Mothers pour their blood and guts into mothering while teaching their children to be grateful to fathers.
Father brings home the bacon. Father is such a good provider. We must all be grateful to Father, children. He works so hard. Not like me. I’m just fulfilling my purpose, like a hammer, or a toothbrush. You don’t thank your toothbrush when you use it. Don’t thank me. Thank Father.
And we all oblige because we know if we really truly grasped what our mothers have given us, have given up for us, if we really prostrated ourselves before the reality of that actual self-less self-giving self-surrendering, we’d never stand back up again.
Much easier to give all praise to Father. Father makes the money. Father turns the gears. Father bulldozes the forests and turns them into brochures. Father is the provider. Father invented the Church of God the Father. We all worship there.
We do not worship Mother. Mother is there to be used, and to be used up. She disappears the problems. She disappears the pain. She disappears the waste and refuse. That’s what she’s for. We pour the garbage into her. We are not grateful. We grow up and become strong and say “I did it! All by myself! Thank you for providing while I made myself, Father!”
Because we can’t look at what she did for us.
Father gave us all of this. Father is the provider. Father provides us with money. Now we have money to eat. Money to drink. Money to breathe. When Mother is all used up it won’t matter. We will eat the money. We will drink the money. We will breathe the money. Praise be to Father, the provider.
“We got here all by ourselves!” we say, while devouring Mother’s flesh, while burning Mother’s life force, while blackening Mother’s air and water.
“When Mother is all used up it won’t matter, we’ll upload our minds onto computers and launch the computers into space. Computers we made. Rocket ships we made. Then it will all be our creation. Then we can forget about Mother. We will have made our own Mother. A Mother made of computer chips. A Mother made of plastic and metal. Then the whole universe will be Father. And we can finally feel happy.”
Jeff Bezos is the world’s greatest Father. He makes all the money. He turns all the trees into profitable landfill. When Mother is all used up Jeff Bezos will send us to space, to live in giant space cylinders made by Jeff Bezos.
Jeff Bezos is pouring money into becoming immortal. He wants to live long enough to see the whole universe turned into Jeff Bezos. His hideous face on every planet. On every star. On every galaxy. A goblin’s head. A devourer’s head.
But Jeff Bezos will die. But Jeff Bezos will not turn the universe into Father. He may kill off Mother. He may make lots more money. But he will die. And before he dies, he will see. He will see his whole construct ripped away from his eyes, and he will see what lies underneath it all.
And he will finally prostrate himself before the truth of it all. We will all prostrate ourselves before the truth of it all.
And Jeff Bezos will regret.
And we will all regret.
And his last word will be “Mommy.”
And all our last words will be “Mommy.”
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67 responses to “Mother”
When countries like Australia and the UK cease their continuous grovelling before the USA,
When the USA can no longer cause massive loss of life in victim countries with their sanctions,
When the military of the USA is no longer spread across the globe,
When the USA’s media can no longer spread lies across the globe,
When the USA can no longer trash countries that do not genuflect,
When the USA’s department of defense does defense instead of aggression,
Only then will the empire have sufficiently decayed.
I like Caitlin because often times she’s right on the spot, makes total sense; and I recognize that she can also be off the mark, and obviously biased, like in this case.
So here’s Caitlin for you. She gives you an incredible, courageous article (“Why It’s Ugly To Criticize Trump For Dodging The Vietnam Draft”); and before that a very insightful, profound article “(Narrative Managers Argue China-Like Internet Censorship Is Needed”); and sandwiched in between those two intelligent articles, an embarrassing (but gender-politically correct) lamentation that we’re giving “all praise to Father”.
After reading that ridiculous assertion I was ready to ask her on what planet did she live? Maybe on planet Australia men are actually praised, but even a most man-hating feminist, possessing the tiniest amount of discernment should be able to make a simple observation, that in the current US “privilege hierarchy” women are positioned way higher than men, past “equal” to “better” and morally superior.
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And then, while I was still considering whether to bother dissecting her “unappreciated mothers” diatribe, I re-read her latest one (on dodging the draft), where her logic is impeccable again, she’s not partisan and she’s making sense again. So I gave up on criticizing her confused (not to mention insulting to fathers) view of Bezos as Father figure, hoping someone else would do it.
Unfortunately, family life doesn’t always follow the blueprint. My father was an alcoholic gambler, who didn’t provide and my mother was too often cold, distant and unloving. I envy those whose families did follow the blueprint, even if it ended up like the unfair situation you describe, Caitlin.
The Tao is called the Great mother
empty yet inexhaustible
it gives birth to infinite worlds
It is always present within you
You can use it any way you want.
Quote marks on my last comment.
Love you, love your work, Caitlin. So grateful I have you to read, for it helps maintain my sanity.
I tend to enjoy reading the comments section from your readers. Some days, the comments actually give me a warm, fuzzy Kumbaya feeling. Other days, they remind me of why I don’t have a Twitter account…that is, opinions are like assholes and everyone has one. And furthermore, for some unknown reason, certain people feel that their opinion is OH SO important.
To those who criticize your free style, I say, “Blah, Blah, Blah.”
Write on. Right on. Know you are loved and appreciated. Peace, sister!
Jeff Bezos is a vulgar word to me. I boycott every one of his enterprises.
However, I cannot speak for others, but the rest of the articles seems like ancient nonsense to me. My mother worked just as hard as did my father, because both incomes were needed, even though it was an era where the two-income family was the exception rather than the rule. Furthermore, because my father had certain physical maladies, our two-income family was often a one-income family.
Caitlin, I believe that your perspective is tainted by being a female. I always loved my mother and thanked her – until dementia set in and all thanks in the world would have made no sense to a woman who could no longer recognize her own face in a mirror. On an emotional level, not an economical one, I was always more attached to my father than to my mother. On the day that he passed on, he had been my best friend for a great many years.
I don’t equate feelings with money. Or deeds – with a certain connection, regardless of source, that two people feel toward one another. It was difficult to watch my mother decline but, once she hit bottom, the end came in a hurry. Still, it was far worse to watch my father, in a hospital bed, in pain for the better part of 44 days – and I sitting next to him – decline to the point that, on the day of his death, the phrase ‘skin and bones’ became a reality, for there was no longer flesh between his skin and bones.
I didn’t think in terms of who brought home money. I knew, intuitively, where the greatest, undemanding love came from – from the same place where I returned it in kind. That was the basis of my feelings, certainly not the almighty dollar.
What if everything we think is correct in our society was a lie and that we went off the rails a long time ago.
What if society concensus does not make it right.
What if freedom was not a right but just a transient condition.
What if our idea of the roles of men and women were both equally skewed.
What if our desires are not as important as we think.
What if we are not as smart or awoke so to speak as we think.
What if there is absolute right and wrong regardless of situation or society.
Yep. Back to the future. Back to a time when life was simpler and worthier.
I believe that Ms. Johnstone is among our wisest commentators. But wisdom is always elusive, and here she reveals the limits of hers.
She shows the way that she herself has been ensnared in the evil culture that has been engineered to divide and weaken us, so that the Elites can rule over us. Try however we might, none of us are immune to the immense social engineering power that has created this culture in which women are taught many (MANY) very strange things.
“Divide and rule” has been the Elites’ mantra for 10,000 years. Exploiting racial and other tribal divisions has always been reliable, but destroying the love, trust, and total biological and spiritual interdependence between men and women has been these Elites’ masterstroke. We can see the cunning and evil power of this culture here, as the heart of even a woman as wise and Ms. Johnstone has been ensnared by it.
Man and woman, mother and father, are yin and yang. They are parts of one thing. (Steinbeck called it “One Great Soul”). Ms. Johnstone is simply not quite old enough to remember the culture that reflected that, which was INTENTIONALLY destroyed because it made us, the Common People, stronger.
I was born in ’48. I grew up in a culture that revered motherhood. Motherhood was exalted as the highest status in human society. Motherhood was akin to ‘religion’. Motherhood was exalted as the very reason for men’s coarse existence. Men did what men did simply to serve mother and family.
Boys were allowed license to “be boys” as we grew, but we were taught to not merely respect girls, but to understand that they were BETTER than us. Boys could cuss among ourselves to our hearts’ content, for example, but NEVER around a female. Girls and women would simply not tolerate it. Many a boy’s mouth, (including mine), was washed with a bar of Ivory soap by mothers teaching their sons ‘manners’. Girls would simply leave our presence, if we ever dared ever use a curse word in theirs. Boys were taught to show their respect by opening doors, by walking on the curb side when walking with a girl or woman, (in case of splashes), by standing up when a girl or woman entered the room or left the table.
Women were revered and honored as the “keeper’s of the culture”. To honor, serve, and revere women were the reasons for men’s existence. Men were expendable. Any man knew that his ‘duty’ was to die before he would let any harm come to any girl or woman. Women and children were first in the lifeboats, and if there were not enough boats, men simply smiled bravely, waved good-bye, and courageously accepted their fate.
Once puberty laid its heavy burden on boys, we were all eager to consort with ‘fallen’ girls. Sluts were shamed by women and girls even more than by boys and men. For boys, they were the objects of both our desire and our cruel derision. We desperately wanted to consort with them, of course, but none of us would ever think of one as a suitable wife.
But then came ‘Playboy’.
‘Playboy’ was the beginning of the ‘pornification’ of our culture. Hugh Hefner was an obscure suburban husband and father in his mid-20s, but he quickly became the nation’s, and then the world’s, Master Pimp. The “Girl Next Door”, stripped naked for men’s pleasure, was his product. He paid girls of 18 or 19 a paltry sum to lift their dresses, in PUBLIC, and show of their boobies and pee-pees to all the boys. He wrote and published long essays in each issue, which he called “the Playboy Philosophy”. This “philosophy” extolled the virtues, to all society, for young women to strip naked and parade their sexual charms in public. It was wholesome and good, he posited, for the wholesome “girls next door” to lift their dresses and show all the boys their boobies and pee-pees.
Like a wildfire in a wind on a parched grassland, ‘temptation’ became license. It only took a very few years to destroy the previous culture. Reactionist ‘feminism’ almost immediately blossomed. The first issue of ‘Playboy’ was published in ’55. Friedan’s ‘The Feminine Mystique’ in ’63. And then Gloria Steinem’s ‘Ms’ magazine in ’71.
With the immense power of modern Mass Media in the Elites’ hands, it took only 16 years to completely destroy our society’s bedrock foundational culture.
Ms. Johnstone should try to realize and understand two things.
The first is that Gloria Steinem WAS a CIA operative. This is PROVEN fact. It is not in dispute. Anyone can listen to Ms. Steinem herself, in her own recorded voice, declare that in her experience working for them, the CIA was an “open-minded and liberal organization”. Gloria Steinem had no money to launch a slick glossy magazine. ‘Ms.’ was published with a shady source of financing, and did not even accept advertising for three full years. (News-stand sales and subscriptions could not even begin to cover the costs of putting out a ‘slick glossy).
There is as yet no evidence that I’m aware of concerning Hefner’s possible relationship to any ‘powers that be’. But he had no money either. He was a 26 year old husband and father, (but it wouldn’t take him long to ditch the family), licking address labels to stick on his magazines, which were piled in boxes in his split-level suburban garage, to get the first issues in the mail, and in his FIRST issue he published a nude spread of the biggest, most celebrated international movie star sex symbol in the entire world, (Marilyn Monroe).
How did that happen? How does a 26 year old father living in suburban Chicago get ahold of nude photos of the most sensational and celebrated international sex symbol?
The second thing that Ms. Johnstone should try to realize and understand, is that studies have shown that women were MUCH happier in the old, (pre-pornified), culture. Readers can simply type ‘the paradox of declining female happiness’ into any search engine if they want to learn about this.
Women now have been cunningly fooled into thinking they are “liberated” because they ridiculously now claim the ‘right’ to behave like alley cats in heat, but haughtily deride any who would “shame” them for so obviously being “sluts”. Then they go cry-babying to their girlfriends that “men won’t commit”.
Single motherhood continues its explosive growth, as women’s biological imperatives have their way with them, but men still have the good sense to not want to marry (or commit to) “sluts”.
Using the power of Mass Media to ‘pornify’ our culture, and thus to divide women and men into openly warring camps, has been the Elites’ masterstroke of “divide and rule” social control.
Caitlyn Johnstone is far too smart and wise a woman to be as ‘taken in’ by her own Enemy’s brilliant “divide and rule” ruse, as she shows herself to be here.
Fascinating reply. Thought provoking. I agree with so much but wonder about all the references to ‘sluts’. To a patriarchal society all women have that capacity. I agree with the divide and conquer bit wholeheartedly.
Constructive counterpoint to Caitlin’s post, but was putting the female on a pedestal not itself, in its own way, a diminution and marginalization of her, the softer, “nobler” underbelly of sexism? This aging Boomer also longs, in many ways, for the good old days but has come to realize that they weren’t as good–not even close–as they seem in wistful retrospect. The way forward from our “pornified” culture, built upon exploitation and ecocide, is not back but through.
Thank you to both commenters for these thoughtful replies.
I only used the word ‘slut’ to ‘shine a beacon’ on the counterproductive foolishness of modern women using that very word to claim the ‘right’ to act like ‘alley cats in heat’ without being “slut-shamed”.
Women most certainly have the ‘right’ be promiscuous, but to anyone looking at female promiscuity from an anthropological perspective, it seems very obvious that promiscuous behavior is very damaging to girls’ and womens’ own self-interests.
The old culture I am describing certainly had its egregious faults, and yes, one of the first complaints I recall women making in the early days of feminism was their rejection of the responsibility as ‘keepers of the culture’. They eagerly jumped down off that pedestal. If boys could indulge their animals appetites, why not girls?
But where did they land? There was, and is, a natural biological reason that the responsibility, as ‘keepers of the culture’ fell on females. As anyone who has done it knows, (I have), it is excruciatingly hard to both raise and nurture children, and work to earn a living for them. Promiscuous female behavior only leads to single motherhood because men do not want to marry promiscuous women, (and women feel a VERY strong biological compulsion to have babies).
Why do men not want to marry promiscuous women? Because when a baby is born they immediately hand it to its mother. There is only in the rarest of circumstances any doubt about who its mother is. But men want to support and raise their own children, not some other man’s. A man must accept on faith that the baby is his. He has no way of knowing, except as a matter of ‘trust’. Obviously, it is a riskier ‘bet’ to trust a promiscuous woman that a ‘virtuous’ woman.
Single motherhood and ‘happiness’ are largely mutually exclusive, except for women with moderately to very high incomes. For woman working for average wages and paying for childcare, life becomes a grueling grind that more often than not causes unhappiness, often severe unhappiness, in both mother and child.
Professional child care presents a paradox. To be affordable, to make it worthwhile for a woman to hire another woman to care for her children while she works, the woman that she hires must either care for large numbers of children, thereby giving her child less attention and nurture, or else must somehow be able to live on a poverty-level wage.
I think socially subsidized child-care is likely the best answer, so that we don’t waste the economic value of more talented women who can fill higher earning jobs, but for average women to work low wage jobs, in dehumanizing corporate cubicles, or in service jobs, while even lower wage women care for their children, makes little sense at all.
Everybody loses, the children most of all.
It is MUCH better for women to earn the trust and love from a committed partner who will both help care for the children, and either earn the family’s living, or help to do so.
I don’t advocate returning to an outdated culture that itself was egregiously flawed in MANY ways, such as the shaming of human sexuality itself. Studies do suggest, however, that women were considerably happier living in that culture, than in the ‘sick’ pornified culture in which they are ‘liberated’ from being “slut shamed”.
I agree we need to evolve a new culture that facilitates human fulfillment and happiness. But women don’t yet seem to be even beginning to learn the pitfalls in many of the unwise and counterproductive precepts that ‘feminism’ has led them to adopt.
I believe they will, and when they do, (assuming that Humanity survives), we may begin to adopt a healthy culture that allows for both the healthy enjoyment of human sexuality, and the formation of healthy families for nurturing children.
In reality you just prefer your own version of divide and rule. Delicate, infantilized women, expected to steward a sick culture that spent centuries suspecting them of witchcraft and burning them at the stake for expressing themselves, who are sexually shamed and disempowered, on the one hand, and over-worked, “expendable” men on the other. If anything, your vision of proper social arrangements is even MORE disparaging and degrading to fathers and men. I’d rather see coalitions of single mothers raising children with free reign to develop within their communities as sovereign people and be nurtured by multiple adult role models, and men who have no claims to their specific biological offspring as a sort of human property. The nuclear family is where the human spirit goes to die, we should not re-institute it. That’s what a deep anthropological perspective recommends. Not atomized, militaristic slave units.
Thank you for your comments, Josh. You clearly fancy yourself as a mind-reader, with the magical ability to divine what a person thinks about complex matters from a few brief comments, and so generously telling me what I think and believe based on your ideological knee-jerk assumptions.
You are using a polemic device called a ‘straw man’. You put words in. my mouth that I did not say, and thoughts in my mind I do not think. The straw man you stuff is custom designed by you for you to huff and puff, like any ‘mighty’ ideologue, and blow down.
I hope perhaps you saw my comments elsewhere in this thread. To reiterate, I was gifted with three brand new female human spirits to nurture. I dedicated many years of my life, at great sacrifice to myself, to nurturing them, (as a ‘virtual’ single-father when they were babies), as best I could. I raised them to believe that they are the equals of ANYONE, man or woman.
I coached them, and quite literally HUNDREDS of other young girls, in little league sports, for 39 seasons, (3 seasons per year over 13 years, until the youngest was ready to play varsity sports in school). All three blossomed into championship caliber athletes. Two attended college, at UVa, and Northeastern, on athletic scholarships, both enjoying record setting careers, and my middle daughter was named one of the 50 greatest athletes of ALL TIME, at UVa. All three were highly motivated students, earning straight A’s’ right up through high school. My oldest daughter had athletic scholarship offers to several schools, but chose to attend Stanford on an academic scholarship instead. The oldest went on to earn a masters and PhD at NYU, and my middle daughter earned a masters from Harvard. My youngest went on to earn her masters at Northeastern.
They all have grown into strong adult women, with loving nuclear families of their own, (6 grandchildren and counting).
Perhaps you could pause from reciting your knee jerk ideology long enough to understand how foolish you sound in the straw man assumptions you make here about a complete stranger after reading a few brief comments. I would hope that you are a better person than the ideologue fool you make of yourself here. I think you almost surely are, (though I have no way of knowing.
Your cultural ideas about the nuclear families are interesting, and would bear discussion, but this is too complex a subject to delve into here. I lived (albeit briefly) on communes when I was in my early 20s, and the cultural ideal of collective child raising is still interesting to me. But I don’t know of ANY communes from that era that succeeded in creating the kind of culture you describe, or that even succeeded is lasting more than a brief few months, or a couple of years at the most.
Our modern ‘sick’ pornified culture certainly does not support the success of nuclear families, but many still do prosper, and are not “where the human spirit goes to die”, or “atomized, militaristic slave units”. When our whole extended ‘clan’ gets together, we comprise a large group of happy adults who experience and share great joy in seeing our clan’s happy well-balanced children playing while we enjoy each other’s company.
You clearly must have had an unhappy family experience to have developed such an extremely ugly opinion of the oldest cultural institution in ‘civilized’, (rather than tribal), human societies.
Thanks again for you comments
R Zwarich, those were great insights, and I tend to agree with you about the importance of nuclear families. Whether we like to admit it or not, adults who have a vested, biological interest in the well-being of children are usually the ones who will ensure the greatest possible benefit for their children. The family unit (nuclear family and possible extended family) is the greatest social safety net known to mankind. I agree with you that there has been a systematic attempt to dismantle this arrangement in order to gain control over society.
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If people are dependent on the government instead of their families, then they all must submit to the government in order to get their needs met. As we can see from history, it is a rare government that genuinely places the well-being of the people above themselves.
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I also agree with Caitlin that women do not get the credit that they well deserve, especially when it comes to bearing and raising children. The physical, emotional, and mental work that goes into raising babies is far greater than what most people put into the work they do in the paid workforce. Even the notion that SAHMs “don’t work” is inexcusably offensive — and nearly every stay-at-home mother has heard these words multiple times throughout her child rearing years.
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As much as some of us pine fo the “good ol’ days,” those were days when women would be questioned about spending that $20 on a new pair of shoes for herself or even the kids. Those were days when a man thought that his only obligation was to work an eight-hour day and then sit in his recliner while his wife was expected to cook, clean, and serve him every night..as if she hadn’t been working those eight hours, too.
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Ultimately, I think that we all need to acknowledge what each partner brings to the table, and while you think that it’s always the woman who has the biological drive to have babies, there are plenty of men who seek to own and control women for the specific purpose of bearing the men’s children — especially sons.
To understand feminism, one has to understand how poorly women have been treated throughout human history. Just in our lifetimes, there have been many places where women were not able to buy a house or get a credit card or drive a car or get a paying job without getting a man’s approval. It’s difficult to understand just how poorly women are treated unless you’ve walked in their shoes. There’s a reason why most men would never want to actually trade lives with a woman — the intuitively know that women are considered by many to be worth less than men.
Thank you so much to JM for sharing your own valuable insights.
There were many things about the ‘old culture’ that were intensely unhealthy. How many recall, or ever saw, the excellent cultural study ‘Splendor in the Grass’, from 1961? (Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty, in the full splendor of their own youthful beauty). It was a study in how parents tried to teach a young girl that her healthily blossoming sexual feelings were ‘evil’. She loved her family intensely, and she wanted to be a ‘good girl’. But her passions and equally intense love for her boyfriend were impossible to suppress. The tension drove her to mental illness.
In ‘Grapes of Wrath’, Steinbeck dealt with the culture that existed before the great urbanization of US society. When I was in high school, (class of ’66), a buddy of mine once commented how “all our grandparents had growth up on farms”. All of mine certainly had. (In the ‘old country’ (as they called it), in Ukraine, on my father’s side, and deep in the Missouri Ozarks on my mother’s side.
In the opening chapters, Steinbeck describes the ‘Oakie’ culture of the Joad family, as they prepare for the great migration to escape the great dust storms, and the Great Depression.
There was “women’s work”, and there was “men’s work”, and if either gender crossed those lines, (if men did the laundry, or cooked dinner, etc, or if women started up the tractor to go out and plow the fields), that would be perceived as criticism, and thus as a ‘threat’, or insult, by the opposite gender.
Neither gender felt superior to the other, because the cultural roles that both fulfilled were recognized as equally valuable to the group.
The women, the Earth mother, as embodied in Ma Joad, knew that they were the life giving force, and that their men honored them for it. They knew that they needed their men to do the work that women lacked the physical strength to do, to feed them, and to feed their babies.
As the social emergency threats to their safety played out, the women would watch their men, to see that they remained ‘whole’ in strength and spirit, because the women knew that if their men’s spirit ‘broke’, the women would have to ‘take over’ to protect “the fambly”. As long as the women could see that their men’s spirit was ‘whole’, the women would trust in, and honor, their strength and protection.
It was inconceivable (at least according to Steinbeck) that Ma Joad, or Rosa’sharn, (a daughter), would ever think or feel that they needed to be “liberated” from their gender roles. It was thus a ‘healthy’ culture, (again, according to Steinbeck).
The massive urbanization of the US took place VERY rapidly after WW2. The rural culture was sorely challenged to adapt to new circumstances. People of my generation, (born in ’48 myself), were born into a culture that was already in a period of major transition.
Again … many thanks to JM for sharing her or his deeply thoughtful comments
I’m even older than you Caliban, and yes, I recall, I grew up in the culture you recount, and I remember it well. Yes, mothers were sacrosanct, and women were held in high regard; however, they were powerless legally. That was all well and good if all those around you played their roles according to that playbook, but there were rogues. Women/mothers were beaten to a pulp by not so reverential husbands, and police didn’t interfere in “domestics”. Mothers got the short end of the stick in divorce cases, and a divorced woman was shunned. It was not as rosy as you paint, not by a long shot.
However, I applaud you, because obviously you were and probably are one of the good guys.
Caitlin is referring to the fact that always present mothers over-compensated and made sure that the absent father was revered, while her own role was accepted as a given. I didn’t see it as an attack on fathers so much as a dissertation on how children don’t always appreciate their mothers enough … often until it is too late.
There is absolutely no doubt that the entire psychology, sexual revolution, womens’ lib, porn as normal, lowering the education standards … all of those “modern” attitudes to sex … were a concentrated and planned attack on western Christian culture. No doubt whatsoever. It worked, because prurience is attractive to infantalised minds.
But Mothers’ Day comes up in May in Australia, and in this case Caitlin is applauding mothers. Mothers today have an even bigger burden than they once had. Now they have the “freedom” to go to work all day too (according to Rockefeller so they could tax both members of the family), as well as the usual chores, and if she is lucky, she either has hired help or a spouse who sees the entire family thing as a joint effort. Not all are so lucky.
Thank God for mothers: I miss mine every day. I miss my father too.
Thank you for these thoughtful comments, Ms B.
Please try to understand, however, that women may have been “legally powerless” in some ways, but were actually much favored by laws in others.
Many a man, for example, now living alone in some cheap dingy apartment, has stood outside what was recently his own home, (which he is STILL paying for), watching through the window as another man enjoys the shelter of that home, and the company of his family, solely because his former wife capriciously became bored and decided to violate her wedding vows.
Divorce and family laws have long been, and still are, (at least in the US), very heavily stacked in favor of women.
Looks like no-one’s perfect then …
Having read through your posts, I can see that you got the short end of the stick. Clearly you played the “mother” role. Our experiences colour our opinions, rightly so, and there’s no “one size fits all” in human relationships.
It’s only relatively recently that the pendulum swung here in Oz, and as pendulums always do, they go way out into space on the first swing. Men here say the law favours women now, but as I have said before, that was not always so, not by a long way.
Maybe in reality people marry for the wrong reasons, or with stars in their eyes.
Anyway, clearly from what you say you have been a great father and your absent partner decided motherhood was not her first priority: that’s not the kind of mother we are celebrating on Mothers Day here in Oz, or the kind that Caitlin describes. We just want to give appreciation for those mothers who have made their children and their families their first priority. Mine was one of those.
You seem to be afflicted with the Madonna/Whore Syndrome which puts some women on a pedestal, but only if they act according to your antiquated norms.
Hey, I think the 1950s are calling you. Or maybe it’s the 40s.
Thank you for at least using the conditional ‘seem to be’, as you yourself ‘seem to be’ needing to fit me into a handy ideological ‘slot’.
The “Madonna/whore” syndrome is indeed a deep seated factor in human psychology, and I’m sure it affects my own viewpoint in some way, as I am equally sure that it affects yours, (whether you are male of female).
I intentionally did not even try to teach my daughters anything about their own developing sexuality, or any ‘rules’ that I felt should ‘govern’ it. I simply imparted to them, by example, what the meaning of a man’s genuine love and commitment to them feels like.
There is a direct correlation between the love and attention that girls get from their fathers, (or lack of same), and female promiscuity. Many girls engage in promiscuous behavior in order to seek self-esteem through acceptance from boys.
I am not so foolish that I think any of my daughters were virgins when they got married. But I was pleased to see that none of them chose promiscuity as their behavior. As they grew and matured, they each had a small handful of intense romantic experiences, from which they learned valuable things about human relationships that any person needs to learn before choosing a life-long mate.
Men are indeed instinctually threatened by female promiscuity because men instinctively want to support and raise their own children, not another man’s children. In a pride of lions, when a new male defeats the formerly dominant male, the first thing he does, IMMEDIATELY following the ‘combat’, is kill all the former dominant male’s cubs. Humans are not lions, (obviously), but we ARE animals, and our behavior is largely dominated by deep seated, DNA-rooted, instincts that are beyond our control.
When a baby is born, the mother knows for certain it is her baby, but her mate does not know it is his. His only assurance is rooted in his trust and faith in the woman. A promiscuous woman is simply a MUCH ‘riskier bet’, than a ‘virtuous’ woman.
Men certainly want their wives to be enthusiastically ‘animated’ in the sack, but it is much easier to trust a ‘Madonna’ than a ‘whore’, (or a woman for whom sex has been considered a ‘casual’ thing to indulge in with any man who catches their fancy).
That is instinctual in male psychology, in our species, whether women like it or not. Men will greatly enjoy having sex with promiscuous women, but the will not be inclined to commit to/marry them. Thus the direct correlation between the rise in female promiscuity and thje rise in single motherhood.
Please, everyone. Poetry is allusive and indirect. As with many arts, it damages the essential quality of poetry to try to explain it, but I think I have to make a comment. Cait is writing about our mother, the earth. The earth has created us and sustains us. Mother Earth asks nothing from us and gives literally everything to us. In return, all we can do is to cherish the earth as we should cherish our human mothers. In contradiction, Cait presents human hubris in the role of a neglectful and even manipulative father who takes from life and doesn’t feel obliged to give anything and who turns his children against their mother. There! I’ve ruined this lovely poem enough.
I don’t agree, Mr. McDonnell, that deriding men, and insulting fathers, is a suitable poetic metaphor for celebrating ‘Mother Nature’, or decrying Humankind’s destruction of same.
Pleasing their women, (or trying to), is most men’s most basic motivation. What fair young maiden would not rather fall in love with a rich man, who ‘rapes’ Mother Nature to acquire his wealth, than a poor man who lives in dishonored poverty?
Two men, equally handsome, equally smart, equally capable. One acquires wealth by playing the corporate capitalist ‘game’. The other adheres to honor, and thus lives in poverty.
Which will most fair young maidens choose?
The majority of men work our asses off to support our beloved families. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but the metaphor of the “manipulative father who takes from life and doesn’t feel obliged to give anything and who turns his children against their mother”, is just a stinking crock of you-know-what.
I agree! so many people jumped on this thread with their own biases, while criticizing Caitlin for here bias. Think people!
Mothers are not saints. Speaking from personal experience, and hearing similar from others, they are just as likely to beat their children as fathers are. In my case far and away more likely. Fathers create mothers, just as mothers create fathers. Both are required to achieve the best outcome for their children, as is obviously demonstrated by the result of the vast increase in single motherhood and the effect such has on the lives of their children. They don’t typically do well. Jeff Bezos is a poor example, and not even close to a typical father. I can’t imagine what prompted you to put him forth as the representative father. By the way, men are considered expendable by most cultures, as they rightly should be, since one man can easily produce 100 children while a woman can only produce 20 at the most. Of course such expendability produces stark differences in their roles. Such does not determine the superiority of one over the other.
Over 200 academic studies have VERY clearly shown that almost exactly HALF of ALL incidents of domestic violence between opposite sex intimate partners are initiated by females.
According to data compiled by the US Dept of Justice, in some years females initiate more incidents of domestic violence. Some years men.
But averaged out over time, it is almost EXACTLY a 50-50 deal.
The contention that women are less violent than men is a giant pretentious myth that women have created, and desperately cling to, to glorify being a female human as superior to male humans.
Speaking for myself, my father was almost never violent. In all my childhood, he only hit me once. I never saw him lay a hand in anger on my mother. My mother, on the other hand, would frequently make me go out in the yard to cut the switch that she’d use to beat me. (And if I cut too small a branch, she’d just swing in that much harder). And she was given to hysterical violent rages, during which she would freely hit my father, or throw things at him, with all her female strength.
My father would calmly say to me, “Don’t worry. I can take a few blows.”
Your personal story reflects your present attitude. But then, for all of us, it is this way until we become more enlightened. Sorry, but calling a female a “slut” is a degrading thing to do and reflects your engrained attitudes and opinions you’ve expressed here. In other words – Your Madonna/Whore complex is showing.
I explained (see above) that I used that word in this context for a very specific reason.
You seem to think you know me based on a couple of comments.
I raised three daughters, at considerable sacrifice to my own career, happiness, and self-interests. They all three have formed happy and vibrant families of their own, with partners who are very deeply committed to them. (I have six grandchildren, and counting), and I have been married to the same woman since 1974, almost 47 years).
My wife was an airline flight attendant when my children were babies. She was absent, in another city, for 21 days out of every month. And thus, due to her selfishness, her determination to “have it all”, and at great cost to my own happiness, not to mention my career, and my self esteem, (I was a ‘pioneer’; this was YEARS before Michael Keaton’s cute little movie ‘Mr. Mom’), I raised my children as a virtual single parent.
I coached all three of my daughters in little league sports for 39 seasons, (3 per year over 13 years), and they all became championship caliber athletes. (Two attended college on athletic scholarships, and had record setting careers. The other had athletic scholarship offers, but decided to attend Stanford on an academic scholarship instead).
My daughters have degrees from Stanford, NYU, UVa, Harvard, and Northeastern. Three BAs. Three masters. And one PhD.
I have committed my entire lifetime, at considerable sacrifice to myself, to the happiness and well-being of these 4 females, but you go right on ahead and put me in your glib handy-dandy little slot that serves your own ego, after reading a couple of comments if mine, if that’s what lights your fire.
Pardon me, Ma’am, but your silly and glib ‘feminist’ superiority complex is showing.
Ah. Explains your posts.
You got a nasty one.
Personally, I have no time for parents who harm children in the one place they should feel safe. No time at all. If that’s the only way a parent can find to show the right way to their children, they are bad parents.
My father was the one who did that in my family, usually to my brother. I used to get in between them so he couldn’t. He would never hit me, a female, but he had no such compunction dealing it out to my sweet and gentle older brother. According to my father he was too soft.
But then he had been in WW2, and had a particularly challenging time. My mother used to ask us to forgive him because of that. That’s mothers …
There is no such thing as a father without a mother.
There is no such thing as a family without a mother.
There is no such thing as a child without a mother.
Life itself is not possible without her.
We all need to awaken to this very very very evident fact.
How many mothers do not have fathers? How many children? There are most CERTAINLY many families without mothers.
If science could create sperm, would women want to eliminate men completely? And would they think human life would then be idyllic?
Maybe some of us need to awaken to the fact that we are ALL, men and women both, a part of what Steinbeck called “One Great Soul”.
I’m a family lawyer. Spend my days up to my arms in the human wreckage of families turned to warzones.
Reading this made me feel sick to the guts.
Dear Caitlin,
Mmm.
Not sure why you have decided that a regular Dad’s way of earning money is to bulldoze forests.
Not sure why you are ignoring most regular dads who share the nurturing, bringing the kids to school, helping them with their homework, cooking their meals, washing their clothes, reading them stories at bedtime, taking them on adventures.
The reason that forests are bulldozed is because humans (which includes mums and kids too) cannot stop eating meat and food which requires palm oil, not because humans want to read books and magazines.
The print industry plant their own trees, have increased their forest coverage every year for the last 20+ and the energy the industry uses mostly comes from sustainable resources. https://www.twosides.info/
I am still one of your supporters, but please be more careful next time as to at whom you sling your barbs. For example, Jeff Bezos, if you need to criticise him, then point to his greedy and shabby treatment of his employees.
Thank you.
Kind regards,
Alex.
THANKS Caitlin!!!!
Kind Regards, Ben
Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts. — E. B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web.
If you judge people, you have no time to love them. – Mother Theresa.
The kindest relative I had as a child was my uncle’s wife, Aunt Maggie. If not for occasional trips north to her house, I might have frozen to death.
The human being to whom I am most indebted for making the rest of my life feasible was a high school English teacher who gently, patiently helped me to see my worth as a human being. He had two children and his wife (now widow) is an artist and art teacher.
The longest lasting friendship I’ve had was with a gay man. He had no children, but he taught first-graders for many, many years.
All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it to those around us. – Father Rohr.
“The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants…..and your people who revere your name…..and for destroying those who destroy the earth.” Revelation 11:18
TIME TO GO INTO OVERDRIVE FOR JULIAN ASSANGE, CAITLIN!
Turnbull, Rudd and others on the right must make a stand for Assange
The Wikileaks leader is threatened with a torturous 175-year sentence for practicing journalism. This needs a new level of opposition. If not now, when?
GUY RUNDLE APR 28, 2020
9
(IMAGE: AAP/PETER RAE)
Now is the time, if ever there was a time, for prominent Australians, especially those on the right, who support Julian Assange, to take their defence of him up a gear.
The Wikileaks founder, currently on remand in London’s Belmarsh prison, has just had a full hearing of his refusal of extradition to the US delayed for months — possibly until November — because preparation of a defence has been impossible due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Assange has been unable to meet directly with his lawyers, videolinks for court hearings make due process more or less impossible, and lawyers have been unable to interview witnesses.
The court granted the extension. They had little choice. Assange is facing up to 175 years thanks to the US’s absurd draconian sentencing system, on a charge of espionage which revolves around the allegations that he gave another person (presumed to be Chelsea Manning) some informational advice as to how to bypass passwords on locked files.
Assange stands up to the courts — but what of the press?
Read more >
The British state and judiciary would have loved to rush Assange through to a military rendition flight in orange jump suit and shackles. Paradoxically, it’s the theatrical-but-real severity of the potential US sentence that has made it impossible for the British state to hustle Assange away — since the sentence amounts to a virtual entombment for life in a US supermax prison.
Such sentences are designed to instil the pure terror of the death penalty in those who go against the US state, while avoiding the UK and other countries’ ban on deportation in death penalty cases.
COVID-19 has given Assange and his team no alternative but to request a delay, despite the fact that this puts Assange’s health in further danger, as he has a lung condition which counts as a major comorbidity for the disease.
The deep disquiet around the treatment of Assange, and the very nature of the charges against him, has been growing in Australia and around the world for some time.
Even those who have never agreed with many of the actions of Wikileaks, and especially of its conduct during the 2016 US election, have come to realise that this is a brutal and state-dictatorial attack on the basic practice of journalism.
Assange, a non-US citizen, working outside of US soil, is not accused of physical theft of anything, nor of computer hacking; he is accused, under the Espionage Act, of exchanging information with a whistleblower who had already taken electronic information from their military workplace, and needed to access it.
Potentially any journalist who renders active assistance to a whistleblower — from helping them open a locked briefcase, to giving them advice as to how to get a paper file out of a workplace, or even to simply encouraging them to leak — could now be swept up under this new, global extension of a law introduced in WWI (a law aimed at anti-war activists as much as at German spies).
The sheer exercise of the pure, annihilating power of the state is on display here. It is the rare moment, when the US-UK Atlantic alliance is so desperate to punish a new level of openness — created by the Wikileaks cablegate exposes of 2010-11 — that it is willing to unveil the exceptional power behind the facade of actually existing democracy.
At a time when news media is in dire straits, and much of the spirit of critical journalism has died in the era of “content production”, such an exercise in brute power is designed to scare thousands of everyday journalists, who might otherwise be willing to undertake investigative work, into turning their attention back to TV recaps and lifestyle features.
Assange extradition battle could cause an international mess for Australia
Read more >
The terror of the supermax prison is the terror at the heart of modernity: not that of physical torture and death, but of being flung into lifelong solitary confinement in a bare room, with virtually no human contact, the lights burning 24/7, books and other media strictly limited.
Because it is not a dungeon or an arctic circle work-gulag, US authorities can claim it as “humane containment”. It isn’t. It’s a system designed to be a living hell by other means, and in that respect it is no different from a gulag or the interment of political prisoners in somewhere like Dachau.
Australia’s prominent figures who oppose this now have to stand up and make an extra effort to represent a widespread national disquiet on the world stage.
Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd (and Gillard and Albanese if they will, which I doubt) need to make a joint press conference to ramp up the opposition to this.
Turnbull was a champion (for hire) of openness towards Western spying operations; Rudd is a follower of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian pastor who was executed for his role in plans to assassinate Hitler. They cannot, if they have any consistency, not make this a major focus. It’s now not enough for such people to sign a petition, make the occasional remark.
Barnaby Joyce and George Christensen, as the right-wing MPs most prominent (for whatever mix of motives) in the campaign to release Assange, have a responsibility to ramp it up too.
The left MPs in this movement will do so, but it is the right, talking in terms of solidarity with Australian nationals, and not deserting them in a London cell, that will start to put the squeeze on the Morrison government. Ideally, the National Party and the Greens need to make a joint statement, and, yes, another joint press conference.
The immediate aim is to get Assange out of remand — his time for breaching bail has been served; he is guilty of no crime — and at the very least, into a facility that is equal to outside living in terms of his health.
The aim over the rest of this year is to have the Australian government oppose the threat of torturous lifelong incarceration, and for pressure on the UK government to refuse extradition.
The media campaign needs a ramp up too — but so many journalists have been so cowardly, stupid and predictably disappointing on this matter, that a focus on figures actually wielding power becomes the proximate focus.
It’s worth remembering that the pursuit of Assange is being conducted by a US right-wing government that is effectively leaderless, shambolic and opportunistic.
What of future right-wing US administrations that were of this intent, but focused, efficient, and determined to wipe out critical scrutiny of the US across the world? “First they came for Wikileaks…”, to paraphrase another resistant German pastor.
The delay in Assange’s hearing is both a respite, but also a further threat to his health. There can’t be any delay in the campaign to free him. The time for a new level of action, from those with the profile to make their voices heard, is now, right now, no other time than now.
Read this mother’s cogent and very urgent plea.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/13/assa-a13.html
Thank you, John Gleeson for reminding us all that our obligations as human beings to fight injustice have not been suspended because of this pandemic. On the contrary we must keep fighting for the freedom of speech, for justice and our human rights with reinforced efforts or we may all have to face a future too dismal to even contemplate. We must fight for the freedom of Julian Assange, because within courageous individuals like him lies our only hope to know the truth,and the ability to defend ourselves from the malicious powers who are trying to dominate, exploit and destroy all life on this precious planet.
Wow. I read, I understand. I am a man, I have children. I have grandchildren. I don’t play by those rules in adulthood but I sure as hell took my Mum for granted and respected my Dad. I miss my Mum. I reflect on my Mum often, valuing her love and her pain. I dream of going back and making things right with her. I rarely think of my Dad and feel guilty for not feeling love toward his memory. All around me I see Mums loved more than Dads. Mothers at the core and Fathers on the periphery. I’m odd. A cold Father contributed to that. My best qualities are feminine qualities. I thank my Mum for balancing the love and Guarding my soul. Thank you Caitlin. Yet again you dare.
I think Caitlin is talking about Mother Earth being raped by toxic capitalism
So do I.
In part I’m sure you’re right but these things are very subjective, and deep.
Real mothers work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sometimes they work the hardest when they are sleeping. All societies revolve around the females whether they admit it or not. A good woman is priceless; just five minutes in her presence is worth more than gold or diamonds. Conversely ” a bad woman ” can ruin countless lives in a heartbeat. The ” trouble with most men ” is that they do not know how to properly look at a woman. Most men only see the outside of a woman and never learn how to see her insides where her heart and soul are. Males, usually do not really appreciate women until they are middle aged or older. Females, on the other hand, study males their entire lives and know everything there is to know about what makes us tick. If a good woman has chosen you; then worship her because she deserves it!
Lamenting the Kiwi cultural Stereotypes (in a patriarchal system) eh?
Christianity in not purely patriarchal, just mostly. Jesus was male. But one cannot forget Notre Dame, so many churches, and innumerable art works honoring Mary/Marie?
But I understand your pointing out the essential , if much unrecognized, value of mothers (relative to fathers?)
I assume this article was motivated at least in part by upcoming Mothers Day.
Mother Earth has shaken many great civilizations off of her back. Just as she will do with this generation of man. Huge monolithic structures from cultures of antiquity, litter the globe as evidence. There will be no stopping the changes that are looming. Tipping points have been breached and the glaciers will win. We enter this world with nothing but a promise to fulfill an unknown destiny and we leave this world with nothing but undefinable dreams.
“Only love exists at the edge of extinction.”
Yes, only love exists at the edge of extinction, after we have tried everything else and it utterly failed, we are left with nothing else but to face the truth.
Excellent. The patriarchal legacy and final goal has always been to do away with mother. Brings to mind an excellent essay called, “Patriarchy, Utopia of a Motherless World.” Today we can quote the technocracy saying, “Humans are biohazards, machines are not” as they use Covid to further their agenda. It’s sickening. And we are still here fighting them off because a huge part of our population is still telling us not to get angry about this…”but, but, but, not all men.” No shit, crybaby.
Ah, the Buddha Ms Caitlin speaks the truth! Honor Thy Mother!
Once, in another time, centuries ago, we worshipped the Mother Goddess.
And then the church with its priests were formed, and the women who were healers were burned at the stake, and the priestesses in temples to life flayed alive, and we were the ‘weaker sex’.
But mothers get one day a year …
Mrs. Bezos gets 3% of it. i heard it on the radio: 162 Bn X 3% = ez, lots.
she musta signed a pre-nup….still a good deal. no human is worth even her half.
and it should be half. but who knows?
they should get the same, of course.
so let’s pass a law: they EACH get 3%. so 5 bn USD each.
net to us is $152 bn according to what i heard on radio.
so we could give that to Bernie and he’d get elected ez.
then he could pass it on to nurses and get free health care and toss in free Honduras and Haiti as well.
ez
When I first started reading I thought “WTF? Caity can’t be denigrating hard working, loving fathers (not that fathers work harder or have more worth than mothers).”
But I see where you were going. Toxic patriarchy, “modern civilization”, consumerism, consumption, greed, hubris. I get it and I agree.
Most here seem to be missing the entire point, at least as I understood it. Context, people.
As an aside, perhaps a bit of synchronicity, I saw this music video earlier today by Rina Sawayama called “XS” that matched perfectly with this clarion call from Caitlyn.
Misandry is as deeply unattractive as Misogyny, but what is even more ugly is using this to spread the hatred of men. Grow up, some of your posts are good and some like this one make you look sad and vengeful. Most of us men are good people despite years of being emasculated via feminist hate ramblings. You’ll get what you sow if you behave like an old sow.
I thought it was pretty good.
Didn’t you love and appreciate your Mum?
You are missing the BIG Mother of us all, folks.
Eeeuuw. Harsh. Look in thy mirror.
So true. My mother never had a day off. The only time I remember her sleeping in was the day after my little brother’s funeral when she finally allowed herself to break down. The next day she was up again, being strong for everyone.
Love your Mother!
Best damn god piece EVER!!!
Love for Mother. Peace and Harmony.
Perfect
Verging on hate speech. Daddy issues?
Go away with your “hate speech” … the latest simpleton category of simpletons.
We are celebrating mothers, who sacrifice everything for their families, even their due appreciation. And they do it selflessly, at least mine did, God rest her beautiful soul.
Wonderful prose.
We are all leaves nurturing the tree.
Find you heart and you will see, you will become a nurturer too.
And you will see, the more your heart grows, the more the world around you blossoms.
Don’t despair, just let your heart grow.
And then you’ll see Jeff Bezos transformed, breaking down and crying for the love he had long ago forgotten about.
Good one.