Time to Talk Feminism and Tradwives…
Once upon a time, feminism wanted something noble. It wanted women to vote and to own property and to be legally treated like their male counterparts and not a child with a uterus. Surprise, surprise, the Catholic Church, long before Susan B. Anthony ever sewed her first sash, was already teaching that woman was made in the image and likeness of God.
Mary Wollstonecraft — bless her logical British soul — argued in 1792 for “the rights of woman” not by erasing the difference between men and women, but by appealing to reason and virtue. She wanted women educated, responsible, morally serious human beings — not perpetual coquettes or docile houseplants in corsets.[1] Next, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in the 1840s, insisted that a woman should own the property she earned and not be clubbed over the head by legal codes written for livestock. And she was right. Women should have legal status, voting rights, and protection from abuse.[2]
That was first-wave feminism. It was, for the most part, a righteous and long-overdue correction.
Then came the second wave. And that tsunami showed up clad in a macrame vest with moral outrage puffing Virginia Slims to offer incense to the goddess of grievance and cursing Tupperware parties as ‘domestic Stockholm syndrome.” Worship was offered to the likes of Betty Friedan who famously dubbed the suburban mother “a mindless and passive baby-making machine,” stuck in a “comfortable concentration camp.”[3] Yes, nothing says “fascism” like a backyard, three kids, and a casserole. These braless brigades lined up to follow Pied Pipers like Simone de Beauvoir who insisted that no woman should be allowed to stay home and raise children — even if she wanted to — because “she will not spontaneously choose to submit herself to the bonds of marriage.”[4]
Translation: Feminist “freedom” is forcing women to work even if they don't want to. Dammit women! You WILL be liberated... by gunpoint if necessary.
These are the women our universities lionize. These are the prophets of second-wave liberation: women who achieved “freedom” by turning their backs on femininity, and convinced two generations that joy was located alone in a childless cubicle working in middle management.
On this foundation came third-wave feminism, shaking it for Planned Parenthood and selling empowerment for $9.99/month on OnlyFans accompanied by a Shih Tzu in a stroller named Captain Nibblesworth who’s Instagram has 50,000 followers. You are now free to be objectified... on your own terms.
And now, in the final season of this Netflix horror show, fourth-wave feminism has arrived, where men in wigs seize womanhood by crying during tampon commercials and kicking in the doors of woman’s spaces to the cheers and yips of the feminist establishment and Captain Nibblesworth.
Then, there’s the other side of this cultural circus: #Tradwife influencers — women who pretend to be the antidote to all this chaos by filming themselves baking and whispering “I submit to my husband” in a soft voice... while cashing ad revenue from TikTok and offering coupon codes for vintage aprons. If you think these women would actually close their influencer accounts if their husbands told them to, I have beachfront property on the moon to sell you.
And, that’s our landscape: feminism made womanhood a commodity for lust; tradwives made it a commodity for likes. One strips for revolution; the other dresses up for brand deals and yet both betray the dignity of authentic femininity. Completely unfazed for 2,000 years and shaking its head, is the Catholic Church — the only institution left that knows what a woman is, what matrimony is, and what “submission” actually means.
The False Gospels of Feminism
Let’s be fair: first-wave feminists like Wollstonecraft and Stanton weren’t trying to destroy the home — they were trying to secure the home by recognizing that women were not the property of their husbands. The Church could and did absolutely nod in agreement. Pope Leo XIII declared in Rerum Novarum that a woman should not be a “mere instrument” in the family, but a person of equal dignity and value.[5] Somewhere around 1972 feminism went off the rails and landed in a drum circle where Maureen refused to shave until capitalism collapsed. Betty Friedan said women had become “walking corpses” trapped in the home.[3] (Absolutely! Nothing screams “brain death” like reading to your kids on a couch instead of editing spreadsheets in the HR department.) Not to be outdone, Gloria Steinem quipped, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”[6] Adorable until you realize that a culture without marriage is like a fish without water. Spoiler: it flops around and dies. And, as noted, the aforementioned de Beauvoir insisted women must be “forced” to work because homemaking would “tempt” them to abandon self-actualization.[4]
Imagine hating the idea of motherhood so much that you’d outlaw baking cookies in your own home for fear of accidentally being... content. How did society benefit from all this so-called “liberation”? We solidified higher divorce rates, fatherless homes, collapsing birth rates, skyrocketing depression, and a generation of women who display three advanced degrees and four cats but can’t name a single virtue.
Pope Pius XI saw it coming a mile away. In Casti Connubii, he warned that the feminist revolution would tear down God’s order of marriage, erase obedience, distort complementarity, and leave women in a new kind of slavery — one with a cubicle and a LinkedIn profile instead of chains.[7]
Paul VI, in Humanae Vitae, warned that contraception would teach men to reduce women to objects — and he was right. We built a sexual culture that promised freedom and delivered a buffet of abandonment.[8]
John Paul II, in Letter to Women, noted that when a culture begins to treat people like products, women are always the first to be dehumanized.[9] And now women are so dehumanized that they can be replaced by men with a razor and an estrogen shot.
The Catholic Blueprint: Complementarity, Not Counterfeit Equality
Here’s a sentence that causes gender theorists to burst into flames: Men and women are not equal.
Not in function. Not in strength. Not in purpose. They are equal in dignity — yes — but they are gloriously complementary. One leads, one nurtures. One initiates, one receives. One head and one heart. Sword and sanctuary.
St. Thomas Aquinas, whose intellect could vaporize the entire Harvard faculty, wrote that the husband is the head of the wife — not because he is better, but because order demands leadership, and the wife is his partner in human nature.[10]
And St. Paul? The guy who sends feminists into epileptic fits? He said:
“Wives, be subject to your husbands.”
Cue the pearl clutching. But then he adds:
“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her.”[11]
So yes, wives follow. But husbands? They die. If you think that’s toxic masculinity, you’ve never seen Christ nailed to a cross.
Which brings us to the Latin lesson of the day: “submission” — from sub missio.
Sub = under
Missio = mission
So to submit means to place oneself under a mission. A divinely appointed mission. The husband leads the family to God. The wife, fully equal in worth, freely participates in that God-given goal. It’s not domination — it’s orchestration. It’s not 1950s cosplay — it’s a sacrament.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent taught this clearly: wives are to love, honor, and obey their husbands in all things lawful — not because they're second-class citizens, but because marriage is a divinely ordered unity with a head and a heart.[12]
The Tradwife Theater: Now Starring You, Your Kids, and the Algorithm
And just when you thought it couldn’t get dumber than second-wave feminism, along comes the other counterfeit: the Instagram Tradwife.
At first, it seems wholesome. Modesty. Marriage. Bread-baking. Praise God. Then you look closer and realize it’s a monetized LARP session. Tradwife cosplay. Aprons. Hashtags. Faux-femininity with a Venmo link.
If your submission is so deep and holy, why are you livestreaming it to 47,000 strangers while collecting Patreon tips from lonely men named Chad?
These are not Proverbs 31 women. They’re Proverbs $3.10-per-click. They’re not building a domestic church — they’re running a domestic brand.
And here’s the kicker: a real tradwife — a truly traditional Catholic wife — would never discuss the sacred details of her marriage online. You think Our Lady of Guadalupe had a YouTube channel titled “10 Ways to Obey Joseph Without Losing Your Identity”? Please.
A woman who actually loves her husband and children wouldn’t trade their privacy for affiliate marketing. She wouldn’t package her toddler’s nap time as content. She wouldn’t treat her family like clickbait.
Pope Pius X nailed it: marriage is a partnership, a sacred union, oriented toward the creation of immortal souls — not followers, not sponsors, not “likes.”[13]
Sacramental Marriage: The Real Deal
Here’s what no secular ideology — and certainly no TikTok trend — can offer: the Sacrament of Matrimony.
A real Catholic marriage isn’t aesthetic. It’s not a lifestyle brand. It’s a living icon of Christ and the Church. When a Catholic man and woman marry, God binds them in a covenant, floods them with grace, and gives them a mission: love each other to heaven and raise saints.
As John Paul II taught in Familiaris Consortio, marriage is “permanently elevated” by Christ to be a sign of His own love — faithful, fruitful, and forever.[14]
Christ said it Himself:
“What God has joined, let no man put asunder.”
That includes no-fault divorce attorneys, OnlyFans subscriptions, and tradwife TikTok managers.[15]
And children? Not accessories. Not burdens. Not props. Vatican II calls them “the supreme gift of marriage.”[16] You don’t outsource them to daycare. You don’t exploit them for algorithms. You raise them in the Faith, because they’re future saints — not future content.
Queens, Not Commodities
The Catholic woman is not a slave. She is not a product. She is not a marketing scheme in a linen skirt.
She is a queen under mission — sub missio — freely and intelligently cooperating with a man who vows to die for her, a Church that dignifies her, and a God who created her to crush serpents and raise saints.
Feminism tried to liberate women by making them men. Tradwives tried to dignify women by making them dolls.
The Church? She never bought the lie that women needed to be anyone other than who God made them to be: courageous, virtuous, life-giving icons of the Bride of Christ.
And to the confused men in dresses — no, you’re not women. You’re not queens. You’re not oppressed. You’re just cosplaying mediocrity while stealing trophies from 15-year-old girls and crying about “inclusion.”
Enough.
Enough with the feminism. Enough with the tradwife theater. Enough with pretending that objectification with a side of Instagram filters is traditional Catholicism.
The Church never stopped honoring women. She just refused to sell them.
Endnotes
[1] Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792.
[2] Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls Convention, 1848.
[3] Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963.
[4] de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949.
[5] Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII, §19.
[6] Gloria Steinem, Ms. Magazine, 1970.
[7] Casti Connubii, Pius XI, §27–29.
[8] Humanae Vitae, Paul VI, §17.
[9] Letter to Women, John Paul II, §3.
[10] Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supp. Q.45, Art.3.
[11] Ephesians 5:21–25.
[12] Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part II, On Matrimony.
[13] Catechism of Pius X, On Matrimony.
[14] Familiaris Consortio, §56.
[15] Matthew 19:6.
[16] Gaudium et Spes, §50.