion that the family formations depicted on commercial television somehow precede those existing in real life. Not surprisingly, this Newsweek issue is rich with contradictions and reveals a variety of ideological layers in American family discourse. For my purposes, however, I focus on the theme of the “loss of the traditional American family” that preoccupies the May 2001 Newsweek issue. With the cover headline claiming that the “traditional family is fading fast,” one has to question who or what exactly comprises this “traditional family.” Kantrowitz and Wingert begin their Newsweek story with an ironic twist on the traditional family archetype: Just imagine what would happen if June and Ward Cleaver were negotiating family life these days. The scenario might go something like this: they meet at the office (she’s in marketing; he’s in sales) and move in together after dating for a couple of months. A year later June gets pregnant. What to do? Neither feels quite ready to make it legal and there’s no pressure from their parents, all of whom are divorced and remarried themselves. So little Wally is welcomed into the world with June’s last name on the birth certificate. A few years later June gets pregnant again with the Beav. Ward’s ambivalent about second-time fatherhood and moves out, but June decides to go ahead on her own. In her neighborhood, after all, single motherhood is no big deal; the lesbians down the street adopted kids from South America and the soccer mom next door is divorced with a live-in boyfriend. (2001, 47–48)

This “postmodern June would be almost as mainstream as the 1950s version,” state the Newsweek authors. Yet, the television sitcom story, while retold to match the current American demographic profile, lingers in the American psyche, and here the sitcom family becomes the standard to which all others are compared. As Dan Quayle attests: Clearly, it is best to have a mother and a father, preferably in a happy monogamous relationship, actively involved in rearing and nurturing

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their child. The recent Census numbers reflect what we already know: there is extraordinary turmoil and dysfunction in families today. (2001, 52)

Therefore, the rhetoric of the American family presents two images: the heteronormative “American family” and “alternative families.” Together, these two monolithic family types work to create a binary rhetoric. The families portrayed in “Leave it to Beaver” or alluded to by Quayle exemplify the imagined and preferred heterosexual American family; this “subsidized nuclear family unit, mischaracterized as ‘self-sufficient’ and ‘independent,’ is held out as the idealized norm” (Fineman 1995, 227). But the family portrayed in the 1950s media is actually an anomaly in American history—the 1950s was the only period over the last 150 years where there has not been a decline in marriage and parenthood (Coontz 1992, 187). Nevertheless, the percentage of householders who are unmarried is represented in Newsweek in terms of a 1950s comparison: 22% in 1950 to 48% in 2000. On the other hand, there are the alternative families that are a result of divorce, artificial insemination, lesbianism, cohabitation, adoption, and “serendipitous pregnancy.” Relying on demographers, sociologists, and political scientists who specialize in family and cohabitation, the Newsweek writers address two key concerns: how do cohabitation and unwed mothers fit into the larger U.S. family system and what effects might these alternative family formations have on children? While Newsweek authors offer readers a range of narratives about and reasons for the rise in “nontraditional households,” they clearly have singled out mainly white families with economic means to interview. For example, Baba and Conn, the one lesbian couple of the Newsweek story, conceived Gabrielle “by fertilizing eggs from both women” (2001, 50). The cost for in-vitro fertilization averages between $8,000 to $10,000 per cycle, not including fertility medications, which can cost between $200 to $3,000 per month, depending on the drug and insurance coverage (Davis and Stover 1996; Mol et al. 2000). Additionally, 45-year old Laura Carroll, a Boston lawyer, is shown with her three children—two adopted girls, one from Costa Rica and one from China, and one biological son. Her unconventional family speaks more to her economic standing as a provider than to anything else. Despite her single mother status, she has adopted two girls from underprivileged circumstances. Carroll explained that while vacationing in Costa Rica 10 years ago, she “crossed paths with a poor, pregnant teenager who posed a question: can anyone in the United States adopt

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my child?” Ultimately, she adopted the child, Louisa, “and brought her home to Boston” (Kantrowitz and Wingert 2001, 49). She is not represented as upsetting the moral fabric of society in the same way, perhaps, that a young, unmarried, poor, pregnant black woman would be. Barbara Howard, a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins, is quoted saying that unmarried women who choose to have babies, “whether by donor insemination or adoption, generally make successful mothers. They’ve got the financial resources. They’re not downtrodden or depressed because they’ve been abandoned” (Kantrowitz and Wingert 2001, 55). In other words, poor women and/or women of color are not the mothers who are successfully building “good” American families. Their lives apparently do not make engaging human-interest stories, and thus they are absent. Readers are told that Carroll goes to church with her children, and that Carolyn Feuer, the Newsweek cover model, is an educated registered nurse from New York. These women are shown as compassionate and competent citizens, if not intentional single mothers, and many of them would consider getting married if the right man came along. If the woman’s unmarried state is portrayed as temporary, then the heterosexual marriage institution itself is not threatened. However, those who do not display an intent or desire for marriage are more overtly altering how family is realized. Natashya Brooks, who has never married, says “When [the kids] see the stability of a nuclear family they ask me, ‘Hey Mom, why don’t you get married?’ And I answer; ‘Why get married? I already had the kids’”(55). Lyn Freundlich has two children with Billy Brittingham, and though they have been together for 13 years, they have no plans to marry: It’s not important to me. . . . Marriage feels like a really unfair institution where the government validates some relationships and not others. I can’t think of any reason compelling enough to become part of an institution I’m uncomfortable with . . . I’m so busy juggling all the details of having a two-career family, taking care of my kids, seeing my friends and having a role in the community that it’s just not something I think about. (Kantrowitz and Wingert 2001, 52)

Similarly, Wolverton and Hoefert say they are “not quite ready to take the big step into matrimony. ‘We want to make sure we’re doing the right thing’” (46). And Mashburn “says she probably won’t remarry while her children, Jesse, 14, and Skylar, almost 12, are still living at home” (51). In other words, many of these women exert a degree of agency outside the scope of a traditional, patriarchal family consecrated by legal marriage (for an ethnography on this topic, see Edin 2000).

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The loss of the traditional family is often linked with the rise of cohabitation and unmarried motherhood. The U.S. Census Bureau notes that since 1970 the number of young, never-married adults has substantially increased: the proportion of women between 20 and 24 years old who have never married rose from 36% to 73%; for women between 30 and 34 years old the proportion rose from 6% to 22%. There were no statistics provided about men’s marital status, which is noteworthy. As Chrys Ingraham argues, marriage is very much a structured gendered arrangement: “women are taught from early childhood to plan for ‘the happiest day of their lives.’ Men are taught, by the absence of these socializing mechanisms, that their work is ‘other’ than that” (1999, 81). Yet, the very category of “single” or “never-married” is problematic, as is made evident—but never explicit—in Newsweek; “single” is a catchall phrase used for those women who are not permanently and legally attached to a man. But many of the women interviewed were involved in intimate relationships, and at least four were living with a partner. Social scientists argue that cohabitation has become so prevalent that research categories must be expanded to include individuals who are not married, but do not classify as “single” (Smock 2000; Ross 1995; Casper and Cohen 2000). Otherwise we overlook the fact that a large number (40%) of children born to supposedly “single” mothers are actually born into two-parent (cohabiting) households (Smock 2000, 15). While being single may be unsettling for some people, what seems to be more troubling, as captured throughout Newsweek, is the presence of children in these unmarried homes. Public discourse often represents marital status as a cause of children’s emotional and discipline problems. This rhetoric of the failures of unmarried mothers and the harm they do to the future citizenry is also addressed by other authors in this book, for instance, as it relates to school violence (Meagher), physical and sexual abuse (Reich), and illicit substance use (Buydens; Shivas and Charles). The familiar rhetoric that two-parent families are better than unconventional ones negates the domestic violence, sexual molestation, poverty, mental illness, alcoholism, and other familial problems that can occur. Although a number of the alternative families presented do not include a married mom and dad with biological kids, marriage is nonetheless held out to readers like the pot of gold at the end of the family rainbow in Newsweek. The loss of the iconic American family is resolved by holding fast to the traditional white, middle-class ideal, sanctified by legal marriage, even if it is never a reality for many of the families interviewed in Newsweek. Even Baba and Conn, who “refer to each other as ‘partner’ or ‘spouse’ . . . hope some day the law will allow gays and lesbians to legally marry” (Kantrowitz and Wingert 2001, 50).

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But in Newsweek there is no discussion of why these two women cannot legally marry or the hidden benefits and constraints to legal marriage. Also absent from the discussion is the extensive controversy surrounding same-sex marriage within and between queer organizations, activists, and scholars (see Warner 2002). Marriage, therefore, is a social marker for the “traditional” heterosexual family as well as a social ritual steeped in meaning. As critical rhetorician Davin Grindstaff notes, the “heteronormative usage of the ideographic term ‘marriage,’ which privileges male/female sexual relationships, clearly relies upon its conventionality and widespread cultural acceptance for its repetition” (Grindstaff 2003, 263). This reliance is obvious in the current debates in the U.S. about civil unions and legal marriage for same-sex couples. The very word “marriage” is so sanctified for many heterosexuals that some argue that any legalized recognition of same-sex couplehood be called anything but “marriage.” Individual states’ efforts to get anti–same sex laws on or off the books and the Bush Administration’s recent call for the “Federal Marriage Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution are other instances of the state defining in heterosexist terms the basis of “family” and “marriage.”

The Ideological Construction of Family The U.S. Census, in addition to the national weekly magazine Newsweek, shapes how “family” is imagined in the United States. While the Newsweek issue on the “New Single Mom” touches on a number of structural factors that contribute to the rise of unwed motherhood and the social concerns about such a phenomenon, it also helps maintain the iconic American family. Yet, as a result of international adoptions, new reproductive technologies, a loosening of sexual mores, higher divorce rates, and an increase of women in the public economic sphere, the traditional nuclear heterosexual family is more a nostalgic icon than a reality for many people. Nevertheless, these romanticized images of the American family serve a vital ideological role. While the family, as an institution, is conceptually positioned outside the control of the state, the state relies on the private family to care for society’s weaker members and produce and educate future citizens (Fineman 1995, 226). At the same time, this function of the family becomes even more important with the dismantling of the welfare state. The larger question underlining this family rhetoric is why America’s family formation is so important. How is it that certain demonized and idealized images and narratives about sex and citizenship have come

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to obsess the national public discourse? Why, Berlant asks, are “acts that are not civic acts, like sex . . . having to bear the burden of defining proper citizenship?”(1997, 5). Berlant argues that this privatization of citizenship, as part of a conservative cultural agenda, diverts people’s attentions from the more substantive causes of economic, racial, and sexual inequality. To maintain a nation’s core image, it is easier to divert public debate to people’s private lives rather than challenge extraordinary U.S. military spending, transnational capitalism, gender inequality, or the legacies of racism and sexual exploitation. For example, while this discourse sees the large number of children currently living in poverty as a serious concern, the only solution it offers is familialism. Activists Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller question this heterosexist profamily solution, stating, “You can’t feed your children on wedding rings or pay your electric bill with your marriage license” (2002, 4). If marital and childbearing/rearing status is the condition on which women’s social membership is determined or denied by the state, then the presence of cohabitors and single-mothers, as sexual and social deviants, upsets the dominant sexual order. Yet, personal acts, such as private household living, childbearing and sexual arrangements, should not be indicators of civic responsibilities and commitments. As many scholars have pointed out, definitions and purposes of family and marriage are not static—they serve different cultural, religious, economic, and legal functions at different historical moments (Anderson and Fienberg 1999; Cott 2000; Fineman 1995; Warner 2002). The authors of Newsweek attempt to make these contradictions transparent by selectively choosing particular women who, while unmarried, do appear socially, emotionally, and financially “responsible.” But in so doing they expose the constant struggle between the populace and the government over defining and regulating citizenship and family. In acknowledging that nonstandard and single-parent households exceed the 24% of families who fit the “normal” American model, the U.S. Census data invites those who have considered themselves part of the dominant culture (i.e., monogamous, heterosexual, married, or marriageable) to think about their own sexuality. Those who conform to societal expectations of the good, normal, and natural sex acts that Gayle Rubin (1993) identifies make up only half of the American population, though only if we equate these sex acts with legal marriage. But legal marriage cannot be equated with these acts, because married heterosexuals can also engage in the sexual activities that Rubin identifies as socially unacceptable. Thus the 2000 Census data suggests that the percent of families that fit the “normal” model so defined may be even less than the reported 24%.

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Kirsten Isgro Conclusion: The Manifestation of Heteronormative Family Ideology in Public Policies

The 2001 Newsweek is one concrete example of the multiple and contradictory ways in which “family” is constructed on the micro and macro levels. There is a distinct struggle over how family and marriage are formulated in people’s personal lives, the mass media, academic research, Census data classifications, and public policies. Using empirical data to bolster public policy and promote a particular ideology of the family is not a new phenomenon. Family debates often center on issues of morality, rather than legality or economics. Debates about who are responsible, what is appropriate dependency, and how families are being constructed are embedded in an ideology of the father-as-breadwinner and the mother-as-caregiver as the norm. This family ideology has a concrete impact on public policy making. Marginalized relationships, such as cohabitors and unmarried mothers, as one specific example, are targets of sexual normalization, wherein some idealized sexual tastes or practices are mandated for everyone (Rubin 1993; Warner 2002). Sociologist Gwedolyn Mink writes that moralism has been at the core of family politics by invoking “strict canonical prescriptions for virtue and sanctions for sin” and “conflating virtue with obedience to white, middle-class, patriarchal rules and with conformity to the dominant culture’s ways of doing things” (1998, 44). The Christian marriage model as a hegemonic cultural standard becomes a relatively easy and effective apparatus through which to funnel this image management process. This regulation of unmarried people resists recognizing or validating sexually intimate relationships outside the sanctions of marriage. As long as people marry, “the state will continue to regulate the sexual lives of those who do not marry” (Warner 2002, 267). Particularly relevant to this point are how the U.S. Census Bureau continues to count households and families and how the newest welfare reform act focuses on marriage as a solution to poverty. As Mink notes, the most distinctive aspect of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) is “the national government’s unapologetic imposition of moral stipulations, its bold appropriation of police power” in the enforcement of national moral standards in people’s private, intimate lives (1998, 64). While an analysis of PRWORA is not part of my immediate project, it does offer another context for understanding the 2000 Census discourse, since it clearly promotes traditional heterosexual marriage, childbearing and rearing rather than addressing the financial needs of

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poor families (Mink 1998, 67). Cohabitors and unmarried women are specifically targeted by such policies, as is explicit in the Personal Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act of 2002. For example, this bill says, “As a Nation, we have made substantial progress in reducing teen pregnancies and births, slowing increases in nonmarital childbearing, and improving child support collections and paternity establishment” (sec. 4.2: 5). It also states, “There has been a dramatic rise in cohabitation as marriages have declined. Only 40% of children of cohabiting couples will see their parents marry. Those who do marry experience a 50% higher divorce rate. Children in single-parent households and cohabiting households are at a much higher risk of child abuse than children in intact married and stepparent families” (sec. 4.2E, 6). In a 2001 commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, as noted in Newsweek, President George W. Bush asserted the need to strengthen families, noting that “poverty has more to do with troubled lives than a troubled economy” (Kantrowitz and Wingert 2001, 52). Such justifications of poverty help explain why the 1996 PRWORA, the Family Promotion Act of 2002, and other marriage promotion/faith-based initiatives are currently offered as a solution or mandate to low-income mothers (see also Solot and Miller 2002). Traditional family advocates suggest that laws that base access to resources on that imaginary American family are essential for maintaining sexual moralism in people’s lives. Another example of sexual moralism is the argument that the legalization of same-sex marriage somehow threatens and undermines heterosexual marriage. In this moralist discourse, marriage somehow supports moral standards if you are heterosexual, but defeats moral standards if you are not. Marriage is a moral crutch for society, but married queer people would be a moral threat. As Meagher remarks, the rhetoric of “family values” is often a guise for homophobia (this volume). But even if same-sex marriage were to become legal nationally, the institution of marriage would continue to perpetuate a sexual relationship hierarchy, thus delegitimizing and stigmatizing nonmarried relationships, needs, and desires (Warner 2002, 268). As Berlant states: “In the contemporary United States it is almost always the people at the bottom of the virtue/value scale—the adult poor, the nonwhite, the unmarried, the nonheterosexual, and the nonreproductive—who are said to be creating the crisis that is mobilizing the mainstream public sphere to fight the good fight on behalf of normal national culture, while those in power are left relatively immune” (1997, 176). Clearly the iconicity of the American family and marriage occupies an important ideological and functional relationship to the nation,

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which has serious ramifications for public policy. Family, much like citizenship and nation, is a social construct. Particular family formations are included and excluded in the Census, justifying a family hierarchy embedded in moralism. Numerically (same and different-sex) cohabitors and unmarried mothers do not individually threaten the nation’s security or future, yet their presence serves as a national scapegoat for uncertain economic and cultural times. Rhetoric directed at “single” mothers, like that directed at feminists, gay men, and lesbians, reveals the paternalistic, racist, and homophobic stance that the state often takes on nontraditional families and relationships (Meagher, this volume). A discourse that maintains this exclusion controls the terms and conditions of citizenship, as is evident in current public policies for unmarried individuals and couples. It is not surprising, says feminist legal theorist, Martha Albertson Fineman, that the institutional or official representation of the contemporary family reflects the class and supports the socioeconomic position of those who hold formal and economic power. It is these people who are most involved with the formulation and implementation of family law and policy and who therefore control the content of the family. (1995, 226)

And, as Michel Foucault has argued, it is essential for the state to know what is happening with citizens’ sexual lives so that sex may be controlled and made into a public issue, via “a whole web of discourses” (1980, 26). Yet while those in power attempt to control the terms of family, others challenge the dominant family paradigm, either consciously or unconsciously, by their very existence. “We live in a time of intense contestation concerning gender, sexuality, and sexual difference,” notes feminist social theorist Nancy Fraser. “Far from being monolithically patriarchal, the interpretation of these terms is at every point subject to dispute” (1997, 234). As the 2000 Census discourse reveals, each decade the American national identity is continually debated and negotiated. This is not a new occurrence, as the history of the U.S. Census shows. Fineman suggests abolishing marriage as a legal category altogether, arguing that the abolition of legal marriage would assume equality between men and women, as in other social contexts such as legal contracts and property law, and would abrogate any state-sanctioned model of sexual intimacy (1995, 229). Her suggestion has gained some currency lately in public debates about same-sex marriage, when the problem of attaching health and/or legal benefits to one’s relationship status are being exposed and questioned, if only marginally. At the same time, Fine-

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man admits that she is more pessimistic about ideological alterations than structural changes, since dominant marriage and family ideologies are transmitted at multiple locations in society (1995, 22). Other activists and scholars argue that changing moralist public policies requires exposing and challenging discriminatory realities of the conservative marriage movement (Mink 1998; Solot and Miller 2002; Stacey 1998, 2000). Marriage dispenses privileges and subsidies, often unavailable to the unmarried, such as tax relief, property inheritance, immigration rights and/or citizenship, Social Security and veterans’ survivors’ benefits, and insurance, both on a state and federal level (Cott 2000; Fineman 1995; Warner 2002). One of the most compelling remedies to the exclusionary nature of legal marriage is to provide such benefits to everyone regardless of relationship status. Fineman and Warner also argue that state entitlements available to married couples could be extended to other kinds of households and intimate relationships. As Warner maintains, “extending benefits as an issue of justice, apart from marriage, reduces the element of privilege in marriage, as many conservatives fear” (2002, 282). What Meagher calls the need to “interrupt dominant discourses by deconstructing their logic” (this volume) is a project worth pursuing with respect to marriage and family structure. Feminists have long argued that the nuclear family is a gendered and contested site. As I have pointed out, neither are family and marriage a solely private concern. Specific discourses that exclude and include different family formations set the terms for citizenship. Yet, while the discourses about family and marriage are constraining, there are also ruptures and shifts, as I have shown in the definitions from the Census Bureau and in the contradictory coverage of motherhood in the Newsweek 2001 issue. We must rethink why these categories of normative and nonnormative family formations exist. What are the terms used to describe family and social life, which in turn become active forces in shaping these institutions? How on the micro, meso, and macro levels are definitions both normalized and contested? Without visions of a more democratic, sexually expressive society, a more humane future seems unlikely. And the future citizenry will likely perpetuate the myths of the ideal, white, middle-class patriarchal family, against the grain of social reality in the United States.

Works Cited Anderson, Margo, and Stephen Fienberg. 1999. Who Counts?: The Politics of Census-Taking in Contemporary America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

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Berlant, Lauren. 1997. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Casper, Lynne, and Philip Cohen. 2000. How does POSSLQ measure up? Historical estimates of Cohabitation. Demography 37(2): 237–245. Coontz, Stephanie. 1992. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books. Cott, Nancy. 2000. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Davis, Kristin, and Stacy Stover. 1996. The Agonizing Price of Infertility. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine 50(5): 50–56. Edin, Kathryn. 2000. What Do Low-Income Single Mothers Say about Marriage? Social Problems 47: 112–133. Fineman, Martha Albertson. 1995. The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family, and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies. New York: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1980. The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books. Fraser, Nancy. 1997. Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition. New York: Routledge. Grindstaff, Davin. 2003. Queering Marriage: An Ideographic Interrogation of Heteronormative Subjectivity. Journal of Homosexuality 45(2/3/4): 257–275. Hinds, Hilary, and Jackie Stacey. 2001. Imaging Feminism, Imaging Femininity: The Bra-Burner, Diana, and the Woman Who Kills. Feminist Media Studies 1(2): 153–176. Ingraham, Chrys. 1999. White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. Kantrowitz, Barbara, and Pat Wingert. 2001. Unmarried with Children. Newsweek, May 28, 2001, 46–54. Mink, Gwendolyn. 1998. Welfare’s End. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mol, Ben, Gouke Bonsel, John Collins, Maarten Wiegerinck, Fulco van der Veen, and Patrick Bossuyt. 2000. Cost-effectiveness of In Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer. Fertility and Sterility 73(4): 748–754. Quayle, Dan. 2001. Why I Think I’m Still Right: Since the flap over ‘Murphy Brown,’ American families have come under even more pressure. Newsweek, May 28, 2001, 52. Riche, Martha Farnsworth. 1999. Cultural and Political Dimensions of the U.S. Census: Past and Present. American Behavioral Scientist 42(6): 933–945. Ross, Catherine. 1995. Reconceptualizing Marital Status as a Continuum of Social Attachment. Journal of Marriage and the Family 57(1): 129–140. Rubin, Gayle. 1993. Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. In The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, eds. H. Abelove, M. A. Barale, and D. M. Halperin, 3–44. New York: Routledge.

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Simmons, Tavia, and Martin O’Connell. 2003. Married-Couple and UnmarriedPartner Households: 2000. U.S. Department of Commerce/U.S. Census Bureau. Washington, DC. February. http://www.Census.gov/prod/2003pubs/ censr-5.pdf. Smock, Pamela. 2000. Cohabitation in the United States: An Appraisal of Research Themes, Findings, and Implications. Annual Review of Sociology 26: 1–20. Solot, Dorian, and Marshall Miller. 2002. Let Them Eat Wedding Rings: The Role of Marriage Promotion in Welfare Reform. Alternatives to Marriage Project. Boston, MA. http://www.unmarried.org/rings.pdf. Springen, Karen, and Pat Wingert. 2001. Is it Healthy for the Kids? Newsweek, May 28, 2001, 54–55. Stacey, Judith. 1998. Families Against the ‘the Family’: The Transatlantic Passage of the Politics of Family Values, Radical Philosophy 89: 2–7. ——— . 2000. Family Values Forever: In the Marriage Movement, Conservatives and Centrists Find a Home Together. The Nation. July 9, 2000, 26–30. U.S. Bureau of the Census. 2000. Table DP-1. Profile of General Demographic Characteristics for the United States: 2000. U.S. Bureau of the Census Bureau. Washington, DC, 2000. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/ www/2001/tables/dp_us_2000.PDF. ——— . 2001. U.S. Adults Postponing Marriage. Census Bureau Reports. Washington, DC. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cb01-113. html. ——— . 2001. Nation’s Median Age Highest Ever, But 65-and-Over Population’s Growth Lags, Census 2000 shows. United States Department of Commerce News. Washington, DC. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/ www/2001/cb01cn67.html. ——— . 2002. Technical Note on Same-Sex Unmarried Partner Data from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses. U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division, Fertility and Family Statistics Branch. Washington, DC. http://Census.gov/ population/www/cen2000/samesex.html. U.S. Congress. 2002. Personal Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act of 2002. H.R. 4737. 107th Cong. http://www.house.gov/levin/general. html. Warner, Michael. 2002. Beyond Gay Marriage. In Left Legalism/Left Critique, eds. W. Brown and J. Halley, 259–289. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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CHAPTER

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Enemies of the State: Poor White Mothers and the Discourse of Universal Human Rights JENNIFER A. REICH

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. —Article 16, United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Introduction In early 1996, 28-year-old Tammy Holycross was a single mother of two girls, ages 6 and 11, and one 3 1/2-year-old boy, Adrian. She was also eight months pregnant with her fourth child. On January 21, 1996, Tammy, in a reported effort to “discipline” Adrian for not cleaning up after the family dogs, “disciplined him by ‘throwing him against the floor’” (Gibson 1996). Adrian’s oldest sister called 911 when she noticed he was unconscious and not breathing. After six days in the hospital, Adrian, who never regained consciousness, died (Hubert 1996a). In the six days that Adrian was hospitalized, many articles and columns about Adrian appeared each day in the newspaper near where the family lived. Most articles attempted to search for an explanation for how such an atrocity could have occurred (Sacramento Bee 1996; Hubert 1996f). The county office responsible for intervening on behalf of abused children, the Family Preservation and Child Protection Services agency (CPS), had been monitoring Tammy’s family on and off for two years and consistently for six months. Two months before Adrian’s death, agency social workers concluded that Tammy’s children “were not in ‘imminent’ danger” and stopped monitoring them (Hubert 1996c). Traci Kaufman, 33, was also a single mother; she had five children, ages 13, 11, 8, 5, and 2. On April 28, 1997, Traci’s boyfriend, Joseph

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Carlos Engle, reportedly as a form of punishment, held Traci’s two year old daughter Rebecca under water in an ice-cold bath. As a result, Rebecca lost consciousness. According to the authorities quoted in ensuing newspaper articles, “Police weren’t notified until nearly an hour after the incident, when a neighbor found the girl lying face down on the floor of a bedroom” (Hubert and Chiu 1997). Rebecca died in a hospital two days later, also having never regained consciousness. Rebecca’s four siblings were taken into protective custody by CPS, as Tammy’s daughters had been. As with Tammy, the agency had known about Traci’s family and had at various times in the preceding six years provided her with services, parenting classes, and supervision. In December 1996, four months before Rebecca’s death, “CPS closed its case file on [Traci], concluding she had made progress and her children were not in imminent danger” (Hubert and Chiu 1997). Following Rebecca’s death, news accounts reported that Traci’s children had been victims of other crimes (Hubert 1997a). One article explained that according to members of the county sheriff’s office, “The near drowning of a 2-year-old girl by a . . . mother’s boyfriend led to the discovery that the mother had watched as her 11-year-old daughter was sexually molested by the man” (Teichert 1997a). While Traci did not have any direct involvement with Rebecca’s death, she became the focus of the ensuing articles. This paper analyzes media coverage of the prosecutions of these two U.S.-born white women, who both lived in the same region in Northern California, for causing the deaths of their children. Both women were poor, white, and unmarried. Each was publicly persecuted in the media for causing or contributing to the death of one of her children and for causing the suffering of her other children. Neither woman was simply charged with traditional murder or ordinary criminal charges. Rather, one woman was charged with torture (in addition to murder), while the other was charged with false imprisonment of her children (in addition to other charges). These crimes, which obtain their meaning from international human rights law, show how these women were demonized to an extent that they were decitizenized and dehumanized. Susan Bordo suggests that “cultural criticism clears a space in which we can stand back and survey a scene that we are normally engaged in living in, not thinking about” (Bordo 1997, 14). In this tradition, I analyze the newspaper coverage of these two cases to better understand the broader cultural meanings of viewing poor white American women as so deviant as to be foreign. I illustrate how their lives came to be viewed as alien and how the women were described in terms similar to those first-world leaders use to characterize third-world nation-states. My analysis of the use of international human rights doc-

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trine in their convictions shows that this use of human rights discourse has several important outcomes. First, the use of such rhetoric allows “good citizens” to ignore the lack of structural power poor families have. Second, the representation of these bad mothers as “icons of antimaternity” (Connolly 2000b, 41), and in effect as foreign, allows middle-class mothers who may be criticized for their own maternal transgressions to feel vindicated. Finally, the construction of abusive poor mothers as deviant, and fundamentally un-American by middle-class standards, creates public demands for more state intervention in the lives of the poor and those perceived as immoral. This increased state intervention, which dissolves the boundaries of poor families, simultaneously shores up the boundaries that protect white, heterosexual, middle-class families from state intervention.

The Role of the State in Protecting Human Rights: Untangling the Public-Private Duality The newspaper articles and television news coverage following each child’s death raised the same two broad questions: “How could this have happened?” and “How could the state have failed to intervene in time?” To fully consider the meanings of these questions, it is important to understand the historical tensions surrounding public intervention on behalf of individual family members into the private family unit. The concept that individuals are deserving of individual rights was concretized in 1948 with the passage of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Transcending national boundaries and the rules of sovereign nations, this declaration sought to establish a baseline of rights for all people, defined solely by being human—or a member of the “human family”—with women being formally recognized as holders of human rights (U.N. 1948; Okin 1998). It was the hope of the sponsors that the formal signing of the declaration by all nations would translate into adherence to its principles in the construction of national human rights laws (Charvet 1998; Messer 1997). Nations’ enforcement of the declaration has been all but “universal.” One way this resolution has not been universally adopted is the failure of nation-states to treat women’s rights as equal to men’s. Political scientist Susan Moller Okin suggests that this failure has been because both the early conception of “the rights of man” in the 17th century and the original conception of international ‘human rights’ in the mid-20th century were formulated with male household heads in

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mind” (Okin 1998, 34). This formulation reflects the implicit opposition of the perception of families as units with defined boundaries requiring protection from external threats and the perception of individuals as rights-holders who need protection from threats inside and outside of their families. Arguably, the family became less impenetrably private after the “discovery” of child abuse as a social problem in the U.S. in the 1960s, which led to increasing public demands for intervention on behalf of children. The realization that children could be harmed in their own homes by their parents or presumed caregivers established a justifiable reason for the state to trespass the boundaries of the family (Best 1990; Nelson 1984; Pfohl 1977), which until then had been regarded as private. At the same historical juncture, welfare rights organizations fought to articulate the need for both greater public resources for families and increased civil liberties to protect families from unnecessary surveillance (Piven and Cloward 1993). The appropriate role of the state in family life has remained unresolved. Domestic violence advocates have mobilized for a more responsive legal system, public funding for shelters, prosecutions that do not depend on victims to press charges, and broader legislation and funding to support women’s ability to leave the bonds of family (Bartlett 1993; Gelb 1983). Publicly funded childcare, accessible and affordable family planning services, and public health campaigns, including mandatory childhood immunizations, are other examples of drives to broaden public engagement in family life. Each of these solutions suggests the dissolution of the walls that surround the private patriarchal family and the development of a more liberal understanding of individual rights and the need for states to protect them. At the same time, state involvement in family life is not without problems. Most specifically, government surveillance accompanies each state-sponsored intervention. Welfare provides a clear example. State support provides a source of economic freedom for women; at the same time, recipients of public assistance have been subjected to levels of scrutiny to which few others would be subjected or would tolerate (Sarat 1990; White 1991). These include requirements to drug test, provide free or subminimum wage labor, or maintain a residence where adult men cannot live (Abramovitz 1988; East 2000; Edin and Lein 1997; Gordon 1994; Mink 1990; Morgen 1990; Piven and Cloward 1993). In the last decade, attempts to legally challenge such policies and practices have been unsuccessful, illustrating the shrinking support for the privacy rights of the poor (Piven and Cloward 1993, 165–167). Battles for reproductive rights also illustrate the different experiences for women of

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different classes. While middle-class women advocate for expanded state coverage for reproductive planning services, poor women have had to resist state-sponsored campaigns of forced or coerced sterilization (King and Meyer 1999; Davis 1983; Roberts 1997). Indeed, the experience of class is significant for understanding how family members in differently located families experience state intervention. Indisputably, poor families have less privacy. Having said that, it is also worth acknowledging that boundaries—however thin and thinning—still surround poor families as social units, with parents perceived as ultimately responsible for their children. (Initiatives to hold parents responsible for their children’s truancy or criminal acts speak to this.) Most parents want the authority to make decisions for their children, particularly in areas of health care, education, and religion; parental autonomy is often perceived as an expression of individual freedom. For white, middle-class families, the boundaries that protect this liberty are usually reified and respected. As legal scholar Robert Mnookin notes, “Most American parents raise their children free of intrusive legal constraints or major governmental intervention. Although compulsory education and child labor laws indicate there are some conspicuous legal limitations on parents, it is the family, not the state, which has primary responsibility for child rearing” (Mnookin and Weisberg 2000, 518). For the most part, the state only intervenes in the families of those perceived to be failing to adequately care for their children. In these families, the state will investigate maltreatment and remove children from their homes as deemed necessary. Here, the children, seen as hostages of circumstance, must be rescued. The legitimacy of these private families has been called into question. Because they are not adequately meeting societal expectations of parents, the imperative for state intervention is clear. The cases of Tammy Holycross and Traci Kaufman represent both the justification for state intervention and the resulting dissolution of family boundaries. The rhetoric of bad mothers, which is pervasive in U.S. popular culture, also contributes to the justification of state intervention in the case of some families. As a cultural image, the bad mother may include “those that did not live in a ‘traditional’ nuclear family; those who would not or could not protect their children from harm; and those whose children went wrong” (Ladd-Taylor and Umansky 1998, 3). Critiques of the rhetoric of “bad mothers” have offered important insight into how public expectations of women as mothers are narrow and inaccessible (Hanigsberg and Ruddick 1999; Hoffnung 1989; Ladd-Taylor and Umansky 1998), including how these representations reflect inequalities in race (Collins 1991; Roberts 1997, 2002), class (Appell

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1998; Noble et al. 2000; Connolly 2000b; Gordon 1994), and sexuality (Fineman 1995; Weston 1991). These theorists have shown how women are publicly criticized for their employment or lack of employment (Hoffnung 1989; Rubin 1994; Williams 1999), reliance on public assistance (Abramovitz 1988; Edin and Lein 1997; Gordon 1994; Piven and Cloward 1993; Roberts 1999b), sexual relationships outside of marriage (Tice 1998; Tong 1989), lack of sexual relations within marriage (Fineman 1995), child maltreatment (Appell 1998; Ashe and Cahn 1994; Roberts 1999a), behavior during pregnancy (CRLP 2000; Gomez 1997; Noble et al. 2000; Paltrow 1992), failure to breastfeed (Blum 1999; Stearns 1999), or even emotional ambivalence about mothering (Rich 1976). Indisputably, the rhetoric of bad mothers has been powerful in attacking virtually all women. At the same time, Tammy and Traci are indisputably bad mothers. They in fact either directly or indirectly participated in the deaths of their children. Referring to them as such is not a matter of hyperbolic rhetoric. And the rhetoric of “bad mothers” is pervasive in newspaper articles about these two women and their children. Yet, these articles created an image of these women that extends beyond the usual idea of the “bad mother,” and beyond their specific acts. These articles employ the discourse of “bad mothers” in a way that shapes perceptions of these mothers as so wholly deviant as to be foreign, and thus, unlike “the rest of us.” In making these women completely unfamiliar, this discourse constructs these bad mothers so that they resemble U.S. accounts of problematic economically underdeveloped countries. In the newspaper articles about Tammy’s and Traci’s families, the children are portrayed as captive (and later mourned) citizens, while their mothers are represented as more similar to powerful leaders of abusive nation-states than to members of “all-American families.” This transformation in the representation of “bad mothers” is further evident in the very statutes used to prosecute them.

Living in the Third World in America Poor women are frequently viewed as inadequate mothers, with their poverty defining their maternal failure (Appell 1998; Connolly 2000a; Gordon 1994; Noble et al. 2000). This view is most clearly observed in the discourse surrounding women who rely on public assistance to support their families, particularly when they are unmarried (Abramovitz 1988; Edin and Lein 1997; Gordon 1994; Piven and Cloward 1993; Roberts 1999b). Representations of impoverished women as bad moth-

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ers also reflect racism (Collins 1991; Roberts 1997, 2002; Solinger 1997), as families of color are disproportionately more likely to live in poverty. For poor whites, a special condemnation exists. To be poor and white—to be what is often called ‘white trash’—is to have failed to be like other whites, and as such, is to be “a breed apart, a dysgenic race unto themselves” (Newitz and Wray 1997). Thus are women like Tammy and Traci viewed—as U.S.-born white women who have failed as mothers and as white women. As poor women are seen as failed mothers, their children come to be seen as having interests, needs, and values separate from their family unit. For example, conservative Charles Murray’s testimony to the Ways and Means Committee in Congress during the 1994 hearings on welfare reform condemns poor mothers: Bringing a child into the world when one is not emotionally or financially prepared to be a parent is wrong. The child deserves society’s support. The parent does not . . . The signal is loud and unmistakable: From society’s perspective, to have a baby that you cannot care for yourself is profoundly irresponsible, and the government will no longer subsidize it. (Murray 1994)

Within this statement, Murray makes two things clear: first, poor women—or those who are not “financially prepared to be a parent”— are irresponsible for becoming parents, and thus, are irresponsible as parents; and second, that poor children and their parents are not interdependent, but are instead separate entities with one deserving protection and collective support and the other society’s disapproval. Human rights are conceived of as individual rights and therefore do not speak to issues of collective support. They are also idealized as universal; thus, they do not take social inequalities into view. In concept, each person has the same human rights, irrespective of an individual’s class position or access to resources. Illustrating this belief, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced at the opening of the 54th session of the Commission on Human Rights that human rights “were African rights. They are Asian rights; they are European rights; they are American rights. They belong to no government, they are limited to no continent, for they are fundamental to humankind itself” (U.N. 1998). These universal rights, supposedly realized by the Western industrialized nations, and prescribed to the third-world nations, are imagined to cross all boundaries, which include boundaries of privacy and family. Although rights are imagined to be “universal,” some nations fail to prioritize them in the way envisioned by their supporters. In such

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cases, the countries’ lack of economic success—or development—is attributed to their lack of respect for individualistic human rights. Making this connection clear, Annan explained, The international community had yet to absorb fully the implications of the link between democracy, development, and human rights. . . . The link, stressed by the World Conference, had been demonstrated by the experience of all nations. Those experiences demonstrated that sustainable development was impossible without full participation of people; that it was impossible in the absence of full human rights. (U.N. 1998)

Nation-states that violate human rights often lack economic development; poor mothers who violate such rights lack individual fiscal responsibility. Like nations that do not develop economically or politically in the ways prescribed by Western nations, Tammy and Traci also appear to have failed to “absorb fully” the link between democracy, development, and human rights. As unemployed welfare recipients, drug addicts, and unmotivated potential laborers, these two women can be likened to underdeveloped countries that are seen as resisting development. Third-world countries that refuse first-world assistance are seen in much the same way as Tammy who refused her parents’ assistance since she, according to her father, “just didn’t want to live by our rules.” Suggestions that moral impoverishment accompanied their material poverty saturate the media accounts of these cases. Police officers described Traci’s apartment as “unfit for children, with broken furniture and holes punched in the walls.” One officer stated that “It was foul smelling, unkempt and [an] inappropriate environment for children” (Teichert 1997a). Many articles alleged that Traci’s five children were inadequately housed in their two-bedroom apartment, noting “one child slept in the bottom of a closet and another slept in the bathtub” (Hubert and Chiu 1997; Teichert 1997a). The lack of space and furniture directly indicates only a lack of money. Yet, the implication of these representations of poverty is that these shortcomings constitute child abuse. Another article stated that Traci’s children had been sent home from school because of health problems, which are later revealed to have been head lice (Hubert and Chiu 1997). Head lice are a common affliction for school-aged children, are not class-specific, and rarely constitute abuse. Yet here it is used to suggest that there were multiple “health problems” so severe that the children could not remain in school. Tammy’s house is described in even worse terms than Traci’s. Sheriff Sgt. John Parker was quoted as saying, “‘The house is filthy . . . ter-

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rible living conditions for these children’” (Gibson 1996). Most notably, “there was dog excrement in the house and one of Adrian’s chores had been to clean up droppings left by several medium-sized dogs that live with the family” (Gibson 1996). According to other officials, Tammy’s other children were “physically unharmed but lived amid extreme squalor and neglect” (Hubert and Davila 1996). “Squalor” is commonly used in descriptions of both households. This word does not simply denote poverty, but contains within it notions of sordidness, degradation, and misery. With welfare, poverty, and drug addiction, Tammy and Traci represent the worst of bad mothering. In fact, they exist so far out of the middle-class lens that their lives are invisible most of the time. These mothers’ perceived moral poverty, represented in terms of their material poverty, separated them from other community members. As Tammy’s father, Richard Holycross, publicly speculated, “This is not the last time this is going to happen.” He believed that future child deaths were inevitable because, he explained, “there is a whole subculture of people like Tammy” (Hubert 1996b). He does not elaborate on who comprises this “subculture.” However, others employing the same imagery do. For example, representatives from children’s advocacy organizations described Traci’s children as living in “a precarious world,” in which “a mother’s use of methamphetamines and a live-in convicted felon as her boyfriend were all red flags” (Teichert 1997b). Clearly, their “precarious world” is separate from the one where good middle-class families live. Women like Tammy and Traci can move in the subterranean world of American poverty until the condition of their hostage children is brought into view of the state. Once that occurs, the question becomes one of how the state should deal with them.

Sentencing the Offenders Both women faced criminal prosecution for the deaths of their children. Tammy pleaded guilty to torture, separate from the charge of seconddegree murder. Traci was found guilty of false imprisonment, in addition to child molestation and abuse. Although there is little question that their entrance into the criminal justice system was appropriate, the use of statutes relating to torture and false imprisonment in these cases is less clear. These unusual charges do not find their original source in U.S. law, but rather in international human rights doctrine. In the following section, I discuss the strong similarities between the California and

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United Nations statutes on these two crimes. In doing so, I show how each charge does not simply serve to punish these women for their acts, but to discipline motherhood—that is, to deploy information about these acts so as to normalize meanings of mothering more broadly (Foucault 1979; Sawicki 1991). Torture The crime of torture (separate from murder by torture, which brings a charge to first degree murder but is not a separate crime) was added to California law in 1990, when voters passed it by ballot initiative as the “Crime Victims Justice Reform Act.” In its new form, statute 206 of the California Penal Code defines the following: Every person who, with the intent to cause cruel or extreme pain and suffering for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion, or for any sadistic purpose, inflicts great bodily harm as defined in Section 12022.7 upon the person of another, is guilty of torture.

In comparison to the California penal code, the United Nations defines torture as “a particularly serious violation of human rights” that, as such, is condemned by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 5, which states that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” U.N. declarations on torture specifically address the ways states are barred from torturing their citizens: For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. (U.N. 1984, article 1, pt 1)

The language of the California penal code closely resembles that of the international doctrine. By substituting “person” for “public official,” we see the ways in which powerless individuals are represented in the same terms as powerful leaders of nation-states. Illustrating the

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rhetoric used to discuss dictators of nation-states, President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address described the need to take preemptive military action against Iraq, or more specifically, against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Likening him to other historical dictators including Hitler, Bush explained how Hussein presents a threat to his own people, as well as those in other countries: The dictator who is assembling the world’s most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages—leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained—by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning. (Bush 2003)

Tammy, as leader of her family, becomes the equivalent of the leader of the nation-state, torturing one of her subjects. Similar to the United Nations’ (or United States’) ability to intervene in sovereign nations to protect human rights, the state was able to intervene in Tammy’s family to protect her children’s violated human rights, even as it failed to do so in time. Tammy’s conviction of torture, separate from murder, rests upon a perception of her as a cruel perpetrator rather than as a mother. For example, articles published about Adrian’s funeral explain that “even as the community grieved Adrian’s death, the mother who admitted to fatally beating him spent the afternoon in her cell in the downtown courthouse taking a snooze” (Erwin 1996). Tammy is described as the ultimate antimother, one who so deeply lacks concern for her son that she naps through his funeral. Here, the use of the word “snooze” over others to denote sleep communicates a haphazard or undistracted dozing. Tammy’s villainy draws upon images of persons in power abusing innocent victims—vulnerable citizens—without feeling regret or remorse. For example, descriptions of Tammy at the hearing where she pleaded guilty suggest continuing egocentrism. One newspaper article explained, “Tears soiled her eye makeup and lipstick as gasps of astonishment and disbelief could be heard from the audience filled with over 100 people waiting to have their cases called. ‘Oh my God, it was her own 3-year-old boy,’ one woman’s voice could be heard from the audience” (Coronado 1998b). This portrayal suggests a level of vanity inconsistent with dominant understandings of appropriate maternal

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virtues. After all, what kind of mother wears makeup after killing her own child? Most striking, her crime was outrageous even to the other alleged criminals in the courthouse that day. False Imprisonment Traci was convicted of, among other things, false imprisonment. False imprisonment is defined in California as “the intentional infliction of confinement.” The confinement must take place in physical boundaries; thus, a person can only be locked in, not out. The perpetrator must know with substantial certainty that confinement would result from his or her actions. Further, the use of threat constitutes confinement. Based on this definition, it is difficult to imagine how one might falsely imprison one’s own children. After all, it is not uncommon for parents to send children to their rooms with a threat of retribution if they come out. Nor is it uncommon for a child to be barred from leaving home after school, speaking on the phone, or visiting friends. However, it is unlikely that these acts would constitute false imprisonment. Government officials quoted in articles did not hesitate to liken Traci’s treatment of her children to that of actual prisoners. As one article notes, “Police said the five children, ages 2 through 13, lived like prisoners in their unkempt apartment. They spent most of their time locked in a bedroom, and were rarely allowed outside to play with other youngsters” (Hubert 1997a). Only by stepping outside the California context and again looking to the rhetoric of international human rights, can we make sense of this imagery. The 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights article 13 declares, “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State” (U.N. 1948). If we substitute family borders for state borders, we can see the inhumane treatment of Traci’s children who were denied freedom of movement within and beyond their family’s borders. Phrasing this fact in terms such as that they were “rarely allowed outside to play with other youngsters,” conveys to the readers—or good citizens—an image of children who without their parents’ cruelty could have safely played in parks and on lawns with neighborhood children. This ignores that such a situation may have been unlikely, unsafe, or even impossible in the low-income development where Traci lived. The nation-state metaphor is especially apparent in the imagery used to describe Traci’s daughter’s suffering. In Traci’s case, as in Tammy’s, the rhetoric used likens these mothers to dictators. For example, an article covering Rebecca’s funeral quoted Rev. Mitchum, who presided over the service, as saying, “I think of Rebecca as a casu-

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alty of war. I believe there is a war going on, and it’s a battle for the hearts and minds and souls of our community” (Hubert 1997b). Clearly, this image places Traci on the opposite side of the good mothers and good citizens in this war. Returning to President Bush’s speech for a comparison makes the call for intervention clear. Boundaries must be crossed to save trapped citizens. Calling for intervention, Bush said he had a “message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country—your enemy is ruling your country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation” (Bush 2003, note of applause in original omitted). In Bush’s statements, intervention into sovereign nations is necessary and justified on behalf of the “brave and oppressed people” and promises to liberate them so they may enjoy their human rights. Similarly, charging Traci with false imprisonment—like charging Tammy with the crime of torture in addition to murder—depends on a commitment to the ideals of universal human rights. If the county child welfare agency (as a substitute for U.S. military) had intervened sooner, perhaps the lives of their brave and oppressed children might have been saved.

Implications of Representing the Decitizened With little doubt, Tammy and Traci are not like most poor mothers. After all, most poor mothers do not contribute—directly or indirectly— to the death of their children. These women committed terrible acts against their children; this fact should not be lost in the analysis of rhetoric. However, the use of international human rights discourse in domestic violence cases has far-reaching cultural ramifications and serves several purposes beyond those explicitly stated in penal law. Such rhetoric erases power differentials, reinforces constructs of middle-class motherhood, and calls for increased surveillance of poor families. Each of these outcomes potentially affects other poor families, including those who do not harm their children. First, the use of rhetoric that represents poor American mothers as foreign allows “good citizens” to ignore the lack of power these women possessed as impoverished, drug-addicted women who relied on public welfare. As shown, this is accomplished through public and legal representations of them as similar to powerful dictators of oppressive nationstates while their dependent children become victimized citizens whose rights have been denied. Anthropologist Deborah Connelly points out that focusing on the individual failures of individual mothers “encourages us

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to ask ‘what went wrong’ within a particular family or with an individual woman rather than try to understand the race, class, and gender dynamics in the scenarios” (Connolly 2000a, 280). In these cases and others, we can isolate the crimes as the acts of the demented or demonic. There was something wrong with Tammy and Traci that makes them unlike the rest of us. In fact, by “searching for individual pathologies, we confirm cultural standards” (Lowenhaupt-Tsing 1990, 284). By viewing Tammy and Traci as pathological, good parents can feel reassured about their own positions, without questioning cultural constructions of race, gender, or class that shape meanings of motherhood and maternal deviance. Their poverty, drug dependence, or lack of social support can be ignored rather than perceived as possible contributors to their failures as mothers and the breakdowns of their families. Illustrating this effect, television coverage following Adrian’s death showed Adrian’s tearful biological father. Although he had not seen his son in more than eighteen months, almost half the boy’s short life, there was no discernible public outcry that he had not contributed to the support of his family, nor intervened on behalf of his son. Yet, the structures that facilitate such parental failures remain unexamined and the consumer of the media remains safe in his or her place of privilege. Second, the successful creation of the bad mothers as foreign allows middle-class mothers to feel righteous about their own parenting. As mentioned earlier, all mothers face public scrutiny. Women understand their own adequacy and failures in motherhood in part by hearing stories of other mothers (Lowenhaupt-Tsing 1990; Connolly 2000a). Women hear accounts of failed mothers and are able to position themselves on a hierarchy of competent mothering. In comparison to what Tammy or Traci did, the typical accusations against mothers—of putting children in childcare, failing to breastfeed, allowing children to watch too much television—are minor. The construction in newspaper articles of Tammy’s and Traci’s lives as so foreign and so deeply problematic implicitly celebrates a commonality among good citizens in contrast to these two women. This effect was also accomplished by providing testimonies from good parents who voiced their horror at the crimes. For example, one article offered the following: “Sacramento Police Detective Jeff Gardner, a seasoned homicide investigator, said he will never forget the case. ‘I have two boys ages 11 and 8. It was very difficult. It touched me so much. I spent a lot of time crying,’ Gardner said” (Coronado 1998b). The drowning of Traci’s daughter was by no means the most gory or horrific of murders. Presumably, a professional like Gardner has seen a great many violent crimes, many that were far worse than this, but by qualifying himself as a parent rather than a homicide detective,

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he communicates that this crime is more disturbing than most. Similarly, articles about both children’s funerals were filled with quotes by presumed good parents who never knew either child, describing why they felt compelled to attend. One parent who attended Adrian’s funeral announced, “I saw his picture, the blond hair and the brown eyes, and I thought of my son and the kind of love that I have for him. I just had to come” (Hubert 1996c). These statements illustrate a common response to social problems where the acts are constructed as a form of individual deviance that is separate from the collective norms. The problem case becomes the exception, and the basis on which a seemingly homogeneous society can demand reform (Gusfield 1989, 435). About mothering, Connolly argues that the process of providing an “allegedly dangerous anti-model” serves to erase “the continuum of behavior that more adequately represents how women live their lives. In effect, the model of normal motherhood is produced and enforced even though it does not adequately represent the experiences of mothers—even those purported to embody the ideal” (Connolly 2000b, 40). Rather than calling the expectations of motherhood into question, demonizing Traci and Tammy serves to reinforce that ideal and validate those who aspire to it, even as it remains just beyond reach. Third, the construction of abusive poor mothers as not only deviant but also as un-American by middle-class standards, decitizenizes them and creates public demands for more state intervention in the lives of the poor and those perceived as immoral. This dissolves the boundaries of—or zones of privacy surrounding—poor and nontraditional families while simultaneously shoring up the boundaries of normative middle-class families. In response to the negative news coverage following these two cases, the county CPS agency became increasingly willing to intervene in the lives of poor families and take their children when deemed necessary. Following Adrian’s death, the county child welfare agency launched an internal investigation to examine how they had failed so miserably to identify the risk Adrian faced. The county board of supervisors also appointed an independent panel to determine whether CPS had been negligent. Six months later, the panel released a report calling for many changes. Among them were an attack on CPS’s “‘family preservation’ philosophy that places more emphasis on keeping families together than on the safety of youngsters” (Hubert 1996d) and a suggestion that they change the agency’s name to reflect a greater priority on protecting children than saving “dysfunctional families.” CPS took these criticisms seriously and agreed to evaluate their own policies. Seven subcommittees comprised of senior agency administrators, community members, religious leaders, and academics were formed to

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advise the county agency through its reformation. One change, which represented many larger ones, was the modification to the agency’s name, which abandoned the phrase “family preservation,” and called itself simply “Child Protective Services.” In late-April, 1997, over a year after Adrian’s death, “CPS officials testified to county supervisors that they were making progress in childabuse prevention and that the agency had adopted many reforms in the wake of last year’s beating death of Adrian Conway” (Teichert 1997a). Unfortunately, Rebecca’s drowning occurred within weeks of the agency’s pronounced reinvention. Public outcry followed Rebecca’s death, and the agency faced further criticism because of its failure to protect another child from a mother who was already known to the agency. News stories featured town hall meetings full of angry citizens who wanted guarantees that the agency would prevent further tragedy. This demand was met with increased removal of children determined to be at risk. In part, fearing media coverage of a potential mistake, social workers opted to err on the side of placing more children in foster care, rather than leaving them with parents who were considered marginally acceptable. Although the county was significantly constrained by limited resources, CPS began removing children with increased frequency. By the end of 1997, the county was taking in 300 new cases a month, the equivalent, according to one CPS supervisor, of “emptying an elementary school each month.” By the end of 1999, the county had among the highest per capita rate of foster care placement in the state.

Conclusion By no means do I intend to argue that children do not require protection, nor that states should fail to intervene when necessary. Nor am I suggesting that those whose actions cause the deaths of children should not be punished. Instead, I argue that how individuals are punished and what language is used to discuss parental transgressions have far-reaching effects. Legal scholars have suggested that “the law is a reflection or institutionalization of the normative order. It formalizes what we take for granted and makes custom into rule” (Sarat et al. 1998, 1). Policies and statutes articulated in terms of international human rights discourse represent poor mothers as deviant to the point of being decitizenized; in the process, these mothers are metaphorically given power that they lack in their daily lives. Viewing these women as alien erases their poverty, lack of social support, and addictions as contributors to their crimes. Perhaps more significant, media coverage of these mothers furthers a belief that poor families—fam-

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ilies that have failed to achieve middle-class status—are intrinsically dangerous and therefore must be supervised or dismantled. Tammy was sentenced to two life sentences in the death of her son (Coronado 1998a), an indisputably harsh sentence for the death of one person, with no allegations that she caused any harm to her other two children. Not surprisingly, the baby girl she was pregnant with at the time of Adrian’s death was removed from her custody after her birth in prison and placed for adoption. Traci’s boyfriend, Joseph Engle was, by all accounts, the one who actually held Rebecca’s head under water in an ice-cube filled tub until she lost consciousness. In the end, he pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder and four felony counts of child abuse; he was sentenced to 35 years to life. Traci Kaufman was sentenced to 72 years in prison on 19 charges, including false imprisonment, child molestation, and abuse (Davila 1997). One article points out that “among her crimes, Kaufman admitted to dressing up her 11-yearold daughter like an adult and holding her hands while the child was molested by Engle” (Coronado 2000). However, Engle—the actual child molester and murderer—was not charged with child molestation. Although his crimes were more severe, Traci’s sentence was more than twice as long as his was. The disparate treatment of Traci and her boyfriend—absent any compelling logic—points to a clear cultural thread that weaves through the public treatment of poor mothers. Although Engle murdered a child and molested others, Traci’s greatest crime—like Tammy’s—was against motherhood itself. The use of universal human rights discourse to prosecute Traci and Tammy and to represent them in the mass media shows that, in the dominant cultural imagination, those who violate its ideals of motherhood deserve more severe punishment than those who violate children themselves.

Note I am indebted to Michael Alan Sacks, Anna Muraco, John Dale, David Scudamore, Erin Farley, Daniela Kraiem, and Sarah Projansky for helping me to develop the ideas in this paper. This project was supported, in part, by grant number 5 T32 HS00086 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Works Cited Abramovitz, Mimi. 1988. Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present. Boston: South End Press.

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Appell, Annette R. 1998. On Fixing “Bad” Mothers and Saving Their Children. In “Bad” Mothers, eds. M. Ladd-Taylor and L. Umansky, 356–380. New York: New York University Press. Ashe, Marie, and Naomi Cahn. 1994. Child Abuse: A Problem for Feminist Theory. In The Public Nature of Private Violence: The Discovery of Domestic Abuse, eds. M. A. Fineman and R. Mykitiuk, 166–194. New York: Routledge. Bartlett, Katherine T. 1993. Gender and the Law: Theory, Doctrine, Commentary. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Best, Joel. 1990. Threatened Children: Rhetoric and Concern about Child Victims. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Blum, Linda. 1999. At the Breast: Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood in the Contemporary United States. Boston: Beacon. Bordo, Susan. 1997. Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O. J. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bush, George W. 2003. President Delivers ‘State of the Union,’ January 28, 2003. Charvet, John. 1998. The Possibility of a Cosmopolitan Ethical Order Based on the Idea of Universal Human Rights. Millenium 27(3):523–541. Collins, Patricia Hill. 1991. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge. Connolly, Deborah. 2000a. Mythical Mothers and Dichotomies of Good and Evil: Homeless Mothers in the United States. In Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism, eds. H. Ragone and F. W. Twine, 263–297. New York: Routledge. ——— . 2000b. Homeless Mothers: Face to Face with Women and Poverty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Coronado, Ramon. 1998a. Mom gets 2 life terms in child-abuse death of her son, Adrian, 3. Sacramento Bee, March 11, 1998, B1. ——— . 1998b. Mother pleads guilty in boy’s death: Adrian Conway’s beating became symbol of abuse. Sacramento Bee, February 20, 1998, A1. ——— . 2000. Pair Get Long Prison Terms in Child Killing. Sacramento Bee, January 29. B1. CRLP. 2000. Punishing Women for their Behavior During Pregnancy. NY: Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. Davila, Robert D. 1997. Plea Deal by Mom in Child Drowning. Sacramento Bee, September 12. B1. Davis, Angela. 1983. Women, Race and Class. New York: Vintage Books. East, Jean F. 2000. Empowerment Through Welfare-Rights Organizing: A Feminist Perspective. Affilia Journal of Women and Social Work 15(2): 311–329. Edin, Kathryn, and Laura Lein. 1997. Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

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Erwin, Diana Griego. 1996a. Amid eulogies, tears, care, death still unfathomable. Sacramento Bee, February 1, 1996, A2. ——— . 1996b. For children who are in peril, the future is now. Sacramento Bee, January 30, 1996, A2. Fineman, Martha Albertson. 1995. The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies. New York: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books. Gelb, Joyce. 1983. The Politics of Wife Abuse. In Family, Politics, and Public Policy: A Feminist Dialogue on Women and the State, ed. I. Diamond, 250–262. New York: Longman. Gibson, Steve. 1996. Boy critically injured; mother arrested. Sacramento Bee, January 22, 1996, B1. Gomez, Laura E. 1997. Misconceiving Mothers: Legislators, Prosecutors, and the Politics of Prenatal Drug Exposure. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Gordon, Linda. 1994. Pitied, but not Entitled. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gusfield, Joseph R. 1989. Constructing the Ownership of Social Problems: Fun and Profit in the Welfare State. Social Problems 36(5): 431–441. Hanigsberg, Julia E., and Sara Ruddick, eds. 1999. Mother Troubles. Boston: Beacon Press. Hoffnung, Michele. 1989. Motherhood: Contemporary Conflict for Women. In Women: A Feminist Perspective, ed. J. Freeman, 157–175. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Hubert, Cynthia. 1996a. 3-year-old beating victim Adrian Conway dies. Sacramento Bee, January 27, 1996, A1. ——— . 1996b. Boy’s kin: Case not unique. Grandparents seek causes behind abuse. Sacramento Bee, January 24, 1996, A1. ——— . 1996c. Calls alleging abuse swamp agencies. Sacramento Bee, January 26, 1996, B1. ——— . 1996d. Conway autopsy suggests long abuse. Sacramento Bee, June 4, 1996, B1. ——— . 1996e. Friends, strangers attend service for Adrian Conway. Sacramento Bee, February 1, 1996, B1. ——— . 1996f. Where—and how—did system fail abused boy? Sacramento Bee, January 25, 1996, A1. ——— . 1997a. Charges in death of girl, 2. Mom, boyfriend face murder counts. Sacramento Bee, April 30, 1997, A1. ——— . 1997b. Hundreds pay tribute to girl, look for hope. Sacramento Bee, May 7, 1997, A1. Hubert, Cynthia, and Robert D. Davila. 1996. Abused boy near death—and a community asks why. Sacramento Bee, January 23, 1996, A1.

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Hubert, Cynthia, and Yvonne Chiu. 1997. Agency warned on child. It received 2 calls before death of girl. Sacramento Bee, April 29, 1997, A1. King, Leslie, and Madonna Harrington Meyer. 1999. The Politics of Reproductive Benefits: U.S. Insurance Coverage of Contraceptive and Infertility Treatments. In Sociology of Families: Readings, ed. Cheryl Albers, 145–161. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Ladd-Taylor, Molly, and Lauri Umansky, eds. 1998. “Bad” Mothers: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America. New York: New York University Press. Lowenhaupt-Tsing, Anna. 1990. Monster Stories: Women Charged with Perinatal Endangerment. In Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture, eds. Faye Ginsburg and Anna Lowenhaupt-Tsing, 282–299. Boston: Beacon Press. Messer, Ellen. 1997. Pluralist Approaches to Human Rights. Journal of Anthropological Research 53(3): 293–317. Mink, Gwendolyn. 1990. The Lady and the Tramp: Gender, Race, and the Origins of the American Welfare State. In Women, the State, and Welfare, ed. L. Gordon, 92–122. Madison: University of Wisconsin. Mnookin, Robert, and D. Kelly Weisberg. 2000. Child, Family and State. fourth ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Morgen, Sandra. 1990. Two Faces of the State: Women, Social Control, and Empowerment. In Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture, eds. Fay Ginsburg and Anna Lowenhaupt-Tsing, 169–182. Boston: Beacon Press. Murray, Charles. 1994. Testimony July 29, 1994 Charles Murray, PhD, Bradley Fellow American Enterprise Institute. Washington, DC: Subcommittee on Human Resources. Committee on Ways & Means, Hearing on Welfare Reform. Nelson, Barbara. 1984. Making an Issue of Child Abuse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Newitz, Annalee, and Matt Wray. 1997. Introduction. In White Trash: Race and Class in America, eds. Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz, 1–12. New York: Routledge. Noble, Amanda, Dorie Klein, Elaine Zahnd, and Sue Holtby. 2000. Gender Issues in California’s Perinatal Substance Abuse Policy. Contemporary Drug Problems 27(1): 77. Okin, Susan Moller. 1998. Feminism, Women’s Human Rights, and Cultural Differences. Hypatia 13(2): 32–52. Paltrow, Lynn M. 1992. Criminal Prosecution Against Pregnant Women: National Update and Overview. American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project.

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Pfohl, Stephen J. 1977. The “Discovery” of Child Abuse. Social Problems 24: 310–323. Piven, Francis Fox, and Richard A. Cloward. 1993. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. New York: Vintage Books. Rich, Adrienne. 1976. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Roberts, Dorothy. 1997. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Vintage Books. ——— . 1999a. Mothers Who Fail to Protect Their Children. In Mother Troubles: Rethinking Contemporary Maternal Dilemmas, eds. Julia E. Hanigsberg and Sara Ruddick, 31–47. Boston: Beacon Press. ——— . 1999b. Welfare’s Ban on Poor Motherhood. In Whose Welfare?, ed. Gwendolyn Mink, 152–167. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ——— . 2002. Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare. New York: Basic Civitas Books. Rubin, Lillian. 1994. Families on the Fault Line: America’s Working Class Speaks About the Family, the Economy, Race, and Ethnicity. New York: Harper Collins. Sacramento Bee. 1996. Editorial. What Happened to Adrian? January 24. B6. Sarat, Austin. 1990. “. . . The Law is All Over”: Power, Resistance, and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare Poor. Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 2: 343–379. Sarat, Austin, Marianne Constable, David Engel, Valerie Hans, and Susan Lawrence. 1998. Ideas of the ‘Everyday’ and the ‘Trouble Case’ in Law and Society Scholarship: An Introduction. In Everyday Practices and Trouble Cases, eds. Austin Sarat, Marianne Constable, David Engel, Valerie Hans, and Susan Lawrence, 1–13. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Sawicki, Jana. 1991. Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power and the Body. New York: Routledge. Solinger, Rickie. 1997. Race and ‘Value’: Black and White Illegitimate Babies, 1945–1965. In Feminist Frontiers IV, eds. Laurel Richardson, Vera Taylor, and Nancy Whittier, 282–294. New York: McGraw-Hill. Stearns, Cindy A. 1999. Breastfeeding and the Good Maternal Body. Gender and Society 13(3): 308–325. Teichert, Nancy Weaver. 1997a. Abuse of five kids alleged. One critical. Tot nearly drowns; Mom, boyfriend held. Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1997, A1. ——— . 1997b. Agency missed warning signs, critics charge. Sacramento Bee, April 30, 1997, A1. Tice, Karen. 1998. Tales of Wayward Girls and Immoral Women. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

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Tong, Rosemary. 1989. Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction. Boulder: Westview Press. U.N. 1948. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York: United Nations. ——— . 1984. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. New York: Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights. ——— . 1998. Commission on Human Rights Opens 54th Session “SecretaryGeneral Warns That Human Rights Violations Remain ‘Widespread Reality.’” New York: United Nations. Weston, Kath. 1991. Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. New York: Columbia University Press. White, Lucy. 1991. Subordination, Rhetorical Survival Skills, and Sunday Shoes: Notes on the Hearing of Mrs. G. In Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender, eds. Katharine Bartlett and Roseanne Kennedy, 404–427. Boulder: Westview Press. Williams, Joan. 1999. Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It. London: Oxford Press.

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Medical Discourses and Social Ills

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CHAPTER

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Fixing Sex: Medical Discourse and the Management of Intersex ELLEN K. FEDER

Many feminists are drawn to continental philosophy for the variety of ways it provides to identify and understand social and political problems related to gender and sexual difference. Often this work involves divesting something that is “taken for granted” of its givenness, even something as given as that there are two sexes, male and female. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus” suggests possibilities for understanding the tragic effects of the promotion of a rigid conception of sex and gender, which functions as a kind of implicit foundation of knowledge and practice. In the Logic of Practice, Bourdieu famously defines habitus as systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. (Bourdieu 1990, 53)

Habitus is only imprecisely understood in terms of “culture,” or the more or less fixed assumptions that ground a person’s understanding of the world and her place within it. As Bourdieu describes it, this understanding is not, for the most part, a reflected understanding. The habitus is taken for granted, understood as reality in all its transparency. But the experience of some defies the prevailing common sense. Parents of “intersexed” children, children born with genitals that are neither clearly male nor clearly female, can no longer take for granted the “fact” of sexual difference. With the help of medical professionals, parents of intersexed children nevertheless abide by the rules that organize conventional conceptions of sexual difference. A “structured structure,” sexual

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difference itself “structures” the social order in which parents move and make sense of the world. The most well-intentioned parents consent to cosmetic genital surgeries because they know how easily their children can be hurt by others’ intolerance of their difference. Maintaining secrecy about even the existence of intersex shapes the ways that it can be understood by parents who often learn of it for the first time following the birth of their own child. (Incidence of intersex at birth is conservatively estimated at 1 in 2,000. Anne Fausto-Sterling’s estimate is 1.7% of live births, but she cautions that the number “should be taken as an order of magnitude rather than a precise count” [2000, 51].) As intersexed adults have made clear, silence about the prevalence and controversial management of intersex has unintentionally promoted harm, both physical and emotional, for children, and heartbreak for parents who are doing everything they can to act in their children’s best interests. In Bourdieusian terms, the silence about intersex functions as a discursive practice that shapes parents’ and children’s understanding of the world and the possibilities for moving and making sense of themselves within it. That understanding, in turn, circumscribes the possibilities for understanding sex and gender in ways that would promote acceptance of intersex and eliminate the shame and secrecy, which make alternatives to cosmetic surgical intervention “unthinkable.” Bourdieu’s analysis further suggests that the habitus in which parents move and make sense of the world, in turn, moves and makes sense of them, not only as men and women, but as parents. It is not only that the silence protects them from a kind of guilt by association: “What sort of people would give birth to a hermaphrodite?” one parent I interviewed remembers thinking before the birth of her daughter. But, as the doctors make clear to mothers and fathers of intersexed children: What sort of parents would subject their child to a life as a hermaphrodite? That is, what sort of parents would forgo normalizing genital surgery? If the first question points to the discursive maintenance of the border between the normal and the abnormal, the second question emphasizes the material practices that reinforce a discursive or “symbolic” order that regulates that border. While this formulation may suggest some kind of crude division between the “discursive” and “nondiscursive,” Bourdieu’s concept of habitus aims precisely to unsettle this division, to promote an understanding of discourse as another kind of “action,” which reproduces certain practices and promotes certain interests against others. Between May 2000 and August 2001, I spoke with parents of intersexed children. I sought out these parents through Internet bulletin boards and personal contacts because I could find no information

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addressing the experience of parents of intersex children. I found this striking, for parents are charged with making the difficult decisions associated with genital surgery and changing gender assignment. Not only is there next to no work available on parents, there are effectively no resources or support available for parents of intersexed infants. The absence of support is even more remarkable when one considers the many resources now available for parents of children with other congenital problems. Parents and family members of children are urged to seek help, to join or form support groups. Their children have access to other children like themselves. By contrast, parents of children with intersex do not have the opportunity to meet other parents who have faced similar dilemmas or to consult mental health professionals with expertise in intersex or even gender development. When they are not explicitly urged to keep the “truth” about their children to themselves, they are led to believe that the intersex condition has been “corrected,” and that their children will grow up to be “normal” girls or boys.

“This was a female, and she needed to look like a female . . .”: Ruby’s Story The first was born in 1961.1 Doctors thought she was a boy. Her clitoris was enlarged, her labia fused. She was given a male name. But she became sick almost immediately. She couldn’t breastfeed, she lost weight, and on New Year’s Eve we took her to the ER. The doctors thought she was going to die, but one doctor knew about pediatric endocrinology, and transferred her to the children’s hospital in the city. They diagnosed her with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) 2 and explained that she was female. She had no testicles, but a uterus and ovaries. At three months, she hemorrhaged; her urethra was connected to her vagina. She had surgery, and they performed a clitorectomy at the same time. She had another surgery when she was two. The same thing happened with my second daughter. Everyone thought,“This one’s the boy,” but I knew. I just knew it was a girl, but we gave her a boy’s name. When we brought her home she became very sick. So I insisted that I be sent to the children’s hospital again. She was kept in the hospital for a long time, because the doctors thought that any talk about a son would upset my older daughter. At three months she had the clitorectomy. This was a female, and she needed to look like a female. They did leave tissue, but she had a series of infections and she had more surgeries—

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The prominence of what Ruby calls “the gender issues” in her life and her children’s lives both does and does not distinguish their experience. Parents of children with no genital ambiguity may also face complicated questions concerning gender. Helping a child adapt to prevailing social standards may sometimes require a mother to direct her daughter to behave more “like a girl” or her son to behave more “like a boy.” At the same time, a parent may come to believe that a social script

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dictating a particular gender behavior is not appropriate for her child. Parents convinced of the problematic nature of gender scripts may resist the imperative to direct their children to behave according to the norms associated with a certain gender. For the most part, however, mothers generally harbor no doubts or anxieties about the “true sex” of their children. Absent such doubts or questions, mothers may experience less anxiety when their children fail to conform to particular lines of behavior. Anxiety that parents may feel if a daughter prefers trucks, or a son prefers dolls is not so much fear about their children’s “sex” but fear that their child will experience homosexual desire. The salient difference between the kind of “gender panic” manifested by parents afraid that their “apparently normal” girl or boy might be homosexual and that experienced by parents of children with ambiguous genitalia is the apparent tangibility of intersexuality.3 Ruby’s situation, though, is complicated by doubts concerning “the gender issues.” Her husband’s family responded with shame and criticism; her husband withdrew, first emotionally, then physically. More upsetting to her, however, was the alternating silence and denial she faced when she started questioning the doctors managing her daughters’ ongoing care. “Why,” she asked again and again, “do my girls behave this way? And what can I do to help them be more like girls?” In response to her questions, most of the doctors had no answer. One impatiently cut her short: “These two little girls are normal little girls. Quit worrying.” The doctors’ refusals to respond meaningfully to Ruby’s questions may be symptomatic of doctors’ own anxiety over whether they had made the right decisions in the management of Ruby’s daughters. Whatever their motivation, the doctors compounded Ruby’s vulnerability. Making every effort to fulfill her responsibilities to her daughters, she had to rely on the recommendations of medical authorities who are themselves subjects of prevailing conceptions of sex and gender. When she sought advice to address the consequences of the earlier recommendations, she was given to understand that her questions—questions that arose from her attentive connection to her children—were improper.

The Imperative of Normality: Mary Twenty-five years after Ruby’s first child was born, a young mother named Mary brought her 12-year-old daughter Jessica to the pediatrician. The day before, Jessica had just come out of the shower when Mary noticed, out of the corner of her eye, a “growth” emerging from her daughter’s labia. Mary had called the doctor, who agreed that Mary

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should bring Jessica in the following morning. Her daughter did not question why they would be going to the doctor. “Jessica was the type of child who never questioned me. She never spoke back. Never. Because she wanted to make me—us, her parents—happy, and not displease us.” That same day, Jessica’s pediatrician sent her to a pediatric endocrinologist. A sonogram revealed that Jessica did not have a uterus, but undescended testes.4 The pediatric endocrinologist asked to speak with me alone. Jessica was in a different room. The doctor and I then sat and she explained to me that Jessica had XY chromosomes and Jessica would not be able to bear children. She also explained to me that this was something I should never, ever bring up with Jessica. I should never talk about it with Jessica. We should just take care of it as quickly as possible so that Jessica could live a normal life. I agreed to this because it was what she asked me to do. I was very young at the time. I was just in my late twenties. Naturally I was shocked; I was stunned; I was saddened. I went home and told my husband, who had just come back from work. I told him all about it, what the pediatric endocrinologist said. I had never seen him cry before but he just broke down and sobbed in my arms. That’s when it impacted me the most. . . . There were a lot of tears, a lot of feeling bad for Jessica, knowing that she couldn’t have children naturally. Mary was instructed to tell Jessica that “her ovaries hadn’t developed properly and they would have to come out.” Jessica was not told that her testes would be removed because doctors feared they would become cancerous. Nor was she informed of the clitorectomy5 that would be performed at the same time. Only a month later, Jessica was in the recovery room of the children’s hospital. Mary remembers finding her daughter moaning in bed as she recovered from the anesthesia. She thought it was only from the pain, but Jessica has since told her that, having reached down, she realized that “a piece of her was gone.” In the week that Jessica spent in the hospital, nothing was said about the clitorectomy. Doctors did inform her, however, that she would have to return to the hospital in a week to evaluate the effects of what they called “the plastic surgery.” Mary remembers that before the surgery, immediately after, and in the follow-up evaluation, “scores of male residents would come in to examine” her daughter. Mary had consented to the examinations because her daughter was being treated in a teaching hospital. It was not

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until years later, when Jessica had obtained her medical records and confronted her parents with what she had learned, that Mary would hear from her daughter’s mouth, the terrible effects, not only of the surgery and the deception, but of the repeated examinations. Looking back, it seems obvious to Mary that her daughter, who regarded her enlarged clitoris as perfectly normal, would have experienced the surgery and the examinations as painful violations. But Mary was told that the surgery had taken care of the problem and further discussion would only raise potentially damaging questions for Jessica. What was important was that Jessica look normal. If she looked normal, she would be able “to live her life as a normal girl.” When Mary speaks of the importance of the “normal appearance” of her daughter’s genitals, however, it is difficult to discern whether her remarks reflect her own concerns or those of the doctors. Appearance, as opposed to sensation, is the governing criterion that determines whether genital surgery (and in some cases, a change in gender assignment) is indicated (Kessler 1990, 18–21; 1998, 25–27). Emphasis on normal appearance, however, is at odds with a common sense understanding of sexuality that prioritizes genital sensation rather than appearance, as evidenced in a study by psychologist Suzanne Kessler. Kessler asked college students to imagine that they had been born with “clitoromegaly,” defined as having a clitoris larger than one centimeter at birth. Asked whether they would have wanted their parents to sanction clitoral surgery if the condition were not life-threatening, 93% of the students reported that they would not have wanted their parents to agree to surgery: Women predicted that having a large clitoris would not have had much of an impact on their peer relations and almost no impact on their relations with their parents . . . they were more likely to want surgery to reduce a large nose, large ears, or large breasts than surgery to reduce a large clitoris. (Kipnis and Diamond 1999, 181; Kessler 1998, 101)

These findings, Kessler reflects, are not surprising given that the respondents characterized genital sensation and the capacity for orgasm as “very important to the average woman, and the size of the clitoris as being not even ‘somewhat important’” (1998, 101–102). Men in the study were faced with a different dilemma, the one facing parents of boys with “micropenis,” a penis smaller than the putative standard of 2.5 centimeters at birth. Their question was whether to stay as male with a small penis, or to be reassigned as female. More than half rejected the prospect of gender reassignment. But, according to Kessler,

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Ellen K. Feder That percentage increases to almost all men if the surgery was described as reducing pleasurable sensitivity or orgasmic capability. Contrary to beliefs about male sexuality, the college men in this study did not think that having a micropenis would have had a major impact on their sexual relations, peer or parental relations, or self-esteem. (1998, 103)

This study confirms that individuals are generally disinclined to compromise their erotic response for the sake of cosmetic enhancement. If asked if they themselves would be willing to subject themselves to cosmetic surgery, it is quite likely that parents would refuse. But when acting on behalf of their children, the majority of parents agree to surgery. In a separate study, Kessler and her team asked students to imagine that their child was born with ambiguous genitalia. Students in this study indicated they would make what Kessler describes as “more traditional choices.” Students’ rationales mirrored those of parents, which can now be found on internet bulletin boards devoted to parenting intersexed children: Students reported that they did not want their child to feel “different,” and believed that early surgery would be less traumatizing than later surgery (1998, 103). Like parents faced with these difficult decisions, students did not reflect on the possibility of lost sensation. It may be uncomfortable for parents (and even for those only imagining themselves as parents) to focus on the feeling in a child’s genitals, which might appear to inappropriately sexualize children. But it also seems that parents, and those imagining themselves as parents, opt for medical science’s definition of normality as congruence between the appearance of one’s genitals and one’s gender assignment. The power of gender as a “structuring structure” is evident here, as parents are led to sacrifice, or at least to overlook, their own common sense in order to ensure that their children’s bodies will clearly and unambiguously reflect the sex of rearing.

Money’s Theory The medical protocols for treating intersex children were first outlined by John Money, the psychologist credited with creating the framework for the management of intersexed infants. For Money, gender identity does not originate in the innate characteristics that distinguish male from female; rather, Money viewed gender identity as a function of socialization (Kessler and McKenna 1978; Money and Ehrhardt 1982). For parents who unequivocally see their child as either male or female,

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social imperatives ensure that their comportment toward the child results in an unambiguous gender identity. The problem with intersexed children, as Money saw it, was that their ambiguous genitalia would promote doubt and confusion on the part of parents that would then be conveyed to the child (Money and Ehrhardt 1982, 16). So corrective genital surgery was necessary for the successful assimilation of the child into a world divided into men and women, boys and girls. Almost 40 years later, the rationale for the surgical assignment of gender remains largely unchanged. The Intersex Society of North America estimates that every day in the U.S. five children receive normalizing genital surgery (www.isna.org). That fact might not seem so remarkable but for the revelation that the famous case that served as definitive proof of Money’s theory has been revealed to be a sham. “The Case of John/Joan,” or, as it may come to be known, “the true story of John/Joan,” has been recounted everywhere from Oprah to National Public Radio (Oprah Winfrey Show 2000; Fresh Air 2000). It is the story of a boy, an identical twin, who at the age of eight months was injured during a routine circumcision. Under Money’s counsel and supervision, “John” underwent sex change surgery, and was reported to have been successfully raised as “Joan.” A medical calamity was stunningly redeemed, and in 1972, just five years after the surgery, Money published, with his colleague Anke Ehrhardt, Man & Woman, Boy & Girl, the book that widely publicized the case and promoted a conception of gender as a product of “social construction.” But while the medical community and the general public—alerted by a story in Time magazine—were captivated by Money’s tale of “the boy who became a girl,” Joan’s family was struggling to maintain the fiction that their daughter was a “normal” girl. While her twin brother recognized her as his sister, according to him, “she never acted the part. . . . When I say there was nothing feminine about Joan . . . I mean there was nothing feminine. She walked like a guy. She talked about guy things, didn’t [care] about cleaning house, getting married, wearing makeup. . . . We both wanted to play with guys, build forts and have snowball fights and play army”(Colapinto 1997, 65–66). Joan’s parents’ reports are similar: from tearing at lacy dresses her mother made for her as a child to flushing down the toilet estrogen pills her father demanded she take at puberty, Joan intensely resisted taking up her assigned role as a girl. None of these details appeared in Money’s book, however, nor in subsequent follow-up reports that claimed that Joan’s “behavior is so normally that of an active little girl, and so clearly different by contrast from the boyish ways of her twin brother, that it offers nothing to stimulate conjectures” (quoted in Colapinto 1997, 70). When at 14, her

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father told her what had happened to her, Joan asked for a sex change. She took hormones, underwent mastectomy, had penile reconstruction, and called himself David. And what of subsequent reports in the medical literature? Like so many children who have been the objects of studies of gender and sexual identity, Joan was “lost to follow-up” and no further reports of the case appeared in the literature (Diamond and Sigmundson 1997). As the details of Money’s suppression of data are revealed, and as his refusals to comment on the case become more conspicuous with each call that he do so, the story also raises questions of a specifically ethical nature. But more important is the “truth” these matters reveal about sex. While in popular discourse the pendulum swings from “nurture” back to “nature,” in the debate regarding the development of gender identity, the management of intersex children—for which the John/Joan case served as cornerstone—remains unchanged, if not unchallenged (Diamond and Sigmundson 1997; Reiner 1997a, 1997b; Bradley 1998).6 In a ground-breaking article, Suzanne Kessler uncovers how the advancement of medical technology in the second half of the 20th century allowed doctors to make determinations about an infant’s “true sex” based on chromosomal and hormonal data (Dreger 1999). Nevertheless, she writes, Physicians who handle the cases of intersexed infants consider several factors beside biological ones in determining, assigning, and announcing the gender of a particular infant. Indeed, biological factors are often preempted in their deliberations by such cultural factors as the “correct” length of the penis and the capacity of the vagina. (Kessler 1990, 3; 1998, 12)

These concerns help to explain the preponderance of intersexed infants assigned female. As one doctor put it, “you can make a hole but you can’t build a pole” (Hendricks 1993), or at least you can’t build a pole up to culturally acceptable specifications. While Kessler’s observation might appear remarkable—doctors putting more stock in cultural understandings of gender than in “scientific” determinations of sex—it appears less so when one takes into account the enormous influence wielded by Money’s theory in the medical community. If, as he and his colleagues first proposed in 1955, and then publicized sensationally in 1972 with the case of John/Joan, gender is utterly pliable until the age of 18 months, then doctors can make sex determinations with impunity. Despite a clear XY karyotype and the presence of testes, for example, an

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unusually small penis (in clinical terms, a “micropenis”) could constitute grounds for clinical castration and a female sex assignment. Likewise, if a female child is born with a clitoris judged to be “too big,” then “clitoral reduction” is indicated so that parents can, as one physician put it, “go home and do their job as child rearers with it very clear whether it’s a boy or a girl” (Kessler 1998: 16).

“Parents’ Choices”: Carol and Jim Carol and Jim already had two children, Alex and Bobbie, when Sammy was born in the late 1990s. They were on their way to the hospital when they decided that their third child would be named Samuel or Samantha. They joke now about how their older children had unisex nicknames (short for Alexander and Barbara), but this was the first time that they had picked out a male name and its feminine equivalent. In retrospect Carol reflects that God had prepared them for what would happen. In the darkened birthing room, Sammy was pronounced a girl, and nursed soon after birth. It was the middle of the night, and after an hour, when all seemed well, the doctor and birthing assistant were sent home. When Carol got up for the first time to use the bathroom, her husband joined the remaining medical resident to bathe the baby and conduct a more thorough exam. Both Jim and the resident noticed a “puffiness” in the baby’s genital area, and together considered the possibility that Sammy was actually a boy. The resident told Jim that the swelling could be caused by any number of things, but that he would call the doctor back in. Jim should not tell Carol anything for the moment. After some consultation, the doctor recommended discharging Carol and Jim so they could recover with Sammy at home. He was concerned that the genital swelling could be a sign of CAH, but, because Carol and Jim were experienced parents, he trusted them to keep a close eye on their baby for the next 24 hours and to go directly to the emergency room if the baby showed any signs of distress. In the meantime, he assembled a medical team in the city children’s hospital and told the parents to bring Sammy in for tests. Carol remembers that once they brought Sammy in, They wouldn’t tell us anything. It was all whispers and stuff like that. We had this feeling that they were leaning towards boy. They ordered an ultrasound and as the doctor did the ultrasound we both said, okay “It’s going to be a Samuel. It’s going to be a Samuel,” but then we heard them say,“Oh, there’s the cervix.”

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Genetic tests revealed that Sammy had a rare “mosaic” chromosomal pattern, but with a predominance of “X” chromosomes. She had a vagina and uterus, as well as a descended gonad that appeared to be composed of testicular tissue. It was removed for fear that it would develop a malignancy. The other, lodged in her abdomen, appeared to be an ovary, but contained no follicles. Of those few days, Jim recounts that There was a lot of buzz going around. They were bringing in different interns and everybody was poking in during different rounds at different times. You always saw one of the doctors and somebody you hadn’t seen before. So, we were like, ‘Okay, this definitely isn’t something normal because everybody wants to see and come back and take a look.’ . . . They’re kind of prepping us with words like ‘surgery’ and ‘we’re going to have to take that out.’ We knew they would have to do some cutting sooner or later. Having been informed, in no uncertain terms, that their child was a girl, Carol and Jim agreed to the removal of the remaining gonad in her abdomen, the repositioning of her urethra, and clitoral reduction. Carol and Jim were not uninformed in these decisions. When the doctors began discussing surgery, Jim went on the Internet. The doctors at the hospital disapproved of Jim’s pursuit of information; according to him, they “really tried to steer you away from doing any research on your own. They were afraid that you were going to uncover something that they didn’t warn you about yet.” When the surgeon told them what he planned to do, Jim did further research online. He returned to the surgeon and told him that he had decided that the surgery he had proposed was too experimental. The surgeon, according to Jim, was “peeved,” but relented, warning them that he didn’t want to wait “until puberty, because they’re old enough to remember this.” Carol and Jim believe that some of these decisions are properly Sammy’s, and when the time comes they will help her understand why the surgery to move her vagina and practice dilation are necessary. Carol’s and Jim’s religious beliefs dictate that there are girls and boys, men and women, with nothing “in-between” and that homosexuality is an unqualified wrong. Still, Carol wonders, remarking on the aggressive behavior of their fearless and willful youngest child, so unlike her older siblings who are “very much a girl and a boy,” whether Sammy will grow up to desire women, to feel more like a boy than the girl she is being raised to be. They watch Sammy closely when she plays with dolls and trucks, but, just two years old, she prefers the infamously gen-

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der-nonspecific Teletubbies. Carol sometimes wonders whether “they made the right decision,” but most of the time expresses confidence that the judgments she and her husband have made are sound.

Upsetting Sex Before Sammy’s birth, Carol took for granted the clear division of the world—of people, customs, and habits—into male and female, masculine and feminine. Now that she knows “the truth,” that variation occurs, she has had to confront a tension between the settled expectations that had ordered her understanding and her child’s daily and insistent defiance of those expectations. But despite Sammy’s resistance, the structure that makes Carol and Jim’s world make sense—their habitus—remains largely intact. Carol and Jim maintain the secret of Sammy’s mosaic chromosomal pattern from all but a few members of their immediate families because they know that others’ ignorance or cruelty could harm Sammy. Carol and Jim, like Mary 10 years before them, and like Ruby almost 30 years earlier, maintain their silence for their child’s protection. The challenge for Carol and Jim, for Mary and for Ruby—the job of any parent—is not only to protect one’s child, but also to accommodate her to the world in which she lives. If, in the case of intersexed children, cosmetic genital surgery is presented to parents as a necessary adjustment, it is easy to understand why parents would consent. But if, as the experiences of the parents I interviewed suggest, decisions were not made for parents, they can be understood to have been made through them. While parents are not simply instruments of doctors’ agendas, their decisions cannot be regarded as products of an uncompromised agency. Similarly, doctors’ failure to present a complete picture to parents may be seen, not as a conscious and deliberate effort to mislead parents for the sake of the maintenance of the binary structure of gender, but as a function of habitus that functions, as Bourdieu understands it, to reproduce itself. In its most recent statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared that, “[t]he birth of a child with ambiguous genitalia constitutes a social emergency” (AAP 2000, 138). If the AAP declines to elaborate on the nature of this emergency, it is perhaps because there is little question that the revelation of intersex poses a grave threat to the existing social order. The very fact of intersex is material evidence that sex is not an either/or proposition, but rather exists on a continuum. As such, intersex poses a genuine threat to the current construction of habitus—a threat that is managed in the treatment of intersexed children by eliminating the very ambiguities that would provoke questions about it:

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Ellen K. Feder The habitus is a principle of the selective perception of indices tending to confirm and reinforce it rather than transform it, a matrix generating responses adapted in advance to all objective conditions identical to or homologous with the (past) conditions of its production; it adjusts itself to a probable future which it anticipates and helps to bring about because it reads it directly in the present of the presumed world, the only one it can even know. (Bourdieu 1990, 64)

The dispositions that motivate the practices associated with corrective genital surgery must be very narrowly concerned with the reinforcement of “the present of the presumed world.” Consider doctors’ resistance to reconsidering standard practices despite the revelation of the true story of John/Joan and the wealth of critical narratives being published by intersexed adults. Consider doctors’ insistent promotion of surgical “treatments” similar to many of the practices known in developing countries as “female circumcision” or clitorectomy8 so vigorously opposed in the West. Indeed, many of these practices would appear to be prohibited by U.S. federal law; 18 U.S.C. § 116, “Female Genital Mutilation” (1996) states: “whoever knowingly circumcises, excises, or infibulates the whole or any part of the labia majora or labia minora or clitoris of another person who has not attained the age of 18 years shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.” But an exception is noted: “A surgical operation is not a violation of this section if . . . necessary to the health of the person on whom it is performed, and is performed by a person licensed in the place of its performance as a medical practitioner.” And a subsection of the law clarifies that “no account shall be taken of the effect on the person on whom the operation is to be performed of any belief on the part of that person, or any other person, that the operation is required as a matter of custom or ritual” (emphases added). That the very conventions of gender, as understood by Money and his colleagues, that motivate the surgeries could themselves be “a matter of custom or ritual” is elided by the health exception written into the law. Consider finally the response to the recent recommendation against routine cosmetic genital surgery on infants made by a Hastings Center working group. A physician writes that the successful outcome for a child with intersex depends on parents’ “ability to accept and unconditionally love” that child (Eugster 2004, 428). If cosmetic genital surgery is required to ensure that love, the author suggests, there is sufficient reason to allow it, despite well-established bioethical principles of informed consent. The recommendation, and its defense, merit further discussion, but they vividly demonstrate how adaptive habitus can be in

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maintaining “the present of the presumed world,” which is not disposed to accommodate genital ambiguity or efforts to promote its acceptance. Parents’ ardent wishes for a “normal life” for their children, and their abiding belief in what that life should look like, is a function of habitus. Even as parents try to respond to the imperative—itself a product of habitus—to be attuned to what a child may experience, both somatically and socially, and to act for that child in a way that respects and supports the child’s future agency, parents are moved by the prevailing habitus to disregard their own common sense, and to instill the shame and secrecy that impede that agency. In the space of this contradiction, we must ask: What if parents identified with their children, and left the decision of whether to undergo genital surgery to the child, forgoing cosmetic surgery? If parents of intersexed children were to identify with their children as intersexed individuals, if doctors were to use their considerable authority to promote acceptance of genital variation rather than its erasure, the prevailing habitus would undergo real transformation. Not only would identification with intersexed children lead to improved relationships between parents and their children, it would also work against the conservative principles of habitus and make of intersex the kind of variation that would itself be taken for granted.

Notes The research in this article was presented in a different form in “‘Doctors’ Orders’: Parents and Intersexed Children” in The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency, edited by Eva Feder Kittay and Ellen K. Feder (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), and appears with permission. I thank once more those who shared their stories with me, and who continue to support this work. I also thank Sharon Meagher and Patrice DiQuinzio for inviting me to participate in this project and providing me with helpful suggestions for revision. 1. I have changed the names of parents to protect their privacy. The parents I interviewed live in nearly every region of the U.S. except for one mother, who lives in a Westernized country outside the U.S. 2. Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) is a genetic condition associated with a deficiency in the enzyme 21-hydroxylase, involved in making the steroid hormones cortisol and aldosterone. Girls and boys with the “salt-losing variety” of CAH (such as Ruby’s daughters) require regular doses of the steroid cortisol, which they cannot produce on their own, as well as a salt-retaining hormone. Without such regular treatment, children will experience crises similar to

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the one that brought both of Ruby’s daughters so close to death. Girls with CAH may have genital ambiguity, but boys do not. While most intersex conditions are not associated with medical conditions as severe as those Ruby’s children suffered, I begin with this story because it highlights both the distinctive nature and consequences of the treatment of medical issues associated with intersex and the cosmetic issues. 3. Perhaps for this reason, many parents of children with ambiguous genitalia, including many of those with girl children with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, resist the term “intersex” for their children (see postings at www.congenitaladrenalhyperplasia.org). In the medical literature, however, the term “intersex” designates any “defect in the normal processes of sexual maturation that results in abnormality in . . . the karyotype, the internal and external sexual organs, the gonads and the secondary sex characteristics which appear at puberty” (Creighton 2001, 218). Resistance to the term “intersex” may also be an effort made by parents and intersex individuals alike, and increasingly some physicians treating patients with certain intersex conditions, to deny their difference and “fit in” to the categories given by society. Bourdieu’s analysis makes sense of this resistance. 4. Jessica had a form of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS), a condition in which a fetus with a normal (46XY) male karyotype is unable to absorb androgens in utero. In its “complete” form, AIS would result in a child with typical feminine external genitalia and undescended testicles. In its “partial” form, the body can absorb some androgens, and at puberty an enlargement of the clitoris may result. 5. The term “clitorectomy” is controversial. Western doctors today refer instead to “clitoral recession,” apparently to distinguish current practices from those now decades old. However, review of the older literature reveals that concern for the retention of erotic sensation, and assurance of the satisfactory result following such surgery, was not absent, as some practitioners now suggest. In 1956, Hampson, Money, and Hampson wrote that “[p]artial amputation of an enlarged phallus in a girl is an operation approached with hesitation by many surgeons, in the fear that serious loss of sensitivity may ensue. Studies indicate that these women have subsequently been erotically responsive and able to experience orgasm” (Hampson et al. 1956, 551). The more euphemistic term “clitoral recession” appears calculated not only to distance past from current practices, but also to distinguish “medical” (beneficent, scientific, modern) practices from “cultural” (ignorant, primitive, uncivilized) practices that occur in “other countries.” But the distinction is credible neither linguistically nor practically; “-ectomy” simply means “to cut,” not to excise. Philosopher Diana Meyers proposes the term “genital cutting” to circumvent the euphemistic terminology used to characterize both “medical” and “cultural” practices (see Meyers 2000, 470).

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6. And the recent news of 38-year-old David Reimer’s tragic suicide may not change matters any. The May 2004 Associated Press story only briefly mentioned Money; the New York Times referred to him only as a “Baltimore doctor.” Neither mentioned the enduring legacy of Money’s experiment.

Works Cited American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP]. 2000. Evaluation of the Newborn with Developmental Anomalies of the External Genitalia. Pediatrics 106(1): 138–142. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bradley, Susan J. et al. 1998. Experiment of Nurture: Ablatio Penis at 2 Months, Sex Reassignment at 7 Months, and a Psychosexual Follow-up in Young Adulthood. Pediatrics 102: 1. Colapinto, John. 1997. The True Story of John/Joan. Rolling Stone, 11 December, 54–97. Creighton, Sarah. 2001. Surgery for Intersex. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 94: 218–220. Diamond, Milton, and Keith Sigmundson. 1997. Sex Reassignment at Birth: Long-term Review and Clinical Application. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 15(11): 298–304. Dreger, Alice. 1999. Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Eugster, Erica A. 2004. Reality vs. Recommendations in the Care of Infants with Intersex Conditions. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 158: 429. Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books. Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Airdate February 16, 2000. Hampson, Joan G., John Money, and John L. Hampson. 1956. Hermaphrodism: Recommendations Concerning Case Management. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 4: 547–556. Hendricks, Melissa. 1993. Is it a Boy or a Girl? Johns Hopkins Magazine 46(6): 10–16. Kessler, Suzanne J. 1990. The Medical Construction of Gender: Case Management of Intersexed Infants. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 16(1): 18–21. ——— . 1998. Lessons from the Intersexed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

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Kessler, Suzanne J., and Wendy McKenna. 1978. Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach. New York: Wiley-Interscience; Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kipnis, Kenneth, and Milton Diamond. 1999. Pediatric Ethics and the Surgical Assignment of Sex. In Ethics in the Age of Intersex, ed. Alice Domerat Dreger, 25–27. Hagerstown, MD: University Publishing Group. Meyers, Diana Tietjens. 2000. Feminism and Women’s Autonomy: The Challenge of Female Genital Cutting. Metaphilosophy 31(5): 470. Money, John, and Anke A. Ehrhardt. 1982. Man and Woman, Boy and Girl. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Oprah Winfrey Show. “Why This Boy Was Raised as a Girl.” Airdate February 9, 2000. Reiner, William. 1997a. To Be Male or Female: That is the Question. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 151: 224–225. ——— . 1997b. Sex Assignment in the Neonate with Intersex or Inadequate Genitalia. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 151: 1044–1045.

CHAPTER

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Social Melancholy, Shame, and Sublimation KELLY OLIVER

In the 19th century hysteria was the name of the disease associated with women. In significant ways hysteria produced and reproduced stereotypes or ideals of white bourgeois femininity as passive, emotional, irrational, and incapable of serious thought or work (cf. Matlock 1993; Gilman et al. 1993; Showalter 1998; Borossa 2001; Mitchell 2001). In the 20th century hysteria has been replaced by depression, again a disease associated with women that produces and reproduces the meanings of femininity. In contemporary discourses both in popular culture and in medicine and psychology, depression is associated with women as moody and passive, lacking agency and rationality. Is it a coincidence that many of the characteristics of stereotypical femininity are also the characteristics of clinical depression? In various ways, lack of activity, passivity, silence, moodiness, irritability, excessive crying, lack of sexual appetite, and nervousness—the very description of the symptoms of depression given by the National Mental Health Association—have been part of our ideas, even our ideals, of femininity for centuries. So is it a surprise that doctors would look for, and find, these characteristics in women more often than in men? In a sense, the female subject is constructed as passive and emotional, then pathologized, diagnosed as depressed, and finally treated with drugs and electroshock therapies for mental illness. As Jennifer Hansen points out “Physicians routinely administer Prozac to such depressed women, whether or not these women participate in therapy or not. This practice concretely illustrates how patriarchy deals with women’s depression. The practice of masking women’s depression follows both from long-standing cultural assumptions that women are inferior creatures in comparison to men and that women’s rage needs to be contained so that women will not break out of the disciplinary matrix of ‘femininity’ in which patriarchy subordinates them” (1999, 22).

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Some studies, never conclusive, link depression to hormone changes and other physical differences between women and men. Few studies, however, consider lifestyle, behavioral, and attitudinal differences imposed by patriarchal culture and the historical value placed on men over women. I am not arguing that there is some Stepford Wives or The Handmaid’s Tale–type science fiction conspiracy to keep women docile through drugs. Nor am I denying that there are physiological aspects of depression that should be treated. Rather, I am suggesting that we should extend our critical analysis to the very studies that so powerfully document women’s depression and to the social conditions that render women passive, lacking appetites, moody, etc., that is to say depressed. Moreover, we should turn our attention to the culture that produces depressed women in order to diagnose the dynamics of its pathology and the relation between social and psychic space. The tension between these two purposes—challenging studies that pathologize women as depressed and diagnosing the social causes of depression— may be eased by considering that the studies and the indicators of depression in women are symptoms of the same cultural phenomena that devalue women and their experiences, especially as mothers. The pathologization of women’s depression covers over the social and institutional causes for that symptomology. Insofar as patriarchal values continue to devalue and debase women and mothers in ways that colonize psychic space, depression becomes a cover for what I call “social melancholy.” This is not the melancholy of traditional psychoanalysis, but a form of melancholy that results from oppression, domination, and the colonization of psychic space. Social melancholy differs from both Freud and Kristeva’s notions of melancholy in that it is the result of social factors that constitute the depressed subject as ashamed and lacking agency. Crucial to my analysis is a distinction between shame and guilt missing from traditional psychoanalytic accounts of melancholy and depression. In “Mourning and Melancholia” Freud describes melancholia as identification with a lost love object (Freud 1917; cf. Hansen 1999). While mourning is a healthy working-through the loss of a loved one, melancholia is a neurotic identification with the lost love in order deny the loss. In a now familiar passage, Freud says that while in mourning “it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.” Melancholia, unlike mourning, displays “an extraordinary diminution in self-regard, an impoverishment of ego on a grand scale” (Freud 1917, 584). This diminution of self-regard that is caused by the subject’s identification with the lost love is also hatred toward the lost loved one for abandoning him. More than this, Freud attributes these

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self-reproaches to the melancholic’s guilty delusion that he is to blame for the loss of the loved one (1917, 587–588). As Freud describes it, the subject holds onto his love for the lost object through his identification with it. In this way, although he berates the lost object as himself, he refuses to give up the love relation with the lost loved one (1917, 586–587). The melancholy of oppression, however, is not Freud’s internalization of a lost love, but the internalization of the loss of a loved or lovable self-image (cf. Oliver 2001, 36–37). Confronted with abject images of themselves from mainstream culture, even as they are part of that culture, girls, women, and mothers suffer from the loss of a lovable image of themselves. Their melancholy is caused by the loss of the self as an active agent and positive force in the world. Just as Freud describes the loss of the other as formative of the melancholic’s own ego, the loss of a positive self-image is formative in the melancholy of oppression. Unlike classical melancholy that fortifies the ego through its neurotic identification, the melancholy of oppression fragments the ego and undermines the sense of agency and thereby renders the ego ineffective and passive. So, if there are no representations of girlhood, womanhood, or motherhood through which we can discharge the affects of girls, women, and mothers, particularly the “negative” affects caused by oppression; and if the articulation of affects of girlhood, womanhood, or motherhood are absent within our culture, then the missing girl, woman, or mother becomes the melancholic object. As we will see, rather than guilty thoughts or actions, women’s self-beratement manifests itself as shame over their very being. They are made ashamed of being women. Shame and depression are the result of a loss of any socially sanctioned discharge of affects, especially negative affects associated with femininity, girlhood, womanhood, motherhood, and their various patriarchal circumscriptions. Social melancholy as it is manifest as depression also differs from Freud’s theory of melancholy in which the melancholic can hold onto love and refuses to lose it by incorporating it into his own ego. As Julia Kristeva’s analysis suggests in Black Sun (1987), for the classical melancholic there is still the hope that love is possible even if that love has its source in denial. Within the terms of Kristeva’s theory, we could say that the melancholic still has faith that words can discharge affects in spite of the fact that he is cut off from his affects and his words betray them. Depression, on the other hand, is a complete loss of faith in the ability of words to discharge affects. The depressive is reduced to silence because she has given up on words to express the painful affects of her lost love, i.e., herself. With depression, the split between words and affects can become so extreme that it leads to catatonia and even suicide.

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In her diagnosis of female sexuality as a melancholic sexuality, Kristeva applies Freud’s theory of melancholia to the lost maternal body. On her theory, insofar as female sexuality is an identification with the maternal body in order to avoid losing it, it is melancholic. Unlike Freud’s melancholic, however, Kristeva’s depressive does not turn hostility toward the other back onto herself or torture herself with guilt for that hostility (Kristeva 1998, 186). In fact, the depressive’s sorrow is not the result of hostility or guilt but rather the result of a primary narcissistic wound that leave the depressive feeling empty, incomplete, or flawed. For Kristeva, this primary narcissistic wound is the result of an identification with the maternal body, which has been made abject not only by the infant during the process of weaning but also by the culture at large that devalues maternity by reducing it to a repellant or asocial animality. Insofar as the girl is expected to identify with her mother and with motherhood, she cannot leave the abject maternal body behind, but drags this abjection with her like a festering wound at the core of her psyche. In her case studies, Kristeva finds neurotic sons and daughters not only identifying with depressed mothers but also eroticizing their sorrow and suffering as the secret silent pain that binds them to their mothers. But social melancholy as I have described it is neither the Freudian inability to mourn the loss of a loved object nor the Kristevaean inability to mourn the loss of the maternal body, but the loss of a loved or lovable self. Freud describes the mother’s desire for the child as a desire for the father’s penis: the child is a penis substitute that satisfies the women’s penis envy. Although Freud’s theory seems objectionable to most feminists, there is a sense in which it is telling. If within patriarchal culture women are valued only or primarily as mothers, then their relation to the social order is through the child. The child is a substitute for access to culture and positions of power; in this sense the child is a substitute for phallic power. In the case of the depressed mother, the child becomes a substitute for symbols, for words. The mother, who has been denied full access to the symbolic, gives up on the symbolic and turns to the child as substitute, the only compensation available within patriarchal culture. But, this is too much responsibility for most children to bear; they cannot be expected to carry the burden of their mother’s psychic life and her link to sociality. The expectation that the child can fulfill the function of the Third of symbolic meaning for the mother renders the mother speechless and the child an appendage of her catatonia. Moreover, insofar as the mother is required to sacrifice the child to the social order, to wean the child and help it become independent, even if that independence is bought at the cost of her own abjection, then she

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must sacrifice her own identification with the child as substitute or Third. In the case of the depressed mother, then, the wounded narcissistic identification works both ways: not only is the child identified with a wounded and depressed mother who is outside the realm of words, but also the mother is identified with the child as substitute symbolic destined to sacrifice. Maternal melancholy, then, is the result of the unavailability of representations of motherhood as active agents and lovable, desiring subjects. Literature, medicine, and popular culture are full of images of bad mothers. Whether they are blamed for loving too much or loving too little, mothers are held responsible when something goes wrong. From Hollywood films (and the novels upon which they were based) like Now Voyager (1942), through Carrie (1976), to the more recent The Virgin Suicides (1999), overprotective and controlling mothers are represented as the cause of mental breakdown, violence, mayhem, and death. From early Hollywood films, The Blue Dalia (1946) and Leave Her to Heaven (1945), to the more recent The Ice Storm (1997) and Caught (1996), sexualized mothers are represented as the indifferent cause of violence and death. From the violent mothers in White Heat (1949) or Bloody Mama (1970), or the abusive mother in Sybil (1976), to the mean or callous mothers in Citizen Kane (1941), the comedy Throw Mama From the Train (1987), or the more recent AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001), popular culture gives us mothers whose cruelty and abuse cause violence, death, and/or mental illness in their children (cf. Kaplan 1992; Doane 1987; Fischer 1996; Oliver 1997; Oliver and Trigo 2002). And the question of the representation of mothers in popular culture is complicated by race in films such as Imitation of Life (1936, 1959) where the mother, presented as a mammy figure, is blamed for her mix-raced daughter’s blackness and therefore her subjugated social status. Popular images of bad mothers are fueled by medical discourses, in which mothers are held responsible for the health of their children from conception. The recent emphasis on prenatal care makes the expectant mother anxious about the effects of all of her actions on her unborn child. Civil and criminal law make it possible for mothers to be held responsible for harm done to their “unborn children.” Indeed, a South Carolina woman, Regina McKnight, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after she was convicted of homicide by child abuse for “killing her unborn fetus” by smoking crack cocaine (The New York Times, May 17, 2001; see also Shivas and Charles in this volume). As Buydens as well as Shivas and Charles argue in their chapters in this volume, popular culture is full of such images of “drug moms.” Legal precedent even

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makes it possible for children or others to sue mothers in civil court for their actions while pregnant. Mothers are not only held responsible for any and all harms suffered by the children whom they raise but also they are held responsible for any harms suffered by their “children” not yet born. While raising their children, mothers can be blamed for any and all ailments, both mental and physical, suffered by their children. For example, in the literature on ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder, also called ADHD Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder), many of the studies test for “maternal pathology,” while none of them specifically test for paternal pathology or particular fatherly causes (even when they test for sexual abuse and incest as factors in ADD, these studies identify “parental” or “family” factors or pathology, but never paternal pathology; see, for example, Barkley 1992; Kuhne, 1997; Faraone and Beiderman 1997; Perry 1999; Pelcovitz 1998). One study suggests that maternal depression is a factor in children developing ADD (Faraone 1997). More generally, many of these studies suggest that maternal pathology gives rise to pathology in children. Medicine and popular culture work together to trace our children’s problems back to maternal pathology, specifically maternal depression. Rather than blame mothers for their children’s problems, traditional notions of maternity should be considered as a source of a cycle of violence and oppression. To echo the language of the social sciences, we could say that maternal oppression is a factor in maternal depression. By rendering social and political problems individual problems, governmental and social institutions pass off any responsibility for addressing issues of poverty, housing, child-care, health care, etc. This is the all too familiar strategy of pathologizing and blaming the very people disadvantaged by institutional sexism and racism; for example, inner city single moms, especially African-Americans and Latinas, are held responsible for drugs and violence. For example, in this volume, Reich discusses mothers represented as “white trash moms” and Isgro analyzes popular images of denigrated single mothers. Making women’s depression, especially maternal depression, an individual problem covers over the social factors that produce it. The lack of accepting or loving social space for the articulation and discharge of affects, especially the very affects caused by that lack, is a major factor in women’s depression (cf. Hansen 1999). Without positive representations of girls, women, and mothers, without images that are not always also tinged with abjection, it becomes difficult to avoid depression, or what I am calling social melancholy. People who are constantly exposed to negative and denigrated images of themselves cannot help but feel insecure about whether or not they are lovable or can be

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loved (cf. Oliver 1995). To feel loved and lovable is possible only if there are positive self-significations readily available in culture. In a culture where women and men of color have been pathologized, abjected, ridiculed, and hated it is difficult for them to avoid some incorporation of self-hatred or a sense of inferiority or lack of legitimacy. The lack of social space for sublimation can lead to the depressive’s feelings of emptiness, incompleteness, and worthlessness; at the extreme, the lack of social support can lead to the split between words and affects that Kristeva identifies with the depressive position. Within exclusionary cultures where the affects of the oppressed are not valued it is no surprise that we lack the social space in which those affects can be sublimated or discharged into socially acceptable forms of signification. The silence, especially women’s silence, which so often accompanies depression, is a socially proscribed silence, if not its cause. If oppression is a factor in depression, then women’s depression should be diagnosed as social melancholy rather than individual pathology, or biological chemical imbalance. As we have seen, social melancholy, unlike classical melancholy, is not the internalization of a lost love followed by guilt. Rather, social melancholy is the inability to mourn the loss of a lovable self because there is no affirmation, legitimization, or acceptance of this self as lovable and therefore as a self at all. Social melancholy is not only followed by guilt over hateful thoughts or actions toward the lost love but rather more essentially by shame over one’s very being. When there are no lovable or accepting images of oneself within dominant culture, when the only available images are always tainted with the abject or perverse, then the result is shame. In the psychological literature, shame and depression are linked and they are, not surprisingly then, both much more likely to be experienced by women (see Lewis 1986 and 1987). Shame is related to one’s sense of oneself as a subject and agent rather than to one’s actions. And it seems that shame is constitutive of identity in depressed women. An analysis of the differences between guilt and shame not only points up the ways in which shame is about identity while guilt is about action but also begins to explain traditional psychoanalytic theory’s attention to guilt rather than to shame as another form of its masculinism. Indeed, shame (often compounded by guilt) results in a sense of double or debilitating alienation from one’s own experience that is directly related to one’s social context and position as marginalized or excluded within mainstream culture. Oppression works through both guilt and shame. But, as we will see, shame is more deeply seated in subjectivity itself.

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In “Shame and the Narcissistic Personality,” clinical psychologist Helen Block Lewis explicitly links women’s depression and shame: “an empirical study of guilt and conscience in the major depressive disorders suggests that ‘negative self-esteem’ rather than guilt ‘forms the cornerstone’ in depressed patients of all types. Shame may be understood as the affective-cognitive state that accompanies ‘low self-esteem.’” She describes one study in which “depressed women undergraduates were more likely to blame their characters for bad events than they were to blame specific behaviors. (If anything, blame for behaviors was negatively correlated with depression.) If we equate blame of self for its character with shame and blame for behaviors with guilt, we may glimpse a convergence of evidence from behavioral and psychoanalytic sources suggesting the role of shame in depression” (Lewis 1987, 105). It is important to note that Lewis finds blame, even self-blame, negatively correlated with depression. To blame oneself is already to begin to articulate shame as guilt. And, this articulation is a form of sublimation that can become a means for directing internalized negative affects outward once that blame is placed with social institutions instead of on individuals. Insofar as shame is further from sublimation than guilt, it is not only more effective in the colonization of psychic space, but also more often linked with depression as the split between words and affects. Depressed women feel flawed or defective in their very being. Lewis explains that as long as mainstream views of women as less rational or otherwise lacking continue to be valued or internalized by women themselves, then shame and humiliation are turned inward rather than outward as anger or rage at oppressive stereotypes and are thereby transformed into depression: “that women are more prone to shame than men is a long-standing and widespread observation. . . . Two factors join in fostering women’s greater shame-proneness.” First, loving identifications are central to the development of their personalities and the loss of love threatens their sense of self and causes shame. “Second, the widespread exclusion of women from positions of power in work fosters a culturally sanctioned adjustment in women’s position of economic dependency and devotion to family” (1981, 194). Lewis concludes “Women patients suffer a special penalty for their exclusion from and admiration of the aggressive arena. It is particularly the fate of women in our society to be reared into the expectation that they will live in an arena of gentleness to others and then to be shamed and shame themselves for these very qualities” (1976, 312). Teresa Brennan gives a more psychoanalytic explanation of similar phenomena when she discusses the lack of directed attention that women receive

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from others and the resulting turn inward that leads to passivity (1992). Jennifer Hansen reaches similar conclusions when she discusses both the inward turn of aggression and the social stereotypes that lead to depression (1999). We can conclude, then, that shame and the depression that result from it are social pathologies that work to colonize psychic space and undermine women’s sense of themselves as agents in the world. Given that several psychologists postulate that shame is the flip side of interest, then it is reasonable to assume that insofar as depression is characterized by loss of interest in the world and others, sustained experiences of shame will lead to depression (see Tomkins 1995, 104). This loss of interest has significant implications for subjectivity if we take seriously the phenomenologists’ insistence on the role of interest or what they variously call intentionality (Husserl) or care (Heidegger) in consciousness and subjectivity. As interest in the world withdraws, the structure of subjectivity itself is undermined. The directionality of consciousness as the consciousness of something always directed at the world and others withdraws into catatonia. The care that Heidegger describes as conscious interest in the world inherent in dasein can become disinterested or decathected such that engagement with the world is cut off. The subject experiences itself as a damaged, defective, or flawed being who deserves to be ostracized from the social. Those excluded or abjected by dominant values are made to feel ashamed, not about something that they have done, but about who they are. Shame is directed at the very being of the marginalized subject. In fact, shame is at odds with guilt insofar as it undermines the ability to act and to desire as a responsible agent. Stuck at the level of being, the shamed subject is cut off from the realm of meaning that engenders human agency and social legitimization. Shame undermines one’s sense of agency and renders the shamed person passive. As I have argued elsewhere, oppression operates through an attack on subjectivity, particularly on the sense of agency inherent in subjectivity (see Oliver 2001). Several psychologists postulate that shame is a “keystone affect” in identity formation insofar as it appears very early in infancy before any notion of prohibition (see Basch 1976, 765–766). Shame appears before infants have any sense of the distinction between right and wrong, between being and doing. As a result, shame is associated with the infant’s being. Shame is constitutive of identity not only because it attaches to one’s being or self but also because it is the result of the interruption of pleasure or interest in relation to another or others. Shame is not originally the result of doing something that is prohibited, but rather

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the result of being unable to maintain social relations. Shame is a response to a break in effective contact with another that aims toward reconnection and communication (see Basch 1976, 765–766). It is the underside of communication and communion with others. While classical melancholy is the result of losing a loved other that produces feelings of guilt in the self for aggressive or hostile thoughts toward that other, social melancholy is the result of losing a lovable self that produces feelings of shame in the face of aggressive or hostile thoughts from others. Shame affects one’s sense of self-identity as lovable and therefore as an active agent who inhabits the realm of meaning as one capable of making meaning. Recurring experiences of shame are constitutive of self-identity insofar as they undermine the individual’s sense of him or herself as capable as well as lovable, which in turn undermines the individual’s sense of her own agency and legitimization. Shame results from a break in communion with others that is triggered by others’ or society’s negative response to the shamed individual. Negative responses directed at an individual in response to what he or she is rather than or in addition to his or her actions accumulate to form a sense of the self as defective or bad and therefore unlovable (psychologist Donald Nathanson links shame directly to the constitution of a sense of self, particularly a sense of self as lovable; 1987, 27). The relation between shame and subjectivity can be further discerned in a closer examination of the difference between shame and guilt. In Femininity and Domination, philosopher Sandra Bartky incisively describes the difference between shame and guilt: “Shame, then, involves apprehension of oneself as a lesser creature. Guilt, by contrast, refers not to the subject’s nature but to her actions. . . . Shame is called forth by the apprehension of some serious flaw in the self, guilt by the consciousness that one has committed a transgression” (Bartky 1990, 84). Bartky concludes that shame undermines one’s trust in one’s self and in that regard is deeper than feelings of guilt over a specific act. In more recent analysis of shame, literary critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick corroborates the distinction between shame and guilt as one between who one is and what one does: “What most readily distinguishes shame from guilt is that shame attaches to and sharpens the sense of what one is, while guilt attaches to what one does” (2002). Shame is attached to being, while guilt is attached to doing; and as we will see, mainstream presumptions about identity are attached to the distinction between being and doing. While one is held morally responsible for what one does, and can therefore be praised or blamed, found innocent or guilty, shame is related less to morality than to inferiority. If guilt is associated with evil

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in a moral sense, then shame is associated with bad in the sense of inferiority. Shame brings with it the sense of being defective or flawed. If “guilt is about moral transgression; shame is about inferiority” (Tomkins 1995, 85; cf. Bartky 1990 and Miller 1985). Shame is related to feelings of inferiority and defect associated with self-identity while guilt is associated with action and conscience. We could say that shame is constitutive of self-consciousness while guilt is constitutive of conscience. In this sense, shame is prior to guilt and appears before the infant has a sense of right and wrong. We could say that shame attacks subjectivity or the ego-super-ego structure itself while guilt is the operation of the super-ego. Shame attacks the subject’s very being while guilt resides in the realm of meaning. Of course, those excluded and oppressed are likely to experience both shame and guilt, bad consciousness and guilty conscience over it. Shame itself can produce feelings of guilt; but this guilt is more existential or ontological than the guilt discussed by Freud for example in his account of the melancholic. Psychologists from Freud to Kolhberg have postulated that conscience is a later stage of moral development than shame. Freud suggests that guilt is an unconscious by-product of the resolution of the oedipal conflict (Freud 1923, 52). And both Freud and Kohlberg maintain that girls and women have a lesser-developed sense of guilt and therefore a lesser-developed moral sense. Helen Block Lewis argues that sexism in psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and psychology accounts for why theorists have concentrated on guilt rather than shame; she claims that Freud theorized guilt rather than shame because he “originally developed the superego concept with men in mind” (1976, 183; cf. 301). If girls are ashamed, for Freud it is the result of their sense of their “inferior” genitals. Because shame is more basic than guilt and the Oedipus complex, however, it is more directly related to subject formation and identity construction. This explains why shame is constitutive of identity and subjectivity in a way that guilt is not. Although on the Freudian model, guilt can be unconscious and is a by-product of the oedipal complex central to melancholic ego formation, it remains associated with action rather than being. Even its role in ego formation and in the conflict between super-ego and ego, it is related to particular actions or desires. Shame, on the other hand, is not the result of any action or desire on the part of the subject, but rather it is aimed at subjectivity and its concomitant sense of agency. Helen Block Lewis identifies this doubleness with a negative type of self-consciousness that results from shame: “Shame, however, involves more self-consciousness and more self-imaging than guilt. The experience of shame is directly about the self, which is the focus of a

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negative evaluation. In guilt, it is the thing done or undone that is the direct focus of negative evaluation. We say ‘I am ashamed of myself’ and “I am guilt of having done (or not done) something.’ Because the self is the focus of awareness in shame, ‘identity’ imagery is usually evoked. At the same time that this identity imagery is registering as one’s own experience, there is also vivid imagery of the self in the other’s eyes. This creates a ‘doubleness of experience’ which is characteristic of shame” (1987, 107). Shame, like the Freudian notion of guilt, splits the subject into harsh judging super-ego—the eyes-of-the-other— and shameful ego. Unlike the Freudian notion of guilt, however, the double experience of shame is not the result of a desired or imagined action on the part of the subject. Rather, shame is the result of internalizing the contempt of others, which becomes contempt toward the self. The shame of sexual difference is the result of internalizing a cruel sexist super-ego of mainstream patriarchal culture, the culture that lead Freud to suggest that women are ashamed of their inferior sex organs and suffer from penis envy. In an insightful study of shame and trauma in the writing of Toni Morrison, J. Brooks Bouson also concludes that shame is related to inferiority: “Shame sufferers feel in some profound way inferior to others—they perceive themselves as deeply flawed and defective or as bad individuals or as failures—and this internalized shame script grows out of early shaming interactions with parents or significant others” (2000, 10). Those excluded and abjected within mainstream culture are not only shamed but also become the bearers of shame for the entire culture. As Bouson argues “In a white male American culture that is ‘shame phobic’—for it places value on ‘achievement, competition, power, and dominance’—African Americans not only have been viewed as objects of contempt, they also have served as containers for white shame. Because white Americans have historically projected their own shame onto blacks, African Americans have been forced to carry a crippling heavy burden of shame; their own shame and the projected shame of white America” (2000, 15). I would extend Bouson’s claims to women and other marginalized and abjected groups who are not only made ashamed of their very being but also forced to carry the shame of white men. For example, feminists have done important research on the emotional division of labor that assigns women, especially mothers, the lioness’s share of affective burden so that men are free of it (cf. Brennan 1992; Bartky 1990; Hansen 1999). Shame is one of the heaviest parts of that affective burden. We could say that unlike guilt, shame is a product of one’s social context or exclusion from that context. Shame is the result of one’s sub-

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ject position insofar as it intimately affects one’s subjectivity. While traditional psychoanalytic theory has been instructive in formulating a theory of subjectivity, it has neglected subject position and social context and thereby too often sacrificed social, political, and historical relevance. But subjects, subjectivity, and agency always exist only in political and social contexts that affects them at the foundation of their constitution. One’s social position and history profoundly influence one’s very sense of oneself as an active agent in the world. Yet, the contradictions and inconsistencies in historical and social circumstances guarantee that we are never completely determined by our subject position. It is possible to develop a sense of agency in spite of, or in resistance to, an oppressive social situation. Our experience of ourselves as subjects is maintained in what I have called the tension between our subject positions and our subjectivity (see Oliver 2001 and 2004). In oppressive cultures that abject, exclude, or marginalize certain types of bodies, sublimation and idealization can become the privilege of dominant groups. This is because sublimation always and only takes place in relation to others and in relation to the Other that is the meaning into which each individual is born. If these others or available meanings abject certain individuals based on race, sex, or sexuality, then the ability to sublimate is undermined. The abjected individual is put in the perverse position of sublimating or assimilating the very meanings that abject him and construct him as unable to sublimate. Indeed, by undermining the ability to sublimate bodily affects into signification, oppression leads to depression. This type of attack against the very self-image and sense of subjective agency that is fueled by negative self-images in popular, legal, and medical discourses results in the colonization of psychic space and lack of capacities for sublimation and idealization inherent in meaning-making. At stake in the depression of oppression and the silencing of the affects of oppression is the ability to sublimate, which is to say the ability to translate bodily drives and their affective representations into words or other forms of signification. Oppression undermines the ability of those othered to sublimate; and sublimation is the origin and operator of all that we know as human. Sublimation is what makes us linguistic beings. The inability to sublimate leads to depression and silence. But again in order to explain the relationship between sublimation, subjectivity, and oppression we need a more social theory of sublimation than traditional psychoanalysis provides. As we have seen, social melancholy is associated with the loss or denial of lovable self-images or cultural meanings, which is replaced within oppressive cultures by abject and shameful images or cultural

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meanings. And, as many of the chapters in this volume demonstrate, legal, medical, and popular discourse continue to present images of sick women and toxic mothers who are blamed for everything from school violence to their children’s health problems (see Shivas and Charles, Buydens, Isgro, and Meagher in this volume). This lack of positive images undermines idealization by undermining the move from the body or real to the ideal realm necessary for signification. Moreover, the way in which oppression operates by denying the ability for meaning-making to those othered can lead to a type of double alienation insofar as there is little social space available within which those othered can make their own meanings, that is to say sublimate. Stuck in the body, without access to social space or signification within which to transfer or sublimate internalized abjection and shame, marginalized or oppressed people are left with somatic symptoms and emotional pain. Idealization is necessary for sublimation and robust psychic life: It is necessary for the transfer of drives and affects into signification; it is necessary to turn bodily symptoms into words or works of art. Idealization is a necessary prerequisite for sublimation. Idealization involves both the ability to form ideas or mental images and concepts as separate from perceptual experience and the ability to idealize someone or something as valued or valuable. Both of these aspects of idealization require imagination and yet also nourish and sustain it. Imagination, then, is definitive of subjectivity and a sense of agency. Through the agency of imagination affects are transferred into symbols and sublimation becomes possible. This conception of the relationship between idealization and sublimation links them both to subject or ego formation, especially to one’s sense of agency, autonomy, and belonging. Through the operations of idealization and then sublimation, the individual is authorized by the social and enters the realm of meaning as a meaning-maker, as an agent. She enters the realm of meaning as an individual insofar as she sublimates her bodily drives and affects into signification; but insofar as she does so through pre-existing forms of signification and meaning, she also belongs to a community of meaning and to a community of meaning-makers. Through idealizing social meaning and then identifying with it, the subject can make meaning her own in order to sublimate her bodily drives and affects. Idealization is necessary for sublimation and therefore for signification. Meaning itself requires both idealization in the sense of the ability to form ideas or concepts and idealization in the sense of valuing something outside of oneself. We must value meaning in order to enter the world of meaning. Yet, as we have seen, oppression works to exclude some individuals or groups from the world of meaning through the

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operation of a cruel or punishing super-ego that turns idealization into notions of superiority and inferiority and corrupts the process of sublimation and undermine access to meaning. We need a balance between signification and affect such that the processes of sublimation and idealization do not tip to either hysterical acting out without the ability to symbolize on the one hand or empty and impossible ideals on the other. If women and other marginalized or oppressed peoples are denied the social space in which to discharge or articulate affects, especially the negative affects of oppression, then it could be the case that those othered are also denied the social support for sublimation of drives and their affective representations, especially aggressive drives. For example, anger as a normal response to oppression and repression becomes pathologized. Those who feel this anger are themselves blamed and can come to blame themselves or each other for aggressive or hostile emotions that are pathologized within mainstream culture. They are expected to carry this affect without expressing it. Indeed, they are expected to carry the affective burdens of the culture, particularly the shame of the culture. Unwanted affects are projected onto those othered in order to shore up the privilege of the rational autonomous subject. Feminists have argued that women and especially mothers bear the affective or emotional burdens for men and children in an unequal affective division of labor. As Sandra Bartky puts it, women feed egos and tend emotional wounds. Like Bartky, Teresa Brennan describes this emotional labor as feeding the masculine ego and self-esteem by directing attention toward it and away from oneself (Brennan 1992; Bartky 1990). Jennifer Hansen presents a similar argument in her study of melancholia and gender when she argues that women are less able to sublimate than men because women are occupied with the labor of keeping the “species going,” which allows men to do more creative things (1999, 17). And, Gayatri Spivak claims that the civilizing mission rests on the foreclosure of affects, which are then projected onto the oppressed who are expected to carry the affective burden for dominant culture (Spivak 1999). This denial of unwanted affects is not so much a projection as an injection of affects into those othered within dominant society. As we know, philosophers have long associated lack of control over emotions with a lack of reason, and lack of reason with a lack of humanity. Affects are associated with the irrational and barbaric in a complicated movement through which they are transferred onto the abjected other and at once become signs or symptoms of that abjection. They are further disavowed by the foreclosure of their articulation by those who are forced to carry them. Even mainstream culture’s rage over difference, which should be met with anger by those

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whose difference is abjected, is transferred to those othered who are forced to carry it. Their resistance, then, is seen as a symptom of their irrational monstrous rage, while the domination, oppression and abuse against which it was directed (perhaps misdirected) are normalized and naturalized as a rational self-defense against monstrous evil or disease in order to maintain proper order. Sublimation and idealization become the privilege of domination. Sublimation is the hallmark of subjectivity. Indeed, it is at the origin of, and necessary for, the continuation of humanity. In some sense, sublimation is what defines our humanity. Human beings have the ability to sublimate aggressive animal drives into signification—from rap music to symphonies, from subway art to museum art, from street poetry to academic literature and philosophy. But the ability to sublimate has everything to do with social context, support, and subject position. In order to account for oppression’s effect on the ability to sublimate and idealize we need to go beyond traditional psychoanalytic notions of sublimation, which following Freud, are usually based on the relationship between an individual’s ability to redirect aggressive drives into socially acceptable forms of expression such as art and intellectual pursuits. We need to develop a social theory of sublimation that interrogates what counts as socially acceptable and for whom. If sublimation is the movement of drives into socially sanctioned forms of signification, then it has everything to do with social sanctions and prohibitions. Although sublimation is a central concept for Freud, it remains underdeveloped in his writings (Freud supposedly burned his only paper on sublimation thus subjecting it to literal sublimation by fire). Freud limits his discussion of sublimation to sexual drives as they are redirected into art and intellectual activities; he rarely considers any other possible drives in relation to sublimation. Moreover, the sexual drives that Freud considers are the products of male libido, which for him is the only kind of libido. Even more troublesome for a social theory of sublimation is that Freud does not consider sublimation constitutive of the subject, but considers it only as it concerns the object or aim of the sex drive. In his 1914 “On Narcissism,” Freud makes it clear that sublimation is about the object and not the subject’s constitution per se: “Sublimation is a process that concerns object-libido and consists in the instinct’s directing itself towards an aim other than, and remote from, sexual satisfaction . . .” (1914, 94). Freud does not consider sublimation constitutive of the ego because it is simply a matter of redirecting sex drives toward another object and therefore is primarily about objects as the aims of drives.

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Contra Freud, I would argue that sublimation is not only constitutive of identity, but also it is the lynchpin of subjectivity and agency. We could say that sublimation in the constitution of subjectivity is analogous to sublimation in chemistry, which is the chemical action or process of subliming or converting a solid substance by means of heat into a vapor that resolidifies upon cooling. Analogously, the process of sublimation transforms bodily drives and affects that seem “solid” and intractable into a “dynamic vapor” so to speak that liberates the drives and affects from the realm of being or the body and discharges them into the realm of meaning. We become beings who mean by sublimating our bodily drives and affects. Sublimation, then, is necessary for both subjectivity or individuality and for community or sociality. This is because sublimation makes idealization possible; and without idealization we can neither conceptualize our experience nor set goals or ideals for ourselves. Moreover, without the ability to idealize, we cannot imagine our situation otherwise, which also is to say that without idealization we cannot resist domination. Sublimation and idealization are necessary not only for psychic life but also for transformative and restorative resistance to oppression. They are the cornerstones of our mental life, yet they have their source in bodies, bodies interacting with each other. Sublimation is possible through the social relationality of bodies. Yet, when the articulation of bodily drives and affects into signification is undermined or foreclosed as a result of the unavailability of socially acceptable forms of signification, sublimation and idealization become monumental undertakings. As we have seen, the lack of positive images of girls, women and mothers results in depression as a consequence of oppression. Images of sick women and toxic mothers not only undermine the ability of women and mothers to sublimate their drives and affects and thereby create meaning for their lives. These images also foster a blame the victim discourse that leads to shame that reinforces this attack against subjectivity and agency. We need a social theory of depression and melancholy that identifies its social causes rather than covering up those causes through a discourse of individual pathology. In sum, the meaning of language is dependent upon the processes of sublimation of bodily drives and their affective representatives into socially acceptable forms of signification. When bodily needs and affects become cut off from signification, the result is depression. In its most severe forms, depression is the inability to sublimate, or more generally the loss of Eros—the ability to connect with others. At the extreme, the depressive becomes cut off from others and the world around her and enters a catatonic state. This catatonia is not just the result of individual pathology but also the result of social melancholy

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caused by the devaluation of women and their emotional and physical labor. In a sense, the depressive has given up on words and on society because they have given up on her. This kind of depression, and other pathologies associated with people who are not considered fully rational social participants, should be considered social diseases rather than individual pathologies. Analyzing women’s and mothers’ depression as a social condition rather than as individual pathology can serve as an antidote to blame the victim discourses that continue to present us with images of sick women and toxic mothers. If depression is reaching epidemic proportions, especially among young women and mothers, then rather than pathologize girls, women, or mothers, we need to examine the pathology of our culture.

Works Cited Barkley, R. A. et al. 1992. Adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 20(3): 263–288. Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. Femininity and Domination. New York: Routledge. Basch, Michael Franz. 1976. The Concept of Affect: A Re-Examination. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 24: 759–777. Borossa, Julia. 2001. Hysteria. New York: Totem Books. Bouson, J. Brooks. 2000. Quiet as its Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison. Albany: State University of New York Press. Brennan, Teresa. 1992. The Interpretation of the Flesh. New York: Routledge. Broucek. 1982. Shame and Its Relationship to Early Narcissistic Developments. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 63: 369–378. Doane, Mary Ann. 1987. The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Faraone S. V., and J. Beiderman. 1997. Do Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Major Depression Share Familial Risk Factors. Journal of Nervous Mental Disorders 185(9): 533–541. Fischer, Lucy. 1996. Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Freud, Sigmund. 1914. On Narcissism: An Introduction. In The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition, ed. James Strachey, vol. 14, 94. London: Hogarth Press, 1955. ——— . 1917. Mourning and Melancholia. In The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay, 584–588. New York: Norton, 1989. ——— . 1923. The Ego and the Id. In The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition, ed. James Strachey, vol. 19, 12–66. London: Hogarth Press, 1955.

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Gilman, Sander et al. 1993. Hysteria Beyond Freud. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hansen. Jennifer. 1999. Remembering the Self: Gender, Melancholia and Philosophical Method. PhD Diss, State University of New York at Stony Brook. Kaplan, E. Ann. 1992. Motherhood and Representation. New York: Routledge. Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror. Trans. Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. ——— . 1989. Black Sun: Depression and Melancholy. Trans. Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. ——— . 1998. The Portable Kristeva, ed. Kelly Oliver. New York: Columbia University Press. Kuhne, M. et al. 1997. Impact of Comorbid Oppositional or Conduct Problems on Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Journal of American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry 36(12): 1715–1725. Lewis, Helen Block. 1987. Shame and the Narcissistic Personality. In The Many Faces of Shame, ed. Nathanson, 93–132. New York: Guilford Press. ——— . 1986. The role of shame in depression. In Depression in Young People, eds. M. Rutter et al. New York: Guilford Press. ——— . 1981. Freud and Modern Psychology: The Emotional Basis of Mental Illness. New York: Plenum. ——— . 1976. Psychic War in Men and Women. New York: New York University Press. Matlock, Jann. 1993. Scenes of Seduction: Prostitution, Hysteria and Reading Difference in Nineteenth Century France. New York: Columbia University Press. Miller, Susan. 1985. The Shame Experience. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press. Mitchell, Juliet. 2001. Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria. New York: Basic Books. Nathanson, Donald, ed. 1987. The Many Faces of Shame. New York: Guilford Press. Oliver, Kelly. 1995. Reading Kristeva: Unraveling the Double-bind. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ——— . 1997. Family Values: Subjects Between Nature and Culture. New York: Routledge. ——— . 2001. Witnessing: Beyond Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. ——— . 2004. The Colonization of Psychic Space: A Psychoanalytic Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Oliver, Kelly and Benigno Trigo. 2002. Noir Anxiety. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Pelcovitz, D. et al. 1998. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Family Functioning in Adolescent Cancer. Journal of Traumatic Stress 11(2): 205–221.

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Perry, Bruce. 1999. Post-traumatic Stress Disorders in Children and Adolescents. Current Opinions in Pediatrics 11:4, August. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 2002. Shame and Performativity: Henry James’s New York Edition Prefaces. http://www.duke.edu/~sedgwic/WRITING/PREFACES.htm. Showalter, Elaine. 1998. Hystories. New York: Columbia University Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tomkins, Silvan. 1995. Exploring Affect, ed. E. Virginia Demos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

PART

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Subjects of Violence

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CHAPTER

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Predators and Protectors: The Rhetoric of School Violence SHARON M. MEAGHER

Prior to the rash of suburban school shootings in the late 1990s, school violence was thought to be a problem confined to urban schools, and as such, not a problem for general public concern. In the popular American moral imagination, cities have always been the site of evil and moral corruption, and urban school violence has long been accepted as inevitable. For years students at public urban schools have been subjected to metal detectors and bag searches upon entering school each morning. These students are overwhelmingly lower class and/or students of color. It is rationalized that they need to be protected from themselves. Urban school policies have long justified treating all students as if they are violent criminals, even when few students are actually predators and many more are likely to suffer violence outside of school—at the hands of adults—than inside school. This logic of justification is what Sarah Lucia Hoagland calls a predator/protector logic, a logic she identifies with colonists’ paternalistic rationalization of their activities. Colonizers presumed that “barbarians” wanted and needed protection and that they needed to be protected from their own violence and incompetence. Such logic in turn justified colonizers’ predatory conquests. The protectors regularly became predators when any natives of a colonized land failed to act as passive weaklings in need of protection. “For their own good,” violence was used to put them in their place (Hoagland 1988, 177). John Devine’s ethnography of violence in inner city New York public high schools reveals the high degree to which violence has become normalized in urban schools. Urban schools have become paramilitary zones, with students regularly subjected to metal detectors, high-tech surveillance equipment, and other sorts of searches. Guards and other security personnel often match teachers in numbers. But

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rather than minimize violence, the guards’ presence seems to reward it. A boys’ dean told Devine, “If I have a rape in the school one year, I’ll get two extra security guards next year” (Devine 1996, 76). Not surprisingly (but still disturbingly), Devine’s ethnography further reveals that the guards are themselves sexual predators (89). To note just one of Devine’s examples: “One African American girl who had participated in our program told me that she transferred out of the school . . . because one of the guards had made suggestive remarks as he moved the scanner in the vicinity of her legs” (27). What a vivid example of a “protector” acting as a predator. Studies reveal that the American public takes violent (and what has become correlative) highly policed urban schools as normal (Devine 1996, 42). But popular American perceptions of school violence were challenged by the emergence of white, middle-class, suburban male perpetrators in Kentucky, Arkansas, Colorado, Oregon, and elsewhere. It is very difficult for our moral imaginations to grasp the fact that those young men, imagined as the future protectors of women and children, are also our predators. So rather than blaming the perpetrators, they are portrayed as victims of a society in moral decline, a society produced by the civil rights, the feminist, and the gay liberation movements. Rather than needing protection from our so-called protectors, it then appears that we need protection from ourselves. Since the Columbine High School shooting in May 1999, the media coverage about school violence increased dramatically and education policy makers and leaders have scrambled to respond to this seeming crisis. More than 125 books have been published on school violence since Columbine; many of them focus on the “rampage” killings that have occurred in suburban schools. Books, grant-funded studies, and government analyses of school violence continue apace, despite the statistical evidence that overall schools are safer than they have been and that youths are much more likely to suffer violence in their homes and on urban streets (see, e.g., North Carolina Center, 2001). The first shootings to gain widespread, sustained media attention were those of Jonesboro, Arkansas, in 1997 and Springfield, Oregon, in 1998. In those cases, the shooters usually were described as crazy loners. While the fact that the shooters were white, middle-class, and suburban propelled these incidents into the national limelight, the fact that the shooters were male garnered scant recognition. We should not be surprised that the gender of the killers has been ignored by all but a few (see Perlstein 1988; Mills 2001). As many feminists have argued convincingly, white males are often viewed (at least by themselves) as not having identities. Dominant groups “need not notice

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their own group being at all; they occupy an unmarked, neutral, apparently universal position” (Young 1990, 123). White men define themselves as the norm; all Others are measured against them. “Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being” (Beauvoir 1952, xvii). If humanity is male and someone commits inhuman violence, then logically it makes sense to think of them as monsters or Others and not real men. In the case of Kip Kinkel, the Springfield, Oregon shooter, the local newspaper accounts repeatedly contrast his cowardly, unmanly act of shooting with that of the manly act of heroism of Jake Ryker. One such account reports that Ryker’s heroism in ultimately restraining Kinkel was motivated by his witnessing of Kinkel shooting Ryker’s girlfriend, Jennifer Alldredge, in the chest and neck. That shocked and enraged Ryker, a well-built, outgoing wrestler. He stood up. The gunman aimed at Ryker, pulled the trigger and sent a round clean through his right lung. A second later, the suspect’s rifle ran out of rounds. . . . So Ryker made his move. . . . “The junior attributed his confidence and quick thinking to his familiarity with firearms and the training he’d received as a Boy Scout and as a wrestler,” Meyer said. (Register Guard 1998b)

Jake Ryker and Jennifer Alldredge recently married, and the story of his heroism was repeated in the write-up of their wedding. It was noted that prior to the shooting, they were happy teens who held hands all through the film Titanic, a film that romanticizes the masculine protector role. Since the shooting, they have remained true to their roles of protector/protected. Jen stood by Jake while he served three years in the Marines; she turned down a job opportunity on the East coast to stay with Jake (Cooper 2002). Kip Kinkel is dismissed as crazy, obsessed with guns and unable to control his own desires, while Jake is cast in the role of the rational male who is appropriately and legitimately violent, that is, in the service of controlling Others who are out of control. Jake and the other named heroes quickly pick up on the rhetoric in which their actions were first described, and in subsequent interviews repeat the same language. In a culture that values masculinity, violence is celebrated when used properly, that is, in the service of protection, without any acknowledgment that protection and predation are intimately linked to one another. Hoagland demonstrates that both the logic of protection and the logic of predation are essentially the same. Protectors can become predators if those whom they are protecting no longer act in manners that

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“deserve” protection. In such cases they rationalize their predatory ways as justifiable and even necessary for the good of those they claim to protect. And protectors cannot exist without the threat of predators; predators can become protectors and protectors can become predators (Hoagland 1988, 177). Hoagland argues that predator/protector logic is at work in gendered relations. Women require the protection of men because they are subject to attack by men. Women who fail to act sufficiently feminine are subject to further violence, since they are deemed not worthy of protection. Predator/protector logic emerges from an ideology of male dominance and undermines women’s agency and integrity (Hoagland 1988, 175–176). Often the challenges to the well-being of all girls, as well as to boys “who do not fit in” are made in what appears to be feminist language of protecting and/or empowering children, but actually works in the service of patriarchy. Assymmetrically gendered power relations are effaced. The gender dynamic is hidden because the gendered and raced identities of both the perpetrators and their victims have remained hidden. While a local headline for the Springfield, Oregon, shooting read, “Bullets didn’t discriminate among shooting victims,” the article opened as follows: “The bullets did not discriminate. The 23 students who were wounded in the shooting represented a wide range of campus life: athletes, straight-A students, kids who didn’t care much about school, poets, churchgoers” (Register Guard 1998a). Students were not identified by gender or race, the usual targets of discrimination. The lone black youth who was killed at Columbine, Isaiah Shoels, was widely reported by the media as being targeted because he was an athlete, despite the fact that the gunmen used racial epithets and he reportedly complained that he had been threatened by the killers prior to their rampage (Washington 1999). The Columbine victim who has received by far the most media attention is Cassie Bernal, the young woman who has been held up as a Christian martyr, as witnesseses reported that she professed her faith in Christ before being shot. Her Christian faith, rather than her gender, has been the focus of the media stories, even after the witnesses’ stories were called into question. In fact, the Christian Right has capitalized on these tragic events as a way to garner support for their reactionary moral agenda. A small cottage industry developed around both Cassie Bernal and Rachel Scott as supposed Christian martyrs at Columbine (Bernal 1999; Scott et al. 2000; Nimmi et al. 2001; Johnson 2002). If their gender is highlighted, it is to note the ways in which the teenage girls were tempted by the loose morals of their culture only to find a path to Christ before their deaths. Although both later detective reports and an investigative analy-

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sis reveal that there is little or no evidence that these young women were targeted specifically or because of their faith (Watson 2002), the books continue to sell, spurring Rachel Scott’s father to publish yet another book noting the success of the movement (Scott et al. 2002). Alan Keyes, former U.N. Ambassador, conservative Republican candidate in the 2000 presidential primary elections and the founder of “The Declaration Foundation” and another nonprofit organization called “Renew America,” repeatedly capitalizes on fears about school violence to make his claims about the moral decline of society. Keyes argues that school shootings are not caused by guns, but rather by the same moral decline that allows abortion. Keyes is not the only conservative who has connected abortion rights, and even feminist views more generally, to school violence (Keyes 1999, 2000). Radio host and author Bob Larson argues that the school shootings are a sign that women should stay home as much as possible with their children, and that triumph has risen from tragedy, as children turn toward Christ and away from such monstrous evil (Larson 1999, 167, 172). In response to an analysis of the shooters as evil monsters, public policy makers responded by instituting beefed up security measures similar to those found in urban schools. Women and children are to be protected from themselves, from their own evil thoughts and deeds, and from the harm caused by progressive political and social movements. It is little wonder, then, that there is tremendous demand for school security policies that trample on students’ claims to privacy and due process (Harvard Advancement and Civil Rights Project 2000). Many of the policies erected in the war against school violence focus on legal and punitive measures, including the profiling of unconventional students. A federally issued guidebook, “Early Warning, Timely Response,” for example, warns administrators to look for students who display the following symptoms: • • • • • • • •

Social withdrawal; Excessive feelings of isolation and being alone; Excessive feelings of rejection; Having been a victim of violence; Feelings of being picked on and persecuted; Low school interest and poor academic performance; Expression of violence in writings and drawings; Uncontrolled anger (Trump 1999)

Administrators are advised to look through the notebooks and belongings of students who fit these descriptions, yet these so-called symptoms

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are highly subjective and apply to most all teens. These policies take proactive measures that subject students of difference, especially students of color and anyone suspected of being non-Christian (e.g., “freaks,” “Goths,” gays and lesbians), to even higher levels of scrutiny—despite the fact that these students are more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of violence. While girls are perhaps not under greater than usual surveillance in their daily school lives, a feminist politics that would support their work is. Some of the harsher policies that claim zero tolerance have proved both ineffective and politically unpopular in suburban settings (see, for example, Cauchon 1999; McAndrews 2001). Many studies, including a major one done by Harvard University’s Civil Rights project, show that minority members are disproportionately affected by zero tolerance policies. Students of color and white girls are more likely to be disciplined for infractions that require interpretation, such as “disrespect” (2000). The continued rise of lethal suburban school violence, despite the increased surveillance and discipline to which students were subjected, led to studies determined to find the social causes of school violence. After Columbine, school violence was perceived as something of an epidemic, and the social causes needed to be identified. One of the most common theories is that school violence is caused by the breakdown of the family. There is little evidence, however, to support the thesis that the shooters were victims of “broken families;” most are in fact the product of two-parent households. But the shooters are often portrayed as emasculated in some way, and that is often seen as the result of having a mother who is too independent and a father who is absent. While one might then draw the conclusion that both mothers and fathers are to blame, mothers bear the brunt of it. In the video, Sounding the Alarm, part of the series “School Crime: How to Fight it,” an instructional video used in training teachers and public school administrators, the opening montage features blaring music, photos of seriously injured and/or armed kids, and a voiceover reading headlines about kids killing other kids and the astronomical rise of juvenile delinquency. The narrator begins, “The rising tide of violence that has swept through the nation has infected our schools. Like a fatal disease without a cure, the casualties have continued to rise.” He then asks viewers to think back when they were in school, and paints an idyllic, “Leave it to Beaver” picture of superhero lunchboxes and number two pencils. You might have felt butterflies on the first day, he notes, but that is nothing compared to the nerves that students feel today, who he claims are asking themselves the following questions: “are they going to make it to school unharmed? Is there going to be gang warfare in the

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halls? Is anyone they know that day going to get shot or stabbed?” The narrator has indeed sounded the alarm, declaring a war on our children. Later in the video, an officer from the San Antonio School District police department is quoted as follows: “Nowadays the serious things are: bringing weapons to school, getting into fights where weapons are involved, children who are having children. Many schools throughout Texas, probably the United States, have maternity wards on campus. . . .” In his laundry list of school problems, teen pregnancy seems to be equated with school violence. But his discourse does not stop there. While not elaborating on the weapons or harm issues, the officer continues on about teen pregnancy, focusing on the lives of teen mothers while ignoring the teen fathers entirely. The next two persons interviewed discuss the “breakdown of the family,” which is then cited as a primary cause of school violence, noting that some think that violent media such as films and video games might also play a role. Further amplification of this line of reasoning is provided in the second video in this series, Campus Combat Zones, in which another school-based police officer explains: “I think the school environment is basically the same. What’s different is the baggage kids are bringing into school. Our kids are a lot different because of societal changes. Broken families, we’ve all heard about that. Broken families, violence in the home. . . .” Once again, changed family status is named as equivalent to violence, or as a kind of violence, and finally as even the cause of violence. Such rhetoric demonstrates the continuing force of the language of the Moynihan Report that saw female-headed households as a symptom of the “culture of poverty” (1965; see also Introduction to this volume). The officer explains the popularity of gangs and gang violence as follows: “There’s nobody at home, there’s nobody in the house, nobody to take care of them. They are looking for group identity, a sense of belonging—they find that with their homeboys or girls.” If “nobody” is home, we know that the missing body belongs to women and mothers (Bordo 1993, 5–11). The “Enlightenment ideal of the public realm of politics that attains the universality of a general will leaves difference, particularity, and the body behind in the private realms of family and civil society” (Young 1990, 97). The emasculated shooter has no place in the public domain, and is seen as the product of a dysfunctional family. Women are then blamed for the family’s dysfunctionality, since the white male construction of what Kelly Oliver calls “virile subjectivity” erases the body and the masculine subject’s link to both nature and nurturing. The predator/protector logic that dominates discourse around school violence is grounded in this dualistic thinking that feminists have

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long criticized. Man is linked to rationality and the public realm; woman is linked to bodily desire and the private realm. Carole Pateman shows how modern liberal social contract theories usurp women’s power to give birth by formulating a theoretical story in which men give birth to politics (Pateman 1988, 41). As Oliver notes, the “virile subject is the subject who relates to the world and others as objects of his knowledge and control” (1997, 6; see also 119ff). The virile subject is masculine, and created at the expense of women, because virility demands usurping the power of (pro)creation from women. Following Irigaray, Oliver notes that “woman/mother is the silent support for man’s representation of himself as manly. He is not castrated because she is; he is whole because she is fragmented; he is mind because she is body; he is rational because she is irrational” (127; italics in original). The virile subject is the self-made man who then produces and is identified with culture. As Oliver skillfully argues, the virile subject gains legitimacy or authority through a sleight of hand in which his authority is based in nature and the natural strength of his body and yet is identified with the culture and the control of nature. Legitimate authority appears, then, to be grounded in “right” rather than “might.” As Oliver argues, “Implicit in the theories of both Locke and Rousseau are the contradictory claims that the authority of political society is based on right and not might, that only in nature does might constitute authority, that civil society supersedes nature, that the father’s authority is based on physical strength, and that political society is based on the father’s authority” (164). Man takes up his civil authority at women’s expense—by relegating her to nature and the body. Such claims are not peculiar to classic liberal political theories, but find sustenance in 20th-century psychoanalytic and phenomenological theories as well (Oliver, 165–194). Dualistic modes of thinking connect masculinity and self-worth to physical power and violence, providing legitimacy to such while at the same time covering up the equation. We see this philosophical and psychoanalytical baggage in both the diagnostic discourses regarding school violence and in the proposed solutions. If legitimate authority resides in the virile subject (as embodied by straight, white men), then who can be blamed for “might,” for “violence,” but those others against whom the virile subject is constructed and measured? Women are blamed for having failed to nurture their children to recognize proper authority, and so their children resort to “might” over “right.” For example, Richard Panzer argues that the restoration of the family is the key to stopping school violence. He explains that it is

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inevitable that some boys will become violent in the absence of anybody in charge: “Can anyone be surprised if some boys take matters into their own hands and enforce their own bloody version of justice?” (2001, 4). Panzer assumes that authority is a male prerogative, and when fathering men have been emasculated or abandoned by women, boys will “naturally” step in and assert their rights. Panzer argues that fatherlessness is the chief cause of violence among boys (52). While one might logically think that absent men should then be held responsible, Panzer blames women for either chasing men away or failing to tame men’s naturally aggressive impulses. Panzer holds a dualistic view of gender roles: “Marriage and the twoparent family are not just luxuries to be lightly dispensed with in a postmodern age. . . . Children learn empathy through relationships with their mothers and respect for authority and self-control largely through relationship with their fathers. . . . Marriage directs male aggression away from destructive and immature goals and towards the positive purpose of defending and protecting mothers and children” (52, my emphasis). According to Panzer’s predator/protector logic, if women abandon men or do not tame them, then they are to blame for men’s aggression and the failure of men to protect them. Panzer relies on a nostalgia for traditional families that, as Kirsten Isgro (this volume) points out, is “fading fast.” Panzer therefore argues that marriage is a key to preventing youth violence, although he acknowledges that marriages could be improved. He anticipates a possible flaw in his solution: “But what about marriages in which there is conflict between the husband and wife, sometimes even physical violence? Well, virtually all marriages have some emotional and verbal conflict. Parents who show that they can work through, resolve, and accept differences show children valuable lessons they can use in their own lives” (53). Note how the violence slips away (and is not gendered); presumably women are to “work through” the violence of the marriage, for the sake of their boys. While we may want to dismiss Panzer’s analysis as that of an anomalous man on his own verbal rampage, we can see the same logic creep into the analysis of Doriane Lambelet Coleman, even though she is sensitive to the changing roles of women. Coleman argues that the key to “fixing Columbine” is to improve child care. She claims that feminism is indirectly to blame for the crisis, in that the changing roles for women have meant that women have left the home. While women may want (and even expect) that men should step in to fill the void, Coleman argues “the fact is that it is women, and women alone, who have been the overseers of childhood, shaping it and protecting it. It is unlikely that

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men will assume anything like the role women have played, and still do, in raising children, no matter how sensible it might be for men to do so” (89). She continues that “there is plenty of blame to spread around,” noting that while men who are absent are blameworthy, “[t]he society and corporate interests that have devalued motherhood, and at the same time encouraged or found a private benefit in the women’s movement as well as in the continuing (relative) absence of fathers in the lives of their children, also are an integral part of the calculus” (89). Coleman underscores that she is not calling for a return of women in the home (which she sees as unrealistic). But she argues that government must step in with better child-care solutions because of women’s selfishness in pursuing their own happiness when they knew that men would not step in to nurture their children. This perceived failure of women has resulted in school policies aimed at protecting and insuring legitimate authority and teaching children personal responsibility and self-esteem. These policies are often carried out by a team of upper-level school administrators in tandem with law enforcement agencies, including newly created school district police forces. Work that was previously seen as the purview of women, especially in the role of school psychologist or social worker, is now being performed by men who lay down the law. Yet the law of the father and its corresponding concept of subjectivity may well be at the heart of the real causes of school violence. The latest causal explanations of white suburban male student violence suggest that the perpetrators are the real victims—victims of bullies. I do not question that many white, male suburban shooters were bullied or victims of violence themselves. It is precisely their denial of access to the “legitimate” authority that was promised them as white males that brings them to reassert that right using might. Time and again, suburban school shooters perceive their violence as a legitimate response to their rage at being rejected by a girl or teased by other boys—an affront made all the more egregious if those boys are students of color (Perlstein 1998). Even two films heralded as more politically progressive analyses of school violence, Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003) and Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine (1999), fail to examine ideals of masculinity or the role that such ideals may play in school violence. Although critics such as Roger Ebert (2003) praised Van Sant for his fictitious but documentary-like film of a Columbine-type school shooting and his refusal to commit to easy answers about school violence, the film realism obscures directorial choices and some of the haunting realities of that incident. At Columbine, black students were hunted

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down and taunted by racial epithets; in the corresponding fictional Elephant school, there appear to be no racial tensions. Girls are portrayed as catty to one another, and it is clear that it is over competition for boys, but the context of sexism that shapes that competition is entirely absent. And most disturbing, the two killers are portrayed as closeted homosexuals who watched Nazi films on the History Channel prior to the killing. That scene seems to reinscribe the discourse that these killers are emasculated men or “monsters” rather than “normal” boys. At the same time, the film takes no responsibility for offering an analysis or solution. Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, in contrast, actively searches for some answers, rebutting the commonly held ones of American gun policy and violence in the popular media in favor of a thesis of the dominance of fear in American culture. While his interview with Charlton Heston reveals some possible racial undertones to that fear, he avoids direct discussion of gendered violence and the role that ideals of masculinity play on predator/protector roles. Both films are helpful in that they do not specify facile causes for school violence, especially ones that blame women and children for their own victimization. But had the films explored further the dynamics between gender, race, and class, they might have left their viewers somewhat less puzzled. How could two “normal” American boys do such things if they are not monsters? Being normal boys in America means to be entitled to violence; some boys just fail to understand the full rules or limits of what constitutes “legitimate” violence. But lacking such an analysis, policy makers fall back on more individualistic, therapeutic approaches. In response to the insight that the predators might actually be the “real” victims, more therapeutic approaches teaching self-esteem and self-control as well as conflict resolution programs have been developed and advocated. But these approaches are brought in to supplement rather than replace policing strategies. The Center for Prevention of School Violence, for example, advocates what they call a “pyramid of strategies” in response to school violence that relies on law enforcement as the foundation of their strategy, but also includes education and conflict management and resolution programs. As currently constructed and implemented, conflict-resolution programs are problematic. Here I rely partially on the critique of such programs offered by John Devine. Devine argues that these programs normalize violence in their discourse, and depend on hypothetical cases while ignoring the actual violent situations that students face and fear. Furthermore, “Conflict-resolution courses tend . . . to place the whole burden of the introduction of violence on students; likewise,

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they place the burden of its eradication on student-student dialogue . . . conflict-resolution courses posit the phenomenon of violence in a group or an individual, not as jointly constructed through the interaction of agent and institution, individual and society” (165). While Devine makes this point in order to argue for the inclusion of a stronger role for teachers in dealing with violence, I think his point has greater implications. Conflict resolution programs fail to attend to social/ structural issues such as racism and sexism, or the cult of masculinity that causes many boys who are bullied to reassert their masculinity using violence. Furthermore, boys of color and all girls are expected to take responsibility for the violence inflicted on them. See, for example, www.ribbonofpromise.org, another national organization with school chapters aimed at preventing school violence. A centerpiece of their resource materials is a student acted video: “Featuring an all-student cast, this play brings audiences face to face with the consequences of school violence, and delivers psychological insights into the mind of a violent youth” (Ribbon of Promise). We are expected to feel the pain of predators, and to watch for signs of their anger, to take care not to hurt or tease them. Students of color and white girls are most likely to heed warnings that teasing and ostracism send violent perpetrators over the edge, even though (or perhaps because) they themselves are the frequent victims of teasing and ostracism as well as violence (see Randol; Scholz in this volume). Thus they are made to feel responsible for their own victimization, even though the major causes of bullying of white boys are “family values” in the guise of homophobia and the enforcement of stark boundaries of masculinity (Flood and Shaffer 2000). After the Jonesboro, Arkansas, shooting in which one female teacher and four girls were killed (nine other girls and one boy were wounded), it was reported by the press that the shooter was motivated by the breakup of his three-day relationship with a girl. The “girl whose breakup with a 13-year-old boy sparked the bloody shooting spree,” imagined The New York Post, “can’t help but [blame herself]” (quoted in Perlstein 1998, 15). Ribbon of Promise encourages such self-blame as it asks victims to understand the killer in individualistic psychological terms and to take responsibility for their own victimization. While it is highly problematic to blame individual kids as the sole cause of violence, it is also problematic to dismiss violent perpetrators as mere victims themselves, as advocates of the bully theory tend to do. The focus remains on individual rather than social phenomena; the bully and the bullied are stripped of their social contexts that can better explain who is bullied as well as why some are likely to fight back with deadly violence.

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Although public perceptions and fears of school violence, particularly in suburban and rural settings, are not born out by the statistics, we cannot dismiss school violence as a myth. There are real victims of school violence, and they are mostly boys and girls of color and white girls. But current discourses around violence are built on a predator/protector logic that is at the heart of contemporary moral and political thought—right down to our concepts of subjectivity. This logic claims to stop violence by substituting “legitimate” forms of force and violence for illegitimate ones. So what should we do? “Ending violence requires eradicating both what Paolo Freire describes as the piece of hate planted deep within us that encourages silence and complicity—and the systematic inequalities now evident in society at large” (French et al. 1998, 4). We need to analyze how mainstream moral discourse aids in constructing and perpetuating patriarchal norms of masculinity that shape violent behaviors, encourages victim-blaming, and deepens systemic inequalities. Oliver argues that the necessary and appropriate feminist philosophical response to this rhetoric is to rethink the family and family relations, and with it, our understanding of subjectivity. Ultimately she argues in favor of a concept of “social subjectivity” rather than the notion of the “virile subject” (1997, 231; see also the work on subjectivity in Oliver and Scholz in this volume). Such an analysis is helpful in the project of countering the paternalistic, racist, and homophobic rhetoric around school violence. Philosophers are not, and should not try to become, experts who try to resolve social problems like school violence as technicians. Rather, I see the philosopher’s role to be twofold. First, we can interrupt dominant discourses by deconstructing their logic (as I have tried to do here). We can stop conceptualizing violence as the province of the Other—and a problem for the Other to fix. Philosophers need to join the public debate around these issues, questioning assumptions and providing alternative conceptualizations. Second, we can continue the work of feminists and others in creating alternative models of subjectivity, rational discourse, and masculinity that do not themselves do violence. This work can be useful, for example, in thinking about how programs such as conflict resolution need to be rethought in light of more complex understandings of intersubjectivity, rational discourse, and oppression. While this may seem like trifling work in the face of children’s injuries and deaths, it is not. Contemporary American moral discourse, shaped from a long Western European philosophical tradition, has been an important enabling language for violence. If philosophical history has had such power, why can’t a philosophical future have equally powerful counter-effects?

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Beauvoir, Simone de. 1952. The Second Sex. Trans. H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage Books. Bonilla, Denise M., ed. 2000. School Violence. The Reference Shelf, vol. 72:1. New York: H. W. Wilson. Bordo, Susan. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Bowling for Columbine. 1999. Written and directed by Michael Moore. DVD 2003 Santa Monica, CA: MGM Home Entertainment. Campus Combat. 1998. School Crime: How to Fight It series. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities and Sciences. Cauchon, Dennis. 1999. Zero Tolerance Policies Lack Flexibility. USA Today Education News. April 13, 1999. http://www.usatoday.com/educate/ ednews3.htm. Center for the Prevention of School Violence. 2003. Raleigh, NC. http: //www.ncdjjdp.org/cpsv/cpsv.htm. Coleman, Doriane Lambelet. 2002. Fixing Columbine: The Challenge to American Liberalism. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Cooper, Matt. 2002. Couple’s Tie Bound Tighter by Tragedy. The Register Guard. May 21. http://www.registerguard.com/news/2002/05/21/1a. thurston.0521.html. Devine, John. 1996. Maximum Security: The Culture of Violence in Inner-City Schools. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ebert, Roger. 2003. Review of Elephant. November, 7. http://www.suntimes. com/ebert/ebert_reviews/2003/11/110701.html. Elephant. 2003. Written and directed by Gus Van Sant, HBO Films and Fine Line Films. Flood, Craig P., and Susan Shaffer. 2000. Safe Boys, Safe Schools. WEAA Digest, WEAA Equity Resource Center: 3+, November. French, Stanley G., Wanda Teays, and Laura M. Purdy. 1998. Editors’ Introduction. In Violence Against Women: Philosophical Perspectives, eds. Stanley G. French, Wanda Teays, and Laura M. Purdy, 1–10. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press. Harding, David, Jal Mehta, and Katherine Newman. 2003. No Exit: Mental Illness, Marginality, and School Violence in West Paducah, Kentucky. In Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence. National Research Council Institute of Medicine, 132–162. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Harvard Advancement and Civil Rights Project. 2000. Opportunities Suspended: The Devasting Consequences of Zero Tolerance and School Discipline Policies. June. http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/ discipline/call_opport.php.

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Hoagland, Sarah Lucia. 1995. Moral Revolution: In Feminism and Philosophy: Essential Readings in Theory, Reinterpretation and Application, eds. Nancy Tuana and Rosemarie Tong, 175–192. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Johnson, Heidi. 2002. Silence Shattered: An Eyewitness Account of the Columbine Tragedy. Tulsa, OK: Insight Publishing Group. Keyes, Alan. 1999. Renew America Rally at the MacKay Events Center. Speech in Orem, UT. Alan Keyes archives maintained by Renew America. www.renewamerica.us ——— . 1999. Republican Presidential Debate Des Moines, Iowa December 13, 1999 hosted by Tom Brokaw. Alan Keyes archives maintained by Renew America. www.renewamerica.us ——— . 2000. Speech in Franklin New Hampshire. January 29. Alan Keyes archives maintained by Renew America. www.renewamerica.us. Larson, Bob. 1999. Extreme Evil: Kids Killing Kids. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. McAndrews, Tobin. 2001. Zero Tolerance Policies. ERIC Clearinghouse on Education Management. Eric Digest. 146: March. http://ericcass.uncg. edu/virtuallib/violence/9010.html. Mills, Martin. 2001. Challenging Violence in Schools: An Issue of Masculinities. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Nimmo, Beth, Debra K. Klingsporn, and Rachel Scott. 2001. The Journals of Rachel Scott: A Journey of Faith at Columbine High. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. North Carolina Center for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Center for the Prevention of School Violence. 2001. Stats 2001: Selected School Violence Research Findings from 2001 Sources. http://www.juvjus.state. nc.us/cpsv/Acrobatfiles/stats2001.pdf. Oliver, Kelly. 1997. Family Values: Subjects between Nature and Culture. New York: Routledge. Panzer, Richard A. 2001. Preventing Violence: Why Families are Important, What They Can Do. Westwood, NJ: Center for Educational Media. Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Perlstein, Daniel. 1998. Deadly Diversions: Gender, School Killings and the Press. Radical Teacher: 28+, Eric Clearinghouse Digest. http://eric-web. tc.columbia.edu/digests/dig115.html. Register Guard. 1998a. Bullets Didn’t Discriminate Among Shooting Victims. Eugene, OR. May 22. http://www.registerguard.com/news/2002/05/21/ 1a.thurston.0521.html. Register Guard. 1998b. Heroes: Jake Ryker and 3 Other Boys Credited with Disarming the Shooter; Preventing Him from Taking More Lives. Eugene, OR. May 22. http://www.registerguard.com/news/19980522/1a.heros. 0522.html.

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Ribbon of Promise National Campaign to End School Violence. 2003. Description of the Play, Bang Bang You’re Dead. Eugene, OR. http://www.ribbonofpromise.org/bangbang.htm. Scott, Darrell, Beth Nimmo, and Steve Rabey. 2000. Rachel’s Tears: The Spiritual Journey of Columbine Martyr Rachel Scott. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers. Scott, Darrell, and Steve Rabey. 2002. Rachel Smiles: The Spiritual Legacy of Columbine Martyr Rachel Scott. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers. Sounding the Alarm. 1998. School Crime: How to Fight It series. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities and Sciences. Trump, Kenneth. 1999. Stopping School Violence: An Essential Guide. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers. Washington, April A. 1999. Gunshots End Senior’s Dream. Scripps Howard News Service. www.boulderdaily.camera.com/shooting/shoels.html. Watson, Justin. 2002. The Martyrs of Columbine: Faith and the Politics of Tragedy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER

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Battered Woman Syndrome: Locating the Subject Amidst the Advocacy SALLY J. SCHOLZ

The Battered Woman Syndrome, like the Cycle Theory of Violence, helps to illuminate the situation of the battered woman. It helps to explain why she does not just leave the relationship, and why some domestic violence relationships end in the death of the batterer. However, this and related terms may also contribute to the violence of domestic violence. The Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) is a psychological term used to describe women who are stuck within or have recently left a violent relationship characterized by the cycle of violence. BWS is modeled after Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) suffered by Vietnam veterans and later applied to people victimized by rape. But the term ‘Battered Woman Syndrome’ itself is not unproblematic. For some, the term describes a sort of learned helplessness adopted as a survival mechanism within a domestic violence relationship (Walker 1984). For others, BWS is a tool of empowerment that names a shared problem and thereby facilitates personal and social remedies. These and other interpretations of BWS are especially problematic when it comes to social and legal policy. A woman victimized by domestic violence may be portrayed by social and legal services as either a helpless, pathological victim or a powerful, reasonable defender of her own rights. The ambiguity, I argue, results from the liberal notion of subjectivity that is presumed by the rhetoric of the Battered Woman Syndrome. BWS has become problematic because it relies on a notion of the self as autonomous, isolated, and rational to the exclusion of other attributes of subjectivity more consistent with feminism. Moreover, BWS risks biological reductionism and, by virtue of a tradition that associates women with the body and men with the mind or self-consciousness, may end up contributing to women’s exclusion from subjectivity. When invoked in

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legal cases or within the context of social work, BWS might be understood differently by the various actors involved. Altering our notion of subjectivity to account for the importance of relationships while also politicizing women’s experiences and our interdependence with others opens the possibility for a new approach to understanding relationships of violence and, most especially, their effects on the women involved. This alternative model does not reject or deny autonomy or rationality (though it does deny isolationism), but modifies what counts as autonomy and rationality. In addition, because the alternative model addresses battering as a social problem rather than a private problem, it does not slip into the ambiguity of the liberal-based BWS. This paper draws on feminist, philosophical, psychological, and legal literature on the Battered Woman Syndrome, as well as philosophical accounts of violence and trauma. In the first section of the paper, I explore the liberal concept of subjectivity and BWS. More specifically, I examine the definitions and uses of BWS within psychology and social work. Next, the legal applications of BWS are discussed both for their potential and their drawbacks. I illustrate how both these definitions and uses of BWS, and its legal applications, presume the isolated, autonomous subject of liberal theory. The social workers and representatives of the legal system may in fact further victimize a person by making her appear unreasonable, pathological, or irresponsible in their very attempts to help her regain control of her experience. A feminist analysis of the theoretical bases of these applications of BWS reveals the cause of the ambiguity and suggests strategies for change. Section two draws from the analysis of section one to propose an alternative framework for subjectivity. I demonstrate the potentially positive or empowering effects on personal identity and affective relationships of a recognition of subjectivity as relational, interdependent, embodied, and political. I build on feminist reconceptualizations of autonomy and rationality for a more nuanced social theory. I also recommend we jettison BWS and similar attempts to pathologize social problems and instead focus on cultures and relationships of violence.

Part I: Use and Problems of Battered Woman Syndrome When Lenore Walker wrote her groundbreaking book The Battered Woman (1980), she began by arguing that society had a tight grip on women in the form of patriarchal conditioning. When that grip appeared in intimate relations, it took the form of female submission to male dominance, even when that dominance turned violent. Walker then

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detailed a condition she called “Battered Woman Syndrome,” a learned helplessness whereby a woman’s self-esteem was virtually broken by repeated abuse. The identification and naming of this condition proved to be tremendously important for countless individual women and also brought about significant social change. Social services and the criminal justice system, as well as social mores more generally, radically altered their view of domestic violence. Walker’s discussions helped to turn the “dirty little secret” into a public topic worthy of disapprobation (cf. Ferraro 1996; Kruks 2001). Although Walker began by looking for the “psychosocial causation” of learned helplessness rather than the “individual psychopathology,” subsequent uses of the syndrome tend toward the latter. As psychologists and social workers applied Walker’s insights, the social context of domestic violence was obscured and the individual pathology took center stage. I turn now to a brief discussion of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and its relationship to Battered Woman Syndrome. The ambiguity that emerges begs us to reconsider our approach to understanding the particular experience of individual women in relationships of violence. Psychological/Social Work According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) of the American Psychiatric Association, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is essentially, the development of characteristic symptoms following exposure to an extreme traumatic stressor involving direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury, or other threat to one’s physical integrity; or witnessing an event that involves death, injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of another person; or learning about unexpected or violent death, serious harm, or threat of death or injury experienced by a family member or other close associate. The person’s response to the event must involve intense fear, helplessness, or horror. (DSM-IV-TR 2000, 463)

PTSD is further characterized by an “avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness” (DSM-IV-TR 2000, 463). Although the DSM-IV does not have a listing for Battered Woman Syndrome, it does include “domestic battering” in the examples for “interpersonal stressors” for PTSD. It further specifies that in the case of domestic battering the individual may experience the following symptoms:

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Walker argues that the cycle of violence, while emphasizing physical violence, almost always entails psychological abuse (1984, 26). Psychological abuse takes the form of verbal put-downs as well as social and economic isolation. This psychological abuse degrades and humiliates the woman thereby facilitating the destruction of her self-esteem; she learns to be helpless as a survival mechanism to delay incurring the wrath of the batterer/decision maker/controller. Her self-esteem and capacity to make independent decisions are decreased and the violently coercive message may be reinforced by a culture that presents violence as a means to solve conflict (Walker 1984, 19). While PTSD is not a necessary result of a traumatic event, “[t]he severity, duration, and proximity of an individual’s exposure to the traumatic event are the most important factors affecting the likelihood of developing this disorder” (DSM-IV-TR 2000, 466). A woman who lives with a person who batters her or is otherwise intimately involved with such a person experiences prolonged exposure to violence and likely escalation of the severity of that violence. Moreover, the intimacy of the relation means that the woman’s proximity to the traumatic occurrences could not be closer. Nancy Rourke mistakenly construes BWS as “a reaction by the victim to the trauma of domestic violence which leads the victim to strike out and kill the abuser, as a substantive defense” (1993, 264). While striking out and killing a batterer is certainly one among many forms of “substantive defense” against abuse, the Battered Woman Syndrome is a psychological description that only explains a woman’s possible psychological state after or during being traumatized by domestic violence. The risk, as numerous critics have pointed out, is that “the problem of violence [may be located] exclusively in individual pathologies” that merely require the right therapies or drugs for a “cure” (Hirschmann 1997, 199). Such an approach reduces a woman victimized by violence to her body. She becomes the isolated victim—the “battered woman”— who must deal with the resulting problems. Minimally, her autonomy is called into question if not completely eroded. Learned helplessness, as Walker and others describe it, keeps a woman from being able to respond

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to a situation or even know what is the right decision or action to take on her own behalf (Walker 1984; cf. Hartline 1997; Hirschmann 1997). As a counter to these criticisms, Susan Brison offers a compelling philosophical use of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder that might be useful here. In her discussion of the remaking of identity in the wake of a violent, near fatal sexual assault, she explains that mechanical approaches to addressing her depression were insufficient. What was needed was “a reconceptualization of the world and of my place in it” (Brison 2002, 78). While she recognizes the risk of being labeled a victim or of interiorizing the identity of victim, Brison argues that “a diagnosis of PTSD (and subsequent treatment) can be empowering to a victim whose efforts to recover have been hindered by her (and society’s) belief that her injuries are ‘all in her head’” (2002, 80). PTSD allowed her to recognize the physiological nature of her posttrauma reactions. Some of these reactions were better managed through the use of antidepressants and other prescribed drugs. Brison argues we must avoid the Cartesian logic of presuming that the mind is “under our control” whereas the body is mechanistic. She acknowledges that the DSM-IV subscribes to a biological reductionism (2002, 79) but does not conclude that this then is the correct or only appropriate reading of posttrauma reactions. Brison offers a combination of approaches that include the physiological, the psychological, and the personal responsibility approach. In short, a diagnosis of PTSD (and by implication BWS) need not result in a diagnosis of passivity or amount to reductionism. Battered Woman Syndrome is by no means alone in its status as social problem turned pathology. As Sandra Bartky points out, “Female professionals in the APA [American Psychological Association] continue to struggle against the inclusion of categories that will harm women by classifying as a matter of individual pathology patterns that are the result of patriarchal social relations, e.g., ‘masochistic personality disorder’” (2002, 93). Kelly Oliver’s essay in this volume comes to a similar conclusion regarding depression. She suggests that depression might be understood as a social disease, a “social melancholy” resulting at least in part from oppressive conditions, rather than solely as pathology. The ambiguity of the implications of the term ‘Battered Woman Syndrome’—its feminist potential and its demoralizing capacity—continues in the criminal justice system. Legal Use and Problems In the past, social mores and the legal system treated the woman victimized by domestic violence as the guilty partner. She was viewed as

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having done something to deserve the beating or perhaps as somehow enjoying the beating. Women were also viewed as property as is evidenced by the history of rape law wherein a man convicted of raping a woman owed restitution to the woman’s father or husband. Violence within marriage was little different. From English Common Law we get the “rule of thumb.” That is, a man could legally beat his wife with a switch no greater than the thickness of his thumb if he judged that she had not performed her “wifely” duties (Eppler 1986; Walker 1980, 12). Feminist activism effected massive changes in the social perception of domestic violence and in the criminal justice system as well. The shelter movement provided a safe haven for women and proved that they were not alone in their plight. Criminalization of domestic battery and mandatory arrest policies made police confront their own sexist biases that set domestic battery apart from other forms of battery. But, as Kathleen Ferraro (1997) argues, criminalization is not without its problems. Given the heated nature of domestic disputes, police will often arrest both parties and mutual assault is assumed. Arresting the batterer may intensify his/her anger and thus many victims of abuse will petition to have charges dropped—in spite of overwhelming evidence—in an effort to placate the abusive partner. Subsequently, many police officers become jaded as they see good arrests turned away. Is this Battered Woman Syndrome at work? Perhaps. The behavior of the person victimized by violence certainly fits the sort of protective behavior of BWS (and PTSD). According to Lenore Walker, hundreds of women sit in jail convicted of killing their abusive husband or boyfriend. She estimates that up to one half of the women in jail are there because of committing a crime to avoid being beaten by someone they loved (1984, 142). Walker and others also estimate that less than 15% of all homicides are the result of a woman killing her batterer. In fact, most women who strike back at their batterers with lethal force are encouraged by their attorneys to plead guilty rather than face a trial (1984, 142). This is due to the difficulty of convincing a jury that the homicide was perpetrated in self-defense. “Self-defense is defined as the justifiable commission of a criminal act by using the least amount of force necessary to prevent imminent bodily harm which needs only to be reasonably perceived as about to happen” (Walker 1984, 143). In self-defense, one actively chooses and participates in a response to the threat of harm by inflicting harm on the offender. However, because one is reasonably responding to the threat on his or her life, he or she is not held morally blameworthy for the action. Though, of course, having chosen the response (albeit under coercive conditions) one is responsible for one’s actions.

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When a woman does go to trial, she might appeal to BWS for help to make her case for self-defense. Expert testimony on the battered woman syndrome is used in “battered women who kill” cases on the supposition that such testimony helps the jury to understand why the woman acted the way she did and why those actions constitute selfdefense. However, the self-defense strategy works infrequently. The majority of women tried serve at least some jail time even if they have expert testimony on the battered woman syndrome (Ewing 1987, ch. 4). There are, however, some serious problems with so using BWS in self-defense cases. Juries often understand BWS as mental incapacity. As Charles Ewing points out, if the jury believes a woman suffers from a mental incapacity, then she cannot be considered as acting in a reasonable manner, which is what is required by the self-defense standard. If a woman who kills her batterer in self-defense is seen as not responsible for her actions because of a mental incapacity, as BWS suggests, then she continues to exist in an invisible moral realm wherein she is not perceived as exercising or capable of exercising full moral personhood (Ewing 1987, 56–59; Schneider 2000, 31 and ch. 8). Further, the courts may reject a woman’s claim to self-defense “on the grounds of individual, rationalist responsibility (that is, the women should have left, instead of killing their men)” (Hirschmann 1997, 200). Nancy Hirschmann also argues that courts may be reluctant to allow expert testimony on BWS precisely because it opens the door for a diminished capacity defense or the “battered woman defense” (Gillespie 1989). On the other hand, if testimony on the battered woman syndrome is not admitted then the potential for acquittal is slim, particularly in cases where immediate threat of danger is not present. For instance, if a woman kills her batterer while he is asleep then there is said to be no immediate threat of lethal harm. If, however, the batterer is killed in the battering incident, then immediate threat of lethal harm is present and the standard understanding of self-defense should apply. However, there are numerous cases of the latter and the woman was nonetheless found guilty of some form of murder or manslaughter (Ewing 1987, ch. 4; Schneider 2000). Because of this dilemma with using the battered woman syndrome, and because it seems to posit a special standard of “reasonableness” for battered women (see esp. Gillespie 1989, chs. 5 and 6), Ewing proposes an alternative form of legal defense that may be used for all cases wherein there has been a history of abuse/victimization. Ewing’s theory is called “psychological self-defense” and “would justify the use of deadly force only where such force appeared reasonably necessary to prevent the infliction of extremely serious psychological injury . . .

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defined as gross and enduring impairment of one’s psychological functioning which significantly limits the meaning and value of one’s physical existence” (1987, 79). His proposal, however, like the more traditional “battered woman defense” response, relies on a special standard of reasonableness for the woman victimized by abuse. Ann Jones argues that among the reasons so many women who kill their batterers are convicted, despite all the evidence of continued abuse and self-defense, is that society fails to see women as fully human. Instead, a male-oriented legal system looks for reasons to see the woman as “hysterical,” as getting some sort of “masochistic thrill” out of abuse, or as in some way “deserving” the abusive treatment. Jones argues that antiwoman propaganda contributes to the societal failure to see women as persons deserving of respect (1980, 182–183). If BWS is presented as a mental problem, as it often is, there is a risk that this tradition of failing to see women as fully human continues. Furthermore, the legal system does not adequately account for women’s roles within their families. Their decisions to remain with a batterer or to strike out and kill a batterer are rarely undertaken in isolation (Hirschmann 1997, 200). Women’s roles as mothers, as well as society’s sometimes mistaken perception that two-parent families are always best for children, may make it difficult to leave an abusive situation. Women’s roles as daughters may also come into play as the stigma of a failed marriage stings sharply in some cultures or extended families. It is clear that Battered Woman Syndrome is fraught with both positive potential for helping a woman victimized by violence overcome her situation and regain her sense of self as well as the debilitating and disempowering potential of erasure within legal and social systems as a woman’s very subjectivity is called into question. Legal scholar Elizabeth Schneider offers an analysis of the term ‘battered woman’ in her book Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking. The term ‘battered woman’ according to Schneider is “reductive in that it implies the total life experience of the particular woman: a ‘battered woman’ can be no more than a woman who has been battered” (2000, 62). This sort of reductive identity formation is typical of the limitations implied by language in an oppressive society. Similarly, the term ‘battered woman syndrome’ pathologizes women thereby labeling women who are victimized by domestic violence as mentally ill. Such labeling may contribute to the individual woman’s feeling of helplessness. She is told she is “victim” and “weak” and she becomes victim of both the batterer and society. Even the very agencies designed to help her continue the cycle of coercive control insofar as they use the reductive terminology Schneider discusses. The terms ‘battered woman’ and ‘battered woman syndrome’

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remove the violent situation from its context within a culture of violence and sexism. The pervasive use of these terms can also be challenged as reproducing “the subordination and marginalization of women of color” or women from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds (Crenshaw 1997, 186). BWS and Liberal Subjectivity In its social/psychological and legal applications, Battered Woman Syndrome is both useful and problematic. It has become problematic primarily because it relies on a classical liberal concept of subjectivity constituted by autonomy and independence. Individuals are self-determining agents who act independently of others for their own good. Although there are some clear strengths to this conception of subjectivity there are some important weaknesses. There is a long social and legal tradition of guarantees to personal integrity, perhaps most famously articulated by John Locke: “every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself” (ch. v, sect. 27). Individual liberty is the primary value: “To understand Political Power right, and derive it from its Original, we must consider what State all Men are naturally in, and that is, a State of perfect Freedom to order their Actions, and dispose of their Possessions, and Persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the Law of Nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the Will of any other Man” (ch. ii, sect. 4). But, of course, Locke may not have been speaking inclusively here. While Locke does not sanction domestic violence or slavery of any sort (at least not in the Second Treatise), history is replete with examples of women being bought and sold as property, disciplined as if they were owned by the husband, or otherwise reduced to mere body/object. Early discussion of domestic violence and the plight of the battered woman began by offering a feminist critique of this patriarchal convention (Walker 1980, 11–13). Susan Bordo offers a compelling argument that women have not always or consistently been accorded all of the rights of personal integrity in her work on medical intervention. In Bordo’s examples, women, especially poor women, become reduced to their bodies (1993, 76). This reduction is also a probable outcome in domestic violence but it is worth asking whether it can result from the use of the concept of Battered Woman Syndrome as well. Concern for her very bodily integrity brings her into the social-psychological and legal systems to begin with, but the ambiguity of BWS might end up reducing her to that body and stripping her of subjectivity as agency, responsibility, and

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liberty. Some of the ambiguity of the BWS might stem from an overemphasis on a mental state reducible to biology. In this reading, a woman’s actions and reactions are not “her own” but physiological responses to stimuli. She is reduced to her body. The very patriarchal conventions that justified her possession as property and, perhaps, played a role in her being forced to submit to violent treatment, may also be repeated in the language of “Battered Woman Syndrome.” Reclaiming personal and bodily integrity in the form of subjective embodiment, coupled with a recognition of the importance of relations with intimate others (children, the violent partner, other family and friends), requires that legal and social-psychological policies and personnel appeal to a different—embodied, related, interdependent, and politicized—conception of subjectivity for people who have been victimized by pattern-violence.

Part II: Alternative Frameworks Nancy Rourke argues that women victimized by domestic violence must struggle to “shift the locus of control” and change their self-perceptions from being victims to being agents. Reclaiming the locus of control means that the person victimized by domestic violence must assume responsibility for herself and her decisions. Doing so allows her to see herself as a subject and may also influence the perception her batterer has of her (1993, 270). The batterer sees her as a person, capable of making her own decisions, and Rourke adds that the court proceeding may “be the first time that the offender has to take his victim seriously” (1993, 270–271, see also 277). Similarly, in her discussion of the history of the treatment of battered women in the United States, Elizabeth Pleck describes how shelters learned that a woman seeking service must make her own decisions, even if she decides to return to the violent or potentially violent home situation (1987, 190; see also Vaughn 1977, 113–118). Advocates were to support her choice while also communicating to her that she is free to choose and that she will not be denied services regardless of the choice or the consequences of that choice. To deprive the woman of her agency contributed to the violence of her situation because it reinforced her lack of self-esteem and thereby further diminished her already damaged moral subjectivity (Scholz 1998; see also Randol and Oliver in this volume). Rourke and Pleck, it seems to me, are absolutely correct but their accounts remain unfinished without a reconceptualization of autonomy and rationality, and a recovery of social context. In other words, we

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have to examine our standard approaches to domestic violence and purge them of any of the structures of domination that persist within patriarchy. That means we must also look for a new concept of subjectivity, a feminist subjectivity. In this second section, I present four nonexclusive elements for a concept of feminist subjectivity and show how they affect our understanding and response to violence in intimate relationships. Interdependence and Relatedness Nancy Hirschmann analyzes domestic violence using Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts of Liberty” as a guide. Negative liberty, or the absence of external constraints, in domestic violence relationships may be simply the lack of immediate battery. Alternatively, “force, fear, economic dependence and lack of resources can all present effective external obstacles to a woman’s leaving” (1997, 197). Positive liberty pertains to internal obstacles or the ability to “exercise our full capacities” (1997, 195). One of the problems of this positive/negative approach to liberty, according to Hirschmann, is that it presumes the sort of inner-self that is in some way opposed to external barriers. If domestic violence is seen as eroding or obscuring a person’s inner-self as in the case of BWS, then the individual’s personhood and agency are denied. As an alternative, Hirschmann proposes a revaluation of liberty such that an individual woman’s experiences are contextualized within a broader understanding of systems of domination without taking away the individual’s power. In other words, Hirschmann argues for blurring the boundaries between internal and external barriers, politicizing individual women in relationships of violence and affirming their interdependence with supportive others. While the violence may impede a woman’s ability to exercise her agency, she does not lose that potential: “Women’s exercise of agency and freedom thus requires the help of others” (1997, 206). Hirschmann’s analysis and proposal are truly groundbreaking, offering an account that incorporates the individual’s experience while developing a “new notion of liberty.” She shifts the emphasis to an individual woman “coping” rather than “choosing.” This eschews the atomistic individual decision maker of classical liberal theory but offers a better concept of the individual as a basis for a revised conception of autonomy (cf. Jamieson 2001, 179). The woman becomes the politicized community member instead of the isolated agent. Stressing community means acknowledging the interdependence of our decisions and actions. The model of the isolated individual is replaced with the model of the interdependent subject. One need not know other members of

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the community to realize the importance of interdependence as the ramifications of particular actions do affect others. For example, an individual woman seeking prosecution of an intimate partner who battered her may inspire other women to do the same while also issuing an important challenge to the criminal justice system by raising awareness about battering in general (and in the particular) for police, court personnel, and mental health support by articulating her unique experience. But communal membership also entails another element: relatedness. Within feminist theory, nothing has done more to highlight our relatedness than feminist care ethics. By contrasting three models by which we may understand “battered woman’s victimization and violent actions,” Sharon Hartline shows that the helpless victim model cannot account for women’s agency or actions in cases in which they murder their abuser. The two other models, the atomistic model and the care model, each have strengths that allow for women’s agency but it is the care model that Hartline defends as the most viable option to explain women’s response to battering. Among the strengths of the care model is the notion that an individual’s “self-definition” entails “a recognition of her interdependence with those in her web of relations” (1997, 61). Our relationships help to shape who we are and sustain us in our self-concept. For a woman subject to violence within her intimate relationship, this can be a double-edged sword. Often part of the abuse is isolation from other friends and family. When a woman is reduced to one primary relationship and that relationship is characterized by violence, her self-concept is naturally going to be affected. Hartline argues that because caring relations must involve reciprocity and respect, a relationship that threatens “the caring agent’s self-definition” and basic rights could be severed (1997, 62). Notice that the assumption is on relatedness rather than isolated individualism. So rather than asking why any particular woman would continue to submit herself to domestic violence, a care approach would ask whether the parties in a relationship are mutually respectful and affirming, that is, is the relationship itself sustaining or damaging to its participants? Emphasizing our interdependence and relatedness as we reconceptualize autonomy helps redress some of the faults of the social and legal uses of Battered Woman Syndrome that I identified earlier. By recognizing our interdependence, following Hirschmann, and our relatedness, following Hartline, we can no longer accept the category created by invoking BWS of the isolated victim to explain why she behaves the way she does. Instead we must talk of relationships of violence or the contrary relationships that sustain interdependent subjectivity. Through the sup-

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port of caring others as well as the assistance (physical or cognitive) of interdependent others, individual subjects who have been victimized by violence may be able to find themselves again—a self that is connected with known and unknown others. In addition to the intimate relationships that constitute our “web of relations,” however, we should look to those relations with others who do not share a close proximity. In other words, understanding relationships of violence may also mean that we must seek to understand societies that promote violence and domination. Although it does not remove the individual responsibility for actions, a glimpse at sociocultural practices may help to illuminate the injustice of violence within intimate relationships while simultaneously politicizing or repoliticizing the problem. Politicization Recognizing, emphasizing and articulating the importance of the many influences that come into play in social relations and value formation is “politicization.” Politicization brings things that might otherwise be kept behind a veil of propriety or privacy into public realms of discussion. Kathleen Ferraro chronicles the history of domestic violence discourse and argues that the shift to criminalization, while supported and applauded by feminist activists, also alienated the shelter movement from its political feminist moorings (1996). For a movement that began through the politicization of personal stories, the movement against domestic violence risks repeating the very structures that it aimed to challenge if it becomes apolitical. Many feminists have noted the political origins of the domestic violence movement (for example, Walker 1980, Crenshaw 1997) and some call for the movement to be reinvigorated by feminist politics (Hirschman 1997; Ferraro 1996; Pleck 1987). The how of this politicization is the next stage. One approach is to change the term ‘syndrome’ to ‘situation’ in an effort to put the violence in context (for example, Jamieson 2001, 175). While this may be a step in the right direction, it still leaves the onus on the individual woman and so does not challenge the place of violence in culture or society. Nancy Fraser’s discourse ethics of solidarity might offer a viable framework within which to discuss the social phenomena of domestic violence without also losing sight of individual women. The discourse ethics of solidarity requires the confrontation of injustice via dialogue within and between social groups. Such intra- and intergroup interaction, Fraser thinks, challenges traditional conceptions of what constitutes an acceptable topic of “public discourse.”

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Generally speaking, the relevant participants of a dialogue would determine how and what is to be discussed and this determination would also be made dialogically. That is, those individuals and social groups likely to be affected by a moral decision must have a significant say in its determination; in this case, individuals who have experienced relationships of violence would, as Hirschmann suggests, become activists (1997, 206). Policy decisions are thereby reliant on the particularized sociohistorical contexts of participants. There is no overarching principle that guides these decisions. Political and ethical issues and the structure of the dialogue are shaped by the “sociocultural means of interpretation and communication”: the officially recognized vocabularies in which one can press claims; the idioms available for interpreting and communicating one’s needs; the established narrative conventions available for constructing the individual and collective histories which are constitutive of social identity; the paradigms of argumentation accepted as authoritative in adjudicating conflicting claims; the ways in which various discourses constitute their respective subject matters as specific sorts of objects; the repertory of available rhetorical devices; the bodily and gestural dimensions of speech which are associated in a given society with authority and conviction. (Fraser 1986, 425)

Narratives of abuse would lend an experiential component to policy formation but universalizing norms would be avoided as well (cf. Jamieson 2001). This is Fraser’s standpoint of the collective concrete other, emphasizing particularity of experience and political import simultaneously. Among the examples of social groups Fraser offers are workingclass people, welfare recipients, women, and racial and ethnic groups. Women who have been victimized by violence perpetrated by an intimate partner would also qualify as a social group, though the intricacies of individual experience should not be lost. As a further example of how particularized needs get transformed into political discourse, she discusses the way in which groups come to recognize and reinterpret their needs, offering a new vocabulary, to contest the interpretations of their needs prescribed by some dominant group or “public” (1989, 171–172). The dominant group or groups control communication thereby setting the bounds for what is considered appropriate for discussion. The vocabularies and needs interpretations of subordinated groups challenge the hegemony of the dominant group. These “subaltern counter publics” confront and contest the

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dominant public (1996, 80–85). Early consciousness-raising groups, some of which gave rise to the shelter movement, serve as a successful example of needs interpretation. One might argue that the early recognition of a woman’s posttraumatic experience labeled “Battered Woman Syndrome” is an example of new vocabularies put to use because a subordinated group challenged the dominant understanding of violence in the home. The problem is that an ambiguity has crept in, which tends away from BWS as political and toward BWS as pathological. Schneider applies a similar balance between particularity and generality in feminist lawmaking, arguing that it must address the particularity of individual women’s experiences and the generality of women’s situation within a sexist society: Focusing simultaneously on particularity and generality does not mean denying the distinctiveness of women’s experiences with woman abuse; it means a richer and more detailed description of women’s diverse and particular problems, an acknowledgment of abuse as part of a general continuum of violence between intimates, and an understanding of the way particular experiences of woman abuse are shaped by gender, by gender roles, by more general experiences of motherhood, by unequal and constrained relationships with men, and by general societal attitudes toward women. (2000, 72)

Politicizing women’s experience once again can avoid some of the pitfalls of the BWS rhetoric and lead to real social change—not just personal change. Embodiment The discourse paradigm might also be modified to, as Sonia Kruks argues, “deal adequately with the issue of human embodiment” (2001, 136). Kruks begins by tipping her hat to discourse theory, which helps to effect social change with regard to wife abuse. “Through textual comparisons we could . . . demonstrate that to experience oneself as subject to forms of violence that are now defined as illegitimate is not identical to experiencing oneself as subject to the corporeal punishment that it was once a husband’s right, or even duty, to inflict upon his wife: discursive shifts have indeed . . . altered experience” (2001, 138). But Kruks is cautious to avoid conceptualizing experience as entirely the result of discursive shifts. Rather, she argues that domestic violence is not just “discursively constituted” but is experienced. Experience becomes

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part of the origin of accounts of domestic violence and explanations for why abuse victims stay. Feminist activists and theorists interested in participating in advocacy, support, or politicization, Kruks suggests, ought to engage in “world-traveling” (see Lugones 1987) to attain a sense of the lived-experience, the embodiment, of women abused in intimate relations: “To be able to act in effective support of abused women, those who have not been subjected to domestic violence need (as far as possible) to have a sense of the lived experience of such abuse. How does it feel to live with the pain, with the continual fear and humiliation? How does one come to experience oneself in such a situation?” (2001, 138). For Kruks, this world-traveling provides some of the motivation for acting in response to a perceived injustice. If, as I have suggested, it is when we feel outrage, or anger, or pain that we are most likely to act, then we are most likely to do so when we are able to experience a degree of affinity with others for which our own embodied experience predisposes us. In the case of battered women, similarities of feminine embodiment and my awareness of the susceptibility of all women’s bodies, my own included, to male violence offered such predisposing factors. (2001, 151)

The idea here is to expand our knowledge of domestic violence by being more attentive to each other and our varied experience. Embodiment in this sense, contrary to reducing women to their bodies, assures that subjectivity is lived in the particularity of individual experience but communicable (and thus subject to politicization) through solid efforts at world-traveling. In addition, we must be cautious not to ignore the “intersectionality” of racism and sexism in discussions of violent relationships and cultures. Kimberlé Crenshaw argues that traditional domestic violence discourse often overlooked the unique plight of women of color and poor women in its attempt to offer universal descriptions of victims of violence and the subsequent trauma (1997; Hirschmann 1997, 201). In a related manner, Uma Narayan suggests that more attention needs to be paid to immigrant status and similar conditions, which may contribute to women’s situation of impeded liberty in domestic violence cases (1995). In order to effectively work on behalf of many differently situated women, domestic violence advocates must examine all of the varying factors that create any particular woman’s subjectivity, her relationships, and states of affairs. The combination of the four elements discussed above (interdependence, relatedness, politicization, and embodiment) yields an account of

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what might be called “relationships of violence” within a social context. By reconceptualizing the constitution of subjectivity, we shift the emphasis away from individual women suffering from a mental illness toward a social problem in need of attention on an expanded front in light of particularized experience (cf. Oliver in this volume).

Part III. Possible Objections and Responses One objection to my argument might be that taking the focus off the woman provides a disincentive to feminist activists. If we are talking about a culture of violence or relationships of violence, then why call this a woman’s issue at all? In an essay that compares domestic violence murders in the U.S. with dowry deaths in India, Narayan suggests that the reason dowry murders became such a politicized feminist cause, whereas murders by domestic violence did not, was at least in part because the former had an “early and visible place on the agendas of Indian women’s groups and remains an ongoing Indian feminist issue today” (1997, 101). Narayan sees the lack of a proper nomenclature for women who are killed in domestic violence as symptomatic of the absence of public outcry and targeted feminist activism against such forms of murder (1997, 96). Further, Narayan uses an imaginary journalist researching an article on the phenomenon of domestic violence in the U.S. to show that women who are differently situated experience domestic violence quite differently. Domestic violence advocates often use the rhetoric of equality to suggest that women from different racial and class backgrounds might be “equally subject” to domestic violence. But this sort of claim glosses over important economic and racial considerations that impede a woman’s ability to respond to domestic violence in a self-affirming manner (Narayan 1997, 115). In response to both objections, it is important to note that what I have argued for does not fall into the abyss between women’s rights and human rights. By uncovering the ambiguity of Battered Woman Syndrome and reminding us that domestic violence is a social problem, we discover that battery in intimate relations is both a woman’s issue and a human issue. Reconceiving subjectivity to incorporate interdependence, relationships, politicization, and embodiment is thoroughly feminist. It falls in the tradition of feminist theory that recognizes that insofar as there is oppression, domination, or exclusion, there is a feminist concern.

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American Psychiatric Association. 2000. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. Arp, Kristina. 2001. The Bonds of Freedom. Chicago: Open Court Press. Bartky, Sandra Lee. 2002. Sympathy and Solidarity. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Bordo, Susan. 1993. Unbearable Weight. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brison, Susan. 2002. Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of the Self. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1997. Intersectionality and Identity Politics. In Reconstructing Political Theory: Feminist Perspectives, eds. Mary Lyndon Shanley and Uma Narayan, 178–193. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Eppler, Amy. 1986. Battered Women and the Equal Protection Clause. The Yale Law Journal 95. Ewing, Charles Patrick. 1987. Battered Women Who Kill. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company. Ferraro, Kathleen J. 1996. The Dance of Dependency. Hypatia 11(Fall): 77–91. Fraser, Nancy. 1986. Toward a Discourse Ethic of Solidarity. Praxis International 5(4): 425–429. ——— . 1989. Unruly Practices. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. ——— . 1996. Justice Interruptus. New York: Routledge. Gillespie, Cynthia K. 1989. Justifiable Homicide: Battered Women, Self-Defense and the Law. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Hartline, Sharon. 1997. Battered Women Who Kill. Journal of Social Philosophy 28, no. 2 (Fall): 56–67. Hirschmann, Nancy. 1997. The Theory and Practice of Freedom. In Reconstructing Political Theory: Feminist Perspectives, eds. Mary Lyndon Shanley and Uma Narayan, 194–210. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Jamieson, Beth Kiyokoi. 2001. Real Choices: Feminism, Freedom and the Limits of the Law. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Jones, Ann. 1980. A Little Knowledge. In Take Back the Night, ed. Laura Lederer, 179–184. New York: William Morrow and Co. Kruks, Sonia. 2001. Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Locke, John. 1988. Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lugones, Maria. 1987. Playfulness, World-traveling, and Loving Perception. Hypatia 87(2): 3–19.

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Narayan, Uma. 1995. Male-order Brides. Hypatia 10:1 (Winter): 104–119. ——— . 1997. Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions and Third World Feminism. Thinking Gender Series. New York: Routledge. Pleck, Elizabeth Hafkin. 1987. Domestic Tyranny: The Making of Social Policy from Colonial Times Until Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rourke, Nancy. 1993. Domestic Violence: The Challenge to Law’s Theory of the Self. In Kindred Matters, eds. Diana Tietjen Meyers, Kenneth Kipnis, and Cornelius Murphy, 257–288. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Schneider, Elizabeth. 2000. Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Scholz, Sally. 1998. Peacemaking in Domestic Violence. Journal of Social Philosophy 29(2): 46–58. Vaughn, Sharon. 1977. The Last Refuge: Shelter for Battered women. Victimology 2 (December): 113–118. Walker, Lenore E. 1980. The Battered Woman. New York: Harper Collins. ——— . 1984. The Battered Woman Syndrome. New York: Springer Publishing Co.

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PART

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Mothers, Good and Bad: Marginalizing Mothers and Idealizing Children

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CHAPTER

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Bad Mothers as “Brown” Mothers in Western Canadian Policy Discourse: Substance-Abusing Mothers and Sexually Exploited Girls NORMA L. BUYDENS

Pregnant women who abuse substances and children exploited in the sex trade are both stigmatized and vulnerable to coercive moral reform. Pregnant substance abusers in particular have been vilified as “toxic moms” in state and mass media rhetoric; they are subject to “abject images” of the self (see Oliver, this volume). Both pregnant substance abusers and kids in the sex trade are recent targets of mandatory detention policies in Canada. Furthermore, in the late 1990s there emerged a disturbing policy discourse linking pregnant substance abusers and sexually exploited girls. The rhetoric of child protection agencies and provincial governments implies that the women they call “toxic moms” produce the children who end up in the sex trade. I will show that the state’s approach to both groups is predicated on mother blaming. Government policy about sexually exploited girls is the other side of its “toxic mom” ideology; both “toxic mom” rhetoric and mother blaming for commercial sexual exploitation of children are rooted in a familiar mother blaming discourse. The interaction of gender ideology, racism, and social class boundaries is evident in these discourses. Punitive treatment of marginalized mothers scares middle-class but insecure mothers into silence about child abuse by white, middleclass men. My conclusion is that feminists must reach across class and race to defend all mothers from mother blaming ideology. Women who consume substances during pregnancy are widely believed to produce ineradicably damaged children. Yet scientific proof that child problems are caused by prenatal substance abuse, and especially that repair is impossible, is elusive, making obsessive media emphasis on prenatal syndromes questionable. Nevertheless, the

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demonization of substance-abusing women’s damaged children leads to a discursive reconstruction of the womb as the most unsafe place for children. “Children are forced to lead a second-class life because they suffer injuries which are inflicted upon them when they are most vulnerable and least able to protect themselves—in the womb” (Elman and Mason 1998, 776). This poisonous womb image is then used to justify controlling pregnant women in order to “apprehend” their fetuses (Diduck 1998, 205–206), lest they become monstrous children. If a fetus is a ‘person’ . . . he or she is in a particularly vulnerable position. A fetus, absent outside assistance, has no means of escape from toxins ingested by its mother. . . . Society does not simply sit by and allow a mother to abuse her child after birth. How then should serious abuse be allowed to occur before the child is born? (Headnote to Minority, Supreme Court of Canada [S.C.C.], Winnipeg Child and Family Services (Northwest Area) v. G. (D.F.) [1997] 3 S.C.R. 925, 932)

The substance-abusing mother’s imagined power to harm eclipses the power of the child abuser, who attacks the child later in life. The rhetoric of “toxic moms” as the greatest threat to children has been prominent in Canada since 1996, following what the media called the “Winnipeg Sniff Mom” case, G. (D.F.) v. Winnipeg Child and Family Services Northwest Region. To Supreme Court Justice John Major, author of the Minority at the S.C.C., the case raised the question: Does the state . . . have a separate right to intervene to prescribe proper medical treatment in the hope of achieving the birth of a healthy child as opposed to standing idly by and watching the birth of a permanently and seriously handicapped child who has no future other than as a permanent ward of the state? (S.C.C. Minority 961–962)

The Image of the Aboriginal Mother in Canada: The Case of G (D.F.) Media representation of Ms. G. crystallized bad mother ideology—and anti-Aboriginal racism—in Canada. Child and Family Services (CFS) was notified that G., 22 years old and addicted to solvents, was pregnant after two emergency hospitalizations. The CFS, which had permanent custody of her previous three children, argued for a court order (QB Report, 242–253) to force her into medical treatment until birth of

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the child to protect the health of the fetus (Bartlett 1997, 180–185, 187; C of A Report, 111–112, 114). The action raised many issues, not the least of them the basic civil rights of mothers. The Supreme Court of Canada (S.C.C.) resolved the case on the basis of abortion cases, holding that fetal rights are not legally recognizable (Bell 1997). But most media commentary favored restraining women to prevent children with the “irreparable damage that a pregnant woman’s substance abuse will cause her fetus” (Elman and Mason 1998, 771). The “toxic mom” was given a brown face, and concern with proper motherhood eclipsed mothers’ rights as citizens. National Report writer Joe Woodward, ranting against the S.C.C. ruling (1997, 26–32), described Ms. G. as “poison[ing] two of [her children] in the womb.” He argued against the legal precept that the S.C.C. upheld, namely, the “born alive” rule established in Montreal Tramways v. Leveille (1933). This rule holds that damage through an accident before birth could only be recompensed if the baby was subsequently born alive, not if the fetus was aborted or stillborn (Dawson 1998, 214–215). The order detaining G. applied a legal remedy to protect fetal rights, which had not yet been “perfected” by birth. Though Montreal Tramways involved a motor vehicle accident caused by negligent operators, Woodward completely ignored thirdparty negligence as a cause of birth defects. Instead he argued that the “born alive” rule is out-of-date because now “modern medical technology has vastly increased the likelihood of live birth, even if the fetus is extremely premature or crippled by chance or maternal abuse” (Woodward 1997; S.C.C. Minority 972, 978–981, 988, and 991–992). By ignoring third-party negligence as a cause of birth defects Woodward’s rhetoric leaves only one cause of blamable birth defects, “maternal abuse.” His rhetoric constructs mothers as solely responsible for all compensable birth defects in children and shrinks others’ responsibility for the newly born (Dawson 1998, 214–215; Diduck 1998, 203–206; Bittle 2002, 320). G. (D.F.) was linked with two other cases, R. v. Drummond in Ottawa (Feb. 1, 1997), where a pregnant woman shot a pellet gun into her vagina and the pellet was removed from her son’s brain after birth, and the case of Cheryl Hohner. Hohner was murdered by her partner in the eighth month of pregnancy; friends and family called for also charging her killer also with murder of the close-to-term fetus (Tibbetts 1997). Woodward mentions only Drummond, where the harm was the result of deliberate action by the mother, not more typical cases of male violence against women claiming fetal victims. But male violence is relevant to

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fetal harm since it is common for “women subjected to state intervention . . . to be living in relationships that are subject to violence” (Rodgers 1998, 723).

Commercial Sexual Exploitation Policy Like Ms. G. who was dubbed the “Sniff Mom,” commercially sexually exploited children and youth, mostly girls, have inspired schemes for mandatory detention, without criminal conviction or a demonstration of mental incompetency, for “treatment,” under the Alberta Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution Act (P-ChIP), the Ontario Rescuing Children from Sexual Exploitation Act, and the British Columbia Secure Care Act. The Saskatchewan Special Committee was created to consider similar legislation. Alberta’s P-ChIP of 1998, however, was found unconstitutional for breaching the right to presumption of innocence because there were no criminal trial procedural guarantees before confinement for punitive purposes (Cosh 2000, 26). P-ChIP 2000 set out a process for judicial review of detention, but did not address punitive treatment. Furthermore the 2000 P-ChIP listed factors to extend confinement if: “the child is unable or unwilling to stop engaging in . . . prostitution,” “less intrusive measures are not adequate [to keep the child from engaging in prostitution]” and the “best interests of the child” support “confinement for . . . programs and services” (P-ChIP, S. 2.1). Whether the actual purpose of detention is “treatment” is debatable and what has to be “treated” is undertermined. What kids need is not clear: reports refer to substance detoxification, but the overriding goal is ending prostitution, not curing mental or physical illness. Empirical studies, however, indicate many causes of child prostitution and tend to pinpoint poverty (see e.g., Simons and Whitbeck 1991; O’Hanlan 1998) and prior child sexual abuse (see, e.g., Schissel and Fedec 1999; Jackson 1998a and b) as the major causes. Most children who engage in prostitution are runaways. It is not entirely clear whether risk from running away is separable from sexual abuse, and whether prostitution is caused by running away (see, e.g., Brannigan and Van Bruschot 1997). Most researchers see running away as an effect of sexual abuse, making sexual abuse the strongest causal factor (see, e.g., Boritch 1997; Lowman and Fraser 1995; Van Bruschot 1995). Many forms of abuse lead children to run away and engage in illegal activities, but those who run away as a result of sexual abuse are far more likely to engage in prostitution (see, e.g., Hagan and McCarthy 1995; Widom 1995, 1996).

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Substance abuse is common, but as a result, rather than a cause, of sex trade involvement. Substance abuse treatment can help kids exit the sex trade (Jackson 1998a, 34) but does not address its root causes. The Saskatchewan Special Committee to Prevent the Abuse and Exploitation of Children Through the Sex Trade Final Report suggested nothing to combat poverty or to target sexual abuse counseling to kids in the sex trade. Instead, mandatory detention is justified as a means for kids to “dry out.” The committee report also uses Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or Effects (FAS/E) to justify mandatory detention to assess “cognitive disabilities”—another way the committee report directly links “toxic moms” to commercially sexually exploited kids. But there is no proof of high incidence of FAS/E among kids in the sex trade.

The Saskatchewan Politics of Native Kids The Saskatchewan Special Committee’s Final Report further pathologizes aboriginal mothers and devalues aboriginal kids. The Sask. Party, a “socially conservative” coalition of federal Reform Party, provincial Progressive Conservative and Liberal Party supporters, espouses formal equality against affirmative action and disregards the international law that required Britain and Canada to sign treaties with nations of Aboriginals (Erasmus 1989). Although they represented the provincial opposition, the Sask. Party is responsible for the Special Committee’s emphasis on pathologizing kids. The party’s rhetoric decontextualizes social problems, emphasizes individual responsibility, and implies that Aboriginals with problems are pathological (Dyck 1991). A passage endorsed only by the Sask. Party Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) says, mandatory detention is . . . protective secure care[,] . . . a way to provide a safe place for children who engage in harmful self-destructive behaviors and/or who are being sexually exploited by predators. . . . The intent . . . is to demonstrate to the child that they [sic] are precious . . . [and] guide them on the road to recovery, healing and a purposeful life. Protective secure care is . . . one very important step in reclaiming our children . . . from the dark and evil forces that threaten to consume their lives . . . to a life of celebration and love . . . [and] good and wholesome choices. (Spec. Cmtee 28)

A draft bill favored by government New Democrat MLAs to provide support committees for kids bringing civil suits against johns and

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pimps was not recommended. Sask. Party members feared kids would make false allegations and get damages from more than one john (Spec. Cmtee 14) and that support committees would not keep them from going back to the street to “target” another man (though the bill required support committees of helping professionals to stop remittances if kids went back, and to remit for specified purposes only, Spec. Cmtee 13). Sask. Party MLAs said kids would practice “reversed exploitation,” using the term “entrapment” (Spec. Cmtee 14), thus constructing kids as sexual abusers and gold diggers. Instead of holding customers accountable, they proposed treating the sexual behavior of youth vendors as if kids are responsible for johns’ sexual predation, redefining youth behavior as sexual abusiveness with no recognition that youth become vendors for nonsexual reasons. This discourse is powerfully reminiscent of historical treatment of young girls as “temptresses” or “bewitchers” of adult men, responsible for men’s sexual desire for them. But this victim blaming thoroughly undermines the project of legal reform. The lack of credibility attributed to poor, often nonwhite, children, compared to middle-class white male customers, is the biggest impediment to prosecution of johns. For example, Jack Goohsen, a Saskatchewan Conservative MLA, applied to appeal his conviction, claiming the girl prostitute was not credible because of “lying to police about her name and age because she was breaking curfew” (Canadian Press 1999). The Sask. Final Report discussion of “Root Causes” included “domestic abuse” but does not define it. The report also refers to “family violence” and “child sexual abuse,” without explaining what they have to do with each other and with commercial sexual exploitation (Spec. Cmtee 34). Recognizing racism as a cause (Spec. Cmtee 36), the report recommended that the province “expand [educational] activities to combat racism and increase understanding between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.” This recommendation, however, constructs racism as reciprocal misunderstanding, rather than exploitation. Recognizing “domestic abuse” as a cause of kids entering the sex trade led to the only concrete program, in-home visitors for “high risk” families of newborns to age five, modeled on Hawaii Healthy Start (HHS). HHS, using semiprofessionals trained in infant-caregiver relations, reduces child hospitalizations. It addresses mothers of young children, targeting neglect, accidents, and physical child abuse—but not child sexual abuse, committed by men, often occurring later than age five and rarely resulting in physical injuries or hospitalization, which is the abuse causally linked to prostitution. Thus HHS could only reduce commercial sexual exploitation accidentally, as a byproduct of rapport between home visi-

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tors and mothers. But such rapport is unlikely because of distrust of social services, especially by Aboriginal mothers, because of too-ready recourse to child apprehensions (Parker-Loewen 2000). That the Special Committee suggested programs addressing causes of commercial sexual exploitation that only targeted poor mothers reflects racism against Aboriginal mothers, part of the most common form of racism in Western Canada, pathologizing Aboriginal individuals (Dyck 1991, 1–4, 7, 12–15). They blamed FAS/E for Aboriginal social problems and drunken Aboriginal women for child sexual abuse.

Racism and Blaming Mothers Racism as pathologization of individuals is evident in legal journal literature on G. (D.F.). Bruce P. Elman and Jill Mason, writing after Ms. G. delivered a healthy son despite the overturning of her detention, state: By not extending the parens patriae jurisdiction to yet-to-be born children whose mothers are substance abusers, we are consigning . . . aboriginal children in an alarming number . . . to a life filled, not with promise and potential, but with disease and disabilities, crime and conflict. And we are virtually ensuring that the next generation will be the same. (Elman and Mason 1998, 778)

Elman and Mason argue that drunken Aboriginal women are responsible for all the social problems that Aboriginal Canadians suffer at higher rates (see also S.C.C. Minority 969–970), by making their children substance abusers, criminals, diseased, and disabled from birth. Drinking mothers even cause high rates of sexual victimization. Major quoted the Moffatt Report about FAS/E: “Their personalities often lead them into situations where they are exploited sexually. . . .” He does not explain how anyone’s personality could cause someone else’s sexually predatory and abusive action (S.C.C. Minority 968). National Report writer Joe Woodward described G.’s appearance to fit racist stereotypes: during her first hospitalization, she “landed in a hospital after being found unconscious and reeking of paint thinner”; at court, she was “stoned, bruised and dirty.” Refuting Canadian Abortion Rights Action League Jo Dufray’s statement that “Women do not need legislation, they need health support,” he wrote “Health support eventually came to Ms. G., . . . after she had rejected the social workers . . . but only because she was unconscious long enough to get her into a hospital bed” (Woodward 1997).

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By linking medicare to “getting Ms. G. in bed,” Woodward connected “help” by the state to a judicial stereotype of Aboriginal women “asking” to be raped by passing out. Teresa Nahanee discussed Judge Michel Bourassa’s treatment of Inuit sexual assault complainants as “things” or objects, immured to promiscuous sexual use. Distinguishing them from “dainty coeds who get jumped from behind,” Bourassa claimed it was traditional for Inuit women to be used for sex while unconscious: “a man comes along and sees a pair of hips and helps himself.” Even Inuit girls consent to all men indiscriminately, according to Bourassa. When a 13-year-old developmentally delayed Inuk was gang raped and impregnated under the age of consent, the judge said she was not harmed because Inuit were kind to young single mothers and considered girls old enough for sex at puberty. Yet an unconscious victim usually makes judges treat crimes more harshly (Nahanee 1994, 192–204). Elman and Mason emphasized that Ms. G. turned to prostitution “to support her addiction” (Elman and Mason 1998, 770). Woodward said she left her home reserve with the plan “to take up prostitution and glue-sniffing on the streets of Winnipeg” (Woodward 1997), as if she had chosen prostitution and drug abuse as an occupation. In this image, it is prostitution that made her an unfit mother (Diduck 1998, 212) and led to her suicidality: In 1990, Ms. G., then sixteen years old and pregnant, was deemed to be ‘a child in need of protection’ and . . . placed in a residential youth treatment facility. . . . [E]ven then, [she] had adopted an unstable lifestyle including the abuse of solvents. She was subsequently placed in a residential facility designed to assist young mothers with the care of their infants. At that time, Ms. G. was unable to alter her lifestyle. . . . She began to prostitute to support her addiction[,] . . . ‘consistently refused all offers of services or treatment’[,] . . . engaged in acts of self-mutilation[,] . . . had attempted suicide . . . [and] remained a long-term risk for suicide. . . . Her addiction destroyed her life and, most probably, the lives of her children. (Elman and Mason 768)

Conservatives consider neither depression, commonly attributed to middle-class women, as a possible explanation of G.’s suicidality, nor her circumstances as structural causes of “social melancholy,” based on oppression and “the internalization of the loss of a loved or loveable self-image” (Oliver, this volume). Major also represents G. as embodying “stark intransigence” (Dawson 1998, 222; Elman and Mason

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768–769, 772–773, 784), echoing Shivas’s and Charles’s description (this volume) of American constructions of pregnant substance abusers as “spiteful” and “stupid and/or malicious.” Yet G.’s failure to make use of CFS opportunities to “reform herself” could equally be evidence that the state’s programming was a failure. Ms. G.’s prostitution was underage, occurring after the failure of her residential treatment and contemporaneous with the termination in 1992 of G.’s parental rights to the first baby (born in 1990) the year she turned 18 (QB Report 242–243). The empirical relationship of underage prostitution to sexual abuse, poverty, and racism makes the attribution of G.’s prostitution to addiction dubious. But this attribution, like the attribution of Aboriginal social problems to FAS rather than colonialism, racism, dispossession, poverty, and cross-race institutionalized child abuse (Miller 1997; Glavin 1998), demonizes Ms. G. To use prostitution to label G. unfit, social conservatives ignore her age. But in policy discourse as in the Criminal Code, underage prostitution or “commercial sexual exploitation” has been defined as abusive (City of Burnaby 1998, 5). Recognizing that Ms. G.’s prostitution was underage makes her a victim of rather than an agent of evil with no excuse for her plight. Estimates are that 80% to 90% of Saskatchewan children and youth in the sex trade are Aboriginal (Spec. Cmtee 36). Historical analysis shows Aboriginal women and girls were associated with the sex trade from the 1880s, the major treaty era on the prairies (Razack 1998, 2000). FAS/E is held to be more common in Aboriginal youth than nonAboriginal youth (see, e.g., Square 1997, 1999; Mertl 1998; McGovern 1997, 1998), but FAS/E is more underdiagnosed among middle-class whites (Gladston et al. 1997; Francoli 2002). Aboriginal youth recognize the meaning and the effects of this racist discourse. A former youth in care told a Saskatchewan Children’s Advocate, “I don’t think those people at Social Services understand how much people from our reserve love our moms. They just don’t understand” (Parker-Loewen 2000, 47). And a young woman with experience of the child sex trade told Kingsley and Mark: “In Vancouver, some people would just let us die. . . . [I]f you are Aboriginal and work in the sex trade, who cares [if you die], another problem over” (2000, 22). Aboriginals themselves describe FAS/E as a physical manifestation of the effects of colonization (Barnsley 2000). Social disintegration of many communities after World War II increased as did women’s binge and addictive drinking (see, e.g., Native Counseling Services of Alberta 2001; Canada and the World Backgrounder 2002), but women’s drinking is an effect, not a cause, of this social disintegration. The position of Aboriginal women is weakened by social problems, including desperate

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poverty and Aboriginal men’s drinking and violence. Entire communities are hurt by multigenerational child sexual abuse, which began historically with abuse of Aboriginal children by white priests and teachers (see, e.g., Bohn 2003; Four Worlds Institute 2003). While no one has shown that FAS is more common in Aboriginal youth involved in the sex trade (Schissel and Fedec 1999, 46), FAS/E fits stereotypes of Aboriginal youth as problematic. Racist discourse construes a causal relationship between high Aboriginal FAS/E incidence and sex trade involvement that may not exist. Most prenatal alcohol abuse causes no harm to fetuses (see, e.g., Polygenis et al. 1998). Figures like 1 in 30 births to heavy drinkers (Mitchell 2001), or 5%–15% FAS and 30% FAE for heavy drinkers (Pittaway 1997), led researchers to question “Instead of why so many, why so few?” (MacCormack 1999, 87–88). Characterological problems, or “secondary disabilities” (Streissguth et al. 1996), including substance abuse, criminality, and sexual intrusiveness (Wente 2000), have been added to the “syndrome,” widening FAS beyond what can be physically assessed, and exacerbating problems of proof (MacCormack 1999, 86–89; Waterson 2000). But characterological problems can be caused by other problems that occur at high rates in the same population, such as frustration caused by stigmatization in schools. And FAS/E advocates insist that, given positive attitudes and creative teaching, FAS kids not only avoid “secondary disabilities,” but succeed (Dearborn 2002). Given the empirical evidence, too much attention is paid to FAS/E in child sexual exploitation policy compared to the proven risk factor, child sexual abuse, perpetrated at above 90% by males. A discourse and a politics of panic about prenatal exposure to chemicals eclipse attention to the 25% of Canadian girls sexually abused before 18 (Badgley Report 1984). By invoking a rhetoric that blames women for maleperpetrated sexual abuse, this discourse blames women for harm done to children by men.

Sexual Danger as Disability: Manipulating Middle-Class Mothers We need to educate the public that the little kids are not nymphomaniacs . . . or all sex addicted idiots. . . . The guys even try to make it look like they are the victims: ‘Oh poor me, I have to pay to abuse a fourteen year old kid because my wife won’t put out.’ . . . There are girls out there who are eight years old. . . . [S]ex isn’t . . . on their mind at all. —Saskatoon girl who began prostitution in her early teens (Jackson 1998a 14)

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Before the early 1980s the orthodox position on child sexual abuse blamed mothers. The “textbook incest mother,” the wife of a man who abused their daughter, was a “collusive mother.” Daughters were also blamed as “seductive daughters” (Herman 1981). In current policy discourse, insecurities about mothering stop middle-class women from blaming men who buy sex from children. The Sask. Party position in the Special Committee Report was spearheaded by a middle-class mother, Arlene Jule, who professed great sentimental attachment to “innocent” children. But Jule’s policy analysis moved contradictorily between desire to rescue children from “dark and evil [male] forces,” and desire for control over youth to force their sexual practices to conform to social conservatism. Without a structural analysis of causes of sexual exploitation (Bittle 2002, 324, 329–337, 342–343), Jule’s discourse slips into punitive victim blaming despite her emotional commitment to kids. Mother-blaming discourse also rhetorically manipulates middleclass women into defending the middle-class family. But “closing the ranks” among these women protects middle-class fathers more than mothers, and excludes daughters. Current commercial sexual exploitation discourse obscures child sexual abuse, exonerates men while it betrays girls, and does not protect middle-class mothers from motherblaming. These effects are exemplified by two narratives by middle-class mothers of prostituted girls featured in the newsletter of the Prostitution Awareness Action Foundation of Edmonton (PAAFE). Both read like “defense briefs” pitting the family against the daughter. These narratives preempt the suggestion of familial sexual abuse by blaming boyfriends, but also construct the girls’ sexuality as pathological. One middle-class mother, who identified herself as “Rural Mom,” provided a photo of her then 17-year-old daughter as a preschooler. The family’s life before her daughter’s “fall”—through a boyfriend/pimp who made the “former honors student . . . den[y] our love for her”—was beyond reproach because of the family’s material success. The parents proved that “[o]ur children always came first!” by moving to an acreage for “a safe and healthy environment” to “allo[w] our children to grow into the adults we always hoped for.” “Rural Mom” was totally ignorant of the fact that pimps roam the middle-upper class neighborhoods and schools . . . to recruit young girls into their grasp. . . . [N]o family is safe. A pimp does not care what your financial status or what neighborhood he is seeking his next ‘girl’ from. (PAAFE 2000a, 3)

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But this “fact” is false. Most commercially sexually exploited kids come from deprived backgrounds. Pimping can be brutal and coercive, but most kids are not pimped. Most prostitute-pimp arrangements arise after sex trade involvement because of john violence (Sexually Exploited Youth Cmtee, 1–2; Jackson 1998a; Spec. Cmtee 31; Save the Children Canada 1999, 26–27; ADM Committee 1999). Rural Mom’s title, “Stolen Children, Stolen Families,” makes family and children into property. Prostitution is a family apocalypse because it “declasses”: How could this have happened!? This was not a part of the plan! We don’t live downtown on skid row. We are educated; how could we have known? (PAAFE 2000a, 3)

Because they “live downtown on skid row,” lower-class pimps must be the source of danger; danger must be geographically limited to the zone set aside for deviance. But this discourse of geography encodes racial bias (Razack 1998, 2000). Sixty percent of Aboriginal families in Saskatoon and Regina live below the poverty line; child sex trade strips are in Aboriginal slums where 65% of all families receive welfare (Spec. Cmtee 38). Racism allows middle-class families to hide behind their neighborhoods and white faces and pretend that child sexual abuse does not involve them. If one of “their” girls ends up in the child sex trade, it must be due to “abduction”/”seduction” by “dark and evil” (“brown and lower-class”) forces. But how, then, to explain the attraction of the abductor/seducer?

Sexually Exploited Girls and the Sexual Addiction Model I don’t know anyone who does this because she likes it; people think we enjoy going to bed with different men. . . . [I]t’s the price we have to pay to go on living: if I don’t work, I don’t eat . . . —girl from Peru (Save the Children Canada 1998, 19)

The language of a government pamphlet promoting P-ChIP at the A2A Conference constructed the sex trade as an addictive milieu. Its list of “warning signs” read like anti-drug alarmism: Acts cold toward or withdraws from family and/or friends. Is secretive and reserved with information about where he/she has been or with whom.

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Has extreme mood swings ranging from withdrawn to angry outbursts to very happy. Becomes angry, confrontational or abusive when confronted. Is protective of a new boyfriend/girlfriend and provides little information when asked about the relationship. Demands more freedom to do as he/she pleases. (Government of Alberta 1999)

The pamphlet encourages parents to scrutinize adolescent strivings for autonomy, rather than emphasizing the principles of prevention recommended by frontline street workers: good communication with teens, teaching about the sex trade, addressing substance abuse, promoting self-expression, achievement, and self-esteem through creativity, advocacy, and sports, and using Elders to teach traditions to Aboriginal children (ADM Committee 1999, Kingsley and Mark 2000). Providing preventive services becomes the responsibility of parents who are expected to act as police (Bittle 2002, 333–334, 339–340). In the rhetoric of the PAAFE mothers must accept maternal responsibility for the entire family’s functioning (Luepnitz 1988); husbands/fathers are not mentioned. The rhetorical displacement of responsibility onto pimps ignores middle-class johns, and burdens both “respectable” mothers and “sexualized” girls (see, e.g., Russell 1998, Simons and Whitbeck 1991) with sexual guilt, exacerbating the damage of sexual abuse (see, e.g., Kingsley and Mark 2000, 31; Coffey et al. 1996; Sexually Exploited Youth Cmtee 8). The 2000 conference “From Awareness to Action: A Conference On Healing Sexual Exploitation and Prostitution” held in Edmonton, Ontario, primarily relied on the discourse of sexual addiction to explain youth prostitution, despite the lack of sexual desire motivating most vendors’ commercial sex (Lautt 1984, 88, 104, 108). In a checklist (PAAFE 2000c, 6) prostitution was defined as a “sign” of sexual addiction. Other signs described without consideration of the vendor’s own sexual needs include having sexual secrets; “sex in places or situations or with people you would not normally chose”; wanting to “get away from a sex partner after having sex”; “remorse, shame or guilt”; sex leaving you “alienated from other people”; even having relationships with “the same destructive patterns.” At the same time, middle-class wives were represented as “sexual codependents” of “sexual addicts” (Kasl 2000a), pathological themselves because of someone else’s behavior. “Twin Cities Co-Sexual Addicts” material describes “sex addict behavior,” which it conflates with “sex abuse”:

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This rhetoric of “codependence” is the familiar rhetoric of “collusion” with abuse in which the wife of the abuser is condemned for it. The sexual addiction checklist defined “codependent” traits like “asexuality” and “sexual shame” as indicators of sexual addiction (Kasl 2000b). Middle-class wives of sex trade customers were equally pathologized: Kasl diagrammed “Sex Addiction” and “Sexual Codependency” as two lists equidistant from a central column, with identical arrows pointing from each to “integrated traits.” Sexual addiction and codependence are here represented as stemming from the same core beliefs, the different pathologies resulting from a “filter” of “culture, family, temperament, genetics and chance” but not gender (Kasl 2000b). This distorted representation of “traumatic bonding” as an addiction and as a problem in “masochistic” females continued the attack on middle-class women. Carnes represents traumatic bonding as addiction to abusive persons or bad treatment (Carnes 2000), thoroughly distorting the concept of traumatic bonding as posttraumatic social learning developed by psychologists such as Herman (1992) and West and Martin (1994). Their concept of traumatic bonding countered the sexist formulation, “Dependent Personality Disorder” that identified women who put up with abuse by male intimates, rather than their mates, as pathological. Their concept recognizes that traumatic bonding can reduce resistance to abuse and thus that childhood abuse, adult domestic violence, and rape are highly correlated (Herman 1992). But it also shows that traumatic bonding is based on rational victim ambivalence (see, e.g., Alexander et al. 1997, Freyd 1996, Janoff-Bulman 1992) and therefore is no more addiction than is any operant conditioning. This concept of traumatic bonding, unlike Carnes’s model, does not pathologize women. In the discourse of sex addiction, women and girls are either “seductive daughters” who are “too sexy” or “collusive mothers” who are “too unsexy.” This discourse blames women for johns’ behavior and absolves middle-class men. As Oliver puts it: “Women and other marginalized and abjected groups . . . [are] forced to carry the shame of white males” (this volume). Like sexually exploited girls, middle-class mothers are made responsible for not conforming to “rules” deriving

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from a patriarchal concept of the family as the manager of men’s sexual satisfaction, while “[t]he actions of male customers and the conditions that led to youth prostitution, such as male sexual socialization and female poverty, were (and continue to be) largely ignored” (Bittle 2002, 339). State action against girls as irredeemably damaged daughters, and ideological control of middle-class women, through sexual guilt as wives, operate in symmetry. As a result, middle-class mothers strain to avoid blame for their daughters’ prostitution by pointing out daughters’ “defects.” The daughter of the second PAAFE newsletter mother, “Karen,” was murdered at 17. The media described her “as a ‘known prostitute’ as if that somehow explained or justified her death”; but Karen protested, “Her life was so much more precious” (PAAFE 2000b, 3). Nevertheless, Karen had to explain “[w]hat went wrong”; she invoked a grab bag of psychopathologies, exemplifying a discursive “drift towards biological determinism” (MacCormack 1999, 87): My daughter was a low birth weight baby. So much is still unknown about the neurological effects of fetal trauma, . . . often undiagnosed though not unpunished. Could this explain why she seemed unable to plan . . . ? I have . . . relatives who struggle with addictions and motivation. Was her impulsive, fun-loving personality and need for immediate gratification . . . the result of recessive genes? . . . My daughter was a victim . . . born with a personality she did not choose, . . . and was vulnerable to the altered reality of drugs. (PAAFE 2000b, 3)

This description makes Karen’s daughter seem fated to prostitution and murder. Describing her daughter’s “handicaps” undermines Karen’s protest of violence against prostitutes as citizens who deserve equal protection under the law. Defensive fear of blame for the “germ of prostitution” (City of Burnaby 10) shames families and leads middle-class mothers to rhetorically abandon their daughters. The sex trade advertises them as “hot sluts” and the addiction model promotes this image to their own parents, thus placing mothers and daughters in opposition and eroding the mother-daughter bond, all in the name of “family.”

Better Options for Mothers and Girls The recent policy debate in Alberta and Saskatchewan is marked by missed opportunities and misogyny. But there are other possibilities. In

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contrast to the A2A Conference, the 1997 Out from the Shadows International Summit of Sexually Exploited Youth in Victoria, BC, cochaired by Cherry Kingsley, a survivor of the trade, and Senator Landon Pearson, brought together delegates from Canada, the U.S., the Caribbean and South America to draft an international human rights Declaration and Agenda for Action of Sexually Exploited Youth, to supplement the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Kingsley and Rabbinovitch, 1997). In this setting, despised and abused kids became legislators for the world, allowed to speak about their lives and acknowledged for their strengths. The rhetoric of Out from the Shadows emphasized that healing from the child sex trade involves learning that they are persons with rights like everyone else, a basic truth that child sexual abuse, poverty, and the child sex trade hides from them. Lisa, a delegate from Saskatoon, said: Before Out from the Shadows, . . . I knew something was wrong, but I never knew that I had a right . . . to be protected from sexual abuse . . . I thought that being used for sex made me different from other kids. . . . When I attended the Summit, . . . a lot of weight came off my heart. (Save the Children Canada 1999, 54)

A 15-year-old from Victoria added: [L]etting young people know about their rights is very important. . . . Let them know there are other options, other than selling themselves to gross old men . . . to survive. (Kingsley, Lewis, and Halldorson 1997, 2)

The kids impressed the adults who joined them to hear the declaration (Save the Children Canada 1999, 47), proving Kingsley’s point that: “If you see them only as victims, you have missed the point. These young people could be leaders” (Out from the Shadows 1998, 10). They proved the value of “an immediate, non-legalistic, non-condemnatory strategy” to uphold “the integrity of a society that so far has failed to stop adult predators of children and youth,” by “creat[ing] and work[ing] in an atmosphere of trust of and by street children and youth” (Schissel and Fedec [emphasis added], 51–53). Like the victims of child sexual exploitation, Ms. G in G. (D.F.) was silenced (see, e.g., Dawson 1997; MacCormack 1999, 79). Conservatives attributed recklessness, cruelty, abusiveness, and perverse desires—for drugs, prostitution, beatings, passing out—to Ms. G. But they never let her speak. G.’s sisters, however, expressed their care and

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put together a support system (S.C.C. Minority, 965–967), to give her hope for a life with her baby. G. clearly wanted a baby. Like many desperate addicted women, however, she tried to go it alone, avoiding prenatal care (S.C.C. Majority 952; Rodgers 1998, 722) and appearing twice in delivery stoned (S.C.C. Minority 963; QB Report 243). If coercion is avoided, however, addicts will accept full prenatal care including nutrition and drug treatment, and bear much healthier babies (Shivas and Charles, this volume; Garm 1999). The most important outcome of G. (D.F.) was that after major feminist and civil rights organizations (the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League, the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, the Women’s Health Clinic Inc., and the Manitoba Association of Rights and Liberties Inc., S.C.C. 925) took G.’s side, G. kicked her addiction—in just over a week (S.C.C. Majority 933–934; QB order of Aug. 6 was stayed Aug. 8 but G. remained until Aug. 14). She stayed clean and gave birth to a healthy baby. Feminists were most concerned with a right she never sought, the right to abortion (MacCormack 1999, 79, 96–99). Their analyses assume a model of woman versus fetal rights, which failed to capture how G.’s interests were entwined with those of her fetus (Randall 1999; Rodgers 1998; Shanner 1998). But they did not treat Ms. G. as a thing. Human rights discourse can be dangerous, for instance, when used to dehumanize “bad” mothers by representing them as mini-tyrants over their children and when “crimes against motherhood” are allowed to eclipse murder and child sexual abuse committed by men (Reich, this volume). But rights theory may also be very useful. To racialized women, joining the rights conversation, despite its flaws, may be a significant advance over being treated as property by the state. Though extremists suggested mothers’ wombs are dangerous places for children, the CFS’s attempt to reach through Ms. G.’s body as though she did not exist and take virtual prenatal custody of her child backfired. The attention let Ms. G. retain custody of a baby against the threat of apprehension by a racist state. Once feminists were watching, the state could no longer pursue its punitive agenda against an Aboriginal mother. When feminists resist woman-blaming, good can result from representing women as rights-bearing human beings. Johns are middle-class family men, so feminists can help middle-class women see beyond the scapegoating of “other” mothers as a quick “fix” for their own pain, and confront child abuse in their own families. In G. (D.F.) and Out from the Shadows, speaking up for girls and women’s rights as citizens has been effective. Feminists can be allies for Aboriginal communities. The empowerment of mothers and children is not beyond us. Start listening to the women and girls.

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Russell, Diana E. H. 1998. The Making of a Whore. In Issues in Intimate Violence, ed. R. Burgen, 65–76. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Save the Children Canada. 1998. Out from the Shadows, Living in the Open: Regional Consultation Reports. Vancouver: Save the Children Canada. Save the Children Canada. 1999. Speaking Out Together: Out from the Shadows: The Sexually Exploited Youth Project. Declaration and Agenda for Action of Sexually Exploited Children and Youth. Vancouver: Save the Children Canada. Schissel, Bernard, and Kari Fedec. 1999. The Selling of Innocence: The Gestalt of Danger in the Lives of Young Prostitutes. Canadian Journal of Criminology 41: 33–56. Shanner, Laura. 1998. Pregnancy Intervention and Models of Maternal-FetalRelationships: Philosophical Reflections on the Winnipeg C.F.S. Dissent. Alberta Law Review 36(3): 751–767. Simons, Ronald, and Les Whitbeck. 1991. Sexual Abuse as a Precursor to Prostitution and Victimization among Adolescent and Adult Homeless Women. Journal of Family Issues 12: 361–379. Special Committee. 1996. Special Committee to Prevent the Abuse and Exploitation of Children Through the Sex Trade, Final Report. Regina, Sask: Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan. Square, David. 1997. FAS Epidemic on Man. Reserve. Canadian Medical Association Journal 157(1): 59–60 ——— . 1999. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Diagnosed by Telelink in Manitoba. Canadian Medical Association Journal 60(5): 627. Streissguth, Ann, Helen Barr, Julia Kogan, and Fred Bookstein. 1996. Understanding the Occurrence of Secondary Disabilities in Clients with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) and Fetal Alcohol Effects (FAE). Olympia: University of Washington School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Tibbetts, Janice. 1997. Supreme Court Refuses to Recognize Fetal Rights [GlueSniffing Mother Case]. Canadian Press, October 31. Van Bruschot, Erin Gibbs. 1995. Youth Involvement in Prostitution. In Canadian Delinquency, eds. R. A. Silverman and J. H. Creechan, 298–310. Scarborough, Ontario: Prentice Hall. Waterson, Jan. 2000. Women and Alcohol in Social Context: Mothers’ Ruin Revisited. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave. Wente, Margaret. 2002. Searching For a Tragic Link [Fetal Alcohol Effect]. Globe and Mail, Metro ed., July 30, A 13. West, Louis, and Paul Martin. 1994. Pseudo Identity and the Treatment of Personality Change in Victims of Captivity and Cults. In Dissociation: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives, eds. Steve Lynn and Judith Rhuer, 268–288. New York: Guildford.

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Widom, Cathy. 1995. Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Later Criminal Consequences. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice Research. ——— . 1996. Childhood Sexual Abuse and Its Criminal Consequences. Society 33: 47–53. Winnipeg Child and Family Services (Northwest Area) v. G. (D.F.) [1997]. Woodward, Joe. 1997. The Chosen and the Choosers: Once Again the Supreme Court Embraces Gays and Abandons Babies. B.C. Report 9(12), Nov. 17, 26–32.

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Behind Bars or Up on a Pedestal: Motherhood and Fetal Harm TRICHA SHIVAS and SONYA CHARLES

Most of us would agree that no responsible mother would choose to expose her would-be child (a fetus she has chosen not to abort) to harm. Yet there is some disagreement in the public rhetoric about what counts as harm and under what circumstances the mother should be held accountable for the risks her choices expose her child to during pregnancy. In this paper we explore this disagreement in the following two cases: a woman who uses illegal drugs during pregnancy and a woman who uses infertility drugs to become pregnant. A number of risks are associated with the use of illegal drugs during pregnancy including low birth weight, cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and respiratory problems. As a society, we condemn women who knowingly and voluntarily expose their would-be children to these risks. But what about the woman who finds out that after months of painful infertility shots, months of monitoring her cycle, and years of trying to get pregnant, she finally succeeds? What if she discovers she is not just pregnant, but pregnant with seven fetuses? By choosing to try to carry all seven fetuses to term, this woman also knowingly and voluntarily exposes her would-be children to risks including low birth weight, cerebral palsy, and respiratory problems. Do we, as a society, treat this woman the same way we treat the woman who uses illegal drugs? The fact is we do not. In the case of the woman carrying seven fetuses, we shower her with gifts, money, and even praise. In the case of the woman using illegal drugs, we shun her, publicly condemn her, and even arrest her. Why do we treat these cases so differently? If the reason we condemn the woman who uses illegal drugs during pregnancy is that she knowingly and voluntarily exposes her would-be child to severe health risks, why don’t we also condemn the woman who chooses to carry high-order multiples on the same grounds? What makes these two cases different and are they as different as we tend to treat them?

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In this paper we explore how conceptions of motherhood and fetal harm shape public policy for these two types of cases. First, we review and expand on previous work that rooted out the assumptions, cultural ideals, and practical consequences of our treatment of substance-abusing pregnant women. Then we draw out the assumptions, cultural ideas, and practical consequences associated with our treatment of women who employ assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Next, we explore the theoretical and conceptual assumptions imbedded in the rhetoric used in media coverage and policy discourse concerning drug use during pregnancy and ART. Finally, we argue that in both cases there is an inaccurate account of harm that diverts our attention from important issues in the health of pregnant women and their would-be children.

Regina McKnight and “The Drug Moms” It seems everyone from talk show hosts to politicians has weighed in on the paradigm case from the 1980s—whether or not a woman addicted to crack should be allowed to keep her child. Many of the articles addressing this issue have made derogatory comments on the women’s character and expressed concern for the welfare of the children born to these mothers (Hall 1992; Hansen 1998). The recent case of Regina McKnight exemplifies the typical public reaction to these women. In May 1999, 24-year-old Regina McKnight was eight and half months pregnant when she delivered a stillborn child. At that time, McKnight was a crack-cocaine addicted mother of three who had been homeless on and off for a number of years and had never been in a drug rehabilitation program (Pressley 2001, A03). McKnight has an IQ of 72 and said that she began to smoke crack in 1998 when her mother was struck by a car and killed. McKnight was brought up on charges of homicide. Although McKnight’s eventual conviction was covered in the media as being controversial and the media did interview her defense team, there are a number of statements in the media coverage that epitomize the negative representation of women who expose their would-be children to the risks of illegal substance use. Greg Hembree, the solicitor for the 15th Judicial District of South Carolina, was quoted as saying, “If the child had been smothered by its mother two weeks after being born, there would be no question about prosecution. The only difference here is that this was two weeks before the child would have been born. It is still part of a parent’s fundamental responsibility to protect children.” (Boughton 2001, 17; emphasis added)

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If you kill a child by showing extreme indifference to human life then you’re guilty of homicide by child abuse, just like the guy who’s guilty of murder. (Herbert 2001, A29; emphasis added) Regina McKnight is a pathetic crackhead who has no business having babies. (Tucker 2001, 6B)

As these statements show, many believe that drug abuse during pregnancy is not only a voluntary choice, but also a sign that these women could not possibly be concerned about the health of their future children. In fact, the behavior of the women is considered spiteful and these commentators argue that the only way the women will change their behavior is through punishment, and not through education or social support. These statements could also be read as implying that these women are stupid and/or malicious since the assumption is that (a) everyone knows any drug use is harmful to an unborn fetus and (b) help, such as drug rehabilitation, is available if these women wanted it. Both of these assumptions are questionable. The rise in criminal prosecution and the rhetoric in state policies concerning drug abuse during pregnancy tend to reflect this punitive view as well. A recent survey of case and statutory law shows that 60% of states have had at least one major court case concerning substance abuse during pregnancy. Of these cases, all were directed against the pregnant women; none dealt with access to drug rehabilitation or other resources for substance abusing pregnant women. These women have been charged with serious crimes such as distribution of a drug to a minor, child abuse, manslaughter, and murder (Synopsis 2001; Paltrow et al. 2000). It is estimated that “200 women in more than thirty states have been prosecuted on theories of ‘fetal abuse’” (Paltrow et al. 2000). In addition, the criminal statutes frame substance abuse during pregnancy as a question of harm. For example, according to a Wisconsin law, Child abuse, when used in referring to an unborn child, includes serious physical harm inflicted on the unborn child, and the risk of serious physical harm to the child when born, caused by the habitual lack of self-control of the expectant mother of the unborn child in the use of alcohol beverages, controlled substances, or controlled substance analogs, exhibited to a severe degree. (Synopsis 2001, 294; emphasis added)

Furthermore, the legal statutes often go out of their way to distinguish between harm caused by illegal substances and harm caused by medically prescribed substances. Illinois law states:

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There are at least two assumptions in these statutes. First, that exposing a fetus to potential harm while under medical supervision is acceptable, but exposing a fetus to potential harm without medical supervision is not. Second, that women who expose their fetuses to unacceptable potential “harms” are unfit to be mothers, regardless of whether the child is actually harmed and regardless of the intention of the mothers. In addition, these laws also assume that if a woman uses illegal substances during pregnancy, then any birth defects or illnesses suffered by the fetus (or later child) must be a result of the substance abuse. Moreover, this assumption is treated as a medical fact despite lack of evidence and the difficulty in establishing a direct causal connection in cases of in-utero harm. Additionally, these laws suggest that our best policy is to treat the woman addicted to drugs as a criminal rather than an individual in need of assistance. Furthermore, these laws appeal to an ideal of “motherhood” that expects women to be self-sacrificing and always put the needs of their children above their own (an ideal also considered by Oliver, Buydens, Managhan, and DiQuinzio in this volume). This idealizing representation of motherhood excludes women who use illegal drugs during pregnancy from the category “mothers,” or at least automatically labels them “bad” mothers. Let us take a closer look at each of these points. One question raised by these laws is whether it is a medical fact that the use of illegal drugs during pregnancy is the cause of the harms suffered by these children? The answer to this question is no. Recent studies indicate that the use of illegal drugs like crack during pregnancy may not put the resultant child at significant risk of developing birth defects. Clinical research is showing that—despite numerous warnings about the scourge of “crack kids”—there is little evidence of serious physical or mental harm resulting from the use of crack during pregnancy (Frank et al. 2002; Frank et al. 2001). Most of the previous studies that had argued for a connection between crack and birth defects failed to adequately account for other variables such as tobacco or alcohol use, poor nutrition, or inadequate prenatal care (Chavkin and Breitbart 1997). The recent data raise other questions for consideration, such as

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if crack is not the causal factor of these risks, why have the media and the criminal courts focused their attention so heavily on crack addicts? As Lawrence Gostin notes, “The singling out of drugs, particularly crack cocaine, from all other ways in which a fetus can be harmed demonstrates the discriminatory impact and purpose of these laws” (2001, 9). Research has shown that the heavy focus on the use of crack cocaine targets poor women of color—women whose motherhood is already inconsistent with the romanticized ideal of a mother (Charles and Shivas 2002, 144; NIDA 1997; Buydens, this volume). Another question raised by these antidrug laws is if women are found to be using drugs during pregnancy, is criminal treatment the best way to address this problem? Recent work on drug abuse shows that abusers have a very difficult time stopping the use of drugs even when they are trying to quit (Paltrow et al. 2000). Despite evidence showing that there are inadequate resources for drug rehabilitation of pregnant women and that, given proper support and resources, pregnancy is often a motivation for women to get off drugs, law and public policy continue to treat substance abuse during pregnancy as criminal activity (NIDA 1997). Treating women who use illegal drugs during pregnancy as criminals is problematic for two reasons. First of all, throwing women in jail is not confronting the problem; rather it sets women up for continued abuse once they are released. Studies indicate that women who abuse drugs often have been or are being sexually or physically abused. In fact, “experts believe that it is likely that women who are abused ‘self-medicate’ with alcohol, illicit drugs, and prescription medication to alleviate the pain and anxiety of living under the constant threat of violence” (Paltrow et al. 2000). Jail does not address these issues and may further complicate them, such that when these women are released, they will continue to turn to illegal drugs as a means of escape. Secondly, charging these women with certain crimes like homicide, as occurred in the case of Regina McKnight, assumes that these women have some intent to cause harm to the fetus (Pressley 2001, A03). However, there is evidence that “once women are successfully detoxified and enrolled in a treatment program, their motivator to stay drug free is their children” (NIDA 1997). This research suggests these women do not want to harm their children, but rather are in need of treatment that will help them avoid behaviors that may expose their children to risk. In addition, these criminal laws against drug using mothers draw on romanticized notions of motherhood. The romanticized mother is white and completely devoted to her children and her husband; ideal mothers are not single mothers. She does not work, because that takes

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away from time with her children (Meyers 2002; Chodorow 1989; Hewlett 2002). She is never overtaxed, frazzled, or irritated—to be so would be to put her own feelings above those of her husband and children. Instead she is the “angel in the house,” ever waiting and always available to be of service to others. Her responsibility is viewed under the rubric that “ ‘mothering’ [is] women’s function and [that] . . . unconditional loving, [is] a matter of selflessly protecting and nurturing all life” (Hoagland 1988). Under this image of motherhood, any attention she pays to herself or her own needs is frowned upon, unless it is a “perk” that her family “allows” her to have such as a birthday trip to the spa or Dad cooking on Mother’s Day. On the other extreme, we have the cultural image of the “welfare queen” and the “drug mom.” Both of these women are portrayed and viewed as selfish women who do not care about their children at all. The “welfare queen” and the “drug mom” are also implicitly represented as African-American, despite the relatively similar levels of drug use among whites (6.4%), African-Americans (6.4%), and Hispanics (5.3%) and despite the greater number of whites than African-Americans living in poverty in the U.S. (Health, United States, 2002). According to this image the “welfare queen” uses her children for financial gain. Lazy and unmotivated, in order to avoid working she will continue to have children as long as the state will pay and, in the process, passes on her bad values to her children (Collins 1991, 77; Buydens, this volume). During the welfare reform campaign of the 1990s, these assumptions led to the restriction of benefits for additional children, a push to force women into the workforce, and in some instances pressure on women to marry (Isgro, this volume). The “welfare queen” does not meet the romanticized ideal of motherhood; she is viewed as selfish, lazy, poor, and typically unmarried. When the antidrug campaign of the 1980s started, the use of crack cocaine became a primary focus. Drawing on the image of the “welfare queen,” the rhetoric began to focus on “drug moms”—a term used to classify women who abused crack during pregnancy. While not using her children for financial gain, she is also considered lazy and self-centered. Despite the fact that studies demonstrate “no significant difference in childrearing practices between addicted and non-addicted mothers,” the rhetoric of “drug mom” emphasizes her “lack of self-control” and disregard for the well-being of her would-be child (Paltrow et al. 2000). Just as policies were suggested to prevent the “welfare queen” from further reproduction, programs have been established to prevent the “drug mom” from reproducing. In 1994 Barbara Harris established a program under the acronym C.R.A.C.K. (Children for A Caring Kommunity),

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now referred to as Project Prevention. Under this program, women who use drugs are given an economic incentive to be permanently or temporarily sterilized (see www.cashforbirthcontrol.com). The assumption here was that “drug moms” wanted their drugs so much that they would be willing to sacrifice all chances of future reproduction for one or two additional highs. “Drug moms” did not meet the romanticized ideal of motherhood because it is assumed that they lack the self-control necessary of an ideal mother, they seek to fulfill their own needs, and do not care about or do not really want their children. Like the negative stereotype of the “welfare queen,” the “drug mom” image is a highly inaccurate portrayal of these women. While we certainly do not condone or encourage drug use during pregnancy, portrayals of “drug moms” (like other portrayals of motherhood) continue to ignore the complex humanity of pregnant women and mothers. Pregnancy and motherhood do not turn women into completely altruistic and self-sacrificing saints. Pregnant women and women with children retain their full humanity and the imperfections and flaws that come with it. In fact, many women struggle to be “good enough” mothers in the midst of very demanding life circumstances: economic difficulties, domestic violence, conflicting demands on their time and energy from other family members or careers, and so on.

Bobbi McCaughey and the “Infertility Moms” With this analysis of the assumptions imbedded in the rhetoric surrounding “drug moms,” let us examine the rhetoric about “infertility moms.” Consider the case of Bobbi McCaughey—a still visible symbol of an infertility “success” story. McCaughey had previously used infertility drugs successfully to produce a single child; however, on her second attempt she ended up pregnant with seven fetuses. How did this happen? As White and Luethner note, “there are two ways in which the treatment of infertility can result in multiple births” (White and Leuthner 2001, 233). The first way is the use of a process called in vitro fertilization (IVF) in which eggs are fertilized outside the body and a number of the resulting embryos are transferred back into the uterus for possible implantation. To increase the chances of pregnancy, physicians tend to transfer more embryos than they believe will implant. Sometimes, however, more implant than expected, resulting in multiple births. As White and Leuthner note, avoiding high-order multiple births with this method only requires that a limitation be placed on the number of eggs that can be transferred at one time (2001, 224). The second way in which infertility

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treatments produce multiple births is ovarian stimulation via drugs like Pergonal or Metrodin. This method is cheaper because it does not require the intricate steps that IVF requires. However, “when ovaries are stimulated to produce oocytes, there is no absolute way to determine the number of follicles that will ripen or the actual number of oocytes that will be produced” (White and Leuthner 2001, 224). Bobbi McCaughey’s septuplets were produced by drug-induced ovarian stimulation without IVF. McCaughey’s physicians advised her of the increased risk of having multiples with the use of this technique. However, since her first drug-assisted pregnancy resulted in the birth of just one child, it is not clear how seriously she took those risks. McCaughey was also made aware that “multiple gestation pregnancies increase the risk of preterm labor and birth and decrease the average birth weight” (White and Leuthner 2001, 225), and that these factors are strongly correlated with many birth defects. Since she was made aware of the risks, is she irresponsible for deciding to use this treatment? Furthermore, once McCaughey found out that she had seven fetuses, was it irresponsible for her to bring them all to term? By refusing selective abortion, she significantly increased the risk that all the fetuses would either be physically or mentally disabled or would die—whereas if she aborted some of them the risks for the remaining fetuses would have been significantly decreased. Should she have been held criminally responsible for the fetuses that suffered birth defects? Outside of the academic and medical literature no one is asking whether it is irresponsible to use ovarian stimulation or to refuse selective abortion in the case of high-order multiples. Despite public response to substance abuse cases, no one ever asks whether women who carry high-order multiples to term should be prosecuted for any resulting birth defects. Why is McCaughey’s case different from that of Regina McKnight? To answer this question, we must examine what is being said about assisted reproduction technologies (ART) and high-order multiple births, and what policies are in place regarding these technologies. Despite the risks of multiple birth and the health problems associated with them, rhetoric surrounding infertility treatment has been overwhelmingly positive. Notable exceptions include public dramas surrounding custody disputes involving frozen embryos and children born from contract pregnancy agreements. There has also been some attention to infertility clinic “mixups.” Both mixups and custody disputes challenge the prototypical concept of the family, but ART itself is not typically cast as the culprit. Indeed, public discourse concerning cases of ART-induced multiple birth or new infertility breakthroughs is, in general, positive.

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Public media conversations about ART have focused on reproductive rights for the parents. Compare these reactions to the McCaughey septuplets to the reactions to Regina McKnight that were noted above. President Clinton called Bobbi McCaughey on the telephone and said, “It’s amazing . . . I admire you and I think it is great and I hope it will be a great adventure for you the whole way through. . . . It has been exciting for the whole country.” (Smith 1997, 3; emphasis added) Super Mom Bobbi McCaughey held one of her seven infants today. (Pienciak 1997, 3)

In addition to the verbal praise that Bobbi McCaughey received in the media for deciding to carry seven fetuses to term, the McCaugheys received significant donations in the form of money as well as material goods, including a new house, van, free appliances, and free college tuition. This reaction is a far cry from the condemnation and disdain expressed against women who exposed their children to less potential risks through the use of illegal drugs. McCaughey has been held up as the ideal mother and has even been given an Internet advice column as an expert on parental questions. Research shows that though some media accounts of the McCaugheys’ experience mention the developmental delays and physical problems some of the septuplets endure, that topic usually takes up only a very small portion of the article. But in the case of women who use substances during pregnancy the problems that their children may experience is the sole focus of media coverage, no further account of their “mothering” is provided (Charles and Shivas, 2002). The issue of potential harm in the case of ART has been widely discussed in the academic literature. In bioethical and medical literature a number of authors point out that one of the problems that the use of ART causes is an increase in the potential for multiple births and the harms associated with this risk (Capron 1998; Charles and Shivas 2002; Klotzko 1998; White and Leuthner 2001). Contrary to the substance abuse cases, however, the law does not reflect these concerns about potential harm to the would-be child (Capron 1998, 33). In fact, the assisted reproduction industry remains almost completely unregulated in the United States (White and Leuthner 2001). The few existing regulations are silent regarding the potential harms to the fetus, focusing instead on the rights of couples (in many cases specifically married couples) to be covered for infertility “treatments” under their medical insurance. At present 14 states in the U.S. have laws requiring health insurers to cover reproductive technologies. Although laws vary from state to

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state, there are significant similarities in the assumptions imbedded within these laws. Despite the fact that both illegal and prescribed drugs expose the would-be child to potential harm, we treat these cases differently. Why? The answer appears simple. In the case of women who use illegal substances, we believe that they choose to behave in a manner that results in the harm to their children. In the case of the woman who uses fertility drugs that result in harm, we believe that she has not made such a choice, but rather has only treated her “disease.” Or if a risk is recognized, this “slight” risk to the would-be child is taken to be canceled out by the gain to the couple. There are problematic assumptions imbedded in both these responses. First, let us consider the issue of choice in the use of infertility “treatments.” The discourse of infertility as a “disease” is now so commonplace that it is difficult to discuss infertility and reproductive technology without using this and related terms, such as “treatment” (we place the term “treatment” in quotes to indicate our concern with the discourse of infertility as a “disease”). The representation of ART as “treatment” for a “disease” implies that the woman is just doing what her physician tells her. This emphasis presumes that women who use medically prescribed drugs have no autonomy in their decision to agree to use these drugs—which is patently false. Except in cases where women are completely unaware of the “treatments” available or the harms associated with these “treatments,” women are choosing to accept these risks in hopes of producing a child. When aware of the consequences, those women who choose to use infertility drugs that hyperstimulate the ovaries over less risky procedures such as IVF have made a choice to accept the risks of harm for herself and her would-be children just as clearly as does the woman who uses illegal substances. Furthermore, in cases where the woman is found to be carrying high-order multiples, most clinics will suggest that she undergo selective abortion. This situation also requires the woman to decide what risks she finds acceptable—selective abortion poses the risk of losing more fetuses than are intended by the procedure, while carrying all fetuses to full term poses the risk of physical and mental harm to both the fetuses and mother. There is also a sort of “Doctor’s Blessing” issue here. Physicians are supposed to “do no harm.” On the basis of this view of physicians we trust that they, in fact, have adhered to this principle and we assume that they have already done a sort of harm/benefit analysis of any procedure they choose to perform. In other words, if a physician is willing to allow the woman to bring all fetuses to term, we already assume the risk is worth the benefit. However, accepting risks because they are medically prescribed is not the same as having no choice in the matter.

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Of course, there are a number of ways in which this issue of choice is more complicated than we have portrayed it so far. Are the women who must choose among ART options fully informed about the potential risks and benefits? Do women have control of the options available to them such that they could avoid the riskier options? Are these women’s risk-assessment abilities limited by their deep-rooted desire to have children such that their responsibility for the harms to the resultant children is diminished? Let us consider each of these questions in turn. Are women fully aware of the risks and are all the options made readily available to them? It is not clear whether women are fully informed about the risks associated with the different procedures available for infertility treatment. There are data to suggest that these women may not be fully informed (Gurmankin 2001, 3). However, there is evidence that at least in some cases, like that of Bobbi McCaughey, the patient is informed of the risks involved in continuing a high-order multiple pregnancy (Pienciak 1997, 3). Additionally, the power dynamic of the doctor-patient relationship may leave the individual who wishes to pursue these technologies feeling that if she raises too many questions or objections about her care, she may be denied the use of this technology entirely (Marshall 1997). To assure autonomy and address the issue of fetal harm, it is imperative that the physicians inform the patient at all stages of medical care about the potential risks and benefits of all options available. This consideration of patient autonomy leads to the next set of questions: Are all the options made readily available to the patient? And do women have control over these options such that they can avoid the riskier ones? At present the primary limitation on an individual’s access to these technologies is their high cost. A single cycle of ovarian stimulation through the use of drugs costs about $1,000, whereas a single cycle of IVF costs about $12,400 (ASRM Fact Sheet). Furthermore, there are only 14 states in which infertility treatment must be covered by medical insurance and that coverage is available only for patients with some form of private medical insurance. These laws mean that unless a couple has private insurance and lives in a state where this coverage is required, they are more apt to employ the cheaper of the two methods, if they can afford to use any of these technologies at all. The cheaper method, ovarian stimulation, is chosen even though, as White and Leuthner point out, when one actually has multiples the low cost of the procedure will be trumped by the high cost of rearing multiples (2001, 226). The high costs of these various procedures limit who has access to infertility treatment as well as which options are open to them. It also increases the pressure on clinics and patients to try riskier procedures,

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such as having more embryos transferred or higher doses of drugs, as each round of care increases the cost. Furthermore, according to a number of the state laws, one of the requirements for the coverage of IVF is that other “less expensive and medically appropriate treatments” have failed (New Jersey 2002; Texas 2002; Hawaii 2002; Maryland 2002). In states where insurance coverage is mandatory this requirement may mean that physicians will not even inform patients of IVF until they have tried the less expensive but riskier measure of ovarian stimulation. Additionally, some of the states have limits on the number of cycles covered or other available benefits (Maryland 2002). These limits may result in patients being willing to accept higher risks for the higher potential of a success in this cycle. Physicians treating the patients may also be more willing to use risky technology to improve the chances of a successful cycle within the confines of the insurance limitations. Finally, some may argue that the desperate desire these women experience in their wish to have children clouds their ability to weigh these risks rationally. It is true that we live in a pronatalist society that encourages women to have children, and many women feel incomplete, unwomenly, and depressed when faced with the possibility that they cannot become mothers “naturally.” As Diana Tietjens Meyers notes, the reproductive technology industry plays on “infertile women’s feelings of inadequacy and shame” (Meyers 2002, 46). However, we must be careful here not to assume that vulnerability leads to an inability to make choices. These women are vulnerable and emotionally committed to having children, but we do not want to suggest that this vulnerability makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for these women to weigh the risks presented by physicians. If women utilizing this technology are helplessly driven by their desires, one would need to question whether they have the capacity to decide to use these technologies in the first place. Furthermore, as ART becomes more commonplace and receives greater public attention, there is increased pressure to cover these options by insurance, which means that these women arguably have more resources to make an informed choice than many other people facing a major medical procedure. Indeed, those who work with infertile couples point out that, in general, they are highly educated and wellinformed about these decisions and have thought more about their reasons for wanting children than most fertile couples (Berg 1995). Now that we have considered how to think about autonomy and choice in relation to ART decisions, we must also look at the relation between harm and choice. Infertility is considered a “disease” and, as such, worthy of “treatment.” Therefore, any potential harm is simply

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viewed as a side effect of “treatment” and not a “willful” act or choice on the part of the women. It is assumed that there is a difference between harms caused by ART and harms caused by substance abuse because infertility is a “disease” and the risks are associated with the “treatment,” whereas as we previously noted drug abuse is viewed as a choice. The rhetoric used to represent access to and use of reproductive technologies implies that “treatment” is simply a matter of course. Some states even identify professional care for infertility as “medically necessary.” For example, the section of the Massachusetts’ law addressing insurance coverage is entitled “Coverage for Medically Necessary Expenses of Diagnosis and Treatment of Infertility” and a Connecticut law states that “any insurance company . . . in this state shall offer . . . coverage for the medically necessary expenses of the diagnosis and treatment of infertility” (Connecticut 2001). Other states explicitly define infertility as a disease or “abnormal function of the reproductive system” (New Jersey 2002). This framing of infertility as a “disease” is problematic for a number of reasons. First, the claim that infertility is a “disease” implies that childlessness is abnormal. Each of the laws is careful to include caveats about the fact that the couple must be trying to produce a pregnancy. But the use of the language of disease implies both a responsibility of physicians to treat and a requirement for those who are childless to seek treatment and comply with the recommended treatment (Rosenberg 1997). Since disease concepts function socially, they embody social expectations for both physicians who treat the disease and patients suffering from it. Just as calling deafness a disease normalizes hearing and medicalizes deafness (Elliott 1999), so representing infertility as a disease normalizes having children and medicalizes childlessness. Secondly, describing infertility as a “disease” is heterosexist, because only what is taken to be the “normal functioning” of a heterosexual couple’s sexual activity can result in pregnancy. This discussion leads to the final assumption imbedded in the rhetoric concerning infertility—its commitment to the traditional nuclear family. Many of the laws regarding coverage of infertility treatment make direct reference to the traditional family as the proper object of the laws. For example, one of the conditions necessary to receive the insurance coverage in Maryland is that “the patient and the patient’s spouse have a history of infertility of at least 2 years duration” (Maryland 2002; emphasis added). Under Rhode Island law, “‘infertility’ means the condition of an otherwise presumably healthy married individual who is unable to conceive or produce conception during the period of one year”

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(Rhode Island 2002; emphasis added). Additionally, a number of the laws require that in order for benefits to be provided it must be the case that “the patient’s oocytes are fertilized with the patient’s spouse’s sperm” (Hawaii 2002; emphasis added). These marriage-based requirements continue to promote the view that only certain individuals should be parents.

Conclusion In addition to the many questionable assumptions embedded in the contrary approaches to women who abuse illegal substances and women who utilize risky reproductive technologies, there is also an equivocal concept of harm at play in these discussions. In the case of the women who use illegal substances, harm is understood completely in terms of concern for the would-be children. There is no concern for harms that the women might be suffering as a result of their addictions, thus this rhetoric of harm renders these women invisible and unimportant. Furthermore, in this rhetoric our concern for these would-be children ends with their birth. Since many of them will be born into poor communities, they are likely to receive poor education and poor health care. For example, according to the U.S. Census Bureau there are 8.5 million children without health insurance in the U.S. If we were truly concerned for the welfare of our nation’s children this simply would not be the case. This rhetoric of harm also gives little attention to the psychological harms the family will probably suffer if the women are incarcerated. Regina McKnight cared for three other children. Though there is evidence to suggest that these other children would do worse in a foster home (Paltrow et al. 2000), the rhetoric and public policies on pregnant women’s substance abuse pay very little attention to the harms of the other family members. The only harm that the drug policies are concerned with is the potential harm to the would-be child caused by the pregnant woman’s substance abuse. In contrast, when infertile women seek medical care, the focus is on the family rather than the would-be child. The pain and suffering of infertile couples has been well documented; thus, the psychological harm of infertility is taken for granted and considered a significant harm. In contrast, the potential harm to children produced via ART has—until recently—been all but ignored. Because the fertility industry in the United States is almost completely unregulated, many practitioners rush to use newly developed or experimental techniques without proper testing and research concerning the consequences. Since success-

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ful attempts produce seemingly normal pregnancies and infants, those working in the infertility industry have not considered the safety and efficacy of ART. Others, however, have begun to ask questions about the long-term consequences of these processes, especially as the first generation of a large number of ART children begin to reach reproductive age. Although research concerning the long-term effects of ART on the children produced is only beginning to be done, there is speculation that these children may suffer both physical and psychological harms. For example, preliminary research shows a possible statistical correlation between intracytoplasmic sperm injection and IVF and rare genetic birth defects, male infertility, and low birth weight (Bionews Electronic Newsletter). And some children conceived using donor gametes are starting to claim psychological damage from not having access to their ancestry (Norton 2000). As these concerns suggest, we should not just assume that the psychological burden of infertility automatically trumps the potential physical or psychological harms to potential children produced using ART. Nor should we accept the problematic argument that any potential harm, no matter how severe, to these children is trumped by the benefit of life itself (Purdy 1996; Cohen 1996). Furthermore, the potential psychological harms associated with losing children or the strains on families when they have multiple disabled children are not adequately addressed in the way the issue is currently framed (White and Leuthner 2001). In fact the actual harm is the same for in-utero exposure to drugs and for ART-induced high-order multiples carried to term. In both cases the harms that need to be addressed involve multiple individuals—the women who are pregnant or who wish to become pregnant, the family to which she belongs, and the would-be child. Each of these potential harms needs to be given its proper attention. In both cases the women are vulnerable. In the case of substance abuse, the woman is vulnerable to her addiction to drugs. She requires the assistance of a good drug rehabilitation program and community support in order to overcome that vulnerability. Also, more attention should be given to the reasons for these women’s drug addiction. Often, drug use is a “symptom” of something else such as abuse or a death in the family. In many cases the women’s needs go beyond access to a drug treatment program. In the case of the woman seeking infertility care, she is vulnerable to both the culture’s pronatalism and her own desire to have a child. She requires some regulation of ART to make sure she is fully informed of all risks and options and is not subject to risky or experimental procedures. In addition, we need to question the overwhelming pronatalism of our culture that leads

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us to spend huge amounts of resources on producing babies (Meyers 2002; Chodorow 1989), but lacks sufficient resources to assure that our society’s children have proper medical care and education once they are born. In both cases, caring for the needs of the women entails caring for the needs of her would-be child(ren) and the needs of her family. We need to refocus our attention on the women involved and, on the basis of that attention, address each of the potential harms raised in these cases. To summarize, our argument here is twofold. First, any discussion of harm needs to look at potential harms to all parties involved—the women, the potential children, and the family unit as a whole. Whether we are looking at women who use drugs or couples suffering from infertility, all the potential harms should be “weighed” appropriately. By this we do not mean conducting a strict cost-benefit analysis, but rather creating public policy that will best meet the current and future needs of all involved. We believe such policies would include better access to drug rehabilitation programs and community support/resources for women who use illegal drugs, regulation and oversight of ART services for women (and men) who use them, and adequate health care and developmental programs for all children. Second, we believe that focusing on the needs of women will lead to a more productive public conversation about potential harms. For example, Edmund Howe argues that helping parents helps children. According to Howe, research shows that the proper interaction with primary caregivers (both in-utero and after birth) plays a decisive role in children’s development. On this basis, Howe argues that if we want to help children, especially those at risk, one of the most important things we can do is give social support and guidance to parents (Howe 2001). Similarly, we believe that if public rhetoric focused less on placing blame and defining rights and more on social problems and personal needs we could develop more useful and humane public policies that would truly support all mothers and their children.

Works Cited ASRM Fact Sheet. American Society of Reproductive Medicine Fact Sheet: In VitroFertilization (IVF). www.asrm.org/Patients/FactSheets/invitro.html. Berg, Barbara J. 1995. Listening to the Voices of the Infertile. In Reproduction, Ethics, and the Law: Feminist Perspectives, ed. Joan C. Callahan, 80–108. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bionews Electronic Newsletter. www.progress.org.uk/News/BioNewsSearch. html.

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Boughton, Philip Delves. 2001. Drug Addict Mother Jailed over Stillbirth. The Daily Telegraph, May 19. Capron, Alexander M. 1998. Punishing Mothers. The Hastings Center Report 28: 31–33. Charles, Sonya, and Tricha Shivas. 2002. Mothers in the Media: Blamed and Celebrated: An Examination of Drug Abuse and Multiple Births. Pediatric Nursing 28: 142–145. Chavkin, W., and Breitbart, V. 1997. Substance abuse and maternity: The United States as a case study. Addiction 92: 1201–1205. Chodorow, Nancy J. 1989. Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cohen, Cynthia B. 1996. Give Me Children or I Shall Die! New Reproductive Technologies and Harm to Children. Hastings Center Report 26: 19–27. Collins, Patricia Hill. 1991. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge. Connecticut. 2001. General Statutes of Connecticut, Title 38A. Insurance Chapter 700c, Health Insurance, Part III Group Health Insurance, Conn. Gen. Stat. §38a-536 (2001). http://www.lexis-nexis.com. Elliott, Carl. 1999. Bioethics, Culture and Identity: A Philosophical Disease. New York: Routledge. Frank, Deborah, Marilyn August, Wanda Grant Knight, Tripler Pell, and Barry Zuckerman. 2001. Growth, development, and behavior in early childhood following prenatal cocaine exposure: A systematic review. JAMA 285: 1613–1625. Frank, Deborah A., Ruth Rose Jacobs, Marjorie Beeghly, Marilyn Augustyn, David Bellinger, Howard Cabral, and Timothy Heeren. 2002. Level of prenatal cocaine exposure and scores on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development: modifying effects of caregiver, early intervention, and birth weight. Fetal Cocaine Exposure May Not Stunt Development. Pediatrics 110: 1143–1152. Gostin, Lawrence, O. 2001. The Rights of Pregnant Women: The Supreme Court and Drug Testing. The Hastings Center Report 31:8–9. Gurmankin, Andrea. 2001. Risk Information Provided to prospective Oocyte Donors in Preliminary Phone Calls. AJOB 1: 3–13. Hall, Mimi. 1992. Cocaine-babies case appealed: Florida Law used to fight drug use during pregnancy. USA Today, March 6, section A, p. 3. Hansen, Jane O. 1998. Growing up with crack; saved for what?; Medical advances have outpaced the social safety net for fragile infants. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, September 29, section A, p. 10. Hawaii. 2002. Michie’s Hawaii Revised Statutes, Division 2. Business, Title 24 Insurance, Chapter 431 [New] Insurance Code, Article 10A. Accident and Health or Sickness Insurance Contracts, Part 1. Individual Accident and

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Health or Sickness Policies. Haw. Rev. Stat. §431:10A-116.5. http://www. lexis-nexis.com. Health, United States, 2002. United States Center for Disease Control.http: //www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastas/druguse.htm. Herbert, Bob. 2001. In America: Stillborn Justice. The New York Times, May 24, A29. Hewlett, Sylvia Ann. 2002. Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children. New York: Talk Miramax Books. Hoagland, Sarah L. 1988. Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value. Palo Alto: Institute of Lesbian Studies. Howe, Edmund G. 2001. Helping Infants by Seeing the Invisible. Journal of Clinical Ethics 12: 191–204. Klotzko, Arlene J. 1998. Medical Miracle or Medical Mischief? The Hastings Center Report 28: 5–8. Marshall, Mary F. 1997. Treatment Refusal by Patients and Clinicians. In Introduction to Clinical Ethics, 2nd Edition, eds. John C. Fletcher, Paul A. Lombardo, Mary Faith Marshall, and Franklin G. Miller. Maryland: University Publishing Company. Maryland. 2002. Annotated Code of Maryland. Insurance, Title 15. Health Insurance, Subtitle 8. Required Health Insurance Benefits. Md. Code Ann. Ins. §15–810 (2002). http://www.lexis-nexis.com. Meyers, Diana Tietjens. 2002. Gender in the Mirror: Cultural Imagery & Women’s Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. NIDA. 1997. Pregnancy and Drug Use Trends: 13568 NIDA’s INFOFAX. http//: www.drugabuse.gov/Infofax/pregnancytrends.html. New Jersey. 2002. New Jersey Statues Annotated. Title 17B. Insurance, Subtitle 3. Life and Health Insurance Code, Chapter 27. Group Life and Health Insurance; Blanket Insurance, Article 2. Group Health and Blanket Insurance. NJ Stat§ 17 B: 27–46.1x. http://www.lexis-nexis.com. Norton, Cherry. ‘Faceless Fathers’ May Be Identified. The Independent (London), April 24, 2000, title page, 1. Paltrow, Lynn, Cohen, David, and Carey, Corinne. 2000. Year 2000 Overview: Governmental Responses to Pregnant Women Who Use Alcohol and Other Drugs. http:// advocatesforpregnantwomen.org Pienciak, Richard. Off Machine and Into Her Arms: Mom Cradles Septuplet No. 1. Daily News, November 22, 1997, news, 3. ——— . Mom: Abortion never an option. Daily News, November 26, 1997, news, 3. Pressley, Sue Anne. 2001. S.C. Verdict Fuels Debate Over Rights of the Unborn; Jury Finds Mother Guilty of Homicide in Stillbirth. The Washington Post, May 27, section A03.

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Purdy, Laura M. 1996. Reproducing Persons: Issues in Feminist Bioethics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Rhode Island. 2002. General Laws of Rhode Island Title 27. Insurance, Chapter 18. Accident and Sickness Insurance Policies. R.I. Gen. Laws §27–18–30 (2002). http://www.lexis-nexis.com. Rosenberg, Charles E. 1997. Framing Disease: Illness, Society and History. In Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History, eds. Charles Rosenberg and Janet Golden, xiii–xxvi. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Smith, Bryan. 1997. Mother holds the first, strongest septuplets. Chicago SunTimes, 21 November, news, 3. Synopsis. 2001. Synopsis of State Case and Statutory Law Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics 1: 237–296. Texas. 2002. Texas Statutes and Codes. Insurance Code, Title 1. The Insurance Code of 1051, Chapter Three—Life, Health and Accident Insurance, Subchapter E. Group, Industrial, and Credit Insurance. Tex. Ins. Code art. 3.51–5 (2002). http://www.lexis-nexis.com. Tucker, Cynthia. 2001. Drug Warriors Join Forces with Abortion Foes. The Atlanta Constitution, May 20, 6B. U.S. Census Bureau. 2001. Health Insurance Coverage 2000. U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p60–215.pdf. White, Gladys B., and Leuthner, Steven R. 2001. Infertility Treatment and Neonatal Care: The Ethical Obligation to Transcend Specialty Practice in the Interest of Reducing Multiple Births. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 12: 223–230.

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PART

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Protesting Mothers: Politics under the Sign of Motherhood

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CHAPTER

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(M)others, Biopolitics, and the Gulf War TINA MANAGHAN

[P]ower is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms. . . . For it, secrecy is not in the nature of an abuse; it is indispensable to its operation. —Foucault 1978, 86

Introduction Feminist literature and feminist movements often assume that the “rationality of care” evident in predominant cultural practices of motherhood offers women a unique vantage point from which to criticize the military state. Certainly, this assumption was evident at the time of the antinuclear movement in the early to mid-1980s when American mothers organized on the basis of their role as “creators and nurturers” to protect children (Harwood 2001, 77). In this instance, women’s distinctive perspective as mothers and caretakers—which Sara Ruddick (1990) has labeled the “rationality of care”—was situated in opposition to a separate and distinct rationality, that of the military state. But the seeming subversive potential of American motherhood revealed in this protest movement and celebrated widely in some feminist circles has not always been evident in periods of militarization—and, even when it is, its inherent “goodness” is much more ambiguous than its proponents claim. Indeed, by the time of the Gulf War in 1991, the rationality of care appeared to switch sides, allying itself with the military state. It was enlisted through a Yellow Ribbon Campaign to garner support for American soldiers, which was a very short step away from support for the war. The question, of course, is how did this happen? And what does it tell us about the seeming subversive potential of the “rationality of care”?

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According to various approaches that explicitly or implicitly take women’s affinity with peace activism as a given, women’s participation in warlike activity is perceived either to be the result of false consciousness, that is, they have lost sight of their true interests as a result of media manipulation and/or state propaganda, or is the result of women’s limited options, since “[t]he hand that rocks the cradle has certainly not ruled the world” (Ruddick 1989, 36). This second approach maintains a distinction between women’s natural interest in peace and their decision to support particular men at war. Both explanations tend to conflate women’s bodies with their caregiving roles, thereby making possible underlying assumptions about what constitutes “authentic” (stable, universal, and good) versus “inauthentic” (nonstable, nonuniversal, and deviant) maternal traits. This paper makes no such distinction. Rather, I argue that the practice of throwing teddy bears and pillows against barbed wire fences is no more authentically maternal in nature than the practice of tying yellow ribbons and cheering sons and daughters off to war. Using Michel Foucault’s concepts of biopolitics and governmentality, I situate the subject position of mothers across different time periods to demonstrate how the modern practice of motherhood has been carried out in a context of power-knowledge, which regulates the practice of care and its attendant meanings. What is significant from this vantage point is determining how different maternal identities get produced through dominant discourses and cultural performances and their implications for political practice—specifically, women’s involvement in processes of militarization. In this essay, I focus on the shift that occurred from the time of the antinuclear movement to the “cheering re-affirmation of US militarism” manifest in the Gulf War (Boose 1993, 76). I outline some of the mechanisms by which the discursive space for American mothers—who during the antinuclear movement claimed a natural affinity with peace activism—became delineated less than 10 years later in a way that made protest or the articulation of antiwar sentiment untenable. Context is very important here. The dominant discourse of motherhood didn’t change that much, but the context in which it was situated did, such that by the Gulf War motherhood no longer afforded women a useful platform from which to criticize the military state.

American Women and Militarism: From the Antinuclear Movement to the Gulf War I begin by backtracking a little bit to the early and mid-1980s, the time that the antinuclear movement was at its peak: “In June 1982, at the

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time of the UN Special Session on Disarmament, one million people marched against the arms race in the streets of New York” (Gusterson 1996, 165). This march was the largest demonstration in American history and women played a monumental role in this grassroots movement (Gusterson 1996, 166). American mothers, in particular, organized on the basis of their roles as creators and nurturers to protect children. In the words of one antinuclear protester: “We are the creators, really, the caretakers of the creation of life and it’s stupid to pour all this energy into rearing healthy children and then to stand around and let some maniac, because he is hungry for power, destroy them” (Harwood 2001, 82). As Ginger Hanks Harwood explains: “It seemed crucial to them that national military conduct be made that conformed to policies that promoted and ensured life rather than threatened it” (2001, 82). For a moment in time, these women effectively disrupted the seemingly “masculine, rational, and superordinate” world of military planners and government officials by bringing the sentimental values, the personnel, and the “subjugated knowledges” of the domestic sphere into the public realm (Gusterson 1996, 209). Worlds, it seemed, were colliding. Consider the following description of antinuclear protests at a weapons lab in Livermore, California: On one side [of the barbed wire fence] a group of people lived the commitment that the appropriate way to deal with nuclear weapons was to give seminar talks and write bureaucratic memoranda about them, to model their characteristics on computers, to represent the weapons in terms of numbers and graphs and diagrams, and always to be dispassionate and analytical in discussing a predicament. . . . On the other side people responded to the weapons by publicly singing and shouting and weeping and hugging one another while clutching balloons and posters of rainbows and children’s handprints. . . . Speakers at the microphone insisted that international relations are properly not about “deterrence” or “stability” or “alliances” but about “love” and “reaching out,” or about creating a “family of nations.” (Gusterson 1996, 211)

In this instance, women’s distinctive perspective as mothers and caregivers seemed to position them incommensurably at odds with the rationality of the military state. However, by the end of the 1980s the antinuclear movement had all but evaporated and the seeming subversive potential of the “rationality of care” appeared to dry up with it. So much so that by the time of the Gulf War the “rationality of care” was being employed to mobilize women’s support for the war. Despite

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polls one week prior to the war that demonstrated a 24 percentage-point gender gap with 82% of men in favor of the war compared to a mere 58% of women, four days after the fighting started the gender gap had shrunk and, as Cynthia Enloe points out, “it wasn’t men who were changing their minds” (1991, 37). By 20 January 1991, 81% of men and 71% of women supported the war (Enloe 1991, 37). Overall support for the war continued to climb, reaching near consensus levels by February—even drawing the support of so-called peaceniks and other social activists (Allen et al. 1994; Farmanfarmaian 1992, 113). Unlike the mothers in the antinuclear movement who claimed “gender-specific rights and responsibilities for the tasks of critiquing the social ethos and generating a transformative paradigm for human community,” American mothers did not mobilize an effective opposition to this war (Harwood 2001, 77). In fact, American mothers contributed to the remilitarization of American culture evident during the Gulf War, both by participating in the war as soldiers and contributing to the myth of a vital and unified national community. Of course, it could be argued that the one thread holding each of these instances together was a genuine concern with American lives and that women would rally to support these lives wherever they happened to be. But this argument does not explain the deeper attitudinal shift toward militarization (evident in yellow ribbons, the news media, the homecoming parades, and even in toy sales) that simultaneously occurred during this period (Boose 1993). Furthermore, it obscures what Ruddick means by a “rationality of care,” which, as a mode of thinking or way of being whose principal aim is to sustain life and promote the well-being of others, is not in itself exclusive in orientation (1990, 237). That is to say, that while motherhood as a social institution or individual mothers may be patriotic, racist, or elitist, the “rationality of care” is none of these things (Forcey 2001, 163; Ruddick 1989). Although Ruddick makes this point, noting that very few mothers “take the world as an object of extended care,” she would cite this as an example of maternal “inauthenticity” (Ruddick 1989, 113 and 80). Power, in Ruddick’s view, is operative when it stops women from acting in or even recognizing their true interests and its function is primarily negative; it impedes, it blocks, it constrains, it represses, it masks, and it distorts (Gusterson 1996, 42). But only through an essentialist lens can patriotic motherhood be understood as inauthentic, since the claim of its inauthenticity suggests that there is a true expression of motherhood being denied. By emphasizing the performative nature of motherhood, I hope to highlight the productive aspects of power—its ability to regulate women’s behavior not just by prohibiting certain acts or repressing particular desires, but also by normalizing certain behaviors, and creating identities and desires.

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Theoretical Framework Hence, this essay begins from the presumption that an ideological critique is not sufficient to understanding the shift that occurred from the antimilitarist discourse prominent at the time of the antinuclear movement to the broad-based support for America’s overwhelming display of force in the Gulf. This essay is concerned with how the subject position of mothers changed such that even while many aspects of women’s maternal identities remained constant, motherhood no longer coincided so naturally with visions of world peace. This shift was evident not only in the society at large, but also within specific individuals. Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of the Gulf War was not only the high and sustained levels of popular support, but also the near lack of political dissent (Farmanfarmaian 1992; Boose 1993; Allen et al. 1994; Campbell 1993; Rowe 1991). This lack of dissent suggests that many mothers who were peace activists during the antinuclear movement at least tacitly supported the Gulf War. Questions about how the Gulf War came to be constructed as a “just war” are not irrelevant (Campbell 1993). But they do not in themselves illuminate the mechanisms that repositioned the subject position of mothers such that motherhood no longer afforded women a platform from which they could articulate a meaningful critique of the military state. Says Philpott: “[a]n ideological critique is not sufficient, rather it is necessary to attempt ‘to get inside it, come to an understanding of how its mechanisms work’” (2000, 170). These mechanisms include the specific vocabularies, practices, and forms of authority that govern individuals’ relations to themselves, “that shape the ways in which human beings understand themselves and are understood by others, the kinds of persons they presume themselves to be or are presumed to be in the various practices that govern them” (Philpott 2000, 176). The state itself is but one element in the production of subjectivity. Kuehls explains that “[d]iscourses of medicine, psychology, economics, education, agriculture, religion, and so on all contribute to the construction of the proper citizen” (1996, 73). And yet these various discourses with their separate rationalities and fluid points of intersection may have a totalizing effect on the population at large. Foucault observes that while such discourses take as their aim the attitudes, gestures, and habits of individuals, they interact in ways that support the creation of industrious, disciplined, and ultimately docile populations that are fit for the demands of a capitalist economic system (Foucault 1980, 171–172). He argues that the move from authoritarian modes of government to liberal democracy, in which the individual is thought to be “free from police regulation and other forms of direct

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state control,” required that citizens be governed in other ways, “most especially through acquired habits of self-control, reinforced by the normative gaze of others and the work of a variety of state and non-state agencies” (Hindess 1997, 263–268). This development can be understood as “governmentality”—a new arrangement that made liberal democracy both practicable and thinkable (Cawley and Chaloupka 1997, 28). It also transformed motherhood such that individual mothers would more intensely regulate their own behavior according to standards and ideals that they chose to adopt as their own. The emergence of governmentality coincided with the growth of populations in 18th-century Europe, the industrial revolution, and a hostile international environment, all of which led to new ways of conceptualizing and conducting the practice of government. Significant changes were taking place. Starvation, the plague, and other causes of early death were subsiding (due to industrial and agricultural revolutions and the related birth and expansion of the human sciences). The problem of government was less often posed as effecting ultimate dominion over a sovereign territory and more often posed as one of eliciting productive service from one’s citizens. As a result, Western societies were able to move from a preoccupation with death to a concern with how the human material of populations could be modified or enhanced. Says Foucault: “Power would no longer be dealing simply with legal subjects over whom the ultimate dominion was death, but with living beings, and the mastery it would be able to exercise over them would have to be applied at the level of life itself; it was taking charge of life, more than the threat of death, that gave power its access even to the body” (1978, 142–143). Foucault thus links the emergence of governmentality with the deployment of biopolitical techniques of power— techniques that achieve their aims by investing, enhancing, and modifying life (1978, 142–144). As the individual and social body emerged as an economic and political problem—the object of biopolitical techniques of power— power-knowledge came into play as a powerful agent of transformation in human life (Foucault 1978, 142–143). R. McGreggor Cawley and William Chaloupka comment on what this means in the context of an emerging liberal democratic state: “As individualism flourished, a corresponding move simultaneously transformed what individualism would look like. Rather than a collective national body or somehow genuinely independent nomads, the citizenry comes to be seen as a population, a mass that can be measured, statistically represented, and the object of administrative contemplation and action” (1997, 33). Thus, insofar as biopower came to be concerned with the factors that make for a healthy

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and productive population, such as reproduction, medicine, nutrition, and social hygiene, it also became part of the instrumental rationality associated with state survival in a competitive international system— what Foucault refers to as “reason of state” (1994, 238 and 260–261). Interestingly enough, the modern family is situated right at the center of these developments. On one hand, families occupy a unique and instrumental role in terms of the deployment of biopolitical techniques of power in terms of procreation, hygiene, the regulation of sexuality, the discipline of children, and the containment of disease. On the other hand, families occupy a key role in terms of the identification of problems and the articulation of wants and needs, so the direction of power is not one-way. Foucault makes this point: “The family is assigned a linking role between general objectives regarding the good health of the social body and individuals’ desire or need for care” (1980, 175). But Foucault’s very general description of the family unit overlooks the very specific role that mothers play at the intersection of these competing forms of rationality: one associated with “reason of state” that concerns itself with individual well-being to the extent that it enhances the competitive position of the state (as in the case of public education) and one that is concerned with the enhancement and well-being of individuals for noninstrumental reasons. The latter Foucault calls “pastoral power” (1994, 259–260) and it is comparable to Ruddick’s notion of the “rationality of care.” As Jon Simons explains: “[This] kindly, devoted form of power entails individual care and intimate knowledge of each member of the flock . . . [it is] a positive, empowering form of power” (1996, 191–192). Out of this form of power come alternative forms of social regulation and government intervention, but “it is regulation not for the sake of state control, but oriented towards increasing people’s happiness, enhancing their lives and capacities” (Simons 1996, 192). Here one can think of the role of teachers, medical doctors, psychologists, social workers, and Simons has added, mothers. Simons argues that we can see mothering “as the paradigm caring role, and locate it within contemporary networks of pastoral power of which the welfare state and caring professions are key manifestations” (1996, 192–193). But motherhood, like other pastoral institutions, is denied its potentially transformative role by the intersection of this form of power with the rationality of “reason of state.” So a paradox arises whereby those exercising pastoral power develop the capacities and dispositions of individuals in such a way that also enhances the strength of the state. This is not to suggest that pastoral power becomes merely a servant of state needs (Simons 1996, 180; Ransom 1997, 65–73). But it does suggest that the two

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counterpoised and distinct rationalities do often come together in ways that benefit both: “Professions investigating individual psychic states could be extremely useful to a biopower intent on managing the variables associated with population” (Ransom 1997, 65). Modern political power, therefore, is derived at least partly from the intersection of the individualizing effects of pastoral power and the totalizing effects of “reason of state” (Ransom 1997, 74; Simons 1996, 193). The discipline and practices of the caring professions provide the data on individuals that enables children, mothers, and families to be known and therefore to be governed (Walkerdine and Lucey 1989, 34). States define policy problems that require the caring professions to undertake new research and that require caregivers to produce betteradjusted individuals. Mothers participate in this process by striving to make their children acceptable to current social norms. Of course, none of this is problematic in and of itself. I am not suggesting that mothers shouldn’t be involved in transferring useful skills or shaping the subjectivities of their children. To presume otherwise would be to assume that an a priori or innate subjectivity exists and is being repressed. My point is that the caring, individualizing power exercised by mothers is not neutral. It is always the outcome of competing rationalities and strategies— and is therefore extraordinarily political. This understanding of the power exercised by mothers calls for a less than celebratory (even critical) attitude toward mothering since motherhood in its modern guise as an intensely regulated social institution largely came into being at the intersection of individualizing, caring power, and the totalizing “reason of state.” Simons notes that an intensified form of mothering emerged in the 19th century as part of a larger concern with the health and size of the population: “Such thinking is evident in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling of 1908 which held that because healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring . . . the physical wellbeing of woman becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race” (1996, 191). This concern with the strength and size of the population eventually extended to include a concern with the behaviors, attitudes, and inclinations of the individuals within the larger social body, all of which had interesting implications for motherhood. In this situation, it becomes increasingly difficult to talk about authentic or inauthentic motherhood or to describe inauthentic motherhood, as Ruddick does, as an ideological formation that oppresses women (1989, 29). While I do not disagree with Ruddick’s suggestion that “[motherhood (as currently understood)] defines maternal work as a consuming identity requiring sacrifices of health, pleasure, and ambitions unnecessary for the well-being of chil-

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dren” (1989, 29), I do disagree with the proposition (also prominent in child development texts), that there is a certain account of child development and mothering that is natural and inevitable—which exists outside of discourse. Patrice DiQuinzio, in this volume, refers to this view as “essential motherhood.” In her analysis of women’s participation in the Million Mom March, she demonstrates that theoretical and popular perspectives that celebrate essential mothering values and virtues tend to tie women to their subordinate subjectivities. They do so by encouraging women to engage in civic activism on the basis of their private (supposedly maternal) identities and by simultaneously limiting their maneuvrability and self-conception as political actors on this basis. Moreover, I would add, these perspectives deny the ways in which romanticized visions of “essential motherhood” are mobilized to prop up the predominant social order that, in many instances, these women are critiquing. According to Valerie Walkerdine and Helen Lucey, “current ideas about children as having needs to be met by a mother are not universal, timeless laws, but were developed in specific historical and political conditions which make mothering a function that is central to the way our modern state education and welfare practices operate” (1989, 20). Beginning in the 19th century, motherhood underwent a monumental transformation, becoming an object of scientific scrutiny and a site rendered calculable and appropriate for various forms of intervention by state and nonstate agencies. Shari Thurer describes the changes as follows: Borrowing techniques from recently developed and improved industrial production, as well as from the new fields of psychology and child study, which proclaimed themselves to be scientific disciplines, mothers sought to reorganize child rearing along rational, standardized lines. All of a sudden mothers employed thermometers, formulas, milestone charts, and schedules, and they consulted numerous treatises on appropriate courses of action in their endeavours. They bandied about new, impressive-sounding terminology—vitamins, proteins, bacteria— intimidating the uninitiated. (1994, 226)

The outcome of these changes Thurer (1994) has labelled “scientific motherhood” and although it has undergone a series of changes, it nonetheless clearly positioned mothers within the broader discursive network of power relations in modern liberal democracies. In many ways, “scientific motherhood” upgraded the significance accorded to mother’s domestic tasks as it endowed women with the “paradigm caring role” thereby authorizing women “to act caringly and nurturingly

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with respect to children who are ascribed subordinate positions to women” (Simons 1996, 190–192). But scientific motherhood also undermined women’s authority. The task of raising healthy and happy children was now thought of as too important to be left solely in the hands of the mothers themselves (Thurer 1994, 225–227). Mothers were increasingly expected to defer to self-appointed—and generally male—experts, many of whom were trained in medicine or psychology. Hence, in addition to actually improving child survival rates, through “the [biopolitical] technologies of hygiene, sanitation, and nutrition” (Thurer 1994, 226), modern mothering also became “one of the central aspects in the regulation of women” (Walkerdine and Lucey 1989, 20). Interestingly enough, this intensification—even apparent “professionalization”—of motherhood was occurring in and around the same time that tighter distinctions were being drawn between men’s public spheres and women’s private spheres so that men became increasingly associated with reason and abstract causes, and women became increasingly associated with emotion and nurturing roles. As a result of the inferior status accorded to the traits and tasks associated with the female sphere, the apparent professionalization of motherhood yielded no increase in the social status of mothering roles. If anything, this intensification of motherhood was part and parcel of women’s increasing subordination under what Simons refers to as “the central political antinomy of modernity” (1996, 194). Elaborating on this theme and Foucault’s omission concerning the gendered consequences of the intersection of pastoral power and reasons of state, Simons points out that “the welfare side of the antinomy is associated with women and the warfare side with men” (1996, 194). The consequences of this development are not insignificant and will be examined in the remainder of this paper. Adopting a governmentality approach, I outline some of the ways that American mothers were governed in and around the time of the Gulf War with the result that the subversive potential of the rationality of care was denied and the dominant practice of motherhood contributed to the rise of U.S. militarism. To do so requires getting inside and deconstructing the cultural grammar that makes particular utterances about maternal responsibility both possible and intelligible at certain historical moments and not others so that antiwar protest is deemed consistent with maternal responsibility in one instance and an abdication of it in the next. I emphasize that my focus on the subject position of mothers is at once very broad and very limited in scope. Motherhood is a discursive category that both exceeds biological mothers who are primary caregivers (as DiQuinzio argues in this volume that predominant understandings of motherhood also shape societal specifications of femininity) and fails to encapsulate

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any individual mother (because nobody is solely a mother). Any particular mother may also be a worker, athlete, wife, and/or churchgoer. Thus, attempts to delineate how the subject position of mothers gets defined and redefined within a particular cultural context should not be interpreted as a denial of the “oppositional, creative, or random possibilities” that exist within individuals (Ransom 1997, 49). Such possibilities may, in fact, hold the key to transforming motherhood itself.

The “Lead-Up” to the Gulf War and the Production of Maternal Guilt It is nearly impossible to describe the subject position of mothers at the time of the Gulf War without describing the discourse of “sensitive mothering,” which had become prominent in child development texts, child-rearing manuals, and throughout popular culture (Walkerdine and Lucey 1989). The previous discourse of “scientific motherhood” that emerged in the early part of the 20th century underwent dramatic changes and reversals in the postwar years such that by the mid- to late 1970s a “new hegemonic discourse began to take shape,” one that would further regulate and intensify the practice of motherhood (O’Reilly 1996, 89). This discourse emerged not so much as a result of better science, but as a result of new social priorities. In a “world that was reinventing itself after totalitarian insurgence, a world that had become understandably suspicious of any ideology smacking of the Third Reich or Stalin’s Soviet Union,” a new child-rearing philosophy was needed (Thurer 1994, 248). Books such as Watson’s The Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928), which stressed above all else the merits of regularity, punctuality, discipline, and cleanliness, and denounced cuddling and affection (lest it lead to spoiling), were no longer deemed appropriate (Thurer 1994, 237). Traditional ideas about subordinating the interests of the individual to the good of the whole or raising children with “stiff upper lips” seemed hopelessly passé (Thurer 1994, 248). Besides, as Thurer explains, “old concerns of inculcating discipline and self-control seemed a little too ascetic in the booming post-war economy, which was at least partly dependent on self-indulgence and consumerism” (1994, 248). Previous concerns with order seemed not only authoritarian, but were also identified with the continuation of the old system of class privilege. Hence, free will and personal liberation became the overriding concerns of the day. More than anything else, the new democratic citizen of the postwar period was to be “free” (Walkerdine and Lucey 1989, 25–29 and 174–178).

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But first this freedom had to be produced, and as Walkerdine and Lucey explain: “The mother became the guarantor not only of the liberal order, but of this new liberation” (1989, 15–16). With this newfound responsibility came intense regulation. This new mother had to be “watched, monitored, and produced” (Walkerdine and Lucey 1989, 40). Science had to discover and promote a new experience of mothering and then “read it back as natural fact and intervene in practices based on this knowledge” (Walkerdine and Lucey 1989, 35). Andrea O’Reilly describes the changes as follows: Today good mothering is defined as child-centered and is characterized by flexibility, spontaneity, democracy, affection, nurturance, and playfulness. This mode of mothering is contrasted to earlier stern, rigid, authoritative, “a child should be seen not heard” variety of parenting. Today’s ideal mother is not only expected to be “at home” with her children—as her mother was with her in the fifties—she is also required to spend, in the language of eighties parenting books, “quality time” with her children. While the fifties mom would put her children in the pram or playpen to tend to her household chores, today’s mom is expected to “be with” her child at all times physically and, most importantly, psychologically. (1996, 90)

The new discourse has been labeled “intensive” or “sensitive” mothering. Two features of this discourse, highlighted by Walkerdine and Lucey (1989), are prominent and worth mentioning, both because of what they reveal about the changes in the way maternal identities were produced and regulated, and because of what they reveal about the subjectivity of children who were born in the postwar period. Having her domestic life centered on her children rather than her housework, such that even mundane domestic tasks are transformed into pedagogy, is one feature of sensitive mothering (Walkerdine and Lucey 1989, 20–22). This practice at least partly emerged out of a pastoral power genuinely concerned with the intellectual development and educational prospects of young children. And yet, it also emerged at a time when the very legitimacy of the liberal state increasingly depended upon its ability to blur class distinctions and open up spaces of power to those who did not come from a privileged background. One way to do so was through education and increasingly the educational success of children was linked to the child-rearing practices of mothers. At the same time, other factors such as socioeconomic status or the availability of social supports were believed to matter less and less, if they were considered at all (36, 63, and 174–178). So pervasive and seemingly natural

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was the role of mothers in these developments that mothers who embraced this discourse—those who performed sensitive mothering (generally white, middle-class women)—were taken to be the norm against which deviant or otherwise unsuccessful mothers would be compared and subject to various forms of intervention on that basis. The second feature of the sensitive mother concerns the manner in which she regulates her children: “Essentially there should be no overt regulation, regulation should go underground: no power battles, no insensitive sanctions as these would interfere with the child’s illusion that she is the source of her own wishes, that she has ‘free will’” (23–25). The sensitive mother thus makes her power invisible and avoids overt conflict. Resistance and even violent responses by children are turned into feelings that can be rationalized and defused (24–25). Furthermore, discipline should ideally create the illusion of choice such that the child thinks he/she is the originator of his/her own actions. So rather than yelling, “Clean up your toys now or go to your room” a sensitive mother might say, “Why don’t you show me what a big girl you are by helping clean up your toys” or “After you help me clean up your toys we can go to the park” (24–29). Again, my point is not to suggest that the subjectifying power exercised by sensitive mothers is “bad.” It can even be quite effective for mothers wanting to avoid intense battles of will with youngsters. But neither is this exercise of power unconnected to the larger societal goal of creating citizens who are autonomous and free. It ties into the objectives of the liberal democratic state that aims to produce rational and self-regulating individuals in the absence of state coercion and rigid social hierarchies. In a sense, the power exercised by the sensitive mother completes the mode of governmentality. As Walkerdine and Lucey explain: “The idea of democracy with rights and responsibilities became government by reason” (41). And “freedom,” in this perspective, became “an artefact of effective government” (Hindess 1997, 263). Not unproblematically this push to intensify women’s mothering roles and responsibilities emerged on the crest of second wave feminism. How did this happen? Suffice it to say that women protesting the Vietnam War were not consumed by maternal guilt. True, many of them were not mothers. And yet, I introduce them at this point in my essay both because of the role they would play in ushering in the new liberation (through sensitive mothering) and, somewhat ironically, because of the way they would be remembered in cultural memory as “anti-mothers.” There are, in fact, a number of ironies here. Although sensitive mothering was at least partly the outcome of the politics of antiauthoritarianism and personal liberation that gained momentum in the student

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movements of the late 1960s, the young women who embraced these movements were likely unaware that they would break free of traditional binds only to be regulated in other ways. Women who came of age during this period truly believed they could “have it all—children and careers” (Thurer 1994, 266). Everything was supposed to be different now, even parenting. These moms truly wanted their children to be free. They wanted to be more permissive than their own mothers, to indulge their children at times, and to have fun. But, somehow in the hands of so-called experts these desires became conflated with what some authors have described as the “contemporary inflated ideology of good mothering” characterized by “relentless tenderness, total availability, and so on” such that the child’s liberation would come at the expense of mom (Thurer 1994, 266). I am not suggesting that these women were duped or did not know what their real interests were. Nor am I suggesting that motherhood is solely or even primarily oppressive when, in fact, it is also recognized by many women to be a very pleasurable and satisfying activity. My argument is simply that even the pleasure of motherhood is produced and regulated. Not only are the dreams of becoming a good mother culturally produced, but the content of those dreams (i.e., what it is to be a good mother) is also produced and regulated as “correct and incorrect, normal and abnormal—and cannot be seen as given” (Walkerdine and Lucey 1989, 30). Certainly, the direction the discourse of motherhood took in the postwar period was not a foregone conclusion. At the height of the second wave (in the later 1960s and early 70s) even this seemingly sacred institution underwent newfound scrutiny, with some feminist activists and academics faulting it as “one of the major institutions that oppressed women and prevented them from taking more active control of their lives” (Thurer 1994, 65). Such views were reflected in the popular slogan of the day, “It is up to women to stop rocking the cradle and start rocking the boat,” for which, according to Thurer, “feminists have been apologizing ever since” (1994, 265). Indeed, by the end of the 1970s the sudden storm of antimotherhood sentiment had faded as quickly as it had emerged. Even the feminist movement abandoned such treacherous ground preferring instead to celebrate motherhood for all of its exciting feminist possibilities (Thurer 1994, 265). It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that when a group of largely white, middle-class women did decide to organize in the early 1980s to protest the threat of nuclear weapons—at a time that the Reagan administration was shifting government resources from social and economic programs, some of which could assist mothers, toward military

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programs and at a time that there was increasing talk about fighting a limited and winnable nuclear war—they decided to organize on the basis of their identities as mothers (Gusterson 1996). Clearly, the bra burning days of these women were over! The decision to organize on the basis of their maternal identities was likely both a prudent and heartfelt choice. As one protester, quoted at the beginning of this essay, commented, there was something a little absurd about being situated in a position where you are expected to invest the greater part of your energy into raising happy, healthy, and well-adjusted children only to have them killed in a nuclear war. Similarly, another activist queried: “Why should [women] use their whole lives nurturing and caring for these children and let them get killed because some Henry Kissinger thinks it’s a wonderful idea to kill Asians. It’s infuriating!”(Harwood 2001, 82). The “rationality of care” in this instance surely did come up against the military state—but I am loath to label this identity “authentic.” Moreover, care’s subversive potential, which was revealed so dramatically in this instance, did not have a significant or lasting impact. Broader societal changes were underway that ultimately brought other threats, such as American hegemonic decline, to the fore and undermined the presumption that the subjugated knowledges of women offered a valid counterpoint to the rationale of the American state.

Patriotic Motherhood and the Gulf War: The Context of the Late 1980s As the context changed the discourse of sensitive mothering remained largely intact, but the subject position of mothers relative to other societal actors changed, rendering “subversive” cultural performances of motherhood less tenable and others, including patriotic motherhood, more so. There is evidence of his shift in media portrayals of the socalled Supermom. Indeed, in many ways the sort of peace and social justice that had been envisioned by antinuclear activists would be perceived as a quaint anachronism by the standards of the late 1980s Supermom. Consumed by maternal guilt and anxiety about her own abilities, Supermom was always trying to make up for lost time at work—time in which she wasn’t bonding with her child or furthering her child’s intellectual development (Eyer 1996, 67). Although she likely only represented a small and privileged segment of the population, her cultural influence was much broader in scope. In the words of Diane Eyer: “She was discovered by the media, running around in her 3-piece suit, fending off stress and burnout with time management techniques and exercise

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classes” (1996, 65). Supermom was a site of cultural fascination and she was often portrayed in the movies and on TV as a comical character. She was a paradox, really; having been told that higher education and careers were both suddenly possible and (supposedly) culturally acceptable, supermoms now had to reconcile this career-oriented, professional aspect of their identity with a genuine desire to be “sensitive” mothers. Supermom was also a site of cultural angst and thus was tolerated only so long as she didn’t become indignant, for example, by decrying the absence of federally backed maternity leave or daycare or by pointing an accusatory finger at a workplace designed for male breadwinners (Eyer 1996, 65–66). Thus, unlike the mothers who immediately preceded her, the mother of the late 1980s made few demands on the state. In tandem with the rise of New Right discourse, Supermom accepted the message, repeated in countless magazine articles, that “her difficulties were simply the product of role strain she had brought on herself” (Eyer 1996, 65). That is, her problems were really the result of her own ambition—which, of course, is not an authentic maternal trait (Thurer 1994, 287). Nonetheless, societal tolerance of working mothers proved to be tenuous at best. By the late 1980s working moms were often considered a source of America’s economic and social ills, despite the fact that many of these women had to work to support their families or that in many ways these women were more involved with their children than at any time in history (Thurer 1994, 267). It is important to note here that the media identification and portrayal of the so-called Supermom was not purely a cultural phenomenon and, hence, apolitical, but part of what Charlotte Hooper would refer to as a broader power struggle “over the interpretation of practices and groups of people” (2001, 52). This particular domestic power struggle, symptomatic of larger changes in the mood of the American populace, would have important consequences both for mothers and for international relations. As mentioned previously, by the late 1980s the threat of nuclear war had subsided in the minds of Americans as new concerns came to the fore. The United States was undergoing a rather difficult period of adjustment during this time, facing a series of challenges to its supposed economic, moral, and cultural superiority. Real wages were declining, unemployment rates were rising, GNP growth was slowing, and crime rates were skyrocketing (Husting 1999, 161–162). To add insult to injury, the culturally revered institution of the nuclear family was breaking down. Although its breakdown began in the 1970s as part of the “rebellion against established authority,” high divorce rates (of approximately 50% of all marriages) persisted throughout the 1980s so that by 1985 one-fifth of all households was headed by females with one or

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more children (Eyer 1996, 64). As a result, the nation was “gripped with a sense of things falling apart” (Husting 1999, 161–162). But rather than place blame on major transformations in the world economy or investigate “how the myth of the nuclear family and the self-reliant individual” (Berg and Rowe 1991, 5) contributed to the current crisis, the problem was identified by the New Right as individual moral failure and collective cultural decline. And the solution was perceived to be the reinvigoration of competitive individualism and the return to traditional family values (Husting 1999, 162; Eyer 1996, 67; Thurer 1994, 289). Out of this New Right discourse emerged a genuine desire for a return to the traditional nuclear family in the 1950s “Leave It to Beaver” image where men could be heads of household and breadwinners and women could be full-time mothers and wives (Thurer 1994, 249–250 and 289; Eyer 1996, 67; Husting 1999, 162; Niva 1998, 110). Supermom couldn’t stand up to the nostalgic longing to “restore a lost ‘golden’ past of family, flag, neighbourhood and work” (Thurer 1994, 289). What was at stake was not the accuracy of this revered “golden” past, which is rather questionable. Nor was the way in which society cares for its children ever the primary issue. What was at stake was no less than the reassertion of the social influence and masculine values of white, middle-class American men, who were being reinscribed in the dominant discourse as the victims of women’s liberation. This new victim, who was simultaneously portrayed as the one who would restore America’s rugged individualism and nuclear family— perhaps American society’s last hope—was personified in the image of the Vietnam vet. But the vet who emerged in the cultural lexicon of the late 1980s was somewhat different than the one who emerged in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War. He was no longer the victim of a socioeconomic order that would kill an estimated 2 million Vietnamese and risk the lives of many of its own (resulting in the death of approximately 50,000 American GIs) all for the sake of geopolitical credibility and the abstract threat posed by the Domino Theory (Boose 1993, 84). The new victim who emerged on television and in movies such as Born on the Fourth of July, at sites far removed from factual rebuttal, was the veteran who had been denied a hero’s welcome, “particularly by the women [he] had supposedly been protecting” (Niva 1998, 117), and to which, no matter how inappropriate, he believed he was entitled (Boose 1993). As Linda Boose (1993) explains, inside this cultural narrative, the one figure targeted as the source of all the veteran’s pain was the war protester. And, more often than not, this figure of betrayal was embodied in the form of a woman: “In story after story that began in the mid-1980s

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to pour forth from Vietnam veterans, any and all rejection that some of them may have experienced upon return . . . was remembered in the person of a woman: a wife, a sister, a girlfriend, an airline stewardess, or even, in the 1988 film Hamburger Hill, an invented account of soldiers being greeted upon return by Berkeley coeds throwing dog shit” (80). The sense of denied entitlement underlying these stories and the overriding image of the Vietnam vet who was “spat on by protesters” and “never got a parade” reveal something about the stakes involved in this revised cultural narrative (82). The student movements of the late 1960s and the painful economic restructuring of the 1980s had jeopardized traditional white male privilege. Thus, at a time when many men, particularly white and middle-class men, were feeling besieged and threatened by the effects of civil rights and women’s movements, the image of the veteran as victim resonated with men who increasingly felt it was they who were being discriminated against (Niva 1998, 110 and 115–116; Jeffords 1989, 120–121 and 117–118). Both the representation of the Vietnam vet and New Right discourse (which were not, of course, unrelated phenomenon) clearly even if ever so subtly positioned the now feminized war protester— depicted as the “withholding mommy” (Boose 1993, 87)—and the career woman—depicted as a “greedy, ambitious ball buster whom no one would want as a mother” (Thurer 1994, 266–267)—as a danger to both the traditional nuclear family and, by extension, to the nation or community writ large. The power of these representations lay in the fact that they were able to situate both the antiwar protester and the career woman in opposition to the culturally revered (even if undervalued in practice) maternal identity that to a certain extent all women were measured against. Moreover, directly or indirectly linking broader political issues to women’s maternal identities forecloses the issue of women’s equality. Men need not govern or regulate women— which would be extremely hard to justify under modern liberal discourse anyway—when the same effect could be achieved by positioning so-called authentic maternal identities in opposition to the identities of war protesters and career women. Merely invoking associations with motherhood—which as one commentator said is “as American [and, I would add, as beyond political contestation] as apple pie”—would lead many women to regulate themselves by the very standards that they themselves held dear. Hence, the dilemma of both the war protester and the Supermom was that by the end of the 1980s she could only pursue her career-oriented or political activist identity at the expense of a maternal identity. But there was nothing automatic or commonsensical about this dilemma. Only a few years earlier, for

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instance, mother’s activism in the antinuclear movement had fit in quite nicely with the “sensitive mothering” discourse. Hence, the slogan that became popular at the time of the Gulf War, “We Support Our Troops”—and its implicit negative, “We did not support our troops in Vietnam” (Rowe 1991, 121)—reinvoked what Cynthia Enloe (1991) refers to as “a cultural legacy of gendered guilt.” Furthermore, this guilt unraveled alternative versions of female gender identities that had been imagined previously. These include “the femininity that had imagined divorcing itself from playing dutiful wife/maternal producer of the needs of the masculine, military state” during the antiwar movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Boose 1993, 77), as well as the femininity of the early 1980s that expanded upon predominant ideas about women’s maternal responsibility in a way that authorized women to critique the nuclear state. Indeed, the representation of the nation as an imagined community, even a family, and the concomitant but belligerent demand to “love our boys” (Boose 1993, 76) was key to narrowing the gender gap in the Gulf War. Women were encouraged to imagine themselves as patriots by the government and media that positioned them as loyal family members at home and as a passive, but necessary, counterpart to the boys at war (Husting 1999; Boose 1993; Enloe 1991). The fact that 28,000 American women served in the Gulf War did not disrupt this binary (Enloe 1991). If anything, it lent further legitimacy to the war effort by propping up the myth of the imagined national community or family. The constructed contrast of a “democratic, postfeminist America in opposition to popular images of Arab repression,” which was highlighted in the media “positioned the United States as a progressive, liberated country in its treatment of women” (Husting 1999, 164; see also Elizabeth Randol, this volume, on the appropriation of feminism to justify the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan).

Conclusion With the onset of the Gulf War, women and mothers were positioned, at least temporarily, as insiders of this cultural community. As yellow ribbons sprouted up across the nation, the nation’s men and then its women rallied around their flag in such a way that any disinclination to fight that existed prior to the war faded into history and a “cheering re-affirmation of U.S. militarism”—indeed, a cheering reaffirmation of an imagined national community—emerged (Boose 1993, 76). American mothers played a key, albeit unassuming, role in all of this such that

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contrary to the conventional association between motherhood and peace, employed by the antinuclear movement less than 10 years prior, at the time of the Gulf War American motherhood perhaps coincided more naturally with war.

Works Cited Allen, Barbara, Paula O’Loughlin, Amy Jasperson, and John L. Sullivan. 1994. The Media and the Gulf War: Framing, Priming, and the Spiral of Silence. Polity 31(2): 255–284. Berg, Rick, and John Carlos Rowe. 1991. The Vietnam War in American Memory. In The Vietnam War and American Culture, eds. Rick Berg and John Carlos Rowe, 1–17. New York: Columbia University Press. Boose, Lynda E. 1993. Techno-Muscularity and the ‘Boy Eternal’: From the Quagmire to the Gulf. In Gendering War Talk, eds. Miriam Cooke and Angela Woollacott, 67–106. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Campbell, David. 1993. Politics Without Principle: Sovereignty, Ethics, and the Narratives of The Gulf War. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Cawley, R. McGreggor, and William Chaloupka. 1997. American Governmentality: Michel Foucault and Public Administration. American Behavioral Scientist 41(1): 28–42. Enloe, Cynthia. 1991. Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the New World Order.’ The Village Voice (February 19): 37. Eyer, Diane. 1996. MOTHERGUILT: How Our Culture Blames Mothers for What’s Wrong with Society. Toronto: Random House of Canada. Farmanfarmaian, Abouali. 1992. Did You Measure Up? The Role of Race and Sexuality in the Gulf War. In Collateral Damage: The New World Order at Home and Abroad, ed. C. Peters, 111–138. Boston: South End Press. Forcey, Linda Rennie. 2001. Feminist Perspectives on Mothering and Peace. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 3(2): 155–174. Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality. Volume 1. New York: Random House. ——— . 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books. ——— . 1994. The Essential Foucault, eds. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose. New York: The New Press. Gusterson, Hugh. 1996. Nuclear Rites: A Weapon’s Laboratory at the End of the Cold War. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Harwood, Ginger Hanks. 2001. Peace Activist Women During the 1980s in the U.S.: Motherhood, Motivation, and Movement. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 3(2): 77–87.

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Hindess, Barry. 1997. Politics and Governmentality. Economy and Society 26(2): 257–271. Hooper, Charlotte. 2001. Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations and Gender Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Husting, Ginna. 1999. When a War is Not a War: Abortion, Desert Storm, and Representations of Protest in American TV News. The Sociological Quarterly 40(1): 159–178. Jeffords, Susan. 1989. The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Kuehls, T. 1996. Beyond Sovereign Territory: The Space of Ecopolitics. Borderlines 4, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Quoted in Simon Philpott (full reference cited below), 147. Niva, Steve. 1998. Tough and Tender: New World Order Masculinity and the Gulf War. In The “Man” Question in International Relations, eds. Marysia Zalewski and Jane Parpart, 128. Boulder: Westview Press. O’Reilly, Andrea. 1996. Ain’t That Love?: Antiracism and Racial Constructions of Motherhood. In Everyday Acts Against Racism: Raising Children in a Multiracial World, ed. Maureen Reddy, 88–98. Seattle: Seal Press. Philpott, Simon. 2000. Rethinking Indonesia: Postcolonial Theory, Authoritarianism, and Identity. London: Macmillan Press. Ransom, John S. 1997. Foucault’s Discipline: The Politics of Subjectivity. Durham: Duke University Press. Rowe, John Carlos. 1991. The ‘Vietnam Effect’ in the Persian Gulf War. Cultural Critique (Fall): 121–139. Ruddick, Sara. 1989. Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace. New York: Ballantine Books. Quoted in Linda Forcey (full reference cited above), 162 and in Jon Simons (full reference cited below), 36 and 188. ——— . 1990. The Rationality of Care. In Women, Militarism, and War, eds. Jean Bethke Elshtain and Sheila Tobias, 229–254. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Simons, Jon. 1996. Foucault’s Mother. In Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault, ed. Susan J. Hekman, 179–209. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Thurer, Shari L. 1994. The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Walkerdine, Valerie, and Helen Lucey. 1989. Democracy in the Kitchen: Regulating Mothers and Socialising Daughters. London: Virago Press.

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CHAPTER

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Love and Reason in the Public Sphere: Maternalist Civic Engagement and the Dilemma of Difference PATRICE DiQUINZIO

Somewhere between 400,000 and 700,000 people gathered to protest gun violence and demand effective gun control at the Million Mom March (MMM) held on Mothers Day, May 14, 2000, in Washington DC. The Million Mom March is now an organization to address these issues and in June 2000 it merged with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, founded by Sarah and Jim Brady after Jim Brady, former press secretary to Ronald Reagan, was shot and seriously disabled in the 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan. The MMM currently has a number of local chapters across the U.S. working on prevention of gun violence and gun control at the state and local levels. In summer 2004 the MMM staged the “Halt the Assault Tour” in which members toured the U.S. to promote the renewal of the Federal Ban on Assault Weapons, which the U.S. Congress nonetheless allowed to expire on September 13, 2004. Representations of the May 2000 Million Mom March by its leaders, participants, and supporters overwhelmingly emphasized traditional images of motherhood, as did most print media coverage of the March. Some of the implications of these images, however, are in tension with women’s civic and political participation. In modern Western political cultures, citizenship is primarily articulated in terms of abstract individualism, which considers the specific identities of citizens irrelevant to citizenship. Furthermore, the specific identity “mother” is particularly problematized, given both that mothers are associated with the private sphere rather than the public domain of citizenship as well as with emotions rather than with the reason that, according to abstract individualism, is required for citizenship. Yet women’s civic engagement is more likely to be accepted when it is based on motherhood, since motherhood has long been seen as women’s distinctive and most appropriate role.

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This civic engagement articulated in terms of motherhood, or maternalism, however, often locates women in a particular double bind, which is best understood in relationship to the problem of difference and what I call “essential motherhood.” Many feminist theorists have considered the problem of difference (Minow 1990; Rhode ed. 1990; Scott, 1996, 1998, 1991; Fuss 1989; Gatens 1991; Bock and James eds. 1992; Hennessy 1993) in particular focusing on difference in relationship to law, public policy, and politics. Liberal individualism insists that rational autonomy constitutes the essence of subjectivity and is therefore the only basis of human agency and citizenship. Because this view of subjectivity and citizenship is fundamental to modern Western political culture, feminism must claim women’s equal citizenship on the basis of women’s rational autonomy and deny that gender and sexual difference are relevant to citizenship. But feminism must also represent women’s needs and interests, which requires an account of women’s subjectivity and agency that emphasizes women’s specific experiences and situations, or an account of women’s subjectivity that highlights gender and sexual difference. Thus feminism finds itself juggling two accounts of subjectivity that can have contradictory implications. Feminism’s argument for women’s equal rational autonomy and citizenship may undermine its representation of women’s needs and interests, while its representation of the specificity of women’s subjectivity and agency may undermine its claim of women’s equality. This dilemma of difference is compounded by essential motherhood, an ideological formation that defines motherhood and articulates femininity in these terms. Essential motherhood naturalizes motherhood, positing that women’s mothering is a function of women’s female nature, women’s biological reproductive capacities, and/or human evolutionary development. Essential motherhood also requires mothers’ exclusive and selfless attention to and care of children based on women’s psychological and emotional capacities for empathy, awareness of the needs of others, and self-sacrifice. Representing these psychological and emotional capacities as natural in women, essential motherhood implies that women desire motherhood and that women’s psychological development and emotional satisfaction require mothering. Thus essential motherhood also clearly implies that women who do not manifest these maternal capacities and women who do not desire or who refuse to mother are deviant or deficient as women. Thus essential motherhood also specifies proper femininity. So, while individualism is ostensibly gender neutral, essential motherhood posits a specifically feminine/maternal subjectivity and

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requires this subjectivity of all women. But by representing mothering and femininity in terms that are at odds with individualist subjectivity, essential motherhood also excludes mothers and women from the citizenship that liberal individualism promises to all persons. At the same time, essential motherhood masks this contradiction by implying that women’s natural role or function as mothers, rather than sexism or male dominance, excludes women from citizenship. Essential motherhood thus also obscures the extent to which individualism itself defines subjectivity in terms of situations and experiences more typical of men than of women, or the extent to which liberal individualist subjectivity is the “virile subjectivity” that Kelly Oliver (1997) has identified. (See DiQuinzio 1999, xii–xv and 6–27 for more detailed discussion of the dilemma of difference and essential motherhood.)

Maternalist Discourse: The Million Mom March This analysis of the dilemma of difference as compounded by essential motherhood supports the view, shared by the authors of the essays in this volume, that discourses invoking mothers and children demand careful analysis. As I will show, the deployment of discourses of motherhood in representations of the Million Mom March has important political effects. One such effect is evident in the MMM’s appropriation of the Million . . . March format for its name. This format originated with the 1995 Million Man March, in which Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan called for 1 million African-American men to march on Washington, DC for “a day of atonement and reconciliation” (Farrakhan 1995). Though the Million Mom March linked itself discursively to a movement of African-American men, some African-American women criticized the MMM for appropriating their long-standing concern with gun violence in their communities without consulting them or offering them leadership opportunities (Bynoe 2000; Newsweek 2000). And even though the Million Mom March did solicit the participation of AfricanAmerican women and many did participate, the coexistence of the name “Million Man March” offers African-American women only the choice of identifying as African-American or identifying as “moms.” Together these two discourses participate in an erasure of African-American women’s specific identities that many African-American feminists have long criticized (e.g., Davis 1981; Hull et al. 1982; Collins 1990). Maternalist discourse can similarly exclude women who are not mothers and/or who don’t understand and identify themselves primarily in terms of their motherhood.

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In addition to its exclusionary possibilities, maternalist discourse, such as that of the Million Mom March, problematizes women’s citizenship. In this essay I consider first the most significant of these problems, namely, the way that the MMM’s maternalist discourse reinforces essential motherhood’s association of mothers, and women, with emotion, as opposed to reason. Then I consider three erasures effected by this discourse—an erasure of women as direct victims of gun violence, a related erasure of situations in which women, as well as children, are likely to be victims of gun violence, and an erasure of women’s professional and occupational experience, expertise, and authority. Finally, I argue that the MMM’s maternalist discourse also enables its critics to disparage its proposals in specifically maternalist terms, so as to delegitimate mother’s civic engagement itself. The discourse of the MMM insists that all of its members are “moms” and consistently invokes traditional images of motherhood. The MMM almost always calls its members “moms,” as in chapter reports headed “St. Louis Moms Rally Against Ashcroft” and “Michigan Moms to Block Concealed Carry Law” (Million Mom March). Individual members use this self-reference, and speakers at the May 14, 2000, rally consistently identified themselves as “moms,” as in the phrase “speaking as a mom” or “speaking as a mother.” (Information about the participants on stage at the rally, and complete transcripts of their remarks, were available at www.millionmommarch.org from May 2000 through 2002.) Print media coverage also consistently used this language, as in “Marching Moms Come from all Walks of Life” (Tyson 2000) and “the moms gathered . . . to send a message to Congress” (Simon and Anderson 2000). It is also evident in President Clinton’s statement that “the gun lobby ‘is no match for America’s moms’” (Stolberg 2000). Many speakers and commentators noted that people who are not mothers participated in the MMM and are also affected by and concerned about gun violence. But these people—fathers, other family members, people affected by gun violence in some professional capacity, for example—were usually carefully identified in relationship to motherhood. For instance, a sign in the crowd read “Stepmothers care about gun violence, too.” Newspaper reports often included mention of or interviews with men at the rally, but also usually noted their connection to a mother. For example, the Los Angeles Times reported on Joel Smetanka, 30, from Columbia, Maryland, who attended the march with his wife, Lori, and two sons. “. . . plenty of men . . . feel the same way I do,” Smetanka said, “but they don’t feel it’s the best issue to speak out on.” Asked why he attended the march, Smetanka said, “To tell you the

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truth, my wife got really involved. She wanted this to be how we spent Mother’s Day. I’m here to support her” (Simon and Anderson 2000). The MMM’s graphic and design elements are also consistent with traditional representations of motherhood. Its web site and print materials are predominantly pink—often the intense pink that is also used for toys meant for girls, such as clothing and accessories for Mattel’s Barbie™— as is the “big pink rig” in which members traveled on the Halt the Assault Tour. Its graphics include homey cartoons of an apple pie and a “time-out chair” that suggest children’s drawings or images from children’s books. (Such design elements were more prominent on the MMM’s web site in 2000–2002, but they can also be seen currently at www.millionmommarch.org). These design elements all convey essential motherhood’s association of women with children’s needs, concerns, and interests; at times they link mothers and children so closely that they verge on infantilizing mothers, as if mothers would dress in colors associated with girlhood and draw these childish images. Similarly, a New York Times story noted not only that the marchers “came in sensible shoes and straw hats, with extra water and strollers for their children,” but also that “when the children’s performer Raffi took the stage, they happily sang along with ‘The [sic] Little Light of Mine’” (Toner 2000). In this image too the mothers become almost children themselves, singing along with a children’s entertainer. The iconic apple pie and a time-out chair are interactive icons on the MMM’s web site. Above the image of the apple pie, there is the question “who’s been good today?” Place a cursor on this icon and a name appears; clicking on the name calls up a bio of some person or group who has done something to advance gun control and/or prevent gun violence. The apple pie also appears as a real-time artifact in the MMM’s lobbying. For example, an early chapter reports says “Moms will deliver apple pies to their legislators to remind them that the Moms will be closely watching and monitoring their actions this session.” Above the image of a remorseful man in the time-out chair appears the question “who’s been bad today?” Place a cursor on this image and the name of a person or group appears; clicking on the name produces a short bio of this person or group who had done something to promote guns or prevent gun control. This image of maternal discipline is also evident in the cheer that writer Anna Quindlen led from the stage. She encouraged the marchers to tell law makers to pass gun control laws, in the unreasonable terms mothers are stereotypically said to use when children question their discipline: “because I said so!, because I said so!” (Million Mom March). These icons of mothers’ traditional work of feeding their children and meeting their families’ material needs, and of

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maternal discipline as it appears to children, further reinforce essential motherhood’s distancing of motherhood from reason and the public sphere. The MMM’s representation of its participants in pervasively emotional terms similarly reinforces essential motherhood. This aspect of the MMM’s maternalist discourse is most evident in its representation of mothers of victims of gun violence. The MMM, and print media coverage of the march, dwell extensively on the pain and suffering of the mothers of victims of gun violence. The mothers of victims who spoke at the rally described their truly unbearable suffering in heart-wrenching terms. Other speakers at the rally, and other participants interviewed by the media, spoke of the pain they experience in dealing with effects of gun violence on children in other roles. For instance, health-care workers described their distress as they try to repair the effects of gun violence or have to tell parents that their child has died. Even references to mothers’ power to end gun violence tended to represent this power in emotional terms, for instance, as a result of mothers’ anger. As Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) put it, “We, as mothers, fight every day for our children . . . when a mother is trying to protect her child . . . don’t mess with us. All you watching out there, everyone watching on TV, this is ‘Mom Power.’” And Dawn Anna, the mother of a victim of the Columbine High School shooting, said, “The Mothers of the world are angry, and you never, never tick off a Mother!” Many of the mothers of gun violence victims spoke of participating in the MMM as a result of their desire to spare others from what they have suffered. A typical example, Adeline Rabutino of Philadelphia, whose youngest son was shot and killed at 19, told the Los Angeles Times “It’s just devastating. I can’t do anything for my son, but hopefully we can do something for someone else, to prevent it from happening to another family” (Simon and Anderson 2000). These images of enraged mothers, like the traditional image of the fierce mother lion protecting her cubs, suggest that mothers’ responses to gun violence are instinctual and emotion-driven, rather than the result of reasoned analysis. Emphasizing the desire of mothers of gun violence victims to spare others the pain they have experienced reinforces a traditional view of mothers, and women, as selflessly caring. Thus it justifies women’s citizenship primarily when they are acting on behalf of others—their and others’ children and other mothers and families. It is beyond doubt that mothers of gun violence victims experience terrible, almost unimaginable, pain and suffering (as do others who love these victims). But without discounting or minimizing this suffering, we can still consider the effects of articulating the basis of the political agency

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of the MMM participants in such thoroughly emotional terms so consistent with essential motherhood. The MMM’s maternalist discourse appears to valorize motherhood as the basis of a political identity. But it also oversimplifies participants’ identities by representing them entirely in terms of their motherhood. This discourse tends to infantilize mothers, to represent mothers as emotional rather than rational, and to restrict them to the private sphere of bodily and emotional needs. In these ways the MMM’s maternalist discourse jeopardizes mothers’ and women’s claim to equal citizenship by undermining their claim to rational autonomy. In addition to reconsolidating elements of essential motherhood, the maternalist discourse of the MMM erases other important aspects of mothers’ and women’s identities and experiences. Perhaps the most problematic in this regard is a dominant trope of this discourse: “it’s all about protecting the kids.” The rhetoric of the MMM is not very much about protecting, or even recognizing, women who are themselves killed or injured by guns. Consider, for example, the speakers at the MMM rally. In all, 42 people spoke at the March, although a number of others appeared on the stage without speaking. Among these 42 people were • 12 mothers of victims of gun violence; • 4 wives of victims: counting Carolyn McCarthy twice; she is both the mother and the wife of a victim, and including rock musician Courtney Love, whose husband, Kurt Cobain, leader of the band Nirvana, killed himself with a gun; • 2 daughters of a victim of gun violence, Robert Kennedy: Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, who has founded the RFK Center for Human Rights, and Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend, who was then lieutenant governor of Maryland; • a 9-year-old girl, from an organization called Stop the Violence, who introduced herself as “Miss National Stop the Violence American Queen for the United States of America”; • a father of a victim of gun violence: Bobby Rush, then a member of the House of Representatives from Illinois; • 3 male victims of gun violence: Jim Brady, Ryan Martin, a Yale medical student, shot when he was 12, who is now paralyzed and uses a wheelchair, and Bobby Brown, a young man paralyzed and now in a wheel chair as a result of a drive-by shooting, who runs a basketball camp and is an activist against gun violence. Other men who spoke at the rally were Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and David Winkler, a

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high school student in Denver when the Columbine shootings occurred, who organized a group, PAX Students, to educate gun control and antiviolence activists. There were only two women speakers who had themselves been direct victims of gun violence—who had themselves been shot—namely, Mindy Finklestein and Patty Neilson. Finklestein was a teenager working as a camp counselor at the day camp at North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, California, who was shot on August 10, 1999, when a man came into the center and began firing a gun. Neilson, an art teacher, was shot at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. Both of these speakers clearly articulated the physical and emotional pain they themselves have endured as a result of being shot. But they also emphasized the significance of their being shot while engaged in the kind of paid work traditionally approved of for women as an extension of maternal work. That these two women were the only explicit representatives of women who have been shot suggests that these shootings matter at least in part because they were fulfilling a maternal function at the time and because the shootings occurred in the context of gun violence that primarily affected children. There were several moments in the speeches at the MMM rally, however, when other women who have experienced gun violence made a fleeting appearance. Ryan Martin, the Yale medical student, mentioned that he was “shot in the back by our nanny’s boyfriend, who was abusing and threatening her.” He went on to say that on that day, “ My mother’s life changed, my brother’s life changed, and 13 years later we’re still dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder.” But he said nothing more about his nanny. It is not minimizing the terrible pain and suffering Martin and his family endured to also wonder about what happened to his nanny, who presumably was the shooter’s target. Lynne LeBeau, former president and founder of Concerns of Police Survivors, described how her husband, a police officer and father of their two children, “was gunned down in a domestic dispute where an individual shot him with a .357 magnum at a refuge for battered women and children.” She and her children surely suffered terribly as a result. That her husband died protecting the women and children at a refuge for victims of domestic violence makes him a true hero. But what about those women and children at the refuge, one or some of whom were perhaps the shooter’s intended victims? Dr. Michelle Irvin, an emergency room physician at Howard University Hospital, briefly referred to the effects of gun violence on women in domestic violence and other situations involving only adults. And Mary Ann Viverette, then vice president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and Police Chief of Gaithersburg, Maryland, also

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mentioned “domestic offenders” in listing those whom the IACP says should not be allowed to purchase guns. The maternalist discourse of the MMM otherwise barely refers to the gun violence perpetrated in situations of domestic violence that women, as well as children, suffer all too often. Nor does it foreground other situations, unrelated to motherhood, in which women might be shot. Ignoring these instances of gun violence preserves the image of motherhood’s selfless devotion to children and family that the maternalist discourse of the MMM requires. But it does so at the expense of misrepresenting the risks of gun violence to women, and thereby misrepresenting women’s needs for protection. Instead of positioning women so that they can articulate their legitimate needs for protection from gun violence, for instance, in situations of domestic violence, the MMM’s maternalist discourse positions women as acting on behalf of children, rather than themselves. This positioning forecloses discursive opportunities for mothers to act as citizens articulating their own needs on their own behalf. The MMM’s maternalist discourse also erases women’s professional and occupational identities and accomplishments. In addition to speakers holding political office, many of the women who spoke at the MMM rally are also very accomplished professionally. These included emcee Rosie O’Donnell, actresses Susan Sarandon and Reese Witherspoon, journalist and novelist Anna Quindlen, and the singer/songwriters Roseanne Cash, Emmylou Harris, and Melissa Etheridge who performed at the rally. Etheridge was introduced by her then partner, Julie Cypher, who said of her, “she is known as rock star, but . . . she rocks even harder as a mom,” thereby subsuming both Etheridge’s lesbianism and her considerable success in the male-dominated field of rock music to her motherhood. Other speakers were Marian Wright Edeleman, director of the Children’s Defense Fund, and Sarah Brady of the Brady Campaign. In addition to Dr. Irvin of Howard University Hospital, Dr. Antonia Novello, former U.S. Surgeon General, also spoke. All but one of the women who spoke at the MMM rally in a professional capacity, however, also at least identified themselves as mothers, and many of them spoke about themselves primarily as mothers. The maternalist discourse in which these women, most of them with years of experience and accomplishment in positions of authority and/or significant public influence requiring considerable expertise, disavow that experience, expertise, accomplishment, and authority or at least subordinate it to their motherhood has troubling effects. It reinforces essential motherhood’s view of women’s appropriate roles and positions in society and culture and it denies the recent history of

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women’s professional and occupational accomplishments in the U.S. It is even inconsistent with other elements of the MMM itself. Any practical consideration of the MMM indicates that it was a massive effort requiring many kinds of expertise—in fund-raising, event logistics and organization, and public relations. As a public interest group, the MMM continues to require management ability and political skill in lobbying and influencing law and public policy making. The MMM’s maternalist discourse, however, requires that its participants at least minimize if not disavow their professional and occupational expertise, so that they can wield the moral authority that essential motherhood supposedly accords to mothers. But by erasing these other aspects of mothers’ experiences, it further reinforces the view that motherhood is the only appropriate basis for women’s moral authority, and thus further undermines women’s claim to equal citizenship on the basis of their human subjectivity. The assumption that motherhood necessarily entails a lack of other kinds of expertise is explicit in print media coverage of the MMM. In what is also a journalistic convention, many newspaper and news magazine stories were filled with anecdotes about individual marchers or organizers, and most led with such an anecdote. Picking up on the MMM participants’ representation of themselves, print media coverage referred consistently to “ordinary moms” and “ordinary women,” and the phrase “I’m just an ordinary mother” was often linked to phrases like “I’ve never gone and rallied for anything before, but . . .” (Simon and Anderson 2000). One article identified an 80-year-old woman as a “neophyte marcher” (Simon and Anderson 2000) and another led with the story of Cheryl Reynolds, from Boise, Idaho, about whom it said that before the MMM, “[s]he has never protested anything in her life” (Tyson 2000). The Christian Science Monitor reported that “most of the marchers have no past history of activism, although many . . . grew up during the heady days of 1960s demonstrations” (Scott 2000). It may be true that the “moms” had, or see themselves as having had, little or no previous experience as activists and/or didn’t claim the identity of activist for themselves even as they participated in the MMM. If so, this may reflect the extent to which they see themselves through the lens of essential motherhood and/or assume that because they are mothers they by definition are not political agents. More problematic is how the print media reinforced this view of the MMM participants. There were almost no stories about the planning and other work involved in organizing the March, nor was there any serious consideration of the possibility that the thinking and the work that mothers do is more closely related to political agency and citizenship than essential motherhood allows (Ruddick 1989: 3–57). Instead, this media rhetoric,

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like the MMM’s maternalist discourse, implies that “ordinary moms” and “ordinary women” do not act as citizens in a public forum such as a protest rally. Even as the maternalist discourse of the MMM insists that its participant’s motherhood is what particularly qualifies them to speak out and act on the issue of gun violence and gun control, that discourse itself also undermines this claim. By suggesting that their political activism is an exception to or a departure from more typical or acceptable enactments of motherhood, this print media coverage, like the MMM’s maternalist discourse itself, implies that mothers do not really belong in the public sphere. This disavowal of professional expertise and political agency is particularly striking in the case of Donna Dees-Thomases, the organizer of the March. Dees-Thomases, who also consistently referred to herself as “an ordinary mom,” said she was moved to organize the march after watching new coverage of the shooting at the Jewish Community Center in Grenada Hills, California. Much of the print media coverage of Dees-Thomases followed suit. U.S. News and World Report described Dees-Thomases as “a neophyte activist” and also referred to “the moms—many of whom, like Dees-Thomases, [had] never organized anything other than, as one leader puts it, ‘a carpool’” (Spake 2000). USA Today wrote, “The MMM . . . was born in a New Jersey mother’s living room. . . . ‘We started out with one mom, then five moms, then 25 moms, then 25,000 moms,’ says Donna Dees-Thomases, the mother who founded the event” (Morrison and Bowles 2000). According to the Christian Science Monitor, Dees-Thomases said that “the images of the terrified children being led in a line from the carnage . . . were too much to bear” (Tyson 2000). Even sources that mentioned Dees-Thomases’ professional credentials and political contacts downplayed them in favor of the image of her “an ordinary mom.” Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report also emphasized Dees-Thomases’ emotional reaction to the Grenada Hills shooting (Newsweek 2000; Spake 2000), and the New York Times reported Dees-Thomases as saying that “her maternal instincts kicked in” after that shooting (Toner 2000). But at the time Dees-Thomases was also a part-time publicist for CBS television, and had had years of experience in this field. She had also been very active in local Democratic party politics, and is the sister-in-law of Susan Thomases, then an advisor to Hillary Clinton. Dees-Thomases’ representation of herself as “just an ordinary mom” moved to organize a massive, complicated, national protest entirely as a result of her emotional reaction to an undeniably heart-rending event not only required that she disavow her own professional expertise and experience in political activism. It also enabled critics of the MMM to savage her as

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dishonest and manipulative when these aspects of her experience became more widely known (Goldberg 2000; Schiffren 2000). In all these ways, then, the MMM’s maternalist images and discourse undercut its own claim to women’s civic engagement. This discourse represents mothers as largely motivated by their emotional reactions to gun violence, thus distancing them from the rational autonomy that liberal individualism requires as a condition of political agency and relocating them in the private sphere where emotion is appropriate. It also represents mothers as witnesses speaking out on behalf of victims of gun violence who cannot speak for themselves or as indirect victims of gun violence. Thus this discourse implies that women’s civic engagement is acceptable only on behalf of others and/or as an extension of women’s traditional family roles, and that these traditional family roles remain the most appropriate roles for women.

Critiques of the Million Mom March Maternalist discourse also provides certain discursive opportunities for critics of proposals or recommendations that maternalist civic engagement might advance, and this effect is evident in critics’ responses to the MMM. Most significant is critics’ representation of mothers as either unable or unwilling to recognize the facts about guns and gun violence because they are rendered irrational by their emotions. Critics of the MMM’s position on gun control almost all insist that mothers’ emotions—whether their love for their children, their anger at threats to their children, or their fears for their children’s safety—make them incapable of thinking rationally about the subject. For example, in an article entitled “MADD: Moms Against Data and Deduction” Ann Coulter offers the following anecdote: A few weeks ago, while taping a TV pilot . . . I found myself sitting between a housewife for gun control and the incomparable John Lott, author of . . . “More Guns, Less Crime.” During a break, the gun control advocate advised as how her elderly mother had recently purchased a handgun . . . [and that] she ‘knew’ a criminal would wrest control of the gun and use it against her mother someday. Prof. Lott, who earned a Ph.D. from UCLA, gamely told the woman that she needn’t worry, that his studies showed that guns used defensively in crimes are turned against their owners less than 1% of the time. . . . The housewife retorted—and I quote: ‘Well, that’s not my

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opinion.’ Somehow the economics and law departments of UCLA, University of Chicago and Yale University had not prepared Prof. Lott for dazzling logic like that: my opinion is different from the facts. Now we have an entire movement of babbling idiots demanding that their opinions be accorded equal standing with facts based on the stunning achievement of having born children. Self-described ‘Moms’ are using their exalted stations to march on Washington and browbeat the nation into adopting gun control laws that are not only unconstitutional (as if anyone cares about that) but will inevitably lead to more violence against the innocent. But don’t question their logic or facts—they’re Moms. Liberals use motherhood like an enfeebled child who hits his siblings and then calls on his parents to protect him when they retaliate. ‘Mom’ demands our guns, and when you try to argue the facts with her, she holds up a hand to hush you: Talk to the womb. Being a mom means never having to say you’re sentient. (Coulter 2000)

Similarly, in National Review, Andrew Stuttaford describes ”the moms” as “the new brand of gun nut” and writes: It’s not so much what they said . . . but how they said it. Several hundred thousand gun nuts were gathered on the Mall. They were hectoring, self-righteous, and when, it came to firearms, quite incapable of rational discussion. . . . Gun control resonates with all those suburban moms who feel that firearms are, well, icky . . . [this] is a perfect wedge issue that can be pitched purely at the emotional level. . . . The Moms aren’t big on facts or reasoned argument. . . . Speakers included a teacher from Columbine, grieving mothers, and crippled children, a trail of tears designed to lead to only one conclusion. (Stuttaford 2000)

And, under the headline “The MMM: What a crock!” Camille Paglia, in Salon, writes, “It doesn’t take a weatherman to figure out that the average citizen doesn’t want national policy determined by packs of weeping women led by a shrill, dim-witted talk show host (Hillary sycophant Rosie O’Donnell)” (Paglia 2000). These criticisms further indicate the extent to which maternalist discourse is inextricably linked to the problematic implications of essential motherhood for women’s citizenship that I have shown with respect to the MMM’s own maternalist discourse. Even discounting for hyperbole, these images represent the MMM participant almost completely in terms of a belittling representation of their emotional reactions to gun violence, juxtaposing these emotional reactions to the facts, logic, and

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reasoning of their opponents guaranteed by institutions of hiring learning and professional credentials. The representation here of the MMM marchers as browbeating, hectoring, self-righteous, determined, and shrill in particular invokes the bad mother, rather than the selfless and subservient good mother who speaks only in soothing tones to serve the material and emotional needs of others. This version of the bad mother image deploys for very different purposes the image of the disciplining mother, the mother who wields the threat of the time-out chair and who does not have to give any reasons for her demands, that the MMM itself invokes, albeit more playfully. This image of the bad mother thus links mothers’ purported lack of reason to the distinction of good and bad mothers that is pervasive in representations of motherhood in modern Western cultures. Given the very problematic possible uses of the distinction of good and bad mothers in policy discourses that Oliver, Shivas and Charles, Reich, Isgro, and Buydens have detailed in this volume, it is especially troubling that maternalist discourse should contribute to the uncritical perpetuation of this distinction. That the image of the bad mother operates along side of the mother taken to be incapable of reason in these criticisms of the MMM also indicates that a double-bind logic is at work here. In effect these criticisms condemn the MMM participants for the claim that their motherhood qualifies them for political activism while at the same time criticizing them for not being good—soft-spoken, docile, selfless, submissive—mothers. In offering their motherhood as the basis for mothers’ political agency, the MMM’s maternalist discourse enables its opponents to represent participants in the Million Mom March as both bad mothers and as persons unqualified, by virtue of their irrationality, for any form of civic engagement. Many essays in this volume detail the double bind logic of predation/protection. In this double bind, mothers and women are offered protection, but accepting protection amounts to sacrificing their autonomy and thus risking predation. Women and mothers who refuse the terms of this offer are vilified and subject to control and sanction for not conforming to motherhood and femininity as weak and needing protection; thus they also become subject to predation (Hoagland 1988). The double bind that arises from the dilemma of difference is in some ways the mirror image of that created by predator/protector logic. In this double bind, women and mothers who insist on and exercise their rational autonomy and citizenship in liberal individualist terms are vilified for not conforming to traditional understandings of motherhood and femininity. But women who appeal to their motherhood as a basis of citizenship are disqualified from rational autonomy and citizenship pre-

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cisely on the basis of their motherhood while they are also vilified as bad mothers and failed women. Maternalist civic engagement may be an attempt to escape the terms of predator/protector logic’s no-win offer by claiming both women’s equal citizenship and the moral authority of motherhood. But given the dilemma of difference, it risks relocating women within those terms. In other words, when women need support or protection they encounter the double bind of predator/protector logic, but when women claim autonomy and agency—whether in maternalist or individualist terms—they encounter the double bind created by the dilemma of difference and essential motherhood. In either case, women are disenfranchised, disempowered, and put at risk of control, sanction, and predation. Thus much more is at stake in an analysis of the discourse of maternalist civic engagement than merely competing theories of subjectivity. These theories of subjectivity—the terms in which they are articulated and enacted and the political possibilities to which they give rise—can have specific material effects on women’s lives.

Issues for Civic Engagement My analysis of competing representations of the Million Mom March raises important questions for maternalist civic engagement and for other forms of civic engagement in U.S. political culture. Some of the most important questions specific to maternalist civic engagement concern the mass media’s role in perpetuating traditional and/or simplistic and overly dichotomized images of mothers and women. How might feminist theory and activism become more savvy about countering the tendency of dominant mass media to rely uncritically on elements of essential motherhood and to overlook the complexities of mothers’ lives, especially the different complexities of the lives of mothers differently situated? In this volume, almost all the authors but especially Meagher, Shivas and Charles, Isgro, and Reich consider mass media representations of mothers and/or women and provide detailed readings that expose these patterns. Feminist activists and organizations should be working with the wide range of sophisticated feminist analyses of the mass media that are available—analyses that are much more sophisticated than what I’ve accomplished here (two examples relevant to motherhood are Kaplan 1992; Fisher 1996). Coalitions with activists working on media issues in other movements, especially those in the independent media such as the Independent Media Center collective (www.indymedia.org), would also be useful and valuable for complicating and diversifying mass media images of mothers.

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Representations of motherhood that provide explicit alternatives to essential motherhood are also beginning to emerge, for example in Hip Mama, self-described as “a magazine bursting with political commentary and ribald tales from the front lines of motherhood” (www.hipmama.com) and Brain, Child, which describes itself as “the magazine for thinking mothers” (www.brainchildmag.com). Other alternative images come from groups such as Outlaw Mothers, affiliated with the Association for Research on Mothering (www.yorku.ca/crm/ ARM%20info/arm_index.htm). Also important are groups like MOTHERS (Mothers Ought to Have Equal Rights), whose mission is “to improve the economic well being of mothers and other family caregivers” (www.mothersoughttohaveequalrights.org) and the Mothers Movement Online (www.mothersmovement.org), which provides “resources for mothers and others who think about social change.” Groups such as these counter the image of the selfless mother who only speaks and acts on behalf of others. Advocates of maternalist civic engagement who rely on more traditional—and, I have argued, more risky—images of motherhood should be working with groups such as these to expand and complicate the images of motherhood available for maternalist civic engagement. Representations of mothers and of women that confound essential motherhood would also help in resisting the terms of the predator/protector logic implicit in so much policy discourse. Essential motherhood represents good mothers as emotional, selfless, and docile, thus contributing to the logic of predation/protection by positioning good mothers and good women on the protection side of this dichotomy. Alternative representations of motherhood could resist this imperative that mothers and women must either be weak and needing protection or be strong and at risk of predation and insist that rational autonomy is not inconsistent with sometimes needing protection or support (see Kittay 1999). In this way such representations could weaken the power of predator/protector logic. Other questions raised by my analysis of the maternalist discourse of the MMM are relevant to many forms of civic engagement. In modern Western political cultures, almost all forms of civic engagement must ask: to what extent must civic engagement appeal to identities more specific than “citizen”—with its insistence on rational autonomy as the only qualification for civic engagement and its denial of difference—in order to be effective? If appeals to more specific identities—for example, racial, sexual, or social class identities—are required to motivate and sustain civic engagement, to what extent do such appeals run the risks of difference that feminist theory has analyzed so well with respect to

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gender? What are the possibilities of developing more inclusive discourses of political agency without sacrificing the value and effectiveness of political discourses that appeal to specific particularized identities? Are there forms of political practice that would include and even facilitate the reconstruction—or the formation—of civic identities? For example, consider a slight but noticeable thread that ran through some of the remarks at the MMM. While most participants emphasized healing and sharing painful experiences in hope of preventing further gun violence, a few others spoke of transforming emotion into power and action. For instance, Barbara Lee, from the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, a major financial supporter of the MMM, urged the crowd to “Take your passion, take your grief, take your outrage, and turn them into power!” And Patricia Anderson, the mother of a shooting victim, said, “Mothers, we all shed tears for our children. Let’s make our tears a river of votes. Let’s make our tears become a raging river of votes.” These images hint at an interesting and useful way of rethinking the relationship of emotion, power, and action. The possibility of transforming emotion along these lines suggests a connection of emotion and reason that individualism does not recognize. Suggestions such as these that might be implicit in maternalist discourse could be particularly useful for reconceptualizing civic engagement in U.S. culture. As Oliver, Scholz, and Managhan in this volume suggest with respect to feminism, most forms of civic engagement would benefit from accounts of the social construction of subjectivity that improve on abstract individualism rather than recapitulating its dualistic, exclusionary categories. By considering how reason and emotion, knowledge and passion, self and other, agency and power, are thoroughly connected, new theories of subjectivity would establish better grounds for political agency and equal citizenship, especially for those acting from positions of social inequality and/or oppression. For all forms of civic engagement my analysis of maternalist civic engagement clearly suggests a caution: it is crucial to remember that the very real risks of difference can be too high a price for historically excluded or oppressed groups to pay for their civic engagement. These risks must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and continually reevaluated as circumstances change. Feminism in particular may find itself in the paradoxical position of supporting competing discourses in different contexts (see also DiQuinzio 1999, 248–251). In this volume, Norma Buydens’ argument that rights discourse has been useful for aboriginal mothers and women in western Canada and Jennifer Reich’s argument against the use of international human rights discourse in the case of mothers accused of child abuse, taken together, place feminism in precisely such a

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position. Similarly Elizabeth Randol’s concerns about the co-optation of feminist antiviolence discourse and Sally Scholz’ arguments for reconstructing fundamental conceptual elements of this same discourse must be understood as compatible rather than competing. Feminism must pay particular attention to the exclusionary possibilities of its own discourses, as African-American critics pointed out about the Million Mom March. Buydens, Reich, Isgro, and Shivas and Charles in this volume also show that representations of mothers have different effects on women depending on their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and/or sexual orientation. A maternalist politics that achieves its goals for some women, usually those more privileged, at the expense of others cannot be a feminist politics. The subject positioning of mothers and women in modern Western political cultures is thoroughly complicated by the intersection of abstract individualism and essential motherhood, so that the dilemma of difference is especially salient for mothers, women, and feminism. Furthermore, the combination of abstract individualism and essential motherhoods allow the shifting subject positioning of mothers and women that makes them vulnerable to the logic of predation/protection. As the analyses of policy discourses in the essays in this volume make very clear, there is no single correct way around the dilemma of difference and the logic of predation/protection. Discourse analysis, public policy making, and feminist politics and activism will always have to be alert, ready to face whatever versions of these difficulties emerge, and continually creative in devising new approaches to policy that will truly advance the interests of women and children—and thus of all citizens.

Works Cited Bock, Gisela, and Susan James, eds. 1992. Beyond Equality and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist Politics, and Female Subjectivity. New York: Routledge. Brain, Child. http://www.brainchildmag.com. Bynoe, Yvonne. 2000. Color and the Million Mom March. Urban Think Tank. http://www.urbanthinktank.org/pb17.cfm. Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge. Coulter, Anne. 2000. MADD: Moms Against Data and Deduction. Human Events. May 19. http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39219e895b3f.htm. Davis, Angela. 1981. Women, Race, and Class. New York: Random House. DiQuinzio, Patrice. 1999. The Impossibility of Motherhood: Feminism, Individualism, and the Problem of Mothering. New York: Routledge.

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Farrakhan, Louis. 1995. Transcript from Minister Louis Farrakhan’s Remarks at the Million Man March. http://www-cgi.cnn.com/US/9510/megamarch/10-16/transcript/. Fisher, Lucy. 1996. Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fuss, Diana. 1989. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference. New York: Routledge. Gatens, Moira. 1991. Feminism and Philosophy: Perspectives on Difference and Equality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Goldberg, Jonah. 2000. Media Bias 101. National Review, May 12.http://www. nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg051200.html. Hennessy, Rosemary. 1993. Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse. New York: Routledge. Hip Mama. http://hipmama.com. Hoagland, Sarah Lucia. 1988. Moral Revolution: From Antagonism to Cooperation. In Feminism and Philosophy: Essential Readings in Theory, Reinterpretation, and Application, eds. Nancy Tuana and Rosemarie Tong, 175–193. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Hull, Gloria T., Bell Scott, P., Smith, B. 1982. But Some of Us Are Brave. OldWestbury, NY: Feminist Press. Kaplan, E. Ann. 1992. Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama. New York: Routledge. Kittay, Eva. 1999. Love’s Labor. New York: Routledge. Million Mom March. http://www.millionmommarch.org. Minow, Martha. 1999. Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Morrison, Blake and Scott Bowles. 2000. Do Marches Make a Difference? USA Today, May 12. http://lexis-nexis.com. MOTHERS. http://www.mothersoughttohaveequalrights.org. Mothers Movement Online. http://www.mothersmovement.org. Newsweek. 2000. Don’t Mess with the Moms. Newsweek. May 15. http://lexisnexis.com. Oliver, Kelly. 1997. Family Values: Subjects Between Nature and Culture. New York: Routledge. Paglia, Camille. 2000. The MMM: What a Crock! Salon. May 17. http://archive. salon.com/people/col/pagl/2000/05/17/cpmillionmom/index.html. Rhode, Deborah, ed. 1990. Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ruddick, Sara. 1989. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. NY: Ballantine. Scott, Joan Wallach. 1996. Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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——— . 1991. The Evidence of Experience. Critical Inquiry 17: 773–797. ——— . 1988. Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism. Feminist Studies 14(1): 33–50. Schiffren, Lisa. 2000. Moms’ March Had One Degree of Separation from Clintons. The Wall Street Journal, May 15. http://216.247.220.66/archives/ politics/schiffren05–16–00.htm. Simon, Richard and Nick Anderson. 2000. Mothers March Against Guns. Los Angeles Times, May 15. http://lexis-nexis.com. Spake, Amanda. 2000. Will it Matter if the Moms March? U.S. News and World Report. May 15. http://lexis-nexis.com. Stolberg, Sheryl Gay. 2000. On Eve of Million Mom March, Clinton Calls Mothers the Stronger Voice in Gun Debate. New York Times, May 14. http://lexis-nexis.com. Stuttaford, Andrew. 2001. Moms Away—The new brand of gun nut—Million Mom March. National Review. June 5. http://articles.findarticles.com/p/ articles/mi_m1282/is_10_52/ai_62241931. Toner, Robin. 2000. Mothers Rally to Assail Gun Violence. New YorkTimes, May 15. http://lexis-nexis.com. Tyson, Ann Scott. 2000. Marching Moms Come From All Walks of Life. Christian Science Monitor, May 12. http://lexis-nexis.com.

Contributors

Norma L. Buydens is the associate director of University Teaching Services at the University of Manitoba and a graduate student in law at the University of Saskatchewan. Norma divides her time between the urban life in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and rural Saskatchewan. A Euro-Canadian mother of two and a student of law and history, she remains committed to the pursuit of social justice in the relations between Aboriginal and Euro-Canadians. Sonya Charles is currently a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Michigan State University. She completed her master’s degree in philosophy with a concentration in medical ethics at the University of Tennessee in 1999. She coauthored “Mothers in the Media Blamed and Celebrated: An Examination of Multiple Births,” in Pediatric Nursing and “The Mammography Screening Controversy: What is Heard in the Press?” (with Margaret Holmes-Rovner) in Patient Education and Counseling. Patrice DiQuinzio is the author of The Impossibility of Motherhood: Feminism, Individualism and the Problem of Mothering (Routledge 1999) and coeditor (with Iris Marion Young) of Feminist Ethics and Social Policy (Indiana University Press 1997). She writes on political and social theory, with special emphasis on motherhood, and her work has appeared in Hypatia and Women and Politics. She is director of women’s studies and associate professor of pilosophy at Muhlenberg College, and a member of the advisory board of the Association for Research on Mothering. Ellen K. Feder is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at American University. She is coeditor, with Mary Rawlinson and Emily Zakin, of Derrida and Feminism: Recasting the Question of Woman (Routledge 1996), and, with Eva Kittay, of The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency (Rowman and Littlefield 2002). She is currently working on a monograph, Disciplining the Family. Kirsten Isgro (MA Ohio State University, 1991) is a PhD candidate in the communication department at the University of MassachusettsAmherst. She also received her Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies

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from the UMass Women’s Studies program. Her academic interests include sexuality/cultural studies, feminist theories, women and development, and discourses of the religious right. Prior to returning to graduate school, Isgro had worked for a number of nonprofit organizations that focused on sexual justice issues and public policies. In addition to working with the Ohio Coalition on Sexual Assault, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, and the International Women’s Tribune Centre, she served on the executive board of the Alternative to Marriage Project (ATMP) for three years. She has been the recipient of a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Practicum Grant, where she was able to explore how women’s access to information, resources, education and communication technologies may increase women’s civic participation and social, political and economic status. Tina Managhan is a PhD candidate in political science at York University and a researcher with the York Centre for International and Security Studies. Her areas of specialization are international relations and women and politics. Her dissertation extends the work of the included chapter, utilizing Foucault’s concepts of biopolitics and governmentality in order to understand the relationship between motherhood and militarization in the United States and to critically reevaluate the question of resistance in international relations. Sharon M. Meagher is professor of philosophy and the director of women’s studies at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. She has also served as a director of an applied policy institute in Washington, DC, and as the founding president of an urban community development organization. She has published on literature and ethics, community development, and feminist theory. She is completing an anthology, Philosophy of the City and is working on a monograph on moral education and popular culture. Publications include: “Tensions in the City: Community and Difference” in Studies in Practical Philosophy, (Fall 1999) and “Philosophy on the Front Stoop,” Minnesota Review (special issue on Activism and the Academy, 1999). Kelly Oliver is W. Alton Jones Chair in Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Her books include The Colonization of Psychic Space (University of Minnesota Press 2004), Noir Anxiety (University of Minnesota Press 2002), Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (University of Minnesota Press 2001), Subjectivity Without Subjects (Rowman and Littlefield 1998), Family Values: Subjects Between Nature and Culture (Routledge 1997), Womanizing Nietzsche (Routledge 1995), and Reading Kristeva (Indiana University Press 1993).

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Elizabeth F. Randol is director of the Jane Kopas Women’s Center at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, where she also teaches philosophy, sociology, and women’s studies. She earned a doctorate in philosophy from Binghamton University and writes on issues concerning violence, political activism, and political philosophy. She integrates academic research with both academic- and community-based activism. Jennifer A. Reich is assistant professor in the department of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver. She received her PhD from the University of California, Davis, in sociology with a designated emphasis in feminist theory and methods from the Department of Women and Gender Studies. Her book, Fixing Families: Parents, Power, and the Child Welfare System (Routledge 2004) explores how parents and state actors negotiate power and meaning at different critical moments of interaction in the child protective services system. She has written several articles on how structural inequality affects families and family members, including examinations of how mothers’ sexuality is policed by child welfare officials and how single white mothers of multiracial children construct racial meaning for themselves and their children. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, in spring 2004. Sally J. Scholz has worked as a legal advocate for victims of domestic violence and is currently an associate professor of philosophy at Villanova University and editor of the APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy. In addition to essays on domestic violence, she has published on systemic oppression, the public/private dichotomy, solidarity, and the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir. Her books include On de Beauvoir (Wadsworth 2000), On Rousseau (Wadsworth 2001), Peacemaking: Lessons from the Past, Visions for the Future (coedited with Judith Presler, Rodopi 2000) and The Contradictions of Freedom: Philosophical Essays on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins (coedited with Shannon Mussett, forthcoming). Tricha Shivas, MBe, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a master’s in bioethics in 2000. She is currently a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Michigan State University. She coauthored “Mothers in the Media Blamed and Celebrated: An Examination of Drug Abuse and Multiple Births,” in Pediatric Nursing and is the author of an open peer commentary entitled, “HIV-1, Reproduction, and Justice: What is Society’s Obligation,” in The American Journal of Bioethics.

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Index

9/11. See September 11th abjection, 102, 112–13 of maternal body, 102–104 abuse child, 9, 21, 51, 60, 64, 73, 104, 159–60, 164, 167, 175, 185, 243 psychological, 140 aboriginal people children, 163 mothers, 163, 165, 243 women, 11, 165–76 abortion, 190–92, 200–201 selective, 190–92 activism anti-nuclear, 208, 219 anti-violence, 150, 234 feminist, 149–50, 152–53, 218, 241, 244 of mothers, 6, 213, 223, 234–37, 240–41 peace, 206–209, 218–24 queer, 48–49. See also war: protest activists. See activism addiction alcohol, 6, 169, 185–87 drug, 64–65, 166–68, 190–91, 196–97 sexual, 170–75 traumatic bonding as, 172 adoption, 41–48, 73 international, 48 advocacy, 20, 24, 65, 145, 152, 171 Afghanistan, 28–30, 32–33, 223 African-Americans, 1, 104, 110, 188

agency, 31, 107–109, 111–12, 115, 228, 243 of mothers. See mothers of parents, 93, 95 political, 232, 237–41 of women, 2–5, 7, 24, 32–33, 46, 99–101, 124, 145–48, 228 aggressive drives, 113–14 alcoholism. See addiction alienation, 105, 112 Alldredge, Jennifer, 123 American Academy of Pediatrics, 93 American Association for Single People, 43 American Psychiatric Association, 139 American Psychological Association (APA), 141 Ameristat, 43 Anderson, Margo, 41 Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS), 96 anger, 27, 106, 113, 132, 152 of batterer, 142 of students, 125, 132 of mothers, 232, 238 Annan, Kofi, 63–64 antinuclear movement, 206–209, 219, 223–24 Asian-American women, 43 assisted reproductive technology (ART). See reproductive technology Association for Research on Mothering (ARM), 242 Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHA), 104

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Index

autonomy, 30–33, 112, 138, 145–48 adolescent, 171 of parents. See parents of patients, 192–94 of women, 2–4, 25, 31–32, 140, 192–94, 240–42 political, 2 rational, 3–4, 228–21 passim Barbara Lee Family Foundation, 243 Bartky, Sandra, 108–13, 141 battered woman defense, 143–44 battered women, 20, 31, 143–44, 146, 152, 234. See also violence, domestic battered women’s syndrome, 32 Bergen, Candice, 43 Berlant, Lauren, 4, 42, 49, 51 Berlin, Isaiah, 147 Bernal, Cassie, 124 bin Laden, Osama, 25, 28, 33 biological determinism, 173 biological reductionism, 137, 141 biology, 146 biopolitics, 206, 248 biopower, 210, 212 birth, 51, 82, 84, 91, 93, 128, 160–61, 173, 183, 186, 197 defects, 161, 186, 190, 197 of multiples, 189–91 blame, 1–2, 7, 101, 103–104, 106–13 passim, 130, 165, 198, 221 and self-defense, 142 of children,131–32 of daughters, 169–73 passim of feminism and/or feminists, 6, 10, 129 of men, 130 of mothers, 103–104, 126, 169, 173 of oneself, 106, 108, 113, 132 of victims, 2, 115–16, 131–32 of women, 127–29, 131, 132, 168–69, 172 bodily drives, 111–12, 115 Boose, Linda, 206–209, 221–23

Bordo, Susan, 58, 127, 145 Bourassa, Michel, 166 Bourdieu, Pierre, 81–82, 93–94, 96 Bouson, J. Brooks, 110 Bowling for Columbine (1999), 130–31 Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 227, 235 Brady, Sarah and Jim, 227, 233, 235 breastfeeding, 62, 70, 83 Brennan, Teresa, 106, 110, 113 Brison, Susan, 141 Brown, Murphy, 43 Brownmiller, Susan, 23 bullies and bullying, 130, 132 Burton, Nadya, 23, 26 Bush Administration, 18, 26, 30, 33, 48. See also Bush, George W. Bush, George W., 48, 51, 67, 69 Bush, Laura, 28–29 Buydens, Norma, 10–12, 40, 47, 103, 112, 186–87, 240, 243–44 capitalism, 49 care, 3–4, 6–7, 9, 28, 48, 61, 63, 107, 127, 132, 166, 174, 188–89, 196, 211, 228 ethics, 148 feminists theorists of, 6 foster, 72 health, 61, 104, 196, 198 medical, 84–85, 193–98 passim prenatal, 103, 175, 186 protective, 163, 167 rationality of, 205–208, 211, 214, 219 caregivers, 3, 50, 60, 90, 99, 165, 198, 206–207, 211–12, 214, 242 career woman, 222 Carroll, Laura, 45–46, 51 Cartesian logic, 141 case of John/Joan, 89–90, 94 catatonia, 101–102, 107, 115 Census 2000, U.S., 8, 37–53, 196 Center for Prevention of School Violence, 131

Index Charles, Sonya, 11–12, 40, 47, 103, 112, 167, 175, 187, 191, 240–41, 244 child abuse. See abuse child care, 5, 20, 104, 129–30, 220 child prostitution, 162. See prostitution Child Protection Services. See Family Preservation and Al Qaeda, 25, 28 chromosomal pattern, mosaic, 92–93 Citizen Corps, 22, 30 citizenship, 40, 48–49, 52–53, 227, 236 equal, 3–6, 228, 233, 236, 241 infantile, 4 of women, 3–5, 12, 228–30, 232–33, 239–43 passim civic engagement, 227–38, 230, 238, 240–43 civil authority, 128 civil liberties, 30–31, 33, 60, 175 civil society, 19, 21–22, 127–28 civil unions, 48 class privilege, 215 Clinton, Bill, 191, 230 Clinton, Hillary, 237 clitorectomy, 83, 86, 94, 96 codependency, 172 cohabitation, 8, 38, 41, 45, 47, 51 different sex, 38–40, 42, 52 Coleman, Doriane Lambelet, 129–30 Columbine High School, 122, 232, 234 common sense, 37, 81, 87, 88, 95 conflict resolution programs, 131–33 congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), 83, 95, 96 Connelly, Deborah, 69–70 conscience, 106, 109 consciousness-raising, 18, 151 consent, 40, 66, 82, 86, 93–94, 166 conservatives, 53, 63, 164 discourse of, 1 Right, 39 social, 6, 49, 163, 166–67, 174–75

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consumerism, 215 Cott, Nancy, 3, 40–41, 49 Coulter, Ann, 238–39 crack cocaine, 103, 184–88 Crenshaw, Kimberle, 145, 149, 152 criminal justice system, 24, 65, 139, 141–42, 148. See also law Cuban Missile Crisis, 27 cultural imagination, 73 culture of poverty thesis. See poverty custody, 58, 73, 160, 175, 190 cycle of violence, 104, 137, 140 daycare. See child care Dees-Thomases, Donna, 237 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 31 Defense Condition (DEFCON), 27 Democrats, 39 dependency, 5–6, 32, 50, 106 depression, 6, 9, 99–102, 104–107, 111, 115–16, 141, 166 detention, mandatory, 159–65 deviance, 70–71, 170 Devine, John, 121–22, 131–32 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), 139–41 dilemma of difference, 3–4, 7, 11, 228–29, 240–41, 244 DiQuinzio, Patrice, 3, 11–12, 186, 213–14, 243 discipline, 8, 11, 39, 47, 57, 66, 126, 145, 209, 211–12, 215, 217, 231–32 discourse, 1–2, 5–8, 39–40, 47, 49–53, 111–12, 149–51, 159–64 passim, 167–68, 190–91, 206, 209, 213, 215, 229 as action, 82 antimilitarist, 209 antimotherhood, 218 colonial, 2 ethics of solidarity, 149 domestic violence, 149, 152

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discourse (continued) feminist, 12, 17–18, 24, 32–33, 244 cooptation of, 12, 17, 33 medical, 9, 10, 12, 88, 103, 111–12, 195 human rights, 59, 63–64, 69–70, 72, 175, 243 maternalist, 229–40 mother blaming, 159, 169 New Right, 220–22 of bad mothers, 62 of homeland security, 18, 26, 31–33 of infertility, 192 of mothering, 213–19 of school violence, 126–28, 131–33 of sexual addiction, 171–72 policy, 1–6 passim, 159, 167, 169, 184, 240, 242–43 passim political, 8, 150, 243 racist, 167–68, 170 victim blaming, 115–16 discursive shifts, 5, 159 disease, 107, 114, 116, 126, 141, 165, 192, 194–95, 211 disempowerment. See power, lack of dissent, 209 doctors, 82–87, 90, 96, 99, 211 domestic violence. See violence; battered women double bind logic, 2, 12, 240 dominance and African Americans, 110 and feminism, 153 and predator/protector logic, 124 and resistance, 114–15 and violence, 147, 149 colonial, 28 male, 2, 7, 124, 138, 229 See also subordination drugs, 99–100, 104, 140–41, 170–74 passim, 198 abuse, 166, 185, 195–97 illegal, 11, 183–87, 197–98

in reproductive technology, 11, 45, 183, 189–97 passim infertility, 183, 190, 192 mothers who use, 103–104, 184, 188–89 rehabilitation and treatment, 175, 184–85, 187, 197–98 testing, 60. See also addiction due process, 125 Dufray, Jo, 165 Ebert, Roger, 130 economic development, 64 economically underdeveloped countries, 58, 62–65 Elephant (2003), 130–31 Elman, Bruce, 160, 161, 165–66 emotions, 113, 227, 238 empathy, 129, 228 empowerment, 24, 31, 32, 33, 137, 175 Engle, Joseph Carlos, 58, 73 Enloe, Cynthia, 208, 223 evolutionary development, 228 Ewing, Charles, 143–44 expert testimony, 143 exploitation, sexual, 11, 49, 159, 162, 164–65, 167–69, 171, 174 Eyer, Diane, 219–21 false consciousness, 206 false imprisonment, 58, 65, 68–69, 73 familialism, 49 family, 6, 10, 38–53, 57–58, 128–29, 133, 146, 148, 170–73 passim, 188–98 passim, 211, 235 alternative, 39, 45–48 American, 37, 39, 43–44, 48, 51 and marriage, 49, 51, 53 and citizenship, 49–53 as community, 223 breakdown of, 126–27 disfunctional, 127 formation, 8, 38–39, 44–45, 48, 52–53

Index ideology. See ideology intervention in, 59–63, 160–62 middle-class, 169, 174 normative, 39–41, 44–45, 53, 73 nuclear, 45, 48, 61, 220–22 patriarchal. See family, traditional politics, 50 poor, 50–51, 59, 61–63, 69–72 traditional, 42–44, 46–47, 61, 221, 222, 238 values, 18, 37, 51, 132, 221 Family Preservation and Child Protection Services, 57, 71–72, 159 Farrakhan Louis, 229 fathers, 37–45 passim, 50, 70, 89, 90, 102, 104, 125–30, 142, 171, 230 absent, 126 law of, 130 middle class, 169 of intersex children, 82, 84 teen, 127 fatherlessness, 40, 129 Fausto-Sterling, Anne, 82 Feder, Ellen, 5, 7, 9, 12 Federal Defense of Marriage Act (1996), 42 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 22 Federal Marriage Amendment, 48 felony, 73 female sexuality. See sexuality: female femininity, 2–4, 7, 9, 23–25, 89, 99, 106–107, 137 141, 144, 151 and liberal subjectivity, 145–46 and marriage, 40, 47 and motherhood, 3–6 passim, 61–63, 186–94 passim, 205–208 passim, 214, 222–23, 228–38 passim, 240 and predator/protector logic, 23, 124 and rationality of care, 205–208 passim

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and violence, 122–23, 128, 130–33, 137, 141, 144. See also gender: roles feminism, 3–5, 122, 137, 205, 218, 243–44 and activism. See activism, feminist and blame. See blame, of feminism and difference, 3–4, 228 and discourse. See discourse second wave, 217 feminists, 5–6, 17, 19–21, 24–25, 29–30, 53, 81, 110, 113, 122, 127–28, 149, 159, 175, 218 African American, 229 activists. See activism and Freud, 102 early, 23 liberal, 19 Ferraro, Kathleen, 142, 149 fertility industry, 196–97 Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or Effects (FAS/E), 163, 168 fetal harm, 11, 162, 173, 183–98 fetuses, 11, 96, 103, 160–61, 168, 175, 183–92 Fienberg, Stephen, 41, 49 Fineman, Martha Albertson, 45, 48–49, 52–53, 62 Finklestein, Mindy, 234 first-world, 58, 64 foster care, 72 Foucault, Michel, 52, 66, 205–206, 209–11 Fraser, Nancy, 52, 149–50, 162 free will, 215–17 Freire, Paolo, 133 Freud, Sigmund, 100–102, 109–10, 114–15 G. (D. F.) v. Winnipeg Child and Family Services Northwest Region, 160–61, 165, 174–75 gangs, 126–27 gay liberation. See liberation

256

Index

gender and citizenship, 3–4, 49, 69–70, 228, 242 and difference, 3, 52, 81 and governmentality, 214 and guilt, 105–11, 171, 215–23 passim and habitus, 81–83, 88, 93 and family, 52–53, 144, 238 and marriage, 40, 47, 129 and medical discourse, 9, 81–85, 88–90 and melancholy, 113 and rights, 208 and sexual addiction, 172 and shame, 105–11 and violence, 20, 122–24, 129, 131, 151 assignment, 83, 87–88 gap, 208, 223 identity, 5, 105, 144, 212, 219–20, 222, 227, 233 Money’s theory of, 88–90, 94 roles, 3, 40, 123, 129, 131, 144, 151, 206–207, 214, 217, 235, 238. See also femininity, masculinity genital surgery, 82–96 genitalia, ambiguous, 85, 88–89, 93, 96 Gondolf, Edward, 24 government surveillance. See surveillance governmentality, 206, 210, 214, 217 Gulf War, 205–26 gun control, 5–6, 12, 227–39 gun violence. See violence habitus, 81–82, 93–95 Hamburger Hill (1987), 222 Hansen, Jennifer, 99–100, 104, 107, 110, 113 Harris, Barbara, 188 Hartline, Sharon, 141, 148

Harvard University’s Civil Rights project, 125–26 Harwood, Ginger Hanks, 205, 207–208, 219 Hastings Center, 94 Hawaii Healthy Start (HHS), 164 health care workers, 232 hegemony, 26, 150 Heidegger, Martin, 107 hermaphrodite, 82 Heston, Charlton, 131 heterosexism, 48–49, 195 Hinds, Hilary, 43 Hirschmann, Nancy, 140–44, 147–48, 150, 152 Hispanics, 43, 188 Hollywood films, 103 Hoagland, Sarah Lucia, 2, 5, 23–24, 28, 121, 123–24, 188, 240. See also predator/protector Holycross, Richard, 65 Holycross, Tammy, 57, 61, 65 homeland security, 6–8, 17–33 advisory system, 27 department of, 18, 21, 25, 28, 30, 32 homophobia, 51, 132 homosexuality, 85, 92, 131. See also liberation: gay; marriage: same sex; same-sex partners households 2000 Census data, 38, 49 and Personal Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act (2002), 51 as indicators of civic responsibilities, 49 female headed, 1–2, 41, 127, 220 in Newsweek, 42–48 in U.S. Census, 41–42, 50–51 male headed, 41, 59 single parent, 38, 49, 51 two-parent, 43, 47, 126 housing, 104 Howe, Edmund, 198

Index human rights, 3, 9, 29, 57–73, 153, 174 international, 9, 58–59, 65–73, 174, 243 discourse, 59, 69, 72–73, 233, 243 Hussein, Saddam, 33, 67 Husserl, Edmund, 107 hysteria, 99 identity female, 105 formation of, 107–109, 144 gender. See gender group, 127 male, 5–6 maternal, 212–22, 227, 233 national, 52 personal, 138–41 sexual, 42 social, 150 ideology, 215 critique of, 8, 209 family, 39, 48–53 mother-blaming, 159–60 of good mothering, 218 of male dominance, 2, 124 of toxic moms, 159–61 immigrants, 21, 152 in vitro fertilization (IVF), 49, 189–97. See also reproductive technologies incest, 104, 169 Independent Media Center, 241 individualism, abstract, 227, 243–44 inequality, 49, 133, 243, 249 infertility, 183–98 Ingraham, Chrys, 47 instrumental rationality, 211 insurance, 45, 53, 191–96 integrity, 24, 124, 139, 145–46, 174 intentionality, 107 interdependence, 4, 10, 138, 147–49, 152–53 interest group, 236 internalization, 101, 105, 166

257

international human rights law. See law international human rights. See human rights Intersex Society of North America, 89 intersex, 6, 9, 81–94, 96 Inuit, 166 Iraq, 28, 32–33, 67, 69 Irigaray, Luce, 128 Isgro, Kirsten, 8, 12, 104, 112, 129, 188, 240–41, 244 Jones, Ann, 144 just war, 209 Kaufman, Traci, 57, 61, 73 Kessler, Suzanne, 87–88, 90–91 Keyes, Alan, 125 Kingsley, Cherry, 174 Kinkel, Kip, 123 Kittay, Eva, 5, 7, 95 Kolhberg, Lawrence, 109 Kristeva, Julia, 100–102, 105 Kruks, Sonia, 139, 151–52 Larson, Bob, 125 Latinas, 104. See also Hispanics law enforcement agencies, 130. See also criminal justice system law, 6, 10, 24, 69, 103–104, 173, 185, 187, 191 and marriage, 40–49, 51–53 and criminal justice system, 20, 24, 65, 141–46 and domestic violence, 60, 137–38, 141–46 Canadian, 161–64, 167 common, 142 enforcement, 7, 20, 130–31 family, 6, 52, 60–61 human rights, 58 international, 58, 163 of the father, 130 of nature, 142, 145

258

Index

law (continued) property, 52 rape, 142 system of, 60, 138–45 U.S. and/or state, 65–66, 94, 185, 195–96 welfare, 39–40, 50–51, 188 learned helplessness, theory of, 24, 33, 137–40 Leave it to Beaver, 44–45, 126, 221 Lewis, Helen Block, 105–106, 109 liberal feminists. See feminists liberal political theory, 6, 128, 138, 147 liberation, 28–29, 69, 218 gay, 122 personal, 215–18 women’s, 221. See also feminism liberty, 61, 145–52 libido, 114 Locke, John, 128, 145–46 Lott, John, 238–39 Lucey, Helen, 212–18 Lugones, Maria, 152 MacLean, Nancy, 2 Major, Supreme Court Justice John, 160, 165–66 male dominance. See dominance; misogyny; patriarchy male prerogative, 129 Managhan, Tina, 11–12, 186 marriage, 6, 37–53, 62, 129, 142, 144, 196, 220 Christian, 40, 50 heterosexual, 46, 48–52 same-sex, 48, 51–53 status, 39–40, 47 violence within, 142, 144 masculine values, 221. See also patriarchal norms masculinity, 3–4, 10, 87–89, 110, 113, 128, 137, 164, 168–69, 214, 229 and marriage, 40, 47

and rape, 22–24 and violence, 122–23, 128, 130–33, 137 and Vietnam war, 221–22 Mason, Jill, 160, 161, 165–66 mass media. See media maternalist discourse. See discourse maternity leave, 220 McCaughey, Bobbi, 198–96 McKnight, Regina, 103, 184–91, 196 Meagher, Sharon, 10, 12, 40, 47, 51–53, 112, 241 media, 38 manipulation of, 206 violent, 127. See also media coverage; media representation and images; Newsweek ; New York Times media coverage of Bobbi McCaughey, 191 Family Preservation and Child Protection Services (California), 72 G. (D. F.) v. Winnipeg Child and Family Services Northwest Region, 160–61 Million Mom March, 230–37 Regina McKnight, 184–85 Tammy Holycross, 64–65, 70, 72–73 Traci Kaufman, 64–65, 72–73 media representation and images of “bad mothers,” 8, 10, 11, 59, 61–62, 69–70, 103–104, 112, 159–61 crack addicts, 187 family, 39–40, 43–45 mothers, 11–12, 39, 219–20, 239–40, 241–42 motherhood, 11–12, 103, 187–88, 231, 240–42 poverty, 64–65 prenatal syndromes, 159 school violence, 122–25, 130–31 United States, the, 223

Index Vietnam veteran, the, 221–23 women, 5, 12, 112, 221–22, 223 medicine, 9, 99, 103–104, 209, 211, 214 melancholia, 99–116 mental illness, 47, 99, 103, 153. See also depression; melancholia Meyers, Diana Tietjens, 96, 188, 194, 198 militarization, 22, 205–208 military state, 205–23 military, U.S., 28–29, 49, 67, 69 Miller, Marshall, 49–51, 53 Million Mom March, 12, 213, 227–44 Mink, Gwedolyn, 50, 51, 53, 60 Minow, Martha, 3, 228 misogyny, 173. See also dominance, male; sexism Money, John, 88–91, 96, 97 Montreal Tramways v. Leveille (1933), 161 Moore, Michael, 130–31 moral discourse. See discourse moralism, 50–52 Morrison, Toni, 110 motherhood good, 3, 11, 69, 216, 218, 240, 242 essential, 230–33, 235–37, 239, 241–42, 244 intensification of, 214 patriotic, 208 performative nature of, 208 representations of. See media representations of scientific, 213–15 mothering, sensitive, 215–19, 223 mothers as political agents, 11 “bad,” 8, 10, 11, 59, 61–62, 70, 103, 167, 175 blaming of, 11, 104, 122, 133, 159–75 “drug moms,” 103–104, 184, 188–89 failed, 63, 70

259

inner city single, 104 middle-class, 59, 70, 168–73 unmarried, 39–40, 43–52 passim “toxic moms,” 159–61 working, 227 Moynihan Report, 1–2, 127 multiple births, 189–96 murder, 58, 65–73, 143, 148, 153, 161, 173, 175, 185 Murray, Charles, 63 Nahanee, Teresa, 166 Narayan, Uma, 152–53 narcissism, 102–103 Nathanson, Donald, 108 National Mental Health Association, 99 Neilson, Patty, 234 New Right, 220–22 New York Times, 31, 97, 103, 231, 237 Newsweek, 37–53 Northern Alliance, 30 nuclear family. See family nuclear weapons. See weapons O’Donnell, Rosie, 235, 239 Oedipus complex, 109 Okin, Susan Moller, 19, 59–60 Oliver, Kelly Family Values, 3, 127–28, 133, 229 “Social Melancholy, Shame, and Sublimation,” 9, 12, 141, 146, 159, 166, 172, 186, 240, 243 Witnessing: Beyond Recognition, 101, 107, 111 oppression and violence, 10, 32, 104 and depression, 111–15 and feminism, 153 colonial, 5 melancholy of, 99–101, 166 of mothers, 104 of women, 28. See also dominance ovarian stimulation, 190–94

260

Index

Paglia, Camille, 239 Pakistan, 29 Panzer, Richard, 128–29 parens patriae jurisdiction, 165 parents and children’s gender behavior, 84–85, 88–89 and habitus, 82, 93, 94 and school violence, 126–29 agency of, 46, 93 authority and autonomy of, 61 divorced, 44 failures of, 70, 72 good, 70–71, 216 harm by, 44 in poverty, 63 informed consent of, 9, 93–94 married, 42–52, 196 middle class, 169 non-marital and/or cohabitating, 39–40, 42–51 of adolescents, 171 of intersex children, 81–83, 85–88, 93–95 pathology of, 104 punishment by, 68 rights of, 167, 191 single, 38, 42–51 step, 51 support for, 198. See also mothers; fathers parental autonomy. See parents Partners of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters (POSSLQ), 41 pastoral power. See power Pateman, Carole, 19–20, 128 patriarchal norms, 133. See also masculine values Patriot Act, U.S., 31–33 peace activism. See activism Pearson, Landon, 174 pedagogy, 216 penal codes, 9, 66–69. See also law personhood, 143–47 Peterson, Susan Rae, 2, 5 phenomenologists, 107, 128

Pleck, Elizabeth, 146, 149 politicization, 149–53 popular culture, 99, 103–104, 215 posttraumatic social learning, 172 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), 137–46 physiological nature of, 140–41, 146 social learning, 172 poverty, 40, 47–51, 62–65, 70–73, 162–63, 167–74, 188 culture of, 1–2, 127 moral, 65 power and agency, 31 and control, 19–23 passim, 32 and dominance, 110, 147 and emotion, 243 and violence, 5, 128 as oppressive, 24, 33 dynamic, 193 economic, 52 Foucault’s analysis of, 206, 209–12, 214 global, 33 lack of, 1, 8, 66, 69–70, 72, 106, 142, 144, 241 of leaders, 62, 66, 69–70, 72, 106, 142, 144, 241 of mothers, 160, 212, 217, 232 pastoral, 211, 216 phallic, 102 police, 50 political, 40–41, 45, 212 relations, 124, 213 Ruddick’s analysis of, 208 structural, 59 struggle, 220 to give birth, 128 to harm, 160. See also biopower; empowerment predator/protector logic, 2, 5–7, 23–24, 28, 121–24, 127–33, 240–42 pregnancy and assisted reproductive technology, 189–97

Index and drug rehabilitation, 197 contract agreement, 190 illegal drug use during, 103–104, 159–61, 166–67, 183–89, 196–98 representation of, 189 teen, 45, 51, 127, 166 unmarried, 46. See also fetal harm; fetuses prenatal care, 103, 175, 186 privacy, 28–31, 60–63, 71, 95, 125, 149 private sphere, 3–4, 18–21, 127–28, 149, 214, 227, 233, 238 property inheritance, 53 law, 52 woman as, 142, 170, 175 prostitution, 159–74 child and youth, 1, 162, 171–74 Prostitution Awareness Action Foundation of Edmonton (PAAEE), 169–73 Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution Act (P-ChIP), 162, 170 Prozac, 99 psychic space, 100, 106–107, 111 psychoanalysis, 100, 109, 111 psychological self-defense. See selfdefense psychologists, 37, 87–88, 106–10, 130, 139, 172, 211 public assistance. See welfare public health, 60 public sphere, 3–5, 11, 19, 51, 214, 227–44 public/private distinction, 3–4, 19, 21, 25 Quaeda, Al, 25, 28 Quayle, Dan, 43–45 Quindlen, Anna, 232, 235 R. v. Drummond, 161–62 racism, 49, 62–63, 104, 132, 152, 159–70

261

Randol, Elizabeth, 8, 12, 104, 112, 129, 188, 240–41, 243–44 rape, 2, 5, 19–23 crisis centers, 31, 67, 122, 137, 172. See also law; sexual assault Reagan, Ronald, 218, 227 reason of state, 205–208, 211, 214, 219 reciprocity, 148 Reich, Jennifer, 9, 12, 40, 47, 104, 175, 240–41, 243–44 Reimer, David, 97. See also case of Joan/John relatedness, 147–49, 152–53 reproductive rights, 60–61, 191 reproductive technologies, 6, 11, 48, 184–98 assisted (ART), 184–96 Republicans, 31, 39, 125 Rescuing Children from Sexual Exploitation Act, 162–63 Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), 29–30 Ribbon of Promise, 131–32 Ridge, Tom, 21–22, 25–27 roles, sex. See gender Rourke, Nancy, 140, 146 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 136 Rubin, Gayle, 49–50 Ruddick, Sara, 61, 205–208, 211–12, 236 Ryker, Jake, 123 Safire, William, 31 same-sex marriage. See marriage same-sex partners, 38, 42, 48, 51–53 Schneider, Elizabeth, 143–44, 151 Scholz, Sally, 10, 12, 32–33, 132, 133, 146, 243–44 school violence. See violence schools, 127, 168–69 suburban, 122 underground, 29 urban, 121–25

262

Index

scientific motherhood. See motherhood Scott, Joan Wallach, 228 Scott, Rachel, 124–25 second wave feminism. See feminism Secure Care Act, 162 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 108 self-concept, 148, 213 self-consciousness, 109–10, 137–38 self-defense plea, 142–43 psychological, 143–45 rational, 114 self-esteem, 88, 113, 139 low, 186 of abuse victims, 139–40, 146 teaching of, 130–31, 171 self-image, 101, 111, 166 self-sacrifice, 228 September 11th, 2–6, 8, 21–22, 25, 27, 32–33 sex change, 89–90 sexism, 131–32, 152, 229 in psychiatry, 109 institutionalized, 104 sexual addicts. See addicts sexual assault, 19–21, 141, 166. See also rape sexual codependents, 171 sexual difference, 3, 52, 81, 110, 228 sexual exploitation. See exploitation sexual identities. See identity sexual molestation, 47. See also abuse, child sexual predators, 122, 164 sexuality, 8, 49–52, 61–62, 87–88, 111, 169, 172 female, 102 shame, 82–85, 95, 100–101, 105–16 Shivas, Tricha, 11–12, 40, 47, 103, 112, 167, 175, 187, 191, 240–41, 244 Shoels, Isaiah, 124 signification, 105, 111–15

Simons, Jon, 211–12, 214 social conservatives. See conservatives social context, 52, 105, 110–11, 114, 132, 139, 146, 153 social contract theories, 128 social melancholy. See melancholia Social Security, 53 social services, 139, 165–67 social workers, 57, 72, 138–41, 165, 211 Solot, Dorian, 49, 51, 53 Sorokin, Ellen, 30–31 Soviet Union, 29, 215 Spivak, Gayatri, 113 Springen, Karen, 43 Stacey, Judith, 39, 53 state intervention, 8–10, 59–71, 162 sterilization, 61, 189 Stuttaford, Andrew, 239 subject position, 114 of mothers, 209, 214, 219, 244 of women, 4–5, 111, 114, 206 subjective embodiment, 145–46 subjectivity, 2–7, 10, 12, 33, 105–15, 130–33, 137–38, 145–46, 152–55, 228–29 liberal notion of, 137 moral, 146 virile, 3–4, 127, 229 subjugated knowledges, 207, 219 sublimation, 99–116 subordination of women, 2, 214 of women of color, 145. See also dominance substance abuse. See addiction; pregnancy, illegal drug use during suicide, 97, 101–102, 166 super-ego, 109–10, 113 supermom, 219–23 surveillance, 10, 22, 31, 60, 69, 121, 126 Survivor Hypothesis Theory, 24 symbolic, the, 102–103 symbolic order, 82

Index Taliban, 25, 28–30, 33 teenagers, 123, 125–26 as parents, 147 pregnancy. See pregnancy, teen sexual exploitation of, 159, 162–63, 170–75 television, 43–44, 59, 70, 221, 237 Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), 30 terrorists, 6, 21–22, 25–28, 31, 33 third-world. See economically underdeveloped countries Thurer, Shari, 213–15, 218, 220–22 torture, 29, 58–69 Total Information Awareness (TIA), 30–31 traumatic bonding, 172 U.S. census. See census U.S. Constitution, 41, 48 U.S. military. See military unemployment, 220 United Nations, 57, 59, 63–68 Convention on the Rights of the Child, 174 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 57, 59, 68 unwed mothers. See mothers, unmarried Van Sant, Gus, 130 video games, 127 Vietnam Vet, 137, 221–22 Vietnam War, 217, 221, 223 violence against women, 10, 17–26, 161–62. See also domestic violence, battered women domestic, 5, 6, 7, 10, 19–26, 32, 47, 60, 69, 137, 139–43, 144–53, 172, 189, 234–35 gun, 227–44

263

school, 5–6, 10, 12, 47, 112, 121–33 Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA), 20–21 violent perpetrators, 132 virile subjectivity. See subjectivity Walker, Lenore, 24, 137–43, 145, 149 Walkerdine, Valerie, 212–18 war, 206, 214, 223–24. See also antinuclear movement; Gulf War; protest; Vietnam War weapons assault, 227 nuclear, 207, 218. See also guns welfare, 40, 60–63 “queen,” 188–89 recipients, 64, 150 reform, 50–51, 63, 188 rights, 60 state, 48, 211 and “white trash,” 63, 104 Wingert, Pat, 43–51 women of color, 46, 145, 152, 187. See also aboriginal persons, women; African Americans; Asian American women; feminism; Hispanics; Inuit; Latinas; liberation, women’s Women’s Resource Center of Lackawanna and Susquehanna Counties, 20, 31–32 Woodward, Joe, 161, 165–66 working mothers. See mothers world-traveling, 152 Yellow Ribbon Campaign, 205 Young, Iris Marian, 2, 4, 7, 127 zero tolerance, 126

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