Why ‘The Great Feminization’ is a great big conservative con
Sourdough bread that’s made from scratch. Milkmaid dresses. “Feminine energy.”
Those who are serially online may have already caught wind of the slow infestation of antiquated, anti-feminist tropes seeping into mainstream culture.
It seemingly started with a COVID-19 era of female influencers glorifying a stay-at-home lifestyle as they found solace in concocting new, fun ways to feed their husbands and armies of children.
Hannah Neeleman, known as Ballerinafarm online, gained popularity for her homemade sourdough bread and Instagrammable farmstead life with blond-haired little ones running around as her husband worked to provide. She now has 10.4 million followers on Instagram and 10.6 million on TikTok.
Thanks to Neeleman and other “trad wife” influencers like Nara Smith, a dreamlike gender-role stereotype steeped in Christian culture was soon neatly packaged in digestible, vertically shot videos featuring aesthetically pleasing decor and dream kitchens. With it came a growing call for women to shrink back from the workforce and live in motherly, service-based bliss while depending on a single income.
But these appealing dreams of a “soft life” come with darker undertones.
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This idyllic version of a past that, to many women’s disappointment, never truly existed, is just one part of a growing message that conservative culture is pushing.
According to a growing number of right-wing thinkers, the smaller a woman’s role in the workplace, the better for her—and for the country.
Disturbingly, major media outlets are spotlighting some aspects of this movement.
Helen Andrews, a conservative commentator and former editor at The American Conservative, penned a controversial piece titled “The Great Feminization.” To save you a rage-filled few minutes of reading, Andrews essentially argues that “wokeness” is an inherently feminine creation that has caused vast damage to American culture. Since women began taking on more prominent roles in the workforce, she writes, the U.S. has been in decline.
Because women are less confrontational and driven by emotion, Andrews argues, so-called cancel culture ran rampant. She claims a male-led culture is quicker to address issues head-on instead of casting people away, or “canceling” them, altogether.
Another drawback of mainstream feminism, she said, is that DEI initiatives became less of a stepping stone for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and more of a killer of meritocracy.
If this sounds familiar, it might be because President Donald Trump has echoed similar sentiments in his public war on DEI.
“This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life,” he said in January ahead of signing an executive order attacking DEI.
And Andrews, like Trump and Vice President JD Vance, has also expressed a desire for women to return to more traditional gender roles—for the sake of the country.
“I want more babies in the United States of America,” Vance said in his first address as VP.
But this concept of women retreating from the workplace as a means to, yes, “make America great again,” isn’t confined to the extremist wing of the Republican Party anymore.
On Nov. 6, The New York Times gave Andrews’ anti-feminist ideas the ultimate pedestal—a segment with Times columnist Ross Douthat to flesh out all of her thoughts.
At one point in the 60-minute conversation that I also watched so you wouldn’t have to, Andrews even argues that both the #MeToo movement and anti-discrimination lawsuits have hindered male-driven progress due to fear of prosecution.
“The #MeToo movement was a change in the rules of how sex scandals work,” she argued. “It suddenly became mandatory for us to believe all women, no matter how credible or not credible their testimony might be.”
Andrews also took a swipe at gender discrimination laws.
“The real problem with these laws is that most masculine behavior falls into the gray area of ‘not clearly illegal’ but could be cited by somebody if they filed a gender discrimination lawsuit,” she said. “So I think managers take that information, and they think: I can get in trouble for having a toxically masculine workplace, but I’m not really ever going to get in trouble for having a toxically feminine workplace. So if there is ever, in the balance, I’m always going to err on this side — that’s probably bad.”
For Andrews, an office with fewer pushup contests and more thoughtful insight somehow translates to the demise of the workplace.
“Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” was the headline The New York Times went with. Naturally, this set the internet ablaze. But even as pundits argued over the ridiculous premise, a change was taking place.
Anti-feminist rhetoric wasn’t just being debated in Facebook comments: It was being given a platform by one of the country’s largest left-leaning media outlets. And in turn, anti-feminist ideas inched closer to normalization.
Valerie M. Hudson, a distinguished professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, was one voice that emerged to quickly shut down Andrews’ take.
“Andrews’ essay is simply miming male dissatisfaction that women must now be dealt with as peers and not as supplicants in the halls of power,” she told Daily Kos in a written statement.
“One look at human history easily rebuts that view: in historical fact, it is men who are the original back-stabbers; men who are the original authors of nepotism; men who are the original Big Brothers of cancel culture. There is no practice condemned by these ‘great feminization’ pundits of which men are not the first masters.”
The Trump administration is fully onboard the anti-feminism train. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, stood in front of military generals in September as he yelled about kicking out fat generals and banning “dudes in dresses” to bring a manly man ethos back to the military. Hegseth’s approach boils down to ignoring female soldiers’ needs and instead emphasizing a “warrior ethos” that doesn’t see gender or skin color.
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Hegseth also reposted a Christian pastor’s screed about dwindling voting down to one vote per household. So much for the 19th Amendment.
Of course, these head-of-household dreams come with the assumption that these adoring families can actually survive on a single income. And historically, they haven’t.
Social programs including the ones that Republicans denounce at every opportunity were there along the way to help families stay afloat as daddy dearest did the breadwinning.
Now, as the gap between the wealthy and the middle class grows ever bigger, designating a single breadwinner seems less possible than ever.
Placing women back in the household full time isn’t just about child-rearing, as Andrews points out. It’s about reestablishing a male-dominated culture where female traits are pushed back into exclusively female circles while men do all of the “hard work.”
The upshot is that anti-feminism debates are becoming a mainstream topic of discussion—and support for this antiquated take seems to be growing among GOP lawmakers in thrall to the Trump administration.
But Hudson said there’s no going back.
“Men must brave their discomfort for the sake of a greater good: that there might be a future for humankind,” she wrote. “Those urging the re-exclusion of women are, in my view, demonstrating cowardice in the face of looming catastrophe.”
And to those “peddling the ‘great feminization’ narrative, she writes, “shame on you.”