The Hidden History Behind the Tradwife Movement

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]In recent months, it seems that Erica Kirk has been everywhere but at home.

[00:00:03]Today, we are investigating how trades move from Nazi fantasies to a performance conservative women everywhere are doing.

[00:00:12]Have you ever had the urge to drop out of society and work on a farm and then post clips of that to Tik Tok? Is that something you dream about?

[00:00:20]>> I dream about the farm part. I don't think I dream about the posting the farm because I feel like that would go against the farm part with the fun part of the farm part which is um you know being like completely disconnected from >> the world that we're in and I think having to like performatively post would take the fun out of it >> like all men with a beard I have fantasized about going to the woods to eventually die alone there and then the idea >> is that the dream is that what men want?

[00:00:48]>> Yes. All men want if if if me if a man gets stressed enough, he'll just start fantasizing about dying anonymously in the woods somewhere. It's a thing.

[00:00:55]>> Like a dog. Okay.

[00:00:57]>> Like a dog. Like a dog or like an old cat. Yeah.

[00:00:59]>> Our audience was like, "Hey, women want this, too." So, at least in our listenership, they are >> Oh, yeah. Apparently, our our women listeners also want it. Yeah.

[00:01:07]>> Interesting. That's not a fantasy for me. I do have I do have the farm fantasy, but it does Yeah. I'm too codependent. What's the satisfaction for men of do of dying alone instead of dying with with someone like the couple in in the Titanic holding hands? Like why is doing it alone better?

[00:01:24]>> Uh, you know, I've never really like interrogated it. It's just a feeling, you know, like like your your comparison to an old dog or like a cat or something. Like I just I'm drawn to the woods to to disappear there. Um like the guy from Into the Wild.

[00:01:38]>> Yeah.

[00:01:39]>> You know, that's that's the dream. Got it. Uh but but as you said, the the act of posting about it ruins the fantasy.

[00:01:45]>> I guess it does.

[00:01:46]>> It does. And that is what we're going to be interrogating today. We're going to be interrogating the desire to drop out of society and then of course post non-stop about it. And we're going to try to figure out is it connected to a large-scale fascist takeover of America.

[00:02:00]This is what we're talking about today on Panic World. My name is Ryan Broadick. With me as always is my trad wife Grant Irving, uh my lovely producer. And this is a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And uh yeah, with disturbing frequency, regressive ideas about where women belong is becoming increasingly mainstream. And we're going to try to figure out where those ideas are coming from and how they took over the internet. And joining us today is the host of Boy Problems, Liz Plank. I've been a fan of yours for a very long time. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:28]>> Thank you for having me. I The feeling is mutual.

[00:02:32]>> Before we talk about women, and we're gonna be talking about women a lot today, but like do you think men are okay too? like like how how would you compare how would you compare like the genders right now?

[00:02:43]>> Who's doing worse? Yeah, >> I that's a good question. I do think men are are fairing worse, but I don't think that I I think that women are better at coping. I I think women and men both are feeling like crap. I think women are better at coping with it. I think that um if any we've learned anything from the manosphere documentary um and sort of the last 10 years of of of the internet, it's that like there's a a lot of of of male suffering that that can be monetized.

[00:03:14]>> Yes.

[00:03:15]>> Women tend to internalize pain and men tend to externalize it. And so, um no, I think men are acting out more than than women. But I think women are really sad, too. You know, there there there's all this, you know, talk about the loneliness crisis. I I really women are really lonely, too. We're just not going out and like shooting like up like massage parlors, >> right? No. Yeah. I was going to say the the mass violence would be the difference there. Yeah.

[00:03:41]>> It's less visible like a lot of things that women do. You know, a lot of it is invisible. The labor, the suffering, >> the hidden the hidden emotional labor of not killing everybody.

[00:03:49]>> Not killing everybody. But I do Okay, I think about this. I've been thinking about this really a lot lately. I don't know when this episode is coming out, so you can cut it. But the the whole Taylor >> I can't It's Taylor Frankie Paul. She has like three first names. Um and I'm not familiar at all with um unfortunately um the Well, I've watched like one episode of of the Mormon Wives.

[00:04:09]They sound really fun and entertaining, but um you know the the whole thing about her throwing a chair at a guy and I'm like I feel like it's a miracle that and not even a miracle, it's actually unsettling that we don't throw more chairs at men. Like I I think that's actually on us, you know, and and requires some some thinking because I I I think that we're we're not doing that enough. Like it is weird. It is.

[00:04:31]>> I you know, barring uh anything we eventually learn about the Mormon wife lady, uh yes, I would agree with you that women probably could throw chairs at men more often. And that's that's what we're going to be talking about today, which is sort of the uh the modern uh the modern evolution of this very uh lucrative subculture, particularly in the right-wing, um called trades. And I want to start by asking you, how would you define a tradife? What comes to mind?

[00:04:58]>> I mean, what comes to mind is a very like 1950s um you know, sort of version of of of what being a a a woman is. It's a a woman who is very domestic, who's very docile, who focuses on traditional, you know, roles um that that we sort of tra, you know, tend to assume uh or or or sort of tend to assign to women, which is taking care of the kids, taking care of the home, making a lot of muffins, and uh making a man um you know, feel like he's a man by by having absolutely no sort of like emotions or or thoughts that would challenge um his own view of of being a man. I think actually tried wives are like a lot about making uh men feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel better, >> you know. Uh so our research actually backs it up and we're going to get to where the term comes from in just a second, but I wanted to start with this.

[00:05:53]>> Yeah, I we were actually surprised. Um but we let's start with uh this CNN segment about Erica Kirk uh because I think that she's probably the most kind of visible of this group right now. Oh yeah, she's in the home all the time.

[00:06:07]>> She's always We never see her.

[00:06:10]>> She's at the family farm and we never hear about her. She's always barefoot kids. Yeah.

[00:06:14]>> She's not in some sort of WWE Thunderdome uh shooting Charlie's casket into space or some [ __ ] No. So, okay. So, uh she says to CNN, "I love submitting to Charlie because he's a phenomenal leader." Um I mean, clearly he had the larger forehead of the family, so you sort of, you know, you follow him. He's got a big head. Um, and uh, so she says, "As a woman, you are meant to be the guardian of your home, to be the helpmate of your husband, be that biblical wife you are supposed to be for him and honor uh, the order that God had created marriage to be in. When I met Charlie, that was it. I could care less about the career." Well, he's gone now and she really cares about the career.

[00:06:54]So, uh, that does seem to back that up.

[00:06:56]But that's like the last Pokemon evolution of this movement. Erica Kirk is performing a girl boss trad. Let's talk about how we got here before we unpack how confusing that is.

[00:07:05]>> Yeah. Well, that's fascinating.

[00:07:07]>> Uh, if I had to ask you like when the concept of a tradife started, like in the modern context, how how old do you think this idea is? Because this this surprised us a lot. Like how far back do you think this stuff goes?

[00:07:19]>> I learned this recently on uh Amanda Montel. She came on my podcast, sort of surprised me in the way that she explained where the term originated, which is like 4chan. It it was basically like the manosphere before we sort of had a term for it that came up with with that term as as a way to sort of mock women and degrade them and then it was like turned into a positive I guess. Uh that that's sort of the origin story is I understand it but maybe maybe you have a different >> uh so uh searching on X these days is kind of tough but our researcher Adam went pretty deep and he thinks he found the first use of the word trad uh May 2016 oh and it was a uh an account named paraxial_logic who was writing a mother's day post uh to his uh wife I guess um whose name is a purposeful wife. And uh this guy writes, "Happy Mother's Day to Aliyia, our dear lady. Best to you and your family." So maybe it's not his wife. I actually have no idea what this means, but anyways.

[00:08:26]>> He then uses the hashtags #tradife #tradife #white girls are magic.

[00:08:34]>> Wow.

[00:08:34]>> Which would have been a response to the black girls are magic.

[00:08:37]>> That last one.

[00:08:38]>> Yeah. So this was from the jump associated with white supremacy, right?

[00:08:42]>> Um, so this is what this uh account looks like. It's uh it's private now, but these are older posts and it was it was very active mid 2010s. They identified as a church of Latter-day Saints, a trad uh identified as alt-right. They are also posting like a bunch of like Nordic uh like traditional, you know, clothing and stuff. And yeah, it was it was I'm not even totally clear this is a real person, you know, like this was back in those days where you're just making up kind of like white women to say racist [ __ ] before you could just find white women to say racist [ __ ] The 4chan guys used to make them. So, it uh isn't very common still in 2016, but then in 2017, uh there is something called the white baby challenge.

[00:09:30]>> Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:31]>> Do you remember this?

[00:09:32]>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, I remember reading about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:34]>> So, yeah. uh a wife with a purpose uh basically starts the white baby challenge where like you're going to have white children and uh it was this weird kind of mix of farright Nordic fetishism and Mormonism and a like clearly going against like whatever was happening on black Twitter at the time.

[00:09:55]And then in August 2017, this woman uh is invited to speak at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and uh allegedly declines, writing, "Certainly a women's perspective is important, and I plan to speak on the importance of families, but this event was quickly becoming something more, something bigger, something for the leaders of the movement, not for a mom of six children, which definitely, you know, sounds like this is a real person and this is all real."

[00:10:20]>> Or they killed a white woman at that rally.

[00:10:22]>> They did. They did. So she she had a good maybe she yeah she had a good premonition >> maybe but it yeah it's really heating up in 2017 reporter Will Smer writes at the time so basically farright guys are obsessed with telling the women on the scene to get married and have kids everybody's hunting for a hashtagwife and this is the beginning uh and what's really fascinating this is a bit of data science here in 2014 the number one search term on Pornhub was lesbian in 2015 as t wife started to enter the consciousness stepmom became number one >> uh really fascinating psychosexual kind of peer into the world. Wasn't there also I'm and forgive me I don't remember the term but there's a term for a certain kind of porn that was also sort of uh trending but this was more around 2020 so maybe it was uh after that stepmom moment where it was a kind of porn that is that that like happens within the home where like a woman is literally in the middle of a domestic chore and the man starts having sex with her while she's doing the chore. free use.

[00:11:29]>> What's that called?

[00:11:30]>> Free. I think it's called free use is what you're describing.

[00:11:33]>> Yeah. Didn't that also then become really popular? And then some people say that it was like an extension of Tradife, but also an expression of the pandemic and the fact that like a lot we were all sort of indoors. I mean, many of us were indoors.

[00:11:47]>> So, you you've stepped into a digression that I have a lot of thoughts on because I have seen this as well. I've seen this this argument as well. I have had a theory for many years though that the incest stuff, the free use stuff, the milk stuff is all actually an expression of a uh very very like uh limited housing market, >> right?

[00:12:07]>> And and so like people like can't own their own homes anymore. So even our sexual fantasies reflect back that you still live at home. So there was a New York Times piece that came out I think a few days ago and they you know published it on or you know did a carousel on Instagram and it was like millennials you know love living with roommates and you know this resurgence of like and wasn't it wasn't even just roommates it was like people are living with couple like couples are living with a third >> couples are getting a roommate. That's right. Yeah.

[00:12:38]>> And everyone in the comments was like um it's called a housing crisis like like like are you freaking joking me? So yeah, that's super interesting that then it would affect I mean it's affecting us in so many different ways and and yeah, it's really funny to see them or see all the theories except the one that's very obvious which is like we're in a [ __ ] housing crisis and >> Right. Yeah. people aren't gooning to free use porn because uh they're fascist. They're doing it because they can't afford although maybe the housing market is exacerbating the rise of fascism. Yeah, I think that's possible.

[00:13:08]>> But but isn't it also that like we no longer have we no longer go to work.

[00:13:13]There's no places to go. There's like people don't like you there's no like there's like barista >> porn, >> right? You don't order a plumber to come over. Yeah. Like that's it. Exactly. Um >> it's like it's like it has to suddenly be your stepmom who's really hot. Like it's like woman >> because you have no larger network of social stuff. Yeah. Um so in the late 2010s, the back half the the decade, the term trad is is kind of bouncing around the internet. It doesn't get true mainstream attention until the New York Times covers it. And they open with this anecdote about a woman who is much happier being a stay-at-home mom. Um, and it reads, "I always wanted children that looked like me. Blonde hair, blue-eyed babies, but I kind of had to say it under my breath. The digital farright, frequently called the alt-right, is largely regarded as a men only space. The movement shares DNA with so-called incels, and it is defined in part by its misogyny and anti-feminist, anti-woman language. But some members of the alt-right have been weighing whether the absence of women from their movement is a problem. Nationalist Marcus Fen says, "You might not like that women have the right to vote. You might not like any that anyone has the right to vote, Mr. Fen conceded. But it's about winning a long-term political victory."

[00:14:29]And that's I think the real kind of breakthrough is that like when the whole alt-right thing fizzles around 2018, the larger far-right ecosystem is like we need a way to bring women in. And what's fascinating is like it's it starts to look exactly like the way ISIS treated women. Uh a friend of mine for years was covering like the Tumblr blogs of ISIS brides that were >> ISIS. Okay, I thoughtis. So, like in the early 2010s, all these women were flying and young girls were flying from Europe and they would go to Syria and they'd join ISIS and they'd marry ISIS members and then they would start blogging on Tumblr and there's like these incredible photoshops of like Disney princesses wearing hijabs and like like life in the day of an ISIS bride post with hashtags.

[00:15:16]>> Yeah. And it's it's it's it was virtually identical to like what the trades start to do uh in the later part of the first Trump administration. So, we took it from the ISIS, which totally makes sense. It's it's a circle >> or just like Yeah. I mean, all these all these movements treat women the same way, which is like you're the propagandist, you know, you've got to bring other women in. And so then, uh, author Annie Kelly, who's great, anyone listening, definitely check out her stuff, makes the argument about like why the Tradife stuff would be so appealing to women. And, uh, Kelly writes, "Female fears of object uh, objectification and sexual violence remain as potent as ever. The tradife subculture exploits them by blaming modernity for such phenomena and then offers chastity, marriage, and motherhood as an escape.

[00:15:58]One such YouTube commentator, a teenager, told her audience, "Traditionalism does what feminism is supposed to do in preventing women from being made into sexual objects and treated like a [ __ ] Trades may seem like a lunatic fringe at the present, but they may not stay one for long." And this was like very right. Very, very, very right.

[00:16:19]Yeah, >> but also I'm hung up on the term teenager. So, because this kind of tell it's it's a teenage blogger. Did I understand that correctly? Who said that?

[00:16:29]>> She's like a >> Yeah, it's a it's a teenage YouTuber.

[00:16:31]>> Yeah. Which is which is part of this other theory on the internet right now, which is like everyone's 12. Have you heard that theory?

[00:16:38]>> You look at the manosphere doc. It is um or who's that guy who interviews all of them? Who's um South Asia? I think he's South Asian. He He's in a studio with a one of those race cars in the back.

[00:16:50]That's definitely like a green screen.

[00:16:53]Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

[00:16:54]Okay. You have no idea. So, >> I don't know what you're telling.

[00:16:57]>> He interviews a lot of these idi these manosphere guys. He interviewed the guy from the manosphere doc who's like, you know, uh says that women have never invented anything like that guy. And the set of the interview is like what a 12-year-old boy's version of being a man looks like. And a lot of people have been using the Simpsons meme of Ned I think it's Ned Flanders with his little like race car bed.

[00:17:22]>> Uh not not Ned Flanders. Um Oh my god.

[00:17:25]Bart's friend's dad.

[00:17:26]>> Yeah. Yeah. Milhouse's dad.

[00:17:28]>> Yeah. Milhouse's dad has a race car bed.

[00:17:30]I think he gets a divorce and maybe gets a race car bed. I don't know what. I don't remember. And so people are like, "This is the energy that it's giving."

[00:17:36]Like, like a 12-year-old boy wants a race car bed. And um these men are sort of uh using literally like that level of intellect in order to um sort of like Yeah. conjure this ideal of masculinity that like that like boys would want. And and I think that on both sides that's what's happening. You know, like when I was Yeah. 12 years old or maybe a little bit younger, I Yeah. I played with my Easy Bake Oven. And that's the only thing I [ __ ] cared about. Like my parents were like, "You need to get a [ __ ] life." I was like, "That's all I could talk about." And I wanted babies to like, you know, dolls to play with.

[00:18:13]Like that's what, you know, Yeah. an 8-year-old girl's version of being a woman is. And And then what we're seeing on the manosphere is like is like the same. It's like a mirror of that, right?

[00:18:22]>> Yeah. Just like on the side of the manosphere, the people who are at the helm of these like movements who are monetizing them are not even uh living the life that they are claiming is this ideal, right? And and it's the same thing with women. I mean, you brought up Erica Kirk who's like, okay, so she's like the trad, you know, look up to Candace Owens who has like, you know, like >> I think Candace Owens is a true trad.

[00:18:48]She's real ride or die for Charlie Kirk.

[00:18:50]Like I love their love. You too. Yeah.

[00:18:52]Yeah. It's inspiring. It's for sure. I Yeah. I want to I want to be just like her.

[00:18:57]>> Most people will go their whole lives looking for a love like Candace Owens and Charlie Kirks. You know that that that >> she's still talking to him in the astral plan right now. Um Yeah.

[00:19:08]>> But we're going to talk about after the break how trades go from this like fringe Nazi like kind of troll to a full-on cultural move movement. of course, thanks to Tik Tok and also surprisingly Tumblr. And we're going to do that right afterward from our sponsors, TurningPoint USA. Um, they want to talk to you kids about stuff.

[00:19:31]Yeah.

[00:19:36]Let's look at this tweet from 2018 here.

[00:19:38]I got it right here. Um, and I would love for you to read it. Uh, let me pull it up.

[00:19:44]Yeah. So, this is this was an early kind of tradife tweet from deplorable wife on Twitter was the name.

[00:19:52]>> Okay. So, you're asking me to read it?

[00:19:55]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:19:55]>> You know, you've sent the message to your family that you want to be a tradife when your birthday gifts consist of kitchen supplies, cleaning supplies, home decor, and dresses. Cry life emoji.

[00:20:08]>> Okay. I can't speak for the dresses part, but this to me feels like you're gross and your family's trying to tell you. Yeah, it's like getting gum. You know, when someone keeps offering you gum all the time, you're like, am I do I have bad breath?

[00:20:21]>> That's exactly right.

[00:20:22]>> Um, yeah. I don't know anyone who's happy about getting cleaning supplies. I mean, except like Monica from Friends, like like a like I I just it is an immediate insult. Um, and also like boring. Like why would I >> can you just buy Windex?

[00:20:36]>> Very boring. Uh, this person describes himself in their Twitter bio as proud to be a white American Christian. #Tradlife # feminism is cancer # MAGA and then we have this person who um is another tradife posting around the same time. So this is 2018 in our story uh just to orient our listeners and this is Midwest Tradife or Samantha who writes first time making banana bread. It looks like kind of boring banana bread. Uh then they write I'm pretty excited. Then #Tradife #Tradife # Sundayf funday. Of course, the bio also says pro medical freedom informed choice breastfeeding advocate homeschool stay-at-home wife.

[00:21:16]Just to sort of summarize, like the alt-right appears after Trump becomes president. They're all weird men.

[00:21:23]They're trying to figure out ways to get women interested in their movement. They start like creating kind of like aspirational content for women. I think oftentimes using bots, making it explicitly racist. Then they actually seem to get some women on board and then through there you start to get like the newagy home the um what is it school choice movement you get antivac stuff down the line you get homeschool you get all of that that's all starting because like >> they've basically like connected themselves over into Instagram that that's how I sort of see it >> and you and that's when you start to see like >> a lot more of these like hashtags spinning around and what's really interesting is I had sort of assumed that the cottage core stuff was before all of this and it was not.

[00:22:12]>> Oh.

[00:22:13]>> Um, yeah. Uh, our managing editor Kate Holderness, who used to work at Tumblr, did some digging, uh, around Tumblr, not using any sort of proprietary information, just to say she just knows the website really well. And she discovered that the first cottagecore post on was on Tumblr in 2018, which would have been right around the same time all this is happening. And it's from a a username Honey Goblin who writes, "Cottage core is jam, honey, insects, fruit, wooden spoons, milkmaids, stone and wood, ceramics, moss and mud, goats and lambs, picnic baskets and bread." And then a bunch of hashtags and then the first comment.

[00:22:50]>> I I got it.

[00:22:51]>> You have it. They've changed >> be like, "I must create something or I will kill myself."

[00:22:57]>> Cool. Cool. Um, and then it gets kind of recognized as an official aesthetic.

[00:23:03]There's an aesthetics wiki um, around in June of 2018.

[00:23:08]>> And then in August of 2018, you get the cottagecore subreddit. And so what's to be clear like this is not at the current point in our story connected to all this stuff, but it is fascinating that it's happening around the same time. Like it's it's it's strange to me that you have one part of the internet going like we all want to be barefoot and pregnant trades and then you have this other part of the internet saying we all want to go like eat moss out in the woods or whatever do witchy stuff and then they collide basically um in 2020 during the pandemic >> right around that time is when the internet got really shitty right like I think there's this whole you know sort of trending conversation that's been going on for maybe like a couple of months about 2016, you know, 2016 being like the last good year and this sort of idea that it was like the golden age and you know and and yeah, infinite scrolling didn't people don't remember I mean that's how I don't know how old you guys are but like there infinite scrolling is a new pretty new modern in invention like I remember a social media um that that didn't like where you were on it and then you were done right and so then you could move on you were like oh I've seen everything by I'm going to go outside And so I also, you know, weirdly enough, it's almost like that part of the internet that you're describing, you know, tad alt-right. I mean, it's pretty negative, right? Like even if it's it's it even if it's I don't know, helpful quote unquote to some of these men that were lost or lonely, it still was like solving their problems in a really sort of like it was not like helping them be better people or like feel better about their lives.

[00:24:46]Um then then that cottage core thing almost feels like a response, you know, to like wanting to go offline and sort of I mean it's off the grid. All of it feels like a big coping mechanism >> for the world getting like really weird >> and the internet being you know a place that sort of you know in a way was was a way to escape you know in the way that yeah TV and movies are a way to escape your life or even reading like now the internet is is is where Yeah. where when you go like you feel worse.

[00:25:17]>> Yeah. And I I think it also speaks to the insidiousness of a lot of this stuff where it does become very hard to separate and that that gets and it's gotten harder over time. You know, in in 2020, we found an article from a tradife written in this publication Eevee, which I have never heard of. Eevee magazine.

[00:25:34]>> What's the big treadwife magazine?

[00:25:36]>> Is it Is it the big treadwife magazine?

[00:25:38]>> It is. I' I've interviewed the founder.

[00:25:40]Um, I was I was at a panel like a a couple months ago in in LA and they they plumbed me right between um yeah, the founder of a Pride magazine and then like an academic lesbian feminist. Like it was just like go >> I felt like Andy um Cohen at like a like a like a housewives reunion. And I was like not that >> but but so yeah she Eevee is like yeah a very very big public try public well I don't even think they would identify that way but yeah >> they see the opportunity that co has provided in April 2020 they publish a story titled here's why I decided to become a hashtra wife this is an expert uh this is an excerpt I'd like to read to you and sort of get your thoughts on.

[00:26:21]So it reads truth is many people are tired of the constant pressure to feel fulfilled by having it all. While the career model works for most in this day and age, many don't want to run on the career treadmill and would rather be a housewife and mother. But these women are told that this isn't enough to want in life and are looked down upon by the mainstream culture and media. For example, an Australian mother posted on Facebook about how she felt proud of doing housework and preparing breakfast for her husband and children only to be slammed by journalists on national TV.

[00:26:50]Why do feminists or the mainstream media depreciate housewives as being extremists or lazy or aggressive? If feminists truly cared about all women's rights and empowerment, shouldn't they also be cheering on women who choose a life outside the boardroom?

[00:27:04]>> Yeah. I mean, that's like a classic straw like, you know, like why do do feminists hate, you know, uh, stay at home wives and you're like, show me a Jessica Valente post about how, you know, it's wrong to make banana bread.

[00:27:18]Like I many of these quote unquote feminists are are are yeah mothers themselves and yeah maybe if this was like I don't know the 1970s and like I don't know what Andrea Dorren would have said about Pride Wives but maybe she was critical of motherhood like it's just not a take it's not a modern take that you'll hear you know any kind of mainstream feminist have women on the right are told a lot of stuff um and what I found when you start having conversations with them is like or even with Britney like we're friends like once we started talking realized oh we have all these things in common and I don't look down on you for being proud to be a mother. Like I want to be a mother. There there's money to be made by making people angry and particularly I guess making women angry.

[00:27:58]>> What has become very apparent to me now cuz I'm watching I'm watching a lot of people we're recording this in the midst of h gosh I think this is probably day seven or eight of our national discourse about Lindy West's throppple.

[00:28:11]>> Oh my god. And uh I'm watching a lot of people talk about mid200s and 2010s blogging culture, talking a lot about Jezebel and like >> you know I had I had an RSS reader up and running with my favorite blogs in it since I was like a freshman in college.

[00:28:28]>> I was reading all of those sites as they became bigger and bigger. And it's fascinating to watch young people, but also just like non-media people, I suppose, misremember that era so explicitly. And I have to imagine that it's like not totally their fault in a way, like because of the way everything moved online and conversation moved onto the internet in the 2010s and not everyone moved with it immediately. I'm just realizing that there are massive gaps in uh American culture that like a large chunk of people don't totally understand because it was happening on Twitter and no one was on Twitter in 2015, right?

[00:29:08]>> How well how do you think it is misremembered? I saw this one take that like Lindy West and all the Jezebel writers are the reason why Roie Wade was repealed in 2022 and they were spending all their time doing dumb [ __ ] and being frivolous and I'm like they were like one of the most aggressive news rooms in the country in like the 2010s >> and and I have to imagine that like >> it's like a purple monkey dishwasher thing cuz I even like clicked on some of these accounts being like, "Okay, are you just like a right-winger that's like being to some purpose and like no these were like chapel ran stands being like oh millennial feminists like threw us all under the bus >> and it's like yeah cuz you were like 12 and you didn't understand what was going on and I think like a large chunk of the population probably saw >> social progress happening in visible ways and not really understanding why like what conversations led to that or like who was invol and yeah I I have to imagine that's the case and >> all of this gets like supercharged charged after the pandemic because now now a huge chunk of the country is on the internet. Um and that's when these platforms start to like really latch on to the trad thing and the cut um interviewed reporter Max Reed about like the tradife trend in 2003 and he had kind of an interesting take on it which was >> Reed said uh it's uh neither bait nor authentic. It's just audience strategy.

[00:30:34]Social networks are specifically designed to engage people in exactly this way through the performance of political and social identity. Putting that together as a lifestyle that you show over the course of multiple videos, it's perfect.

[00:30:46]>> Which I think is largely true like it's performative, you know, it becomes far more performative after co >> Yes. Social media look it was always perform like it was performative, right?

[00:30:59]We we we posted good brunch pics. Like if you made a shitty, you know, or if you tried to do a pin Pinterest recipe and it came out looking [ __ ] bad, like you didn't post it. But but now we're kind of like all avatars of ourselves. And in a way that back then your real life was more important than your digital life. your digital life was was I mean in my case and it seems like yours like full and and interesting but it it didn't it was still separate and and now I truly do think that who you are online is is more important than who you are in in in real life and so yeah we we're I'm not surprised to see yeah the these I mean what you're describing is like like caricatures I mean I I saw an Andrew Tay talk yesterday he's like sitting alone in some [ __ ] Oh, and what did he Yeah. He was like, >> "Men who have wives are gay." He was like, "If you don't have multiple uh baby mamas, uh you're gay." Like like like you like any guy who posts about his wife on social media is gay. And the proof is think about guys in elementary school again. Who is he talking to? The guys who had friends that were girls were all gay. like like the logic, you know, it's it's just it's it's a parody and and we're all a little bit parodies.

[00:32:25]I mean, even if you look at the the real faces of celebrities now, they they they're like they look like avatars of crazy. They everyone, you know, anyway, it's just reached a fever pitch >> and it and it has and it's it's largely thanks to this this Tik Tok effect that we see, you know, in the in around 2023.

[00:32:44]And that's when we started to get uh accounts like uh Estee Williams. Are you familiar with her or >> the name is familiar? I'm sure you've probably heard of Ballerina Farm.

[00:32:54]>> Yeah. And then we also get Hannah uh Nieleman who is a Mormon woman who married the son of the founder of JetBlue.

[00:33:04]And which I think is very important to point out here that like this is something that rich women are telling poor women to do.

[00:33:12]>> Yeah.

[00:33:12]>> Like everything on the right, this is a concerted effort from the rich and powerful to convince poor people to do something that they want them to do. And there is nothing probably better uh for their overall political strategy than telling poor women to drop out of the workforce and rely on a man and you know and and drop out of school. It seems to have not really worked out for these women. Williams had a baby born with a birth defect and after that did a big pivot away from trad content. Hannah Neilman of Ballerina Farms was profiled in 2024 and the dynamic between her and her husband honestly seems scary. And in 2025, Gwen the Milkmaid deleted all her milkmaid content and went back to Gwen Gwiz, i.e. making ASMR videos in lingerie, which is fine. That's Yeah.

[00:34:05]Okay.

[00:34:05]>> Right. I think it's Magdalene Taylor, former GU uh guest of Panic World, who excellent sex and culture writer who uh just was like, "This is all like this is all porn." All she her take is like wife content is all porn to some degree. And I think that that's right.

[00:34:22]>> Wow.

[00:34:23]>> Do guys like that?

[00:34:25]>> Like >> I don't.

[00:34:26]>> But when when you're like is it again like we're all 12 like 12 like is it the idea that a 12-year-old boy would be like be like Yeah. I think that's right.

[00:34:36]I there's some data to back that up, too. In 2024, Tradife searches were up 72% on Pornhub.

[00:34:44]>> I think there's like a couple dimensions to this. Like, I think I think it's particularly easy for like Zoom school Gen Z kids to fantasize about a life that they do not live because they don't really live one.

[00:34:58]>> Tik Tok is a portal to like different kinds of identities and lifestyles that they can try on. And we and like very early on in sort of the Gen Z story, there was a lot of like identity play and aesthetic play and sort of like understanding the world through what they're seeing online. I think trades fit in perfectly there because you can just sort of imagine this thing that is not real.

[00:35:18]>> I think that there's a lot of millennial wives that are doing it to make money or because they have like hardcore right-wing political beliefs. Not to excuse the Gen Z kids, but I think it's a lot more sort of cynical at that age, our age. And I also just think that I don't see this as >> I think it's twofold. Like >> yes, it is something that is being performed for a male audience to a degree. I think that's newer. I think I think it originally started as a way for women to recruit women >> and it has it has now kind of pivoted.

[00:35:53]And in fact, we had we did an episode about the manosphere with Siri Dollah a couple weeks ago, and she had this great take where it's like the manosphere used to be something that was totally like focused on helping men meet women.

[00:36:06]>> Yeah. Pick up >> and now it is totally focused on helping men perform for other men.

[00:36:11]>> So, it's like both of these kind of sides of the coin have devolved over time into being just like some combination of porn and wrestling and QVC.

[00:36:20]>> Right. Right. Right. And I I will add I think for millennial women who have fallen into this um who who have fallen in in into this rabbit hole, we also have to remember although the 2010s were wonderful, you know, that's also when the girl boss movement sort of, you know, that that was that was all >> Hold that thought. Hold that thought right there.

[00:36:42]>> We're going to talk about it >> because because that's coming up next.

[00:36:45]But we're going to first go to a word from our sponsors. Prager University.

[00:36:50]Accurate historical information about women's rights from Prager University.

[00:36:59]All right. Uh we are back now and I want to show you a video. Uh in my opinion, this video uh basically caused the global recession we're all living in.

[00:37:10]>> It is Samberg's TED talk.

[00:37:12]>> Uh Jenz and a mini.

[00:37:16]I I can't hear what they're saying, but I I know like Jenzie I I I know the trend.

[00:37:22]>> Jenzie boss in a mini skirt. Do Do the whole thing, Ryan.

[00:37:24]>> Jenz boss in a mini boss and a bitty and a bob. It a new friend new friend and a sneaky link. Okay, so if you have never seen this video, this video is probably without question the most viral video of Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter of X. It is the most hated piece of content of the 2020s. And when Donald Trump announced the tariffs, like thousands of Trump supporters were like, "We did it to specifically hurt these women because we hate them so much." These women are not American. They run an Australian skincare brand called TBH. Um, they seemingly have no idea that they have become the symbol of everything wrong with feminism and women and life. And like there are like multiple thousand 10,000word screeds out there of men being like, I want to crash the global economy to make sure that these women can never be in an office again because they were so mad about this video.

[00:38:29]>> What? I'm I did I missed this whole thing. So these women are making a funny because I know the trend of like >> like you know hi pony and and hoop earrings. So So they just happened to make a version of it and and why did why were men so so mad about it because they're happy. So okay trying to follow sort of yes but trying to follow the thought process in these spaces like takes a lot of time energy like it's really stupid every time but >> so basically during the pandemic a bunch of men working in like engineering and coding and sort of STEM jobs >> started complaining that like they had to work while their bosses who were women or what they call laptop mommies or product mommies got to like sit in pools all day and answer Slack. text messages. Oh yeah.

[00:39:18]>> And so there there was this Yeah. There was this massive wave of resentment >> largely started by one previous video of two young women basically work on their laptops out of a out of a pool.

[00:39:28]>> And that sort of created this idea that like uh in the 2010s, progressivism installed a bunch of young women in managerial positions to manage a bunch of men.

[00:39:40]>> Wow. And then when this video dropped, they saw it as proof that like women don't do anything but do Tik Tok dances all day in the office.

[00:39:50]>> And so we should smash the global economy so that women have to marry men to survive the global depression.

[00:39:57]>> Got it. And what makes men escape this global depression that they've caused?

[00:40:01]Or is it like a murder suicide situation?

[00:40:04]>> Uh yeah, I mean well like men love hurting each other. Like that's just like a thing that they do. Um, and like they just sort of believe that like uh what's the term they use like uh high interest rate phenomenon or whatever it's called where like they believe that like women having jobs is like a totally caused by like just having interest rates that were too low or whatever.

[00:40:25]>> And is this a real This is a real thing.

[00:40:26]>> Yes. Yes. I've uh yeah, it's it's been this video like comes around on like the so I have like a watch list of like the worst guys and like they're sharing this video like once a month probably still being like they're like when >> the there'll be like the it's it's okay that like we're having an energy crisis because of the war in Iran because it means like these women won't have jobs soon.

[00:40:49]>> That's like the thing.

[00:40:50]>> Wow. Fascinating. It links to your point about girl bosses where it's like we have to punish the girl boss.

[00:40:57]>> Yeah. And and by the way, oh my god, I I mean we could do a full hour on the girl boss that defined the 2010s. It really did. Right. So So Cheryl, you know, basically 20 before 2013, women were in the office, but like a real like minority, like treated like a like a true minority. And not that they're not anymore, but when I started uh writing at the So I I moved to New York in 2013. That was like my first year of like working as a journalist.

[00:41:24]>> I remember seeing a New York Times room for debate.

[00:41:29]>> Remember remember that? I don't They still have it. They they'll have people like debate a topic. And the headline >> I need I need to get this right. It Oh, yeah. The headline was can women lead?

[00:41:42]>> Didn't they just do that story again like a month ago? like how like >> oh yeah are women are women ruining the work? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:49]>> Yeah. It just it and and then they had four people debate that idea and and you know have like one normal person be like yeah I think women can be bosses. Um I think that's that's possible. And then like three other people be like evolutionarily um women are supposed to just be [ __ ] You know like it just it was ridiculous. and and and it was printed and I so my first article I wrote and I was like the [ __ ] New York Times and then Margaret Sullivan who was the public editor at the New York Times at the time wrote like I was writing for a blog called mike.com at the time called policymic that no one knew about and she responded to my article and then they ended up taking it down and having sort of a and and this was so there was a moment of reckoning obviously beyond the scope of this one article that the New York Times did where there started to be a Huffington Post women section And you know, people started being like, maybe we should hire women in newsrooms and like maybe we should have a a manager, like a managing editor who's a woman at one of these newspapers. So So this was um a really exciting time for women.

[00:42:54]>> Long long live the hairpin and the toast.

[00:42:57]>> Yes.

[00:42:58]>> Remember that RIP RIP and RIP Jezebel. I mean, I can't >> RIP Jezebel.

[00:43:04]>> I can't even believe that's a sentence.

[00:43:05]But but so it was a very exciting time.

[00:43:08]women were starting to be respected and and and have sort of you know this sort of equal place and or at least there was this belief that was sort of um like you weren't supposed to say women are inferior at least like you were supposed to at least publicly say like yeah yeah women are equal to men and I do think that we took it a little far you know like I do think that then it just became this like capitalist definition of of of mas of of feminism this very like white feminist you know, definition of like you can have kids and be the boss and sleep four hours a day because you'll be fine. You have a brown or black nanny to, you know, it was very, it was not realistic as an ideal and it was very elite and very white.

[00:43:51]And I do think a lot of women burnt out from it. I myself did. I mean, um, Sama Buopai, who was one of the founders of Feministing, another amazing blog, um, from the 2010s, I mean, she wrote an entire book about it. She was the, you know, she made it. She was the executive editor of Team Vogue and had been, you know, at the helm of all these different media companies and yeah, we all burnt out and and so in a way, this is my admission in a moment of vulnerability.

[00:44:18]I will be honest. Like, >> are you a trad wife? Is that what >> I'm not a trad wife? I I'm not I would need like a husband and like many other, you know, I would need like to own my home and like have a bunch of cows. Um, >> a tra a trad Yeah. I'm not even a girlfriend, but like I >> because part of the tradife movement has been sort of tangential in any kind of extreme, you know, sort of movement.

[00:44:42]There's also like smaller, more like I don't even know how how to describe it, but like like less I guess radical portions of it. And one of them is the stay-at-home girlfriend, which >> I was about to say my dream is to be a stay-at-home girlfriend. That sounds >> right. When I see those across my feed, I I'd be like this [ __ ] girl. And then I look at her day and I'm like, I I kind of wish I that could be my life.

[00:45:07]You know, part of it is that we're all trying to escape the [ __ ] hellscape of living, especially in the United States, you know, in in a country where you have to work just to afford to be alive. Maybe uh you know, or if you're James Vanderbeek and you you're literally living the American dream, you still need to create a GoFundMe after you've already died to pay for your expenses, right? of of >> Wait, but wasn't that because his wife was a tad wife who's like doing right-wing [ __ ] on Instagram and like and like >> didn't he die because she's antiax and stuff? Yeah, I'm pretty sure like all of that. Yeah, cuz like >> she's like a woo woo I'm pretty sure she's like a woo tread wife who made the move to the farm. They were like still renting or something and like >> Oh my god, this is we can cut this.

[00:45:50]Okay, >> I'm I'm almost positive like she is like he died kind of because >> she killed him. Okay.

[00:45:57]>> Or she like wouldn't let him take like real medicine or something.

[00:46:00]>> Okay. I did not see that portion of the discourse. Um but >> Oh, yeah. James Vanderbeek's wife uh is anti-science and was against him doing chemotherapy and uh in favor of holistic stuff. Um his colon cancer was specifically very survivable. Um, and like their whole move to the farm was sort of to support her like woo woo [ __ ] Yeah.

[00:46:22]>> It's a Steve Jobs.

[00:46:23]>> Mhm.

[00:46:23]>> It's a cry.

[00:46:26]>> It was totally treatable, but he needed to eat like only earned food.

[00:46:30]>> That's really sad.

[00:46:32]>> Yeah. The whole thing about like them not having money or whatever is like real weird.

[00:46:37]>> Okay. I just >> There's no evidence he was right-wing apparently according to >> but there's no evidence he wasn't. I think it has become increasingly difficult to understand like who is doing this stuff for what reason. And I think RFK, you know, as the installation of, you know, whatever his stupid [ __ ] title is, this department of secretary secretary secretary of health.

[00:46:58]Yeah. um has like made it even more confusing because like we've done research into sort of how MA or Make America Healthy Again works as a network and you have a lot of people who know that it's explicitly right-wing and then you have a bunch of like crusty yoga moms who don't know that they are repeating right-wing talking points >> and that's on purpose. Like this stuff has become so insidious. the the right-wing fixation on Sydney Sweeney and whether or not she's conservative or not. They don't they're not really waiting around to recruit people anymore. What they're doing is like casting the widest net possible and then making you be rightwing by association.

[00:47:36]It's all about like false consensus building, I think.

[00:47:38]>> Oh, that's really interesting. Yeah.

[00:47:40]Yeah. And and you know, I went to a Turning Point conference a few months before uh Charlie Kirk was killed. And >> wait, wait. Did you go to the one where Dana Lo spoke to like all the women?

[00:47:52]Because that's literally next in our our outline here. Did you >> I They kicked me out so I wasn't allowed to.

[00:47:59]>> Why did they kick you out?

[00:48:00]>> Well, I mean, >> yeah. Why' they kick you out?

[00:48:01]>> Cuz I do podcasts like these. I don't know. Uh no, like I they they Yeah.

[00:48:05]Really? I really tried to get in and I paid actually like they owe me like several hundred. That ticket was expensive, but whatever.

[00:48:11]>> Was it Was it the Was it the TPUSA one in Dallas?

[00:48:15]>> No, it was in um [ __ ] Tampa. dude in the summer. Yeah. I I don't I blacked out for half of it. No, it was the one where like um they tal where where Tucker Carlson gave that speech where he was like, "Hey, you can't afford your house." Like that sucks. You know, gave a very sort of left-wing kind of speech and and and where the Epstein file stuff also like a lot of some of them even spoke out about and I think Charlie Kirk spoke out about the Epstein files on stage. Um but whatever.

[00:48:43]>> Okay. Yeah. The the one we have here is a basically like kind of a a bow on where we started with this episode, which is there was a Q&A with Charlie Kirk and Erica Kirk uh in Dallas at a TPUSA event. And uh this is from the New York Times who covered it and they basically they write >> one after another members of the audience came forward to ask Mr. Kirk and his wife for advice. Why? Why are you okay? I don't want to go to college and I don't want to commit to a career that I know I'm going to have to abandon once I have kids. one young woman said to which Mr. Kirk replied, "You're already thinking correctly." Mrs. Kirk asked if anyone in the room had a liberal boyfriend. A hand near the front shot up. "Pray for her," an audience member yelled. And then, um, Charlie Kirk suggested that we bring back the celebration of the MS degree. Uh, and then he said, "You know who the most miserable and depressed people in America are?" Mr. Kirk said, "Care career-driven early 30some women." So this woman told New York Times in attendance of the thing, she said first she got rid of her seed oils and food dies and she ransacked the cabinets and threw out Cheezits and candy and then she decided to not get the COVID vaccine. And then she said, "All these doors opened when I found out about the food. It only takes one voice to start going down a rabbit hole." And like I think that's >> really the driving like that's how most people are encountering this stuff now.

[00:50:06]>> No. is like they're they see a post and they're like, "What does that mean?" And then they just start picking and picking and then they find themselves at a TPUSA event.

[00:50:14]>> Yeah.

[00:50:15]>> And you know, it's it I think the point I think of this whole episode is just like this stuff was done on purpose.

[00:50:22]Like it was set up this way on purpose to do this exact thing and they succeeded, you know?

[00:50:27]>> Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's like sort of comes back to even our joke about wanting to die alone in the woods. Like >> That's right. It's like yeah people are unhappy right like people I mean and it's a normal part of being alive you know it's a normal suffering is a normal part of the human condition and I think what we've been seeing is I mean I think a lot sorry to make this whole conversation about the 2010s but the internet in the 2010s one of the big differences with it now is sure there was always optimization and monetization right there were tech bros wanted to make money and like you know all all those things right Mark Zuckerberg start Facebook out of like the kindness of his own heart to you know bring people together but the internet wasn't as much of a place to like monetize everything like and the perfect example of that for me is couch surfing >> like do you guys remember couch surfing so Jenzi people have no idea that this existed basically I'm like oh it was Airbnb but it was free and they look at me and they're like I'm sorry what like and of course and and I don't know if you I used it at multiple occasions. It led to many I I did it in Hungary. I did it in France. I met friends. I had a boyfriend. Like it was great. And then it and then Airbnb comes around. It's like, well, we can make money off of someone having an extra couch, right?

[00:51:49]Airbnb was like literally after an air mattress, right? Because some of these uh couch surfers, it was is a couch surfing, right? So, it wasn't even have an extra room. It was like, I have just like an inflatable mattress.

[00:51:59]>> And and yeah, someone was like, we got to monetize this. And and I really do think that so much of this is tied to that, right? People being [ __ ] scammed. I mean, it is, I think, going to be the defining characteristics characteristic of the 2010s. And I think it definitely started with Donald Trump, but who's, you know, the griftiest president we've we've ever had. It's just like people seeing opportunity for money and and even clvicular. I mean, we didn't even get into that, but >> he's a he's kind of a trad he's a beauty influencer.

[00:52:33]>> He is a beauty influencer. a beauty influencer. And I also still do not think he believes a lot of the things that he says to that extreme, but he's making money off of it. And so, yeah, I I I think sometimes it's like, and I'm not saying that to depress us. It's like sometimes it's not even that deep.

[00:52:50]before before we move off clavicular um like further proof of like how insidious this stuff is. I was having a conversation with like a like a a good reporter like a good internet culture fluent reporter and she was saying like oh my god like the clickier stuff is so funny I think he's so funny and I'm like yeah like he is funny but like he's super racist of course and she's like what do you mean super racist? Well, he's got like tons of videos where he's just like talking about how like black people are inferior and all this stuff.

[00:53:18]And she's like, "Oh, I didn't see any of that. I just saw like the funny clips."

[00:53:22]And I'm like, "Right."

[00:53:22]>> Right.

[00:53:23]>> And because like that's that's what the that's how all of this stuff works is like you you could and and she's like, "I'm mortified. I've been going to parties being like, I think he's so funny." And I'm like, "Yeah." And I bet you like 90% of the people you're talking to are like, "Yeah, he's funny."

[00:53:38]Because they also don't know that like he's talking on the in the same streams about all kinds of [ __ ] up stuff because we only watch clips.

[00:53:45]>> Yeah.

[00:53:45]>> Because we only watch >> we only see the jester maxing at the club.

[00:53:49]>> We're not we're not Yeah.

[00:53:50]>> And how could we see it all? I mean that's the other thing. I'm like what are people >> you can't see it all?

[00:53:55]>> You can't And >> you can't have it all and you can't see it all.

[00:53:58]>> Yeah. And the rise of streaming it's like I was explaining it to my sister, you know, and she was like but like I don't understand. Don't people have jobs? It's like what do you mean watching someone for eight hours a day?

[00:54:08]It's it's a perfect storm and and it took all of these different things for it to, you know, sort of get to where we're at.

[00:54:14]>> I I always say this. I hope this stuff is losing steam. And I I sort of think the proof of that is that people are getting more desperate about making everything seem wife coded. Like the Sydney Sweeney meltdown last summer like to me feels very desperate. Um I think a vibe shift is happening whether the right-wing want it or not. And so, yeah, I know I'm I'm not totally pessimistic about all of this, but I will definitely be posting Tik Toks of myself turning butter on my farm soon. Um, yeah, and I want to thank you for coming on the show. This was lovely.

[00:54:45]>> Fun.

[00:54:46]>> I I asked all of our guests this uh where can people follow you on the internet? If people want to see your trad uh tenant, your trad um yeah, I I am at feminist fabulous on Instagram, but if you put in Liz plank, you'll you'll find me. I'm Liz Plank on Tik Tok and YouTube. You can find my podcast, Boy Problems, on Spotify or anywhere you listen to your podcast. You can watch it on YouTube. Uh I have a Substack called Airplane Mode and where I break down the news and try not to make you feel depressed about it. Um I think those are the big ones um for now.

[00:55:21]Yeah.

[00:55:21]>> Awesome. Hey, it's Ryan. If you like what you just watched, subscribe to our channel and check out our other episodes. Not only will it help us grow, but each will help other folks like you who might need a little reminder to chill out and touch grass.