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Two decades ago, the Louisville Project intervened in competitive intercollegiate policy debate by challenging traditional research paradigms that limited “meaningful black participation” in the activity. From their perspective, traditional norms guiding both the content and form of debate were demonstrative of an elite white male space that was inaccessible to black college students. Since the 2005 special issue of CAD, debate has continued to become increasingly split between traditional debate and critical/performance debate. One of the primary questions raised by traditional debaters is, how can debates in which both the affirmative and negative refuse to affirm a hypothetical interpretation of the resolution produce clash, switch-side debating skills and an equitable division of ground? This article seeks to further intervene in this conversation by arguing that “Revolutionary vs. Revolutionary” debates – in which both the affirmative and negative teams present non-traditional strategies – do not diminish these aspects but instead present an alternative framework for engagement and clash that can push debate to better address structural violence.

Introduction

Academia is often thought of as an ivory tower; a place where the brightest and most thirsty minds convene to acquire more knowledge and expertise. Higher education is purported to be the beacon of free thought. Despite a desire to convince the world that it is a safe haven for liberalism, many institutions have not yet grappled with the ghosts of a not-so-distant past. Predominantly white institutions (PWIs) within the United States have yet to fully make amends for the ways that they advanced from the slave trade. In addition to a long legacy of slavery, PWIs continue to profit off the labor of Black bodies. In 2013, Craig Steven Wilder explored the hidden history of Black labor from past to present in his book Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities. According to a New York Times article, Wilder spent ten years researching for the book. The book explores the many ways that American universities exploited Black bodies. Readers are taken on a journey of how Black people endured assault and abuse, often solely for the amusement of white faculty and students. One story that stands out in the book was that of founding trustee Rev. Samuel Gray of the College of William and Mary, who murdered an enslaved child who had been caught running away.

On college campuses, there was also a long history of medical experimentation on Black bodies. It was recently reported that the remains of two children who died during the 1985 MOVE bombing were being used at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Museum for research and teaching. Black bodies were commodified at PWIs through various forms of slave labor. Many of the most renowned universities in this country were built through slave labor. With a recognition of this in mind, some universities have started the process to address and atone for the horrific transgressions of the past. In 2019, Georgetown University announced that they would raise $400,000 each year to support descendants of the 272 enslaved persons who were sold to keep the college going. PWIs should start thinking about recompences for the ways they’ve benefited from and profited off of Black labor. When envisioning what reparations for descendants of enslaved Black people could look like, free college tuition is a beneficial place to start. In addition, loans that were incurred to secure a college education should be forgiven for descendants of enslaved people.

Sites of Anti-Blackness: Colleges and Universities in the Settler Colonial State U.S. colleges and universities embed the legacies of the anti-Black settler colonial state (Anderson, 1988; Thelin, 2004). In fact, the explicit function of the university was to operate within (and in service to) the new colonial establishment (Thelin, 2004). Created to educate the offspring of colonizers, the colonial university acted as a preserver of social inequality by only serving White “elite” males (Thelin, 2004). In addition to preparing ministers, lawyers, doctors, and “men of affairs,” the colonial university also functioned to educate the developing nation’s White male descendants about the methods of controlling classes (Palmieri, 1987; Solomon, 1985). The colony envisioned White women as domestics and reproducers who both supplied and served generations of White male colonialists (Palmieri, 1987). The colony dictated the relationship of the enslaved and indigenous to the colonial university, which was consistent with state doctrine. In Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities, Wilder (2013) dispels the notion that there were no Black people in colonial colleges. In fact, enslaved Black people outnumbered faculty, administrators, and trustees at a number of Ivy League colleges (Wilder, 2013). Black people erected the buildings, cooked the food, and cleaned the dormitories and yet were not understood as laborers, but as property. Colonizers advocated (from college campus podiums) for the inhumane treatment of Black people everywhere, and violence was a common experience for the enslaved on college campuses. Colonial college trustees (many of whom were ministers) tortured and murdered enslaved Black men, women, and children in the most sadistic ways.

College presidents, many of whom were “slave masters,” used enslaved Black people as personal attendants and as house servants to maintain the president’s mansion. Harvard President Increase Mather (from 1692 to 1701) used an enslaved man “gifted” to him by his son Cotton Mather, to run errands for the college. Harvard President Benjamin Wadsworth (1725-1737) brought an enslaved man named Titus, who lived with his family, to the college and “bought a Negro Wench” two days before arriving on campus. Benjamin Franklin, founder of the College of Philadelphia; the first eight presidents of the College of New Jersey (Princeton); and Georgetown presidents Fathers Louis William Valentin DuBourg (1796-1798) and Stephen L. Dubuisson (1825-1826), all accumulated enslaved Black people for their own personal service during their tenures as the top college administrator (Wilder, 2013).

Labor, Ownership, and Education Settler colonialism requires an explicit connection between land and citizenship. The original arbiter of full participation in the colonial political economy was not White manhood. Several White men in the colony lived as indentured servants, share croppers, or otherwise dispossessed. Their agency within the colonial arrangement was barely above the Black enslaved (Williams, 1944). The lynchpin to citizenship was land, or property ownership. This connection between land ownership and citizenship created a fundamental link between ownership and humanity. This link continues to bear much consequence for Black education today.

Education funding at the K-12 level is largely determined by property taxes. Children who live in neighborhoods with higher property values benefit from the resources available at well-funded schools. Children who live in poorer neighborhoods endure underresourcing, high teacher turnover, overcrowded classrooms, and a milieu of additional challenges to their educational access. Unsurprisingly, neighborhood school funding is highly racialized and historical. Steering potential Black homeowners to areas with lower property values, government collusion in the obstruction of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) home loans dispensed to Black veterans, and “White flight” have all worked to consolidate large segments of the Black population to impoverished neighborhoods and subsequently underresourced schools. All of these realities work to concretize notions of mattering and humanity. These realities are even more intriguing when one considers Anderson’s (1988) assertion that universal public education, particularly in regard to iterations forged in the U.S. South, is a Black idea. When analyzed through the lens of organizational or political theory, the challenges of public education can appear unfortunate, possibly evidence of the ills of capitalism, if one were a Marxist.2 However, through the lens of anti-Blackness, these regulatory failures can be understood as White supremacy’s response to Black agency with reassertions and reminders that “The Black” is “slave.”

This project has already begun in the feminist theorizing about personal privacy described in the first part of this Essay. Having revealed the ways in which traditional conceptions of privacy are either inadequate for or affirmatively harmful to women, feminists have begun to reimagine privacy rights in a way that might more fully realize for women the values informing liberal privacy. 88 Significantly, much of this work on privacy does not track the traditional public/private boundary but instead entails affirmative state intervention in the private sphere to alter the allocation of private power.

Although this work represents an important beginning, the business is unfinished. Feminists need to expand the project to encompass broader questions of the proper role of state power. What constitutes a legitimate exercise of state power within a well-functioning deliberative democracy? How should individual rights be defined against state and private power? What are the affirmative obligations of the state to intervene in the allocation and exercise of private power? How can power be allocated among institutions, both public and private, to enhance simultaneously individual liberty and equality? Bearing in mind these large questions will help to move feminist theorizing beyond a critique bounded by traditional notions of public and private and toward a possible transformation of the roles of public and private power in ensuring women's liberty and equality.

C. A Feminist Critique of Fear and of Consumption as its Answer

The feminist critique I embrace is one that wants to rescue feminism from its minority corner and challenges it to offer a comprehensive critique of the malaise of our society that affects all of us, and perhaps especially so women. Fear and consumption are aspects of social malaise that feminism could address in the twenty-first century. In the process, feminism may need to shed its content-based definition and embrace Bertrand Russell's solution to the demise of philosophy as a way to resurrect its future.

I believe that legal feminism can become more than a middle-class theory if it becomes a feminist critique of equality. Few women live alone. Most are integral parts of societies and societies are more intertwined every day. Legal feminism needs to address the fact that women's plights cannot be substantively changed for better unless the societies around them are better places to live. It needs to become a feminist critique of equality. Equality for women cannot be obtained without raising the issue of substantive equality for all and without involving the state as a guarantor of those rights.

This approach is more easily said than done because under the guise of postmodern politics, the role of the state has been systematically under  [*176]  attack and, for many, the rise of the market and eclipse of the state "has become one of the defining conditions of contemporary social change." 347 Postmodernism used language that demanded well-defined social justice. The state was left out and people have begun to expect that the state is unable to secure greater equality and welfare for its citizens, but that the market can take care of their needs.

So how could feminism in general and legal feminism in particular deal with this hemorrhaging reality? My answer is one that requires feminism to rediscover its social justice roots by promoting substantive human rights for all by becoming a feminist method-based discipline. In the 1980s, Eagleton wrote about the virtues of a class discourse, whether it was the Marxist discourse of socio-economic classes or the feminist discourse of gender and sexual politics. 120 Its virtues rest on the call for action it implied: it assumed that the impoverished social classes spread social alienation to their members and deprived them of their individuality. 121 However, Eagleton reminded us, 122 the way to cure that alienation is not to deny its existence, 123 which is what the academe has been doing for the last few decades. The only way to undo that alienation is to assume that unattractive position (alienation) and reverse it. 124

"The goal of a feminist politics would therefore be," Eagleton stated ten years ago, "not an affirmation of some "female identity,' but a troubling and subverting of all such sexual straitjacketing." 125

Women find themselves at the top and at the bottom of the social ladder. Those at the top are as interested in preserving the status quo as the men next to them are. 2 Women at the bottom of the social ladder and living in the slums, like Cheryl Green - the fourteen-year-old Los Angeles gang violence victim - and her mother 3 - continue their quest for basic survival. Legal feminism has no long-lasting answers for them, except perhaps to start a lawsuit against some perpetrator, because if legal feminism wants to help gendered subjects with specific gendered wants, quite often it ignores their slums.

Internationally, American legal feminism faces similar problems. Women who live in the Third World, 4 who either migrate to toil in our kitchens, backyards, nurseries, and nursing homes, or die quietly in their homeland, find even fewer answers in this theory. They are even more connected to their families and neighborhoods, and thus their demands are even more complex and more intertwined with those basic ones. 5 Those demands require deconstructing reality and bringing out the essence of poverty to find long-lasting solutions. So far, American legal feminism has been successful when it offers incremental answers to most non-economic middle-class problems. When it offers economic and social solutions (to employment, motherhood, etc.) it has opened itself to questions about the solutions current feminism seeks. The lack of solutions threatens the fabric of our meek social support of have-nots. 6 Can we decide who is more deserving? Shall we decide between men and women equally in distress? The time for new answers has come.

We have accepted that a theory is feminist to the extent that its content is feminist, or that it believes that women are unjustly unequal to men because of the social meaning of their bodies. 273 This section wants to further articulate the argument that legal feminism can preserve its identity if it becomes a feminist critique of equality, of how states ensure human dignity for all their residents. 274

For many of us feminism is no longer a way of thinking confined to persons born female. 275 Moreover, it needs to go beyond concentrating on women's experiences as women see them because such a perspective is too divisive. Today, as Gloria Steinem pointed out, is about coalition-building, not about legitimizing minute perspectives. Of course, feminism has been defined as collective and deeply contextual. 276 For example, a feminist critique of human rights would preserve both characteristics, as it affects how different states can implement substantive human rights within their geographical borders, and such a critique is both collective and contextual. My feminism is one that does not want to stop until all women can live with dignity. 277

Perhaps the fact that American legal feminism is unable to treat the diversity in the physics faculty body at Harvard as equally important as the plights of female bankers at Morgan Stanley, who do not earn the million-dollar salaries their male counterparts do, or female Wal-Mart employees, who make thirty percent less than male employees, 174 is going to prevent us from being heard by our intended audience. Only the academe can  [*143]  understand how those three issues may become equally important research topics, while neither the upper class nor the poor can see them fitting together.

What our legal feminism misses acutely is a systemic critique of inequality whose majority victims are women. For example, the fourteen-year-old Los Angeles teenager, Cheryl Green, a recent victim of gang violence, defined herself in a poem entitled I Am, as a complex human being, but a being with needs that defied race or gender:

2007-12, the Planning Commission set up a Working Group of Feminist Economists to review the sectoral chapters of the Eleventh Plan through a gender lens. Engaging with the draft chapters, the group established the primacy of women and their work in India's growth achievement. It argued that planning processes and methods exhibited an inadequate awareness of these facts. The value of this initiative was that it advocated moving beyond a special focus in the chapter on "Women and Child" to looking at women as growth agents in India's political economy, across all sectors. Thus, the major shift of this initiative was to move the gendering of public policy into macroeconomic space (Planning Commission 2010). The Planning Commission has reconstituted the Working Group of Feminist Economists for the Twelfth Five-Year Plan. This paper draws on an earlier gendered analysis of the ideas in the Approach Paper to the Twelfth Plan (henceforth Planning Commission 2011). While the wheels of the planning process have been moving steadily forward, we believe that the directions proposed in the approach paper continue to shape planning. The strategies for growth proposed in the Twelfth Plan appear to be formulated with little consideration for the needs and roles of large sections of the population of the country and especially those of poor women (Planning Commission 2011). This paper aims to highlight some of these glaring gaps in the overall design of the proposed plan and to suggest ways of making economic growth during the twelfth century. Despite several decades of struggle by women's groups to make policy gender-sensitive, the approach to the Twelfth Plan exhibits insufficient awareness of the specific problems of women, their unpaid labour and their distinctive economic contribution to the nation's economy. The overall theme for planning is achieving "faster, sustainable and more inclusive growth" (Planning Commission 2011). The thrust is on increas ing the rate of growth of gross domestic product (gdp) or the rate of expansion of the total volume of output of goods and services in the economy, especially at a time when there has been a drop, relative to past rates of growth. The approach paper notes that inclusiveness is a multi-dimensional pheno menon. Inclusive growth should result in the lower incidence of poverty, broad-based and significant improvements in health outcomes, universal access for children to schooling

Feminist theorists of international relations (IR) have long argued that binaries of public/private reinforce the subsidiary status given to gendered insecurities, so that these security problems are ‘indi- vidualised’ and taken out of the public and political domain. This article argues that the emerging field of cybersecurity risks recreating these dynamics by omitting or dismissing gendered technologically-facilitat- ed abuse such as ‘revenge porn’ and intimate partner violence (IPV). I present a review of forty smart home security analysis papers to show the threat model of IPV is almost entirely absent in this literature. I conclude by outlining some suggestions for cybersecurity research and design, and reaffirming the importance of critical studies of informa- tion architecture to the modern study of IR. The ease of changing locks after a break-up—and the design of homes and domestic architecture more broadly—could have once been seen as a private matter, far from the concern of inter- national relations (IR) and security scholars. However, the global spread of information technologies means that information ar- chitectures designed in one part of the world mediate the lives of people worldwide both in the workplace and in ‘private’ spaces like the home. For example, ‘smart home’ technology allows users to control their home from an interface, adjusting temperature, un- locking doors, controlling lights, or viewing security cameras. The smart home market is growing rapidly and is forecast to comprise nearly 1.3 billion devices by 2022.1 Therefore, lack of diversity and failures of imagination among designers, theorists and practition- ers of cybersecurity have global implications. The definition of cybersecurity is contested and in flux. Cy- bersecurity is best understood as the set of protocols, technolo- gies, and practices designed to protect against threats mediated by digital technology. The question of who or what is protected is often at the heart of definitional controversies. Early understand- ings of ‘information security’ (which is often used interchange- ably with cybersecurity), such as the classic ‘CIA model,’ focused on the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information.2 Similarly, Kello’s The Virtual Weapon and International Order – an influential book on cybersecurity and IR – defines cybersecurity as “measures to protect cyberspace from hostile action,” where “cyberspace” is defined as “all computer systems and networks in existence.” However, as von Solms and van Kiekerk point out, cybersecurity goes beyond information security, as the term en- compasses not just the protection of information, machines, or networks, but also of the humans that use them. A feminist ap- proach to cybersecurity must be grounded by a focus on harms to humans. Security analysis papers – in which new technologies are as- sessed in light of how their security architectures might be com- promised by an adversary – are a common cybersecurity practice.4 Security analyses commonly begin by ‘threat modelling’: a system- atic analysis of the probable attacker’s profile, the most likely at- tack vectors, and the assets most desired by an attacker.5 Threat modelling therefore reflects assumptions about the causes of inse- curity among technology users. Feminist IR theorists have challenged binaries of internal/ external and personal/political violence in conventional security studies, arguing these ignore or diminish the threat of gender- based violence and threats to women’s security. Unfortunately, the emerging field of cybersecurity has not incorporated these insights and therefore risks omitting many forms of technological abuse. In this paper, I present a review of smart home security analysis to show how cybersecurity research fails to account for domestic and intimate partner violence (IPV) in its threat models. This is deeply concerning because technology is an increasingly common medi- um for abuse; if researchers ignore the domestic threat model, it is unlikely designers and practitioners will account for how informa- tion architectures can both facilitate and constrain abuse.

Fair use liberates authors to fairly copy, adapt, or embed portions of pre-existing content into their own new creative endeavors. Fair use enables intermediaries to fairly develop new content delivery models and distributive technologies without incurring secondary liability. Consumers utilize fair use when they fairly make noncommercial backup or auxiliary copies of copyrighted works they have purchased or use them in a way that might otherwise infringe one or more of the exclusive rights held by copyright owners.23 One can only avail herself of fair use by using fairly, which limits and complicates the doctrine, but encompasses considerations far more expansive than commercialization and monetary exchange. To the extent that women and men may construe fairness differently, the definition of fair use is susceptible to gendered shadings. Fair use determinations invoke ethical and moral considerations, which many observers believe are influenced by gender.24 The cultural gendering of fair use is observable when, for example, a representative of the Recording Industry of America asserts about peer-to-peer music uploading and downloading: “I don’t think your mother had in mind this kind of sharing.”25 Good mothers, according to the view implicit in this comment, establish a moral paradigm of intellectual property use by their children that does not encompass putatively infringing behaviors.26 Why the comment references “mothers” rather than “parents” suggests that the speaker sees women as important arbiters of copyrights and “copywrongs.”27 Generalizations about divergences between the views and behaviors of women and men are of limited utility, and they risk assuming either too much difference or similarity between the sexes, as well as too much uniformity within them.

2. Recovering the hidden foundations of economic activities: An ethical perspective

The industrial economic system, together with widespread economic thinking, actually are responsible for the ecological and social crisis. Neoclassical economists claim their thinking to be value-free. They do not realize the many taken for granted foundations and the underlying value decisions on which their thinking is based. This narrow view has to be enlarged by the (re-)introduction of the ethical perspective in looking at the foundations on which industrial economies and the theoretical thinking about them are based. Revealing the often taken for granted foundations is looking at economics from an ethical perspective.

Feminist and Mainstream Perspectives on Inequality and Macroeconomics

Distinct differences in the approaches of feminist and mainstream economists have emerged in the burgeoning research on the interrelationship of inequality and growth. Contrasting views are apparent at the outset as evidenced in the framing of the inequality problem. We consider first the perspective of mainstream economics that underlies the influential policy documents of the World Bank, including the 2006 World Development Report (hereafter WDR2006) evaluated by Diane Elson (Citation2009) in this volume. This perspective, which is also embodied in standard economics textbooks and thinking, does not fully reflect the growing sophistication of mainstream economics, but it does have a heavy influence in policy and the market reforms spearheaded by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in developing economies.

Feminist approaches to explaining terror might appropriate feminist insights on the incompleteness of human autonomy, the unrepresentativeness of rationality, and the limited utility of strong analytical distinctions between these categories. Feminist theory can present different readings of terrorism. Nancy Hirschmann’s work on re-lational autonomy29 might be used to argue that the decision to commit terror is part agent, part structure – how much of each is based on questions of relative power. Catherine MacKinnon’s work on gender as a derivative difference30 could inspire the argument that the agency an actor has in a decision to commit terror is both wholly decisional and wholly socially constrained. Christine Sylvester’s work on empathetic cooperation31 provides a way to see that it is possible that even the divide between terror/counterterror and the west/Islam can be bridged. Katharine Moon’s work on individuals as bargaining chips in international security32 can be used to find actors other than ‘terrorists’ and state leaders in international terrorism. Elisabeth Prugl’s work on the process of constructing gender roles33 could help understand the gen-dered constitution of terrorist subjects. Amy Allen’s work on defining alternative strategies of power from the political margins34 might help to understand ‘terror’ asa tool of the powerless and the powerful. Anne Fausto-Sterling’s work on the sex/gender dichotomy35 can be used to analyze the gendered terrorist body as a symbolic manifestation.

It is important to note at the outset that there is not one feminist perspective on ter-rorism, but many. As women are different, feminists are different. As there is variety among IR theories, there is variety among IR feminist theories – IR feminist realism, liberalism, constructivism, critical theory, postcolonialism and postmodernism. 1Since this short discussion piece cannot cover comprehensively IR feminisms’ various potential contributions to the study of terrorism, I choose to present a collage of feminist perspectives on the question of terrorism. Some of these are related or complementary, others are divergent and sometimes conflicting. What they share is being inspired by various observations of gender subordination in global politics. The first set of observations in this collage is inspired by one of the oldest questions in feminist IR – where are the women? 2 Women are underrepresented in the study of the perpetration and consequences of the actions that fall within our traditional understandings of terrorism.3 Most recent work on terrorism omits women altogether. Several recent important books on terrorism, including Bruce Hoffman’s Inside Terrorism, Ken Booth and Tim Dunne’s edited Worlds in Collision, and Walter Enders and Todd Sandler’s The Political Economy of Terrorism, do not contain a listing for ‘women’ in the index or serious discussions about the gender dynamics or impacts of terrorism.4 Much work on terrorism treats the ‘terrorist’ as a subject gendered male by definition. Both media presentations and scholarly work that do acknowledge women ‘related to’ terrorism in some way or another portray them in very gendered terms. Scholars are increasingly recognizing, for example, that women participate in terrorism as terrorists, a role that is not a new development.5 Still, even work which explicitly addresses women’s terrorism frequently characterizes participants as women ter-rorists rather than as terrorists who happen to be women – placing their gender at the forefront of accounts of their motivation. For example, Mia Bloom’s work on women suicide terrorists links their motivation almost exclusively to their status as rape victims.6 While Robert Pape claims women, like men, are rational actors when they commit acts of terrorism, one of his case studies explains that a woman suicide terrorist was acting rationally when she blew herself up, because it was the practical alternative in her society for woman who was unlikely to marry or have children because she had been raped.7In our recent book, Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in GlobalPolitics,8 Caron Gentry and I argue that women’s agency in their political (or even criminal) violence is denied even by those claiming to study women as women because women’s incapacity to commit acts of terror is essential to maintaining our current idealized notions of women and femininity. At the same time as women are being ignored and downplayed as terrorists, the question of where the women are also leads us to recognize that ‘terrorist’ organiza-tions are increasingly incorporating women into their ranks, both in support roles and as perpetrators.9 The organizations claim various reasons for increasingly including women: their increasing interest, the strategic advantages of women’s participation, an interest in gender equality, and the dire emergency of the political cause. Feminist perspectives on terrorism would at once interrogate gender relations within terrorist organizations and the gender dynamics of terrorist attacks. If ‘terrorism’ discourse does not pay enough attention to women as terrorists (as traditionally defined), it also omits women as victims of that terrorism. Another feminist approach to terrorism, then, looks for the differential impacts of terrorism and counterterrorism on those understood as men and those understood as women. Terrorists target civilians as a method. Many suicide bombings claim a disproportion-ate number of women victims, given the times and places of their attacks. Additionally, a recent study I did on criminal prosecutions of those involved with terrorism showed that the wives, sisters, and mothers of male terrorists are disproportionately arrested for the crimes of their relatives.10 That does not even get into counterterrorism – where civilian women are often the ‘collateral damage’ in counterterrorist attacks. Another piece of the collage, then, may be a feminist approach to the question of the perspective from which we study terrorism. As Ann Tickner has noted, feminist scholars are interested in starting the study of IR at the level of individual women’s lives.11 This commitment means that feminist IR can be seen as a research program with a political commitment to studying global politics from the viewpoints of those marginalized in the international arena – from the ‘bottom up’, if you will.12Feminists contend that perspective influences both how and what we know about global politics generally – that knowledge is both interested and political.13 We know what we know about terrorism because we see it from our perspectives – in my case, as someone who would never be in a situation where perpetration was a serious option, as someone extremely unlikely to experience terrorism first-hand, and as someone who is not directly connected to a political cause for which terrorism is frequently used. This is true of most (though not all) scholars who write about terrorism. Feminist scholarship suggests that there are alternative voices out there who see, experience and know terrorism differently – women, but not only women. People identified as women are, as Alison Jaggar noted, ‘at the vortex of contending social forces in the international arena’.14 An individual woman’s voice, then – be she a suicide terrorist, a victim of terrorism, a devotee to a cause which terrorism is often used to further, or a peace activist arguing against the use of violence for political ends – might both debunk our stereotypical understandings about what women are and tell us something more about terrorism than our social-scientific investigations alone can. Additionally, widening our perspective to look not only at those women who perpetrate and experience terrorism, but also those people (generally) who do so without being noticed, studied or counted, would bring us a different perspective – one that focuses on individual narratives rather than a globalized and hyper-securitized discourse of good and evil.

Mothers’ wellbeing and mental health A few mothers described enjoying lockdowns, this was particularly the case for those mothers with older children (not babies or toddlers), without stressful jobs, some financial security and family support (i.e., sharing of childcare and domestic labor with partners). However, the majority of the mothers in our sample experienced what Dean et al. (2022) refer to as the mental overload of emotional labor (i.e., worrying about children’s health and wellbeing; managing multiple roles and responsibilities within the home, wider families, work). Mirroring international research, the mothers in our study engaged in intensive forms of emotional labor through the daily management of their own and others’ emotions (i.e., children, partner, parents, friends, workmates), but the chronic nature of this mental overload was “exhausting, leading to increased anxiety, depression and poorer physical health” for many (Dean et al., 2022, p. 19). Across each of the groups (pregnant women, mothers with newborns, single and low-income mothers, and working mothers) some experienced severe mental health (i.e., depression) and “suicidal thoughts” (Narla) requiring medical treatment. For these women, the lack of access to social and medical support compounded their mental health issues: Over time, my mental health just went so low, to a point where I told my social worker. . . I need help because I am not in a good headspace right now. I want to get onto things now before it gets worse, before I hurt myself or my kids. (Mila) I was mentally unstable. COVID was the main trigger. I realized after that three-month lockdown, my anger toward the boys, I had been more snappy at them to a point where CYFs [Child, Youth and Family] had been called on me. I can’t enjoy the boys as much as I would love to, because right now it’s more like a burden. My therapist was going to send me to respite, that’s how bad I am with my mental health at the moment. . . but I said there is absolutely no way I can go to respite. . . because I won’t get my kids back again. (Narla) I think typically mums put everyone else before themselves, and it is a huge mental load. Just that building up of stress, not getting enough sleep, exhaustion. . . I was getting resentful of having to do everything. I had panic attacks. Depression. I needed help, but I couldn’t get hold of my psychotherapist. I turned up at [GP center], but they turned me away. They said, “We’re only seeing urgent patients.” I was getting to that point where I was having harmful thoughts. I ended up calling Helpline. I just wanted to sit in my wardrobe. (Beth) For many mothers in our study, the pandemic surfaced new affective relations with motherhood (i.e., anger, sadness, loss of enjoyment, resentment) that were contradictory to dominant discourses and social norms of ‘good motherhood’ (Schmidt et al., 2023). While Mila, Narla and Beth each had difficulty accessing mental health support, it was only the Maori-Pacific mother ¯ (Narla) whose difficulties led to surveillance by the State (CYFs), with the ever-present threat of having her children removed from her care. As Stanley and de Froideville (2020) explain, discursive and institutional arrangements, and political and policy priorities, toward families in Aotearoa have long emphasized racialized risk and vulnerability, thus “re-emphasis[ing] colonial practices of viewing Maori children and young people as deficit- ¯ laden risks to be managed”, thus rendering Maori families as ¯ “perilously entrenched in welfare and justice systems” (526). In this context, not only did Maori mothers find it more challenging to ¯ access mental health support, but previous experiences of racial discrimination within the health and social services negatively impacted their willingness to express vulnerabilities and seek help. Furthermore, our findings align with international research that has shown the heightened negative affect and mental distress among mothers during the pandemic was particularly heightened among those with babies, toddlers, and young children (Racine et al., 2021). Furthermore, the mothers in our sample without social and emotional support at home (and in their wider networks), and in economically difficult situations (i.e., single and low-income or welfare; income changes due to pandemic job loss in the family), described experiencing the most severe mental health impacts. The intersectional experiences of mothers on the margins must not be overlooked, particularly by those developing policies, practices, and support structures for families during periods of heightened stress, fear, and uncertainty.

Single and low-income mothers Our sample included several single and low-income mothers for whom the pandemic posed many emotional, social, and financial challenges. Recent research (Mako Mama - Mangopare, the Single Parents Project) conducted with over 3,500 sole parents in Aotearoa has documented the various forms of stigma and discrimination they experience (i.e., housing, welfare, social agencies) (Domett et al., 2023). There is a distinctly racial element to such discrimination. According to New Zealand’s Ministry of Social Development, 46 percent of sole parents on a benefit (welfare) identify as Maori, 28 percent as NZ ¯ European, and 12 percent are of Pacific Island heritage (Ministry of Social Development, 2021). Most of the single and lowincome mothers in our study were of Maori and/or Pacific ¯ ethnicities, many of whom have experienced various forms of racism throughout their lives (i.e., schooling, employment, health systems), while the maternal and welfare services they receive position them as subordinates (Gray and Crighton-Hill, 2019). According to Adcock et al. (2019), young Maori mothers are ¯ subject to “Eurocentric medical, disciplinary, and colonial gazes— through exclusionary health, education, and social services, and public prejudices—that see them as abnormal and in need of regulation” (250). However, their research also showed that, with support from their whanau (families), many young M ¯ aori mothers ¯ are “working hard to provide a positive future for themselves and their children” (250). With whanau often playing such an ¯ important role in the support networks for single and low-income mothers (and particularly Maori and Pacific w ¯ ahine/women), ¯ extended lockdowns caused considerable distress when access to essential family and child-care support was no longer available or highly limited. Of particular concern for these mothers was the loss of childcare (i.e., school, daycare, kindergarten) and family support (i.e., grandparents, sisters). Without any reprieve from their full-time childcare responsibilities, the mothers described the significant impact on both them and their children. For example, Mila, a single mother with two young children, recalls: The boys started getting restless, and just not being able to get out and about was doing my head in, plus having the boys here with myself for almost three months now was driving me crazy. It was hard because they were playing up because they wanted to go see Nanny and Poppa, they couldn’t understand why they couldn’t go to school, see their friends, or play outside with the other kids like they usually do. Seeing how tough it was for them, it was hard on me, and it just made me feel like a shit parent really. For many single low-income mothers, getting access to food and supplies during lockdowns was another significant challenge. For some, access to public transport (i.e., buses) or childcare made supermarket visits difficult. For others, particularly those with children with allergies or nutritional needs, access to affordable supplies required highly creative approaches: I couldn’t find anything [toddler] was able to eat because he is very lactose intolerant. I’m only on a benefit so I was always going for the dollar packets of pasta and baby wipes, but all the cheaper items were always run out. Me and three of my siblings would go to the supermarket. . . each person had a list of items to get. . . and it will take a whole day just to get our regular shopping. Also, getting clothes was hard because the boys were out growing things so fast. (Narla) Continuing, Narla recalled the challenges of being a single parent while she and her children (both under 5 years) had COVID19. Unwell and without any energy, she was unable to feed, clothe or change them: I would only have 15 min of energy and in that 15 min I would open as many snacks as I can for the boys to help themselves throughout the whole day. Then I’d fall asleep. I’d pass out. Dinner time I would just Uber Eats a really big meal and they would just come and help themselves. I would fall asleep. It was horrible. I’m surprised I survived that whole thing on my own. I was mentally unstable. As the quotes powerfully illustrate, the pandemic took a particularly strong toll on the emotional, social, and physical health and wellbeing of single low-income mothers and their children. Our findings here align with research in the US that showed financial instability significantly exacerbated the mental health impacts (anxiety, depression, loneliness, and stress) among Black mothers, with stable income serving as “a protective factor for anxiety” (Ibekwe-Okafor et al., 2023, p. 694). A key theme for the single low-income mothers was the importance of informal social support networks. Some mothers were grateful to their family members who went to great lengths to support them from afar. For example, Lady recalled: “Mum was calling and talking to the kids every day. And that made things a lot easier”. Others described family, neighbors, and even the police, stepping in to relieve the pressure at critical moments: I’d be at home by myself with my sisters, who are nine-year old twins, and then my daughter who was a newborn. But my auntie, she lives down the road, so she was always coming to see me, hang out, help me clean the house with the kids, because they didn’t listen to me. (Porsche) Recognizing the seriousness of the situation, some friends and family broke protocol to support the single mothers. For example, Mila described the critical roles played by a neighbor and her friends, while she struggled with mental health issues during the 107-day Auckland lockdown: I had my neighbor, she shares a wall with me. . . . if she could hear me screaming at the boys and the doors are closed and she can hear me through the walls, she’ll just let herself in and deal with the boys while I calm down and take 10 min to myself. My friends are awesome. I called them up and I was like, “Look, I’m not doing too good.” Then they all came over. They were like, “stuff the lockdown”. And they all showed up. A few hours with my friends . . . just keeps me going. For other single mothers, it was the financial aspects of the pandemic that posed the biggest challenges, with family members supporting them between jobs: Mum and dad were my biggest supporters. When I dropped down to part time [due to redundancies at work], they offered to cover [daughter’s] school expenses. As well as my brother, he ended up helping out with the grocery shopping. (Alyssa) Our findings align with those of Radey et al. (2022) who identify the importance of formal and informal networks for exchanges of support for low-income mothers during the pandemic. Yet not all single mothers found support among their family and friends. Some described how the intensity and stress of the pandemic brought to the fore existing and new issues in their relationships with family members. For example, Narla described feeling disappointed when her parents, sisters and friends failed to understand the difficulties she was experiencing, and were unable or unwilling to look after her two young children: COVID has turned our world upside down in a bad way, in a very, very bad way! My friends with kids don’t get it because they’ve all got partners to help out with the kids and stuff. And my family are too tired from looking after my nephew 24/7 that when I ask for help looking after the kids, they just don’t want to. My sister and I used to talk every day, but now we don’t talk or see each other anymore. After many weeks of being the sole caregiver for two young children, and without any family support, Narla felt abandoned and alone (McLeish et al., 2022). Another mother of two young children recalled how the intensities of pandemic life surfaced challenges in her relationship with her partner, with instances of domestic violence that prompted her to leave the family home: Our relationship wasn’t fabulous anyway, but I think just being locked down just the four of us for that length of time just really brought out the bad sides. I had to make that decision, not only for myself, but for the kids because it was just such a toxic environment for them to grow up in. And the domestic violence happened in front of my oldest. . . I just had to make that call. I became a solo mother. I had to become a whole lot more independent, emotionally and financially. And yeah, we moved back in with my parents for 6 weeks before I found my own place. (Lady) As Broughton et al. (2022) have argued, mothering in the context of intimate partner violence requires feminist intersectional approaches that move beyond dominant ideologies of “normative motherhood, deficit and grit/resilience”, and toward approaches that emphasize “strengths and equity” (p. 3974). Such approaches become even more important in the context of the pandemic, where cases of domestic violence and intimate partner violence grew exponentially, and support systems available for women and their children were heavily reduced (Usher et al., 2023). In sum, single low-income mothers’ relationships with existing networks, and particularly family and friends, were either “strengthened or dissolved” in the context of COVID-19 (Radey et al., 2022), greatly impacting their capacity for coping during this exceptionally difficult period.