Red Pill women now recommending the Stepford Wives as role models

I don’t mind if one spouse stays home to take care of the house and kids and ensure that dinner is on the table, while the other brings home a paycheck. So, men? What are you waiting for? If it’s good enough for us ladies, it’s good enough for you. Advents in technology make it so that women can choose not to be pregnant, like, all of the time, and also make it no longer necessary for the Mommy Milk Machine to accompany infants wherever they go, so we’ll just show you how to thaw breast milk from out of the freezer. We women are just so busy with our careers. You understand, right?

They really missed the point of ‘The Stepford Wives’ didn’t they? I read it last year, very creepy.

Like,if Stalin is a bad guy and what he did is an indictment of the USSR, then what should be made of the tens of thousands of dead people every year, thanks to colonialism, or the near daily extra judicial executions of black and Latino people in the US alone?

I mean, I’ve been noticing this a lot as an adult. And I know basically no one really cares that the west is a citadel of bone, no crime we ever commit will be significant enough to indict our society or politicians existentially, you just have to vote harder for the next liberal administrator of the world’s biggest spy network, prison complex, and invasive, bloody military. Stalin wished he had this level of lockstep obedience. Even social critics don’t really want to change the foundation, just change the wallpaper. I feel ill.

@ SFHC

First off I would like to say that I debated making this post for a long-ish time. I’m still not sure this is the right choice, and if it’s not, then I’m sorry. I’m doing my best to avoid being a dick, however I’m not good at that, and if I fail, as I often do, it’s on me. It’s probably best that I withdraw from the discussion after this. I’ll try to explain myself with a carefully minimized amount of assholery, then I’m out.

1. Feminism is about choice – about not forcing women into roles, regardless of that role. Forcing women into the role opposite of the traditional patriarchal one is still forcing women into a role.

A lot of feminists would not agree with you on that. I don’t. We’re not advocating forcing women to do anything. We’re recognizing that women’s choices are constrained by patriarchy, and can’t be seen as entirely free. Because of that, emphasizing individual choice as the foundation and endgoal of feminism is misguided. Women are an oppressed class; feminism can’t be an entirely individualist movement. Too much individualism will always end up trying to make women responsible for their own oppression. Individualist “feminists” are people like Wendy McElroy, Cathy Young and Christina Hoff Sommers. “Choice feminism” is a pejorative.

2. So, even though it fell through due to reasons beyond my control, since my original goal in life was to raise a family, I’m not a real feminist? I’m secretly working for the patriarchy because I love and wish I could have children? Because that’s what it sounds like you’re saying.

It was definitely not my intention to sound like that. Please do not take any of what I say as a personal attack. If any of what I say comes across as a personal attack, I apologize.

We all cooperate with patriarchy, in small and big ways. We all make constrained choices. This is necessary. It would not be oppression if we could choose to opt out. Few of us are in a position to reject society as much as it would take to avoid collaborating with patriarchy. Feminists rejecting society en masse is not really even a desirable goal.

Regardless of who you are, if you’re not a little uncomfortable when thinking about your position in life, you’re probably doing feminism wrong. I’m saying you should be aware of patriarchy and the ways you’re choosing to cooperate with it, whether you’re the oppressor or the oppressed, even if it doesn’t feel good. It’s the same for all kinds of oppression. Oppression is fucked up; if there is any, you’re not supposed to feel good about it.

@ Tessa

You are falling into the trap of buying that something that’s traditionally coded “woman” is “bad.”

This is not how I see it. There have historically been strong, practical reasons for why things that are traditionally coded ”woman” are low status, and the causal relationship does not go from ”woman” to ”low status” but the other way around. Low status work without lucrative rewards was left to low status people: women. The picture has become more complicated since feminism, as some work has become low status after women started doing it. But that is not the reason why traditionally female-coded work is low status.

Many of the strong practical reasons for why some woman-coded work such as housework and care work are low status and not well rewarded are still there, and are independent of simple sexism. There are other, deeper power hierarchies in society than sexism. There is nothing inherently more valuable about the kind of work that is male-coded. What makes it high status is the access to resources and power it grants you.

Paid work is higher status than unpaid work. Better compensated work is higher status than work that is not well compensated. Care work is mostly unskilled work and a service provided to disprivileged classes like the old, the sick or the very young who cannot pay their carers well. This alone makes care work irrevocably low status, until the day when money no longer equals status in society, which is a worthy goal but clearly beyond feminism.

Assigning the “taking care” aspect the label of “less than” as you have done, will do nothing to change the stigma. Just make it worse.

As I see it, I’m not doing any assigning. I’m only stating the problem out loud. My intention in pointing out the problem is not to fix it immediately. To begin the long term process of addressing a problem, one must first be conscious of it. There are no shortcuts. Redefining the problem so that it is not there and calling it solved also does nothing to change the stigma.

@shaenon

Ira Levin…also wrote Rosemary’s Baby, another classic horror novel with strong feminist themes.

I read “Rosemary’s Baby” as a teenager and was struck by the writer’s sympathy for women. I reread it recently and was even more surprised by the strength of his feelings for women. It’s quite unusual for a man, especially a man of his era. It’s ironic that noted rapist Roman Polanski directed the film.

@Virtually Out of Touch

David have you ever written about the crazy Manosphere idea that women and “feminists” are against the male pill and that’s why there is not one? If not, could you? Because I remember reading some feminist literature from the 70s that bemoaned the fact that birth control was seen as solely a woman’s responsibility. I swear these guys must not know a single woman or a single feminist AT ALL because everything they write about women and feminists “opposing” are usually things that women and feminists are in favor of. I mean, where do they get their ideas?

Where do they get their ideas? They make them up to keep their angry readers angry. They definitely don’t want life to get any easier for their readers. An employed MRA in good health and with great relationships with his wife, family, and friends–is no MRA. The manosphere isn’t making any money from happy guys.

Virtually Out of Touch, I really enjoy your comments but could you perhaps swap in a dfferent word for “crazy” in the future? We’re not big fans of it ’round here.

Delurking to agree with Tessa here.

My job was 9 to 5 and left me anything but fulfilled. Being home with my kid, keeping my family fed, with the leisure of extended breastfeeding and being able to help him nurture and grow one-on-one, isn’t “lesser”. It has more of a positive impact on the world than the office grind ever did. My life is full of joy, learning, creativity and purpose.

Looking down on traditionally “feminine” roles makes the status of women worse. Valuing them more highly is a feminist mission that also helps to de-gender them, because if caring is higher status, it’s also more attractive as a role to men.

As for the implication that I’m letting the side down as a feminist by being some sort of selfish, individualist “choice feminist” who should be taking one for the team and making the choice that’sg less optimal for me, well… I’m a lesbian. I’m by definition not doing this for any man.

Please don’t buy into misogynist assumptions that roles assigned “feminine” are limited in scope and lesser. I think everyone needs to find the role that best fits them as a human being. My wife would be bored and restless doing what I do… Just as I was in every single job I ever had, once the novelty and excitement wore off.

The Stepford Wives novel terrified me as a kid, incidentally, but I love the clothes in the first movie.

Talk about missing an obvious point.

“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.”

UHHH, the bolded part negates the whole freaking point of your comment, lady. She was RIGHT. How does that make her irrational? This woman needs to have several seats.

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.

Remember that what a lot of women, and their families, did was to assemble the wife’s contribution to her married household before she married. The traditional glory box or bottom drawer.

Starting out a separate household with 20+ years’ worth of bed and bath linen, all the kitchen equipment you’d ever need and a “trousseau”. This was downgraded over time to a near trivial assemblage of nightwear and fancy undies for the wedding day and honeymoon, but it started out as having as big a stock of petticoats, underwear, nightgowns, aprons as well as a stack of fabric and trimmings suitable for making “day” dresses and other utilitarian wear. Everybody was expected to be able to sew and knit their own and their children’s clothes, or, as in my mother’s case, have a relative who was able and willing to do it for her. My mother knitted and did “fancy” work but her mother did her sewing.

When she died aged 85, my grandmother still had new, unused, still in their cellophane wrapping, linen sheets that she had when she married 60 years before. At Xmas aged 13, I was given my very first casserole dish. By the time I married 9ish years later in 1969, I had 2 tea chests completely full of bed, bath and table linen, tupperware, various cooking thingummies along with a whole heap of other stuff, everything from fancy crocheted table decorations and flower vases to mops, brooms and 20 aprons. Some obviously for laundry/baking day, some frilled and lace trimmed in case I was ‘caught’ wearing an apron when guests were expected for dinner.

For my grandmother’s generation, one ‘contribution’ that many women made before getting married was to have all their teeth extracted and replaced with false teeth — to save their husbands the expense, they’d never need a dentist’s appointment. With my mother’s generation, and many of my own, most worked after marriage until they got pregnant. Every single penny of those earnings usually went into the house, household furnishings and-or into savings the wife could keep to pay for her own expenses, like gifts for her husband and household or baby items. Extravagances like outings or holidays were strictly paid for by husbands.

So the idea that households were entirely maintained by a man’s income wasn’t exactly a fiction. but it wasn’t the whole truth. All but the poorest households were set up to some extent by the woman’s pre-marriage earnings and handiwork as well as gifts and hand-made items from her family and friends.

@mildlymagnificent – If you don’t mind me asking, what country are you referencing?

I’ve never heard of women having their teeth pulled pre-marriage to save on dental expenses.

I have heard of the pre-marriage cache, though as a “hope chest”.

Hm. I agree with mola the ocean sunfish that “choice feminism” shouldn’t be the whole story, and that choices are made within the context of patriarchal/hierarchical systems. I think maybe what I didn’t see articulated by anyone yet (but I could very well be wrong) is that the point isn’t blaming individuals for their choices, either. To me, that’s not a helpful way of thinking about it either.

Now I want to see Stepford Wives, but I signed up for a craft workshop this afternoon (traditional femininity, here I come – it’s about making “felted” fabric) so I guess I should go. Ah, the fleeting free time of weekends…