Bad tradwife manifesto | Sarah Collister

IEarlier this month in UnHerd, Mary Harrington chronicled Lauren Southern’s transition from former “tradwife” to almost-feminist in “Lauren Southern: How My Trad Life Became Toxic.” She was betrayed by a man she met online and plunged into a life of abuse and heartbreak. Harrington testifies that Southern is just one of many “online” women who have succumbed to the promises of “listicles” and been duped into a life of oppression. For her, it’s a testament to the truths of feminism and the need for women to protect themselves from similar fates.

Harrington tells only half the story. Tradwifery, for all its frills, plays on a growing discontent among women who have abandoned the promises of feminism for what may be the idealistic life of the housewife. Beneath the prairie dresses and sourdough recipes lurks a sincere desire to be cared for, to have children, to create a warm and welcoming home. Despite all the decadence of our times, our wealth must have a silver lining. The fact that a woman does not have to sacrifice her prime to a desk, pay high rent, and expose herself to years of sexual exploitation should at least earn some respect.

Radical feminism, liberal feminism, ecofeminism: modifiers for feminism abound. But beneath the layers of history and modification lies a genuine desire for clarity. Ten years ago, Roxanne Gay attempted to explore the internal contradictions of feminism in her book Bad feminist:

I fail as a woman. I fail as a feminist. Accepting the feminist label would be unfair to good feminists. If I am a feminist, I am a pretty bad one. I am a mess of contradictions.

There are many ways in which I misinterpret feminism, at least when I look at the way my perception of feminism is distorted by the fact that I am a woman.

I want to be independent, but I also want to be taken care of and have someone to come home to. I have a job that I’m pretty good at. I’m responsible for things. I’m on committees. People respect me and take my advice. I want to be strong and professional, but I hate how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to get a fraction of the attention I would otherwise get. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming need to cry at work, so I close my office door and lose it.

I want to be in charge, respected and in control, but I also want to completely surrender in certain areas of my life.

What Gay goes on to describe in her “Bad Feminist Manifesto” seems appealing; women can essentially reshape feminism in their own image. She opens the way to a puzzling possibility of trad feminism (whatever that is). What she fails to consider are the women who may not want to be feminists at all. Is it possible to modify feminism so much that it is no longer feminism at all?

Perhaps Gay’s bad feminisms lead naturally to anti-feminism, the 80s and 90s reaction to Betty Freidans Feminine mysticism, in which she clumsily characterizes housewife boredom as “the problem that has no name.” Camille Paglia, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and Helen Alvare advocated for men while still identifying the unique “feminine genius” and protection they deserved. Perhaps their thinking presages the eventual need for a new modifier: impossible feminism, which denies the need for feminism, admits that the trial period is over and what follows will be a necessary restoration to somewhat more traditional gender norms. Traditional femininity, like toxic masculinity, is easy to caricature. But what lies beneath that impulse is something true: sex calls each person to reckon with their ultimate purpose in life.

It is useful to return Harrington’s article tag, “The online ideology doesn’t work in the real world.” Tradwifery, often as extreme and performative as feminism, doesn’t work in the real world. The promises of feminism—total autonomy, economic success, true equality—will never be realized this side of heaven. Women who insist on them find themselves locked in an endless power struggle with men and society. There are real “wins” in these struggles, just varying degrees of losses. Children often lose the most. You can have as much autonomy as you want, you just have to negotiate it with your 2-year-old.

Perhaps the first step away from feminism’s broken promises is to admit that they were always impossible, and still are. Harrington herself has acknowledged this fact: you can’t have it all (e.g., a beach body, three kids under 4, a 50-hour-a-week career, and free childcare). Sacrifices have to be made, but sacrifices often sound, to modern sensibilities, like concessions, like losses. Admitting your limitations is actually a courageous act of surrender.