If the average American were asked what they imagine the priorities of the feminist movement are these days, most people would likely cite concerns like “fighting abortion bans” or “getting justice for sexual violence victims” or boring mainstays like “equal pay for equal work.” But if you listen in to the world of right-wing social media influencers, they have a different answer. To them, feminists are single-mindedly obsessed with destroying women who identify as “tradwives.”
I think the “men” here is them specifically because they don’t have confidence in themselves, thus the need for an outside force to determine their status. If you know of the Steven Crowder article on how they got married the “right” way, that’s a great glimpse in to this mindset, especially now that him and his wife are separated. He makes it a point to highlight how they’re so much better than others, that he’s proud to say that, and how he’s writing the article while presumably on his honeymoon. Not even all these tradwife guys want to wait to marriage for sex either, like at least Crowder supposedly followed through with that part of it. I feel like the commodified tradwife brand is sort of just a secular fantasy of what religious traditional marriages would be but without the actually hard things that come with that.