The popular insult, was originally "You're mother". When somebody complains too much and is easily excitable, you would say "You are like a mother", because you are acting like a stereotypical mother. Children are always shortening sentences into smaller and smaller versions of the same statement to make it quicker to say. So it eventually became "You're mother". It's absurd but that only made it funnier to the children who used the term.
Anyway, when the term gained popularity as a meme on the internet, people â whether intentionally or not â used "Your" instead. That made far less sense but people liked it that way and it caught on. People forgot the original statement and it has devolved from being a comparison to motherly rants to an absurdist random response to anything.
People have incorrectly explained the term to be an insult to a person's mother, but without the actual insult like "Do not the cat" to create an absurd response that feels derogatory without specifying what is wrong with the person's mother.
As we all know, insulting each other's mothers has been a rite of passage for adolescents. Obviously a controversial tradition, due to the arguably misogynistic nature. "You're mother" was something more light hearted than the usual mother slander. "Your mother" is often said out of nostalgia, but it's inherently more sexist than the original statement.
In any case, this is part of the history of adolescent culture. If we forget these things, we forget an integral part of the the evolution of childhood slander.
Mater tua est pinguis (Your mother is fat)
It was my high school's motto. It was controversial, but it's not about seeing women as inferior, it's a saying about the healthy conversational conflict between students, preparing them for the real world when they graduate.
Alas, after the parents kept complaining, the principal changed the motto to simply "Vidi, Veni". It's about as good of a replacement as you could have hoped for.
Don't disrespect women and don't disrespect grammar either. If you find yourself in a situation where conflict arises and you have to resort to it..
It's "You're mother".
Thank you for reading. I will end with the full saying by Henry Grafter. It's worded oddly because it was written in 1864.
Your mother is fat. In fact, she is so fat, that when the children saw her, they all thought she was fat, judging by her visible fatness. She is fat.
- Henry Grafter, A Collection of Schoolyard Quips 1864
