The Mother is not only a person or nation or continent; it is also the West’s self-flattering idea of itself. The West portrays itself as the Mother of all Mothers, the beacon of truth and civilization, the arbiter of law and justice. This idea has always been hypocritical, but after the war in Gaza, the West’s claim to defend “civilization” has been exposed as grotesque. Indeed, we may have reached a full-circle moment in history: Mother is finally accepting her true nature, as she revisits with pride her past of colonial plunder.

The exchange implied in the man/woman relationship has a twofold nature: on the one hand, it is an exchange between variable capital and domestic labor; on the other it is an exchange between variable capital and prostitution. On the formal level, it represents itself as an exchange between the wage and domestic labor or prostitution labor and between male worker and housewife or prostitute. However, in reality it is an exchange between variable capital and the labor of domestic work or prostitution and between the houseworker or sex worker and capital, mediated by the male worker. In other words, the exchange of the wage for domestic work (or prostitution) between the male worker and housewife or prostitute is the form of the real exchange that takes place between the houseworker or sex worker and capital.