Turns Out That Guys Who Want Tradwives Aren’t Fans of Women

Good ol’ mid-century misogyny is alive and well in the worst echelons of the manosphere, where a study has just confirmed what most women learn in a single first date: the #TradWife movement appeals not just to the most ick-inducing men, but the ones who just straight-up hate women. Shock! 

According to a new report in Psychology of Women Quarterly, hostile sexism—which is exactly what it sounds like: the kind of derisive-fueled animus aimed at women who don’t conform to gender roles—is the most common trait among men who are into the tradwife movement. According to the findings, any guy who openly resents women also tends to view the tradwife lifestyle in a positive light. Coincidence? Probably fucking not.

“These findings indicate that men who perceive the #tradwife movement favorably believe that they rely on women for intimacy and simultaneously resent that this is the case,” Rachael Robnett, one of the report’s authors, told PsyPost. “This mentality could put tradwives in a precarious position considering the amount of control–both financial and otherwise–that they yield to their husbands.”

The tradwife movement—peddled by the manosphere’s Gen-Z boys and Phyllis Schafly reincarnates alike—refers to the ongoing glorification of a fantasy-like 1950s womanhood where a wife’s (or mother’s) sole purpose was to provide for her husband and family, bake bread, clean the house, and, er, not vote. The term was coined by teenage incels on 4chan in the 2010s and originated as a wet-dream fantasy about fictional wives who only lived to serve their husbands. In the past few years, however, it was launched into the mainstream by social-media tradwife influencers like Ballerina Farm, Alexia Delarosa, and Nara Smith.

The study focused on survey answers of 595 young men in the U.S., ranging from ages 18 to 29. The research pool was mostly Gen Z, a giant chunk of whom we already know dream of being toxic husbands. According to that study from March, a third of Gen Z men believe a wife should obey her husband; 59% believe men are doing too much to support equality; and a quarter think women shouldn’t be too independent. We can probably also assume somewhere in the mix is the same little bitch who cried “discrimination” when he wasn’t invited to a Coca-Cola women’s conference in 2024. 

Speaking to PsyPost, the study’s authors admitted that the findings surprised them: rather than hostile sexism, they assumed benevolent sexism—which isn’t really benevolent at all, but rather driven by protective paternalism—was more likely to be a driving predictor for the men who were pro-tradwife. Alas, they were proven otherwise.

The authors also explained that while the tradwife movement has been around for some time, male attitudes have not yet been fully studied, though it should come as no surprise that the answers were always destined to be disappointing. I guess all that’s left is for us to pray to the ghost of Giulia Tofana…

---