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
re: “wedding teeth”: Googled a bit, had no idea:
http://bizarrevictoria.livejournal.com/95923.html
It was apparently a fairly common practice in the UK that, especially in rural areas, lasted into the 20th century.
@mola the ocean sunfish YAAAAAAS. I get you, you are absolutely right: individualist choice feminism is but a misguided distraction, a waste of time.
Example: i shave my legs. I can swear to you i do it by “choice” but the truth is that i’m socially pressured into doing it. The truth is that i ca’t really opt out of it without feeling terribly inadequate, embarassed and judged. Therefore my supposed choice is being controled by social pressure, so is it really a choice? No.
@Sally…yes, and I don’t shave my legs. Which doesn’t make me a better feminist than you, or whatever, it just means that because of my own individual circumstances I happen to face less severe social consequences, or (again due to chance and privilege) am better equipped to cope with them, than you are. Neither of our ‘choices’ are made purely for personal reasons.
You should have left a gap after your spoiler alert
“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.”
No wonder it comes so readily to the Redpolers; fascists gotta stick together.
I don’t know if vids by mras/puas are allowed to be posted but Roosh is now saying he’s a believing and practicing Muslim and that’s why he was opposed and attacked in Toronto. Now, we know the Manosphere is always saying that “feminists love Islam” and there’s going to be an “Islamic takeover” orchestrated by feminists and “alpha” muslim men. Roosh seems pretty confident that accusing “Canadian feminists” of Islamophobia will do the trick in, what exactly, I don’t know – them issuing an apology or something? This assumption that feminists love or must love Islam is one of the many manosphere memes I never understood. Feminists come from all walks of life, some of them Muslim, sure, some of them favorable to religion and Islam sure, and also some of them not any of the above. So Roosh’s attempt to back “Canadian feminists” into a corner with his profession of his faith, if even that is sincere and can be taken at face value, is kind of well, odd, and it certainly makes a lot of assumptions about “Canadian feminists”
Is he for real or is this a roosh ruse? 😉
Mildly magnificent, thanks for that information. I had no idea. It’s kind of like a dowry, then. Like “here is the burden that is to be your wife, but, she has sheets and Tupperware!”
A land whale:
Nailed it!
Virtually – I believe David documented plans earlier stated by Roosh to claim that he’s Muslim in order to deflect criticism for his “neomasculine” ideals.
Roosh: Not so great at not publishing his shit-plans on publicly available platforms.
Here’s the post: https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/08/13/roosh-v-prepares-for-toronto-by-pretending-to-be-muslim-urging-followers-to-have-sex-with-feminists/#more-17633
@Mike
“This doesn’tt 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; cant speak for the rest of the world) dont 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 dont pay enough to provide for an entire household; like it or not, both spouses have to work. “
Personally, I’m tired of feminists who don’t recognize the privilege of having access to affordable daycare, or the privilege of being well off enough to afford it. (Or alternately, I’m tired of people who don’t recognize the privilege of having a wife/family member available to be able to watch the kids for cheap or “free”. Usually, these people aren’t identifying feminists at least.) Being a stay-at-home mom may have been a “choice” 30 years ago, but day-day-care costs have doubled since then, and many middle/working class mothers find themselves flat out priced out of the job market, and forced to survive on one income, whether they can afford to or not.
Furthermore, I think you may be assuming that all stay at home moms are married and relatively privileged, or that all groups of stay at home moms have the same advantages that married and relatively privileged stay at home moms have . Neither assumption is true.
From Pew Research;
A) Stay at home mom’s are more likely to be younger, less educated, non-white, and poorer than working moms;
*42% of stay at home moms are younger than 35, vs. 35% of working moms
*49% of stay at home moms have a high school diploma or less vs.. 30% of working moms
*49% of stay at home moms are POC vs.. 40% of working moms
*34% of stay at home moms are living in poverty vs.. 12% of working mothers
B)Only married stay at home mothers with working husbands are more likely to live above the poverty line than under it. (Although married working moms are still financially better off than married stay-at-home moms). 15% of married stay at home moms live in poverty; every one else is fucked;
*71% of single stay at home moms live in poverty
*74% of married women with husband’s who are out of work live in poverty
*88% of cohabiting stay-at-home moms live in poverty**
Sorry, but this is a sore subject for me since I once was a young, poor, cohabiting mother. Children are the future, not some individualistic hobby to fulfill parents. Society should;
A) Be more willing to support working parents
with government policies.
B) Be more willing to provide free babysitting for family members. Humans have always lived in groups with extended family providing much support to young parents. Government will never pick up this slack, and forcing parents to do it alone results in overwhelmed parents whom are less able to respond to their child’s needs than if they had been in a more supportive environment.
C. Stop throwing women who have children under the bus for making some “choice”, whatever that choice happens to be. Whether you have children yourself or not, *everyone* in society benefits from *everyone else* raising well adjusted children that will make good nurses, doctors, soldiers, and garbage collectors for when our generation is too feeble and old to do it ourselves. ;p
Speaking of aging, I wonder if jade_cat plans on never aging, because AFAIK one of the “pros” of the robots for Stepford men was that the robots didn’t age.
“Because obviously, a pretty housewife who never complains and who isn’tt a feminist is too good to be true, so she must be a robot ! ;)” -jade_cat
Ok, the “never complains” part is somewhat amusing, because I’m assuming that by “never complains” she means “always is happy”, but then how exactly is a woman supposed to get enough of her needs met to be happy without ever “complaining” to her husband? Is her husband supposed to read her mind? Intrinsically understand her needs like some knight in shining armor from Snow White? I guess he is. What a great example of how hierarchical systems like patriarchy are toxic to *everybody*.
(If she said something like “never nags” I would be a little more understanding, because while “complaining” is necessary to discuss dissatisfaction, nagging isn’t).
As to having a “pretty” wife, jade_cat illustrates just how clueless she is. Beauty is time-limited for even the most beautiful of women. How exactly does Jade_cat plan on never getting sick or old? Is she planning on dying (or getting made into a robot) within the next few years? Is she secretly a vampire? The world will never know.
**Yeah, I dropped the cohabitation/marriage thread because I had a stupid-busy week with my kids, the start of school year activities, and colds. Regardless, I have much of the post written, and I’ll try to post it soon.
I also haven’t read the book, but I’d bet what would happen would be that the daughters are kept alive long enough to be married off and have the requisite number of sons for their husband, and then they would be murdered and replaced like all the other women. If the fathers did have any objections, I’m betting they would be steamrolled by the force of the community/social pressure. After all, I’m betting at least some of these dudes supposedly loved their wives, too, but isn’t everything so much easier when they’re perfect? You don’t want to deny the future generation that, do you? It’s for the good of everyone. You don’t want your grandsons raised by someone unreliable, do you? Etc etc etc. *shivers*
Hm, I may be sticking my foot in a hornet’s nest here, but the world already has a population of over 7 billion and cannot possibly support that many, at least, not if everyone wants to have a standard of living equivalent to a first-world country. With obviously limited resources, especially considering that people of the western world are the ones who put the most strain and demand on them, can we really say that it should be everyone’s right to have as many children as they want, and that we should indeed offer incentives and programs to facilitate an ever burgeoning population?
@ Katz
“Bullshit as it is, ambition is a male-coded word, which explains both why wanting to climb the corporate ladder might be seen as ambitious but wanting to raise kids isn’t, and why lack of ambition is used so often to dismiss women.”
TRUTH
@RosaD“I’m not saying that people have to want to reach a lot of people, or create impressive things – I’m saying that just being a housewife isn’t going to do it (at least I don’t see how).
Also, I’m sorry if it sounded like I was trying to say people who to be housewives or have standard jobs can’t dream big; I was referring specifically to the original poster, whose goal in life seems to be being a housewife.”
Traditionally, housewives were expected to do most the unpaid volunteer work in society. (And they probably still do much of it). Not getting noticed for a contribution isn’t the same as not making it. 🙂
@catalapa
“can we really say that it should be everyone’s right to have as many children as they want,
Right to have as many children as they wish? Yes. Government has no right to limit in people’s reproduction. There’s too many systems of oppression for government limits not lead to tyranny. (Think gender-selective abortions).
Now, in a perfect society, would it be a good idea to limit our world-wide reproduction to a “sustainable” level? Sure. Although, I’m not sure that we could ever really be sure what is in reality “sustainable”, and I’m not really so sure that a “first world” life should really be the goal.
@mrex
Mmn, I’ll agree that government-mandated bans on reproduction are a ethical nightmare. But I find it rather… cruel, I suppose, to bring a life into the world knowing that it cannot possibly be provided for (which will happen eventually, assuming that the population just keeps growing, regardless of how many government programs there might exist to provide aid), or that the life can only be provided for by exploiting other lives in far-away places, to artificially drive costs down using what amounts almost to slave labor and ravaging the environment.
@rugbyyogi,
ergh! You have my sympathies. At least you’re not living with that guy anymore.
A perfect society would not need to mandate how many children it’s people are allowed to have, because a perfect society would have free/affordable education for everyone (therefore among other things teaching people how their bodies work and providing them with skills to build a carreer, making them independent), free/affordable healthcare (including birth control, therefore not burdening people who are too poor to afford birth control with chancing it), free/affordable childcare (and maybe tighter communities), so every parent can still contribute to Society, and a good system in place that takes care of the old (so you don’t need a lot of offspring as an insurance that someone will take care of you later).
So basically a system that doesn’t put pressure on people either way.
And while there might be some People who would want a lot of children, most would probably stay in a range of 1 – 3, because they would want to be able to give enough love and attention and recources to each child, while still also pursuing other goals in their life. And people like me, who do not want children at all, because just not everyone is a kidsperson, would even out the average again…. and contribute financially to the system by tax. Because yeah, children are our future. I can see that, despite not wanting any of my own.
Well educated, happy, free children will make a bright new generation for a better world.
I apologize for clumsy wording, but it’s in the middle of the night over here in Germany and I am struggling to stay awake at work. And this browser tries to force capital letters on me . >_<
Maybe she also runs this bizarre site?
http://www.stepfordwife.com/
Gallogly & RoscoeTCat – When John Self goes on his hawt date in a rented tux that starts making its past lives all too obvious?
I was reading it on an LA-NYC redeye and was getting annoyed looks from three rows away because I couldn’t stifle my laughter. Ended up just sticking the book in the seat pocket to read later… but kept laughing anyway.
The 2004 film version is much more accurate regarding how the world really works. The alpha female is the one who is actually turning the other women into robots and the men all obey her. Red pill women are the alpha females who run civilization and control the men whom feminists believe are running the world as the patriarchy. The Beatles song “Nowhere Man” is about how feminists and corporate elites are trying to overthrow the traditional ruling class of alpha females and how good men need to stand up and defend red pill women.
@JetGirl:
…Wat.
http://www.catgifs.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/206_confused_cat_gifs.gif
@TH:
“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.”
That’s pretty much Vox Day in a nutshell, so there’s that…
Hoping it’s a massive joke, Tyra. Perhaps David could investigate.
If Ira Levin were alive now I imagine his reaction to these women would be exactly like that meme of confused Jackie Chan.