Palestinian oppression and motherhood oppression are linked
What we can do, even if we feel confused
Undoing Motherhood has been in incubation mode. A few weeks ago, I finished creating the course I’ve been working on for well over a year: Undoing Motherhood Shame. Just as I was about to launch it, I realized the weeks’ worth of niggling doubt I had was because the course needed changing to, “Motherhood Liberation 101”. There’s so much more to say about motherhood oppression and liberation besides shame—though shame plays an integral role.
I’ve been working on new lessons explaining where the Good Mother ideology originates and how it works on us, explaining the fundamentals of power and oppression, and reimagining the future of motherhood. I’ve been writing and designing daily, trying to prepare the course for the new year when we’ll culturally share some momentum toward revitalization and transformation.
While I’ve been writing about motherhood liberation, thousands of people in Palestine, including mothers and children, have been tortured and killed, even execution-style in a school, following Hamas’ attack on 1200 Israelis, including at least 29 children.
It’s been difficult to care about anything more than Palestine enough to write about it. It has felt wrong, especially as conditions worsen and the United States remains one of only 10 countries out of 193 not calling for a ceasefire. The world already felt too broken to witness and live in—the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Covid pandemic, the mass dissolution of trust and the rise of conspiracy theories, scary climate change, the war in Ukraine—and now a horrific genocide demands our witness and our action.
Summons
Last night I dreamed
ten thousand grandmothers
from the twelve hundred corners of the earth
walked out into the gap
one breath deep
between the bullet and the flesh
between the bomb and the family.
They told me we cannot wait for governments.
There are no peacekeepers boarding planes.
There are no leaders who dare to say
every life is precious, so it will have to be us.
They said we will cup our hands around each heart.
We will sing the earth’s song, the song of water,
a song so beautiful that vengeance will turn to weeping,
the mourners will embrace, and grief replace
every impulse toward harm.
Ten thousand is not enough, they said,
so, we have sent this dream, like a flock of doves
into the sleep of the world. Wake up. Put on your shoes.
You who are reading this, I am bringing bandages
and a bag of scented guavas from my trees. I think
I remember the tune. Meet me at the corner.
Let’s go.-Puerto Rican and Jewish writer, poet, activist Aurora Levins Morales
It feels like the world is collapsing and like these events building on each other have titrated our tolerance to it. Is this why so many celebrities are saying nothing at all about Palestine? Jennifer Garner posts a video showing us what’s in her purse. Gwyneth Paltrow asks for ideas for some good escapist fiction recommendations. Nothing about the horrific inhumanities the rest of the world is talking about and protesting in the millions. Even Oprah has nothing to say unless it’s to promote the remake of The Color Purple.
Collapse is my go-to trauma response. When the world is unfathomably cruel and despotic, I yearn to melt into the earth and disappear. It’s not a feeling of suicidality. It’s a feeling of tremendous heartbreak, despair, and bewilderment to the point where I feel like I just don’t belong to the world anymore because I am made of something so counter to what I’m witnessing. It’s a pronounced feeling of cognitive dissonance where everyone and everything is different than I thought it was, and I can’t belong to it, nor can I reconcile my confusion. As a result, I long to belong to nature, which I imagine as Home.
But I’m not sure our favourite celebrities are quiet about Palestine because they’re collapsing or freezing as a trauma response. I don’t think they’d be posting giggly content if they were.
I think the silence of white educated liberal people, in particular, is caused by a mash-up of unconscious racism (which is not to say white women don’t consciously uphold racism!), intellectual confusion, propaganda, and threats to our Good Girl status where we don’t want to risk offending anyone and being corrected if we say something incorrect. The Good Girl’s job is to promote and maintain peace and order.
As to confusion—sure, the history of Israel and Palestine is complicated with its historical notations. Understanding which side is more guilty of spreading propaganda is also confusing.
To explain why they’re not outwardly engaging or taking a position, people say, “It’s complicated.” Of course it is. Many things are complicated but we still learn and discuss them.
And anyway, not everything is complicated.
For example, Zara recently launched an advertising campaign that featured an albino-appearing person holding what looks like a human corpse wrapped in white cloth while a piece of drywall hangs conspicuously beside the model, shaped almost exactly like Gaza. The campaign mocked Palestinian destruction and Muslim grief, and Zara’s explanation lacks credibility, especially given senior designer Vanessa Perilman’s 2021 anti-Palestinian remarks.
Is it complicated to say this is inhumane? Is it complicated to say it disgusts us? Is it complicated to say we will boycott any business that uses human tragedy as edgy marketing? This was an easy target for protest for anyone who wants to show Palestinians love and support.
I read a story shared by @letstalkpalestine about a journalist of a newspaper in Gaza—named Diaa Al-Kahlot—taken at gunpoint, and forced to abandon his 7-year-old disabled child to survive on her own. Is that complicated?
If a person doesn’t trust the veracity of this story, they should at least trust news reports that thousands of children have been killed. Is that complicated? Is it complicated that the children aren’t being rescued out of Gaza and taken to humanitarian stations in other countries where they can be cared for? That they will starve to death or die of disease in Gaza? Is it complicated to grieve for them? Is it too complicated to be devastated? As said by UNICEF, “Even wars have rules.”
If we aren’t comfortable debating international politics, some moral positions should be beyond debate. A person should not fear to appear foolish, arrogant, loud-mouthed, or naïve for saying they believe children should be rescued from death by bombing, starvation, disease, or abandonment! Or, to say that Zara should be boycotted. And when celebrities feel safe (or motivated?) to say these things, the average North American follows suit.
It should not be controversial or silly to say these things are wrong, yet people are afraid to say even this. Why? If we can’t be sure if killing children is wrong, what can we be sure of? And if we have no moral positions at all, we have no safety and no humanity.
We must agree on some basics:
All children are innocent and deserve to live.
The loss of children’s lives is tragic and should never be mocked.
Preventing people from being able to access clean water is violent and cruel.
If you argue that violence is necessary as retribution for violence, that must logically include the violence you perpetrated, too. It can’t be okay for only one group of people to always mete out retributive violence. If you believe it’s okay to act from revenge, you must also believe it’s okay to be acted upon with revenge.
Colonization is wrong.
If you can’t agree with me on these points, you will not be able to understand the work of Undoing Motherhood.
At this time, it has felt comparatively frivolous for me to write about wage inequality, chore inequality in the home, or anything I might normally post as content on Undoing Motherhood’s Instagram account. I haven’t been able to bring myself to post anything without addressing the genocide happening in Palestine, but when I’ve tried to imagine capturing my thoughts or feelings, I’ve lost all my physical and intellectual energy.
(Spurred on by my disgust and indignance at Zara’s advertising campaign, I found the words to write this Substack.)
Besides feeling compelled to speak out about this genocide for the same reasons anyone would, I would be remiss to address oppression in its most extreme on an account addressing (primarily North American) motherhood oppression.
What Palestine and motherhood have in common
The same logic that underpins Isreal’s occupation of Palestine is the same logic that underpins Judeo-Christian-patriarchal-capitalist-colonial (kyriarchical) motherhood. The logic’s claim? That an entire group of people can somehow be more entitled to thrive than another entire group of people. And whether the claim is that Israelis are superior to Palestinians or that mothers are made to sacrifice their lives for men and for children, some people believe it was God who told us this is true.
To transform a world of war and power struggle into one of peace and mutual aid, we need to dismantle the ideologies and logics that created the one we have now. That’s what intersectional feminism and Undoing Motherhood strives to do.
When we dismantle these ideologies and logics, we see that we’re left holding violence in our hands. If we ask ourselves, “What is the most moral and healthy world we can imagine, instead of this, and how can we achieve it,” we’re confronted with the only answer that makes sense: Some people have to surrender their unequal advantages, their hoarded capital, their presumptions of superiority, and their precious contempt.
What culture will we participate in creating?
While we can’t all play a role in brokering peace between Palestine and Israel, we can each play a role in creating culture. In fact, we do each play a role, no matter what we intend. We influence the people around us who are picking up on cues subconsciously. (Neurotypical brains are made to mirror other people, because it leads to trust and social cohesion, which are needed for group survival.)
What culture are we creating? One that is empathetic? One that is ambiguous, where our values are unclear? If the majority of people in a social group don’t talk about justice for Palestine, the social atmosphere is pressurized for oppression. The social pressure for politeness allows oppression to go unnoticed or unchallenged.
If we think we have no influence, what first gave us that idea? Perhaps, like me, you’ve heard someone cynically justify their inaction because “it doesn’t do anything.” Yet, I’ve never heard people experiencing oppression wave others off from advocacy work. I think we’re helping indirectly and generatively even if all we do is increase awareness.
I say “generatively” because awareness about one issue generates awareness about other similar issues. For example, people learning about what’s happening in Palestine has led to people learning more about what is happening in Sudan and Chile. That leads to people learning about colonization, leading to a better understanding of our past history, leading to understanding white supremacy, leading to understanding classism, leading to understanding capitalism. And as it turns out, capitalism has a lot to do with motherhood oppression.
In social work, workers have a principle (that I’m sure I will butcher), “Every contact is a door.” Something like that. Meaning: employees within a system should know enough to help a citizen meet their needs, even if they’re asking about the “wrong” thing. If someone goes to their doctor and needs help accessing disability funds, they shouldn’t be turned away without any help because it’s not the right office for applying for income; the doctor should be able to give them information to get them to the right place.
Social justice should work this way. We don’t all need to be experts on every topic, but we could learn where to direct someone. We could each learn and speak to the basic principles of justice and morality because we never know when we might be the first door a person encounters.
We each always have influence over someone, and they have influence over other people. When we individually acknowledge and use our meagre influence, it creates a cacophony of overall influence that amounts to culture. Whether we act or not, we contribute to creating culture. So, which culture do we want to create?
The future of everyone’s liberation… relies on whether the majority of us take up the call to produce a dominant culture of equality, peace, justice and care, or a culture of dominance, inequality and violence.
We don’t need to have all the answers, and we don’t even need to be correct on the facts because it’s okay to need correction and it’s okay to change our minds. It doesn’t matter if you get the dates, the order of events, or the language correct if your moral standpoint is right and unmoveable. Everyone needs correcting sometimes. Hopefully, we’ll each agree on these moral positions:
Each human on earth is entitled to the basic human rights of:
a) autonomy of mind,
b) freedom to act and decide, and,
c) access to the earth's resources to sustain basic human life.
(There may be other excellent arguments for more basic human rights than this but this start is where I want to plant my flag.)We need to help each other achieve and maintain these human rights, or all of our rights will be tenuously maintained.
What can you do?
Donate funds to UNICEF, who is on the ground helping in Palestine. It’s worth noting that UNICEF media contact James Elder says that 1.1 million children in the Gaza Strip and West Bank (about 50% of Palestinian children) were already in need of humanitarian aid before the siege. Canada link. USA link.
Call or email your political representatives in the US to demand a ceasefire now. (Canada has already officially taken this position.)
Consider voicing your support of Palestine on social media. If anyone comments to argue or demand justification, you can reply, “I’m not going to debate or engage other than to say that measures should be taken to protect children from war. In the words of UNICEF, ‘Even wars have rules.’ It’s unacceptable that thousands of children have been killed. It has to stop.”
If you can, join protests. Protests are important, especially in large numbers, because sometimes the media tries to portray a population as having a different consensus than they really do. When people see protests with their own eyes, they understand that the media may not be telling the truth, and it prompts them to investigate.
Educate yourself but beware of propaganda and take care to learn from a variety of reputable sources and consider the biases possible. For example, American news sources are under pressure to support Israel. American support of Israel goes deep. Check this out:
How could Americans be prevented from boycotting companies? How could that even be enforced? Well, I don’t think it can, exactly. But they can be forced to either sign contracts saying they won’t support boycotts, or lie and risk being caught.
I’ve been seeking information from a variety of sources biased from both sides, and more impartial sources like CBC. I’ve been prioritizing listening to Palestinian accounts, as recommended by friends of mine who are close to Palestinian people or who have lived there.
And… that’s where my awareness ends. I’d appreciate comments on Substack or Instagram offering more ideas on what people can do that creates a tangible impact.
I imagined closing this post in some elegant and moving way, but I’ve already spent too much time editing it when its potential for impact matters more than my own ego. Perfectionism is the enemy of progress and we can’t let fear of judgment or public correction stop us from engaging in good works of humanitarianism or social justice. <3