So one of the inhabitants of the Red Pill Women subreddit — devoted not to pickup artistry but to cultivating a regressive kind of femininity — has found an unusual source for inspiration. She’s been reading a novel from the early 1970s that contrasts a brash young woman influenced by the “women’s libbers” of the day with a group of more traditionally minded wives living in a certain (fictional) suburb.
At one point in the novel, the main character — the aforementioned brash young woman — asks one of the new traditionalists if she is happy, having given up her own feminist activism to become a stay-at-home wife whose life revolves entirely around her husband’s needs.
Kit looked at her, and nodded. “Yes, I’m happy,” she said. “I feel I’m living a very full life. Herb’s work is important, and he couldn’t do it nearly as well if not for me. We’re a unit, and between us we’re raising a family, and doing optical research, and running a clean comfortable household, and doing community work.”
Kit supports her husband by taking care of the house, and makes his life easier. Meanwhile, he works to provide for the family. This concept of complementarity, balance and teamwork seems completely lost in this day and age. Household duties are seen as being chores which must be split 50/50, and a more individualistic approach to fulfillment is considered the norm today. It is expected that both partners in a relationship have both their own career and must be career-driven, and “taking care of the household to make the husband’s life easier” is considered as a complete lack of ambition and a waste of talent/intelligence instead of being a way of fulfillment.
I agree with Kit’s vision (obviously), and even though it probably wasn’t the author’s goal at all, Kit’s response to Joanna helps me put words on how I feel about relationship dynamics.
There’s just one problem here. The novel jade_cat is reading, as you have surely realized, is The Stepford Wives, and Kit [SPOILER ALERT] is not a housewife at all, but a robot who has been designed to replace Kit, a flesh-and-blood woman murdered by a sinister cabal of Stepford husbands — with her husband’s cooperation.
Jade_cat is well aware of this; she just feels more sympathy for the murdering husbands than for the murdered wives. As she explains the plot of the 1972 novel (and the original 1975 movie version), Kit and the other Stepford wives
are in fact robots that have been created to replace the sloppy, nagging wives of the men of Stepford.
Because obviously, a pretty housewife who never complains and who isn’t a feminist is too good to be true, so she must be a robot ! 😉
Another Red Pill woman, SouthernPetite, weighs in with her thoughts on the main character of the film — that is, the flesh-and-blood woman who uncovers the secret wife-murdering, robot-making cabal.
The main character was a psycho. She not only did not work, but she also didn’t really take care of the house or kids, and pitched a fit when her H got angry when she would opt to hang out with her friend and get high.
As I recall the film, she was unhappy she’d been plopped down in Stepford amongst all these weird women. Her husband didn’t like her hanging out with her new friend Bobbie, because Bobbie, like her, was a newcomer to the town, a bit of a feminist herself, and, oh yeah, STILL A HUMAN BEING.
She also started freaking out, and eventually stabbed her friend, because some of the women started conforming more. While it was a bit odd, she had literally only been there…maybe a few weeks at most, so she didn’t really know those people, but apparently thought it was ok to become super paranoid, suspect a wild conspiracy right out the gate, and start stabbing people. While is turns out that she was correct, she was far from a rational person.
Uh, she stabbed her friend because by this point in the movie, her friend is not actually her friend any more but a robot made to replace her murdered friend.
Here’s the scene where it happens, by the way:
SouthernPetite continues:
Tbh, this portrayal is so bizarre, I would almost think it’s a critique on the paranoia and selfishness of feminists, but I don’t think that was the intent.
No, no it wasn’t.
Reading (or watching) The Stepford Wives and rooting for the husbands and their robot wives is a bit like reading 1984 and rooting for Big Brother.
H/T — r/TheBluePill
Ironically, enough, that makes all the sense. A bunch of women who resent women with lives and assume that the only way they can please the regressive men in their lives is to actively fight against their own rights and the rights of other women probably would indeed identify more with the antagonists in an Ira Levin book than the protagonists.
I mean, to do otherwise might involve actually having to come to grips with how monstrous what your husband or parents or culture expect of you truly is and so it is much easier to assume that if you are perfect enough you will be spared the robot-replacement as if any woman could or should.
It’s rather tragic, honestly.
I wonder if some or most if not all red pill women are actually male red pillers.
No “Sympathy for murderers” tag? Fictional murderers, but murderers nonetheless.
“Reading (or watching) The Stepford Wives and rooting for the husbands and their robot wives is a bit like reading 1984 and rooting for Big Brother.”
The problem, of course, is that some people do just that.
I’m just waiting for the day that these women discover Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. I’m sure that they’ll really identify with Serena Joy. But the real fun will be watching them try to wrap their pretty little heads around (or trash) Moira.
Hey, do you want Eurasia to win!!!! Or is it Eastasia; my memory gets kind of fuzzy at times?
Well, I learned a bit more about those two than I would ever have wanted. All things considered this holds some very creepy implications for red pillers. Anyone else find it odd that they never seem to address the fact that the wives were murdered and replaced? Really makes you wonder if they would root for other things that do pretty much the same thing in horror movies, pardon the pun.
Rather like that marvellous scene in Money by Martin Amis where John Self reads 1984 and imagines himself as ‘an idealistic young corporal in the Thought Police’.
(I’m well aware how deeply problematic Martin Amis is, incidentally, but he is an incontrovertibly great writer for all that.)
Hahaha. Redpillers calling people paranoid. (and selfish) This is like Alex Jones calling people paranoid.
I mean, aside from the countless examples of redpill conspiracy paranoia (they’re going to take our sexbots!), the name “redpill” itself comes from a movie metaphor for discovering nothing is as it really seems and the world is secretly run by The Enemy.
Well, this reminds me of something.
The list of books/movies/shows that reactionaries completely missed the point of grows even larger.
BTW, the one good thing about the Stepford Wives remake was Bette Midler as Bobbie. Actually, this makes a good reaction gif for this post.
What bothers me the most is that they seem to think of thinks in blanket ideals. Which is to say that one option works for all. Do they not comprehend that all humans are individuals, and that if given the freedom to choose for themselves that all humans would make different choices for their lives? It is insulting to be told that I have to do a certain thing with my life or else I will not be fulfilled (housewife) maybe, just maybe that is not what I dreamed about when I grew up and whatever choice I desire to make is valid. That being said, if they want to model themselves after Stepford wives(ROBOTS) be my guest, but don’t expect me to join ya.
Eh. The Stepford Wives doesn’t leave any room for people like jade_cat to exist. When I read fiction that implies that no one can genuinely think or feel the way I do, I rebel against the canon too. I can’t fault her for coming up with an alternate interpretation that doesn’t erase her.
Huh… I guess I’ve been under a somewhat mistaken impression about what the whole “Red Pill” nonsense is all about. I thought it was more of a PUA thing, about how many “HBs” you could bang and whatnot. I didn’t realize it was (also? (or am I conflating two entirely different subcultures?)) about trying to return family/relationship dynamics to the way they were in the 1950s.
This makes me so sad.
Gallogly-
Money is one of my favorite modern novels. I was obsessed with it for weeks after reading it.
I tried to read some of Amis’ other works, but none of them really grabbed me, the way Money did.
This doesn’t quite come up in the post, but man, I really wish people would stop pretending that having either a one or two-income household is a choice that all married couples get to make on their own and according to their own personal ideals. Most married couples (in the U.S. anyway; can’t speak for the rest of the world) don’t have the option of maintaining only one income – allowing for the other person to stay home and take care of the housework or what-have-you – because most jobs simply don’t pay enough to provide for an entire household; like it or not, both spouses have to work. My understanding is that this was even true in the 50s and 60s – the era that gets held-up as the golden age of housewifery: yeah, it was more common for women to be housewives then as opposed to now, but the households where that was possible – that is, where the husband made enough on his own to support the entire family – were still very much in the minority. Then as now, the Stepford model existed primarily as a fantasy.
Also, how boring was that Stepford Wives remake with Nicole Kidman? Yeah, really boring.
Family relationship dynamics (or w/e) weren’t like that in the 1950s. People were actually human in the 1950s. These red pill people are yearning to return to a past that never existed. I say let them go to his void and shut the portal behind them.
Bull. The Stepford wives, being human beings, were imperfect. That’s why they were killed. The robot wives were prettier, more submissive, more obedient, etc.
The novel didn’t imply that traditional housewives didn’t exist. The point was that the Stepford husbands preferred inhuman perfection.
@brian
If you read through the recent-ish Vox article from earlier this year profiling a less-than-self-aware MRA (despite the part where the writer is strangely generous to Elam and his ilk regarding their self-described advocacy and… charisma), you’ll come across a section where Roosh espouses the same line of thinking in a phone interview. He makes the claim that all his PUAness is pure reaction to cultural collapse–or an adaptation to These Strange and Frightening Modern Times–and that things would be much better in The Past That Definitely Exists and Isn’t Made Up or Anything.
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/5/7942623/mens-rights-movement
LOLwut? Her “alternate interpretation” involves a willful and idiotic misreading of the entire storyline, which is that the men of Stepford all murder their real wives and replace them with compliant, antifeminist robots. I can damn well fault her for that, and so should anyone who’s actually read the book and/or seen the movie. She is just plain blinkered.
Speaking of robots, somehow these bozos are convinced women in general and feminists in particular will oppose sexbots and virtual reality porn
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2015/09/16/is-it-robolove-or-robolust/
when the first founder of a VR porn company is herself a feminist!
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a46390/guys-pay-to-sleep-with-my-hologram/
Really out of touch. Really, really out of touch. Don’t know if its because they are old or just sheltered religious types, or both.
Red Pill Women are like the MGTOWs in that they have this superiority complex over what’s basically a lifestyle choice. Ladies, have at it, nobody’s stopping you from finding your captain and deferring to him in all things to your heart’s content. Except for the fact that most modern, emotionally healthy men don’t want a relationship with an bland, opinionless person who also might abandon ship the moment things get financially rough.
Reading this broke my brain.
I’m sure these women are only enamored with the prospect of being like one of those robots (though I think one of the points is that this is impossiple), but ignoring the fact that women who couldn’t be the archetypal 50s housewife is just scary. It makes it seem like it’s less of a deal than women not wanting to do the dishes every time.
And I’d like to add – “taking care of the household to make the husband’s life easier” in lieu of doing anything else shows a lack of ambition, because you can only control the household. There’s nothing wrong with not dreaming big, but at least own up to it.
Oops, correcting my sentence:
“but ignoring the fact that women who couldn’t be the archetypal 50s housewife got murdered is just scary.”