WAS "MOTHER RIGHT' WRONG?

WAS “MOTHER RIGHT” WRONG?

 Wrong about what, one may ask?  Actually the Mother Right I am referring to is the title of a book that was written by a guy. Stranger things have happened.  His name was  Johann Jakob Bachofen  (1815-1887) and he was one of a group of men called the ” Fathers of  Anthoropology.”  In the 1800’s this was a new science.  Bachofen based his belief that all societies began with Mother Right, that is, that the mothers (and of course grandmothers) in all early human groupings were vital to the survival of the groups.  Not only that, Bachofen, who was also a judge, a professor of law and a historian, claimed in his book that motherhood is and was, the source of all human society, including spirituality, morality and decorum.

I concur with Bachofen and postulate that his conclusions were, and still are,  inherently true.  However, while many countries (mostly western ones) give sickening accolades  to mothers on Mother’s day, the mess the world is actually in testifies to the fact that most countries have come to despise mothers.  They certainly don’t love them.   Erich Fromm (1900-1980) world famous sociologist pointed out in his books that the opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference.  And mothers the world over get loads of this every single day.

 Of course I recognize that not all women are, or want to be, biological or even adoptive mothers.  And women have the inherent right to refuse motherhood when they choose.  This means women have the inherent right to control their own bodies and that the men of fundamentalist religions who seek to control women’s bodies as if this right belongs to them,  are enemies of women and girls,  and particularly mothers.  The facts are these…female children usually grow up to be women (notwithstanding the vagaries of nature) and most women usually will decide to have a child, or children, at some point.

 And even if particular women never have children, in a sense it doesn’t matter.  During their reproductive years most women have the potential to be mothers.  Women come into the world with this equipment.  Women have the brains and nervous and endocrine systems that specialize them as potential mothers.  This reproductive division of nature is what marks women off from men…women will usually, in any given situation concerning wars, guns, violence, food and water safety and destruction of the environment,  think like mothers.  Which means to seek to care for, and to try to nourish and protect children along with whatever else needs nourishing and protecting. 

 Not all women will act as mothers, of course, and yes, okay, I know this is coming as it always does on any discussion of gender… so let’s go ahead and look at Margaret Thatcher  “Maggie Thatcher the milk snatcher” as she became known.  And it isn’t only Margaret Thatcher, there are and have been other women in positions of power, both past and present, who act more like the men around them, than they do as women.  And of course let’s also not forget the legions of women who gladly fill out the right wing religious men’s groups, both Christian, Muslim and including other religions that believe the sexes aren’t equals and that men are superior.  These particular women are indoctrinated  to become  so male identified they are willing to see their daughters devalued  and their sons become cruel with monstrously bloated egos that allow them to think they must control women, to the point of having life and death control in many instances.

But it isn’t these male identified women who will move society forward.  History has condemned the entire concept of male superiority.  And so has Mother Nature. And Mother Nature’s condemnation may prove fatal for the entire human race if human mothers don’t get it together and recognize that…

          A.  We, as mothers, have the right to demand that the destruction of our planet immediately cease. This includes present and planned production of oil, oil sands, shale gas and minerals, along with other industrial pollutants that add to the carbon in our atmosphere.

    B. We, as mothers, have the right not to have our children die in sectarian wars or national wars.

       C.  We, as mothers, have the right to demand an equal distribution of food for children the world over. 
        D.  We, as mothers, have the right to demand that all children the world over be given clean water to drink and bathe in. 
        E. We, as mothers, have the right to demand that children the world over be protected from deliberate murder by religious extremists who consider any education other than their particular religious one a sin that must be eradicated by murdering the children.

         F. We, as mothers, have the right to demand that our children be educated without religious instruction or religious symbolism which breeds distrust for life, contempt for others and also breeds the conditions for war.

        G. We, as mothers, have the right to demand that the War on Drugs cease immediately as it destroys both the users and the sellers and corrupts entire government and countries.

         H. We, as mothers, have the right to demand to know what actually is in the food we are feeding our children by labeling all GMO food products.

          I.   We, as mothers, have the right to demand that our children who are in custody for   whatever reason are in safe places and are being treated with care and kindness.

            J.       We, as mothers, have the right to demand that the obscene amounts of money being spent of military weapons be immediately cut in half with the saved part going to rapid transit construction and operation so that mothers and children can travel to work and school cheaply and easily.
          K.    We, as mothers, have the right to demand that the obscene amounts of money spent on spectator spots be immediately cut in half with the saved part going to children’s non-contact sports and places to play without fear of child abduction or molestation.

           L  We, as mothers, have the right to demand that our children not be                 plunged into a life of debt as soon as they enter a university.   

           M.  We, as mothers, have a right to demand that pornography be severely restricted so that our children do not become the early users of phonography that can only cause boys to grow up with skewed ideas about love, lust, violence and contempt for women.

           N.  We, as mothers, have a right to demand that advertisers, clothing companies , and media stop sexualizing little girls which makes both girls and boys anxious and leave some grown men confused. Pedophilia is enough of a world problem without actively encouraging its spread.

           O.  We, as mothers, have a right to demand that no child, male or female, be trafficked, or encouraged, or forced into prostitution.

           P.  We, as mothers, demand that women be paid a living wage so that they are not coerced by pimps to become prostitutes in order to pay rent, feed children, finish college or feed a drug habit gone off the rails.  Prostitution made overtly legal is contempt for women and girls made overtly legal.

           Q.  We, as mothers, have a right to demand that our children not have to witness their mothers being beaten, ridiculed, or treated contemptuously by their mother’s male partners regardless of whether the male is the biological father of the children, step- father or boyfriend.  Violent scenes, especially blows and beatings to the children’s mother can result in children being beaten too, especially if they try to intervene; these common domestic events are the equivalent of terrorist attacks on mothers and children. 
             R.  We, as mothers, have a right to demand that our governments stop borrowing money from private banks which leave us in debt forever, and borrow from our own bank, The Bank of Canada, which was created to lend money to our government without interest.

   Betty Krawczyk for Mother Right.