Category: New Materialisms

Dear Reader. If this is your first time on this blog – it is best not to start with the post below. This post is a disruptive edit expert-iment that begins ‘in the middle’. It will not make much sense if you’ve not seen some of my previous posts. Some of these posts (like the Geography and Collective Memories post – which you should check out) are getting increasingly ‘loose’ and ‘messy’ and working with ‘in-progress’ sensemaking – thus leading into more disruptive edits like this one. If you are new, perhaps start with the ‘clean and tidy’ version of this post – it is called Mother’s Day 2021 and is the precursor-basis for the exploration below.

If you are up for something different, read on!

*NB: this post is best read on a desktop – might be a little (more) odd if on a mobile device*

This post is not what it seems…well…. it is… and it isn’t.

What started out as a ‘normal’ post morphed into something else. Usually, blog posts are straightforward: informative, factual, opinion, or instructional. While I was writing on the topic ‘Mothers Day’ for this post – disruptive ideas and opportunities emerged. So… instead of ignoring or disregarding them, I embraced them. You could say this was also an experiment in applying diffraction thinking-doing (my theoretical approach I am using for my PhD) to other-than academic writing. This is new territory for me (to write) and for you (to read). What diffraction writing means here, is that instead of only sharing the usual polished final blog post, I’ve experimented with folded into the blog post my thinking-process-editing as I am writing it – a kind of disruptive writing-with blog post process. It might be a little weird and may or may not work. ^{there will be typos and mistakes – some parts will just be notes or ‘snaps’ – resist the urge to edit for ‘correctness’}. But I like the idea of doing something new and challenging what I think writing, ^{especially such public writing!} is or should be, going ‘beyond’, and being (more publicly) transparent with writing-as-process expert-iments . To try and show how this is working, the blog post content is in black text and ^{the process content is in superscript like this .} It would be easier to do this in a word document with track change comments _{^{which I have included below as a file for those interested in seeing it}}, but the here challenge is to see how it works within the functionality of a Word Press.org blog post.

We’ll see how it goes. Good luck to us all! NG.

^{Insert image of mum. Use creative commons to support alt artists. Attribute/link to promote photographer – preferably female. Use an image of other-than mainstream blond mum stereotype (in this case a redhead!) = have some sort of diversity to show a greater range of mums (blond mums already have a strong presence and representation online). See ‘undisrupted’ version of this post for alt (M)othering image}

Mother’s Day: Give more thoughtful presence and presents

8th May is Mother’s Day.

Happy Mother’s Day mums – and dads and significant others and carers who also fill maternal roles. ^{Dads and other/carers: I added this is it did not feel right to only single out ‘mums’ as there are many ‘others’ who are not officially a’ mother’ – yet who equally fulfil a similar role. A homage to my commitment to better recognizing the fluid and diverse experiences of what ‘mothering’ is – and I was raised by my father who was a consummate ‘mother’ and father and many other things…}

For a previous Mother’s Day, I wrote about the issues I had with some Mother’s Day ‘suggested gifts for cycling mums’.

If you haven’t read my post Happy Fearful Mother’s Day Cycling Mums! check it out here – it’s well worth the read! ^{Internal Hyperlink: I link back to my own blog to promote past writing and keep readership ‘inside’ my website where – also helped remind me of the amount of work I have already done and share from the archives … I LOVE the image I sourced for this hyperlinked post}

I appreciate the sentiment of Mother’s Day (and Father’s Day) in taking time to recognise and celebrate the input and work mums do. ^{I didn’t want this post to be ‘too negative’ or ‘down with Mum’s day’ – that’s not what I think or mean – I wanted some balance and make sure I acknowledge the positives of Mother’s Day}.

I like to think that mums are always appreciated as they are on Mother’s Day (ie for the other 364 days of the year as well) – not just one day a year … anyhoo…

Mums have it ^especially? tough.                                                                                                   

Women are advantaged in society and mothers in particular face enduring and unfair social and corporate pressures and constraints around childcare, unpaid labour, taking the load for emotional labour (the unpaid job men still don’t understand) and ‘being a good mother’, inequitable divisions of household labour, the hidden and overlooked value-cost-effort of stay-at-home mums and that working mums (well…all women) on average make only 82 cents  for every dollar earned by men.

Christine Carter articulates these frustrations well in her piece: All I want for Mother’s Day is an equitable division of labour. ^{Wanted to synthesis some facts into the post AND source more widely (ie not only read academic lit) AND get some mums voices in here. I’m hyperconscious that I’m not a mother, so am only presenting my POV on gender issues – not commenting on what it is like to BE a mum as that is not my direct, personal lived experience so I don’t feel comfortable commenting on that – so I made a point to look for mums who have written on this topic and found this great article on emotional labor. It fit in beautifully. So funny – I had a conversation with a dear friend on this very topic…I think I’ll flip her this link as well!} And yes… it is ‘a thing’…still!

With much work needed to address these systemic gender inequities, Mother’s Day is an opportunity to recognise these issues and celebrate mums and other female carers.

Traditionally, this means breakfast in bed, flowers, or lunches out with loved ones. ^{link back here to ‘presents’ and conventional Mother’s Day approaches to lead into my final takeaway idea/content.}

For cycling mums, it’s an opportunity to think more thoughtfully about the cycling presence and presents we give to mums and what these ‘gifts’ communicate, expect and perpetuate.

^{As I was writing this post, I’ve changed the title a few times. The changes reflect the different ‘moves’ I went through in writing the content – so in the spirit of transparent disruption – I am including that process here as well. It was at this stage of writing the post that I looked a the title and thought: ‘that title doesn’t fit anymore. The following section is a brief behind the scene thinking-editing-doing that went on at this stage. For reading ease I have not super-scripted this section despite it all being thinking-writing-as-process content.}

^{I like the image above. It presents a not blond, white mum(gender?) House is a little messy and not presenting a ‘perfectly’ curated photo/family and the black LHS is suggestive of the ‘dark side’ of family life – fits well with overall post themes. It also helps break up blog content and helps separate the next section which is a new and different idea/focus.}

Title: re-writing and re-righting

Initially the title was: Mother’s Day – more thoughtful presents, please!

It was tight and communicated the initial content main ideas. But it only named the ‘presents’ aspect, which was a very minor idea and didn’t fully capture the relational, non-commercial call to action I was putting forward.

So the next edit was: Mother’s Day – more thoughtful presents and presence, please!

I liked the homonym and alliteration of presents and presence – it fitted well with what I wanted to highlight. I looked at the order of the two keywords ‘presents’ and ‘presence’ and wonder how changing their placement might change the impact of the meaning of my overall message. I swapped them around to see that changed. I wanted to start with the known (presents) and end/lead into the blog main idea (presence) – so that was the final word order I chose.

Then: Mother’s Day – more thoughtful presence and presents, please!

I looked at the: , please. It is polite. Too polite. I took it out. I was pandering to social mores that dictate women should be polite, not cause trouble or be bothersome…pandering to people-pleasing? As Gemma Hartley says, mums are ‘just fed up’ and what is needed (and most wanted) is a ‘deep clean‘.

So I removed the: , please. It is a stronger statement – declarative and instructional, not a request and thus leaving open the final decision as to whether to act on this ‘request’ or not to other-than-the-mother-saying it .

Note to self: remove (more): , please(s).

Apply liberally – in general and elsewhere.

So then it was: Mother’s Day – more thoughtful presence and presents!

This was closer to the sentiment I wanted to convey. It is short and punchy and fits into (no more than) two lines of text as a heading – which is a good ‘grab’ for the WordPress RHS margin widget ‘Recent Posts’. The exclamation mark as an end made it read more of an imperative – but perhaps a little shouty – so I removed it. But then it was left hanging. I also wanted to give some notice as to the type of presentation/format ^{this also helps with search features later on} So I added: (Disruptive Edit) at the end. I added ‘Give’ at the start as I wanted to include mention of the action that was the crux of the post ^{giving is a nice thing to do!} I wanted the title to include someone doing something – and it read-felt much better with ‘give’. Then I stopped. ^{gotta know when to stop! send it out now – share your process work, resist being ‘correct’ ‘right’ and ‘good’ just get it out there – it is in-process and raw so no more tinkering!}

Final title: Mother’s Day: Give more thoughtful presence and presents (Disruptive Edit)

..then finish the blog content and close on a positive!

^{Interesting to note that WordPress backend drafting notifications (like the readability analysis, SEO, suggested ‘revisions’) are going crazy pining me to check and recheck. I have a list of sad red face emojis letting me know NEEDS IMPROVEMENT! – its the algorithm reminding me that this type of post ‘won’t work’ and is ‘not normal’ writing and formatting. I am ingoring them all.}

(*PHEW*)

…and that dear reader is a little sneak-peak into some of the in-process ideas, considerations and edits that happen during the construction of blog posts!

Thanks for coming a long for this experimental ride into a disruptive edit!

Stay amazing and see you next time.