Laia Gordi: "Become mother men"
Journalist, communicator and mother of a six-year-old boy. She has worked as a correspondent. She has lived in China, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States. She publishes 'La revolta de les mares. Assalt feminista a la maternitat' (Tigre de Paper), an essay that explains how feminism can help to live motherhood in a more empowered, enjoyed and cared-for way. She founded the cooperative of alternative culture and communication Neu al Carrer.
We decided to have a creature without thinking too much about it. And thank goodness, because I tend to overthink things. We were excited and we knew it would never be the perfect time. I didn't even consider the arguments against it. I had no idea where I was getting myself into and the journey has been amazing.Six months after the birth, we were confined.
— For us, the confinement gave us an almost utopian space where productivity did not exist. I remember we set up a dinner on the rooftop, put up a triangular awning, and ate a tomato salad and baked rice while our baby watched us from the sun lounger. It seemed like we had traveled a lot, like we were on some Mediterranean island. I thought life should always be that.
You write: "We need tender men, desperately."
— Tender men are men who want to care and strive every day to do so. Men are massively educated to be sexist, and not only in the family sphere, but basically in society. This is what is expected of you and what is asked of you, almost always unconsciously and automatically. But not all of you are comfortable being sexist and many of you want to stop being so. Tender men are those who want to care from respect and equality, never from paternalism.
Being parents without paternalism...
— A fatherhood understood and lived as a motherhood. From feminist maternities you have a great opportunity to connect with tenderness, with emotional intelligence, to learn to be mothers, becoming mother-men. And I speak of mother-men, and not of feminist fathers, of "mapes" or other terms because I no longer know what it means to be a father, so worn out has it been by machismo and patriarchy. Instead, we all understand what a mother is.
Give me a lived example in a man-mother household.
— Not long ago I had an important work meeting in the morning and our son had a coughing fit. We both got up to attend to him. I went to get the syrup and my partner took it from me and said: go to sleep, I'll take care of it. This is nothing exceptional. We are simply interchangeable.
Sure, it should be very simple.
— Unfortunately, it's uncommon. At home, when the child shouts "mom" or "dad" we both respond. It's liberating. It makes us interchangeable to him. It's a game that hacks gender roles in a very simple way. Sometimes my son makes a mistake and when he calls me he says dad and I don't correct him.
Why is motherhood a political act?
— Because it has the capacity for social transformation. We cannot talk about the future, nor can we build a new and different world without cared-for, healthy, and happy children; that is to say, without mothers.
Feminism has often distrusted motherhood.
— Because motherhood was imposed on us, but today, as many of us live chosen maternities, it turns out that motherhood can also be a source of empowerment. However you look at it, it is a form of social activism. And here it is important that the left starts to create an inclusive maternal discourse or we will have to put up with the tradwife, as is already happening.
Page 26: "Motherhood is euphoria and hatred in equal measure [...] no creature in the world will generate as much love and as much rage in you".
— Not long ago, my son appeared in the dining room with his cousin, both with their faces completely painted and some flags of manis from when we parents were young. At first I laughed, then I remembered that the flags were kept in an inaccessible place in our room. They had taken a ladder and emptied everything onto the bed, all documentation mixed with old toys, various junk, and a box of "magic blood" opened and spread all over the bed. I exploded. I lost my papers, in many ways.
And now explain another one that ends with a smile.
— One day he was playing in a park with another boy, he picked up a stick and started pretending to shoot a gun while his friend laughed and pretended to dodge the bullets. I called him to tell him I didn't like guns and to ask him if they could play something else. He looked at me tenderly and said: don't worry, mom, it's a water gun.