Liberating Motherhood

I wrote recently about how men are using AI to prop up their belief in their own superiority. This propaganda is nothing new. Men have, for thousands of years, used every tool at their disposal to spread false ideas about women’s inferiority and demonic nature. 
Sarah Ruden is a translator, a classicist, and the author of Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women. She came on the podcast to discuss her new book, which outlines how popular literature and culture have long normalized women’s subjugation by spreading lies about women. 
We ended up having a sprawling conversation during which we talked not just about this book, but about her translations work, Biblical views of womanhood, and so much more. It was such a treat to get to pick such a brilliant mind. No matter what you’re interested in, I think you’ll find something compelling in this episode. 
A few of the topics we discuss include: 

The long history of constraining women’s reproductive rights in service of men, including anti-abortion poems by the poet Ovid. 

The alliance between anti-abortion ideology and authoritarianism. 

Why history is more than a set of facts, and why it matters who tells stories from the past. 

What Sarah has learned as a translator of the Biblical Gospels, and why good translations are so crucial to our understanding of the world. Sarah talks specifically about how the canonical translations of the Gospels suppress women’s point of view and demean women. 

Why our beliefs do not spring up out of nowhere. Not only is propaganda everywhere, but it has always been everywhere. 

The similarities between red pill bros and the men who have translated sacred texts and beloved secular literature. 

The line from Roman anti-abortion rhetoric to the rhetoric of today’s far right, including a focus on genocide. 

The role of anti-abortion politics in imperialism. 

Why the anti-abortion movement has co-opted the Holocaust to justify extreme violence. 

The Catholic church’s shift toward more flexibility on everything except for abortion. 

About Sarah Ruden
Sarah Ruden is a leading translator of the ancient literature of the West. In a career spanning both essential Greek and Roman Classics and sacred literature, she has set new standards for accuracy, stylistic integrity, and accessibility. Her work, including cultural and human-rights journalism, is deeply concerned with questions of power and truth, in accordance with her Quaker faith. She has won Guggenheim, Whiting, and Silvers grants, and numerous other awards.She has a PhD in classical philology from Harvard University.
Her latest book, Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women, came out March 3rd. You can find this wonderful book, as well as several of Sarah’s other books, in the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.

I’m on vacation this month, so am re-releasing this excellent episode with Dr. Emma Katz. 

Content warning: This podcast extensively discusses all forms of intimate partner violence, some child abuse, and briefly discusses the death of a child, but not in graphic detail. 
Intimate partner violence is much more than physical violence. Every physically violent perpetrator was, for a time, not physically violent. The emotionally abusive, degrading, and controlling environment these perpetrators create is ultimately what enables the physical violence. 
Our society recognizes only a very limited number of behaviors as abusive, which is why so many women feel shocked and stunned when their partners finally become violent. When you understand coercive control, though, it becomes clear that the violence is part of a controlling strategy. 
Coercive control is the environment abusers create, and it’s much more—and much worse—than just violence. While it is deeply isolating, it follows very predictable patterns. In this podcast, we talk about topics such as: 

What coercive control is, and why it is the norm in heterosexual relationships. 

Why a relationship can be abusive even if there is no physical violence. 

How to tell if your relationship is abusive. 

Why abusers abuse their partners. 

The most common strategies abusers use. 

Why abusers cannot be good fathers.

Helping a child recover from exposure to domestic violence. 

How gender socialization renders women more vulnerable to abuse. 

Risk factors for the father weaponizing the child against the mother. 

Emma Katz, a world-renowned expert on coercive control, focuses her research and writing on the effects of coercive control on children. She dispels the notion that a man can abuse the mother but still be a “good dad,” and talks extensively about how courts often replicate abusive norms. 
These coercively controlling men might seem cunning, but they’re largely following the same playbook. Understanding that playbook empowers women to recognize abuse earlier, to identify when it is happening, and potentially, to leave. 
I highly recommend Dr. Katz’s Substack. Find that here. Read more about her on her website, or buy her incredible book here.

Today we are going to be learning from the legendary reproductive justice activist Loretta Ross. Loretta is my feminist hero and role model, and I feel so lucky that she was willing to share some time with me. 
How is it that a human rights movement rooted in the shared value and worth of every human being so often devolves into a toxic stew of abuse and hurt feelings? Anyone who participates in leftist political movements has seen small disagreements spiral into mutual attacks, psychological brutality, and worst of all, fractured and less powerful movements. 
Lasting change requires us to build solidarity across difference. At the very least, we must be able to resolve small disagreements. Ideally, though, we have to bring more people into the fold—including people we really don’t like, including people with whom we have very significant moral disagreements. 
I’ve often noted that the anti-choice movement succeeded by standing in lockstep with one another, no matter how much they hated each other. They built a movement for 50 years, and they succeeded. We can learn a lot from them. But leftist coalitions are diverse and highly principled. These are good things, but they can make it challenging to work together. 
So I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can do this. And then I found Loretta Ross’s book, Calling In. It has helped me to consider my own role in toxic call-out culture, and to seize opportunities to build consensus and coalitions rather than elevating myself and my ego. This, I think, is the only way we move forward. 
There’s lots of advice about how to be a better activist, what this moment means, and how to deal with people who disagree with us. I think the most useful advice comes from people who have actually succeeded at sustaining a lifetime of activism. Loretta has changed hearts and minds over and over, working with people many of us would never even want to talk to. She has done the work that progress demands, and now she’s here to teach us how to do it, too. 
You’ll recognize some of what we discuss from my earlier episode about sustaining hope as an activist. I cannot over-emphasize how much Loretta’s work has shifted my consciousness and influenced my own work, and I hope you find her wisdom as valuable as I do. 
Some of the topics we cover in this conversation include: 

Toxic call-out culture, and how it is destroying individual well-being as well as activist movements. 

How childhood wounds create toxic shame that we then foist onto our activist colleagues. 

How we build resilience and capacity to work across difference. 

Calling out vs. calling in, and how we know when to do each. 

Loretta’s experiences working with rapists and deprogramming white supremacist. 

How our egos can undermine our activism, and how we resist that temptation. 

The components of an effective call-in, and how to know when a call-in is likely to work. 

“When you ask people to give up hate, you must be prepared to be there for them when they do.” 

The concept of the victimized violator—the person who feels entitled to violate others because of their own victimization. 

How to respond to a call-out or call-in. 

Can we use calling in with ICE officers? 

How we can acknowledge the humanity of those doing harm without losing sight of their victims. 

How we sustain hope and avoid despair. 

About Loretta Ross 

Loretta J. Ross is a Professor at Smith College in Northampton, MA in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender. She teaches courses on white supremacy, human rights, and calling in the calling out culture. She has taught at Hampshire College and Arizona State University. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law degree awarded in 2003 from Arcadia University and a second honorary doctorate degree awarded from Smith College in 2013. She also has credits towards a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from Emory University. She serves as a consultant for Smith College, collecting oral histories of feminists of color for the Sophia Smith Collection, which also contains her personal archives. Loretta also is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellow, Class of 2022, for her work as an advocate of Reproductive Justice and Human Rights, and an inductee into the 2024 National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Loretta’s activism began when she was tear-gassed at a demonstration as a first-year student at Howard University in 1970. As a teenager, she was involved in anti-apartheid and anti-gentrification activism in Washington, DC as a founding member of the DC Study Group. As part of a 50-year history in social justice activism until her retirement from community organizing in 2012, she was the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective from 2005-2012 and co-created the theory of Reproductive Justice in 1994.
Loretta was National Co-Director of April 25, 2004, March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., the largest protest march in U.S. history at that time with 1.15 million participants. She founded the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE) in Atlanta, Georgia from 1996-2004. She launched the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the 1980s and was the national program director of the National Black Women’s Health Project. Loretta was one of the first African American women to direct a rape crisis center in the 1970s, launching her career by pioneering work on violence against women, as the third Executive Director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center. She is a member of the Women’s Media Center’s Progressive Women’s Voices. Watch Makers: Women Who Make America video.
Loretta has co-written three books on reproductive justice: Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice in 2004; Reproductive Justice: An Introduction in March 2017; and Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique in October 2017. Her newest book, Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel is available now!
Loretta is a rape survivor, forced to raise a child born of incest, and also a survivor of sterilization abuse at age 23. She is a model of how to survive and thrive despite the traumas that disproportionately affect low-income women of color.
Loretta is a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.
You can find all of Loretta’s books, as well as all books recommended on the podcast, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop page.

This is the first podcast episode I’ve done by myself, because I wanted to speak directly to all of you. If you like it, I may do more. 
On a recent AMA, someone asked me how I sustain hope when I’m surrounded by horror and despair. Here’s what I told her: 

I know that the only thing that makes things actually hopeless is giving up hope. If my foremothers could fight through coverture, through legal rape, through legal violence, if other women could continue to fight through slavery, through a Holocaust, through witch burnings, through endless war, then surely I can honor them by continuing to fight. I will not allow despair to cause me to drop my link in the chain that extends to my ancestors and toward freedom.

I decided to record this podcast episode because so many of you have contacted me wondering how we can possibly keep going with things as terrifying as they are. 
I’ve been an activist for a long time, and I’ve been lucky enough to learn from many elders (several of whom will be on this podcast in the next few weeks). I hope that I can offer you some strategies for thriving. I also know there’s value in hearing another human voice—hopefully someone you trust—reassuring you. 
So I decided to record this, off the cuff, by myself. I could have edited. I could have gone back and added more, and I probably should have taken a decent photo rather than a frazzled selfie. I think, though, there’s sometimes value in showing up as we are, and in hearing someone else free-associate. I wanted to deliver this message as quickly as possible, rather than as perfectly as possible, so I hope it still has value. 
In this episode, I talk about how I sustain hope, why I think you need to sustain hope, and how to build effective activist networks. 
If you’re out there doing the work, I love you for that. Let’s join hands together and get as much done as we can. I hope you like this episode. I hope it helps you.

“Black men have been held accountable for things they didn’t do for so long, that we have forgotten how to hold them accountable for the things they do.” — Kiki Bryant

Men are stealing women’s lives by stealing their time. So why is it that we have widespread notions of women as spoiled, entitled gold diggers? The words we use matter. They focus our attention and make it easier (or harder) to speak about a topic. 
This is a sweeping conversation that covers a lot of ground. Some of what we talk about: 

How social media is using bans without any due process to suppress the voices of minority creators. Kiki lost her Facebook account, and we talk extensively about how many other writers this has happened to, drawing on research Kiki conducted. Social media has the power not just to silence people, but to remove everything they’ve ever previously said. 

The importance of memory in constructing philosophical beliefs, and how social media bans undermine collective memory. 

Kiki’s framework of labor diggers. 

The economic impact of being the default parent. 

Labor digging begins in childhood, and how gendered childhood norms set people up for miserable heterosexual relationships. 

The effects of mass incarceration on Black relationships specifically, and how this ongoing trauma contributes both to lower Black marriage rates and to misogynoir. 

The commonalities between Black manhood and white womanhood.

The unique challenges facing Black women leaving abusive Black men. 

The pick-me feminist: the feminist who wants to talk about how she’s not like all the other feminists. 

Competitive parenting, breastfeeding while Black, and the use of parenting culture to reinforce hierarchy. 

About Kiki Bryant
Kiki Bryant, known online as the Uppity Negress, is a mother, writer, and sociopolitical critic located in Chicago, IL.
Follow her on Facebook here. 

Check out her amazing Substack here. 

Follow her on threads here. 

Buy her books on her website, which also has other merch and a ton of great information.