This Machine Kills Fascists

I lost my uterus in the war against the oppressors. Thanks uterus, our fallen comrade, your memory will live on in the actions of these humans that you grew. The righteous labor of gestating them to term, plus the endometriosis ablating and the de-cancer cervix hole-punching, it was too much for you. By the end, you really were a bombed out, shell of an urban war zone, holding out just long enough to help me make these freedom fighters. So thank you for giving everything you had in solidarity with those of us who must continue in the struggle for freedom.

The oldest freedom fighter turned 16 this past week, and the youngest one will be 13 next week. We are in the trenches of the teenage years. I’ve heard that this is supposed to be the hard part, but every consecutive year of parenting has been better and more rewarding than the previous one and I do not expect that this will suddenly change. The thing about teenagers is that they were made for the revolution. They exist to overthrow the ruling class. And I have not only been waiting for their passionate disruptions, I have been cultivating them. In the long Cold War of parenting in late stage capitalism, I have been one step ahead of the oligo-patriarchy. I have been raising the foot soldiers of the new war in plain sight. At library story time. At elementary school birthday parties. In the garden and at church and on public lands. No one noticed, because my labor has been invisible and unvalued. I was just somebody’s mother. No threat at all. Nothing to see here.

My son was an obedient child. He wished to please me and do anything that I told him to do. When he did not behave how he knew he should, he would often punish himself, or ask me to punish him. Where do they get these ideas? But I resisted the temptation to have a pliant child, because that is how you make a Brownshirt. Born at 8 pounds and 12 ounces, my son is now 6’1” I always knew he was going to be a giant, white man. Any size white man is a powerful, terrible potential threat to the bodily and social autonomy of all other bodies. And I made one, with my body, which meant only that I was responsible for ensuring that he could not become an oppressor himself. After all, who else was going to do it? I could not live with myself knowing that I had enabled my own oppression, the oppression of others. He could not fall into enemy hands.

To make a white man be a good human, it turns out, all you need to do is gently show him the power he could wield and all the reasons that he must never seize it because that would be a violation of the sacredness of other beings. And you must do it every day, even and especially when you are tired and it would be easier to impose your will. You must not force a child to your will, you must always show them their choices and show them the consequences of their choices. When he was two I could force his compliance, I could lift him and haul his thrashing toddler body from the toy aisle of the Target, and wrench him into his car seat and give him something to cry about. But now he can pick me up, he can defy my curfew, he can loom over me and make me afraid to challenge him. And because I knew that was the reality of where our adult bodies would arrive, I had to raise him to govern himself to respect the inherent worth and dignity of others. To choose to be his own leash. To abide willingly by the social contract as a fully consenting adult.

And I can tell already, that I have done it.

My daughter, it must be said, has always been a lovely, luminous Molotov cocktail. The bastards will not get her down. She will fight for freedom with her last breath. When they line her up in front of the firing squad and ask for her last words, she will spit in their faces and laugh. For me this has made her an easy child to raise though I am certain that what I am calling “easy” is what most others call “difficult.” A girl who knows her mind is a powerful, terrible threat to power. And so for me, I have had to choose never to overpower, always to guide and honor. The challenge of these next few years is to help her cultivate her craft. My daughter, you must learn the long game, don’t let them snuff you out before all your work is done. You must not be the first one against the wall. Use that fawning, white woman facade to protect others. You lie to the Jackboots while the trans kids and the abortion ban refugees are hidden under your floorboards. They will never see you coming.

Soon, soon they are going to be adults. Adults who will be ungovernable because they are sovereign people beholden only to themselves, yet who nonetheless understand the great power of solidarity amongst equals. That all humans are equals. And because of them, and others like them, we will win. This is not to say they are going to save all of humanity, no, that’s a lot of pressure, and some do not want to be saved. But they are ready for what comes next, what they may have to do.

Since 2017, there has been an image of a uterus overlaid with the slogan, “this machine kills fascists,” displayed prominently in our house. About a year into its presence one of the kids asked, “Mom, what does that mean?” After some explanations about Woody Guthrie and his guitar and punching Nazis, it was still not quite clear. “But mom, uteruses grow babies.” Yeah, they do, and babies grow up to defeat fascism, don’t they? I think this is as explicit as I have ever been about what my hopes are for my children, about what I think their responsibility is to the world.

My children are patriots and their education and care have been my life’s work and greatest privilege. I am so tired. The resistance has taken so much from me. A uterus is only the smallest part of what I have lost. I was born to lay in a field writing poems like Mary Oliver and Emily Dickinson with universal basic income and socialized healthcare and the fastest free internet imaginable, but the world has called me to Mother – which is to raise up humans who can be free people – because it knew that I could rise to the occasion. Children are the public trust, and Mothering is their sacred stewardship. It must be said that this has been my fight, the fight I chose, which has made all the difference. Had I been forced into this life – and I assure you that abortion bans are designed for the purpose of forcing birth – I would have ruined those little freedom fighters, I would have made them into mindless, obedient, followers of tyrants. It would have been so much easier. But we can’t let the terrorists win.

Instead, I was called to a higher purpose, and I have fought the good fight, for the People. And my service has nearly ended.

You’re welcome, kids, and happy fucking birthday.

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This piece was written to be performed on 7 February 2025, at A Ready of Their Own, a community literary event sponsored by the Montana Book Company, and also as a first draft of an introduction to a collection of essays I’m working on and intend to call [for now] “Teach Your Children Well: An Anarchist Mother’s Cookbook.” Some of the essays are already on the blog in some manifestation, others are not yet here [and might never be].