Tradwives, it’s not (leftist) feminism you dislike, it’s capitalism! Rereading Harry Braverman alongside the discombobulated politics of social media tradwives

Abstract

This article examines what I call the discombobulated politics of the tradwife, a popular social media aesthetic embraced by women who champion “traditional” Western gender norms, the nuclear family, and pronatalism. Tradwives have become formidable cultural figures due to their vast audiences, ties to far-right politics, and ability to mobilize around widely shared emotions. I understand their politics as discombobulated insofar as they advance a false cause for a social world that can be more accurately explained through established social scientific frameworks, such as those advanced by Harry Braverman in his 1974 book Labour and Monopoly Capitalism. In this article, I identify recurring tradwife critiques of “feminism” and use Braverman’s analysis to rebut these misframings, redirecting attention to the true structural driver of discontent: monopoly capitalism. By disentangling tradwives’ animus toward “feminism” and relocating it within the dynamics of capital (or a “feminism” that is really capitalism in disguise), this article provides a more precise account of the forces contributing to the contemporary anti-feminist backlash. It concludes that while tradwives often identify real social problems, the emancipatory impetus that would otherwise steer them toward left-wing politics is subverted by the malevolent actors of what Naomi Klein calls the Mirror World.