Bad Mothers and Gender Traitors

Abstract

This chapter considers the depiction of the monstrous woman in newspaper discourse about "jihadi brides" through two narratives of deviant femininity: the monstrous mother and the gender traitor. While the monstrous mother was understood to have abandoned her maternal life-sustaining role and sacrificed her children to jihadism, the gender traitor was seen to have exploited her femininity to befriend, manipulate and procure young women for IS. Through monster talk, these women were represented as profoundly transgressing gendered expectations by instrumentalizing their children, upholding IS patriarchy and subverting the sanctity of the home by reproducing jihadist ideology in the ungovernable private sphere. These depictions served to project well-established horror narratives onto the "jihadi brides," representing them as an evil presence that lurked threateningly on the borders between civilization and barbarism.