The Impossibility of Queering the Mother: New Sightings of the Virgin Mother in the ‘Secular’ State
In this part autobiographical essay, I explore the social consequences of the rise of the so-called ‘tender years’ doctrine coinciding with the rise in divorce. I argue that this has led to increased gender apartheid around the figures of M-for-Mother and F-for-Father, and a new sanctification of the figure of the holy mother-and-child. I look at the inverse and complementary relations between M-for-Male and F-for Female and M-for-Mother and F-for-Father, and I argue (counterintuitively) that origins, mothers, and fathers are queerer in ancient myths and the Bible than they are in contemporary semantics and law. I use strange old biblical texts (Solomon’s judgment; the trial of Abraham) to create unheimlich echoes for the so-called secular state and its strange constructions of the family; and I show how the Ten Commandments continue to influence family law.