One of the most intellectually dishonest aspects of the trad wife conversation is the assumption its adherents make, the minute you open your mouth, that any critique of the structure is an attack on the women inside it. It is not. Of course, it isn’t. That’s the game they play to try to shut you up before you expose their deception. A woman can be brilliant, capable, competent, well-educated, emotionally disciplined, accomplished, and deeply committed to her family, and still occupy a structurally vulnerable position. Those are not contradictions, and that distinction matters, because you know what, patriarchy has never fundamentally required women to be weak. It only requires them to be dependent, because dependent women are easier to contain, to manage, to control. To push around. Women with no power are easier to direct, to destabilize – economically and every which way. You can limit them without even applying any force, And not talking about intelligence or strength, We are talking about leverage – leverage is power And dependency removes leverage. In fact, dependency is the opposite of power. Tradwifery narrows the female world So in talking about women and power or dependency, we’ve been looking at tradwives, but that’s really just one segment within this whole “put the women away” programme, so when we are talking about trad-wifery, the issue is not cooking; we’re definitely not talking about bread…We’re not even talking about who chooses to have children and who doesn’t We’re talking about something much broader and decidedly deeper – we are discussing the ‘21st century patriarchal project” where the objective is to drive women out of the leadership, professional and public spaces of the world, and push us back into the condition where we are dependent on men…where we are rendered indigent, dependent and silent, or in other words, powerless. Without power. Without resources, or access to resources What we’re looking at is constriction; the constriction of financial independence, intellectual expansion, professional development, creative identity, external influence and autonomous mobility. Tradwifery packages this reduction in very nice words. It describes it beautifully. It uses terms like softness, peace, devotion, simplicity, but this aesthetic softness does not eliminate structural reality. If a woman’s survival, stability, and access are heavily mediated through a man, her autonomy has already been significantly reduced, no matter how lovingly this arrangement is presented; how beautiful the wedding or how luxurious the home. Of course, the question is not whether women should be allowed to choose these kinds of lives. Of course, they should! If they want to. That’s the point of choice and autonomy. It is important to realise, also, that the act of choosing, the act of utilising an option gained for her through feminism does not make her a feminist…and that is another essay for another time. The real question is why is it that cultures which are shaped by patriarchy consistently celebrate female dependence as feminine virtue? That is the conversation the system wants us to avoid, because the practitioners are aware, very much so, that once women possess financial leverage, intellectual authority, independent access, mobility or self-sustaining identity, they become significantly harder to contain within unequal systems and structures; within systems and structures built on inequality. And that is what patriarchy has always struggled with most, one of the things with which it has struggled the most – women having the ability to choose to not be owned and controlled, women’s ability to exercise our options in favour of our own selves. The Power Table and Wisdom, Folly & Fabulous Shoes are entirely reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Wisdom, Folly & Fabulous Shoes at shirleyosborne.substack.com/subscribe
