On a cold winter evening, my friend Hazel Acacia and I made a big pot of split pea soup and a spicy shredded carrot salad. As we chopped the veggies and stirred the broth, we got to talking about tradwives. In so many words, Hazel and I both admitted that—minus the fascistic parts—we kinda dig a lot about tradwife life. “I think you, me, and Margaret Killjoy need to talk about this,” declared Hazel, sitting on the compost bucket in my kitchen. And I agreed;
—anarchy’s favorite dulcimer-playing, chemise-adorned, wood chopping preparedness expert—was an obvious interlocutor.Most of the writing and thinking about tradwives in lefty/feminist spheres has been to name the problematic elements of the lifestyle. This is good and necessary work, especially since tradwives espouse some very dangerous ideologies. But the three of us also wanted to acknowledge that some of the stuff these women are doing is…..pretty cool? And we shouldn’t let reactionaries get to claim things like growing food and caretaking as their own. As Margaret says: “Contested terrain means where we fight.”
And we want to fight for things like abundant time for care, air and water free of poison, locally-grown food, and health autonomy.….And, of course: for pretty dresses. <3
More from Margaret:
Birds Before the Storm (newsletter)
Live Like the World Is Dying (podcast)
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff (podcast)
More from Hazel:
“How to Do It Anyway: a guide to self-managed abortion” (zine from Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness)
Resources/Works Referenced
For Further Tradwife Research
Diabolic Lies podcast about Evie
Sara Petersen has covered a lot of tradwife ground
Back in 2021, Mariel Cooksey wrote about the dangers of white nationalist ideas in tradwife culture
The infamous Ballerina Farm profiles: here and here
& hot off the presses, an excellent and very complementary piece from Alicia Kennedy: “On Tradwives”
Family Abolition, Post-Work, Marxist Feminism
Also Mentioned
The Dawn of Everything by David Wengrow & David Graeber
Featured music: two short clips of Pat the Bunny’s “Urine Speaks Louder Than Words” (referenced in the convo, relevant to the topic, I swear). Buy the track on Bandcamp!
Featured art: Nikki McClure who has honestly been giving us anarcho-tradwife content since the early 00s. <3
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