Mothers, Sex, and Sexuality by Dr Holly Zwalf

Author:Dr Holly Zwalf
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Demeter Press
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Hot Queer Leather Mamas: Feminist Kink and the Taboo of the Sexual Maternal

Holly Zwalf

“Damn, I wish I was your lover

I’d rock you till the daylight comes

Make sure you are smiling and warm

I am everything

Tonight I’ll be your mother

I’ll do such things to ease your pain

Free your mind and you won’t feel ashamed.”

—Sophie B. Hawkins

“Gillian, if you weren’t my mother I would make you my wife.”

—The Waifs

In keeping with the long-established and culturally imposed madonna-whore dichotomy that prevails in predominantly white, Western Christian-based societies, the maternal body continues to be subjected to intense public scrutiny and is heavily censored and regulated, particularly in relation to sexuality (Bartlett 59-60; Friedan 46). Although countries such as Australia, Canada, and the United States are officially secular, religion still plays an influential role in their legal systems as well as in their social morals. In her work on the maternal figure, feminist theorist Iris Marion Young notes that the Catholic Church has relentlessly promoted the virgin mother as both the height of femininity and the ultimate feminine power (albeit controlled and restricted by the patriarchal constraints of the Church), who is exalted and favoured by God yet who forsakes her sexuality in an act of martyrdom for her child. This story is, of course, the origin of the age-old madonna-whore dichotomy, which haunts women to this day, as it depicts the archetypal mother as gentle, completely absorbed by the child in her arms, and, most importantly, chaste.1 The good mother, thus, is positioned as mutually exclusive from the “whore”—the sexual woman who is promiscuous and immoral.

This chapter explores the sexual-maternal dichotomy, as well as the problem of maternal essentialism, through a study of queer women, trans men, and nonbinary leather Mommies. Leather Mommies are people who engage in dominant maternal role-play in a BDSM (bondage, discipline/dominance, submission/sadism, and masochism) context and who, in effect, eroticize the omnipotent and nurturing force of the mother. Through an ethnographic study of the San Francisco leather Mommy community, I have observed the leather Mommy’s ability to (re)negotiate the interplay between maternal expression and sexuality, feminism, and queer politics. Furthermore, I contend that by transgressing the taboo of the sexual maternal, the leather Mommy offers a fresh critique of essentialism by challenging the way we, as a society, currently define and limit the maternal. At the same time, this chapter also explores the limitations of queer kink and its ability to subvert long-established social norms; it raises the question of whether the leather Mommy is able to succeed in disrupting dominant maternal discourses or, as a product of patriarchal systems of desire, whether she,2 too, ends up simply reinforcing essentialist ideals.

Despite a long history of feminist engagement with motherhood as an institution, an essentialist definition of the maternal prevails in popular social discourses. These essentialist discourses are both scientifically invalid and theoretically untenable, yet they operate to circumscribe social expectations of women, restricting not only mothers but also those who are excluded from the maternal, such as trans women, trans men, cis-gendered men, nonbinary people, and childless women.

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