FLAMING FLEMING ON YATES: Anne Taylor Fleming, the liberal essayist, scooped up broad-ranging feminist and liberal concepts and wove them into
a bizarre apologetic for Andrea Yates in Sunday’s NY Times Week In Review. Those of you who have read my earlier posts on Yates know that I do think her mental illness was sufficiently advanced to mitigate her sentence from death to life in prison. And you also know that I think Russell Yates bears at least some moral guilt for her crimes. However, the kind of frothy liberal venom toward men and society that Ms. Fleming poured on the Times’ readers this past Sunday requires an answer. Thus the takedown below – the entire Times article is there, in italics, with my translations in regular type given as if in her voice. The tone is not to diminish the tragedy of the death of the Yates children, but rather to highlight the arrogance and bias of Ms. Fleming.
If you want to know more about Ms. Fleming and her work, please see the post below this one.
MATERNAL MADNESS
Crime and Motherhood
By ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING
A NATIONAL gasp went up last week when Andrea Pia Yates was found guilty in a Texas courtroom of capital murder — possible punishment: life behind bars or death by lethal injection. As it turned out, on Friday the jury opted for life in prison.
Translation: The nation gave a gasp of horror that she was found guilty, although it found some mitigation in that the jury didn’t send her to the death chamber.
But questions remained. What did the verdict say about the American system of justice, its system of values? Mrs. Yates had been described over and over during the trial as mentally ill, suffering from hallucinations, postpartum psychoses and suicidal tendencies (she had tried to kill herself twice). How could any mother after giving birth to those five babies seen on the haunting home videos do what she did: drown them systematically, one after the other — any sane mother?
Translation: The verdict flies in the face of reason, given that Ms. Yates was obviously not responsible for her actions. “Those five babies” “haunting” - these are the sympathetic thoughts of a “normal” mother. It was some automaton who drowned them – definitely not “normal” and thus “not sane”.
But was she sane? That was the question. In fact, that wasn't the question before the court. Under Texas law, the question was narrower: did she know right from wrong when she killed her children? On those grounds, the jury found her guilty despite her history of mental illness. What, in effect, happened in that courtroom is that while the defense tried to make the case about mental illness, the prosecutors made it about motherhood — and motherhood trumped mental illness.
Translation: The question SHOULD have been, was she sane? I just established that she wasn’t, but no, the bloodthirsty state of Texas sets the bar for insanity at an unreasonable standard. Because of that, the jury had to find her guilty although it was obvious she was insane by the standard of any thinking, compassionate person. The prosecutors even set up this straw man called “motherhood” to draw attention away from her mental illness. Of course, we won’t discuss that I just used the same straw man in establishing that she had to be mentally ill to do it.
"The children had become a hindrance, and she wanted them gone," said Kaylynn Williford, one of the lead prosecutors, conjuring the image of an overwhelmed stay-at- home mother unable to cope with the needs of a deeply religious, demanding husband and ever-growing brood. She was, in short, the ultimate maternal failure turned murderer, the demon mother writ large. She had to be punished — severe mental instability notwithstanding.
Translation: The prosecution – clever, to use a woman to destroy a woman – painted a picture of some kind of freak mother who got in over her head and just killed her kids because they asked for one cookie too many while daddy was out thumping a Bible somewhere. For giving in to the impulse all of us mothers have had during the course of a five-kid sleep-over at the house while the hubby is playing golf, she must be punished. Even though she was obviously very sick. But I already explained that part.
The flip side of this demonization of Mrs. Yates is the American sentimentalization of motherhood. It is seen as a sacred and sacrosanct sphere. The circle of mother and child is a Hallmark card place, where the selfless mother nurtures her young, no matter her dreams or ambitions, conflicts or terrors. Motherhood is seen through gauze, in soft, religiously inflected focus. Madonna and child. Through all that gauze, it's hard to see a mother like Mrs. Yates as she really is — one of the desperate, destructive mothers nobody takes seriously until too late.
Translation: See? This society (probably the men, I’ll address that below) puts mothers on some kind of pedestal, and when she gets really sick and doesn’t get the help she needs, and kills her kids, well, it’s society’s fault for putting that kind of pressure on her anyway. Why in the world should I give up my dreams and ambitions for my kids? I’d probably be where she is, if I had to do that. And society even prevented her from showing her conflicts and terrors, which led directly to her actions. It’s all because of the religious nuts out there, anyway. Yes, she was desperate and destructive – but wouldn’t you be? And on top of it, she’s ignored, too.
"To capture how deep this is in our culture — this sentimentality about motherhood — you have to go back to the 18th century," said Victoria Brown, a professor of American history at Grinnell College. "That's when there was a profound shift in Protestant literature from an image of woman as Eve to an image of woman as Mary. That is how she redeems herself from original sin, that is how she is valuable to the community — as the self-sacrificing mother.
Translation: I told you it was the fault of religious fanatics. And I even got help on this one.
"And along comes the American Revolution. Women do not get the vote, they do not get full citizenship. They are defined as Republican mothers who will keep the nation together and insure democracy by being these selfless creatures at home, who raise virtuous citizens."
Translation: The delay of the feminist movement contributed directly to Ms. Yates’s crime, er, situation. Did you notice how cleverly I slipped “Republican” in there in a negative context? And I made “virtuous” into a sneer – that was almost as clever as my article on McCain where I made “character” into a sneer.
It seems apparent that Andrea and Rusty Yates bought into this vision big time — a vision he apparently held fast to even as she fell ill, even when she became pregnant that fifth time against doctors' advice (for fear of sending her into another postpartum psychotic episode). He insisted on home-schooling the children, tightening that sacrosanct motherhood circle around his increasingly fragmented wife.
Translation: Here is the real demon – a man, imposing his paternalistic will on his ragdoll wife, squeezing her psyche until it popped. Please note the “I told you this would happen” in the middle.
That was her historically and religiously ordained role, motherhood, and she would do it even at peril to her own sanity. If her anger at him or her angst over her role was part of her madness, we will probably never know. But no question, the prosecutor skillfully played up that motif of wifely anger and revenge.
Translation: Here is my thesis: Religion and paternalism made her do it, and frankly, her anger and angst were justified. We don’t know that from evidence, but I can tell. And the prosecutor was so sneaky.
But what of the rest, the people who stood by and watched her disappear into madness, those close enough to see beneath the gauze of motherhood? What could they, what should they, have done — the relatives, friends and doctors — all of whom say they knew she was unstable? They made stabs at helping, but not enough to avert tragedy.
Translation: Ineffectual bums. But it’s not their fault either. It’s… guess…no, really … guess. Yes! Society! You’re too good.
"We don't have an ethic in this country that says it's suitable to interfere," said Professor Brown. "So it's not just the sentimentalization of motherhood that's at play here, it is the privatization of it."
Translation: Watch me segue into a new way of blaming society. Not only is it religion, and paternalism – it’s a deliberate isolation of women in a blind canyon called motherhood where it’s surprising anyone stays sane. Just keep reading.
Motherhood is a no-entry zone, a zone of privacy. That's apparent throughout the culture — from a husband's refusal to heed the cry of a deranged wife to the state's reluctance to take children from mothers, however abusive or addicted. It goes beyond the hands-off, romantic cult of motherhood. Privacy — and individualism — are basic to our democratic, capitalistic system, where nonintervention in motherhood is the personal analog to nonintervention in the marketplace.
Translation: OH MY! DID YOU SEE THAT? I may have to lie down. I’m so good. I managed to make Andrea Yates’s killing of her five children into an indictment of capitalism and marketplace regulation! You’d have to pay all kinds of money to see contortions like that at the circus!
THE ultimate question the Yates case raises is this: Is there is a point where intervention should occur, where mothers at risk should be helped or children protected — even from their mothers? Can't such tragedies be prevented?
Translation: Can’t we monitor every family continually and make the state responsible for deciding who is doing a good job and who isn’t, and give it even more authority to intervene?
After all, it's not that the public doesn't involve itself in motherhood at some level. There is always a chorus pushing and pulling at mothers, telling them how to do this or that, a lot of it from women themselves, as they try not to feel guilty about failing to live up to the myth.
Translation: All men, and women cowed by the paternalistic motherhood myth, are constantly hectoring at mothers anyway, so why shouldn’t the government join in? Only the government should have powers to “fix” it. Well, as long as that “fixing” agrees with my worldview.
The airwaves and bookshelves are full of didactic advice — be it the hippie homeopathic insistence on natural childbirth or the pro-family brigade's insistence on the virtues of stay-at-home motherhood. The advice, though often contradictory, can end up at the same place: reinforcing the myth of the all-important mother who should be able to meet all her children's needs — physical, psychological, emotional and economic — without help or "interference" from anyone. The new importance of fathers has sometimes ameliorated this mother- centric view of parenting, but sometimes it has had the perverse effect of upping maternal guilt. Mothers are tough on themselves — and each other.
Translation: Why do we have to deal with these freaks who think childbirth without medication is good, and those religious nutcases who think a woman who actually raises her own children is making a wise choice? Everything, everyone, except me and my kind, are making life hard for mothers – even fathers who want to help are making it worse! Motherhood needs to be turned over to the state where people like me can make sure it’s done right. Sheesh.
And who was tougher on herself than Andrea Yates? That's why, she said, she tried first to kill herself and then killed her children — to save them from her inept mothering. They were turning out wrong, going to the devil. There is a grisly, demented rationality in her irrationality, this overwhelmed, unbalanced mother who will now spend virtually the rest of her life in prison.
Translation: Andrea Yates was a mother’s mother. She was so loving and so concerned for her children that she finally
killed them to protect them. Can’t you see that? She killed
because she
loved them. From her insane perspective (and I've established she was insane) it was what needed to be done because she couldn’t meet the demands of her demon husband and this rigid, religious-freak, male-dominated, woman-hating/oppressing society where even women help enforce the hate. And now you’ve sent her to prison.
I hope you’re happy with yourself.
