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Corporate War on the People

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Resistance in the War
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OTHER FALL 2007 ARTICLES

Jennifer L. Pozner  writes on WIMN's Voice ( www.wimnonline.org) that with Field it was not just the usual cutting out of one swear word: "Fox cut away from Field entirely, leaving about six seconds of dead air on screen…"

This is another example of censorship of political motherhood. Political motherhood is the opposite of the pulverized and pamblumized idea of sentimental motherhood. The mass media force  feeds the motherhood mythology. Yet it is still a fragile fantasy that cannot stand any words slipping out that might hint of mothers being political.

            Field received loud and lengthy applause for her speech: “But at the heart of  Nora Walker [her character] she is a mother. So surely this belongs to all the mothers of the world. May they be seen, may their work be valued and raised. And especially to the mothers who stand with an open heart and wait. Wait for their children to come home from danger, from harm’s way, and from war.”war.”

Backstage, Field commented that she wanted to acknowledge mothers. Again she stated: " I really think that if mothers ruled the world we wouldn’t be sending our children off to be slaughtered. I wanted to pay homage to the mothers of the world and let their work be seen and valued."

In her article, Pozner also reminds everyone that "Mother’s Day was first established as a gathering of mothers rising up against the devastation of war on their families." But political motherhood is not just censored by mainstream media. Political motherhood has also been censored by feminist media and movements.

"…the editorial culture at Ms. [Magazine] during that time didn't consider motherhood a feminist issue." Kirsten Rowe-Finkbeiner, The F Word: Feminism in Jeopardy, 2004

"Birthing and mothering have in the past inhabited a shadowy realm in language—hovering somewhere between delicacy and disgust. This has been true not only of the mainstream but, until relatively recently, of the feminist movement too." Libby Scheier, Creativity and Motherhood, Twist and Shout; a Decade of Feminist Writing in THIS Magazine, Second Story Press, 1992.

"When Mothers Are Women proposed government support for at-home childcare… generally the response was a patient explanation that we had profoundly misunderstood the aims of feminism."  Joanna Dean, Mothers Are Women, Limited Edition [anthology]: Voices of women, Voices of Feminism, Fernwood Publishing, Halifax, Ca., 1993.

My own experiences also reflect the censorship of political motherhood. On one feminist email list, after I posted the article by Lillian Hanson "Feminist Agenda: Get a Job!" (published in the Summer 2007 Mother Warriors Voice) one woman wrote back that "motherhood is over-rated" while another wrote "Pregnancy has little or nothing to do with motherhood and motherhood has little or nothing to do with womanhood." (Huh???) There are 1500 members of this email list. Not one person challenged the absurdity of these remarks. The most obvious absurdity is that if motherhood is over-rated that means people are over-rated since what motherhood does is reproduce the human species. Ignoring, censoring and belittling mothers is essentially an argument for human extinction. The question is, do people include themselves in their desire for extinction?

C. L'Hirondelle
Victoria, BC, CANADA