Women then and now

In a culturally Christian country, there is a comforting myth that suffering refines and purifies—that social marginalization confers a form of moral superiority, that the persecuted are naturally ennobled by their struggle. This is a seductive story, deeply ingrained in the American imagination, but one that collapses under scrutiny. It assumes that victimization necessarily leads to solidarity, that oppression breeds resistance rather than submission. The existence of right-wing women is a stark refutation of this myth.

Andrea Dworkin’s Right-Wing Women, originally published in 1983, remains one of the most insightful explorations of this paradox. The book’s recent reissue, with an introduction by Moira Donegan, underscores its continued relevance. Dworkin’s thesis is blunt and unrelenting: the adaptation of women to male supremacy is not a harmless coping mechanism but the maiming of all moral capacity. The women she examines—Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant, and their many ideological descendants—are not merely duped into reactionary politics; they are enthusiastic participants because their loyalty to patriarchy provides them with a modicum of safety, status, and stability. But they are also participating in their own humiliation, paraded as symbols of protection and care when in reality they are props for a hierarchy that does not care about them.

The names and methods have changed, but the iteration remains the same. Today’s right-wing women, like Peachy Keenan, an online trad wife and Catholic mother of five who preaches about the joys of submission, follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. In her 2023 book Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War, Keenan claims that feminism is a greater force for mass death than Mao, Stalin, or Hitler. The rhetoric is extreme, but the function of women like Keenan is the same as that of Schlafly before her: to prettify patriarchy, to frame subjugation as freedom, and to deflect feminist critiques by portraying them as unnatural or dangerous. Dworkin anticipated this kind of political role decades ago, arguing that right-wing women exist to reinforce the very structures that harm them. The spectacle of their existence—their supposed elevation to the role of cherished wives and mothers—is the performance that ensures their continued subjugation. They smile through their own diminishment, insisting that their happiness is real even as they labor under a system that sees them as expendable.

To understand why right-wing women remain loyal to their oppressors, we must recognize that their participation is, in many ways, deeply rational. The world they inhabit is structured by male dominance, and within this reality, their strategy is one of self-preservation. As Dworkin observed, a woman "acquiesces to male authority in order to gain some protection from male violence." The trad wife phenomenon—where women like Keenan present domestic servitude as both aspirational and fulfilling—illustrates this bargain. These women are not merely complicit in their own oppression; they are leveraging it for security. But the security they receive is conditional, dependent on their usefulness, and ultimately illusory. They are not cherished; they are tolerated. They are not revered; they are wielded as weapons against other women, particularly feminists, queer women, and trans women. They accept this arrangement because the alternative—standing alone, standing in defiance—is too costly, too terrifying.

The right-wing woman’s role is twofold: she is both the advertisement for patriarchy and its enforcer. She must embody the ideal—modest, chaste, submissive, devoted to family—while also policing other women who refuse to conform. It is no coincidence that the most virulent attacks on trans women, feminists, and queer people come from right-wing women who insist that traditional gender roles are sacrosanct. This aggression is not incidental; it is essential to their position. If patriarchy is to survive, dissenting women must be punished, lest their rebellion spread. The trad wife, then, is not merely a figure of nostalgia but an active participant in the policing of gender. She works not just to reinforce her own subjugation but to enforce the conditions that subjugate others.

Keenan, like Schlafly and Bryant before her, functions as a cultural enforcer, an emblem of a bygone femininity that never truly existed but is now desperately marketed as an alternative to modern alienation. Her role is to make traditionalism look glamorous, effortless, and rewarding. But the truth, as both feminist history and simple observation show, is that the labor of reactionary womanhood is immense and unacknowledged. The trad wife may say she is fulfilled, but she is also a content creator, a brand, a worker whose job is to insist that she does not work. Her presence on social media is evidence of the contradiction inherent in her position: she is both a laborer and a mouthpiece for the denial of female labor.

Dworkin’s insight that right-wing women must engage in an elaborate self-deception in order to survive within patriarchy is nowhere more visible than in the performative nature of the trad wife. The Instagram-perfect kitchens, the handmade sourdough, the smiling children, the biblical homilies—all of these serve as ideological props. The trad wife must demonstrate that her submission is voluntary, joyous, even revolutionary. This labor is invisible by design, meant to reinforce the illusion that her life is effortless and natural.

But the contradictions are evident. Many of these women, despite their rhetoric, are deeply embedded in the workforce—not as factory workers or corporate executives, but as influencers and authors who monetize their reactionary performances. Peachy Keenan’s Domestic Extremist is, after all, a book sold for profit, written for an audience of women who must pay to be told how to submit properly. The trad wife movement is less about returning to the past than about creating a lucrative market for nostalgia.

The true tragedy of right-wing women is that their submission does not, in the end, grant them real security. While they may be tolerated as long as they are useful, they are never truly equal partners in the conservative movement. Their influence is contingent on their willingness to play the role assigned to them. Even the most powerful right-wing women—figures like Schlafly—are ultimately disposable within their own movement. The moment they cease to be politically expedient, they are cast aside.

This is evident in the way right-wing politics discards women the moment they cease to be politically useful. Consider the treatment of women who accused conservative politicians of sexual assault. When Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was accused of sexual misconduct, right-wing women mobilized—not in defense of the survivor, but in protection of the man. The same pattern recurred with Donald Trump, Roy Moore, and countless others. The system these women defend will never defend them in return.

Even within the idyllic trad wife fantasy, the cracks are visible. Keenan, like many conservative women before her, insists that women will find happiness in submission. But as Betty Friedan wrote in The Feminine Mystique, the role of housewife often leads not to contentment but to a "slow death of mind and spirit." The idealized version of domestic life that Keenan and her counterparts promote conveniently omits the reality of economic dependence, social isolation, and the ever-present risk of domestic violence. And yet, rather than acknowledge these structural issues, the trad wife narrative blames feminism for women’s unhappiness—arguing that liberation, not oppression, is the true source of misery.

At the heart of Dworkin’s Right-Wing Women is a fundamental recognition: feminism and reactionary femininity are not simply ideological opposites, but competing responses to the same reality. Both recognize that women exist in a world of sex segregation and hierarchy. Both acknowledge that women are valued primarily for their reproductive labor. The difference is that feminism seeks to dismantle these structures, while right-wing women attempt to survive within them. Theirs is not a project of liberation but of accommodation. Theirs is not a path to power but to the illusion of protection. They are paraded, not honored. They are used, not loved. And yet they insist, against all evidence, that they are free.