There must be guys out there who watch The Stepford Wives — the original 1975 film anyway — without realizing that it’s a horror film. Guys who would root not for Katherine Ross or Paula Prentiss but for the mysterious men’s organization that runs the town of Stepford, which has developed a, well, unique way to respond to the demands of Women’s Lib, replacing the sometimes uppity women who have just moved into the town with more docile versions of themselves who are both traditional housewives and sexy sex slaves.
For most viewers of the film, the ending hits like a gut punch; for these guys it’s more like a dream come true.
I feel like the guy who wrote the following in the “confessions” subreddit would be one of these guys.
![r/confessions
• 4m
[M24] I want a submissive wife who will obey me and who I can control
So Im socially awkward and introverted, I have never had a girlfriend or anything but there is nothing I want more than a woman who will obey me. I am a hardworking man who wants to provide but I want the woman im with to bear my children, I want to make her wear clothes which I think will make her look sexy, I want steak and blowjobs, I want her to worship me and I will touch her whenever I feel like it even if we are out in public.
I struggle with women but lately I have been having thoughts of kidnapping a woman, brainwashing her and turning her into my perfect wife. Id like to come home from work on a friday and see my submissive wife along with our beautiful kids.
I also want at least 4 kids minimum in fact I will push her to have as many kids as possible 4 Vote Lt Share M Award](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/peh44d4zdij91.jpg?resize=580%2C721&ssl=1)
You could replace pretty much that whole statement with a giant red flag. This is a guy who can’t tell the difference between a sexual fantasy and a life plan; about the best we can hope for is that he wanks that whole kidnapping/brainwashing part of the fantasy out of his head. Most likely he’s bullshitting, and won’t ever try to pull off a kidnapping in the real world.
But certainly there have been men who have kidnapped women to use as sex slaves (like this guy, recently sentenced to 200 years in prison for it). And obviously Incels like our guy in r/confessions have been known to do some pretty monstrous things.
Let’s just set aside the kidnapping/brainwashing thing for a moment to consider this as a sort of dating site profile. He’s set out what he wants from a woman: utter submission to the point of worshipping him, sex on demand regardless of what she wants, lots of babies, a willingness to endure sexual groping in public, and the ability to put up with his hateful ass.
So what does he have to offer in return? He’s “hardworking” and … well, let’s just say he’s very eager to tell women what to do.
Now, there are submissive or at least traditional women out there who like the idea of staying home to raise a bunch of babies. But not even the most submissive submissive is going to find anything here that would make her eager to jump into a relationship with this guy, or even to be left alone in a room with him. Because he sees women not as human beings with their own lives and desires but as little more than flesh-and-blood sex toys.
And he’s not fit to be a BDSM “lifestyler” either; good doms actually care about their submissive partners and won’t push them into activities they don’t consent to. And they’re not as angry as this guy.
Dude, the reason you “struggle” with women is that they can tell what sort of person you are just by looking at you, and the sort of person you are is horrible. Even if a woman can’t quite put her finger on what is wrong with you, her gut sense will tell her to stay away. You spend your life yearning for your own Stepford wife to keep in a sex dungeon; you really can’t hide the degree of angry misogyny that produces fantasies like that.
Hell, dude, I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that you was listed in your high school yearbook as “the guy most likely to keep women in a sex dungeon.”
I suspect that this guy “struggles” so much with women that he never actually speaks to any, because that would involve treating them as something more than their bodies. Maybe some day he will actually learn. Otherwise he will remain a perpetual incel., horrifying the decent people who surround him whenever he starts talking about women.
H/T The Niceguys subreddit, which screenshotted this post before the r/confessions mods took it down.
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I’ve never read or seen The Stepford Wives. But I did read Rosemary’s Baby, and I also saw the film. Ira Levin wrote both novels and worked on both films. Even though I was 13 when I read the book, I could tell that the author appreciated women. So even though the book was super scary, I knew I was in good literary hands. I felt the same way about the movie, even though Roman Polanski — who later became notorious as a rapist — directed it. I bought the paperback of Rosemary’s Baby to read on a cross-country train ride with my mother, and my mother insisted on reading it once I was done. Honestly, I think that when Levin wrote about Satan, he was talking about patriarchy.
This guy strikes me as exactly the kind of guy who would kidnap a teenager and keep her captive in a basement or shed, forcing her to be his sex slave and have babies for him. He should be on a watchlist and not dismissed as “probably harmless”.
@Kat: The moment her husband casually jokes about having sex with Rosemary while she’s unconscious as being ‘somewhat necrophilliacky’ (not an exact quote, but it was something like that) as if that was the only offputting thing about is sent so many chills through me, even though I was still in my ‘edgy teenager who insists everything can be funny ™’-phase.
Both an excellent book and a very chilling film.
Obviously as outlined in the post this can be a kink thing for responsible people (ie. not this guy) but from my perspective, people who enter willingly into the sub/dom lifestyle know it’s ultimately a game designed to create a sexual thrill and nurture a bond. Even if this very troubling young man could live out his fantasy, there isn’t one human on the planet who is 100% submissive and completely lacks agency. And I imagine for those who are into it, that tension is part of the fun!
This guy wants a more extreme version of what lots of men on the right say they want – aka a perfect and totally obedient tradwife – but the kidnapping/brainwashing comment makes me think he KNOWS that this requires a level of subjugation which has to be terrorised into someone. Which is kind of more scary to me than the neo-traditionalist fantasists who convince themselves it’s women’s natural place to serve them, and this lifestyle is key to their fulfilment.
A friend of mine is a FSSW. When she worked in a brothel she said she refused guys looking for a “girlfriend experience” as they “are almost all effed in the head.”
They basically struggled with real life relationships because they all had desires like this.
One where the woman basically has no mind of her own and caters to their every need.
You see this a lot across the manosphere. Even in a lot of my black only spaces you get men who seem to want a chattel slave and not a partner.
That said I feel this mindset is very common. I also think it’s the real reason a lot of men are so derogatory about educated / career minded women. Ultimately they think they will be harder to control.
I always wonder – exactly why they think this is a set-up a woman would desire.
If memory serves, Ira Levin once said that he had initially envisioned The Stepford Wives as a dark comedy, but pretty quickly realized it was better to make it a flat-out horror/suspense story because that’s what it would be to women.
Gasp, swoon, empathy! For people of a different gender than the author, no less!
I’ve never seen either movie adaptation, but I did read the book years and years ago, and I remember how distinct the women were from each other, before they were turned into the titular Wives. They were clearly written as people, not as dispensers of sex and housekeeping.
So like Jeffrey Dahmer, but with women? I see.
Back in the 1790s, Thomas Day decided to create his own perfect wife; although he didn’t exactly kidnap a woman and and brainwash her, he came pretty darn close. In Georgian England, well-educated and extremely wealthy Day was unlucky in love. He longed for a “perfect” wife, meaning one who would be willing to live in near poverty isolated from all friends and family, would be absolutely and unconditionally obedient to him, and would intuit and fulfill all his physical and emotional needs while submitting without complaint to his constant lectures and harangues. And on top of that, Day was extremely short-tempered, ill-mannered, and lacking even in the basic hygiene of the day. After he couldn’t find any eligible women willing to accept him, Day, who considered himself an intellectual and philosopher, did not reflect on whether his standards might be a bit harsh and perhaps he might need a bit of self-improvement; instead, Day deduced that there were simply no rational women. His solution was to adopt two young girls (one eleven years of age and the other just a year older) and mold them until one would be suitable wife material. It didn’t work out: https://www.npr.org/2013/04/30/177764747/a-british-intellectuals-mission-to-create-the-perfect-wife
Not especially pertinent to the discussion, but saw this and thought of @Elaine
@Alan: My husband laughed at that and for… reasons, he doesn’t laugh out loud much. So thank you. You have done one completely good and unselfish thing today.
@Royboy: He’s far from the only one. That’s what “grooming” meant before it applied to specifically to pedophilia – raising a young girl to be your “perfect” future wife. This was never considered something a good and decent man would do. It doesn’t usually work, anyway – it says something that these type of men seem to think that “uncorrupted by society” means “totally devoid of personality”.
> Alan Robertshaw
And for the Ostrogoths ? Ostrich boa ?
There was a recent case near where I live of a man who was popular in local politics (sadly Labour) who worked at a Cheshire Home for severely disabled people. He had a nice wife and son and it all looked great from the outside. However, he was predating on people both male and female with learning disabilities. He has 21 charges against him and is now in prison. I think his sort target people with special needs as they believe they are compliant and less than human, easily manipulated and their testimony won’t be believed.
Speaking of Stepford Wives, we really do have one on the Supreme Court:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/26/amy-coney-barrett-faith-group-people-of-praise
I made it about halfway through this article before I started feeling physically ill. Read at your own risk.
And here I thought that what they meant when they said “uncorrupted by society” was “naive, ignorant, easily gaslit and manipulated, and lacking an outside support network that might give them a place to crash and lend them money should they decide to run away”, and that “grooming” now meant “raising young people to be tolerant of, rather than bigoted toward, LGBTQIA+ persons” …
@RoyBoy
That link to the story on Thomas Day was interesting – thank you!
I had never heard of him. In amongst all the horror this jumped out at me:
A historical “brocialist” in the flesh.
I meet so many men like this. Absolutely resolute on civil rights issues but have no problem indulging in misogyny.
@RoyBoy
By chance are you a Roy Harper fan?
@ Elaine the Witch
You weren’t asking me, but yes, and since I saw your question to RoyBoy I’ve had When an Old Cricketer … as my ear worm^ so thank you 🙂
^except I like Old Cricketer, is there a word/phrase for haaving a song you like stuck in your head?