In today's NY Times, another one of those stories. This one concerns Lauren Southern, who became a minor right-wing celebrity at 19 by posting anti-immigrant, anti-feminist rants, tried to become a tradwife, hated it, fled from her creepy husband, fell into depression, and then wrote a memoir about it.
I have been around long enough to have seen this story dozens of times, and most of them give me the same thought: that in our world ideology and psychological issues form an explosive mixture that regularly blows up and destroys people.
I think most celebrities are crazy. I have an intense suspicion of ideology. I also think that life is just hard, and that only the very lucky slide easily into happy marriages and happy lives.
I think many people throw themselves into ideology as a way to cope with inner turmoil. As it happens, some of the most salient ideological disputes in our age concern family life and the roles of husbands and wives. The partial shift from a patriarchal model in which women work around the home to more equal relationships and more women working outside the home has been wrenching and confusing, and many conservatives hate it and think it is at the root of our current problems. So, some women attracted to retro ideologies try to reverse the trend and disappear back into what they imagine is a better past.
But ideology is, fundamentally, fantasy, and never more so than when it gets involved in family life. Very few women like Lauren Southern – raised feminists, and with their own careers at 19 – are ever going to be happy as tradwives, and I am intensely suspicious of any man who would try to turn such a woman into a tradwife. Of course there was an explosion with harm all around.
I hate what extreme ideologies do to people's minds.
2 comments:
You're somewhat conveniently ignoring the all-too-believable sexual assault by Andrew Tate and the abuse by her husband. I don't think the problem is with "ideology" as such. Contemporary right-wing ideology is inherently abusive. For many adherents, and certainly Andrew Tate, aggressive dominance of others is a feature and the principle draw, not a bug. As you yourself said of the Trump admin, it's about bullying.
It's not even just the Trump administration. It's the foundation of traditional Patriarchy stretching back millennia. And as you suggest, it's entirely by design, and always has been.
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