#tradfemme

[miss-rogers-all-american]

Homemaking tip:

Get dressed and ready everyday. When I treat homemaking as an actual job, with a loose schedule and uniform, it helps me to really focus on my tasks and to see the value in them. I personally no longer wear leggings, I prefer to only wear skirts and dresses, that has become my uniform and I feel more productive when wearing it.

[sheismadeofsunlight]

I’m so looking forward to being a housewife, however if I have to look at another listing for a house that is a white box with grey flooring I’m going to bury myself in the yard.

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

My thing with traditional feminism as a person raised Christian is this entire "Women are subservient to men" thing is very... abelist against neurodivergent people (this doesn't just include people with Autism and ADHD. But also people with FASD, personality disorders, dissociative disorders, and other mental illnesses or learning disabilities).

As an AFAB, before I knew I was nonbinary. I keep getting in trouble because I keep fucking up these goddamn "women must be subservient to men" rules. Because I talk to loudly. Or speak out of turn. Or talk to much. Or ask too many questions...

I eventually just started yelling "Fuck you" any time men tried to tell me to act more lady-like because I don't fucking know what I'm doing wrong but if my very existence of not understanding a single goddamn one of these fucked up unspoken rules, I might as well go with the flow and really dig my heels in, right?

I mean the men will be upset anyways because I earn more than them. So just by having a job I already threaten their fragile masculinity.

-fae

[keres-salos]

Kultura Polska folklor ❤️

[coffeeharvest]

The other thing about staying home is that I’ve been wearing dresses for like a month now. My workplace kinda looks down on people who wear dresses because it’s an industrial environment and everyone wears pants. There isn’t any written rule saying I can’t wear a skirt - it’s just unspoken.

So like, I’m having this “moral” dilemma as to whether or not I should wear skirts when I go back to work. I only go into the industrial areas like three times a year, so I could always keep a pair of jeans at my desk.

[domestic-housebunny]

imagine we all created and lived in a small, self-sustaining village of cottages and farm homes in the woods. the children run around with toys whittled from wood by their fathers as the women tended to the village garden and men cut the fire wood for their families to use that evening. there is a stream where we get fresh water from and we all wake to the beautiful sounds of birds chirping in the morning. everyone is kind and everything is calm.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: As an ex-military veteran and corporate high flyer I have to ask have you ever been ‘barefoot and in the kitchen’? Can you even sew or knit as any real tradfemme would?

I think you’ve answered your own question to some extent. Admittedly it seems like I am as far apart from “barefoot and in the kitchen” as one can be with my life experiences and background.

Your question reminds me of the time I was at a friend’s dinner party in Paris where I met a former personal chef to the fashion designer, Tom Ford. At the time, Mr. Ford used to be creative director of Yves Saint Laurent (and its parent company, Gucci) and had to spend time in Paris, away from New York.

Apparently he hated dining out and partying after a punishing day at work. He just wanted to come home to a home cooked meal but didn’t have the time to cook, and so he hired a chef on hand to do it for him. He was no nonsense and down to earth. But he also liked to take all his clothes off and just be naked - in private not in the company of others - because he found it refreshing to be au naturelle especially as his day job was expensively clothing people.

I can understand the poetry of that. Clothing is like an armour we all wear and it also serves as a signal to others of our social and professional identity. It can be exhausting trying to keep up appearances as we all do from time to time. Nothing exposes vulnerability more brutally than standing naked all by yourself in a room - or in front of a mirror - and seeing your true self, stripped of the conceit of the self-serving lies we tell ourselves to keep up the appearance that we lead fulfilling lives. How many of us are truly comfortable in our own skins I wonder?

The ‘not giving a shit’ Norwegian side of me - when she manages to suppress the annoyingly cautiously prudish English side - likes to get naked and feel the freedom of being au naturelle (often with music playing sonorously in the background). But it’s done when conveniently away from outside prying eyes.

I love to cook. I always have. If not poisoning to death any of one’s loved ones, friends, or guests is a criteria then yes, I consider myself a reasonably good chef.

However I am uncomfortable being labeled a ‘tradfemme’. Unquestionably I consider myself to be a modern woman but one that holds traditional beliefs by temperament and experience. My sense of the traditional feminine stems primarily from my old family traditions which is rooted in itself in from our High Tory heritage. As far as I am able to discern the term ‘tradfemme’ is of a decidedly modern coinage describing traditional beliefs of femininity rooted in traditional bourgeois (middle class) experience (and usually the American one).  

However I don’t want to dwell on these fine distinctions here. Perhaps for another time.

I love how you use the words ‘even’ and ‘real’ as if knowing how to sew and knit is the minimum admission of entry into some august tradfemme club. It’s as if capable women can’t be the best version of themselves.

I wonder how many women today - studying, working or otherwise - actually don’t know how to knit and sew - but still try very hard to keep their traditional values? Quite a lot I would imagine.

Your question reminds me of a time I was sent to stay with my grandmother in her country pile. She was a remarkable woman in many respects. Discretion doesn’t allow me to share some of the more scandalous japes she got into. But when I was a teen - going through a difficult adolescence phase - I was sent to stay with her as a ‘punishment’ from my parents during one school holiday from being kicked out of one of my boarding schools. 


She was well advanced in her age but she was as sharp as a tack. I thought I was going to hate it to be left with a haughty invalid to kick my heels. I thought she might be upset that I had tarnished our family name by getting myself thrown out of my girls boarding school. I thought I was in for a frosty reception. But if anything she warmed to me immediately after my parents and my siblings had left. She was mischievously kind to me and spoiled me rotten. 


One afternoon I had joined her for afternoon tea. She was cosily sitting by the huge fire place. She was knitting with needles some woollen winter scarf. We made pleasant conversation as we had tea and hot scones. 


I asked her if she liked to sew and knit because she did an awful lot of it. She replied that she didn’t really like doing it but it helped her in other ways. It was something she was forced to learn from her grandmother. I was surprised by her response. She asked me if I had learned to sew and knit. I snorted that I hadn’t with a dismissive tone as if I was suggesting it was just the preserve of sexually frigid goody two shoe girls who go to Chapel and timid little old women being their time for St Peter to open the Pearly Gates. She was sharp enough to catch the impertinence implied in my tone. 


“But all girls should be taught how to sew and knit. There is a reason why it’s a tradition that we must maintain.” 


Why bother holding onto a tradition that isn’t useful today I replied. 


“Oh but it is, my dear, it teaches all women about life. It teaches the women in our family the one lesson they ever need to learn.”

What’s that I asked, not quite believing her. 


“It teaches us how to bleed”. She said with such graceful stoicism of a sage, “So much of life is about not minding the pain.”


She explained further we don’t always love what we do in life such as the job we have or the match chosen for marriage turns sour. And even when you have the passion for something, it doesn’t make the boring parts of your job easier or it’s ever enough to sustain a life long marriage. Knitting she was saying just makes you less likely to quit.


She could see I still wasn’t quite convinced. 


“Every girl should learn how to knit and sew if she is to acquire the skills of a good wife.”


I rolled my eyes. Here we go. 


But she shushed me and leaned forward conspiratorially. 


“One day you will be married. A woman with needlework in her hands is generally assumed to have no other thoughts in her head. And therefore, my dear, you are at liberty to safely harbour any number of improprieties.”


She let that hang in the air for a silent moment before she winked and smilingly sipped the last drop of her cup of tea. 


I understood there and then I had one of the most battiest and coolest grandmothers ever. As it happens the knitted scarf was for me as I was to be packed off to a Swiss boarding school shortly thereafter. I treasured that scarf even to this day. 


And yes, I learned how to sew and knit.

From time to time, I knit or sew when I need to think with a blank mind with no distractions (no books or music which don’t empty my mind but cram it with knowledge and imagination). I get bored easily, of people and things in general. Knitting - when I find the time - has been the perfect safety valve to occupy my mind from the mundane. Knitting or sewing allow me to organise the kinetic clutter in my mind.  

So it occurs to me that you and I might be in agreement after all. It seems that to be a bona fide tradfemme one doesn’t need brains, just a vacant mind. 


Thanks for your question.

[southernaesthetic]

To the trad and pro life community

If you get messaged by a user under the name of “hannahgeist” and they seem like they are try to learn about what pro life peope think, they aren’t. They are just there to argue then get really rude.

So, do with this info as you may.