Ordinary or Insurgent?: From Toxic Femininity to Revolutionary Mothering

This chapter moves toward motherhood and engages how toxic femininity, masculinity, and parenting function structurally and interpersonally. To engage structural violence, the chapter examines Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett, the centrality of her white evangelical conservative motherhood during her confirmation, and her influence on the law. Equally significant is how toxicity works intraculturally, intracommunally, and intrapersonally. The chapter argues that while Black and white mothers are seen differently, toxic parenting rooted in heteropatriarchal normativity, which weaponizes and rewards binary heteronormative sex and gender ideologies, is a source of black endangerment. Namely, it may produce toxic children who reproduce toxic worlds that foremost harm themselves but also Black cisgender, transgender, nonbinary, and queer girls. An insurgent alternative centers revolutionary mothering, othermothering, and parenting.