Why tradwives are fleeing the movement: I can't undo my past | Hacker News Reader

Why tradwives are fleeing the movement: I can't undo my past

theguardian.com

15 pointsmakerdiety13 comments

* online influencers who are seeing their grift start to evaporate. Feel bad for the kids.

The tradwife phenomenon is fascinating from so many angles.

It's a tiny niche organic thing from social media, but drew significant backlash and opposition from mainstream media because it was so opposite to the views of the writers and editors of those publications on multiple axes (urban vs rural, career focus vs family focus, independence vs partnership/community, etc). I've seen anti-tradwife content at a 100-to-1 ratio of any actual tradwife content.

It took common leftwing, anti-capitalist ideas like "working a BS job to create shareholder value while barely affording rent sucks, spend your time doing meaningful things instead" but because those meaningful things were raising kids and gardening instead of yoga, matcha brunches and ayuhuasca retreats it got conservative-coded instead of liberal-coded along culture lines.

It's a modern echo of "Tune in, turn on and drop out", but for a new generation of women raised in a post-feminist world, rejecting the default path society expects of them and who are reclaiming aspects of femininity which have been stigmatized, but because it has a veneer of similarity to pre-feminist norms it's seen as regressive rather than progressive.

If I was younger, I'd be doing a sociology thesis on it. So many fascinating bits of nuance and interaction between different groups.

Yes! It is super strange - I like the summary as a post-feminist reclamation of stigmatised femininity.

I also think that there’s more generally a weird flip in that, who you could consider to be “liberals” are not liberals at all, and are a weird new breed of conservative. In my view, there’s nothing wrong with the brand of tradwife I’ve seen on social media, that isn’t driven by religion. In fact, much of the content I had seen about it had no focus on the husband at all, which was interesting.

Literally all the women in the article were abused, beaten and consider it a mistake. (None expressed regret about trying to get other women into the same situation. Some regret they taught their kids it is normal.)

Are you unaware or trying to whitewash? Trying to blame liberals while trying to distract from what non-liberals are?

I mean there's a reason why The Guardian chose these specific women to write an article about; and didn't write an article about women who felt they were abused in some other type of lifestyle.

> and didn't write an article about women who felt they were abused in some other type of lifestyle.

That is absurd claim. Yes, guardian (and generally liberal or progressive media) have articles about domestic violence or abuse in other groups.

The claim is not that this is the only place where it happens. But, believes of this subculture ensure it will happen and members will support the abuse.

A publication with the opposite ideological stance as The Guardian would make the same argument except about Muslims rather than tradwives; and the same people at The Guardian who wrote this article would argue that it's immoral to claim that believers of that subculture ensure domestic abuse of women will happen and members will support the abuse.

Tradwifes are equivalent of fundamentalist muslims who believe in female submission. I literally read articles about violence in that community.

Muslims in general would be equivalent of christians in general. The article is not about christians in general, but about tradwifes.

YOU want to frame the situation as just an aesthetic choice. Or "having kids" choice, as if having kids necessitated submission to husband.

> meaningful things were raising kids and gardening instead of yoga, matcha brunches and ayuhuasca retreats it got conservative-coded instead of liberal-coded along culture lines.

You are being disingenuous here. The primary and most important thing it did, was religion driven complete submission to husband and complete dependence on him.

> who are reclaiming aspects of femininity which have been stigmatized,

Which would primary be that submission and dependence part. Not gardening vs yoga, plenty of progressives have gardens and don't do yoga. Also, having kids is not stigmatized.

> but because it has a veneer of similarity to pre-feminist norms

If he beats you, it is your fault for not being obedient enough is definitely pre-feminist norm. Which is part and parcel of the culture these women embraced and are from.

And now I can't tell if you're being disingenuous, or we're just running into the problems of the modern media landscape. I haven't seen any tradwife content that suggests any of the things you're claiming it represents. Not even close.

Maybe I'm only seeing the cottagecore, homesteader end of the spectrum and you're only seeing the religious fundamentalist end of the spectrum, but both are happening under the same label on various TikToks, Instagrams and Podcasts.

I suspect the way you've framed it is very misleading, and represents only a tiny sliver of content, but, as I conceded in my first statement, I've seen a whole lot more commentary about tradwife content than the actual content itself, so there is a real possibility I am wrong and I've only seen the friendly tip of the iceberg but it's actually full of badness underneath.

There’s absolutely a huge strain of homesteading, family farming, cottagecore. There is also a relatively large strain of tradwives. I can’t think of a single instance of the first group referring to themselves as “tradwives” — “traditional”, “back to nature”, sure. “Tradwife” is very specifically about the wife’s duties and the ones that espouse it absolutely mean it in the conservative, religious, patriarchal sense.

I’m envious that you have avoided that rabbit hole, but it absolutely exists and is not niche.

> cottagecore, homesteader

Does not imply tradwife. Tradwife has submission as unambigous part.

But also, the article is all about tradwifes influencers who were presenting beautiful life while being abused, controlled and part of religious cult. And in some cases white supremacists.

And THAT or risk of that was also primary criticism all along. Except critics talked about it as "risk" or "likelihood" rather then "you are actually lying about your reality".

   She said that the tradwife movement, one she initially thought was about a “return to strong family values”, has “become indistinguishable from the current wave of the red-pill manosphere”

What... did she think returning to "strong family values" meant?

The manosphere, the white supremacists and the Bible-thumpers all say the same things about women, just with different language.

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