We’ve seen the weaponization of childhood, with 2018’s Greta Thunberg and other minors being used to advance political agendas. We’ve seen the weaponization of anti-motherhood, with feminists’ impugning of feminine domesticity and the reaction to the leaked Supreme Court Roe v. Wade draft opinion.
And some may find it ironic that a media outlet that’s party to both these phenomena is now complaining of a weaponization it alleges is occurring — of motherhood.
At issue is an article by MSNBC opinion columnist Cynthia Miller-Idriss, an American University professor with a Ph.D. in sociology, entitled “How right-wing extremists weaponize the idea of motherhood.”
Idriss opens citing a study on the January 6 Capitol protest by researchers at George Washington University. It “detailed the role that women have played in American far-right extremism over the past century, including how many are leaning heavily into their identities as mothers to justify their engagement and to recruit and mobilize others,” the sociologist tells us.
Idriss then relates a supposedly shocking statistic that, she avers, vindicates “experts’” longstanding assertion that women play a larger role in “far-right extremist” movements than people suppose. To wit: 13 percent of those arrest on J6-related charges are women.
How they defined what a “woman” is for the purposes of the study — given that, in accordance with leftist thought, our newest SCOTUS justice cannot even do it — was not explained. Yet also unexplained is this:
Why would a female college professor, part of an ideological group that has endeavored to break down traditional barriers and sex roles and living in a country where women are 16 percent of the military, find it odd that they constitute 13 percent of the arrested J6 protesters? To what kind of stereotypes does Idriss subscribe?
The academic then points out that women are often embraced by radicals because, she informs, they’re “useful as a way of ‘softening’ or rebranding the face of violent or supremacist movements in ways that can recruit both men and other women.”
Something could occur to one here: This is precisely what the Democrat Party does!
Just note that it has boasted of how many female office holders it has. So just what was Professor Idriss implying with her above statement?
Providing an example of women’s utility, she cites hate organization the Southern Poverty Law Center as reporting that an anti-government group supposedly used women as “human shields” in a 2014 standoff with the feds, allegedly figuring that it would attract more media attention if agents fired on females.
It’s also possible, however, that the group figured federal agents would be less likely to fire on women. This thinking has historical precedent, too. At the French Revolution’s start, men dressed as women during the March on Versailles because they knew the king’s troops would be unlikely to fire on the fairer sex. (Note: This fact has been obscured by feminism-oriented “historians” who portray the event as an entirely female affair.)
Turning to history herself, Idriss then points out that women have traditionally participated in “extremist movements” via their domestic roles. In the next breath, she writes that females “use these roles to support ‘backstage’ activities — like sewing KKK hoods, cooking meals for gatherings and home-schooling children.”
Of course, mentioning homeschooling — as the only other example — along with the first example (sewing KKK hoods) within the context of talking about “extremist movements” could demonize it. Accidental?
The professor goes on to say that the “right” uses motherhood as part of “utopian propaganda” about traditional “values” and to justify women’s political activism and, in fact, to frame it as actually a non-political, maternal-instinct-driven defense of their children. Yet while she devotes much ink to talking about “QAnon moms” and their anger over “Satan-worshipping groups” and a “global pedophile ring,” she fails to mention that these aren’t the concerns of the average newly politically active mother in question. This is, in fact, a straw-man portrayal.
Rather, it is a reality that
- minors have been “transitioned” (e.g., a girl told she can live as a boy) in school without parents’ knowledge;
- young children have been “taught” by teachers that so-called “transgenderism” is legitimate; and
- many schools have been teaching the Critical Race Theory lie that our conception of social reality should be informed by the white oppressor/black victim model and that all whites benefit from undeserved “privilege.”
Yet Idriss would have readers believe that mothers have been catalyzed to action by, and are consumed with, irrational paranoia. It’s a bit like wondering why someone is standing before you with arms raised and fists clenched and demeaning him as violent — while ignoring that you’ve spent the last five minutes repeatedly trying to punch him in the head.
As for women “in action,” traditionalists (as opposed to “conservatives”) may lament having them on the “front lines,” literally or figuratively. It also might be nice if man’s nature were such that you could just logically and dispassionately explain matters, Mr. Spock-style, and have people nod approvingly and yield to reason. But people are emotional beings; thus does the imperative of political success dictate you go beyond intellectual appeals and reach them emotionally.
All “sides” do this, including the Right. And it’s projection when leftists register disapproval because they specialize in it. Who has given us the Women’s March, greentopian girl Greta, and made a mantra of “Do it for the children” while bringing kids on stage as political props?
What’s more, the Left is even now weaponizing “anti-motherhood”: In stoking Roe v. Wade protests, it’s catalyzing a free-sex-driven desire to avoid motherhood even once mother status (conception) is achieved. And who was it who said that if his daughters “make a mistake,” they shouldn’t be “punished with a baby”?
(It was Barack Obama.)
But this anti-motherhood spirit is not surprising. Why, last year, Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats even proposed eliminating the term “mother” from House rules. If the Left had had its way, Idriss today would be be complaining about the weaponizing of people-who-menstruate-hood.
