Something wicked is brewing in conservative America.
That’s a cold wind blowing in!
The same culture wars that birthed incels have impacted the girls who won’t date them just as much.
Our refusal to draw mothering into the fold leaves a lot of girls feeling conflicted. Feminism fails them as long as it ignores the more nuanced questions of many women’s lives.
Jen at Fundie Fridays knows a lot about it, “The misogyny on Caitlin’s channel is rampant and direct. She often uses the same talking points as incels when expressing her worldview.”
Using Mrs. Midwest as her pampered example, Jen walks us through Complementarianism -You know, how God made men and women different to complement each other. But of course, in practice this is just plain old submission in fancy clothes.
After laying down the basics, Jen kinda glosses over a lot of what Caitlin says. She describes domesticity as, “acknowledging that women are superior to men in regards to maintaining the home.” Oops, that almost sounds empowering!
Jen lays out classic gender roles with a scoff, because obviously cleaning isn’t genetic. All women do not have a desire to be feminine.
But what if you do? It’s pretty sexist to say that all femininity is patriarchal garbage, isn’t it? It has to be feminism’s job to figure out where they stop and we begin, but Feminist Theory isn’t interested in this.
Gender is a social construct, but it’s based on observations. I think the science really is more complicated, in the interplay of temperament, sex, genetics, and choice.
And, well, some girls are girls. And they’re not wrong.
Sewing is a valuable skill!
I guess Jen doesn’t see this as a serious line of thought, as she lets Caitlin speak for herself: “Our culture really celebrates masculine traits when they’re seen in women … So, it feels like, in order to be a good woman, you have to be really masculine.”
Embracing womanhood used to be a lefty thing. Libfems having outlawed all such talk for having TERFy vibes, where do we expect these women to go?
“But what do those women do, those women like me? I don’t wanna be a Boss Babe, I don’t wanna be ‘grinding.’ I wanna be a wife, a mother, run a household.
“What does a woman like that do, when she feels so marginalized? Where does she go?”
Cue Mr. Crabs playing a tiny violin. Stay classy, Jen.
But Caitlin reminds us of the Hero’s Journey, Professor Joseph Campbel’s famous archetypical adventure story. Boy does a thing, becomes a man. He’s often rewarded with a woman for his trouble, you know the drill. We’ve all seen it a thousand times.
I have been bored with it for years. As a 37-year-old mom in a sharply blended family, no one is telling my story. I’m lead to believe no one else is interested, and we’re all too busy, anyway.
Jen doesn’t address any of this. Instead, she shows off a blush pallet.
She chooses purple because she’s “The Purple Bitch.”
Cut back to Caitlin pretending to hold up angel wings for improved posture.
Jen works pretty hard to make Caitlin look silly, which is weird because Caitlin doesn’t need the help. But it does a good job distracting from what she’s saying.
After having described the masculinization of women, Jen paraphrases Caitlin saying society treats women like breeding cattle.
She’s careful to point out that it’s fundamentalists who do this, but then lets Caitlin say that women should be free to choose a life as a homemaker or in the workforce. “And both things are honorable, because we truly support all women.”
“Yep, you just described feminism, Caitlin.”
“I don’t know where that got mixed up, but I think ‘all women’ includes homemakers.” Caitlin emphasizes this logical flourish with a self-satisfied snicker.
Jen is clearly annoyed by this, really laying it all out: “You know what, Caitlin? I’ll do you one even better – Feminists believe in equality for everyone!”
Oh boy, here we go.
“That includes sex workers” Ooh, edgy! “Transgender folx, people who are incarcerated, neurodivergent friends, people without homes, those with disabilities, intersex and non-binary people, any member of the Alphabet Mafia, immigrants, those who get abortions, people with addictions, asylum seekers…”
Hold still, it’s hard to get all that in the picture!
That sure is a mighty long list of random stuff. I think I even saw a women’s issue in there!
Jen is spelling out for us how feminism has become a garbage fire of social movements. Of course we believe in equality! But feminism is concerned with the issues facing females!
…Oh, wow, I am tired of saying that…
“And, believe it or not, people we disagree with also deserve rights.” This is the surreal moment where liberal feminism reminds me of my born-again Aunt. Then, after a little feminist history, she accuses Caitlin of “talking out of her ass.”
“Feminist theory is an actual thing that you can study. It’s not just a fucking buzzword for you to throw around.” Academic feminist theory turns lesbian separatists into gender ideologues. Why should we turn to it for answers?
Please don’t misunderstand me – I’m not siding with Conservative Barbie. The ‘tradition’ she represents is that White Colonialism we’re all still scarred from.
The incels were easy pickings for the Alt-Right. Racist ideology gave them an explanation and a direction for their rage. And both groups share a love of a mythical past.
But wanting kids someday doesn’t have to mean a return to Traditional Values.
It’s a cruel trick to frame women’s reproductive urge in terms of caveman ethics. “By taking the Red Pill and rejecting social justice and progress, [they think] they’re accepting a harsh truth – that the people of the US need a structure that was in place before any social progress was made.”
‘Leave the modern lie and accept the truth about life‘ would be much harder to sell if libfems weren’t lying to them!
Right in the middle of it all, Jen has her hubby give us a vocabulary lesson.
He looks quite a bit like my husband, actually, and he does a decent job making his granular material entertaining. He’s not condescending, but I could not let the irony go by without commenting on it!…
When Jen takes back over, she brings home the Tradwives’ number one message: “Women are stressed in their jobs and their education because their real destiny is to be a homemaker.“
Maybe if feminism didn’t reject its own past every generation like Mom’s hand-me-downs, young women like Caitlin would know we’ve heard this line before.
“This is particularly dangerous coming from someone like her.” Because Caitlin is a Role Model.
Jen reads us a couple worrying fan letters from young women. She tells us we need to be mindful of the radicalization of young girls online, as well as boys.
“And it’s worthy
to examine why young girls might find her message so appealing.”
More than worthy, it’s urgent! The last ten years showed us what soaking up this kind of subtext-heavy indoctrination can do.
But Jen only takes us halfway.
“Perhaps they feel special being coveted by white men like that. Being told that they will save the world by having beautiful white babies”
TRADITIONAL WHITE FEMININITY IS LITERALLY AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR WHITE SUPREMACY.
Get rich enough, and you could have your very own pasty, uptight prima donna!
I could have sworn everyone knew this! White women are precious commodities on the world market. White men have made it their mission to protect us from all the mudbloods, remember?
You simply cannot traffic in one without bumping into the other!
There’s a retro fashion community on YouTube full of creative, off-kilter people. Many of them are seamstresses or costume designers. All of them boldly wear what they like, fashion be damned.
The community has a motto: Vintage style, not vintage values.
These adorable history buffs feel the need to distinguish themselves from fascists in their opening line because there’s a lot of confusion out there. ‘Tradition’ was the name fascism went by for a long time.
‘Traditional womanhood’ can be seen in Nazi propaganda movies. ‘Traditional womanhood’ is a mother for the war machine.
But this itself is a corruption of the mothering experience. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it!
Jen isn’t interested in where babies come from. “A lot of these women believe they have been cheated out of the … homemaker life,” she says with disdain.
But we have been! Womanhood Classic is out of production. The old fallback of housewife, the role we have avoided and scorned, isn’t even an option anymore. In this economy, no family can sustain itself on just one income.
Things are bleak out there for young women, and everyone is lying to them! People on both sides do it all the time, glossing over anything interesting in favor of poking fun at their opponent’s flaws.
Shallow negativity on both sides makes a logical decision impossible. So we go with our gut, which is easily lead. And it hits inexperienced and distracted young people even harder.
Each side is telling us the other is the problem. But the real villain – Capital – doesn’t want to be called out, and it owns everything! Feminism has always been a favorite scapegoat, despite women doing the lioness’ share of the shopping.
Jen does quote a really good New York Times article, “Tradwives also point to the ways that the half-finished work of the sexual revolution has brought about not just male but also female discontents.” But she doesn’t go anywhere with this.
Instead, she leaps right back into that weird, suppressed Pick-Me attitude liberal feminists have when they’re enforcing The Rules, “Gosh, if only incels could figure out that the real Red Pill is realizing that gender is a social construct and that chaos is the general order of the universe.”
I still don’t understand why gender being a social construct means we should completely reorder society around it.
Thankfully, the Times continues, “[Conservatism] is a lie, of course. Modesty has never been a safeguard against degradation or rape.”
But even the New York Times won’t tell you that Jen is lying, too. After all, who is welcoming to the feminine woman? Bimbo TikTok??
Caitlin’s emotional expression of feminine homelessness is the note of truth the whole rotten symphony is tuned to. Alienation is what drives young men to extremes, and women aren’t that different.
I know this isn’t appropriate for a Zoom call, and I don’t care anymore!
And many of us do want these things! Liberal feminism dismisses feminine women as brainwashed. I definitely got the message growing up that any girly tendencies were embarrassing.
As adults, we are pitied if we don’t have our own income. The media talks about Career Women, but mothers just tell you to keep a job.
But not everyone wants to run with the boys. Tradwives offer many young girls something that speaks to a part of them that feminism has ignored forever.
The idea that housework is work should be a powerful feminist ideal! I stumbled into a traditional lifestyle, and have enjoyed it much more than I ever expected.
Feminism should be reaching out to these young women. They will need us when they start to see who they’re dealing with: “At present, these shared dissatisfactions haven’t helped the alt-right recruit significant numbers of women because, quite simply, the men cannot keep their seething misogyny in check.”
Jen is right to pick on Caitlin. She and people like her are painting a rosy picture over some truly horrific things. They are directly informing the future of our culture. We need to confront this ideology where we find it, just as much as Trans Rights.
Motherhood is the original feminist tool. It’s time to reach out to the girly girls.
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