I don’t think “staying at home is bad” is the message anybody is sending. If people want to be stay at home spouses, that’s fine.
The points of contention are finer: that the “tradwife” phenomenon is syncretic and ahistorical, and that it’s (in part) a recruitment mechanism for reactionary politics.
> it’s (in part) a recruitment mechanism for reactionary politics.
Only because "progressive" politics has forced it into that role. There's nothing inherently wrong or problematic with a stay-at-home lifestyle if that's what you prefer and you can afford it.
“Look at what you made me do” is not a generally convincing argumentative structure. There’s no particular reason why doing traditional things means you also need to dress yourself in reactionary politics.
Besides, I think if you actually went out and sampled the world, you would find plenty of stay-at-home progressives.
Interracial marriage was illegal in the 1950s because racists saw the existence of and normalization of black people in white society as a political statement and an attack on their way of life. It is the same reason why interracial kissing in movies was considered taboo back then.
This literally not true. The tradwife thing is not a reaction to progressives, it is safely within conservative christian "male head of the house with authority over partner" tradition.
It predates progressive politics you complain about. Progressive politics is response to that.
Historical gender roles were an efficient reaction to material circumstances of life, not a matter of politics. Men were more comfortable than women in the public sphere (which used to be a lot more contentious and competitive historically than it perhaps is today), and someone had to do all the crummy housework (unless you were in the upper class and could afford servants) so it fell on women to do that. Then the world, by and large, became a lot comfier and safer; and home appliances meant we could dispense with a lot of strenuous domestic labor. That's when it became possible for "lifestyle" to be a matter of choice.
That is widely ahistorical claim. Historical gender roles were as political as current and as much reaction to material life as now. Also, the roles of women and men different between social classes, periods and places, sometimes very widely.
In particular, upper middle class and riches are minority of population. Poor are most frequent ... and their women work for money unless it is illegal ... and it is illegal purely because of politics and feeling of propriety, nothing material.
And also, the small farms mean that everyone working in home, at field and with animals ... men do physically demanding work tho more. There is gender split, but not between "crummy home" and "work". The household produces a lot of what they need - candles, fabric for cloth, you name it. There are some gender exclusive areas and then a lot of basically work that needs to be done.
Or, in mining areas, men die young. They earn more then women, but they live without sun and die and then you have women having to earn for them and children - that is where some of the crafts come from.
There is some kind of patriarchy most of the time, but in some periods and places women actually can earn money, own stuff, do business in their own name. That not being fully case in 1950 America is purely result of politics. That not being case in Saudi Arabia is purely gender ideology and politics, nothing to do with anything material.
There's a massive difference between having the choice (and freedom) to stay at home -- or not -- as you wish, and pushing a movement which subjugates and flies in the face[1] of the very feminism[2] that gave women that choice to begin with.
Except that it seems a lot more people are pushing the "girlboss" lifestyle compared to the "tradwife" one. Of course, ideally, everyone would simply have the freedom to do what's best for themselves. It's not very responsive to call "girlboss" a product of modern capitalism as the Mashable article does, since one could say the exact same thing about modern stay-at-home lifestyles.
Does it? The article suffers from cherry picking and logical fallacies.
For example the article makes it seem like tradwive sentiment is problematic because it shares some views with the far right. Even if that’s true, which it isn’t inherently, it’s not enough to deem trad wife behavior problematic.
Fundamentally, modern feminism is about women being able to choose. Obviously such freedom can be used to choose to do or share “problematic” things or views, respectively.
Tradwufe is term used literally only in right wing manosphere. It is not term used by stay at home women in general. It is not a term used by left wing people. I have seen that term used only in reactionary circles and in bdsm circles (clumsily in the latter).
And the focus was very much on male leadership and authority, male right to punish a women and expectation of submission. It was not about homemaking itself absent male dominance.
Do they claim to be historically correct remake? Article says otherwise:
>> And she writes that a tradwife doesn't want to go back to the 1950s, but "she simply likes that time because it was the last time her occupation was celebrated in mainstream media."
They don’t need to make a claim to historicity in order for me to remark on their ahistoricity. If they don’t claim historical accuracy, then I’m in agreement with them on that point!
One then wonders what “traditional” refers to, of course.
> One then wonders what “traditional” refers to, of course
The “tradition” of aspiring to 1950s commercially constructed media images of the lily white, Protestant, working-class but with middle-class wealth, American culture [0], to which modern reactionary white resentment politcs aspires and for which it blames everything not White, not evangelical/fundamentalist, and not similarly reactionary for denying the White working class from being able to fully enjoy the way they did in the 1950s... fictional mass media presentations.
[0] ironically, designed specifically to drive consumerism and extract wealth from the White working class.
I guess all sides get what „traditional“ refers to. Just like „non-traditional“. While I'd say nowadays such punk wifes technically are non-traditional...
The claim is predicated on the mutual understanding that being a white nationalist is bad. If you lack that mutual understanding, there are bigger problems at hand!
There is no way to be reactionary without being a white nationalist and the two are interchangeable but you chose one instead of the other for some reason?
Sure. You can substitute “white nationalist” for “any kind of reactionary, including white nationalist” in my previous comment, if you find that more palatable.
There are certainly places in the world where there are significant local reactionary ideologies that are not White Nationalist, but the US is not among them.
> Why is it bad if it pulls people to the reactionary?
Because, and to the extent, that the thing it pulls people toward is bad.
> We might as well say the glamorization of cosmopolitanism is a recruiting tool for neoliberalism.
That's less true, though, but, yes, glamorization of cosmopolitanism feeds a bunch of ideologies that are not the same ones the “trad... ” movement feeds.
No, it's still not progressive. There's a difference between accepting trans people as valid. and pushing some 50's-era rhetoric of feminism being subservient slavery to the man of the house.
Interesting how the OP is about the whole "tradwife" ideology which is damaging for women[1] and feminism[2], but you turn it into a trans-vs.-cis argument, for no reason whatsoever.
The only "clown world" is the one where you think those two entirely disparate topics are comparable.
I didn’t say the GP was either. The observation is solely that doing traditional things doesn’t make you part of this “trad” sphere, which is largely syncretic in terms of what it actually considers traditional.
In case anyone else is wondering, the term "syncretic" can be defined as "combining or bringing together different philosophical, religious, or cultural principles and practices."
Being a tradwife (whether AMAB or AFAB) is neither progressive nor reactionary. Neither is being trans.
Advocating being a tradwife as an ideal, deviation from which in others should be viewed as inferior, is reactionary in and of itself, even if the person taking the position also has progressive views on other issues.
The points of contention are finer: that the “tradwife” phenomenon is syncretic and ahistorical, and that it’s (in part) a recruitment mechanism for reactionary politics.