Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / Monday Mini: Mother

Transcript

Monday Mini: Mother · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Sandy and Samantha. Welcome to stuff. ILL
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: never told you a protection of iHeartRadio. And today I'm
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: gonna apologize in advance Samanta, because we were once again
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: tackling an Internet term that has a long history. We're
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: going to get into but if I make a fool
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: of myself, I'm sorry. So you can see our past
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: episode that we did on Daddy, which yes, this is
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: kind of funny that this episode is coming out on
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: the day after Father's Day because we're talking about mother today.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: A past host have also done an episode on the
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: etymology of mother, like outside of the Internet slaying slash
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: queer context. It's interesting to me how the this idea
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: came about. I have a friend, Katie, friend of the show,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: and she's currently making all of these bracelets for upcoming
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Dragon con big NERD convention in Atlanta to hand out,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: and she was asked. She just randomly asked me one day,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: like I can't use mother, can I because it has
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: another context? And I was like, yeah, I'm not sure,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I think that it has another meaning, which
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I knew it I had another meaning, but I was like,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not sure. How cool that would be
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to use it. And then later she sent me an
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: article that was like, oh, as this whole queer history
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: and here we are, So I thought I would just
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: break it down really quickly.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, while the term mother is really trendy on
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: the internet right now, it has a long his street
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: in the queer community, perhaps centuries long. According to author
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: and professor Paul Baker, it's likely that in seventeen twenties,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: London gay men called the cishet woman who ran a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: coffeehouse that acted as a bit of a safe haven
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: for them mother mother Clap specifically Clap was her name.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: In one instance, she provided false testimony to get a
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: patron off of sodomy charges. She eventually served two years
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: in prison for providing this sanctuary. At some points throughout history,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: it was also used to refer to older gay men
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: who had an air of wisdom about them, who had
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: quote seen it all and could support younger gay folk.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: It was used this way in a nineteen seventy one
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: camp vampire horror movie where the mother like there was
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a mother that was being teased throughout, and the mother
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: in question was revealed to be an older camp be
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: gay man. The term was especially popular in the baller
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: scene in nineteen sixties New York City by Black and
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: LATINX queer communities and drag culture. Essentially, in bal culture,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: there was a mother of the house who would take
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: younger queer folks in sort of a mentorship mentee role,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: but a little bit more than that. Beyonce referred to
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: this in the Queen's remix of Break My Soul from
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: the Gay Times quote. Doctor Jack Doyle, a departmental lecturer
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: in LGBTQ plus history at the University of Oxford, tells
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Gay Times that quote the term mother is an exclusive
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: to Black American ballroom scenes, but the way it's used
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: in those spaces says a lot about how queer people
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: across cultures and times have built and named chosen families.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: He points out that the drag mother is often not
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: just a mentor, but also literally a parent to estranged
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: queer kids. She is the nurturing head of a chosen
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: family unit who makes her queer children feel less marginalized
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: by providing housing, community, healthcare, and safety. So that does
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: seem to be the main defining quality of a mother
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and why gender doesn't necessarily matter in its use because
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: it's more about like the nurturing nature. Again, you can
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: see our Daddy episode where we did talk about some
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: of this, but that's one of the differences. It seems.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: The rise and current popular use of Mother is often
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: chased back to a Twitter exchange between Lord and Kim
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Kardashian in twenty fourteen. Lord explained quote, I retweeted Kim's
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: amazing cover and wrote, mom, which among the youths with
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: a Z is a compliment. It basically jokingly means adopt me,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: be my second mom. I think of you as a
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: mother figure. You are so epic.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was really excited to hear you pronounce that.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm so embarrassed.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I love it. I love it.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: In twenty three the online use of mother and the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: LGBTQ plus community really exploded, most often applied to female
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: pop stars, often straight female pop stars, but not always.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: There have been two SNL sketches I saw about that.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: One was the one with Pedro Pascal where he was
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Daddy and then Sarah Paulson was Mommy he is. And
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: then another was where Megan the doll from the movie
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: was Mother in a Queer club. Here's a quote okay
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: from Gay Times on queer Twitter in twenty twenty three.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Mother is mainly being applied to cishet women with a
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: certain pop cultural cachet and demonstrable queer appeal, and is
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: now also used as a verb, So mother is mothering
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: is frequent frequent way to use it. Quote when Gay
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Times is entertainer editor Sam dam Shanas and I hope
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I didn't meture that. Asked Sarah Michelle Geller about her
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: passionate LGBTQ plus fan base at a January launch event
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: for her new series, Wolfpack, She paused to ask him,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: can someone please explain mother to me? Geller has since
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: fully embraced this term of inqueerment by updating her Instagram
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: bio to simply read mother. Later discussing her mother's status
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: in a subsequent interview, Geller said, humbly, it's a huge honor.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: This is a community that has supported me and all
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: of the jobs I've done, whether they've been successful or not,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: and so I'm incredibly grateful. People studying this topic think
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: that the modern use of this term stem from the
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: ballroom use, but was further popularized by the growth of
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: things like RuPaul's Drag Race. There's a whole song that
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: was produced from RuPaul's Drag Race about Mother. Doyle went
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: on to say, I think what we're seeing with Mother
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: blowing up Twitter is the latest in the age old
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: story of white gays borrowing and misusing queer aave African
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: American vernacular English, which eventually jumps to straight people. This
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: process has changed and accelerated over the past decade, with
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: black and LATINX American drag becoming commodified globally via drag race,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: which is how we get say, white sis head English
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: women talking casually about serving realness or throwing shade. But
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: that is also quote a term of respect for powerful,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: confident femininity, and this respect does sometimes extend to sis
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: had women who are also queer icons. Oh, I apologize again.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: There has been other stuff written that I thought was
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: really interesting in terms of how being like using the
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: term mom outside of this context of like queer history
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: or what have you was bad. Like that was embarrassing.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: You didn't want to be described as a mom or
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: as a mother. And they also had kind of a
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: whole part where they were describing like Beyonce hugging her
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: daughter on stage, and it was like, not only is
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: she mother in this context, but now she's mother, she
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: has an actual child and that's cool. So that is
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: sort of changing too. And when we compare that to
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: what we talked about in the Daddy episode where we
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: were talking about how you know, dads who seem to
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: give any kind of caring aura in public are given
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: a lot more of a pass or are scene as
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: like much sexier. But mom wasn't always the case because
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: that was just expected, But now it seems to be
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: shifting a little, at least for celebrities.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: This is from a female gaze. I feel like this
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: is not you will not see a heterosexual sis man
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: say that's mother. It would be and honestly it would
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: be like what what did you just say? Because there's
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: that conversation. But yeah, it's also like a bigger conversation
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: about how TikTok and social media like that really is
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: pushing the appropriation. However, you want to see it of
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: aave so quickly too, because you will like it things
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: that I have like just heard and then I'm seeing
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: straight white women doing it and I'm like, I'm not
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: doing that. I'm straight Asian woman over here. And I'm like,
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: I would never like I could. That's not a thing
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: that comes out of my mouth, and I have to
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: really check. I'm like, all right, am I doing this
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: because it seems easy and fun to say, like, there's
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: not a conversation of course for me as well, being
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: the older generation as I am, I don't think it's
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: appropriate for me to look at someone's ay, that's mother,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: because I'm like, technically if it was said about me,
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: it would make more sense, not because I'm great, but
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: because of the age range that I see it. So
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: that's the whole different level of conversation in itself that
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: I see. Julian Anderson is also a big example of
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: people saying mother. Part of that is because people really
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: think that she opened up so much queerness for a
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: lot of young women and being able to be like, oh,
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: just because of her her ability to like really show
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: both femininity and masculinity and characters and herself in general
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: and not being afraid of that, not being offended by
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: either of those titles and moving on and embracing her audience.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: So people have also said that about her, So I see, like,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: that's that, Yes, it's that compliment. But again, this kind
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: of goes into more of that female gaze level of conversation.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: It does also feed into that conversation of like, yes,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: it came from queer culture. It was made bigger from
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: what I could gather from black or marginalize gay culture,
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: so from the black brown community in that area specifically
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: like queer ballroom culture and again being like appropriated into
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: that because it was more of a safety as you
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: were talking about, for like that I knew about the
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: mother from queer ballroom culture, which is also like that's
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: kind of sacred. Yeah, So throwing that around like that
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: because it literally was about safety and trust and getting
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: that title was an honor from what I gather and
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: giving that title and finding someone that you saw like
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: that because that was a part of your chosen family.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: So like it is, it's interesting to see like the
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: expansion in this conversation because it can be funny, and
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: you know, we have we've definitely seen a lot of
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: like skits wear, weirdly sis men pulling a character of
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: being homosexual and using terms like that to make it
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: a joke. So it's it's an interesting dichotomy words and
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: terminology like that.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I I think that you know, it's good
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: to keep that in mind. Like when you when you
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: see a term that gets really popular of a sudden,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: you just start using it. Maybe look into it for it,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: just start using.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: It right because it does seem fun. Also, who would
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Katie give this breastless to, like just getting into a
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: random person they call mother?
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Be like, what well, because she gives out bracelets that
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: this is what happened. She was like, she gives out
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: bracelets that say like space Daddy to Darth Vader. And
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: she was like, I can't do that with mother And
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I was like not really, no, Yeah, I was like, girl,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. But I didn't know.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: I didn't know, and I don't think people would find
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: that offensive. Like if you went and found someone who's
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: dressed up like ah Soka and you gave that to her,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know they would feel like that's offense for
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: not pad May the character, like if you, I think
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: like a lot of people would agree if there was
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: such a thing, pad May would be Mother. Yeah, I mean,
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: someone tell me if I'm wrong. And I'm doing this
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: as a person who was neither in the credit culture
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: nor in the Star Wars luch Con culture. From what
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: I gather as an outsider, so I could see how
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: that could be like genuinely appreciated. But it does hold
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: into context of like the privilege around using that time
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: of terminology.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we had an interesting conversation about it because
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I feel like Daddy, we've talked, we have so many
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: episodes about like the connotations of that, but it's less
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: like it could have multiple meanings that a lot of
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: people would think of, whereas Mother just feels like it
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: just feels like as a bigger weight right too.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Well, like there's just again when we say mother is
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: a lot more about safety and feeling you're feeling of safety.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: When we say Daddy is about dominance in power. So
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: there's this whole level of like, yeah, who, what do
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: these words mean?
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, And I think looking at the differences between
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: it because you know, I when she asked me, I mused,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: it was like, oh, I don't know, that's a good question.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: I'm glad.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: I love that she had the forethought of that. And again,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: this is one of those things that you and I
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: are not necessarily the authority on. And for those listeners
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: who are part of the black, Brown Indigenous community QUICK community,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: and you have a lot of thoughts on this, those
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: who are in like ballroom community, because I thought that's
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: actially still a thing which is beautiful. So like, if
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: y'all have opinions about this, again, this is kind of
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: one of those things like better safe than sorry.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, and always look into it, do your research,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: and it's okay to question it is. I'm glad. Yeah,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: and I'm glad I looked into it. Yeah, thank you.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Clearly I'm very shy about using.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: I loved it. Thank you, especially you're reading it out
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: and you just fill it out to saying what you're saying.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Oh dear.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Ze why it's amazing.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Well, listeners, please do write in. If you any thoughts
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: or information about this, you can contact us at Stephan
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: and mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, or on Instagram
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: and TikTok at stuff I've never told you. We have
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: a tea public store, We're on YouTube. We have a
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: as always too, our super producer Christina, our executive producer
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: My and your contributor Joey. Thank you, and thanks to
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: you for listening. Steffan Never Told You Us. Direction by
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio for more podcasts, or my Heart Radio. You
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: can check out the art Radio app, Apple podcast wherever
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.