Gender role orthodoxy is back, baby.
On Instagram, a tradwife influencer bakes lemon squares in a milkmaid dress beneath the caption, “Making dessert for my husband because somebody has to pay the bills and it’s not going to be me.” In a separate video, she makes a meatball sub from scratch while counseling that the cure for relationship conflict is to “put on a pretty dress and make him a homecooked meal joyfully.”
Meanwhile, on YouTube, an aspiring men’s relationship coach cautions that “spending a large amount of time with women” makes “a man’s heart grow weak”; men should instead spend their time out of the house, making money and “skill stacking.” Elsewhere, he offers shirtless thoughts on the virtue of male unavailability, counseling men to reject women’s requests for assistance and company.
Retrograde gender rhetoric also appeared in the 2024 presidential election, with J. D. Vance sneering at “childless cat ladies” and Donald Trump promising that women would “no longer be in danger” because he would be their “protector.” The peanut gallery was full of zingers, like Tucker Carlson calling Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, whose version of masculinity centered around involved fatherhood and community service, “obviously very gay,” and Trump advisor Jason Miller referring to Walz as a “wildly gesticulating effeminate caricature.”
All of this corresponds with a documented change in attitudes among the American electorate. The most disturbing trends are concentrated in Gen Z, which has the heaviest exposure to increasingly gender-segregated online content. But Americans of all ages are boarding the trad train — particularly Republicans.
Americans of all ages are boarding the…
Auteur: Meagan Day
