I feel like there’s a new archetype of woman appearing in my hometown (and probably everywhere else as well with the rise of fascism in the USA spreading and infecting everything around it) which I can only describe as a sort of tradwife hikikomori.

 

It’s genuinely so depressing to watch the people I grew up around become increasingly less cool, increasingly unwilling to think, and increasingly isolated from any new perspectives, new people, or new ideas. The internet is now engineered to make these people fearful but sedated, angry but helpless. This is the only place I see or engage with any right-wing ideas or ideologies. I don’t know any tradwives or conservatives personally and I’d like to keep it that way, but I do occasionally want to know what these people are up to. It’s a weird fascination. I call it anthropology but in reality I’m just kind of a hater who loves getting rage baited by images of heterosexual couples from my hometown; the women dressed modestly and in beige, men in their jeans and plaid, 2-5 children surrounding them in matching outfits, and they’re all in a cornfield or beside a barn or whatever.

 

Aside from how corny and very much not-genuine-feeling these photoshoots are I hate what the entire aesthetic I am describing represents. These women are perpetuating these insanely patriarchal ideas steeped in so many layers of racism, misogyny, queerphobia in order to make themselves feel safe among the right-wing men they grew up around and later married. One Instagram reel I saw posted recently had text which read “Honestly IDC what I look like in photos anymore. I just hope I look good on CT scans, ultrasounds, MRIs & colonoscopies” it got even more psychotic when I realized the the people sharing this content are exactly my own age. I’m 32, this to me was like something a literal senior citizen should be saying in jest. The caption even read: “Over 30 and just hope I’m called ‘unremarkable’”. It just felt like it was giving blood and soil.

 

I want to sympathize and feel sorry for them. I’m sure they’re facing unreal levels of violence and abuse, however it’s hard to feel bad for people who are a mere cunt hair away from sharing blatant Nazi propaganda. Being fed this type of vague Nazism by the algorithm is obviously by design, social media is working as it’s now intended I guess. It takes a very lonely and isolated person to swallow it down so easily and unquestioningly.

 

The concept of feeling as though one’s life is effectively over in terms of physical beauty, having new experiences, starting new hobbies, or learning new things in their 30s is so unfathomable to me, and this strange idea that your 30s symbolize an end to all of these things and more is rotting people’s brains. It’s so arbitrary and untrue. I feel like I’m in my prime and I feel like I always will. I’m always creating, learning new stuff, branching out, gaining new skills and hobbies, attempting to put myself out there to make new and maintain old friendships despite of social anxiety. I think taking care of one’s appearance, one’s relationships with other women, one’s ability to learn, and what one creates is just as important as one’s physical health. I think it takes someone who is deeply insecure and vulnerable already to be so readily convinced that once you hit age 30 you become ugly and useless, no longer desirable or fuckable. If you have kids and want to have your own interests, hobbies, or friends outside of motherhood you’re somehow considered a bad person. It’s incredibly depressing to see pedophilic and patriarchal beauty standards be touted by women who either don’t understand the harm it’s causing or do and are simply evil.

Andrea Dworkin in 1983 said that the emerging form of right-wing propaganda was especially focused on preserving the patriarchy through the concept of the nuclear family, promotion of fundamentalist religions, rallying against abortion, and gradually weakening any attempts to combat domestic violence, and that the right-wing for the first time “succeeded in getting women as women (women who claim to be acting in the interests of women as a group) to act effectively on behalf of male authority over women, on behalf of a hierarchy in which women are subservient to men, on behalf of women as the rightful property of men, on behalf of religion as an expression of transcendent male supremacy.” This has all only gotten significantly worse since then with the social media torment nexus. These women are commodifying themselves in a way. They are treating their bodies and themselves as resources that only exist to give birth and caretake, when in reality they are whole, individual humans who need connection, a hobby, to speak to someone besides their husband and immediate circle of other tradwives.

 

These women are fully isolated in my rural hometown. Everyone they meet is the same as them down to the right-wing ideologies. Everyone consumes the same slop media, everyone is white, everyone happened to choose to have 2+ kids right out of high school without giving it a second thought. Without ever thinking they could wait or do something different. Motherhood is the only goal and once you reach that goal you cease to be an individual and become nothing but someone’s mom. You even go to their social media profiles and the only information there is ” _____’s mom and _____’s wife”. None of this happens to fulfilled women. It doesn’t happen to strong-minded women, or one’s with careers or hobbies, it happens to lonely and isolated women. Women who are sad and insecure and afraid to be themselves. These right-wing women are social recluses. They probably would have a harder time accepting a tradwife fate if they knew other women. And not other tradwives, but different women with fresh perspectives and nuance, women who are strong and confident, women who chose to do something different and view themselves as human, queer women who know how to centre themselves over men. I think fascist ideologies can only permeate the brains of zombified, stuck and scared women. You can shield yourself from this fate by interacting with other women. It’s never too late to change or get a divorce.