Does your feminism reach your mother?

Or is your “sororidady” only with the “sisters” on facebook?

Let's assume you've known about feminism for a year or two. You read some things, you started to identify yourself, you started to recognize your oppressions. You got angry. You were ashamed. You read on and discovered that those things that affect you also affect other women who are different from you. You've discovered that some women experience this oppression differently than you do. You went to read about how black women experience a symbiosis of machismo and racism. You were angry when you discovered the fetishization that lesbians and bisexuals go through. You began to acquire class consciousness when you realized that poor women are oppressed not only because of machismo, but because of their class condition.

In the process, you may have met a lot of people. Lots of women, mostly young, his age. He must have liked many pages on facebook, and shared many provocative images and texts. He must have started to huff and roll his eyes when he saw something sexist on television at home. Perhaps he even began to review how machismo was present in his own affective-sexual relationships, both homo and heterosexual (because, yes, machismo also affects lesbian relationships).

While you were going through all this, where was your mother*?

While you were reading about abusive relationships and the woman's need for autonomy in relation to men, so that she can fulfill herself and transcend as a human being, did you look at her relationship with her father, stepfather or with her boyfriend?

While you were reading about the double/triple workday of women — who are delegated the responsibilities of looking after the house, taking care of the children and working outside — who did your laundry?

While you became aware of the need to end female rivalry and to see each other as complete human beings, about how patriarchy imposes an idea of ​​“woman” on us as being traitorous and selfish, about how relationships between women are as fragile and superficial, have you reflected on your relationship with your mother?

As you read about socialization, about the imposition of sexual stereotypes early in childhood, about the difference in upbringing between boys and girls, and reflecting on your own upbringing, what role did you assign to your mother in this process? What degree of guilt did you impose on him?

You have a vision of how your creation was. Maybe you've already asked your mother how her pregnancy was (whether it was planned or not), how your biological father's reaction was, how the family's reaction was, whether or not she wanted to get pregnant. Maybe you asked how the beginning of motherhood was and how she dealt with you, a newborn creature, all fragile and dependent. Did she have postpartum depression? How did your family react to how you would be raised? And your father, where did he fit into this whole story?

You have a vision of how your creation was, and maybe you have a lot of criticism of it. It wouldn't be unusual if it did; since we are pruned, indeed, from childhood. How much blame do you place on your mother? Do you consider other factors — like school, the rest of your family, religion, etc — or do you blame all your childhood traumas on your mother?

Do you see your mother only as a mother or do you also see her as an individual? An individual who has his own will, his own dreams, his own traumas, his own difficulties, his own tastes, his own history? Or do you see her as an extension of you, before you, whose identity and subjectivity boil down to just that — being your mother?

I'm not here saying that mothers are immaculate beings who don't make mistakes - or, then, that we can't blame them, because everything wrong they did was because of socialization, the pressure of the patriarchy or because they wanted to protect us in some way. No.

I'm trying here to say that they are human beings. Fallible, wrong, sometimes irresponsible, sometimes immature. And we don't accept these characteristics in a mother. And that's part of misogyny, patriarchy — blaming everything on women, and especially on mothers.

Family relationships can indeed be abusive, and the mother-daughter relationship is extremely complicated both in social and psychological terms, so I won't even go into that merit (nor do I want to). I don't want to belittle anyone's suffering here or doubt the mistakes made. The intention is:

do the exercise of giving back to our mothers the humanity that was lost from them the moment they became pregnant with us.

Even if it is to recognize their mistakes: that they are human mistakes, and not “mothers” (because that gives an extremely negative charge).

The revolution begins, first, within ourselves. But if it doesn't catch up with how we view our mothers — the first role models of women we were exposed to — we'll be trapped in a vicious cycle of empathizing with only a few women.

understand, for most of the text, by “mother” as the woman who raised you (not necessarily the biological mother).

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Text originally published by FURIOSA on the MILITÂNCIA MATERNA portal.

Photo: Luciano Meirelles.