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SMNTY Classics: Mother · Stuff Mom Never Told You

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