This week, I read Mothering Is Liberation by Tintiangco-Cubales and it reminded me of mutual aid as mentioned in our discussion sections. The author depicts her hardships in academia and mothership as well as the effects media has on our perceptions of ourselves and others. As a male, I thought that it was really interesting to see the perspective on the role of a mother and how the mindset of a mother can be applied to places outside the home like academia.
One of the key points made by the author was about how society can implant ideas and concepts into our heads such as the ideas of patriarchal motherhood mentioned in the essay. Perhaps we should examine ourselves and see what wrong ideas, notions or concepts we have in ourselves and possibly promote unconsciously. In the essay, the author mentioned that the whole concept of motherhood, though about mothers, oppresses them and diminishes their value. On the other hand, the concept of mothering is one which shows compassion and kindness to others.
In that sense, one doesn’t even need to have children to be a mother, you can even mother someone older than you. Mutual aid and related works that aim to improve the lives of those in our community can be seen as a form of mothering and if we can all foster a mindset of mothering, then maybe we can make this world a better place. The question now is: how can we be mothers in our own way?
Tintiangco-Cubales, A. (2019). Mothering Is Liberation. In Fight the Tower. United States: Rutgers University Press
DSA-LA (2020). Mutual Aid is Love [Online Image]. Retrieved from dsa-la.org
No comments:
Post a Comment