I’m currently a stay-at-home mom and housewife, so I’m allowed to write this, and I do so with the disclaimer that there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with being a SAHM. In fact, there’s something pretty noble about it—as long as you haven’t chosen this particular pathway from a place of resentment or religious guilt.
My initial gut reaction to the hyper-romanticized 50s tradwife cosplayers on social media was "oh this is a kink." For one, a tradwife who really was into the lifestyle wouldn't be on social media posting pictures of herself all dolled up.
May 23, 2023·edited May 23, 2023Liked by Kaeley Triller Harms
It's yet another fetish. A man who needs to dominate a woman in order to feel like a man is absolutely fetishizing the intrinsic inequalities of sex. He is, to use an awful phrase, "getting off" on the control and abuse. And yes, it goes much farther back than even the 1950s. I would shift that marker back to the end of the Mesolithic, or if you prefer, Eden.
"Rigid adherence to superficial gender norms is part of the problem, not the solution. Let people be who they were created to be, wear what is comfortable, and enjoy what they’re wired to enjoy without creating legalistic formulas that inevitably place a whole lot of people at odds with the reasons for which they were actually created." Amen sister! I am also a SAHM, and prefer the term homemaker to housewife. I'm not married to my house, but I try to make a home that my family wants to be in. My childhood was mostly in the 70s when a girl could be a tomboy and was told she could be anything. Maybe because I grew up in a farming community, a woman would didn't have a "paying job" wasn't considered a woman not working. I earned a marketing degree, worked outside the home until our son was born and have been a homemaker ever since (3 more kids, 37 years of marriage). I am happiest this way. My sister, the attorney, would not have been. I know I grew up in a "sweet spot" in time.
I used to believe that the primal battle is good vs. evil. It's not. The primal battle is the individual vs. society, and the trick seems to be raising children who don't betray themselves by trying to be who someone else (most often, parents) wants them to be.
I largely agree with this post. And especially agree with the idea of letting people be what they want or are wired to be. However, I also believe that having traditional roles or paths can be helpful as well. What I mean by that is that telling boys that they will likely end up in a stereotypically male job (Welder, policeman, whatever) has value. It can give direction and purpose. BUT they should be far from rigid. And there shouldn't be any stigma for falling outside of those norms.
Like your example of not letting a boy play with a kitchen or dolls or whatnot.
The reason I think having traditions can help is that many young people seem directionless. They have all of the options that no other generation has, and they I think many are paralyzed by choice. Narrowing the parameters a bit may help. But, again, it is important to take away adherence to the norms and take away gatekeeping to keep the 'wrong' gender out.
The whole point of the women’s movement was to shatter gender stereotypes and allow women And men to be whoever they want to be.
The new trans movement is turning that on its head and claiming that a woman can be whoever she wants to be as long as she becomes a man, and a man can be whoever he wants to be as long as he becomes a woman. Stupid! There’s no epidemic of people being born into the wrong body.
Most important is the recognition that people are willingly abdicating personal agency. That is the real epidemic.
There is so much to this post, that I can only scratch flakes off the granite. First I think your commenter Cheryl Ruffing has the right idea: "The primal battle is the individual vs. society" although how I would say it is, the struggle is for individuals to be responsible and answerable for their own actions, no matter what. The way I say it is, "What you've been through means nothing. What you've become because of what you've been through means everything."
One of the great tragedies of our very free society is one I observed long ago. If you choose to tolerate something, soon you will be made to celebrate it. If I think 2 people of the same sex who love each other should be allowed to live their own lives that way, and it's no business of mine, that does not mean I celebrate the gay bath-house lifestyle any more than I celebrate heterosexuals turning sexual infidelity into a business or Hollywood groomers or Harvey Weinstein's behavior.
Christ's true teaching is that we all have an individual relationship with God and that you'll stand in judgement before Him individually. Not with our husband, not with our family, not with our tribe, not with our nation. You got to walk that lonesome valley. You got to walk it by yourself. Ain't nobody here can walk it for you.
One more point. If you think you can suppress intelligent, capable women by keeping them from making decisions in the official way male society does, you're only fooling yourself. You're merely turning them to evil and subterfuge. If you doubt me, sit back next Thanksgiving or Christmas when the whole clan gathers, walk away from the football game, and observe the women gather and talk among each other. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I read part of the article. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Under the right circumstances, at home mothers with 4 plus kids contribute more to society than career women who have no kids.
1 Cor. 12:28, Romans 16:7. Apostles were first in authority in the Church. Junia, a women, was in authority amongst the apostles and an apostle before her kinsman, Paul. Sorry Fundieloons; you don't get to make your up your own meaning for what Paul, THE Apostle, the FIRST Xtian writer and a LOOOONG time before the Gospels, wrote.
I LOVE these crazy folk, "The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it"? Patriarchal Fundies; going AGAINST what they will INSIST is the WORD OF GOD from almost immediately it was put on papyrus and fudging almost immediately Luther insisted on 'Sola Scriptura'.
Trads and Fundies: Wherefore come out from among them, and BE YE SEPARATE. 2 Cor. 6:17 KJV
My initial gut reaction to the hyper-romanticized 50s tradwife cosplayers on social media was "oh this is a kink." For one, a tradwife who really was into the lifestyle wouldn't be on social media posting pictures of herself all dolled up.
It's yet another fetish. A man who needs to dominate a woman in order to feel like a man is absolutely fetishizing the intrinsic inequalities of sex. He is, to use an awful phrase, "getting off" on the control and abuse. And yes, it goes much farther back than even the 1950s. I would shift that marker back to the end of the Mesolithic, or if you prefer, Eden.
"Rigid adherence to superficial gender norms is part of the problem, not the solution. Let people be who they were created to be, wear what is comfortable, and enjoy what they’re wired to enjoy without creating legalistic formulas that inevitably place a whole lot of people at odds with the reasons for which they were actually created." Amen sister! I am also a SAHM, and prefer the term homemaker to housewife. I'm not married to my house, but I try to make a home that my family wants to be in. My childhood was mostly in the 70s when a girl could be a tomboy and was told she could be anything. Maybe because I grew up in a farming community, a woman would didn't have a "paying job" wasn't considered a woman not working. I earned a marketing degree, worked outside the home until our son was born and have been a homemaker ever since (3 more kids, 37 years of marriage). I am happiest this way. My sister, the attorney, would not have been. I know I grew up in a "sweet spot" in time.
I used to believe that the primal battle is good vs. evil. It's not. The primal battle is the individual vs. society, and the trick seems to be raising children who don't betray themselves by trying to be who someone else (most often, parents) wants them to be.
I largely agree with this post. And especially agree with the idea of letting people be what they want or are wired to be. However, I also believe that having traditional roles or paths can be helpful as well. What I mean by that is that telling boys that they will likely end up in a stereotypically male job (Welder, policeman, whatever) has value. It can give direction and purpose. BUT they should be far from rigid. And there shouldn't be any stigma for falling outside of those norms.
Like your example of not letting a boy play with a kitchen or dolls or whatnot.
The reason I think having traditions can help is that many young people seem directionless. They have all of the options that no other generation has, and they I think many are paralyzed by choice. Narrowing the parameters a bit may help. But, again, it is important to take away adherence to the norms and take away gatekeeping to keep the 'wrong' gender out.
Excellent analysis!
The whole point of the women’s movement was to shatter gender stereotypes and allow women And men to be whoever they want to be.
The new trans movement is turning that on its head and claiming that a woman can be whoever she wants to be as long as she becomes a man, and a man can be whoever he wants to be as long as he becomes a woman. Stupid! There’s no epidemic of people being born into the wrong body.
Most important is the recognition that people are willingly abdicating personal agency. That is the real epidemic.
There is so much to this post, that I can only scratch flakes off the granite. First I think your commenter Cheryl Ruffing has the right idea: "The primal battle is the individual vs. society" although how I would say it is, the struggle is for individuals to be responsible and answerable for their own actions, no matter what. The way I say it is, "What you've been through means nothing. What you've become because of what you've been through means everything."
One of the great tragedies of our very free society is one I observed long ago. If you choose to tolerate something, soon you will be made to celebrate it. If I think 2 people of the same sex who love each other should be allowed to live their own lives that way, and it's no business of mine, that does not mean I celebrate the gay bath-house lifestyle any more than I celebrate heterosexuals turning sexual infidelity into a business or Hollywood groomers or Harvey Weinstein's behavior.
Christ's true teaching is that we all have an individual relationship with God and that you'll stand in judgement before Him individually. Not with our husband, not with our family, not with our tribe, not with our nation. You got to walk that lonesome valley. You got to walk it by yourself. Ain't nobody here can walk it for you.
One more point. If you think you can suppress intelligent, capable women by keeping them from making decisions in the official way male society does, you're only fooling yourself. You're merely turning them to evil and subterfuge. If you doubt me, sit back next Thanksgiving or Christmas when the whole clan gathers, walk away from the football game, and observe the women gather and talk among each other. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
John D. Rockefeller funded the Suffragette movement for one reason, and one reason only.
"Why tax only half the population when you can tax the entire population"
- John D. Rockefeller -
I read part of the article. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Under the right circumstances, at home mothers with 4 plus kids contribute more to society than career women who have no kids.
1 Cor. 12:28, Romans 16:7. Apostles were first in authority in the Church. Junia, a women, was in authority amongst the apostles and an apostle before her kinsman, Paul. Sorry Fundieloons; you don't get to make your up your own meaning for what Paul, THE Apostle, the FIRST Xtian writer and a LOOOONG time before the Gospels, wrote.
I LOVE these crazy folk, "The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it"? Patriarchal Fundies; going AGAINST what they will INSIST is the WORD OF GOD from almost immediately it was put on papyrus and fudging almost immediately Luther insisted on 'Sola Scriptura'.
Trads and Fundies: Wherefore come out from among them, and BE YE SEPARATE. 2 Cor. 6:17 KJV