I think people hear the term “tradfem” and immediately imagine a strawman, (a woman in a prairie dress who has never had an independent thought). That is not what attracts me to those spaces, what attracts me is that they often take femininity seriously.
Modern feminist spaces often seem preoccupied with proving that women are not different from men, whereas tradfem spaces often begin with the assumption that women are different from men, not in value, but in nature, tendencies, strengths, and priorities.
This does not mean every woman is the same. It means difference is not treated as an insult, which is a very different thing. I think modern culture frequently confuses equality with sameness. They are not the same concept. Two things can possess equal value without possessing identical functions.
The Hermetic principle of polarity is interesting here. Masculine and feminine are not enemies. They are complements, opposite poles of the same force. Each defines the other, and each becomes more meaningful through the existence of the other.
What I often find strange is that many self-described progressive spaces spend enormous amounts of time discussing patriarchy, men, male behavior, male power, and male expectations. Tradfem spaces, by contrast, spend more time discussing women, femininity, motherhood, beauty, domesticity, relationships, and community. Though, they are not always right. I disagree with many things said within those circles, but they are at least interested in the subject itself.
I suspect this is why many women find themselves gravitating toward those communities even while disagreeing with most of what they encounter there. There is a hunger for a positive feminine identity, not merely critique, resistance, opposition, or deconstruction, but identity. Something to move toward rather than simply away from.
The word “trad” is interesting as well. People hear it and assume it simply means old. I think it more accurately means inherited. A tradition is something that survived long enough to be handed down. That does not automatically make it true, wise, or moral. Nor does it automatically make it false, it simply means it endured.
The more interesting question is not whether something is traditional, but why it survived. Some traditions persist because they contain wisdom, and some persist because of inertia. Most are a mixture of both.
The modern world often treats everything old as suspicious and everything new as enlightened. History provides little evidence for that assumption. Some of humanity’s oldest ideas have survived because they describe recurring aspects of human nature. The Hermeticists were not obsessed with novelty. They were obsessed with patterns. They asked what repeats, what persists, what reappears across centuries beneath changing names and changing costumes. That question interests me far more than whether something is current. I am less interested in what is trending than I am in what refuses to die.
2087
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