"The family must be abolished, which means a 'breaking open of the family to free and unleash what’s good in it'."
The last time shark attack survivor Bethany Hamilton was on these pages she’d just given a tell-all interview to conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
Bethany hit a wide-range of right-wing talking points – Motherhood, Homeschooling, Marriage, How Social Media is Enslaving your Kids, Christianity and “Men Don’t Belong in Women’s Sports.”
The thirty-four-year-old mammy of four, who lost her arm in a shark attack in 2003, and which was beautifully described by Matt George in a subsequent profile, said it was the WSL opening the door to T-Girls to competing in the women’s div that shook her out of her island complacency and got her politically active.
The stance cost her a sponsorship with Rip Curl which pivoted to the, as it turned out, not-so-lucrative trans-woman market.
Bethany told Tucker she was speaking for tour surfers who felt muzzled and agreed with Kelly Slater who called for a trans-only div and added she’d boycott events if it went ahead. She also issued a prophecy, predicting Third World men would “suppress hormones” so they could get rich competing against women.
Now, in a message to her almost two-and-a-half million fans, Bethany Hamilton says media is brainwashing young people into being anti-family.
“Society as a whole seems so backwards right now! Media brainwashing,” she writes over a chilling study that revealed “70% of millennials would rather have pets than kids.”
In this wild era of post-modernist thinking, “Family” has become a dangerous right-wing idea, one that perpetuates gender roles and economic inequalities and which is garlanded with notes of fanatic Christianity and white supremacy.
As Lily Sanchez beautifully wrote in her piece Why We Should Abolish the Family,
The family must be abolished, which means a “breaking open of the family to free and unleash what’s good in it and to generalize that into the social body as a whole. To make the necessary forms of care available to everyone unconditionally.”
Everyone can support family abolition, even those who feel there is nothing wrong with their family. Family abolition is not about breaking up individual families but about radically changing the society that makes the family structure necessary, about creating a society in which everyone is cared for. We can—and must—imagine and create better ways to live and to love each other.
Family. For or against?
I’ve busted up a few in my time, not always intentionally, but I still stand by the ol nuke fam.
You?