Tradwives. Who are they? Where did they come from? What do they want? To answer these questions and more, we’re going to dive deep into the bowels of anti-feminist history. Starting with a woman named Phyllis Schlafly. She was the absolute fucking worst. Schlafly dedicated her entire life and career to thwarting the causes of feminism. She advocated for women to give up careers and their places in society in favor of staying home, having babies, and nurturing their husbands and homes. She successfully campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment (which is still not ratified as the law of the land to this day), headed a grassroots movement to convince women that equal rights were not only unattainable but undesirable, stood firmly against gay rights, and loved the idea of a white supremacist theocracy even more than she loved the sound of her own goddamn voice. Schlafly was staunchly anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-divorce, and anti-fun in all its forms. Fortunately, she died in 2016. But the infuriating legacy of Schlafly lives on. For while she was yammering on about uppity women knowing their place, this anti-feminist Babadook was decidedly not in her supposed place. (Actually, this is an insult to the Babadook, who The Kids tell me is a bisexual icon and therefore someone to be celebrated and not denigrated. My apologies, dear sweet Babadook. It won’t happen again.) [embed]https://youtube.com/watch?v=Zw5l9WnEHqo&feature=oembed[/embed] The traditional hypocrisy of anti-feminist activism What does this history lesson have to do with tradwives? We’re getting there. Despite her rhetoric, Schlafly wasn’t wearing pearls and heels while crafting her family a home-cooked meal every night. Nor was she singlehandedly doing all of the errands and chores for her husband and kids. She wasn’t a humble, unambitious housewife and stay-at-home mom—she was a highly educated activist even before she became a lawyer. A humble homemaker she certainly was not! For of course Phyllis was a big ole hypocrite. It was hard not to be! Because (and I’m sure you’ve never heard this before) it’s really fucking hard to balance raising kids while simultaneously working a demanding career. She gained fame and notoriety by telling us all to go back to the kitchen and get preggo… while she hired a household staff to look after her family. Schlafly told us girls to get back inside and give up any professional ambitions… while she embraced a high-powered, extremely public-facing career as an extreme anti-feminist mouthpiece. She traveled the country without her husband and kids, living—by her own definition—the lifestyle of a man. It was all very do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do. The policies she advocated for made it exponentially harder for other women to enter public life, choose if and when they had children, escape abusive marriages, and pursue educational opportunities. Phyllis walked so that we could run be trapped in financially dependent lives not

If you’re anything like me, you spend A LOT of time thinking, reflecting, and trying to make sense of everything. Some call it overthinking; I call it wasting time. This is the problem of deep thinkers: people who are conscientious, thoughtful, and considerate. But you’re not being thoughtful at all. You’re actually destroying your own life. You’re always thinking about the future, the past, or things that don’t even matter. What does so-and-so think of […]