Michael Tsarion: Myth of the Terrible Mother

men against women and women against women

Today, I’ll be looking first at Michael Tsarion and an interview on his book: The Dragon Mother: a New Look at the Female Psyche. I first typed Female Psycho, and I think that would have been more true to Michael’s perspective. In particular, I’ll be examining his concept of The Terrible Mother, aka the devouring mother.

I’ll then be looking at a conversation, posted by Elizabeth Nickson, between Janice Fiamengo, retired English professor turned self-professed man defender, and Hannah Spier who co-authors the podcasts, “What Should I Tell My Daughter?” and “Psychobabble”. Their topic is Hannah’s decision to leave her psychiatric practice and be a stay-at-home mom dependent on her husband.

Yet Hannah wants to make sure you know she isn’t just a housewife by putting Dr. in front of her name and MD behind. I get it, it took me years to embrace the term myself. Which is likely why Janice calls herself a ‘retired English professor’ when she realized in her 40’s that her life purpose was to love and look after a man.

They encourage ‘women of average intelligence’ to skip the academics and career, and go straight to looking for a husband. Yet they don’t stake their own self-worth and reputation on this. To their podcast audience, their credentials lie in their former status in the masculine worlds of academia and medicine. And they make sure you know it.

Unlike my book blurb that says, “Tereza Coraggio offers no market credentials by which you can judge her worth or the value of this book. Open it and decide for yourself.”

In the intro, I claim my status solely as a mother and housewife so any credibility I have will be extended to housewives everywhere. Look at me differently, I challenge, and you’ll never say ‘just’ before ‘a housewife’ again.

Let’s have some fun.

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but first, posse up!

Before riding into the Wild West of men who hate women unless they’re like men, this meme makes me so happy I almost can’t stand it. It’s certainly not what Michael Tsarion means by women who are like men, because I would be down with that:

My memes are all a jumble on my desktop, from Heather B, Margaret Anna Alice, Conspiracy Sarah, Pasheen from Diva Drops and a whole new crop from Demi Pietchell of Starfire Codes. Remind me in the comments who I got this from, so I can bow down. I’ve thrown in some gratuitous ones, just for a laugh and to clear my desk.

My women posse also makes me so damn happy. Troublemakers, every one. I’m not certain I even need commentary on the idiocy I’ll be quoting. Every one of the moms will be way ahead of me, their eyes pre-rolled. I’m sure fixin’ to get into trouble today. You comin’?

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the dragon & the female psycho

Maria, who has her own women posse in Australia, is right now leading a weaving-the-heart-chakra bellydance immersion intensive. She sent me the videos of Michael Tsarion on the Dragon Mother:

Michael is interviewed by John Cooper of Raising the Bar. Michael starts at the moment of conception and the somatic connection with the mother. The mother is just a custodian or a field, the pleroma. The circle sections off the fetus’ consciousness. BUT THEN the mother puts her impressions onto the fetus and this is where things go wrong. Here is my paraphrase of his theories:

Ancestral collective trauma is passed down before birth. We all inherit, not just birth trauma, but a sexual strangulation fetish from the birth canal. Patriarchy, Michael claims, has never existed—we live in a matriarchy that feminizes men as mere decoration or chivalric figures. We have a matrifocal society for the supremacy of the female.

A ‘city’ is really a ritual hive and the wall was built to make it a nest, contrary to what men want. It’s the female will and supremacy. Men were nomadic but the female wanted a settled place, leading to mistakes like agriculture. To the chivalric man, women are deified, which is a parody of real masculinity. It’s all about mommy.

The masculine feminine is the woman we should want, the feminine emulating the father. When a woman is masculine, breathe a sigh of relief. Thank goodness there’s lots of them around, going to college, doing jobs. They won’t be putting men down. Ayn Rand is the apotheosis of that kind of good masculine woman.

It’s the feminized woman that’s the problem. She’s passive and seeking what men can provide. The docile female is attractive to the chivalric male. Her terrible mother has so stolen her backbone that she needs to get it from the male.

The feminized male are those who’ve climbed out of the slime. He brings roses, goes down on one knee, deifies women when they don’t deserve it. Looks at women as goddesses, mothers. Just as preposterous as the chivalric man. The feminized male attracts the Terrible Mother.

The masculine man reveres what his forebears have done, especially in Western cultures. No feminized man will step one foot outside the urban environment. The feminine is feelings over facts, socialism, open borders, totalitarianism. Cities are built on feminine symbolism. Everything evil these Orwellian guys are doing couldn’t be done without the feminine mode. Empathy, inclusivity, #metoo movement.

In the female mind we’re all equal, you’re all my children, which leads to open borders. Weaponization of compassion for the planet—lack of intelligence, you’re effectively arguing with the woman. Patriarchy is the father-son relationship and women wanted to weaken it with lies and centuries of deception in order to establish the female supremacy.

Women won’t waste one tear on the crimes of women even though it’s in the Old Testament. If we all go down in the stew, it’s the fault of women. Knowledge of the enemy is very important, they’ve studied us, let’s study them. You’re fighting great evil. And the soy boys are fucking loathsome.

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the boyz & the beez

Let me start with an anatomy lesson, boys. When a grapefruit-sized head forces open a thimble-sized cervix, it doesn’t clamp back down on a neck or we would all be dead. You don’t have to shoulder your way out like a vaginal rugby player. Unless the cord is wrapped around the neck, as happened with one of my daughters, there’s no possible strangulation. There’s also no breathing, hence the umbilical cord. Do we all have a drowning fetish from our immersion in amniotic fluid?

Now how ‘bout some history? In The Master Baiters, I described the nomadic Habiru putting the peaceful cities of Canaan and Lebanon under siege. Only the wall kept them out of Byblos, the world’s oldest city, for five long years. Were women the aggressors? Not a one is mentioned, although many are sent to the Egyptian king as tribute. Without men, would walled cities have ever been needed?

Michael rails against the chivalric male, who gives women credit and roses they don’t deserve. What happened to you, buddy? Did this rejection start with your mother? Have you been guarding against it ever since? It’s curious that the romantic notion of chivalry was the man who slays the dragon for his lady. Michael has made the lady into the dragon, which he urges men to slay.

From all the mothers:

Not to mention making the beds, packing the lunches, washing the dishes and sweeping the floor, all of which will be undone tomorrow.

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ayn rand in a powersuit

What do men want women to want? To be Ayn Rand! Feminine women are “passive and seeking what men can provide.” Perhaps a home in which to raise children, a steady paycheck. Instead, they should be capitalists. If they must have babies, plop them out during a lunch break and get back to those power deals.

The ‘terrible’ mothers of my bonus daughters, who I mentioned in The Great Displacement, are decidedly masculine women. The daughter who was sent away to the Utah wilderness camp had 30 nannies. Empathy would not be used to describe the mothers. Money is a major factor and they’ve done well. One just paid $200K in taxes, another said she had $300K she didn’t know what to do with. Neither girl ever received a penny, even for school.

But I put ‘terrible’ in quotes because this is what men want—the Dragon Mother guarding the hoard of treasure, and not squandering his hoard on some bratty kids. And this is what the system requires—women need to out-macho men in order to have security. The labor of both now serves the sharks—swim with them or be chum.

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misanthropic scriptures

The most telling quotes were:

Patriarchy is the father-son relationship and women wanted to weaken it with lies and centuries of deception … Women won’t waste one tear on the crimes of women even though it’s in the Old Testament.

And interviewer John Cooper added:

Patrilineal is the father passing down property to the son, and that’s natural.

Is that natural in any other species? Does the den belong to the lion, not the lioness and her cubs? I thought men were these nomadic warriors and cities were for sissies? That nest is a cervix trying to strangle you! Kick your ritual hive habit and go live in the woods. Real men sleep in caves with a rock for a pillow. You don’t need to hire that fancy lawyer and go after the house in the divorce.

If property belonged to women, no child would be homeless. In matrilineal societies, like the legendary longhouse, women raise children together with one generation teaching the next how to be mothers. Like bratty kids and picky eaters, terrible mothers are made, not born.

And the clue to how they’ve been made is right there in the Old Testament. Property rights are given to the favorite son, conveying the right to rule over everyone else, while evil is blamed on the woman who is the snake, the dragon mother.

But what really gets me about Michael Tsarion is how scathingly insulting and mean he is—to mothers, women, and men who aren’t in his club. He’s the opposite of my principle to love the person and challenge the ideas. He scorns both women and men, but is fine with the ideology of the Old Testament and free market capitalism. These stories and systems of superiority pump him up. But it just takes a prick to deflate him.

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and now, a word from our sponsors

Her terrible mother has so stolen her backbone that she needs to get it from the male.

I have a message from your backbone:

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are men children?

are feminists psychos?

Are Women Hardwired to Care for Men?

Elizabeth Nickson introduces this by saying that a third of women will choose to not be breeders, and 90% of them will regret it, ‘some bitterly.’ But these two women, she clarifies, go deeper and say:

there is an inescapable bio-dynamic between men and women, that together, they are stronger, in that they serve one another. Shorn of that, we falter and run to neurosis, even madness. As a collective, I suspect, we are seeing the latter.”

Curiously, the interviewer herself has chosen to be childless and put her career first. But in her 40’s she realized her husband is a child and needs someone to look after him. This is a strange concept to me so let’s hear it from Janice Fiamengo, retired English professor:

It wasn’t until much later in life, in my mid-40s, that I understood in my heart that I was made to love a man and look after him. I experienced that deeply, along with a fierce outpouring of affection and angry protectiveness towards young men (and all men.) I found myself identifying viscerally with the men who have been subject to mistreatment and injustice or even simply to the blame and shame that our culture radiates at male persons. It hit me like a tidal wave when I was a university teacher, and the sense of moral outrage has never left.

Let me paraphrase: “I want boys to like me. I want my husband to support me financially in exchange for sex and home chores. Since I don’t have children, I can only justify this by saying I was created to take care of men. When female persons blame male persons, I not only rush to their defense but I identify with them viscerally! I’m not in control of this emotion, it hit me like a tidal wave. I am permanently morally outraged, which doesn’t require me to be logical. And boys like having a girl telling other girls off for them. It’s like a cat fight on the playground, but with insults.”

I agree with you whole-heartedly that feminism will not be defeated until women join with men to throw it into the garbage bin of history, and although I agree that women too are harmed by feminism, I’m not sure what avenues to explore with them.

In other words: It’s a war, peeps. Feminism on one side, men throwing it in the garbage on the other. For men to win, women need to join with them throwing feminists in the garbage. After all, we were made to take care of men, especially when they’re trashing other women. We love that! More men for us! Not sure what to do about their harms but who cares?

But we would make no doubt that the central role of women in any viable society is to care for their menfolk and to raise the next generation, and to cultivate self-control, faithfulness, truth-telling, modesty, gentleness, and loving kindness. …Whether this can be done in the absence of a religious tradition, I am not sure.

To Janice, caring for the menfolk comes first and then raising the next generation. Who’s raising these men who don’t know how to care for themselves? They sound like terrible mothers. These men aren’t partners in raising children, they’re just permanent babies that women need to coddle.

And we’re back to those religious values for the crimes of women in the Old Testament. When you get sent as tribute to the Pharaoh by those who killed your family, make sure and practice that self-control, modesty, gentleness and loving kindness. After all, women are the great evil that men are fighting.

psycho bobbleheads

Dr. Hannah Spier, MD then describes her misery at going back to work when her baby was seven months old. Although she was the primary wage-earner and presumably their mortgage was based on both incomes, she quit her hospital job to be a stay-at-home mom, fully support her husband, and clarify their roles.

Her marriage, she states, was transformed from acrimonious to harmonious. Apparently this gave her husband enough of a testosterone boost that he started making more money. She thinks this trick can work for all men.

I understand the stay at home mom. When I had three kids and the oldest was in second grade, I fully stopped working. My husband travelled for work and it didn’t make sense. I don’t think any of us should spend our lives making the rich richer. Feminism went the wrong way—rather than the labor of women also serving profits, I think the labor of men should also serve the family. That’s what my economic model does.

What I don’t get is the subservience in ‘fully supporting her husband and clarifying their roles.’ It seems like in order to stop working, she’s trading off being a full time servant to him. It’s right back where our grandmothers were, except with ten times the mortgage and us begging to do all the housework and childcare.

What do I tell my daughters? Certainly not that their purpose in life is to take care of a man baby. Fortunately the men in their lives aren’t looking for that either, not that it would be an option. But all of them are stuck with rents and mortgages as high as the double income market can bear.

Hannah’s solution is men cracking that nut singlehandedly. It doesn’t work for everyone—but my plan would. And it would free men from soul-sucking jobs too.

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a little bot of this, a little bot of that

Janice tells Hannah:

It doesn’t surprise me that women have showered you with vitriol on the topic of men’s advocacy. I can imagine they fear becoming aware of philosophical inconsistencies and conflicted emotions.

You mean philosophical inconsistencies like telling ‘women of average intelligence’ they don’t need college while you retire as a professor at 50? Or conflicted emotions like telling women they’ll regret not having children while you ‘take care’ of your overgrown one?

And while Hannah left her profession as a therapist, she kicked it on the way out, saying:

Doctors are subject to malpractice claims if an intervention causes infertility. But no consequences befall a therapist whose advice is responsible for wasting a woman’s youth. … I would be interested to see what happens, if all therapy sessions were taped, archived and open to litigation.

Hannah regrets it’s no longer the case that women talk to priests about their marriage problems and reluctance to have kids. But as second best, therapists should have taped archives that could be subpoenaed so they can be sued for malpractice.

Hope your husband’s job works out, Hannah. Or get ready to fork over another mortgage for malpractice insurance and double your rates. But it sounds like the AI bots will be replacing you anyway. They can mirror back the patient’s words and utter banal aphorisms in a soothing tone of voice. While you pick up your husband’s socks as an advocate for male liberation from housework.

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the devil in the details, not the egg-xorcism

In closing, I agree that feminism is a construct designed to double the profits, double the fun of the banker oligarch ruling class. When we turn against each other—against mothers, those who aren’t mothers, working mothers, men who love women, women who love women, women who take care of themselves and expect the same of men—we fall right into their plan.

Our kids are resilient. They’re going to be okay no matter what choices we need to make. Instead of berating other women, question the stories of superiority. Question the systems that serve a few at the expense of all of us. Especially question anything that doesn’t serve the children. The way out is closer and easier than you think.

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In a recent essay on The Rings of Power, Charles Eisenstein differentiates between feminine power and 'honorary men.' The Dawn of Everything by anthropologist David Graeber and archeologist David Wengrow tells the creation epic of The League of Five Nations and the Jigonsaseh, or Mother of All Nations. As we enter our dark winter of the soul and look at the cult of immaturity in so-called leadership, they show us why we are orphaned by our culture and deprived of the feminine power of all of us.

Waking the Dragon Mom

Responding to Russell Brand's interview, I agree with Jordan that men and women are fundamentally different and I describe a feminine ideology, morality and shape of government. Jordan suggests a fourth branch of government as symbolic with a king. The symbol I'd choose for a feminine structure is the interlocking honeycomb with the child in the center and the queen bee serving the hive. Jordan proposes that lust isn't a sin when directed to the marriage, but I look at sin as seeing inferiority, including objectified wives. I end by applying problem-solving criteria to the pandemic and wonder what it will take to wake the dragon mom.