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
Ha ha! Awesome!
“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.”
Or watching Amistad and rooting for the slave owners. I wonder why this Red Pill woman thinks she wouldn’t be replaced with a sex robot when the apocalypse comes.
Nothing like the freedom of pledging to always criticize feminism no matter what, and the power of submitting to an “alpha” that believes he owns you body and soul. Careful, Hobbes, you’re starting to get a tad Orwellian! Though I suppose that’s not too bad considering your Nom de Plume.
Fun side note: apparently the phrase “Augustine’s Paradox” refers to the idea that if you are able to repent truly moments before you die, you will go to heaven. Thus, it seems like the optimal way to live life is to be as selfish and hedonistic as possible, then repent at the end. However, if you are doing so as part of a strategy then God might see through it and it won’t work.
Does this mean the ideal strategy for women is to spend their early years riding the carousel, then just before they start hitting the wall find some alpha to own them and settle down into traditionalism? But if the alpha knows about their hedonistic escapades, would he take her despite her being physically attractive? If he does, would that make him the “beta bucks” provider and negate his assumed alpha status?
Hmm, what a puzzle…
And the bigger issue is why ambition is coded inherently positive in the first place. Sure, some ambitious people have accomplished big positive things, but all the most terrible people in history have also been extremely ambitious. I’d say it’s a net negative overall; even ambitious people with the best intentions usually end up doing something really shady along the way.
It’s part of a large cultural pattern of casting personalities into dichotomies of Good Traits and Bad Traits. Ambition is good; lack of ambition is bad. Extroversion is good; introversion is bad. Being a leader is good; being a follower is bad. (The latter is so pervasive that many schools and youth organizations to “promote leadership” bend over backwards to classify everyone as some kind of leader, even though the concept inherently requires them to be a minority.) Women who work are feminist and therefore good; women who stay at home are not feminist and therefore bad. And so on.
So what’s the logical underpinning to saying that, even if you have a happy, fulfilling life that fills some vital societal role, that’s “worse” than having some other life that you may not want and society may not need?
It’s not feminist. It’s capitalist. All these dichotomies serve to strengthen the narrative that the people with the most power are inherently better than everyone else and therefore deserve what they have, and that the marginalized also deserve their lot as punishment for failing to have the right personality traits. And of course, as you said, the right traits are coded male, and white, and upper class, and so on.
This isn’t the case in non-capitalist cultures: They may value humility over ambition, or doing a good job at the role you’re in over climbing toward a higher-status role.
The most worthy women are not owned by an alpha; they become alpha themselves and marry a beta and get behind him to make him alpha. Eleanor Roosevelt is a good example.
Katz,
I definitely agree with that. I’m someone who is inherently not ambitious. My whole life, I’ve been told by family and teachers/professors that I’m not working to my full potential, that I need to have a plan and have goals. It’s a source of pain. I often feel bad about myself because I’m not a go getter. Working 80 hour weeks, networking etc. all sound nightmarish to me. I only work because I need to live and because unemployment is my main depression trigger and I do need to get out of the house a bit. Why is that so wrong? The world would be even worse than it is if everyone were ambitious, in my opinion. People who like to spend their time reading, hanging out with friends and family or watching movies aren’t the ones who make the world a shitty place. The world is not going to be worse off if I drift through life. I can still do good by helping loved ones when they need it, keeping my carbon footprint low, and adopting cats who need a home.
Sorry for the tl;dr. I just wish people would get off my back and let me be type b!
What… what does “alpha” and “beta” mean to you, exactly? I didn’t realize the categories were so fluid.
If an alpha woman succeeds at making her husband alpha, does she then leave him to find another beta to prop up? Or has she spent her upgrade token and lost her “worthy” status, so it’s ok to be owned by the newly formed alpha?
Do alpha men have a similar role to play in uplifting women and making them alpha, or is the relationship parasitic in that men benefit from women but women don’t benefit from men?
@Tom
Remember what I said about over posting. Too much, you’ll get banned. Back it off.
@Mola
Okay, now that I know what “Choice feminist” is supposed to actually mean past “Comparing me to Hoff Sommers because ???”…
Yeah, you’ve misread the hell out of me. I never said that choice is the only important thing, only that it’s an important thing. Equality (eg, dismantling the patriarchy), freedom (eg, freedom from rape, harassment and violence) and choice. I focussed on choice because that’s the one you’re sneering at, as if it’s some all-or-nothing thing. (If women can’t make choices in an absolute vacuum, then they can’t or shouldn’t make choices at all! Fuuuck that. Absolutely, it’d be ideal if there weren’t any gender roles or economic factors pushing women in one direction or another, but until then, I’d say that perfect is the enemy of good in this case.) And I sure as hell don’t mean “The choice to be a SAHM or nothing,” I mean any choice for any reason. Scientist, SAHM, retail worker, doctor, soldier, for cash-flow reasons or social factors or just because they bloody well want to – no option is inherently better, more ambitious or more feminist than the others. That comes from what’s inside, who you are and what you believe, not what your fucking job is.
And yes, I do feel that this condescending bullshit about “Working is more feminist than being a SAHM” is, ironically, misogynistic (and classist). Because you’re viewing roles seen as stereotypically feminine as lesser – which means, on some subconscious level, viewing women as lesser. And that’s gross.
Also, you can’t apologise “If” anything “Comes across as” a personal attack and then, once again, compare me to arse-damned Hoff Sommers. It just doesn’t work that way. Own your shit.
My personal Hobbes tolerance threshhold is approximately one post per thread, rounded up.
@katz, WWTH and SFHC
I agree with the idea that ‘ambition’ has been unnecessarily glamorized in society – not to mention the problem of the attached ‘inherently male’ concept to it.
I see society as a massive group undertaking and that every job in it (from sewage worker to neurosurgeon) adds to it – no one should be judged because their contribution is less ‘flashy’, but unfortunately society does indulge in this judgement.
I will admit in my younger days that I used to have the notion that SAHM is a ‘lesser’ job for women, but as I have gained in knowledge and understanding I see now that I was merely reflecting another person’s view without critically thinking it through. Every job matters to society and none are superior, feminist or otherwise. The amount of money and ‘prestige’ you get may differ, but one thing to remember about ‘prestigious’ fields is that they are only so when the society is able to support it. Some of these fields would be redundant when their need/demand is almost non-existent.
When criticizing ‘choice feminism’ as WWTH mentioned, the focus should be about the system that pushes people into choices, rather than the choices that people end up making, lest the critics would end up missing their own point. Being unambitious is not a bad thing at all. Remember, the patriarchy always wants to sell ‘male qualities’ as being better than ‘female qualities’, and ambition is one such ‘male’ product.
And now, let me also speak up in defense of Mola and Rosa here (which I hinted a bit at in my prior post).
I think Mola did try in her long reply (the one in which she wrote about backing out in the beginning) to clarify her position. Unfortunately it can be read that she was equating SFHC with CHS but I don’t think that was her intention. I read it more as she was trying to give examples of faux feminists that subscribe primarily to ‘choice feminism’. The wording was off but I don’t think she meant it in that sense.
Also worth pointing out is that she does try to explain in the post that she is not trying to judge or define the worth of people based on their life choices. She was talking more about how society generally view women as being ‘lower status’ in comparison to men, and why it is easier for the stigmatization to carry on into the work assigned to them. I do think that the criticism that Mola has been receiving is a little too harsh, especially when she did try to clarify things (you can say that she was not clear enough, but that is a different issue).
She also has the right to withdraw herself from the conversation and we should respect that. Please do not attack her because of that. I don’t believe she wrote a ‘hit piece’ and then ran away from the scene of the crime.
In regards to Rosa, I think she was just talking more in terms of how society views ‘ambition’ and how it typically does not apply that well to SAHM. I do NOT think she was casting a wide judgement on SAHM and saying that they are of lesser value – only that the term ‘ambitious’ is not applicable in the way it is commonly used. I personally view that raising children is pretty darn ambitious, but I do see where Rosa is coming from.
Please remember that it is easy (as I stated in the prior post) to mistake criticism of ‘choice feminism’ as an attack on women’s personal choices. Most feminists against ‘choice feminism’ are definitely not judging or demanding that women make ‘un-traditional’ choices. They want to instead highlight the system that is unfairly skewing the society.
If you disagree with what I have written I will be glad to hear you out on what I got wrong, especially if I mis-represented your point.
Thanks.
(Also, post-lunch, I should apologise to everybody else for being uncharacteristically angry about this. It’s just hit two very specific weak points of mine at once.)
@reallyfriendly I think you have on some massive blinders and are willing to see that people you agree with ARE critiquing SAHMs.
Take for example some of @Rosa’s posts:
No here’s your defense:
Bullshit. Notice how she repeatedly used the word “I”. She wasn’t talking about how “society” views ambition, she was clearly talking about how she feels, and she feels SAHM’s aren’t ambitious. She said that creating “impressive” things is something housewives can’t do, how is that not a critique on the value of their work? She doesn’t think that the goal of being a SAHM isn’t a big enough goal to count as an ambition. It seems like you twisted her comments into what you wanted to hear, and are blind to the fact that SAHM’s are being critiqued here.
… *Sore spots. Weak points is video games. Sigh.
@Button, among other things, I do not recognize “reddit does it” as a legitimate argument. You are absolutely free to engage with novels however you like. But to call this kind of wholesale disregard for the contents of a book “interpretation” is a category error. Re-envisionings, reading against the grain, speculating about what might be different, and any other manner of activity might be rewarding in other ways, but they all represent the fan’s thoughts and ideas, not the novel’s.
Also, authors do not create canon. Critics, time, and the status quo create canon. We decide whether or not we want to accept that canon, or create alternate ones.
What purpose would a room full of leaders have, if there aren’t any followers for them to lead? (It’s like the old saying “Too many chiefs, not enough Indians”.) It’s difficult for many parents to accept that not every child is destined to attend Ivy league, and become one of the youngest successful CEOs of an F500 – or some other such amazing level of parental brag-worthy accomplishment – and in a perfect world everyone would continually make each other sick with all the awesomeness being posted on Facebook about each and everyone’s child(ren). Fortunately this is an imperfect world.
@Snuffy
I will agree with you that in the second quote is Rosa stating her own opinion on being ambitious – which I will also point out is normally the way society uses the word ambitious.
Do people in general call SAHM ambitious? That is what I’m getting at. Rosa is using it in the common context. I will cede the point that she may not be talking specifically about society’s definition of ambition, but she is using it when she is trying to describe how she looks at things.
I do however think you are reading an intent that does not exist. Other than stating what she thinks is ambitious or not is all she does. She did not say that either choice is better or worse, only that one choice had characteristic ‘A’ and the other doesn’t.
Please point me to an instance where Rosa specifically said one choice was BETTER than another. I did not see that.
The intent you are assuming is that Rosa views a job negatively because she says it is not ambitious. I don’t see her trying to disparage SAHM in any way. Remember that I think otherwise on this point (SAHM is something I view as ambitious), but I bear Rosa no ill will because I see her discussing definitions, not critiquing SAHM.
While it can be argued that ‘unambitious’ is viewed negatively by society in general (Katz and WWTH talked about this) I don’t get that sense from Rosa from what she wrote. Please point out an instance if I missed it.
@SFHC
I hear you. It really hurts when people attack your life choices.
However, I did feel like the two individuals were trying to argue in good faith and that got lost in all the noise. I don’t blame them for not wanting to continue the thread.
We should not let these differences in opinions keep us from hearing one another out.
I really enjoy reading your comments as well, just in case I never mentioned it 8p
@reallyfriendly
She specifically said that SAHMs aren’t capable of doing anything “impressive” (I already linked that quote). How is that not an insult? How is that not belittling to the work SAHMs do? How would you feel if your ambition was dismissed because someone thought you weren’t dreaming “big” enough?
You excuse her for using “society’s” definition to describe herself, then immediately turn around and say that she isn’t using the way that definition is coded by society. You can’t have it both ways. Society’s definition of ambitious includes all of the coding about which jobs are considered “good” and high-status.
Intent isn’t fucking magical. I don’t care if she didn’t intend to insult SAHMs. She did. Period. I’m not the only person who thinks so. I don’t like how you are trying to spin this to be about me being wrong at “reading” her, you’re one step away from saying “it’s all in my head”.
I know this post’s getting a little old by now, but just wanted to quickly respond:
@mrex, 9/20/15 3:02pm
Oh that’s actually not what I meant at all… I think that in our culture (speaking from the U.S.), there remains this aspirational ideal of mid-century domesticity, which includes devoted housewives and gainfully employed husbands, along with a good dollop of suburban affluence. So, even as that lifestyle has become inaccessible for most Americans – and even though it was never very accessible to begin with – it’s something that a lot of people (mainly young people) still think they can achieve, if it’s simply what they decide they want. My point is that realistically, most households can’t maintain that degree of affluence on just one income, because most jobs just don’t pay enough for that.
I think my mistake was that in my original post, I didn’t say anything specifically about how the housewife/male-breadwinner fantasy intersects with dreams of wealth (or of middle-class stability, at least); I guess that’s because I feel like that element – of financial prosperity and general comfort – is inseparable from the 50s suburban ideal (i.e. the thing that was being satirized in The Stepford Wives).
Basically, I think we’re both saying pretty much the same thing: in the contemporary U.S., single-income households are likely to be struggling financially.
@mildlymagnificent, 9/20/15 9:45am
Those are great points and it’s really fascinating to hear about that stuff (my sense of those particular traditions is pretty vague). Thank you for sharing that.
First off: I really appreciate that you’re taking a nuanced view here and seeing both sides. I don’t want to be reductive of people’s positions and I do think the anti-“choice” people have a point in there somewhere.
However, if someone wants to share their nuanced opinion in a good-faith discussion and cares about being represented accurately and treated respectfully, they shouldn’t frame the whole thing in terms of a pejorative label that reduces everyone they disagree with to a simplistic single-issue position and lumps them indiscriminately together with straw feminists, plastic surgery ads, and Christina Hoff Summers. Respectful conversations do not that way lie.
They should just say what, specifically, people actually present are doing that they have a problem with, and why it’s a problem. Then we can have an actual conversation.
@katz
I agree that mola framed her case poorly and that her subsequent withdrawal made it hard to carry on the conversation, but I do respect the choice to so. There was clearly a better way to state her case without labeling others in the discussion with any pejorative terminology.
When I take everything she said into context, I understand that that is not what she is trying to say and hence why I am trying to defuse the situation a little, which in turn could be my own ill-advised action, which I apologize if what I’m saying/doing is wrong.
Mola was doing her best to express herself about an idea she was worried about getting blowback on, which it did a bit.
Framing bad? Yes. Wording bad? Yes. Lumping people with CHS bad? Definitely.
mrex did a much better and clearer job of getting the idea across. Mola started with terminology and categorizing before explaining the details and hence why it came out sounding really horrible.
As I have previously encountered such discussions before that may be why I was less annoyed with what Mola did – her ideas were not new to me.
If you want to call her out on how she expressed herself, I do agree with you. As many others have pointed out, there are issues there. However I did think that a few of the replies did not understand where mola was trying to come from and I was trying to clarify that. I’m not saying that everything mola said or did was good, just trying to explain where she was going with her ideas.
My grandfather had all his teeth pulled at a relatively young age. I presume there was some decay but not at the level which would have required all his teeth being pulled today. When he was in local government in a small town in the South, he advocated and successfully had fluoride added to the water supply without telling the electorate. He only told people after the fact. He knew they’d think it was a communist plot and he also knew it would save other people from his fate. He also told me many, many times to look after my teeth, because real teeth were much better than dentures.
@Snuffy
Without going into personal details, yes, I do understand the feeling of people calling my choices ‘un-ambitious’.
What I will say in regard to that is how you feel about it is personal to you – there is no real wrong or right way to feel about it. If you read my earlier comment about how I view the word and the ideas implied with it, you could assume that it didn’t strike myself as particularly negative (though I wouldn’t think of it as positive either) and you would be right.
I’m not saying this to imply that your view of the term is wrong in any way, just answering your question. I could easily view other descriptions that are more neutral to you as being very negative towards me.
I don’t see Rosa using two definitions of ‘ambitious’, just one, and it is the common one. I disagree with it. If what I wrote was not clear, I apologize.
Going through everything Rosa wrote, I agree with you that it comes off as belittling initially. Her first comment was directed at Red Pill women and I do think (could be wrong) she intended to belittle them and she wasn’t the only one. However, in Rosa’s case she dragged in an entire community of women into her belittling comment and that was definitely wrong.
When she tries to explain her idea of ambition, she goes for the common concept which is unfortunately very male-coded and belittling towards women.
This is where you and I diverge in opinion. For me, Rosa is explaining the common definition of ‘ambition’ which because it’s already insulting towards SAHM due to the male coding ends up making Rosa sound like she is insulting this community of women. All she was trying to do was explain this definition – I don’t see her as a person insulting others, more like a person trying to explain a loaded idea that is insulting to others.
Her word choice was poor as she could have used more neutral terms to explain it, but it is not that simple to dump linguistic baggage.
I’m not saying that what she said is not insulting, or should not be read as such. What I am trying to set the focus on is that Rosa is not trying to be negative of SAHM, but since she is using the male-coded idea she ends up insulting others and we should be aware of that.
Intent does not absolve her actions, but it should temper our criticism of her.