https://crooked.com/podcast/trumps-plan-for-peace-in-ukraine-only-pleases-putin-the-politics-of-modern-love/
Shon Faye '... for most of the 20 tens, one of the kind of online hubs of transphobia, really big mobilization of anti-trans groups and some of the most prominent, taking to the streets, anti-trans campaigners and actually kind of got radicalized on a website called Mumsnet. It’s a parenting forum and, like, I think it serves a, you know, a function for a lot of parents, but it’s I think it’s something like 90% women. So mostly mums. But yeah, like on certain corners of that it became like this hub and like basically any pro trans point was shut down for mums of trans kids, basically bullied off the website and it basically became this now. Is that coincidence? And what I was interested in and it’s kind of a - for me, like, a microcosm of the general problem you’re talking about, because in America, there’s a lot of right wing groups that use moms in the title of Moms for Liberty.
Coco Khan Yeah, right.
Shon Faye Yeah, 1 Million Moms. And they’re like these, like, potentially far right groups. And yeah. Is that is there a link? Why Mumsnet? I guess what they would say is that motherhood is a point where you radicalized and they like, well, we’re not going to accept this like denial of biology by the trans cults or whatever they say. The reality, I think, is that actually you find quite a lot of women on parenting forums who have lost their identity or feeling quite unsupported, often whether they have a partner or not. There’s even these studies that show that men think they’re doing 50% and they’re not.
And so, so, a lot of of women who have young children are on these parenting forums and perhaps I argue for and quite resentful, resentful, it may be suppressed resentment of their own partner and resentful - like, the fact that society does this bait and switch with motherhood where like there’s a lot of pressure on women to do it and then when they do, it is kind of like, well, get on with it. And if you’re a bad mother, that’s your fault. And if you fuck your kids up that's your fault.
Andrea Dworkin, this radical second wave feminist, kind of said that, like, women often can’t express their resentment against the men closest to them, so they deflect it. Right wing women will deflect it onto people of color or lesbians in the 70s, and I think that’s a good example of like how motherhood is used. Like lots of black motherhood was so used in Trump’s recent campaign. Yeah, because it’s this idea, particularly white motherhood, right? It’s like we’ve got to protect white children from the threat. Whatever the threat is at any given generation.'
Nish Kumar In this instance, the threat is specifically in various forms. The three people currently go kill.
Coco Khan Yeah.
Shon Faye Yeah. I was going to say, when I said in every generation I was like, but it’s using it. It doesn’t it doesn’t feel abstract. As we said this time, it doesn’t feel too abstract to I mean, yeah, very fair observation. But it’s clever, right?
Because anyone who’s a parent, you know, the protection of young people is a sort of noble aim. And a lot of parents will have a very real fear, fear of like, children being harmed is like a is a very natural fear, but it’s also one that’s easily manipulated. Yeah. And with far right movements, you know, it has a long history of like, it’s good for, you know, recruiting women and it’s also good for recruiting other men. But like the idealization of a certain kind of puritanical motherhood. I mean, I’m really loathe to invoke Nazi Germany like fascistic regimes have always known that a particular idea of the mother is quite a potent idea in that imaginary. And, you know, that’s not me saying that motherhood or motherly love is always this right wing reactionary idea. It’s not. But yeah, I think it can be weaponized in that regard.'
Shon Faye has, inexplicably, just published a book of presumably this sort of deep insight and wisdom.