“Girlboss” and “Tradwife” are Opposing Identities.
Women Should Reject Both and Choose Vocation Instead.
In this week’s Fairer Disptuations original, Elizabeth Grace Matthew urges women to look past the flimsy identitarian possibilities of “girlbosses” or “tradwives” and encourages them to seek meaning and purpose from the more complex and rewarding realm of vocation.
“Girlboss” and “Tradwife” are Opposing Identities. Women Should Reject Both and Choose Vocation Instead.
Elizabeth Grace Matthew
The shallowness of the “girlboss” ideal, in which each woman is a disembodied incarnation of a self-expression that may or may not include motherhood of a child or two, understandably repels many thoughtful women. Looking for a framework in which pregnancy and birth are met with unique joy, family life is valued, and women are not expected to be the same as men, some women are drawn to the “tradwife” identity and its pronatalist orientation instead.
But the perils of an identitarian paradigm are very much at work in tradwifery, too. The fetishization of maximal fertility on the right ultimately imperils the futures of exactly the women who are best disposed to take us past today’s mainstream feminist hegemony and toward something better: a future in which more motherhood of more kids is a holistic expression of well-formed, multifaceted, vocational womanhood—not just another cheap identity.
This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism: Wombs Aren't Spare Parts, Gender Roles, and Diagnosis-Positive Feminism
This week: Janice Turner on why wombs shouldn't be viewed as spare parts, Ivana Greco on what conservatives mean when they talk about gender roles, and Victoria Smith on diagnosis-positive feminism. Plus: gender ideology and gyms, losing custody over social transition, a rape and incest video game, the role of testosterone in making men—and more!
From the Archives:
Featured Author Leah Libresco Sargeant makes the case that having kids is a gift to be embraced.
Why You Should Have More Kids
Leah Libresco Sargeant
“I’m pitching you on more kids because children are good in themselves and they’re also good for you. What I’m counseling is an openness to life, both in your own life and marriage, if you marry, but also an openness to life in the form of the interruptions and chaos that other people’s kids will bring.”