I have never liked the Magic Mommas / Trembling Sisters essay b/c it absolves women who've put themselves in the MM position of their responsibility for taking up that role & doesn't name the kind of damage these kinds of women can wreak when they act out or end up crumbling...

The essay is here, by Joanna Russ, called "Power and Helplessness in the Women's Movement" https://feminist-reprise.org/library/resistance-strategy-and-struggle/power-and-helplessness-in-the-womens-movement/

It doesn't name that MMs often find that kind of power over other women (& their enacted helplessness) appealing for various reasons & that the tremblers can have legitimate points about her power & uses that are misdirected into self- & other- destructive actions...

It has always read to me of putting successful women in a "victim" position (that they're somehow uniquely victimized by the women they feel vindicated by escaping, besting, or leaving dependent on them) & ignoring the costs of success that they burden others with...

The essay's always struck me as existing solidly within the dynamic the essay tries to name-- as deliciously chastising the tremblers so the MM feels like her choices (to pursue notoriety, power, ambition, etc.) are vindicated & that her success is worthwhile in comparison...

The essay makes note that the MM celebrity feminists & writers of the time had to make sacrifices about their agency, autonomy, & voice to be published, as if this is not often precisely the critique of those w/out such influence & a real problem in co-opting radical movements...

The tremblers are posited as simply misunderstanding the costs of success- they "don't know" what happens at the upper levels- as if some women's power or just pettiness doesn't rest exactly on obscuring or sharing what it is they do...

The author claims that MMs wreak far less damage than the tremblers. I don't believe this. I have seen women who put themselves in this position cause enormous harm and even abuse others. In most cases the dynamic is mutually reinforcing and mutually destructive to all...

The idea that the MM bears less responsibility for harm than tremblers tells me that MMs often consider themselves to have the unique ambivalent control over the community-- that they are in fact the uniquely helpless ones & how dare others deny them help when they do it all...

That trashing can never come from above & that successful or just happenstance-in-charge women don't use "that woman is needy" as a way of seriously hurting others is ludicrous. See any profession where women help & hurt others: therapy, abuse/trauma services, nursing, etc.

Not to say that the tremblers don't exist. In my experience they usually attempt to destroy each other first & once they get juiced up enough on their first taste of female power they then go for a token figure they feel ashamed for being insecure about/dependent on...

But the essay has always struck me as a way for a self-identified MM to strike out at the women *she* feels insecure about/dependent on- women whose politics she may feel like she betrayed, women she must admit she is powerless to help, the readers she needs but cannot answer...

One of the biggest developmental challenges as a female person in a patriarchy is confronting your lack of power relative to men. Most if not all women struggle w/dealing w/this honestly & it may be impossible to integrate it fully into your self-concept w/out shame...

It's only one dynamic that happens when women try to confront this lack of power together. There are more, some of them more mundanely hopeful & others much darker. Always thought this essay fails to recognize the wide spectrum of female ambivalence about power & helplessness.

Ironically it has also always read to me as undermining women's power: successful women need their helplessness recognized lest they lose their power, their power is dependent on the helplessness of other women, that being put-upon is a bigger deal than patriarchy itself...

It also fails to note that power over other women- power to help or harm & the choices we make around this- is sometimes life or death. That women already have power thru considerable influence over the lives of other women...

The call to stop "trembling" in the face of MMs is because the MMs don't have any power, or at least not real power, you see, book deals don't buy you much & what did a CR group ever do anyway? Nevermind that women can change the course of law, or just get each other fired.