“The critiques aren’t totally wrong: Tradwives are sometimes performative, a made-for-social-media phenomenon that can look a little ridiculous. The most successful ones are the most extreme, curated, and out of touch. The more modest ones, who traffic in budgeting tips and great recipes, garner smaller followings and less fame.
But this cultural movement warrants celebration, not contempt. Tradwives don’t want domestic servitude. They want the roles of wife, mother, and homemaker to count as respectable options for the 21st-century woman.
“Affirmative consent refers to the idea that “no means no” doesn’t cut it; when it comes to sex—or even kissing—all actions must be explicitly and affirmatively agreed upon.
There’s nothing wrong with affirmative consent as an ideal, though some may argue it’s the antithesis of erotic. But affirmative consent as a legal standard is unworkable and dangerous. And as a feminist standard, I think it leaves a lot to be desired too.”
“Modern neopatriarchy begins from the opposite fear; the concern is not communist collectivism, but liberal individualism.
The neopatriarchs believe we live in an age where people prioritize self-actualization and fulfillment above all else. Young adults, they argue, live in extended adolescence, lost in some combination of video games, drugs, and casual sex; as they age, raw hedonism is replaced by single-minded foci on money and career. According to neopatriarchs, this liberal social model fails men and women alike, funneling them toward a spiritually empty existence that all but guarantees disappointment and depression, and it fails society by discouraging the production of children who are quite literally required if the country is to have a future. (Immigration, needless to say, is not seen as an acceptable solution.)
The solution, for neopatriarchs, is to return to the past. Men need to rediscover the old John Wayne vision of masculinity, making traditional male gender markers (including acting as fatherly provider) into defining aspects of their identity. The state should play a role in encouraging this reversion, primarily by changing policy to cultivate “masculine” virtues and incentivizing marriage and child-rearing.
In his recent book Manhood, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley urges men to embrace strength and stoicism as routes for self-improvement, calling on them to take on the roles of “warrior” and “builder” in their everyday lives. The psychologist Jordan Peterson has long dispensed similar advice, helping turn him into a conservative guru. In his forthcoming book Dawn’s Early Light, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts argues that contraceptive technologies “break the most basic functioning elements of civilization” by liberating individuals to have consequence-free sex out of wedlock. Vance, who wrote the forward to Roberts’s book, has mused about eliminating no-fault divorce for similar neopatriarchal reasons.
Neopatriarchy can be distinguished from straight-up patriarchy primarily through its treatment of women. Unlike some Christian fundamentalists or alt-right scribblers, neopatriarchs do not assert that women are obligated to be homemakers as a result of divine commandment or natural law. All they insist on explicitly is that women have lots of children, and that choosing to focus primarily on raising said children is no worse than having a career.
It’s obvious why liberals and leftists would have problems taking this seriously. If Americans are supposed to be having more kids, and American men are supposed to be more traditionally masculine, then who’s supposed to be doing the work of raising all of these kids? The answer, of course, is wives (as it’s certainly not immigrants). Neopatrarichy may not explicitly call for a reversal of the feminist revolution, but that’s basically what it’s going for.”
“Mexico’s Supreme Court threw out all federal criminal penalties for abortion Wednesday, ruling that national laws prohibiting the procedure are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights in a sweeping decision that extended Latin America’s trend of widening abortion access.”
X chromosome MedlinePlus. https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/chromosome/x/#:~:text=Females%20have%20two%20X%20chromosomes,cells%20other%20than%20egg%20cells. Turner syndrome Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/turner-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20360782#:~:text=Turner%20syndrome%2C%20a%20condition%20that,to%20develop%20and%20heart%20defects. The Myth Of Biological Sex Kim Elsesser. 2020 6 15. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2020/06/15/the-myth-of-biological-sex/?sh=2099280e76b9
Grammatical Sexism in Spanish Daniel Eisenberg. 1985. Journal of Hispanic Philology. https://users.pfw.edu/jehle/deisenbe/JHPcolumn/jhp093.pdf Gender neutrality in Spanish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_Spanish The subtle ways language shapes us Nayantara Dutta. 2020 10 6. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20201006-are-some-languages-more-sexist-than-others Language influences mass opinion toward gender and LGBT equality Margit Tavits and