When Motherhood Is a Weapon

Photo: C-SPAN

Senator Katie Britt of Alabama knows her place. Characterizing herself as a wife and mother of two, the 42-year-old Republican delivered the party’s response to the State of the Union seated alone in her kitchen. “This is where our family has tough conversations,” she said. “It’s where we make hard decisions.” Perhaps that’s true, but there was no sign of life in that empty room. Britt’s kitchen looked like a stage, and as she faltered through her speech, she looked like an actor — a bad one. What, though, was her performance meant to convey? Tommy Tuberville, her fellow Republican senator from Alabama, got at the truth. “She was picked as a housewife, not just a senator, somebody who sees it from a different perspective,” he said on Friday. “I mean, she did what she was asked to do. I thought she did a good job. And it’s hard when you’ve never done anything like that.”

In pre-speech notes disseminated by her team to conservative influencers, Britt fashioned herself a Reagan-esque but relatable figure. “She came off like America’s mom — she gets it,” the document reportedly said. “She’s one of us. That’ll be families’ takeaway watching this.” Doubtful. Britt’s breathy delivery was pitched to be inoffensive, but the result was somehow menacing. Punctuated by the occasional “y’all” and at least one “bless his heart,” her demeanor seemed alien. She may be the GOP’s ideal woman — a white mother who is loyal to Trump — but the gap between the party’s gender politics and those of the average American has never seemed wider.

She tried to bridge that gap a few times. Britt appealed, early, to racist fears of immigrants crossing the border. A cartel trafficked a woman in Texas who was gang-raped from the age of 12, she said. She later cited the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, who last month was allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela. Although there’s no evidence that undocumented immigrants are any more dangerous than native-born Americans, Britt was uninterested in facts. Her job was to sell the GOP’s racial politics to America, and that’s what she did. To do so, she needed to appear as a concerned mother: Riley could have been her daughter, she said, or ours.

Her maternal guise carried over to abortion politics. Britt carefully avoided the word “abortion” (as did Biden in his address) and spoke only of in-vitro fertilization. “We want families to grow,” she explained, and that’s why the GOP supports IVF — or so she says. The Supreme Court of her own state forced several IVF clinics to suspend treatment last month. Not long afterward, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi blocked a bill that would have protected IVF nationwide. Britt hasn’t criticized Hyde-Smith or explained why she supports IVF even though she believes life begins at conception. (Some embryos can be discarded during a conventional IVF treatment.)

Britt isn’t the only woman politician to broadcast from a kitchen. Some Democrats have done so as well, including Representative Katie Porter and Vice-President Kamala Harris, and men will occasionally join in. Senator Mark Warner once filmed himself making a dubious tuna melt sandwich. But Britt emits a more sinister aura. Moms, she said, wonder how they’re going to be three places at once and still get dinner on the table. Do America’s moms have a choice in this scenario? Where exactly are the dads, and what injury prevents them from cooking? For women, the kitchen can be a place of exile, too; a location they inhabit out of necessity rather than choice. Should Britt and her party get their way, women may find themselves exiled again. If she believes women can be anything but the wives of men — that unmarried women, or queer women, might lay claim to equality — it’s not obvious.

“We are steeped in the blood of patriots,” she said toward the end of her speech. It’s violent imagery, suitable for the party of insurrection. When she said it, her kitchen became even less inviting; became, briefly, contested territory — a place secured through brutality. America’s ideal woman serves her family atop a heap of bodies. Like Britt, she knows her place, and is willing to fight for it. She’ll never know equality, but she may win power. Britt showed America what that looks like on Thursday. The face she presented was unpleasant, off-putting, and therefore truthful. This is all the GOP has to offer women, and everyone else, too.