White Second Wave Feminisms and Rich: Historic Feminist Matrophobia

Abstract

Understanding the lingering and ongoing effects of matrophobia in relation to contemporary feminist understandings of maternity requires rereading rhetorically the origins of matrophobia within white second wave feminism. The rereading allows me to show how deeply embedded matrophobia was within second wave feminism generally and more specifically within the sisterly and daughterly subject positions that emerged. To do so, I trace the role matrophobia played in the development of the wave metaphor between first and second wave feminism, the preference for organizing around the sisterly system and the metaphor of sisterhood, and the subsequent development of the sisterly and daughterly subject positions—or locations from which to critique society.

We can support each other emotionally and become sisters in oppression and, finally, in victory. (Judith Ann 100)

For as long as I can remember, I did not want the kind of life my mother felt she could show me. (Nancy Friday 20)

Nearly thirty years on, it is possible to interpret Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born as a bugle call that released packs of hounds, chasing pen in hand to “write” (and often “right”) the great unwritten cathexis [between mother and daughter]. (Karin Voth Harman 137)