#trad domestic violence

[shoujoboy-restart]

By Mary Harrington, May 6 2024.

[...] Canadian Right-wing firebrand Lauren Southern, whose early video content regularly challenged liberal feminist orthodoxy, and promoted domesticity. Our stories are symmetrical in some respects: both of us embraced radical politics in our early twenties, me on the Left and Southern on the Right. Both of us embraced ideologies that felt inspiring in the free-floating world of the internet. And both of us, albeit in different ways, have course-corrected back toward reality in part via the fiercely practical experience of caring for a child.

Southern has attracted vitriolic criticism from the Right, for speaking openly about how “tradlife” went wrong for her. She, however, sees speaking out not as betrayal of her own “side”, but as continuous with her earlier willingness to challenge progressive consensus on topics such as immigration. “I’m not worried about saying the things I’m saying right now, that are getting me so attacked online. Because I’ve dealt with this, with South Africa. I’ve dealt with this with mass immigration, I’ve dealt with this with my critiques of feminism. And every single one turned out: oh, maybe she was onto something.”("sure I was wrong about trad life, but my racism is still right you will see")

For, she tells me, she’s not alone. She tells me she knows many other women still suffering in unhappy “tradlife” marriages. One of her WhatsApp groups, she says, “is like the Underground Railroad for women in the conservative movement”. Some of these are prominent media figures: “There are a lot of influencers who are not in good relationships, who are still portraying happy marriage publicly, and bashing people for not being married while being in horrendous relationships.” She hopes that in speaking out she can reassure “all of these women who are thinking in their heads: I’m uniquely terrible, and I’m uniquely making a mistake” that no: something is more generally amiss.

There were warning signs from early on. “If I ever disagreed with him in any capacity he’d just disappear, for days at a time. I remember there were nights where he’d call me worthless and pathetic, then get in this car and leave.” But she didn’t see them, thanks to the simplified anti-feminist ideology she’d absorbed and promoted: “I had this delusional view of relationships: that only women could be the ones that make or break them, and men can do no wrong.” So she didn’t spot the red flags, even as they grew more extreme. “He’d lock me out of the house. I remember having to knock on the neighbour’s door on rainy nights, because he’d get upset and drive off without unlocking the house. It was very strange, to go from being this public figure on stage with people clapping, to the girl crying, knocking on someone’s door with no home to get into, being abandoned with a baby.”

But as she tells it, the nightmare began in earnest when he was offered a work opportunity in his home country of Australia, a few weeks after the birth of their baby. She did not want to leave her support networks behind. But he used the political and religious importance she placed on lifelong marriage as a lever to force her to agree: “Whenever I wouldn’t do something, he would say: I’m going to divorce you.” So, feeling she had no other option, she assented.

He also insisted she should publicly quit work. His work required a high level of government security clearance; she was a Right-wing provocateur who had faced deplatforming, state investigations, and was even banned from entering the UK. In their early, giddy romance this had felt manageable. But “when we moved back to Australia, he really wanted to get back into his old work”. And Southern was a “hardcore liability”, so the pressure was on: “It was like: Lauren, you gotta hire lawyers. You’ve got to disavow everything. You’ve got to never talk publicly again.”

So, in 2019, she announced that she was leaving media and activism altogether. As Southern tells it, she was trying sincerely to put into practice the ideology she’d promoted in her videos. “I believed I had a certain role in my relationship,” she told me. “And it was to be the more submissive one that supports my husband’s dreams.”("if I don't give up of my constitutional rights, which I keep claiming the left.wanta to take away, my husband will be so sad tho" like damn ma' you

“I was told daily that I was worthless, pathetic. Deadweight.”

Then, thousands of miles from friends and family, she reports becoming “the closest thing to a modern day, Western slave”. With no income of her own, she had to do everything: “The lawns, the house, the cooking, the baby care, his university homework. And I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t have any support. There was no help changing diapers, there was no help waking up in the night with the baby. I’d still have to get up, to make breakfast before work. I’d be shaking and nervous, for fear I’m gonna get yelled at.” Then he’d berate her for spending all her time on tasks other than earning money: “I was told daily that I was worthless, pathetic. Deadweight. All you do is sit around and take care of the baby and do chores.” When Covid shut down all real-world public life, her situation became “hell on earth”. It was, she said, “the only time in my life where I idealised dying.”

“He was so much kinder, sweeter and more pursuant of me when I was this ‘boss babe’ travelling the world working. It seemed like becoming a mother made him lose respect for me. It was shocking to me, again, because the traditional view preached the opposite — that men love you more when you stop working and become a wife and mother.” In her experience, though, this was “very much not the case”.

Talk about imperfect victim, right?

Lauren should be criticized and reprimanded for her racism, bigotry and general alt-right fuckery. But obviously no one deserves to suffer domestic violence and abuse from their partners, I hope she fully wakes up and realises part of the reason she even got herself in a lifestyle that is a catalyst for abuse is because part of her mindset was the need for a "strong (white) man to care for her and protect her (from them immigrants)" she was also sold while fear mongering immigration.

Again, she should be criticized and reprimanded for her divisive ideology, not mocked for thinking she would be a exception to the actual reality of trad life.

I'm hoping she never has to experience this sort of abuse ever again in her life no matter what, hoping she also becomes a better person and leaves behind these regressive bigoted ideals of her too.

[icarus-phaethon]

"You achieved equal rights why do you need feminism anymore" idk bro you tell me, who is fighting against rape cultute, porn, sex work, human trafficking, for maternity leave, better healthcare for women, against pedophilia, male honour belief system, male supremacy, female infanticide, women's labour paid n unpaid to be honoured, mothers and wives to be honoured, fighting for animals, fighting for women who are being raped, abused, killed, domestic violence, eve teasing, fighting for female only spaces, against climate change that impacts women much worse, safety of women [trad women] who dedicate their lives to their husbands through alimony, equal pay, shared household responsibility that you don't have to raise a 30yo manchild you married, for widows, single mothers, homeless women, etc

If it wasn't for feminism we weren't even being considered for voting rights, until feminists fought for our inclusion in universities we were killed for studying, until feminists fought to be included in medical trials women were fed doses of meds catered for men and poisoned, until feminism fought for mothers there was no maternity leave[we are still the frontrunners in this fight], until feminists fought for us we couldn't have bank accounts, men have never stood up or fought for our rights, we were ignored. They were righting about capitalism, racism and more, but no issues that impacted women.

[pink-strawberry-kissess]

Claire‘s va is denying cleon‘s possibility n calling it dumb or sumn

She used to approve of it, now she denies it and finds it dumb.

I wonder what changed her mind. 🤔

rant about feminism and quiet misogyny

i don't wanna continue on with discourse about this so pls do not send me anything else

but i did wanna mention that i dislike how she always has to punch down when it comes to other women. it's one thing to mention that hey, i don't think this ship will actually work out because they have fundamental differences, but she's ALWAYS gonna put down other women in the same breath which i find so gross and pick me vibes

i was going to write a long thing about feminism and misogyny in video games regarding the sexualizing and fetishizing of ada wong. but that's gonna take a lot of effort from my end lol

so i will just say this

i think it's very telling how people talk about women, fictional or not. i think it's one thing to just hate a character and chat about it with friends in a private server or whatever, but to publically take your opinion online is a whole other scenario.

in this day in age, where tradwife culture is growing rampant and is glamorized and misogyny still kills women- i think that it's a bit trite to continue being this "feminist" icon and "being a badass and able to fight while still being a "down to earth girl"" while in the same breath, needing to slutshame/demean or put down other women because they hold values that is different to yours

it's a bit hypocritical aint it

furthermore, the whole "nice girl mentality" leads into trad wife and leads into domestic violence and the loss of personhood.

okay anyways i dunno she's been kinda queer baiting a lot with clairejill lately so dunno why she's been doing that unless it's catering to another part of the fandom (that's larger) that she finds to be more useful to her or whatever

she pandered to cl*on for years so no idea why she's pandering to clairejill fandom now :shrug:

[xenosagaepisodeone]

i'm convinced that the recent lauren southern article going around is just to build up sympathy for her inevitable pivot to being "center-right" since she has only been turning into a more contentious figure within far-right circles in recent years (for reasons besides being a woman). believe it or not, domestic violence is rarely a surprise to conservative women in "trad" relationships. the gains cultivated from the mutual political goals between these women and their husbands self-justifies any personal dissatisfaction within the relationship in their eyes. seeing the public respond positively to your bleating about white genocide makes crying because your husband yelled at you feel like a small concession. being praised as aspirational by your network of white supremacists and subsequently having your voice elevated in the community makes your husband locking you out of the house after an argument something that "just" has to be avoided next time (because even he understands how important it is to maintain a good image, right). hearing stories like this don't inspire pity or schadenfreude in me, just apathy. "naturally, as a matter of course" and such. I imagine that the fact she is actually open about it is signaling that she's ready to shed the more abrasive members of her audience and assume the role of the dime a dozen contrite, weepy political commentator who "loves America" and is "just concerned 😟" for all the physical abuse being imported by beastly immigrant men, assuming she can actually roll back the act that far.

it is amusing to think about how she might attempt to reel in more sympathy from this point to achieve that, though. she's too much of a true believer to sell herself as reformed. people remember you shooting flares at boats of Africans fleeing slavery in Libya in an attempt to sink them, lauren! people remember you following Doctors Without Borders around the coast of Italy to prevent them from rescuing immigrants from boats that had potentially capsized! the new zealand mosque shooter was inspired by you! I'm positive that she would vaporize instantly if she had to grit her teeth and cede any ideological ground in the name of positive press.

[onefieshoneend]

does anyone else feel like they're being driven absolutely insane by this increasingly popular and palpable narrative that women were PRIVILEGED by the marriage system because we didn't have to work??

Even the leftie people who oppose this narrative do so on the grounds that some marriages were abusive or that trads are lame or whatever don't take into account the seriousness of the claims being made when someone says that women were PRIVILEGED by not being allowed to work.

Because not only is that decidedly untrue and the vast majority of women around the world did unorganised paid labour + child care+ domestic care- the reason that the patriarchal system kept all women financially dependent on men is NOT because it saw women as too delicate to actually work. That is a patriarchal myth that people are taking at face value - something that people across the political spectrum are doing more and more often.

The actual reason women were kept financially servile was so they could be forced into marriages with men- marriages that came with the condition of the woman providing sexual and reproductive services in exchange for financial security. ALL women- no matter how rich and white and privileged, no matter how poor and marginalized- lost all bodily autonomy upon entering marriage and were the property of husbands fullstop.

The 2 main reasons this system is not seen as the master-slave dynamic it really is:

The deeply interpersonal nature of women's oppression leads people to believe that patriarchy is a system that just forced people into unhappy heterosexual arrangements, not a male supremacist one that forced women into subjugation under men.

The fact that the family is a PRODUCT of women's oppression and thus continues that very oppression shows itself in this way: a lot of women did "love" their chief oppressors, their owners (husbands/father's/etc)- bc they were brainwashed into accepting their slavery as their womanly role required to recieve romantic and familial love-by their families (which: formed off of women's oppression, formed to keep women as private property, thus will continue this property-owner relationship).

Everyone is psychologically impacted by their oppressions but women more so because they have always been born into THE system of their subjugation and yet do not see this system as an oppressive force despite the very real violence it has enacted because the people maintaining this system have been called family, not "outside" forces of colonialism or imperialism but people who birth us and raise us.

[apilgrimpassingby]

Hello Tumblr!

Firstly, I haven't had a social media account before except on YouTube, so I hope I don't sound like a dork here.

I am a 18-year old English male who had my trad desires awakened by Tumblr, specifically @homeiswherethewitchcraftis, @barefoot-a-pregnant and the sadly now deactivated @unsweetenedlemon. This is the culmination of a long and winded journey into rejecting feminism (the modern variety, not "women should vote and get paid equally") that included the music of Heather Dale and Mercedes Lackey, "The Dangerous Book For Boys", and a religious experience last summer that changed my life.

I have decided to open up a trad masculinity blog (or whatever they're called here; I'm pretty new to Tumblr) with frequent divergences into Christianity because:

There aren't enough of them.

Pretty much all that there are have pornographic, fetishistic or outright misogynist content - not good for training to be a true traditional man.

I will say a few things before I finish:

Christianity is a major part of me and my tradness, so I will be talking about it a lot, but people of all and no religions are more than welcome to follow, repost, read and so on. Just look at the neopagans who brought me here. However, if you have some kind of vendetta towards Christianity, Christians, the Bible, religion in general or some combination of the above, leave it at the door or go elsewhere.

In case this needs to be said, I do not endorse everything on every blog I repost from.

Leave arguing at the door. We're here to be better people, not to bicker and quarrel.

Please, no swears or slurs. And use the best grammar and spelling you can.

While the name is a play on the official name of the Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), I am not a Mormon but an Eastern Orthodox catechumen. But Mormons, like all other people (with an exception outlined below), are more than welcome to note, reblog and comment on my posts and follow me.

I will tolerate kink blogs reposting and noting my stuff; by people looking for the original blog, they may find (as I did) that tradness is a perfectly adequate substitute for kink, or at least find a way out of viewing porn. But please, do not follow me if you are a kink blog or are "mature content". I will block any who attempt to do so. No exceptions. And if your blog has stuff like "women are property" or "domestic violence is okay", I will block you the instant I find out.

I think that's all, so hello Tumblr and especially Tradblr, and I hope to have a good time!

All glory be to Christ.

Edit: from 19th August 2023 onwards I have a long-distance trad girlfriend in @beholdthehandmaidenofthelord; in fact, I suggested the username. I praise the Lord for this opportunity and blessing.

[le-fils-de-lhomme]

Not that I expect female internet comedians to do better but I do expect you, if you are a female internet comedian, to not make light of domestic violence when making jokes about trad wives.

[tlaquetzqui]

“Women being given extra protections is trad nonsense!”

You’re right, it was totally a trad who said “Attempts to formulate a ‘perfect society’ on any foundation other than ‘Women and children first!’ is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal.”

Oh wait. That was Robert “I’m my own grandpa” Heinlein, noted advocate of polyamory and nudism.

Bateman’s principle doesn’t care what you think is fair. Why don’t you worry about real problems in men’s lives like gendered definitions of rape and domestic violence, instead of trying to wage war on biology itself?

[wormworker]

fandoms i've been in ranked from least to most toxic/depraved/make me upsetti spaghetti

(not a rank of these titles or things themselves)

-my little pony G3 (peace and love on planet earth)

-legend of zelda

-sonic the hedgehog (yes seriously... and i've been in this fandom probably since before a lot of you were born)

-goldfrapp (musician/band)

-tori amos (musician)

-south park (amazingly..... but i mostly stuck to the tumblr side of it, to be fair)

-TOOL (the band) (to be fair i didn't roam much)

-team fortress 2

-goth (like actual OG trad goth subculture)

-death note

-jojo's bizarre adventure (mostly fine, but there are a TON of "bros" in this fandom who are extremely ableist and racist)

-punk (as in bad brains and dead kennedys punk, not..... what, fallout boy? lol)

-hazbin hotel, helluva boss (tumblr and twitter? great. facebook and youtube? holy hell)

-invader zim (i was part of the toxic. and honestly i think this was where i lot of us as teenagers realized we had some fucked up trauma to unpack lol)

-vocaloid (made me need to call an exorcist on myself)

-joy division (the band) (......yikes on bikes)

-breaking bad (ableists and explicitly misogynistic supporters of domestic violence)

-harry potter (HAHAHAHAHAHA)

[lizardbytheriver]

I have no problem with people wanting to be housewives or househusbands. I think its a noble profession. Raising kids, taking care of the household, cooking, cleaning, etc. is essential, necessary, and important. The problems arise with "Tradwives" terminology... which seems to be a dog-whistle for far-right types. The imagery produced is often of (blonde) white women in a kitchen. Where its often indiscernible from Nazi Propaganda or 1950s USA Sanitized (and Fictionalized) Marketing. I believe that Housewives and Househusbands are great and respectable. But there is a problem where people want those roles to be one-to-one with how they were in the (perceived) 50s. Ignoring the glaringly obvious problems of financial dependence and lack of education... which can very easily lead to abuse. Even in the 1950s, housing was more affordable, but Women often were barred from buying houses. Nowadays, housing is not affordable regardless of gender (progress lol). There needs to be education about abuse. This education needs to be introduce in elementary school through college. Reiterating how social isolation and financial dominance is not healthy. Now how to counteract some of these problems... you advocate for basic universal income. You advocate for free public housing programs (so the abusive partner cannot use shelter and heating as a cudgel). You advocate for sex education, parenting classes, programs warning about the dangers of domestic violence, free and available contraceptive access, free and available abortion access, etc. (so there's less of a chance of having children with someone who is ill-prepared or who is not a match for you). You have to understand that abuse can arise from these situations. You also have to understand that some people do want to be primarily domestic caregivers. The answer to both is promoting progressive policies and strong social safety nets. Of course, this only works in an economic system where one partner's income can afford housing, heating, food, clean water, electricity, entertainment, and wifi for an entire family. (This is why many popular Trad Wife influencers are revealed to be rich. Big surprise.) Instead of the current economic system where two working parents cannot afford an apartment. I don't think the roles of Housewife or Househusbands are bad, immoral, or inherently demeaning. But you cannot have a "traditional" lifestyle. Cause you are not fixing the problems of the past, you merely wish to repeat them. You cannot have the traditional society that you dreamed of. Cause that traditional society was created by marketing and hid ugly truths. You can build something better. But that requires advocacy of programs that do not look "traditional" (tho, they may be decades old in other nations). We perceive this stuff as traditional. But inorder for this to exist in the modern-day (unless you are rich), it must be surrounded by an inherently untraditional world. Which is funny... cause a lot of these Trad Wife People... end up wanting to escape politics or feeding into a reactionary/regressive political ideology.

[yugotrash]

wow that essay that someone sent you was written by a homophobic, misogynistic jesus freak and it shows. moreover, it's full of anecdotes, and the writer quotes randy shilts in an attempt to position women as "moderators" of male sexuality? when have men ever allowed us to delineate the boundaries of their sexual appetites? then he goes on to suggest that women are hyper emotional and he cites that study about domestic violence among lesbians that's completely wrong. disgusting.

yeah it's pretty fucking terrible. how hard is it to grasp that rejecting what passes for various gay subcultures (tehms included) doesn't mean I'm gonna hop on the trad train

[theicysneasel]

Unsavory take: Parents who preach and enforce the purity and abstinence model on their children, whether they realize it or not, are grooming their children for future abuse.

I am dying on this hill. We apologize for the inconvenience.

[angstylittlecatboy]

if tradwife image macros were posted on femsub kink accounts theyd fit right in and become better because theyd have a pretense of having a sex fantasy instead of being a nazi

[iteratedextras]

You up for a tl;dr rebuttal to that "MRA" nonnoid?

[anon]

In clearness, this rebuttal would be coming from someone who considers themselves at least MRA-affiliated. got no fucking idea what I was going for with "nonnoid"

That won't be necessary. I hope all readers already understand that most of the nasty feminist types have essentially zero understanding of how the typical MRA thinks, which is part of why they represent them all as either incels or PUAs or both at the same time.

The thing the MRAs typically care about is stuff like the Duluth Model, which has been used as policy, which presents domestic violence as "men's violence against women" even though it's usually in both directions more often than that. It's pretty much pure ideology.

I was raised by engineers, so when that kind of crap showed up in force in 2014 in the more general sense, it took me a while to figure out what the fuck was going on.

What nasty internet feminists are doing is the following:

Women are equal to men in every positive way (except strength, but that doesn't count for more than opening pickle jars).

Men are uniquely violent and dangerous.

Therefore, women are better than men.

MRAs mostly negate #2. Trads mostly negate #1.

Certain kinds of women tend to understand men and how they relate to men better than others. It's not ironic that girlwriteswhat, who was popular with MRAs on their subreddit back in... 2014? ...had a short haircut, and had been asked by another woman to help escort her to her car.

The more hardcore trad and PUA types don't pick up on this so much, I think.

[broken-academia]

I've only ever met 2 non-insane trad men in my college lol the rest I've spoken to seem all too eager to find a wife not out of love or any sort of godly obligation but so they can "own" somebody and have what in their eyes is essentially a forever servant and sex toy. It makes me sick how so many of them are nothing more than misogynists (many of whom are open about porn consumption!) rather than men who want to serve God and have healthy relationships and families.

100% agree. part of it is probably an overcompensation against the modern woman, but explaining their reactions doesn’t excuse them. one of the man-child’s I took this comment from:

was reacting with jealousy and hatred toward the thought of me being both better read and more qualified than he was. The 15 minutes summaries of books he’d watched online, I’d actually read and commented on in my senior thesis. The grades he bragged about excelling in, I tested out of. The one college class he had attended was one I took before I graduated four years early with my degree.

With this jealousy came belittlement and gaslighting, repeatedly telling me it was my place to be silent and submissive whilst his place to be qualified and opinionated. In short, a force of control that, in some cases, escalates to domestic violence. It’s misogyny and hatred in its most pathetic form, and is the exact opposite of masculinity.

[papirouge]

*blogs desc reads they support traditional femininity, anti feminism, patriarchy, and gender roles* *blog posts nothing but porn, bdsm, general misogynistic degeneracy* every. 🤢 single. 🤢 time 🤮 These people are unhinged and porn fried, unable to see women as people. I've seen "tradfem/tradmasc" porn blogs in the past argue pro abortionists in favor of being pro life too. But they do so put of malice, believing that pregnancy is a punishment for women being whores. While also supporting the porn industry which has a pipeline to the abortion industry. I think for every cute harmless cottagecore blog you find on here, theres at least 5 faux "trad" blogs that focus on porn and misogyny and I hate it

The thing is that porn culture is so pervasive that there are hardly any scene dominated by women that porn fried degenerates won't try to invade - tradfeminism isn't a exception. I indeed stumbled upon a bunch of "submission fetish" tradblog, and the most confusing thing is that they mostly were owned by women.

These blog were filled with awful things like "women need to be put into their place, be dominated (by force) and stay silent", or posting pictures of a cage with fluffy girly decorum and commenting "that's where I belong uwu💓". It was like a mix of ddlg and traditionalism and it was utterly unsettling to say the least....😐

I have yet to see them fully endorse porn, (although I saw porn gif on faux tradmen blogs a bunch of times already) but it's obvious this bastardization of tradculture reeks of porn culture (glamorization of domestic violence, BDSM, etc...)

I stated many times how traditionalism is now used by people more as an aesthetic than a genuine commitment to values, which isn't necessarily a bad thing (that's why I think the narrative of saying every tradcore enthusiast is racist/a White supremacist is ridiculous), but my issue is when they're trying to mingle it with Christanism and do that kind of trash. Being a trad wearing fluffy dress, obsessively seeking to get married young like in the good ol'days, and popping 5 kids before turning 25 doesn't make you a better Christian lol Many secular women do it already....and better than you. I actually got shit for stating a bunch of the stuff "biblically feminine" women were entertaining was NOT biblical (make up, high heels, non modest clothing) but very few people are ready for that conversation.... lol