Lesbian Motherhood

The purpose of this research is to examine the issue of lesbian motherhood as an instance of social oppression with reference to the feminist theory of Marilyn Frye and Sandra Lee Bartky. The plan of the research will be to set forth the general social and philosophical context in which the issue has arisen in the modern period and then to discuss how certain theories proceeding from the contemporary feminist social critique can be used to explain the systematic nature of oppression of lesbian mothers, the internalization of oppression on the part of the oppressed, the manner in which the phenomenon of lesbian mothers can be seen as an instance of what Foucault calls the modernization of power and oppression, and the implications of the theories for possibility of liberation.

What must be understood about the phenomenon of lesbian motherhood vis-a-vis the theories of Frye and Bartky is that it does not appear to be directly mentioned even one time by either of them. That may be partly a function of time. Frye's book is a compilation of essays produced from the 1970s to the early 1980s, before lesbian motherhood was a significant part of the feminist social discourse, let alone more general social discourse. Bartky's focus, while of relatively more recent date, is, as she explains (x), heterosexual on one hand and programmatically theoretical on the other (1-2). It is in the 1990s that the phenomenon of lesbian motherhood has entered social, legal, and political discourse dec

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ts forms as a necessary life strategy. As a consequence they fit the profile of Frye's caged bird, "confined and shaped by forces and barriers which are not accidental or occasional but systematically related . . . all avenues, in every direction, are blocked or booby trapped" (Frye 4). On the other hand, to ignore the rule of law altogether and seize the child by force or attack the judge or ex-husband amounts to a fool's errand. From the personal point of view the potential for traumatizing the child seems likely; from the legal point of view a violent or overtly illegal act does nothing so much as prove one's unfitness for parenthood--the judge's determined disregard of the parental unfitness of a convicted murderer notwithstanding. On Bartky's analysis, the mother's calculus in this regard shows strongest relevance to the mechanism of cultural domination. Bartky describes psychological oppression as a situation in which "oppressor and oppressed alike come to doubt that the oppressed have the capacity to do the sorts of things that only persons can do" (29). To the extent a lesbian mother fails to (as it were) beard the lion of the law in his den and forcibly bear her children home in defiance of a custody court, there seems g

Category: Psychology - L