If the average American were asked what they imagine the priorities of the feminist movement are these days, most people would likely cite concerns like “fighting abortion bans” or “getting justice for sexual violence victims” or boring mainstays like “equal pay for equal work.” But if you listen in to the world of right-wing social media influencers, they have a different answer. To them, feminists are single-mindedly obsessed with destroying women who identify as “tradwives.”
Are they also selling the fantasy you can make ends meet on a single person’s income?
It’s the same fantasy. You work on seven years I’ll work on odd ones
Right, that’s the most idiotic part. My wife has a career that I also make sacrifices for and vice versa. Even with modest career growth, she will contribute about $4M in earnings over 30 years.
Setting earnings aside, we have a child, and she is an equal partner. It would be insulting and foolish to ask her to stop working. We want our son to grow up knowing that women are just as capable as men.
They’re selling the fantasy to people still living with their parents.
In the UK childcare is so expensive that it has started to make sense for someone to take a career break while they are young. Unfortunately women appear to be most affected by this.
This is probably a luxury thought but I wonder if the opportunity cost of the career break not leading to promotions ends up costing a lot more than the childcare in the long run.
Child care is not expensive here, but women tend to “sacrifice” their economic future to spend more time with the kids. This means they work less than men, and they will suffer quite a lot when it comes to pensions when they get older.
Imagine not knowing how to cook or do anything for yourself so you need a captive woman to do it all for you and not resent you at all.
My conservative friend is literally this person.
His mother was his “slave” and now he found an “asian slave.” He doesn’t cook or clean or anything really. He’s even told me to look for foreign women because “white women” don’t want to do things for you like others will.
She does all the work at home and he makes money. He’s living the 1950s conservative dream…
Married my Filipina last Friday! She’s the perfectly coifed and feminine “tradwife” this article is talking about, but Jesus that word makes me almost physically ill. These young men are looking for slaves, not partners. Had a gf like that once, bored me to death.
I have to note, there’s something to be said about a traditional division of labor in the household. We both cook and clean, but it’s 90% her doing. I do all the “manly” stuff she’s clueless about. It works because no one is removed about a thing not being done. Without any real discussion, we both know who’s responsible for what and we take care of one another’s needs. There are almost zero arguments, and when there are, they aren’t angry.
LOL, it was kinda hard to adjust to! “Baby, I can feed myself, been doing it for decades. I can also run a washing machine.” She’s never had a man that didn’t treat her like a maid. I’ve turned her around from being so submissive and now she is more open with me, less fear of offence.
tl;dr: I just married the finest women I’ve ever known, and she’s what the article describes. But she’s my partner, not my slave. If anyone’s a slave, it’s mutual. :)
Congratulations!!
I’m perpetually single so I don’t actually have a dog in this fight, but I’d like to think I would be the same as you in that situation lol
Thanks! I was raised by Greatest Gen grandparents, Beaver Cleaver style in the 70’s, so this is natural to me.
But I had always approached live-in relationships as a 50-50 thing. We both split the chores equally, ya know?
But that’s really bullshit. Partners have their strengths and weaknesses, so why not play to that? Dad never asked mom to mow the lawn. Mom never asked dad to do the dishes. It was simply understood that each person had their role to play, and they did so. Zero fights, zero discussion.
Dad helped with the math homework (he was an engineer), mom with the English and writing (she wasn’t creative, but she knew the rules). Nothing wrong with that.
I do not wish to give credence to these assholes that merely want a subservient wife, disgusting, revolting. The term “tradwife” makes me physically ill, puts a spin on my stomach, can’t even begin to watch the videos in the article. But again, there’s something to be said for a division of labor.
My wife honestly loves taking care of me. First date she kept saying, “I will take care of you.” Guess that Filipina for, “I love you.”?
What that means to her is cooking and cleaning and such. And I wish to take care of her. To me that means making most of the money, handling vehicle issues, fixing the weed whacker, whatever.
I have never loved or been loved like this. She took my hand in marriage last Friday and I’ll hold that until the end.
(And in writing this, I realized she has a cold and is ill in bed. I will go to her now. Later y’all.)
I guess a 50/50 (ish) is a nice place to start exploring where the two participants in the union have their strengths. Congratz on the wedding, I hope your wife get’s well soon!
I dislike your friend so much, just from your description of them, that I caught myself wanting to down vote your post.
Sorry friend lemming, thanks for the hard share.
Lol thanks for resisting! Just remember the downvote button was “invented” to filter out distractions from the discussion, it’s not about what we like or don’t like but whether it’s relevant to the conversation! :)
Angry upvote
And I’ll bet you dollars to donuts he will say he’s not a racist because he’s married to an Asian.
What does asian slave even mean? Like he literally went to SE Asia and got someone or was there an Asian girl he met that happened to enjoy being a housewife?
I’ve heard from several people who are in an older generation than I am about this, but it goes something like this: Date foreigners, and even better, if you can go to that country for a little while and find someone willing to be your wife there, marry them and bring them back.
It’s always been off-putting when someone can say things like that in an earnest manner.
I mean, look how many chicks can’t make any money and they all think they’re 10/10s looking for dudes to pay for everything. There’s a real weird dynamic going on with this generation. Both sexes aren’t even successful at their own default stereotype but want their partners to be the perfect stereotype.
That last sentence is a good way to put it.
I’ve heard the term “tradwife” before, and it always seems to equal “Someone who will be a new mom, but does what she’s told”.
Based on direct personal experience I recommend a witch wife. Intelligent, capable, not submissive (unless she wants to be) and definitely not helpless.
Young disillusioned men who don’t think they are getting the respect they deserve fantasize about a submissive wife and family that they can rule over as a Patriarch. They think that this is more natural or normal than marriage as a partnership of equals.
It’s fucking gross
Yuck. My wife is an adult with her own feelings, goals, fears, and strengths. Most of which compliment my own. I can’t imagine trying to keep her held down, because it’s too much fun to stand back and watch her.
Woman In Total Control of Herself. There’s a song and everything!
Great song too, I listen to it on my way to work when I want to get upbeat!
[off topic] There was a hilarious episode of Dharma and Greg where Greg’s mother turns 50 and starts to freak out. Dharma tries to help by getting her to embrace her “inner crone.”
Exactly who I want!
My friend couldn’t understand why I was into his sister when “she’s stubborn and thick headed!” No, she just knows what she wants and she knows when to argue. I like that she has a brain…
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No one:
Conservatives: WEMEN BAD
I like that there’s even an accidental confession in the spelling.
These are the fantasies of rich grifter assholes like Steven Crowder. They still pretend it’s the 50’s when most households could function on just one salary. The reality is that 95% of American households can’t survive on a single income. This is not the reality for most couples. These ideas are just as unpopular as abortion bans. They live in this weird bubble where they think women want to return to servitude and have prove they “deserve” a divorce. It’s a fantasy. It’s not going to happen, boys.
The reality of feminism, though, is that if a woman truly desired to be that kind of wife, they’d 100% have that choice. That is kind of the entire point of feminism. If that’s the woman they want to be, then more power to them.
But they also want to be sure women aren’t being coerced, blackmailed, etc., into that subservient position. Because that’s the most important part. It must be her decision.
Sure, feminist ideals require any woman to be free to choose a Leave It To Beaver lifestyle. But that still doesn’t make it a realistic lifestyle for most people, because feminism won’t provide the means to pay for it.
And just as freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences, feminism doesn’t mean I can’t find certain people’s life choices revolting. People who advocate the “tradwife” lifestyle aren’t doing so in a vacuum; it’s very much a product of the fascist movement and it shouldn’t be allowed to hide behind feminism.
Oh, please don’t misunderstand. I am not defending these “tradwife”-obsessed psychos…
I just wanted to point out that there is nothing inherently wrong with that lifestyle, as long as the person chooses to live that way.
Its partly a reaction against the financial freedoms women have started to enjoy since they started getting closer to male salaries and a career became a more socially acceptable option for women. In the past if you were a woman you had to marry to get your own place, it was also deeply socially unacceptable for women to remain unmarried into their twenties and thirties, so far more women had to marry men who never really the right choice for them, witness the high divorce rates for the tail end of this group as divorce became easier and more socially acceptable. I would also add its also more socially acceptable for people to be out and in relationships now, rather than marrying a beard or playing full on pretend. This further cuts the pool who needed to marry men rather than wanted to marry men.
Now women can remain single or in more flexible arrangements and a large group of men are now struggling to adapt. Large elements of this group have been targeted by the likes of Crowder for rationalisation and end up on the incel pathway. A trad wife is a fantasy that makes everything easy for this group of men, its going to be attractive to them.
They would hate my household. My wife is much better educated than I am and has always made a lot more money than I do and we have had to go down to a single income so I can help my daughter through online school. We can afford it- just barely, but we can afford it. Total reversal of gender roles.
We’ve done it twice before. Once when we kept her home and did online school during COVID and once from when she was a baby to age three. I was the one staying home with the kid those two times too.
They’d probably want to throw me in prison for that or something.
Yeah, reality ends up like my ex, who wanted a tradwife who also makes the bulk of the money for him to spend.
And no, I knew none of that beforehand.
I think the principle is popular enough - though certainly not for everyone (it’s probably not even close).
The impracticality of surviving on a single income makes the idea laughable, and I wonder how much of its popularity is actually a desire to live a comfy life on a single income - maybe a few kids too.
So really, it’s aspirational. Like a hummer in every driveway sort of thing.
I grew up conservative Christian and have some friends in traditional marriages, although they are liberals politically, but it’s pretty different from what these grifters sell it as, even Crowder who presumably did it “the right way.” The expectation of the man in this arrangement is something these grifters love to gloss over. “The man should lead” means they are leaders in a church community in their free time, the wife is too, everyone knows each other’s business to a degree, problems are discussed in small men’s groups or women’s Bible study etc. It’s really not a commodified lifestyle which these grifters sort of treat it as, it’s a lot of sacrifice. They sell it here as this easy thing but the ones I know who make it work don’t treat it that way.
Naïve man children who need validation because being with someone their equal is scary, and the “tradwife” insofar as they exist, wants to be completely dependent on this manchild. Sounds like a great idea I’m sure it works out well all the time. The idea of being with a woman like this hell to me, and any of the associated sexual fantasies involved are hotter when power is willingly relinquished, from either person, not in some weird coercive context.
being with someone their
equalsuperiorThis is their real fear. And that if women are given a chance to live their life in freedom, the men might actually have to offer something on the relationship table that they might not be able to manage.
I think the “men” here is them specifically because they don’t have confidence in themselves, thus the need for an outside force to determine their status. If you know of the Steven Crowder article on how they got married the “right” way, that’s a great glimpse in to this mindset, especially now that him and his wife are separated. He makes it a point to highlight how they’re so much better than others, that he’s proud to say that, and how he’s writing the article while presumably on his honeymoon. Not even all these tradwife guys want to wait to marriage for sex either, like at least Crowder supposedly followed through with that part of it. I feel like the commodified tradwife brand is sort of just a secular fantasy of what religious traditional marriages would be but without the actually hard things that come with that.
Surely it’s easier to demand a submissive partner who won’t talk back rather than spend time on grooming, personal hygiene, and not being a fucking massively immature man-baby though?
It’s funny cause I grew up where the traditional husband and wife arrangement was what you were expected to perform, and I still have some friends who’ve followed through with it into adulthood. I’m talking 3+ kids, wife might be part time involved with the church, and the husband is just working so much, plus he’s involved in church activities and “leadership” stuff. I’ve basically seen the best cases of this working and worst cases too.
The thing that turned me against this initially, is it just sounded so fucking miserable as the husband, you’re expected to demonstrate leadership in the community, provide for your family, budget your household and wife’s spending, know how to be a handyman around the house, do all the yard work and heavy chores, provide your wife the “tools she needs” ie renovate and get the fancy stuff. You never see your friends and it becomes your whole life, plus you don’t even see your kids as often as you might if you were trading time with a working spouse. Oh and you likely are part of a church men’s group and bible study where you have hosting and leadership tasks, and you are as a group working through problems in marriages and providing support.
That’s not the arrangement these tradwife fetish guys want, they imagine it like the husband is just this individualist dom sex pest and the wife does all the boring stuff so they can go be “men” in a juvenile fantasy way. They don’t realize in these traditional arrangements that actually work, the commitment goes both ways and you are giving up those man fantasies. They don’t think about how you’re involved with a whole community that provides structure to your life.
insofar as they exist
They definitely do
They do, I mean the ones in the article are running online brands based on it, but I grew up in an environment with strict traditional marriage ideals and the tradwife in that context doesn’t match with this.
Everyone here assuming all of us know what a tradwife is…
Anyway, from the article:
" “Tradwife” is internet slang for “traditional wife.” It’s largely a social media trend of conventionally attractive white women putting out TikToks and videos gushing about the joys of submissive marriage and “modesty,” though notably this “modest” clothing often leaves little to the imagination. "
“Tradwife” is internet slang for “traditional wife.”
Thanks for clearing that up.
I thought it was a wife who likes rock climbing.
I wish I knew more women and men who liked rock climbing. It’s so fucking flat here, and I can’t find anyone who wants to take vacations to go climb.
I thought it was a trade-wife… meaning one that could construct dovetail joints from furniture. My enthusiasm is misplaced, and i feel bad.
Dumb removed are smart.
I also want be a trophy husband, where I don’t have to do shit. Smart
But to put up with that amount of stupidity I would work my ass off to be sure I’m out of there instead of being someone’s slave who doesn’t get an opinion. Dumb removeds
Edit: Brah I never thought that so many people would think I’m for real in a post that starts with “dumb removed are smart.”
Y’all are soo smart
I think you underestimate the amount of subservience involved here. You’re basically raising a baby man child that doesn’t ever grow up.
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Based on the downvote count, you may want to reconsider where the failure in communication occurred.
In the part where I insult him, but it’s fine, it was worth it.
Idk. They’re hitching their financial stability to someone else entirely.
They still going to be able to do that at 40? Good luck with job searching after you’ve just been tradwifing it for however many years.
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The trick is to get pregnant and marry, like this you can claim half of his stuff BC one of you sacrificed their job carrear to stay at home.
It works on courts, don’t ask how I know this
You don’t
Ah yes. The not at all hidden cost of sticking your dick in someone.
Fleecing these nutjobs by pandering to their fantasies is so fucking easy.
Same folks who wouldn’t walk through New York City honestly believe they’d be a badass warlord in the post apocalypse
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I don’t understand that reference.
This is like ragebait to the third power.
That’s Salon for you.
Your right, but I think there is something there. I was watching a girl gamer/streamer (whatever you call them) give an entire talk about how she is against feminists or someshit, and the 4chan crowd were spamming the link and calling her based - so I decided to check it out and it was her complaining about getting drafted, being a triggered armpit hair snowflake, some other dumb shit - really fucking idiotic stuff. (Her name was Brittany venti and something about feminism ruining her life for the curious).
If I didn’t know any better, it looks to me to be the alt-right and by proxy, conservative strategists, trying to find the latest wedge issue to attack women and women friendly causes - flinging shit around and seeing what sticks
In my circles of friends, I’ve been hearing girls make dumb comments about feminism as well, so there is something bubbling under the surface. None of them can articulate anything though
In my doomer brain…
It’s just a preview of what’s to come if the far right takes over, for every woman that is unfortunate to come across a man that is all in.
They’ll reverse no fault marriage, and then when you marry the guy (either because the guy pulls a bait and switch, or you don’t really understand what your agreeing too until after the fact) you either comply or get beat into submission, with no way out, while you pop out babies
This is a handbook, not a fad.
I’m sure I’m wrong and it’s a bunch of women that don’t want to work…but if it’s not, it could turn into some scary shit.
Well. The Handmaid’s Tale is the handbook since they literally want Gilead and have been openly working towards it
I’m curious how all these alt-right (e.g., white supremacist/christian nationalists) think that they’re going to be able to afford a family–since the very concept of a tradwife is rooted in having a large family–when their wife is going to be entirely a stay-at-home wife? What kind of career do they think that they’re going to have? Are they in medical school, or prepping for the bar exam? Did they just finish their MBA?
The funny thing is that the GOP were the ones who destroyed the middle class. In 1968, one job supporting a family of four with a stay at home mom was the norm. Nixon’s Vietnam War inflation [he paid for the war with paper money to avoid raising taxes] combined with the Oil Boycott made more and more families dependent on a second job to keep going. After three terms or Reaganomics, the two income family was the norm. Meanwhile, $1 million in 1968 was a vast fortune, and by 1993 it was what a rich guy paid for a party.
They fantasize about being a local warlord when society breaks down.
Shhh. You’ll just confuse them. Let them have their fantasy and economic ruin.
No. That gets the rest of us economic ruin as well
If it only affected them, and not just their (potential) children, I’d be fine with that. But growing up in that kind of family ain’t no way to start life.
Honestly, if you make enough money that you can be a solid tradhusband, and you find a woman that wants to be a tradwife, that’s fine! Do that thing if that’s what you want. But slipping into poverty because you need to live out fantasy visions of masculinity, and dragging your family with you? Naw.
Yuuup. Both my wife (and myself for that matter) said it’d be great to be a stay at home spouse. But then the other person would have to make double the money, and that’s not happening…
I’ve met people who live that life as a kind of kink. It’s honestly amazing that people can somehow afford it.
While our kids were little, my wife could’ve had a job that just about broke even with daycare. Maybe netted $200/mo. Why the hell would I put her through all that and spend on gas and an extra vehicle for $50/wk. That’s a buck an hour! The family was better off being supported on a single income.
It wasn’t kinky. Well okay we worked a little kink into it. I’m not saying everyone needs to try this one little hack, but we ran the math and dual income didn’t make sense for us; single income wasn’t anything we had to try to make work. Yeah we had to make choices and limit ourselves a little, but only a tiny bit less than otherwise. Our monthly budget was like $3k or something and another $200 was nothing.
Stay at home mom is one thing, but was she subservient and obedient?
There’s a difference between a woman staying at home to raise kids because it makes financial sense, and what these women are peddling.
TMI: I mean we are kinky so it felt like a natural fit at first but it didn’t take very long to get uncomfortable with household submission outside the bedroom. Especially since we have daughters and even if it was sexy for us, it sure as hell wasn’t behavior I wanted to model for them.
So as far as your point goes it really wasn’t kinky, but I have some understanding of how it can be for some folks who already decide single income is the right choice for them. But once kids enter the picture, kink has to go behind closed doors. Family dynamic has to grow beyond just what tickles two people.
This is fair. You guys tried it out, within a certain context. When it didn’t feel right yall moved on. There’s nothing wrong with trying new things, and there’s nothing wrong with using this concept to be kinky. Spice up your life, I say. And, good on you for not wanting to role model that for your daughters!
I feel like what’s going on here is more than just a kink, though. I can see how what these women are doing could be construed as a kink, but that seems superficial and kinda dangerous. These women aren’t just saying “Yes, Master” when their husband’s tell them to bend over and pick up that spoon they’ve dropped, wearing some maid outfit in a xxx rated 50 Shades of Grey fantasy. They’re advocating for compete and total control, by their husbands, over their everyday lives, from a religious standpoint. Not going out at night, having trackers on their phones, and controlling who their friends are, are also some of the things the videos of those women in the article listed.
Yeah, the article is about how it’s giving young men the wrong idea about relationships, comparing it to how porn gives them the wrong idea about sex. But, at the end of the day, I think its a poor analogy. Its not just about lonely guys having unreasonable expectations of a wifes role in (and out, in this case ;) of the bedroom. The message here is that women should all love not being treated as equals, in any regard, and their only role is to cater to a man’s every whim, because thats what the Bible says. Not just whims sexual in nature, but in every aspect of life. If a large amount of men come to expect every woman should act like this…well, just ask women in Iran or Afghanistan how that’s going.
I don’t think raising kids is what people are talking about here
It’s definitely part of the context. What do you imagine these stay at home wives are supposed to do while they aren’t earning money? The desire for a tradwife and the number of times per day the word “cuck” goes through their heads is closely related.
Kids are certainly part of the alpha-male fantasy package. They wants fifties household complete with kids and the husband spanking the wife if there are water spots on the dishes. Kids are both a status symbol and another layer of control.
I got a coworker who claims is wife is like that, don’t know if this is true or not but he does mention it a lot.
Interesting.
I managed to find them while exploring a related kink that I would like to avoid naming as I don’t enjoy being kinkshamed.
The experience with the discord community I had joined was positive at first but became negative over a series of poorly moderated interactions and increasingly poor community rule implementations.
That being said, the thing I found in common was that the women who were interested in that lifestyle tends to enjoy having an easier life and not having to worry about the every career bullshit. Instead getting to focus on keeping a house neat and orderly, ensuring meals were worked and other activities.
More power to them I suppose, reminds me a little too much of secret society by nofx or the 3 slogans from 1984
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Maybe they are in a poly relation with their bank and also indulging a findom kink?
I’d love a trad wife or frankly to be a trans trad wife? Basically I’d love myself or my wife to be able to not have to work and actually be able to spend time cooking meals and doing household chores, so we actually have more time with each other at the weekends.
Hahahaha, when I grew up, I though it was pretty neat that my mom did all the chores at home and, basically, worked (as a household raising mother) from home in 1995. Loosely translated, we have a non-derogatory word for it in dutch: House-spouse or House-woman. When asked at school what I wanted to be when i grew up: House-spouse/House-man!
Social media is really no different than traditional media: you play a character that appeals to your specific audience to sell something, in this case, the tradwife lifestyle, because that’s what their audience wants to see, a kind of fantastical parallel universe like Barbieland, a fantastical parody of the media’s depiction of 1950s Americana to make money. Don’t get too angry at that, because fictional persona are just that, fictions, and the second the camera stopped rolling these characters cease to exist, because these characters cannot step into the real world.
In reality, how many women would actually put on cute pink sweaters and nice stainless farm dress and a full face of makeup to cook and clean? Trust me, nobody looks this good when they are doing housework.
I understand why these kind of video became popular, because they are ultimately is a reactionary movement in response to some of the more extreme and vitriolic voices within the feminists movement, but again, a broken system that is inherently unfair is still broken even if the sides are switched, and it’s still not the equality and fairness we should all be striving toward.
There’s nothing I find more pathetic than a man that cannot get through the day without an obedient slave to wipe his arrse for him.
It’s the epitome of fragility.
