In a thread posted on Twitter, activist, sociologist, and feminist author Illana Weizman reflected on the virulent reactions of some mothers to her book "This is our postpartum."
"Chochotte". This is how some critics of feminist and anti-racist activist, sociologist, and author Illana Weizman call her. While she published, on January 20, 2021, her book This is our postpartum (Marabout), which frees the voice of women on the difficulties encountered after childbirth, voices express their astonishment at his political speeches on motherhood and the post-childbirth period.
Indeed, in the book, Illana Weizman returns with relevance to certain aspects that she and others may have experienced after the birth of their child. Difficulty walking, peeing, fatigue constancy, invisibilization of mantal health … So many signs of a true reality of this period yet unknown, because taboo or even hidden most often by the first concerned.
But faced with this speech, she meets some detractors, mothers, who believe that her political speech should not be relayed. We can read : "She thought she would come out with her baby under her arm like Kate Middleton", or "What did she believe ?? !!!This is how in a thread posted on Twitter, the author replied.
The sociologist, also the initiator of the #MonPostPartum movement which emerged in February 2020, took up these criticisms in order to make an analysis. Because these remarks are apparently not isolated. "I expected to see these types of reactions, they are recurrent, Illana Weizman tells us. Being a mother myself for three years, I had already observed this maternal competition at various times in my life."It therefore seems important to her to deconstruct these speeches which, according to her, show a certain injunction to outperform motherhood.
"In a patriarchal system, women or people perceived as women will have motherhood as their main field of development, because specific roles are assigned according to gender. But unfortunately, we can be an actor of our own subjugation", she tells us. So those who thwart the discourse of perfect motherhood, and who dare to evoke the sides not perceived as positive, are seen as transgressive. "If a mother complains, she is put in her place, and is excluded from the clan of real mothers. Those who take it, clench their teeth, do not flinch. It is therefore important to decipher this recurring discourse.".
In his work This is my postpartum, the author has also devoted a chapter to the norms of male domination incorporated by her own victims and to maternal competition.
This is our postpartum by Illana Weizman (Marabout editions), € 17.90.