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
Better than the last one. I give it a 5/10, but it’s still lacking.
@JetGirl
http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Nope-4.gif
@Thomas:
“The 2004 film version is much more accurate regarding how the world really works.”
I have a confession; I actually love the 04 version. And yeah, the movie is an accurate metaphor for reality. For those who haven’t seen the movie, the rest is not spoiler free.
A. You’re right; red pill alpha women absolutely conspire with men to fuck over lesser women. (LOL internalized misogyny).
B. The movie is also accurate in that it shows how men (class) WON’T listen and accept the intelligence of even the red-pill alpha women. (The alpha woman in the movie, a brilliant scientist, had to go to incredible lengths (use her murdered, robot husband) to get her message out to other men.)
C. The men in the movie were obviously willing participants to the conspiracy. The husbands tricked their wives into going into the lab with them, because they believed that having a cyborg wife would be of benefit to *them*, with zero concern with how being turned into a cyborg would impact their wives. They acted in pure self-interest with no regard for their wives, so yup, this is absolutely in line with the reality of red pill men.
D. At the end the alpha red-pill woman killed herself by making out with her dysfunctioning robot. Everyone woke up from their dream, and the men were faced with the reality of imperfect wives that needed help grocery shopping. The horror.
And that’s how how reality will go. Jade_cat, and other red pill women will talk a good game for their own benefit, but reality has a way of slapping the face of men who ignore it. Someday red pill men will wake up, and realize that women are human beings and will never be the robots that they want them to be. They’ll realize that everything the red pill says about what makes a “good” relationship is a lie held up by a house of cards. Wahhh wahhh. And then they’ll either face reality, grow up, and form equal relationships, or they’ll become MGTOW and spare women the blight of dealing with an asshole that wants a robot instead of a relationship.
“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.”
Well the lyrics were written by John Lennon, so I guess this makes Yoko Ono the ultimate red pill woman? 9_9
Here are the lyrics to the song for anyone who’s curious.
Beatles – Nowhere Man Lyrics
He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Doesn’t have a point of view
Knows not where he’s going to
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man please listen
You don’t know what you’re missing
Nowhere man, The world is at your command
He’s as blind as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see
Nowhere man, can you see me at all
Nowhere man don’t worry
Take your time, don’t hurry
Leave it all till somebody else
Lends you a hand
Ah, la, la, la, la
Doesn’t have a point of view
Knows not where he’s going to
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man please listen
You don’t know what you’re missing
Nowhere man, The world is at your command
Ah, la, la, la, la
He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
No way that site is not a joke.
Why is Richard Dawkins such an islamophobic piece of shit?
http://gawker.com/priorities-confused-1731919698
“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 !”
Yes, that is exactly how it is.
If you’ve never tried to be that housewife it may be difficult to understand, but it is impossible for a real live human being to fill that role without being at least somewhat damaged or deranged.
(How many other people think Mola’s garbage is fucking offensive and, behind the SJ language, sexist as all hell? I know I’m really touchy about motherhood stuff to the point of losing any ability I might have to read the room, so I should ask for the overall consensus before continuing.)
Scented Fucking Hard Chairs: I also think that it’s rather offensive and condescending.
Oh look, our joke troll is back. hows its going man?
I think women can choose to do whatever they want. If they want to be stay at home wives who cook, clean and take care of kids/share half of that to husbands that’s great if they want to have careers and don’t want to get married or have kids then that’s great too.
The problem I have are women (people in general) who go “women who are stay at home wives are trapped and need to be free!” Or “women who stay at home are only just leeching off of men!” And “women who don’t marry/have kids/want to cook, etc are man-haters! And not real women!” Or “Good for you! Girl power!”
Just leave me and all women and girls alone and let us live our own lives.
SFHC – Hm… I think it was unfair of them to label you a “choice feminist” – it seems strawmannish. If they were just generally critiquing an idea of feminism that only focuses on individual choice, I’d say they have a good point, but the labelling I didn’t like. Sorry if I wasn’t clearer about that before.
*unfair because that wasn’t what you were arguing anyway, moreover
Also, Thomas Hobbes, I’m curious about your interpretation of the Beatles song “Yesterday.” Would you enlighten us as to its true meaning and how it relates to redpill rhetoric?
This has been a very stimulating discussion for me. I am currently a stay-at-home dad. My husband is a small business owner. I took medical retirement from my civil service career back in 2008. Looking back, I realize that Alice B. Toklas was my role model for adulthood – meet and marry a genius, then dedicate myself to nurturing their genius to fruition. While my working life was intrinsically worthwhile (providing services to disabled veterans), my father had taught me that real life is what happens when you’re not at work. After twenty four years of working, staying at home – cooking, cleaning, taking care of things so my husband can focus on building his business – feels good. I would never tell anyone else that this is what he or she should be doing, but it works for me.
One thing of which I’m very aware – we weren’t *expected* to adopt children, and I wasn’t *expected* to stay home and take care of them. In fact, the first time I took time off from work to attend a parent/teacher conference, my supervisor informed me very seriously that that was a luxury I should not expect. I informed her that I would be taking as much time as I saw fit, and if she had a problem with that she could take it up with the union. She somehow had the conviction that my spouse must be equivalent to a “wife”, rather than an equal partner (with a corporate career, earning twice what I did). As she was married herself, I thought this was remarkably retrograde of her – from the OP, it appears she was not unique in this respect.
@Lily Louise
Hello! And welcome – I think I’m one of the reasons you decided to comment, so I figured I really should say hi.
Let me see if I can express myself more clearly:
I would not call a woman whose dream is being a housewife ambitious. I would call a woman whose dream is to create a show like Martha Stewart Living ambitious.
I would not call a woman whose dream is being a bank clerk ambitious. I would call a woman whose dream is being a CEO ambitious.
I would not call a woman whose dream is being a gym teacher ambitious. I would call a woman whose dream is to participate in the Olympics ambitious.
I don’t think roles assigned as feminine are lesser or necessarily show a lack of ambition just by virtue of being assigned as feminine.
As an exemple – I love taking care of children. I would be nurturing and motherly and play with kids for hours, and not think any lesser of myself for it – but I really wouldn’t consider that as being ambitious.
If you believe that being a housewife is something that can have a big scope, I personally can’t see it, but if you can clarify, I’m all ears.
@mola
“I’m going to say my piece, then not bother to engage with or even be around for any responses or discussion afterwards” is kind of an ‘avoid being a dick’ fail in itself.
The thing with the word ‘ambitious’ is that it’s seen as being this grand, huge thing – if you’re ambitious, you’re a shoot-for-the-stars go-getter! You want to be bigger and better! You’re doing it right! And the implication (accurate or not) is that those who are not ambitious (as we tend to define it) are somehow slackers or lesser… or at least mediocre and not really that important, as they don’t have much impact on the world at large.
Accurate or not, we tend to use ‘ambitious’ in this way as opposed to the definition, ‘having or showing a strong desire and determination to succeed.’ I suppose this is because of how we tend to view and define ‘success’, at least in North American culture, and we associate it with grand scopes, wealth, power etc.
I’d say someone who raised well-loved, awesome kids has had a greater positive impact on the world than Martha Stewart has had with her show… but yes, we’d call Stewart ambitious, and regard her more for it because IMO our values in that respect are more than slightly fucked up.
I find the whole argument about “choice feminism” to be really frustrating. The whole thing strikes me as a false dichotomy. I mean, take this:
Who in the universe has ever said that choices exist in a non-patriarchal vacuum? And what feminist in the universe (actual feminist, not people like CHS) has ever said, or acted like, feminism was completely about individual choice and not about dismantling patriarchal structures? No one here, I can confidently say.
So I’m trying to figure out what Mola and the anti-“choice feminism” camp believe that’s different from what all feminists believe, and all I’m coming up with is “some lifestyles are better than others.” If we’re dividing into one camp that believes some people’s life choices are inherently superior and one camp that doesn’t, put me in the non-judgmental camp and label me whatever you like.
I can see how some of my comments might have come off that way. I was discussing personal choices in my bits.
But you’re right Katz: It isn’t just about personal choice, but dismantling the patriarchal structures that make some choices more worth shame to society as a whole, and trying to say that some choices are better than others and if you choose something that’s traditionally female then you’re not good enough or “not ambitious” is way off the mark. There are different ways to succeed, and saying that stay-at-home moms can’t be “ambitious” is just outright silly.
No one here was saying that these choices exist in a vacuum, no one here was saying that choice is the MOST IMPORTANT thing, because choices are effected by said patriarchal structures.
You guys can stick me right in the non-judgmental camp as well. I don’t care what people choose to do with their lives, as long as it’s not hurting themselves or other people, they should be allowed to make the choices that suit them best, and that doesn’t mean that they’re better or worse than anyone else for making those choices.
@SFHC
“(How many other people think Mola’s garbage is fucking offensive and, behind the SJ language, sexist as all hell? I know I’m really touchy about motherhood stuff to the point of losing any ability I might have to read the room, so I should ask for the overall consensus before continuing.)”
I’ve been a SAHM, I think Mola was sometimes wrong, but never sexist. Maybe it’s a conflict between different “brands” of feminism?
I really dislike “choice” feminism as well, and in particular I’m sick of people calling staying at home with kids a “choice”. I feel that calling it a “choice” sugar-coats the issues that are behind many women’s “choice” to stay home. I’m not saying that stay at home mom’s are oppressed, or lazy, or that they hang out at home and contribute nothing to society, but I don’t think that it’s exactly a free choice either.
Mostly, her idea that feminism can’t change the association between “status” with “has money” is dead wrong. If feminists can get women the vote and start to break down oppression, we can bring honor to the poor. After all, the poor are mostly women.
@katz
” we’re dividing into one camp that believes some people’s life choices are inherently superior and one camp that doesn’t, put me in the non-judgmental camp and label me whatever you like.”
Sounds judgemental. 😉
Well, I think that we can all agree that people, themselves, should always be supported, no matter the choices they make, as long as they don’t hurt other people. Even if the choices they make hurt themselves, I think people should have the right to do as they please with themselves.
Problem with pretending that all lifestyles are equally valid is that it tends to shut down any discussion that analyzes the real costs of a particular choice. “Superior” is a problematic word, as it’s extremely subjective, however, you certainly can say that the costs of one lifestyle are different than the costs of another. 🙂
No, absolutely, there are huge social pressures on women and girls in certain directions, and there’s a degree to which presenting “you can do this countercultural thing, or you can do this extremely socially acceptable thing” as if they were equivalent options is unhelpful because the latter is constantly being put forward as an option. And I’ve known a lot of female friends who graduated from college and swore up and down they weren’t just going to quit their jobs and stay home when they had kids, but somehow fell into that role anyway.
However:
a) No choice is a free choice, because every choice carries social baggage. So if you’re going to say you can’t use the word “choice” to describe being a SAHM, you shouldn’t use the word “choice” to describe almost anything. (And if there is someone who says she decided to stay home with her kids and it was her own choice, saying it wasn’t a choice feels a tad gaslighty.)
b) At the end of the day, when women make choices, you can either support them in whatever choices they make, or you can try to control the choices they make by casting some of them as “better” or “worse.”
“Yesterday is a post-Miltonic buldongsroman which rebukes the Catholic Church for its corpulent reformationalism at the end of the Second Vatican Council. It’s lyrics about believing in yesterday, and not being half the man he used to be, enlighten us as to the debauched state of western civilization since the Protestant Reformation. Paul McCartney became a spy for the Vatican in 1958, and sought, as much as possible, to influence the direction of popular music on a traditionalist direction. He actually tried to block the relase of The Stepford Wives novel but was unsuccessful.
Button, the claim if yours that I responded to was this:
Now you’re claiming that Stepford’s housewives were the villains of the story!?
You must be an MRA. Nobody else argues so incoherently.
Re “choice feminism”–
Feminism analyzes and criticizes and makes judgments about society. That’s–a large part of what it does.
Feminism is also about supporting women.
Unless you want a simplistic narrative where anything a woman does is good and unproblematic because a woman did it, there’s going to be some tension between those two different strands of feminism. So be it.
Here’s how I see “choice feminism”: It tries to stifle analysis, critique, and judgment in favor of making everyone (everyone female, that is!) feel happy. It’s phony empowerment. I’m no Marxist, but it does seem to me to be a very consumer-culture-driven phenomenon.
Look, it’s OK for us to argue about the meaning and effects of things like wearing a hijab or being a housewife or modelling for Playboy. It’s healthy for us to discuss those things and argue about them and disagree.
Sometimes in the course of those discussions and arguments some of our own choices may be criticized. THAT’S OK.
(That doesn’t mean anyone should be thrown out of the club [so to speak] for being an imperfect feminist. I loathe purity tests.)