I’ve written about mothers before here, here and here. And here and here and elsewhere. I stand by every word I’ve ever said about mothers as a class, including that they are sluts and that I am fucking sick of their bullshit. I am. In honor of Mothers’ Day, I would like to remind everyone what antiauthoritarianism is at base. Bruce Levine’s blog is a good reference for anyone who wants more.
Antiauthoritarianism is not the outright rejection of all authority, it is the rejection of illegitimate authority, where only legitimate authority is based in honesty, knowledge, and care and concern for one’s charges. Thus, regarding mothers and presumed maternal authority, “authority” that is based on letting some dick dragging loser impregnate you is not legitimate authority.
For women who only became mothers in the first place because of rape, authority that is based on being too powerless to stop it is illegitimate authority. Authority that is delegated from someone else, whose authority is not based on honesty, knowledge, and care and concern for one’s charges, is illegitimate authority. Authority that only exists because of the worst mistake you ever made — by having kids you never wanted — or which exists because of the best choice you ever made — by having kids you actually wanted — and which is not otherwise based on honesty, knowledge, and care and concern for one’s charges is illegitimate authority.
The only thing that matters, when it comes to the legitimacy or illegitimacy of anyone’s authority is honesty, knowledge, and care and concern for one’s charges. Get it? Good.
Lying liars (or spinning spinners aka politickers including COVID politickers) are not legitimate authority, stupid shits who can’t put 2 and 2 together are not legitimate authority (no, I’m not talking about math), the selfish and self-interested do not hold legitimate authority over anyone, let alone over children. And let alone over other adults for that matter. Does anyone reading here actually know a single authority figure that holds legitimate authority over anyone? Considering that under patriarchy, literally all recognized authority is patriarchal authority, radical feminists must concede that no recognized authority is legitimate as it pertains to girls and women because it is based in the lies, ignorance, and self-interest of men and maleness and that includes the illegitimate authority of motherhood.
As it pertains to girls and women, within a more or less global patriarchy, the closest we have to legitimate authority must be natural law (mustn’t it?) which is based in cause and effect. The bad news is, natural law doesn’t really give a fuck about you as an individual i.e. it doesn’t care about us, but who really cares about that? At least it’s care-neutral. It doesn’t really “care” about itself either, it just is. It’s not interested in you but it’s not self-interested either which honestly is a relief.
And for mothers, although Mothers’ Day and its attendant rituals attempt to obscure some of this, natural law doesn’t give a fuck about how tired you are, it doesn’t give a fuck about how unfair everything is (according to you) or how much you think the world owes you for pushing out one or more tiny humans that you are demonstrably ill-equipped to care for yet you fucking did it anyway. If mothers are drained-dry by the attempt, if they and/or their kids are physically, mentally and in all other ways struggling and largely not making it, and this causes you pain, that’s only because having kids in a fucking more or less global patriarchy is a terrible, frankly irredeemable idea and this is the natural, inevitable result. In other words, you deserve it.
Comments open.
Cannabis Refugee, Esq. 
Hi CR. I know you’re an attorney and wanted to ask if “care”, “concern”, and “charge” had any specific legal definition that would be relevant to this. One thing I really appreciate about your writing is that it’s extremely clear. I feel like this is both natural to you and partly from being in law school. I’m thinking “care and concern for one’s charges” = mother’s love for her children, which I’ve personally been led to believe is the only actual/true love. I’ve come to the conclusion that “romantic love” is a byproduct of male supremacy/patriarchy/women’s suppression. fathers = men pretending to be women who have given birth to children, aka lying. there are many cultures where the primary male in a child’s life is the mother’s brother, etc. Care and concern are actual material ways in which love(mother’s love) will be manifested in reality, so there can be enforceable laws around that. I get honesty. Knowledge, do you mean sharing knowledge and information with one’s child? Educating them?
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Hey khthonic, here is my understanding of CRE’s work here; IF mothers were *honest* with themselves and others based upon their *knowledge* of patriarchy they would not bring children into this world whom they obviously can’t adequately *care* for, therefore birthing them anyway demonstrates that they don’t have the requisite *concern.*
They could have three out of four qualities, say, concern, care, knowledge; but without honesty the other three qualities are compromised and if they have a child they would likely be tortured by their knowledge, concern manifesting as guilt about inability to provide adequate care. You could do this experiment in any arrangement; concern, care, honesty, but no knowledge, and it would turn out the same. 4 – any of them = illegitimate authority. I haven’t read Levine’s work, but this is my interpretation based on what I’ve read here.
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Yes, legitimate authority has to have all 3. I think of care and concern for charges as one thing, its the opposite of self-interest. But its interesting that you thought to break that element down further. Care as the verb-form of care, as in caretaking, and concern as the desire to provide caretaking into the future maybe. I don’t enjoy fielding questions, so I appreciate someone else stepping in, thanks for that. It’s basically mother-love, yes. As for mother love being the basis for maternal authority, I wrote about that here
As I think anyone can see, it’s mother love that causes women to show up for their kids, and it certainly gives mothers more authority over their kids than anyone else, even “natural” authority in a way, since its more or less natural and foreseeable, but it’s pathetically inadequate and does not make illegitimate authority legitimate, unfortunately. I for one would love to be able to defer to some legitimate authority for once, but there just isn’t any. Antiauthoritarian children see how pathetic and inadequate their own parents are and it gets them into trouble, just like antiauthoritarian adults can get into trouble. And yes, if mothers were honest and knowledgeable, they wouldn’t have kids in the first place, would they. It’s not like you can get around that by “educating” your kids once you have them. What would you even tell them, when most “knowledge” is all male lies anyway? The old ways have been lost, in every patriarchal culture on the planet, which is pretty much all of them.
And also, “love” does not give anyone the right to control the love-object, that is patriarchal thinking to its core. So there’s that, and there goes mother-love as the basis for legitimate authority over children, if we are talking about giving mothers the right to tell their kids what to do just because they love their kids. If this were anything other than a fucking nightmare hell dimension (ie patriarchy) love wouldn’t be a scarcity anyway, and one person wouldn’t need to show up because the community would show up. Or, there wouldnt be these constant predictable crises/danger where anyone needs to show up, there would be no reason for it. That’s all I have for now. Thanks for reading.
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Hi, I can definitely relate to the desire to defer to someone other than myself. I don’t mean that in the sense of, I don’t want to be responsible for myself and/or be a burden to others, but I have wondered why I’m here/why my parents had me. I know that “love” can’t be defined in this context, by nature it is subjective, even if it can be experienced in material reality to a certain extent. I know it can’t be forced. I’ve determined that love is a natural thing, and I feel like it’s related to “natural law” as you use it. Natural law inherently overrides ‘legal’ aka any manmade/artificial law and/or authority.
“Knowledge”, honesty is an absolute prerequisite to this, in any and all contexts. “knowledge” that doesn’t fit the definition of “truth” is a lie. Objective reality is this. it doesn’t matter what you believe, the truth is the truth and is, whether you close your eyes to it or not. I think “mother love” has overlap with both objective and subjective truth/knowledge. The subjective part is the thorny part, for me at least. I know that if the child doesn’t feel that they were loved by their mother then the responsibility lies with the mother. this is the consequence of “authority” deriving from “mother love”.
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“Responsibility” (per g00gle): the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone.
“Authority” (g00gle again)the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.
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Yes, responsibility is a different animal isn’t it. By objective standards, parenthood is not a good career, its a burnout career using objective criteria of high stress + low control (full responsibility but no real power wrt outcomes). I believe that parents do have responsibility for their kids, and I think that my “believing” that is irrelevant bc it just is. People are responsible for what they create, and bringing life into a more or less global patriarchy makes you responsible for that life FOREVER. Some people call that kind of responsibility karma. And a lot of people pay a lot of money to have people tell them the opposite, that whatever happens to their kids isn’t their responsibility (or karma) for whatever reason. This is a huge meme in New Age and heavily therapised (brainwashed) populations. Zero people will pay money to hear what I have to say on the subject. I’ve lost patrons over my motherhood posts.
And legislating mother love (requiring mothers to show up) assigns responsibility to someone who has no power and no resources, and no legitimate authority, but most mothers would show up anyway. Notably, fatherhood is somewhat legislated too, and fathers definitely have no legitimate authority over children, and many fathers refuse to show up despite the legislation. This shows that the tendency to show up for one’s children is more or less innate, I think. People are going to do what’s in their natures regardless. That’s why legislating violence and sex crimes doesn’t prevent them from happening, that would be impossible. It’s why “late term abortions” almost never happen even when and where they are perfectly legal, most women just wouldnt do that, altho men get worked into a lather over it, apparently thinking women are like them and have to be legislated to not happily kill for spurious reasons. I’m not sure what your interest is in the legal aspect of any of this, but yes, there is overlap between legislation and natural law, and how parenthood is enforced. Impregnation is where state control attaches to women, its a tool of patriarchal control and is 100% wielded by men as impregnators. Idk why more people (incl feminists and anarchists) don’t seem to care about that.
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I’ve found that a lot of words have slightly different definitions in legalese than at large. Like how some English words mean different things in Europe compared to N America. Authority and responsibility are two sides of the same coin it seems to me. and it’s an inextricable part of the mother child relationship(I’m specifying mother-child as in biological, not caretaker-child or father-child or whatever else) since by nature children can’t really be responsible for themselves until whatever age–“legally” 18 years old, though historically people have been treated as an adult starting much younger.
I think this is a very important topic of discussion that’s happening at large right now. Mothers, children, women having babies and etc. I saw an article from the Guard1an about women who regretted having their child(ren). I would say that’s a fairly large platform. people are talking about it.
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To be fair, I’m not really talking about mother regret. But that is a distinction that maybe should be made. I’m still thinking on it, thanks.
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