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- [00:01]
Gwyneth Paltrow
At goop, we talk a lot about healing, how we pursue it, how we hold space for it, and the people who make that possible. Our obs, our dentists, our acupuncturists, our estheticians. These are the people we trust with our bodies, our stories, our care. So it matters what they wear while doing that work. That's why we partnered with figs. They make scrubs that feel as intentional as the people who wear them. Thoughtfully designed to support healthcare professionals while they support all of us. The fabrics are beautiful, lightweight, high performance and made to last. They come in elevated essentials like black and navy and limited edition colors that are playful, fresh and just really lovely to wear. And the fit? It's flattering, comfortable and made to feel good in. If you work in healthcare or wellness or love someone who does, these are the scrubs. Use code FIGSRX for 15% off your first order@wearfigs.com I've always loved travel. I think some of my favorite memories are from trips where everything felt new. New smells, new food, new light. I still chase that feeling. And whenever I arrive somewhere and step into a beautiful home, one that feels cared for with personal touches, I immediately exhale. That's the kind of space I look for when I travel. It's also why I think hosting on Airbnb makes so much sense. Your home could be that place for someone else. Hosting on Airbnb is a great way to make the most of your time away. It's a wonderful option if you have extra space, own a seasonal home, or tend to travel at the same time every year. Hosting is incredibly flexible. You set the dates, welcome guests on your terms, and create memorable stays that reflect the warmth and uniqueness you seek in your own travels. If you've ever thought about hosting, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com host.
- [02:14]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
When you are pioneering anything or introducing new ideas.
- [02:18]
Gwyneth Paltrow
To the culture, you get criticized.
- [02:20]
Unknown
You do? Yeah, did you hear about that?
- [02:23]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
I didn't find the one.
- [02:24]
Gwyneth Paltrow
I found someone I respected and we.
- [02:26]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Made it the one. In the sort of longing kind of view of love, people understand each other.
- [02:31]
Unknown
As if by magic. Nothing in itself is addictive on the one hand.
- [02:35]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
On the other hand, everything could be addictive if there's an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled.
- [02:41]
Gwyneth Paltrow
I now know that nobody changes until.
- [02:44]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
They change their energy.
- [02:45]
Gwyneth Paltrow
And when you change your energy, you change your life. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the GOOP podcast, bringing together thought leaders Culture changers, creatives, founders and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers and seekers here to start conversations because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world. Here we go. Welcome to the GOOP Podcast. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow and today I'm joined by the brilliant Anna Malaika Tubbs, a mother sociologist, New York Times best selling author and advocate for social equity. I put mother first because so much of Anna's work is centered on the power of motherhood and the ways mothers, especially black mothers, have been systemic, left out of our cultural and historical narratives. Her latest book, Erased, builds on that foundation. It's a deeply researched and eye opening account of how women's contributions have been overlooked throughout our country's history and how we can begin to weave their stories back in with intention. We talk about why selflessness isn't always a virtue, how intuition is vital to personal power, and what it truly means to mother not just children, but new ways of being. Let's get into it.
- [04:10]
Unknown
Okay, I'm so excited to be talking to you today and there's so much to discuss, so I just want to start out with kind of telling our audience a little bit about you, so I'm going to dive right in if that's okay.
- [04:22]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Sounds great.
- [04:23]
Unknown
So I'm so happy to be speaking with you today, Anna. You are a tremendous thought leader and woman. For those of you who don't know Anna yet, she is a scholar, an author, a sociologist, and an advocate known for her work in gender studies, especially at the intersection of race, gender and class. She graduated from Stanford University PI Beta kappa with a BA in anthropology. Her PhD is in sociology and Masters in the Multidisciplinary Gender Studies from Cambridge and a Bill and Melinda Gates Cambridge Scholar. I did not know that part. She is the author of the New York Times best selling book three how the mothers of Martin Luther King Jr. Malcolm X and James Baldwin Shaped the Nation that came out in 2021. And her new book is called what American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us, which is already a New York Times bestseller. Fascinatingly, she grew up in Dubai, Mexico, Sweden, Estonia, Azerbaijan and the us she's working on a unscripted show on the mothers of contemporary black icons. I can't wait to ask you about that. And she has a TED Talk. She is a mother of three, probably most importantly, and lives in Los Angeles. So welcome to the GOOP podcast. Anna.
- [05:50]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. I've Been so excited about this interview.
- [05:55]
Unknown
Well, we're thrilled to have you. You know, you're, like, just in the sweet spot here for everything that I get so excited, fascinated about when I get to interview people like you. I think your work is so layered and so interesting. And, like, I think it's super interesting to me how you bring to the forefront this idea of mothers and all of the different roles of mothers, how they impact all of the layers. I wanted to ask you a little about the first book, if that's okay, and just start there, because I also think it, like, kind of sets the stage for kind of the broader conversation. But I wondered, how did you align on these mothers of James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Like, how did it sort of coalesce in your mind that the idea for the book around these three women in particular, and what was the thesis? What were you setting out to lay out for us?
- [06:48]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Yeah, when I wrote that book, I wasn't a mom myself yet. I was just always really inspired by the role and the power and the influence of motherhood because of my own mom. She was a lawyer who advocated for women's rights in the US as well as abroad. And we spent our childhood, my siblings and I, traveling from country to country nomadically, as a result of her work, my dad's work, too. But I was much more inspired by my mom's work. And so she always told us to focus on how women were being treated in these different places, but especially how the role of motherhood was being treated. And she related so much back to the treatment of motherhood. She thought that if mothers were being supported and they had the appreciation that they deserved and the resources that they deserved, that you would see those ripple effects across the nation. And if they didn't, if they were being ignored or if their role was not being respected or protected, that we would also see some negative ripple effects. And so I grew up believing motherhood was powerful, influential, one of the most important roles, if not the most important roles in societies that were nurturing the beginning stages of life. And so I wanted to write something for my PhD that had to do with celebrating motherhood. But I wanted to also add this inspiration I felt when I read Hidden Figures, a book by Margot Lee Shetterly, that, of course, went on to become this incredible film. And when I read the book, I was so angered that this was the first time I was hearing these women's names, the first time that we knew the role of Black women in NASA's history. And I Thought I'm going to be somebody who joins Margoly Shetterly, and I'm going to find other hidden figures. And I want to pair that with this passion that I have for celebrating mothers. And so then when I was thinking of all of the black mothers that I could have highlighted, unfortunately so many are erased and their contributions are denied. I thought it would be interesting to go to mothers who it would seem so obvious to spend a little time getting to know them, especially because their sons are so famous. And there have been dozens of books written about these men and really to make it so clear that they had been erased and how strategic that erasure is. And so of course, MLK Jr came to mind. And of course, a natural second is then to think of Malcolm X. But the reason I wanted to do three mothers was because we often, when we only have two options, we see them as opposites of each other. We start to have this kind of binary thinking, and that's not representative of their ideas nor their lives. And so I thought a third would be really beautiful to bring in, and especially a queer man's relationship with his mother would be powerful to study. And I had no idea when I had this question of who these mothers were, that they each did what their sons later became famous for, long before their sons were even a thought in their mind. And so that wasn't my thesis. I didn't go in looking for evidence of that. My question was just who were these women? They must have been fascinating. Let's just explore their lives. And at every turn, 90% of the book is my original research. There was nothing out there really for us to go off of before. Now you can Google Googled them as a result of my work and some other scholars as well. But before, when I was starting this project, there was nothing. And every piece of evidence that I found showed that they were the ones who directly influenced their sons to be activists. And it was really so sad that it took until 2021 for us to discover that.
- [10:23]
Unknown
And you said a couple sentences ago something like it was like a conscious erasure of their work. Can you say more about that?
- [10:30]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Absolutely. I found that each of the sons actually gave their mothers a lot of credit for their work. And so in letters that the sons wrote, or in communication with family members, or even in some of the archives that I found, the sons continuously said, my mother was the one who taught me this. My mother was the first to introduce me to this. And so I actually also then realized in my own life that erasure was playing out. And I became very aware of it. And I think that these experiences personally and professionally happened at the same time so that I could be a keen observer of erasure and to give a little background on my own experiences. My husband was the mayor of Stockton, California. He was the first to demonstrate universal basic income in the United States. So he had a lot of attention around him. And every time someone interviewed him, he would say, it was my mom. So he talks about his mom, his grandmother and his aunt, three black women who helped him become the leader that he is today. And I remember him saying that every single time he was interviewed. But when the article came out afterward, or there's two documentaries about him, they are edited out. The women become less important. And there's so much more attention paid to his father, who sadly hasn't been able to be present in his life. But people are more interested in telling about this male figure in his life, even if he wasn't there, rather than the women who were there every single day pouring into him and allowing him to become the leader that he is. So that happening alongside me, completing this project and witnessing how there's evidence of the sons saying, my mother is the one who taught me this. And then we still, as scholars, historians, decide that doesn't fit the narrative. And we're going to tell a different story or we're going to emphasize a different part of what they were telling us. But you can see it even with James Baldwin, he passed. All three of the sons sadly passed before their mothers do. But James Baldwin had a wish that he was going to be buried next to his mother. So artist Baldwin, his mother had nine children, but she is buried next to her firstborn as a symbol of. If people want to come and honor the life of James Baldwin, you will always also have to honor Burtis. And that's just one of many beautiful testaments to the relationship that these sons had with their moms. This season, let your shoes do the talking. Designer shoe warehouse is packed with fresh styles that speak to your whole vibe without saying a word from cool sneakers that look good with everything. The easy sandals you'll want to wear on repeat. DSW has you covered. Find a shoe for every heel from the brands you love, like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas, New Balance and more. Head to your DSW store or visit dsw.com today.
- [13:34]
Unknown
Why do you think that it behooves the patriarchy to erase a mother's role like that, that profound influence that she has specifically on a man? Because it's Funny, like you imagine someone's writing an article, your husband, for example, is talking about his mother. It doesn't seem like a conscious choice, right? Like, oh, I'm gonna uphold the patriarchy by not writing her into this article. But what is the unconscious bias against that theme? How does it keep the patriarchy propped up?
- [14:06]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
The thing that patriarchy relies on is defining who gets to be in control, who gets to have power, who gets to be recognized really as a human being in our nation. And in erased. I'm pointing to the origin of American patriarchy. Yes, Patriarchy exists across the world. I'm not saying that our US system is worse or better. That's not what I'm interested in. I think all patriarchal systems are not great. But I do want to say that it originated somewhere and we want to question who wrote it into our national system. And so our founding fathers define what it is to be human by saying what it is to be man. In the United States, men are the ones who can vote. Men are the ones who can enter into business decisions on their own according to the Constitution without somebody having to speak for them. Men are the ones who pass on their legacy and their status to their children. And based off of the exclusion entirely of women, even in the Constitution, we see that they aren't really a recognized group outside of their ability to reproduce the power of men. So if I'm going back to just even this original kind of social order that the founding fathers envisioned, and it was just their opinion, but then it was systematized through law and through our policies, I think we still see a lot of traces of that to this day. One of those being the erasure of women's roles and women's contributions, especially those contributions that show us that no man is self made. Even though that's something that is really important in American patriarchy is this notion of the self made man, that they were the ones that were able to create everything from scratch, and therefore it makes sense that they're supposed to be in charge. And anything that questions that or that shows us something different is typically erased. And we see that play out over and over again. And with the three mothers, so many people feel shocked when they learn the stories of these women. And they always ask me, how is it possible that they were erased when these sons are so well studied? How is this possible that we didn't know this? And the answer is patriarchy. And it's just one symptom of many.
- [16:23]
Unknown
Yeah. And you know what's interesting as well is that there's like a psychic weight to motherhood. And what you just touched on, really interestingly, is like the propagation of the male, that the importance of women culturally could reside in their ability to reproduce more, presumably white males. Right. To run the patriarchy. So I feel like endemically then what you're saying is in this country, we're always fighting that system. Right. Like, we're always pushing back against this idea that we're not written into the Constitution. It's not our God given right to, you know, go forth and prosper. We're relying on men, and we're sort of begrudgingly given permission, right. To be working women. And then the mother aspect adds a whole other level. And there's this kind of psychic weight of motherhood, I think, particularly black motherhood as a place of resistance and also responsibility. Right. So how do you hold that duality?
- [17:25]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Yeah, And I think going back into that definition that is set up by American patriarchy, first they set up, okay, this is what it means to be man in our nation. And in the letters that they write, we see what it means to be woman in our nation. And in the letters that they write to their daughters, to their wives, they say you're supposed to be obedient. You're also supposed to be protected because you're fragile and you can't think for yourself, you can't do for yourself. And anything that you acquire in terms of skills, let's say, to learn how to play an instrument, for instance, all of that is in service of your role as a mother to our children and the reproduction of this male legacy. So that right there shows us that the way the founding fathers are defining the women in their lives doesn't actually include a lot of other people. So we know that they're setting up this kind of problematic and flawed and limited binary as it is saying what it is to be man, it's either you dominate or what it is to be woman. You are dominated. However, when we look, for example, specifically at black women in American history, and especially during times of slavery, we see that black women were not being included in this notion of womanhood. And in fact, they were told the complete opposite. For a woman who was enslaved, if she came to have a child, no matter how this came to happen, and we know there's horrific ways in which black women were forced to have children, that child would always carry the status of. Of the mother. And so we also know that historically, by law, black women are the only ones who have been told that we were the birthers of non life through our children, that by law our children were somebody else's property. And so black women, in a lot of ways, we have been reclaiming our humanity. And we've been able to see beyond what the law offered to us. We've been able to see from the beginning how made up it all was, how this clearly was just again, a story, someone's opinion. Because we weren't going to accept the fact that we were not human. We were not going to accept the fact that our children were not human. But instead we were going to fight for this nation to see things through our eyes. And we were going to fight for policy and for law to change and be in alignment with us as we were building a country that would be worthy of our children. And so black women have often not been tricked into protecting this system. And you said something earlier around, all of us are kind of fighting this on a day to day basis. But I actually think subconsciously many people have been tricked into assimilating into the two roles that we were offered. Because at least there was some path to humanity there. We were told that's how you'll be treated as a human being. And so when you see anybody protecting that social order, even though it clearly doesn't serve any of us, it's largely because we think that's the rule, that's the path. That's what we need to do in order to be recognized, in order to have access to resources. But black women in particular, One of the reasons I say we have to listen to black women in these moments where we're all so afraid is because we've been cast so far away from it. We've been able to see it very clearly. There's never been a path there. For us to gain humanity, it had to be, let's make up something else, something new.
- [20:59]
Unknown
You've never been tricked.
- [21:00]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Exactly. That's never been afforded to us. I think some of the proximity to it allows people to think, maybe this will work for me too.
- [21:09]
Unknown
That's so interesting. So is that then an additional burden for black women?
- [21:16]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
I think it could be read as a burden, but also I see it more as a leg up on American patriarchy. I use an example of a woman named Ellen Craft in my book to explain how she was a student of American patriarchy and that's what allowed her to achieve freedom. So at a time where she and her husband were enslaved, she had lighter skin and she could pass. And so the way in which she and her husband make their way to the north is that she impersonates a white man and she cuts her hair. She knows how to act. She gets on the train. Her husband, well, he is a slave, but he's pretending to be her slave the entire time, and she's pretending to be a white man. And it's such a courageous act that they are boarding these trains. They are making their way up North. But it also shows just how arbitrary these categories are, how performative these categories are, and also shows how black women are some of the most astute observers of this American patriarchy, and therefore the ones who can really address it and do something about it. In terms of the burden that sometimes comes with that is this expectation of black women to continuously lead us with others not fully listening. And so, in my opinion, if you want to actually follow the lead of black women, if you want to actually elect black women, that's less of a burden than to say, okay, black women are going to continue to vote in a way that is useful for all of us. But then we're not all going to get behind them. We're not going to listen to them as the experts that they are. And then instead, once the problem has happened, we continue to return saying, tell us what we're supposed to do versus listening, when we can actually make a difference. So I think it's both. I do think there's a lot of burden associated with it, but I also see it as the most inspiring thing. And a lot of people ask me why I still am so hopeful when I'm somebody who deeply studies these things that are so ingrained in our nation and can feel like there's nothing we can do about them. And. And my hope stems from the tradition of black womanhood and always envisioning beyond what's being offered to us, always saying we can create something different. And that's what we need so many people to feel right now. At a time where it can be really scary and it can feel like we don't have options and that we're being scared into submission. Truly, it's to remember we can always do something different. We can always choose to imagine beyond and build towards that vision.
- [24:08]
Unknown
You feel that way really, truly, now, even. I mean, I feel like it's been really interesting to be alive during this time for many reasons. But I never thought that the Overton Window moved backwards. I thought it always moved forwards and offered us the path to progression. And it's been very eye opening to live in a time where I feel the regression. And obviously there's axioms like, you know, reproductive rights and many other things. But do you still feel hopeful even now? I mean, I feel it's a regression. I don't know if you feel that way or I don't know if, like a sociologist, you recognize there's pattern recognition here.
- [24:52]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Yes, I do still feel very hopeful. I think the three mothers gave me so many gifts, and one of those is that I studied black women who were born in the early 1900s and who had children in the 1920s, and then they lived through until the 1990s. So when I see what they witnessed throughout their lives. Right, Jim Crow, of course, how they needed to protect their children in the twenties, how they are inspiring their children to participate in the civil rights movement and fight for their rights to be finally realized in a way that had never been the case before. It is hard for me to say this is the worst it's ever been and we can't have hope. And yes, there are moments in which we are regressing. But one of the reasons I wanted to write this book is because we have lost the traces of how American patriarchy as a system has continued to operate. And so we've never fully dismantled it. So that's why our rights continue to be so vulnerable. And so even while I've been on this book tour, several people have asked me, how could you, a woman with three degrees, say that patriarchy is still a problem? Does it even exist anymore? And that's exactly the issue that we're facing right now, is we can't assume that because we've made incredible progress, that we aren't still coming up against the system that is built into the fabric of our nation, that didn't recognize our full humanity from the beginning, that set up this really problematic, again, flawed binary that now is being recycled in conversations in this current administration. And not only attacks on trans people, not only attacks on women, but also attacks on immigrant people. These are also people who were not recognized in this initial definition. And so I just want us all to feel like these are not new battles. And that when we see moments where we are regressing or we see things like Project 2025, if we draw the lines between this original intended social order and even, for instance, our current Supreme Court, where I argue in the book, we've never seen an anti patriarchal Supreme Court in the history of the United States, we need to stop being shocked by what they're deciding. But. But when we can recognize it, then we also recognize the strategies of resistance that have always been there. That's the most important part of my goal is for all of us to restore the things that have been kept from us when we've been taught that American patriarchy is unavoidable, that it's the natural order of things, so that we continue to be surprised when it shows up. And so I think my hope stems from the fact that I'm just not surprised by it. I don't spend a lot of energy letting myself be caught off guard. Instead, my energy is spent saying, I'm pretty sure this is something he's going to try to do. And we know how to counter that. We know what we're supposed to do. We know that we need to lean on each other more. We know the power of community and collective action. We know all of those things. We can't keep going on these cycles of surprise. How did this happen? How did we find ourselves here? And then it just continues to go on and on.
- [28:17]
Unknown
Yeah, because I noticed this with my black women friends. Like, they are not in a perpetual state of surprise at all. And I am. I think I was bamboozled. Like, I've been tricked. You know, like the inception of the conversation. Like, there is a blindness. I think I have. First of all, I think, you know, white women drink that Kool Aid, right? And we do survive and achieve by playing within the borders of that system. And I don't even think we realize that we do that. But I don't know. I think that's what's so interesting. Like, that I'm surprised and you're not. And, like, I'm the one who has an overlay, and you're seeing things clearly.
- [28:57]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
I mean, a lot of questions have been asked of how white women are voting, for instance. Not everybody, right? There's definitely, like, different groups of people, some who are subconsciously, sometimes not necessarily protecting American patriarchy, but who are not questioning it, because that's also not our fault. You know, I have a lot of compassion, actually, for all of us who find ourselves in this American patriarchy without realizing that we are in it. And hence, the reason it continues to surprise is because we're just not noticing it anywhere. And for example, Barbie, the movie that I thought was really great and entertaining, and I loved it personally. However, I was seeing so many women in the theater crying when they were watching Barbie. And I'm thinking, is this their first exposure to the fact that patriarchy exists as a system? And the film. The entire thesis is patriarchy exists and women, if you could just realize it and then tell each other that it exists, then everything will be better. And that's not what I'm saying either. I think, yes, that's a step. We do have to realize that we are being cast into the play that is American patriarchy and told what roles we're supposed to play and how we're all supposed to act. But we actually need to start seeing real policy shift that is anti American patriarchy, because American patriarchy is not in alignment with American democracy. Democracy tells us that power is supposed to be vested in the people, all of the people of that democracy. And we have yet to see that because this original definition only recognized one group really then slightly recognizes a second group in its role that it can play. Reproducing the first group. And everybody else is then told, try to be one of these two things and instead of fighting the system, fight each other. Because maybe that's why you haven't been recognized fully, is that you're not playing this role well enough. And if you can just see it in that simple form and map it to everything we're seeing now with every single executive order, with every attack, it then just makes so much more sense and you feel a lot less helpless. You actually realize how fabricated it is and how it relies on us not recognizing it, but also on the erasure of anything else that will teach us differently. And so in the book, I also offer a lot of moments of hope. Most of the people that I am talking about in the book are those who have recognized the other things that were available to us from the beginning. I talk about Stacey Abrams, for example, as someone who others would have said, what you're trying to do is impossible. There is no way that Georgia could ever become a swing state. And her saying, watch, because all of this is made up and I can make up something else. And it's not to minimize the incredible effort behind that, the incredible courage behind that, but it is to recognize the initial vision we have to operate with on a day to day basis, especially at a time like this. We have to always believe we can create something new, have to believe that they're trying to return to this initial social order. It's not anything new. And we have to study those who have taught us throughout history that we can always create something different. And we have to.
- [32:47]
Unknown
I wanted to take a moment to.
- [32:48]
Gwyneth Paltrow
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- [33:22]
Unknown
Living in and will be living in.
- [33:23]
Gwyneth Paltrow
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- [33:44]
Unknown
So maybe to your point, like, something else to be hopeful about, that in this moment, we're living in a set of circumstances that make it really hard to have the wool pulled over our eyes, right? It's like, it is so out in the open, the patriarchy is being celebrated blatantly. Like in the past, of course, I could be tricked because it was all kind of under the surface, and now it's so incredibly blatant, and you have, like, this bizarre celebration of toxic masculinity. But I guess you're saying that was always sort of there and everybody was pretending that it wasn't. And so is it almost like a sigh of relief, like, okay, great, now nobody can pull the wool over our eyes. We're seeing what is actually under the surface.
- [34:34]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
It's only a good thing if we recognize it as that.
- [34:38]
Unknown
Is there any other conclusion to make?
- [34:41]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
I think people are being tricked into believing that is the thing that will make us all feel comfortable again. Why you're not accessing resources. Oh, because we've strayed too far away from what this original social order was meant to be. And so then we start to think, oh, there's maybe something really positive about, again, protecting this. We then are seeing this notion of President Trump, who I try not to name too much, him saying, I want to pay women to have children again, very Handmaid's Tale.
- [35:17]
Unknown
That was a shocking headline.
- [35:18]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
I wasn't shocking to me, because I was like, that tells us that he believes that women are meant to reproduce the power of men. So that aligns with this initial plan. But that if we're told that this is a good thing and we're not calling it patriarchy, we're saying, let's protect the nuclear family, let's protect Americans and their jobs. And again, it's all reproduction of dehumanizing groups that don't fit into this initial social order, a lot of people aren't going to recognize that it's American patriarchy playing out and that they won't be served by it because they think if I play my Role well enough. If I assimilate well enough, I will be okay. And everybody else, well, they can just figure it out. But what starts to happen is if you don't recognize it for what it is, is you don't realize you're not really a part of it either. And so I don't think people realize that this is an obvious expression of American patriarchy. And so that's going to be my mission over the next several years, is to just make sure we define it for what it is because then we actually, this is the opportunity that it's presenting us with. It's so clear that it does not serve us. It is not going to work. People are not going to prosper more sadly after this. And it's very painful, but I think it's necessary. And I actually see it as a testament to the progress that we've made that they are doubling down so hard on this right now. But I just want to make it obvious that this is what we are seeing. And if we can really all get on the same page about that, then this could be a really positive moment.
- [37:08]
Unknown
So you talk about intuition, courage and ancestral wisdom, I think as tools to dismantle the patriarchy. I would love you to unpack those. I'm so fascinated by how you're mine works. I mean you can get any of them. I mean perhaps intuition, because it's so unexpected.
- [37:26]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Yeah, it's so interesting because when I was really diving into what's been Hidden from Us, the subtitle of the book, those words are what came to mind for me as I was walking through how I was going to tell the story of American patriarchy and how in order to analyze it, I wanted to walk through stages of my own life and my realization of how it was operating all around me to invite my readers to do the same thing and really picture ourselves as children. Think about how our parents were influenced by this. Think about the future of the world through my own children. And those words are what came up as I was analyzing what had been taken from us. But I thought at first, are those a little too cliche? Are people not going to take me seriously? You know, maybe they'll think this is like a self help book. And then I realized that was also American patriarchy telling me that the things that are soft, the things that are vulnerable, the strength and that softness and in that vulnerability were not worthy of our study, were not worthy of us taking seriously. And so I really fully leaned into it and said actually that's exactly why those have been removed from us. And so, for instance, with intuition, if we're putting people into boxes from the moment that they're born and we're telling them, in order to again be treated as a human being in this nation, you have to follow these roles and these dictates, and you have to try to have power over as many people as possible. And of course, capitalism plays a role in that, in terms of money is power. But again, I would say capitalism maps directly into a tool that American patriarchy uses. We're never actually taught to just listen to ourselves. It's always about, let's listen to this system and what it wants from us. And so especially around, let's use mothering as an example at every turn when you are pregnant, for example, or you're going into labor, or you've brought this baby home. American patriarchy, through the system that it is in our healthcare system, but through specifically around the way women's bodies have been treated in our national systems, tells us to not listen to ourselves, tells us somebody else knows better than we do. In fact, if you're in pain and you tell me something's going wrong with you, I might just ignore it. We want to over medicalize the process of it so it becomes less about women saying, okay, here's what I need, here's what I'm feeling, and more about, well, that's not how things go typically. And this is what I'm asking you to do. And then even when you bring your baby home, for instance, for me, my intuition said I want to co sleep with this baby. I want this baby to be on my chest, like all night long. And I want to be as close as I possibly can be to hear my baby breathing and see that their heart is beating rather than put them in a bassinet. And I'm not saying that we all have to do things the exact same way. In fact, I'm saying that's what my intuition told me. And so that's what I did. Because I study American patriarchy, so I'm aware when someone else is trying to tell me, nope, do not do that. You're not allowed to do. Tell me what I'm allowed to do. This is my baby. This is my child. And so I think if we could realize how much of that's been removed from us, just being able to hear yourself and make a choice for yourself, which again, is much more in alignment with democracy. When I'm talking about the opposite of American patriarchy and we're talking about all these words like Intuition and interconnectedness and courage and our capabilities and all of these things. I'm not advocating for a country where women have control over men, and I'm not criticizing men. A lot of people get very defensive. I'm advocating for a country where we each have power within ourselves, and intuition is vital in that power. It's listening to what your body, mind and soul is telling you. And even for those who are the beneficiaries of American patriarchy, you know, if we're thinking of, like, powerful white men, rich white men, because it doesn't include all white men, that initial definition either. But they're being asked to deny some very human parts of themselves, recognizing their connection to other people, recognizing that dominating other people will hurt them as well. And so that's why I think all of those things are critical in our dismantling of patriarchy, is to reclaim the things that we've been told, don't allow you to dominate.
- [42:18]
Unknown
It's so interesting, too, that you talk about that dismantling in the context of being a mother. And because when you were talking about people saying, oh, don't do that and do it this way, and it's true. It's like so many of those, quote, standards of how we're supposed to raise a kid, the co sleeping, the breastfeeding, the, you know, gentle parenting versus whatever. It's like, it's a really interesting sort of slice of life and format in which to kind of inculcate more patriarchy. Right? Separate you from yourself, from your own instincts.
- [42:55]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Yeah, exactly. And I think it comes up powerfully in the role of motherhood. And why, even when I wrote the Three Mothers, yes, I was talking about these three particular women, but it opened up a whole world of understanding for me because I also then was expecting my firstborn. As I started writing the book and it became very personal and political and academic at the same time to complete this project, I became so aware of the control of the role of mothering and why it's so important to control it. Because, I mean, anybody who is a parent, but especially a mother, you see how close you become to all other beings around you. You know, I suddenly was like, whoa, I understand this world so differently. And through my birthing experiences, the power that I felt within myself and how if we all felt this power, how different this country would look and why there might be a need to control that, why there might be a need to say that mothering was weak. Even for those of us whose children are not necessarily our biological children, we might not necessarily have birthed them. There's still this power in understanding our influence on another being's life and to then make that role seem weak, then to make that role be something that we're going to use to remove rights from somebody.
- [44:29]
Unknown
Right. Like constantly the selflessness.
- [44:32]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Oh, yes. The sacrifice of it.
- [44:35]
Gwyneth Paltrow
All.
- [44:35]
Unknown
Right. And how amazing that is. And that's the gold standard. Right.
- [44:39]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
That's like the thing that I constantly am trying to critique is this notion that to be a great mom is to sacrifice yourself the most. And that is also the propaganda of American patriarchy. We cannot buy into it. And I write it in the book when, you know, I still am actually nursing my third. So I have three babies.
- [45:00]
Unknown
Yeah, you moved quick. You really. When I met you, you didn't have any.
- [45:03]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Since January 2019, up until now, I have either been pregnant or nursing or both without a day of breaks, and I'm still nursing the third. So I say that because it made me well aware of the power of my body and my ability to care for other people around me. And how dare anybody tell me that what I have been able to do makes me less than. Makes me weak. That, you know, birthing is gross. Like all these ways in which people try to remove the power from women is just so obvious in this focus on mothering. But I will say that June Jordan, a black feminist scholar, once said that every time a child is born, the world begins again. And that is when we talked earlier about some of the contrast between some people believing that mothering just reproduces the patriarchy or some people using it to reproduce the patriarchy. We can always again present something else, which is we are the ones that are nurturing this new world beginning. And how powerful is that? How incredible is that? And we get to ask our children, what world is beginning with you? Rather than parent them in a way where we try to replicate the world that already exists, can we ask them, who are you? Versus this is what you need to be. So that's just one of the shifts that I also offer in terms of moving us away from American patriarchy.
- [46:47]
Gwyneth Paltrow
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- [47:41]
Unknown
So in that vein, what has your motherhood like? How has that reshaped your sense of purpose and voice and ambition right outside of just the dedication and love of nurturing their world and the new world that is starting with them?
- [48:00]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
I always see mothering as an extension of our identities. I think, again, it's also been presented to us historically as a replacing our previous identity versus a growth in it. And in that tradition of these three women that I talked about in my first book, Alberta King, Berta Baldwin and Louise Little, they were always activists in their own right. They were always advocating for better access to resources in their communities to change their circumstances around them. All of those things were true. And when they became mothers, it just further amplified that because of this reclamation of all the things again that feel so in opposition to what we've been taught we need to uphold. You can't deny your connection to somebody else. You can't deny the need to envision beyond, because we're hoping to build a nation worthy of our kids beyond our time here on this earth. And so it just, I think, elevates your ability to commit to creating better circumstances not only for yourself and your own family, but you become aware of the pain of other people, how horrible it would be. As soon as I was holding my firstborn, all of these intense feelings swept over me of just the horrific things that happen in this world. And I had that too. I think, you know, so many of my friends have said this, and I think that we should talk about it more because there is, you know, this veil that suddenly lifted where you think all of us just started as this precious baby, every single one of us.
- [49:48]
Unknown
Every serial killer, you know, it's really wild to think about.
- [49:52]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
It is. And it's a simple thought, but it's so deeply profound. And if we can all have that awareness around how we interact with each other on a day to day basis, and we remember the simple truth of something happened in this precious baby's life that created more pain, that created more trauma. But can we interrupt that pain? And I think that there's something really unique that mothers can do because we can't deny that in each other. You know, there's just something really powerful about creating and connecting with that creation that's so beautiful.
- [50:36]
Unknown
And what I love so much about what you just said is that it sounds like your children have taught you about tenderness and justice and imagination and, you know, in ways that your academic work couldn't have.
- [50:52]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
I agree completely. It reminds me of when my firstborn, I was talking to my doulas, and they asked me why I wanted to work with doulas. And I said, you know, I've been doing all this research about how horrific the treatment of mothers is in the United States, and I don't want to die when I go into a hospital, and I want somebody to. I was just going on and on about all the things I knew statistically. And they were like, okay, take a breath. And they said, don't let your knowledge of all of this rob you of the magic of what's happening right now. Don't let it rob you of the joy. And I always carry that with me now. And a lot of people have asked me, how do I still seem so happy when I'm talking about American patriarchy? And again, I have three kids under the age of five and a half, and I am not somebody who's a sacrificial mother. I'm not somebody who believes that's the best way to love them. And so I approach my mothering with so much confidence in myself, I give myself so much grace. And I also get to just enjoy the magic of it all. And seeing the world through their eyes, they have no idea what's happening on this larger scale. My youngest, his birthday is November 6th. So on November 6th, I was at the balloon museum, you know, and I think that is really a powerful thing. And it makes me think, even beyond parenting, for everybody to have proximity to children, you know, like elderly people in our nation. I talk a lot about how American patriarchy is really awful to people who are aging because we put so much emphasis in this, again, original social order, on reproductive abilities. And so when we're no longer in those stages of our lives, but especially for women, we completely discard them. Instead of creating spaces where our elderly can interact with our children and we can continue this interconnectedness throughout these different stages of our lives. And so I think the joy that I get to experience with my children on a day to day basis is something that we all could experience if we saw children as all of our children. And it's something that comes up when we look at other nations where we think, oh, you know, in Japan, children can just get on the train. And why can't we do that here in the US it's because we don't recognize, again, our connection to each other. We could actually all, like, all the people in my neighborhood could benefit from my three babies and living through their lives and their eyes. We just don't do that as a nation.
- [53:32]
Unknown
We could create that fabric that entwines us all, but we're moving more and more towards, like, the individual, you know, the person, like, in a room with a VR mask and going to, like, completely fulfilled by everything online. And that's a whole other podcast, though.
- [53:48]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
I do talk about it in the book, though I do have a whole section on tech and AI and VR, because currently it's just going to reproduce American patriarchy because it is based off of what's already available to it. But I also think technology always has potential to create another world. And so as long as we can diagnose it appropriately and see American patriarchy for what it is right now, I think we are at a really important moment, especially for AI. Obviously, we're all talking about AI, and that's another reason why we need to analyze this initial social order, because we don't want to just reproduce it unknowingly. We actually could intervene with AI.
- [54:33]
Unknown
Hey, that is another podcast. So just before, in our last two minutes, will you just tell me, now that you've birthed this book out into the world, just tell me, what are you dreaming into being? Now, creatively, and I want to hear about the show and intellectually, personally, however you want to answer the question.
- [55:00]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
I just always have ideas and stories that come to mind for me, and I'm really grateful that I've kind of established this space in nonfiction. And people see me as somebody who writes for history and all of these things, and I love that, and I'm going to continue to do that. But I also have ideas for fiction, and I wrote a script for a rom com, and I'm writing a script for the Three Mothers because I really believe these three women deserve to be known across the world. And so I'm not done telling their story, but I think that screen projects connect with so many more people. So I'm excited to see what happens there. And then with Erased, I want to do maybe some kind of documentary, and I think we saw some amazing, you know, films with cast Origin with the Ava did for cast was incredible. Stamped from the beginning. Mara Bracha kill for Ibram Kendi's book. So I'm definitely exploring that and there was so much that I couldn't fit in the book. Sadly, American patriarchy is in everything that we do, and so I think a lot of people who read the book will feel like, okay, and now what do we do? Even though I wrote a conclusion entirely based off of solutions, I think that maybe a podcast series of conversations on now we understand what it is, here's how we move forward. So all the things I'm just seeing what I can do. I am done having children though, so that's exciting.
- [56:25]
Unknown
Okay. Shop is closed.
- [56:27]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Creation in all other ways.
- [56:29]
Unknown
Exactly. Well, thank you so much for being on the pod and it's so lovely to see you. You're amazing and I hope I get to see you in person soon.
- [56:40]
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Yes, please. I would love that.
- [56:47]
Gwyneth Paltrow
Mothering is the first experience we all share. It's how we enter the world. It's such a simple truth, and yet we rarely stop to consider just how foundational mothers are. Anna's work is deeply important, not just in recognizing the mothers behind some of the most culturally defining leaders and change makers in our history, but in inviting us to reflect on what so often goes unseen, the quiet power so many women carry. Thanks for tuning in. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.