Why Our Politics are Wonky: Reflections from a Feminist Trad Wife

Wonky politics, feminists, and trad wives: I may be the first person to use all those terms together.

I don’t know.

It’s a strange combination of ideas, to be sure, but these ideas share more in common than you might think.

Let me explain.

My husband and I grow a garden, and I am right in the middle of canning pickles, spaghetti sauce, salsa, pesto, applesauce and (fingers crossed) peaches.

Stocking up on home-canned goods for the winter. 

I love growing and preserving food. And I love cooking good, homemade food from scratch.

The other night, I made my husband, John, homemade meatballs, tomato sauce (with canned garden tomatoes), spaghetti squash and roasted broccoli.

It took me an hour or so to do this.

Did I have to do this? No.

Did John tell me I had to do this? Absolutely not.

But I loved doing it.

And if you watched me cooking, you would have seen me wearing a skirt, a floral blouse, and mary jane flats and an apron.

To be honest, I looked like a 50s-era traditional housewife.

Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

And I’m not ashamed of that.

That’s because I love the domestic arts. I love to cook, can, and (sometimes) clean.

I just ordered sourdough starter because I’m going to make SO MUCH SOURDOUGH BREAD.

Also, I love sewing, crocheting, and knitting.

I plan to start quilting ASAP.

In many ways, I’m a pretty traditional gal.

For example, John and I just celebrated our 29^th wedding anniversary, and I consider it a privilege to be John’s wife.

It’s the most important thing to me.

My beloved.

Many days, I look like a traditional housewife, or TradWife, as they are called on social media.

TradWives are women who celebrate the traditional housewife role.

They often dress like traditional housewives in aprons, skirts and very feminine clothing.

And if they have social media accounts, they often film videos or take pictures of themselves cooking, cleaning, and tidying up the house for their man.

Often Trad Wives celebrate their embrace of traditional wifely habits as a rebellion against the modern, feminist lifestyle.

The idea is that contemporary feminist ideals, so TradWife thinking goes, lead women to reject homemaking, femininity, and traditional roles of womanhood as something women should despise and find oppressive.

Now given that I often look and behave like a Trad Wife, and given that Trad Wives often reject feminist ideals, it may surprise you to learn that I consider myself a feminist.

When I say I am a feminist, I mean a very specific thing.

I mean that I believe that men and women are equal in terms of their human dignity and are meant to be equal partners in the home, in business, in politics, and in church.

Women are not, as some people have historically believed, defective or inferior men.

Here are some further things I do and don’t believe as a feminist.

I don’t think a women’s place is in the home, although I love being a domestic goddess.

And I don’t think the purpose of women is to be a wife and have children, although I think marriage and children are a blessing.

The purpose of women (like men) is to live out their purpose and passion in the world for the good of everyone.

Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

And each individual person—male or female—must figure that purpose and passion out for themselves.

In addition, I believe that women are just as capable as men of doing activities traditionally considered masculine.

I also believe that the world is a better place when women are allowed to participate in arenas from which they were historically excluded.[1]

And because I am a feminist in this sense of the word, I often end up doing very feminist-looking things.

For example, I have my PhD in philosophy (often considered a male discipline).

And I have also written three books on logic (also often considered a male discipline).

I also once got sent to the principal’s office in high school for arguing with my teacher’s interpretation of scripture at the Christian school I attended.[2]

I thought my questions were respectful, but he thought otherwise. So, to the principal’s office I went.[3]

In addition, I have also worked full-time or almost full-time outside the house my whole adult life.

As such, sometimes I have been the bread winner of the house, and sometimes my husband has been.

Also, I am trying to learn how to mow the lawn and weed-eat and do other chores often considered masculine.

This only seems right and fair to me, given that my husband does the dishes, often considered a feminine chore, more often than I do.

I don’t do these things to be a feminist, just like I don’t cook and can to be a TradWife.

I cook, can, study philosophy, write books, and sometimes argue with scriptural interpretations because I am a human being living out my passion and purpose in the world to the best of my ability.

The other day, thinking about the various hobbies and roles I take on, I joked with my husband that I was going to start a TikTok account called Feminst Trad Wife and make everyone mad.

I don’t really want to make everyone mad.

But such an account would likely anger some people on both sides of the issue.

That’s because people often think that it must be either-or: either you are a traditional wife. Or you are a feminist.

But it’s completely unnecessary to think in these false binaries.

After all, women can believe in the equality of men and women and still love to clean, cook, and can.

That’s because the domestic arts are beautiful.

Eating nourishing food grown close to home is beautiful.

I picked these raspberries from my backyard berry bushes the other day.

Creating a peaceful home-life is beautiful.[4]

By the same token, someone can love all the domestic arts and still believe that men and women are equal partners in all areas of life.

That’s because organizations are stronger when they have input from both men and women who often see the world in different ways.

Homes and communities become stronger when both women and men are able to develop all their talents to the fullest.

And when we allow women and men to do this, we often observe them developing talents considered both traditionally feminine and masculine.

Early pioneer women in the Americas beautifully demonstrate this truth.

Pioneer women certainly practiced domestic arts like cleaning, cooking, and preserving food.

However, these women also were also tough and hardy and engaged in a lot of activities and arts typically considered masculine like herding animals, hunting, trapping, and building.

Pioneer women had to embrace both the feminine and masculine to survive and for their families to survive.

And the world was better for it.

Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

They were both TradWife and feminist and something more. They were living out their purpose and passion in the world.

If we think a woman’s choice is either to be a Trad Wife or a feminist, we have a failure  of imagination.

We fail to imagine a world in which domesticity and equality, tradition and progressiveness, gentleness and strength weave together to create stronger homes, churches, communities, and politics.

That’s because the point is not Trad Wife or feminist.

The point is dignity, beauty, nurture, peace, adventure, strength, purpose, passion, and flourishing.

These precious goods should be our focus.

And all this discussion about Trad Wives and feminists leads me to my point about our wonky politics.

Right now, our political system in the United States is wonky.

By wonky, I mean it often demonstrates characteristics like irrationality, exaggeration, ignorance, silliness, immature and unvirtuous thinking.

An example of this is that our parties constantly communicate to us that we must make impossible and ridiculous choices between socially constructed binaries.

Picture by Ben Wertheim, courtesy of Unsplash. 

For instance, frequently Republicans and Democrats suggest that we must choose between these binaries:

Self-reliance or strong social safety nets.

The right to bear arms or safe communities.

An unborn baby’s dignity or a mother’s dignity.

Sexual morality or sexual autonomy.

People or the environment.

Defending our country or being hospitable to immigrants.

Honoring traditional religion or freedom from religious coercion.

These binaries are false, ridiculous, and unsustainable.

One of the greatest tragedies of binaries it that they are often self-undermining.

For example, one of the best ways we encourage individual self-reliance is to cultivate strong safety nets.

But one of the best ways to cultivate strong social safety nets is to also encourage individual self-reliance.

The issue is not self-reliance OR strong social safety nets. It’s both and something more.

And one of the best ways to nurture and strengthen humans is to protect the environment which gives us abundant resources by which we can support ourselves.

But the only way we can protect our environment well is by recognizing that humans have a special ability to care for the environment and maximize its potential for everyone and everything.

The issue is not people OR the environment. It’s both and something more

As another example, one of the best ways to defend our country is to create safe and hospitable immigration policies.

But we can only create sensible and reasonable immigration policies by developing a clear vision of our country’s values and specific threats which undermine these values.

The issue is not defending our country OR being hospitable to immigrants. It’s both and something more.

My point is that the binaries currently so evident in our politics often create more problems rather than solving the problems they purport to solve.

And that is because binaries miss the point. The point is not whether we are following Republican or Democratic party policies.

These parties are arbitrary parties that we imagined into existence.

If we believe we are captive to party policies that people invented (and recently, too), that’s a failure of imagination.

And it completely misses the point.

The point is not Republicans or Democrats. The point is dignity, beauty, nurture, peace, adventure, strength, purpose, passion, and flourishing.

These are the goods for which our politics should aim.

We can imagine and create politics that shatter stupid binaries and help us embrace these most precious goods.

By the way, one of the reason the false binaries I mention are such a problem is that they prevent us from practicing resilient politics, which you can read about here: Resilient Politics: What It Is; Why They Matter. 

*****

If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing on social media.

******

[1]I also believe that the world is better when men participate in arenas from which they were historically excluded, like caring for children.

[2] I like to think that I was inspired in these arguments by the spirit of my Quaker great- grandmas who were both recorded ministers.

I also like to think I was inspired by my Quaker minister Grandpa Clark who once told me a beautiful story, inspired by Plato, about how men and women are two halves of an originally whole person.

His point was that we need both the masculine and feminine equally present in our lives, working together.

[3] This story is an amalgamation of three separate but similar events in my life. As such, I have modified some of the details.

[4] By the way, no one must excel in, or enjoy, cooking, cleaning, and canning.  And we should never shame people for not being a great cook or cleaner. (On a related note, I have some closets that I don’t want anyone to see because they are a disaster. Also, if you come to my house, please don’t look too closely at the windows.)