#tradwives

[balkanradfem]

So I've found Alyssa Grenfell on youtube. She shares her experience of leaving mormonism, and the inner workings of the religion. I had very little ideas about what mormonism is, only that it's a high-control religion, very difficult to leave, and has people knocking on doors trying to get converts. I've been interested to find out more, and I ended up watching almost all of her content, and some of the information I've got from it opened my eyes on other feminist topics, and I believe is relevant to the current discourse!

So if you, like me, don't know how mormonism works, it started when a guy decided that he too could be a part of the bible; he wrote a bible part two: mormon, and proclaimed himself a prophet. Then he started a religion based on his writings, decided it was more important than the bible itself because he 'translated it from gold tablets god gave him', and started gaining followers by convincing people he's the prophet. Once he had managed to get a following, he soon started to sexually exploit the wives and daughters of these followers, to the point where he had 20-40 wives and had married 14yo children. Families allowed it to happen because he would promise them to be royalty in the afterlife. He eventually got into a lot of trouble for stealing and raping children so he was killed by an angry mob, but the religion continued.

The religion is same as christianity except more rules (no coffee, no alcohol, no smoking), eternal worship of the predator who wrote it, followers are pressured to follow the rules exactly, and, the vital part, the followers have to give 10% of their income to the church. They developed a culture where once every young mormon kid comes of age, they have to go on a 'mission', which means they're removed from their home, and have to spend 2 years (1,5 for women) living in a foreign area, knocking on doors, sharing the gospel, trying to convert people. The conversion rate is extremely low, but at that point kids have invested so much time, effort, energy and passion for the religion, they become devoted to it and start to feel alienated in the world that rejects their religion. And even with the low conversion rate, every new convert means another continuous source of income for the church. So it's very profitable to send out young adults to make these sales. The kids are told that if they don't complete their missions, they will not be able to marry, and marriage is presented as their only life purpose.

So how rich is the church at this point? 230 billion dollars. I've been shocked to hear this because I had no idea. Alyssa explained that the mormon church is as rich as Pepsi, they have more money than Disney and McDonalds. So you might be wondering, like I did, well what are they doing with all that money? I've been left to wonder this for a while, until I watched the video called 'Why are so many influencers mormon?', which explained it. I didn't even realize a lot of influencers were mormon. But, this video showed me something both disturbing, and eye opening.

Before I go into that, I have to point out how patriarchal and misogynistic this religion is. Women are not given any options except marriage, and it's presented as the only righteous way to live. They're groomed for marriage from a very young age, encouraged to start writing letters to their future husbands at the age of 9. They're taught cooking, sewing and childcare, and to coddle any males in the family. It's taken for granted that m*n won't respect women, to the point where male children are allowed to harass grown women and their families will not intervene or consider it a problem. Chastity and purity are promoted to the level where members of the religion are expected to wear special underwear at all times, which hides their entire torso, shoulders, and legs down to their knees, and their clothing is expected to cover this up completely. They're rejected by the religion if they dare to have sex before marriage, or drink alcohol or coffee, or in some cases, tea. The church has a history of allowing and promoting polygamy, in the sense that a male was allowed to have as many wives as he wanted; they've since stopped this, but refused to break up the existing marriages. They're also promoting anti gay and racist propaganda, which Alyssa observed in school where she'd been teaching; a gay kid almost ended his life due to extreme homophobia.

I know all of this is somewhat common in all areas of society, all religions, and all cultures, but in mormonism it seems to be written into the core of it.

So now, why are so many influencers mormon? I didn't even know they were. The influencers themselves are not promoting the fact that they're mormon, nor does it come up in viral discussions. Ballerina farm is mormon. Tradwives are mormon. Whataboutaub, Rachel Parcel, brooklynandbailey, tanner_mann, thebucketlistfamily, Taylor Frankie Paul, Sarah Beeston, Ruby Franke, these are all mormon. Most of the Utah-based influencers are mormon, and there's a bigger amount of successful and popular influencers from Utah, than from LA or NY.

For me it immediately explained why this viral content is like that. Why we're having such influx of highly patriarchal, anti-feminist, very dangerous and sexist content, put in front of the eyes of young women. Why it's being promoted as an ideal way of life. How are these women able to share this life as if they truly believed it was good and ideal. How could they think it's harmless? If they're using the internet to the extent that they're creating content, how would they not be exposed to any feminism at all? And they wouldn't because it's against their religion to engage with content like that, or with people talking about it. Because being raised in a high-control religion, they would truly believe their lives are the ideal. They would be presented with it as their only option, the only way of life possible for a woman.

It's heartbreaking because I can now understand why it was so easy to push Ballerina Farm to give up her entire life ambition to get married and carry children for a male she didn't even want to go out with, the pressure from the religion to do so would be immense, she would have been raised to see this as the only option, everything else in her life would be considered pointless. She wouldn't have an actual choice, she'd be groomed for this from the moment she was born. Mormons don't advertise 'looking for your soulmate', they only instruct women to marry a mormon male who completed his mission and make it work.

So how does the immensely rich mormon church play into this? I couldn't see it until Alyssa explained in a very detailed way how youtube content advertising works. I didn't know about this either, but here's the overview:

How much you get paid on youtube, instagram, tik-tok, or other online content platform, depends on what type of content it is, based on how much advertisers are willing to pay to put adverts on it. For instance, you get paid much more for finance content, because banks will pay premium prices to be advertised in a finance-related video. If you're making content on cooking, you get paid way less, because it's not such a lucrative field. If you're making content on christianity, you get similarly low price as for cooking, christian church is not that rich. But, if you're making content as a mormon, that's showcasing some aspect of a mormon life, even if you don't specifically say you're mormon, the price goes way up, to the point where it's as lucrative as finance. The mormon church is making sure that the mormon influencers are being paid premium prices for their content, because people who get massively interested in the influencers, eventually find out that it's the mormon life being advertised, and some of them consider taking on mormonism. Which gives church more converts, which means the church will earn more money. The content we're watching is one huge advert sponspored by mormon church, and we don't even know it.

Alyssa figured this out because her content falls under the keyword 'mormon', and her comments warned her that the church is advertising on her videos, even when she's making mormon-critical content. She then realized that she too was being paid a premium price for her views, just because they're mormon themed. She went on to discover that even just being an influencer in Utah will fetch a premium price, because most of mormons are based in Utah. For more detailed and comprehensive explanation on this, watch her video!

Advertising is not the only way the mormon church is spending their money, they've also built a shopping mall, and are basically spending their money by investing and gambling and everything any corporation does with their profits. It's making me mad, and also makes the members of the church mad when they discover where 10% of their income goes, because they're told it's being used for charity and community service, and not advertisments and building malls.

For me this solves a mystery of how is it possible, in this day and age to have such influx of tradwives and influencers of 'traditional life', they're being sponsored by an organization making a profit off of it, making sure that anyone making this content is so well paid, they're able to live off of it, and keep creating more of it, and in the process of doing that, groom young women into their lifestyle.

Learning more about religions, specifically high-control religions, makes me realize just how much of it is happening all around us, but invisible, not naming what it is. It's similar to MLM's, the people inside are constantly trying to lure more people in, to make profit for those on the top, while the organization keeps changing names and hides their business structure in order to save their reputation. People can get influenced by it, and sucked in, without even knowing about it. Somehow most MLM's are also in Utah.

Mormon church also asked to no longer be called that, in order to stop being associated with the words like 'cult', which people have identified it as. Now they're working under more secretive names, and hidden business practices, so we wouldn't even know what we're being influenced by, and why is the content in front of us what it is.    

[odinsblog]

Lmao, Abby feels “betrayed” by Right wing conservative men, who been showing everyone they hated women literally from day one

[bitchesgetriches]

I, for one, am shocked. SHOCKED, I say.

[tarragonthedragon]

i used to read about how like marie antoinette's court would dress as milkmaids and have almost-baked bread placed in fake ovens for them to finish and pre-washed hen's eggs daintily tucked in their immaculate fake coops with fluffy prize hens briefly placed in them for the aristocrats to playact the life of the peasantry and think, wow, that's crazy, what must have been going on in their minds to make this game seem appealing, what did they think they were doing, how did the little fake world of the court make them so totally blind to how the real people whose lives they were playing at hated them with the smouldering embers that would be stoked into a flame of revolution

anyway crazy how we have tradwives all over instagram now huh

[notsomodernwoman]

[loveandstardustcrystals]

L

[orwellsunderpants]

if women are turning themselves into Stepford Wives by choice i suppose that's a thing they're entitled to do, but it sure as hell creeps me out and shows that we haven't learned anything since the early 1970s

[800milesisadrive]

Just to be clear, yes this is kink.

Unintentional or knowing.

And I'm 100% into recontextualizing traditional gender roles into kink roleplay. ��

[randomfoggytiger]

TRADWIVES: Ahistoric LARPing

Found some cool clips that debunk the current "tradwife" grift circulating the internet.

Clip 1: Traditional wives were not weak-willed lilies that pined away dutifully, grossly stupid and financially dependent on their husbands... working women, anyway. (Full video here-- though it mainly debunks the "godfather" of the Red Pill more broadly than his misunderstanding of the traditional family.)

Clip 2: The tradwife and Red Pill movement don't understand the 1950s. Married women chose to remain in the work force post WWII, which locked the younger women out of jobs. The younger generations then married and had kids early because the economy was good and there was nothing else to do. (Full video here. I highly recommend it in conjunction with her video carefully deconstructing the "men need sex [at the expense of women]" narrative, found here.)

Clip 3: Lastly, "modern women" who've chosen to become SAHM and SAHW have successfully done so without sacrificing their financial independence or losing their personal dignity or identity. (Full video here, which breaks down popular TikTok tradwife content.)

Obviously, no relationship is perfect; and more obviously, it's a great risk to throwaway the potential of financial freedom and independence on the false dream the trad movement is selling. Not only are they self-employed women masquerading as traditional, but most (not all) are also making a mockery of the hardworking women who juggle their lives, kids, and finances to make a SAHM role work.

At the end of the day, we can only make the best choices for ourselves-- in any area of our lives-- if we're truthfully informed.

Thanks for reading (and watching)~

Enjoy!

[khepiari]

Enough with the, "It's a Choice" card

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Enough with the, "It's a Choice" card.

It’s very convenient to pull this logic card when the subject in question expresses that their choices indeed don’t make them happy or empowered, but they still choose to sell this "tradwife lifestyle" to millions on social media. Young impressionable girls and women who are already sick of the capitalistic exhaustion buy into the words these tradwives sell them.

So, no, we are not going to say it's a choice to raise 8 kids without pain medication and give up on your dreams to live the cowboy cosplay life of your husband because that makes you happy. When let's face it, it is not.

Stop defending this nonsense as a choice, it stops being a choice when it begins influencing people outside the life of the person who makes the choice. In this case, millions of young girls and young women!

And people who are saying we are dissing tradwives because we are jealous, jealousy my foot.

Living on a farm with 8 children is what women did in the pre-contraceptive and no voting rights era around the world.

Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting that many middle-class American women with a certain amount of privileges are really demented about how hard-won their rights are. Read your history, and know why women of previous generations went to prison for the sake of the rights you enjoy today!

For someone like me from Asia, especially India, it is not a matter of choice here. I have seen my friends being married off against their wishes and giving up on their dreams because domesticity was forced upon them. I really have no sympathy for a Juilliard dropout who chose this life of 8 kids!

Likewise, I will die single and a hater. I can’t believe my timeline is full of tradwife apologists.

Why are you all so gullible!

[tiny-pteranodon]

tradwives be like:

heres my book about what we as women must never do.

1- write a book

[shamebats]

*This is not what rural anywhere looks like

[bitchesgetriches]

NEW POST!

The Disturbing and Hypocritical World of Tradwives 

Tradwives. Who are they? Where did they come from? What do they want?

To answer these questions and more, we’re going to dive deep into the bowels of anti-feminist history. Starting with a woman named Phyllis Schlafly.

She was the absolute fucking worst.

Schlafly dedicated her entire life and career to thwarting the causes of feminism. She advocated for women to give up careers and their places in society in favor of staying home, having babies, and nurturing their husbands and homes. She successfully campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment (which is still not ratified as the law of the land to this day), headed a grassroots movement to convince women that equal rights were not only unattainable but undesirable, stood firmly against gay rights, and loved the idea of a white supremacist theocracy even more than she loved the sound of her own goddamn voice. Schlafly was staunchly anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-divorce, and anti-fun in all its forms.

But the infuriating legacy of Schlafly lives on. For while she was yammering on about uppity women knowing their place, this anti-feminist Babadook was decidedly not in her supposed place.

(Actually, this is an insult to the Babadook, who The Kids™ tell me is a bisexual icon and therefore someone to be celebrated and not denigrated. My apologies, dear sweet Babadook. It won’t happen again.)

Keep reading.

Did we just help you out? Say thanks on Patreon!

[fischotterkunst]

It was 2007, and Tia had lived for nearly 15 years in an increasingly fundamental Christian marriage. By the time she worked up the courage to escape, they were living in an unheated, isolated urban homestead in Tennessee – and her controlling spouse was forcing her to obey orders while calling him “my lord.”

The story began far more benignly, with Tia and her parents joining a megachurch in Florida when she was an adolescent. There she was introduced to families following the Gothard movement, a fundamentalist ideology and way of living that was the brainchild of American minister Bill Gothard. The increasing number of Gothard families within her First Baptist congregation promoted homeschooling and could be spotted because the “women dressed like prairie wives, always pregnant and holding a baby,” she writes in her book.

Tia gave birth to five children – including baby Clara, who was born with a heart defect and survived just weeks – as Allan moved the family to more and more conservative congregations. Many fellow congregants were adherents of the quiverfull theology, which encourages large families and forbids any type of birth control or family planning.

“I see the trap,” she tells The Independent. “I see the lifestyle that is so all-encompassing that you can’t get out of it. I see the systematized denial of agency and options so that you might wake up one day and want to be out of it, but you’ve closed door after door after door so that there’s no one there to help you. There’s not a bank account to turn to. There’s no agency to just start asking questions or to change your life, if you decide you want something different." It’s a movement that’s deliberate and strategic, dating back decades and beyond, and she says it’s chilling to hear echoes of proclamations made from pulpits during her childhood in the words of influential politicians today – “especially when JD Vance opens his mouth,” she says. [...] The talking points are all there, Tia says. “They are often divorced from the theology that fed them, and I think that’s for a mass audience – but that’s also a good opportunity for someone who comes from that background to say, I know why they are teaching that, and I know what they intend to accomplish with it.” While she watched the mass popularity grow of reality shows featuring families like the Duggars, where she recognized tell-tale Gothard fingerprints, Tia was caught off-guard by the latest pop culture fad across TikTok and Instagram. “Maybe [the trad wife social media movement] speaks to … the very clear binaries of the gender roles, easy answers, the simple formulas,” she tells The Independent. “Sometimes it can just be comforting to watch, because we like process videos and we like pretty aesthetics, and we can tend to think it’s benign and that it’s not part of something greater." “Patriarchy needs women to perpetuate it, so it grooms our participation, and then it holds us there with the guilt of our complicity, and then we become perpetrators. So it’s like the cycle that just keeps going."

please reblog this version of this article with context and without the derailing so as to give this incredible woman and her extremely important message the platform she deserves

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Olivia Little at MMFA:

TikTok’s “For You” page recommendation algorithm propels users who interact with “tradwife” content — which promotes “traditional values” and rigid gender roles — down far-right conspiracy theory rabbit holes. Media Matters coded and analyzed 327 recommended videos after exclusively interacting with tradwife content and documented what happened. We found TikTok’s recommendation algorithm rapidly populated our FYP with conspiracy theory content and fearmongering, which made up nearly one-third of all videos served to the FYP.

In recent years, the “tradwife” movement has shifted from far-right internet subculture to mainstream social media trend, becoming particularly popular among young people. Not every popular homemaking creator is a “tradwife,” though; tradwife influencers specifically preach the gospel of rigid gender roles and biblical submissiveness, glamorizing a 1950s housewife aesthetic while calling for some variation of a “return to tradition.”

MMFA reports on how Tradwife influencers are spreading far-right conspiracist content on TikTok.

[tradgays]

Introducing Tradgays

Inspired by the “tradwife” phenomenon, we introduce the new trend sweeping the gay world: tradgays.

What is a tradgay? They are gay men who embrace “traditional” elements of life, relationships, and domestic hierarchy.

There are two types of tradgays. Terminology for this is fluid and some prefer alternative labels but for now we’ll call them Alpha males and beta males.

The Alpha is the protector, leader, and primary decision-maker in a relationship. The beta male is domestic, nurturing, and supportive of his Alpha.

Elements of a tradgay life:

Courtship and romance over hookup culture

Tradgays are tired of the sex-focused world of hookup apps, bars, and random encounters.

Instead they embrace dating, chivalry, and taking things slow.

Monogamy, with an eye towards marriage

To each their own- if you prefer polyamory, more power to you. But for tradgays, a “closed” relationship is the ideal relationship.

Courtship is treated as a precursor for the ultimate dream: finding a spouse and getting married.

“Traditional” relationship roles

Tradgays embrace traditional gender hierarchy but apply it to a gay relationship. The Alpha leads, the beta supports.

For marriage, the ideal is for the Alpha to be the breadwinner and the head of his household. While some betas may still need to work at least part-time, being a good little “househusband” who cooks, cleans, and obeys his husband is the gold standard.

Embrace of vintage aesthetics and lifestyle

Minimizing screen time and enjoying domestic life through reading, the arts, sporting events, and other forms of recreation can create a happy environment for a tradgay couple.

Some tradgays may choose to take up farming or homesteading while others embrace aesthetics from the 1950s or earlier.

What tradgays are NOT:

They are not aligned with, or supportive of, any kind of misogynistic, racist, or transphobic ideology. This is a chosen lifestyle and does not represent a hierarchy anyone MUST accept.

They do not tolerate abuse. Both parties in a relationship must be consenting adults who enjoy and are enriched by their choices. Every individual deserves support and resources if they feel unsafe or need to leave a relationship.