Beyond "tradwife," part one

exposing the flaws in neo-traditionalist gender ideology

A Young Mother Sewing, Mary Cassatt,1900. Cassatt, contemporary of 19th century female social reformers, uses triangular composition common with Renaissance portraits of the Madonna and Child to confer her subject great dignity and importance despite the mundanity of the activity. 

Let me begin this essay by saying that I don’t have any problem with “tradwives,” if by “tradwives,” we mean women whose family model basically conforms to the midcentury breadwinner/homemaker ideal, who are socially conservative, openly Christian, and happy to inhabit the particular aesthetic common to that lifestyle. By that definition, I myself fit the bill. Many of my best friends fit the bill. Enough ink has been spilled criticizing our choices to dye the world black.

That said, certain aspects of the “tradwife” movement as an online phenomenon and growing ideological program raise my suspicions. There exists an online “tradwife” sphere—not to be confused with the aesthetic projects of influencers like Nara Smith or Ballerina Farm, but rather with women whose presentations are overtly ideological. This sphere has emerged as the feminine counterpart to the Red Pill movement—a secular and religious mix of male supremacists who claim that unchecked female power is the singular cause of society’s problems. Tradwives often adopt these manosphere truisms as self-evident, rebranding and promoting them under the guise of idyllic, complementary gender roles, particularly through more feminine-coded platforms like Instagram. Alarmingly, this ideology is seeping into real life, as many well-intentioned, scrupulous men and women, who instinctively reject mainstream leftism, now accept its stark opposition without question.

Why does this matter? Because truth matters, first and foremost. The desire for truth — conformity with the logic of Creation — is etched into our hearts by nature. In a postmodern, post-truth communication environment, those who make the loudest and most unyielding claims on the truth, against the relativist hemming and hawing, can superficially fulfill that desire in even the most earnest observer. But being anti-left doesn’t make the right right. The inverse of an evil claim isn’t necessarily a good claim. However reliable that heuristic might seem, reflexive reactionaries run the risk of taking the same shape of the evil they purport to oppose.

Falsity is not just intellectually, but often physically and spiritually damaging. I’ve seen women who take these ideas very seriously compromise their life to fulfill the sexual wants and emotional demands of husbands who regard their wives as spiritual and intellectual inferiors. Even the darling of the “trad Catholic” movement, Father Chad Ripperger says as much: that traditionalist communities often have problems with sins of a sexual nature, which flow directly from spiritual pride. Reflexive apologia for male license often results in abuse, the concealment of abuse, and the perpetuation of abuse in such communities.