00:00:22.840So the fundamentalism that we encounter on Instagram today through the Tradwife movement
00:00:27.120isn't really that different than what we called ourselves 20 years ago, the traditional wives,0.50
00:00:32.720you know, like we saw in the Duggars. Like the aesthetic back then is more of a back to the land
00:00:37.120prairie, 20 kids in long dresses. Today, the aesthetic looks like homesteading. If we had
00:00:42.720had Instagram back then, it would look identical. And trad is short for traditional. So I mean,
00:00:48.940the same thing. But it's an answer to the chaos. And so after 9-11, especially when the world felt
00:00:54.900very chaotic and scary. My trajectory of the past 30 to 40 years matches what happened in the wider
00:01:01.440evangelical movement, which was mainstream Christianity becoming more political and
00:01:06.460nationalist and fundamentalist over that span of time. So they lead with beautiful ideals and a
00:01:12.980pretty aesthetic that feels comforting. It seems soothing. It seems like simpler times. And they
00:01:18.640promise a better life if you follow their formula. So that's very tempting.
00:01:24.900This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.
00:01:31.920And I'm Tia Levings, author of A Well-Trained Wife,
00:01:34.500and I educate on the abuses in Christian fundamentalism.
00:01:37.820So I'm so excited for this episode today.
00:01:40.280You are so good at talking to people who have some background in evangelical fundamentalism,
00:01:48.960like who knows some of the terminology, who might have been part of it.
00:01:51.660but then you're also really good at introducing some of these concepts to people who did not grow
00:01:58.340up in this world or even adjacent to this world. So I just, I'm really excited. So the other thing
00:02:04.860that I see amongst women in particular is an incredible fatigue with trying to like juggle
00:02:12.580everything in contemporary life. And it's not that they don't want like the advances of feminism,
00:02:17.740I'm like, they still want to have checkbooks, right? They still want to have, like, fundamental human rights. But they're so tired. And so much of it has to do with what our current society expects of women in terms of creating what we understand is like a happy family, a happy marriage, a happy world. Like, there's just so much to do in order to do that. And so there's something that says like, oh, if I just quit my job.0.97
00:02:46.680and lived in this house. And even if I had eight kids, it would still be more relaxing than what
00:02:52.860I'm trying to do now. And I don't think that's necessarily true, but it does seem like a nice
00:02:56.920fantasy. So that feeling, that fantasy feeling right there is what I want you to kind of lock
00:03:01.860onto in your belly, especially if you're listening to this and you're feeling exhausted and it just
00:03:06.440seems easier like it would come home. You are playing into the gentle velvet prison of the
00:03:11.660soft voice that's coaxing you gently into your cage. They made the world so exhausting. They do
00:03:18.120that on purpose so that in your fatigue, you will just back off, get back in your box, back,
00:03:23.820back, back, back, you know? And it's a lot easier than fighting an army of women if you can just1.00
00:03:29.400wear them out and so they get tired and they go home. Now, the big lie is that it's not going to1.00
00:03:34.420be less exhausting at home without any rights or freedoms or agency to get out, especially if
00:03:38.740you're trapped with an abuser but that's not what they lead with they lead with isn't it lovely to
00:03:44.600go back home wasn't life simpler when you were back home yeah and yeah we want a nap so we're
00:03:49.580like sure yeah no i think that that's something that i try to keep in mind when i'm like child
00:03:55.760care is so exhausting finding child care right well that's that's on purpose right like republican
00:04:01.260legislators vote to make child care difficult like there are solutions that we could have
00:04:07.640We have examples from other countries. There are so many different systemic ways we could make life easier for women, and we don't because the people in power want a different world.1.00
00:04:17.780Yeah, that's very important to remember.
00:04:19.980So today we're talking about, in part, what it's really like to be a trad wife, not just the image that is available on social media and why it's important that we understand the dynamics actually at work here.
00:04:32.420So I think for people who aren't familiar, can we start by defining what a trad wife is?
00:04:47.340So again, trad wife is just a quick vernacular, a little hashtag short for traditional life,
00:04:52.880traditional wife, traditional lifestyle.
00:04:54.960It's whatever comes back to the way things used to be.0.96
00:04:58.300And you can go back as far as 1950s, or you can go back to the 1800s, you can go back to the Puritans. It depends on how far the traditional role that you're looking at. But it's based on this complementarianism model, which teaches men and women are different by design, and they have assigned roles according to their genitalia. So men are only good at one thing, and women are only good at another thing. And so the woman's place in that system is at home raising children, bearing children, and that is all.
00:05:26.920And her entire time and energies and ambitions and output will be in support of that joint mission to raise the family.
00:05:36.400Doesn't really allow for any exceptions or anomalies or individual strengths, progress, growth, research, evidence, all of that's out the door.
00:05:44.740This is they did it when the founding fathers did it.
00:05:47.900So therefore, it must be the best thing for all of us.
00:05:50.280And we must go back to that if we want to have what the ideals were that the original Americans had.
00:05:56.200Can you also describe what fundamentalism is? Because I think sometimes people align it with
00:06:01.980evangelicalism, evangelical culture. And I think that it's important to make this distinction.
00:06:10.180Yeah. So let's talk about the word fundamentalism for a moment. Fundamentalism at its core is a
00:06:15.840system of belief where you have a formula that's going to result in a certain outcome. You have a
00:06:22.340promise. And so you have the fundamentals of the faith or ideology. Fundamentalism can be in
00:06:27.980anything. You can be fundamentalist about your soul cycle. You can be fundamentalist about your
00:06:32.140nutrition. Anything can have that rigidity in this step, step, step, step equals process.
00:06:37.820Christian fundamentalism is just fundamentalism that's applied to Christianity. And then to just
00:06:42.720confuse things even more, within the Protestant denominations, there's a fundamentalist
00:06:47.600denomination. And so sometimes Christians will say, well, we're not fundamentalist Christians.
00:06:52.560And what they're actually saying is we are not of that denomination. It doesn't mean that their
00:06:57.360denomination isn't fundamentalist in nature. It means that there's a word, a semantic that they're
00:07:02.540drawing a distinction between. Fundamentalism infiltrated the mainstream evangelical movement
00:07:10.000through organizations that taught a biblical formula for holy living, and it applied to all
00:07:18.300denominations. So while the Baptists became more rigid and formulaic in their approach,
00:07:22.920the Presbyterians did as well. And it dovetailed with this movement towards reform theology. So
00:07:28.420again, it drills back down to there are rules, and you will follow them, and this should be
00:07:33.760your outcome. This is, you know, it's this big, wider agenda, bigger movement. Yeah. So can you
00:07:41.040situate for us, where were you in the early 2000s? Like, what was your, what was your situation?
00:07:47.680Yeah, I grew up in a Southern Baptist megachurch in Jacksonville, Florida, we were the largest
00:07:51.800megachurch in the southeast. That was we moved there when in 1984, when I was 10. And I grew up
00:07:57.700a mainstream evangelical Christian, who knew that my job was to become a Christian wife and mother
00:08:04.660My church was becoming more fundamentalist through Bill Gothard's Institute of Basic
00:08:56.820What was the truth that you're talking about there?
00:08:59.380Oh, my goodness. So at that time in the scene, in the book, my parents lived two blocks away. And the truth was, my husband was spanking me. The truth was that we lived in high control and abuse. We lived in some of the most rigid fundamentalist expressions that this movement has. They are not niche or weird or fringe or unusual. It's just that survivors are too ashamed to talk about it or they're too wrecked. If they manage to get out, they're too wrecked to talk about it.
00:09:28.140I'm the reflection of 10 years of trauma therapy and a deep conviction that I need to tell you the
00:09:35.000truth of what it's like to live that way because it's coming for our country. Like, I am horrified
00:09:40.300that the life I ran away from and barely escaped with my life is part of our headlines. And I know
00:09:45.060I have the capability to tell that story. That's not true for most people. When they're dealing
00:09:49.120with the truth of what that fundamentalism does and how it grinds you down, those women usually1.00
00:09:54.580die or they or they're depressed or they're they're dysfunctioning they're breeding the
00:09:59.660new generation of fundamentalists and they fade into the background without names um that's much
00:10:05.640more common of a result in one of your newsletters you wrote about how one of the primary tasks of0.82
00:10:14.760the wife in these families is to serve as pr yeah to really do an incredible job of selling this1.00
00:10:23.660lifestyle. Was that a role that fit for you? Yeah. So I think that I'm a great example of1.00
00:10:30.360an ambitious, creative, talented woman who's put into a box and she's allowed one justifiable
00:10:36.160expression. And it's really convenient when you want for yourself what the patriarchy wants for
00:10:41.500you. That's the sweetest spot. When your gifts and abilities match what they need, you have a
00:10:48.060little golden time. And so, yeah, I was great at marketing. I was an early adopter of the internet
00:10:53.180and the tools that it provided. I really believed that our lifestyle was the best way and the right
00:10:59.120way and that we should show a beautiful example of a beautiful family. But I also really wanted
00:11:03.780those things. I wanted my children to have a happy household and I wanted to emphasize the good and
00:11:08.140be positive and not air our dirty laundry by telling our secrets, but showing how gorgeous
00:11:13.920my canning jars are. I had beautiful canning jars and beautiful home births and beautiful cloth
00:11:19.820diapers all lined up on the clothesline it's just one of my favorite tactile sensory things and
00:11:25.000so I was a very good proponent of the aesthetic that's why I know that if I'd had Instagram
00:11:30.840in my hands I'd have been all over it because I've got those chops you know and so a lot of0.96
00:11:37.500a lot of those trad wives I'm like you go girl like you are showing that you have more to yourself0.94
00:11:43.180than the little box they want to put you in well and this is like something that I think a lot of
00:11:48.800people who don't understand the inner workings of how like of what it's like to be in one of1.00
00:11:53.720these marriages or just like how proselytizing works they're like wait a second these wives1.00
00:11:59.980are supposed to be so submissive why are their husbands letting them have an instagram account1.00
00:12:04.400and it's because they're selling the lifestyle like you said it's that little pocket of you are
00:12:10.340allowed to do something here that like that uses some of your creative skills that you get like
00:12:17.020positive feedback and you are spreading God's word right like that right as long as you are
00:12:23.140also careful and I've seen this inner fighting amongst influencers about like not being too
00:12:30.200ambitious or like keeping humble or like modesty and all those different things but that's it's
00:12:36.500absolutely okay they're like yeah do more this is great it's called lifestyle evangelism and so0.65
00:12:42.580it's very it's very intentional the dugger girls all have insta accounts like there's they are
00:12:48.820they're going where the people are to show a better way to live and they're hoping that you
00:12:52.640buy it you know evangelism is all about sales and and rabid and contagious enthusiasm um yeah and
00:12:59.560so they show the best of the best and and i really think that there's a part of them that truly
00:13:04.380believes what they're producing because i did i believed and it was the truth the things that i
00:13:08.680was showing actually did happen. I just didn't show the whole truth. I wallpapered over those
00:13:13.560dents. I didn't tell the truth of what was happening because I knew the audience wouldn't
00:13:18.660like that. They wouldn't fall for that. Like if I said, my husband corrects me the same way he
00:13:23.180corrects our children, that would have been a turnoff. People would have probably, someone
00:13:27.660would have called the police, I like to think. But maybe not. People do talk, they do tell their
00:13:35.200abuse stories online. And there is that distance of, well, we aren't going to get involved.
00:13:40.060But they live in lives that are carefully crafted away from any mandatory reporters. And so it
00:13:44.660really takes a savvy eye to say, I can see beneath your surface. I know that's too good to be true.
00:13:50.260So we're going to hear a lot more of your story as we answer questions from listeners.
00:13:54.100Let's start with a question from Jacqueline that will help us outline what we are and aren't
00:13:58.580talking about here. I'd love to hear your thoughts about why the simple trad wife1.00
00:14:02.900tasks of intentionally preparing food in specific ways, practicing low-waste ways of living like
00:14:09.900mending, and living in a more unplugged way seems to still be made fun of by most other people who
00:14:16.720do not live the traditional script. Don't we all want a chance to slow down and not continue to
00:14:23.200grind through capitalistic American culture? I think it is a shame that the traditional ways
00:14:28.940of life are seen as incorrect ways to live in the modern world. Sometimes those traditional
00:14:35.120roles still work for families, all while maintaining equity between partners.
00:14:40.200Okay, so obviously if you mend your clothes or garden or make your own butter, you are not0.75
00:14:46.320necessarily a trad wife, but trad wives often do a lot of those things. We had another listener
00:14:52.400write in to say that the more gardening content that they watched on YouTube, the more trad wife
00:14:56.880content they got served by the algorithm like we recently published a newsletter on culture study
00:15:01.240about like the moody kitchen aesthetic which is like a certain type of kitchen that then leads
00:15:05.820you slowly into trad wife content the algorithm does radical magic there but i yeah i don't know
00:15:14.360how do you think about this idea yeah i two words i really latch on there is incorrect like it's
00:15:20.760incorrect to live this way in your modern it's a criticism i frequently hear um and that don't we
00:15:26.560all want to slow down. And the overlap of these good things is true. Like that's why the algorithm
00:15:33.080leads you down because a couple things are true. If you're a trad wife, then you're going to be a0.89
00:15:37.140gardener. It doesn't necessarily mean the reverse is true. If you're a gardener, you're not0.80
00:15:40.800necessarily a trad wife. And there's nothing incorrect with any of these things. That is so
00:15:45.080important to emphasize. All of these things are things by themselves and their choices. And if
00:15:49.160you want to be frugal, you want to mend your clothes, you want to mend your socks, you want to
00:15:53.360use cloth diapers you want to make your own ingredients i used to make my own ketchup you
00:15:57.820know like i used to do everything according to the trad life the difference is that it's a mask
00:16:03.400in trad life it's masking an agenda it's it's done to an end versus i'm doing this because
00:16:09.620i enjoy it or i'm doing this because i think it's healthier for my family or my husband and i have
00:16:14.620equally the end of that question was about equal partnerships my husband and i have equally divvied
00:16:19.100up the responsibilities and these are what i'm going to do and these are what he's going to do
00:16:22.360that is not the same thing that we're talking about in the trad wife movement, where you are1.00
00:16:26.080being forced into a role because you have a vagina. Just not the same thing, you know, and to this end1.00
00:16:31.580of women should not be in the workplace, and we should have as many children as possible.1.00
00:16:35.840Their underlying theology in the trad movement is dominionism. They want the Christian worldview0.99
00:16:42.740to take over the country, and then eventually the globe. And so they have to have a few things to do0.97
00:16:47.560that they have to have a military at their disposal, they have to have a population that
00:16:51.040will cooperate. And like I said earlier, the confrontational method isn't going to necessarily
00:16:56.960put us there. But the attractiveness of this simpler life will do it for a lot of people
00:17:03.360because we do want those things. And we just have to learn how to separate them from the wider
00:17:08.000agenda so that you can mend your socks and can your food without it becoming part of Gilead.
00:17:13.760Are there a couple words that are like flags for you if you're watching content that's kind of
00:17:19.380pretending or like at least has us on the surface level is not necessarily trad wife content but
00:17:25.560that indicates to you that the person behind the account is probably part of this larger movement
00:17:34.020and is trying to in some ways you know mask who they are in order to like this sounds like it's
00:17:40.100more diabolical than it maybe is I mean it actually is kind of diabolical but it's pretty
00:17:45.200dialogue but like i think sometimes people think like it's so simple like why no one's like trying
00:17:53.480to trick you and i'm like actually i think that sometimes they are trying to trick you with
00:17:58.020content that isn't explicitly religious that will eventually lead you in i mean there's a reason why
00:18:04.360like young life when i was in high school had like cool music so that then eventually you would get
00:18:09.360roped into the larger world, right? Right. So yeah, any keywords? Yeah, keywords, but also key
00:18:15.520looks. So if there's, if it's too pretty, and there's nothing behind the scenes really showing
00:18:19.860any, any true life, because this is not simpler, it is not actually less work to do all this stuff
00:18:25.640from scratch. It is a grind, it will exhaust you. It is tedious, and you're trapped. And when I was
00:18:32.320making my own ketchup, it was because I couldn't buy a bottle of ketchup, you know, but I could
00:18:36.520grow a tomato, and I could grind it, I could smush it, and I could, you know, strain it and make
00:18:40.840ketchup and add a little rapadura, which was like a natural sugar I was allowed to use, you know,
00:18:45.480and I could go through all this work for it. So I look for those kinds of signs, like, is there
00:18:50.320behind the scenes, like, does this look like a real life? Or does it look like a set?
00:18:54.960Are there children present? Or are they just conveniently off screen? Because when you're
00:18:58.580quiverful, you're having as many babies as you can. But mommy has a lot of time on her hands by
00:19:04.320herself to make a lot of content, that's bullshit. The other thing is like the glowing smile. So the0.99
00:19:09.680cult glaze is another tell for cult involvement. So if she's smiling serenely through the whole
00:19:15.440thing, and she's very performative in her actions, and there's a hypnotic effect to the ballet
00:19:20.960movements of her gardening, big tell, big giant tell, she's under mind control, or she's trying to
00:19:27.000oversell the beauty and simplicity in a way that is lulling my brain. And my critical thinking is
00:19:33.420starting to come offline yeah i also think of anything that like references like larger plan
00:19:40.900um prepping yeah anything like prepping like adjacent some of that is more obvious to me
00:19:49.700blessed oh my god okay so we have another question that's trying to clarify what we are and aren't
00:19:56.260talking about this comes from jen how can we talk about trad wives without it devolving into a
00:20:01.420discussion about stay-at-home moms. Every time I try to talk about tradwives and specifically how0.99
00:20:07.100ominous their work is, inevitably someone in the discussion goes, well my friend loves her life as0.99
00:20:13.980a stay-at-home mom and I want to scream that's not what I'm talking about because I don't think1.00
00:20:19.700the tradwives really want us to be able to choose to stay at home or have like family discussions1.00
00:20:27.040about it. I think they want us to be like obligated or forced to stay at home.1.00
00:20:32.320Okay. So before we answer that larger question, which is great and I love it,
00:20:37.040Jen calls Trad Wife's work ominous. Why do you think that is? Like, and I think part of this
00:20:43.660is the political aspect, which you talk a lot about in your work.
00:20:46.700Right. I think there is a gut level instinctive awareness that this is being pulled back. Like
00:20:52.480we are being pulled back from our rights and our agency through a backward way of living that we've
00:20:58.080evolved from. And so when we can pick up on that feeling of manipulation, even if we don't always
00:21:02.540have language for it. So this is a great question of an example where she can feel something's off
00:21:06.980and she's trying to convey it, but she doesn't have the verbiage. So a lot of my work is just
00:21:11.060providing the vocabulary. And this is going to come back down to they're staying at home for an
00:21:16.500agenda versus staying at home because they like to stay home with their kids. And the big distinction
00:21:22.400like you can talk to on a personal level with somebody
00:22:59.940And that can slip in really easily when he's the one with the breadwinning agency and you're dependent on him.
00:23:06.660Now you are on equal footing with your children.
00:23:08.900And there's a lot that changes in that world.
00:23:11.800Yeah, and I think that's the part that people, if they aren't actually familiar with this theology,
00:23:16.460they're just like oh this woman just loves her husband and her kids like and wants to make
00:23:21.920lemonade to take out to him on the tractor not i have to ask permission to even get the ingredients
00:23:28.280to make this lemonade right yeah it's not always nefarious and ominous either it's he can mean well
00:23:35.120he can be nice and the authority structure can still be there i mean yeah yeah that yeah that's
00:23:41.500a really good point it's not like all of these men are like devils with rods right they can they
00:23:48.020can be nice but still reside within that larger authority structure and that understanding
00:23:52.960yeah i call it benevolent patriarchy benevolent patriarchy is still patriarchy it's still high
00:23:58.320control yeah yeah our next question is from may and it's about getting into the life and getting
00:24:04.440out of it growing up in an amish and conservative mananite family i understand how a trad wife type
00:24:10.600of lifestyle perpetuates itself when literally everyone you've known since birth is living it0.65
00:24:15.580and your whole world is built to reinforce it. But how is it sustainable when people come to it
00:24:21.100later, largely in isolation or at least physical isolation? Why is it still so hard for people to
00:24:27.160extract themselves from it? So we knew this was the perfect question for you because this is
00:24:31.740basically what your book is about. So what's the sort of short answer here as in like how do people
00:24:40.040get sucked in later in life I think they get sucked in because in our culture almost no one's
00:24:45.440coming to this as a blank slate it's part of our culture and so the water turns up very slowly
00:24:50.920you mean well you like for in my instance I turned to a mentor who had a lot of children
00:24:56.260because I needed help learning how to be a mother in in an erratic situation and so women at church
00:25:02.160are taught to turn to older women it's the tightest two model and so that's just a very
00:25:06.020gentle, easy example of how it just kind of seeped in and I just kind of swept into this world at the
00:25:12.840same time as the external atmosphere was becoming this way. So pretty soon, I mean, I call it the
00:25:19.640cult without walls, because even though I wasn't in an Amish community where you can actually0.96
00:25:23.820physically see the borders and the way everyone lives, I was just as isolated. It's a country
00:25:29.940within a country. This is an America within an America. And so you are in the world, but not of
00:25:34.740it. And you don't have any access to anybody who's not like you by the time you're in that deep.
00:25:39.860And so extrication is, for all the reasons we've already talked about, just as hard. I mean,
00:25:44.440I don't have... There's nobody to ask. There's no safe path out. There's no world where your
00:25:52.980husband isn't aware of your movements. There's no education to fall back on. And then begins the
00:25:58.940very hard work of convincing outsiders that you're really in danger. When, for example,
00:26:05.720Project 2025 threatens to take away our right of no fault divorce. So if the system is predicated on
00:26:13.700you have to convince us that you have a reason to get divorced, you're struck with convincing
00:26:20.040all that. And while you yourself are still coming to an understanding of what you've just experienced,
00:26:24.120extrication is really, really hard. Right. You're not only convincing yourself,
00:26:28.940that you need to leave, which is an ongoing process that I'm sure is filled with doubt
00:26:32.640and second thoughts. But then if you also are trying to convince others that you deserve to
00:26:38.240leave, it's so much. Right, right. You know, and then we have J.D. Vance chosen as the VP ticket,
00:26:44.400and he is quoted as saying that women should stay with their abusive husbands because it's hard on
00:26:49.020the kids. Well, that like leaves out everybody who would be dead if they don't get out, you know,
00:26:53.640and that's definitely my story. My children were unhappy sometimes that this happened to our
00:26:58.040family but it's because abuse broke our family abuse broke our family not divorce divorce was0.98
00:27:02.940the way it was the path to freedom for me and and that if that's how our country changes women are
00:27:09.260going to die that is the that is the unhappy truth of of that ideology we know that from0.93
00:27:16.080survivors telling their stories when we have all of this trad lifestyle has tells it has outcomes
00:27:21.840it has evidence testimonies survivors i'm a big one for like the historical timeline of progress
00:27:27.240so we're supposed to be growing as a society that doesn't mean we go backwards to something we tried
00:27:33.100and it failed and we grew past because there were reasons we didn't just like experimentally decide
00:27:38.360to give women rights no women fought they went to jail they lost their lives they fought hard to get
00:27:43.060our rights because not having rights wasn't working for them it was there were problems with not having0.73
00:27:48.080rights that we don't really want to return to but they make it look really pretty i know we are in
00:27:54.160such a moment of regression, I think. And a lot of it is is reactionary. I always think of like
00:27:59.580the history of feminism is two steps forward, one step back. Like we are in a massive step back1.00
00:28:05.040right now. But that doesn't mean that we're not like there's still not momentum and the potential
00:28:10.640for continued progress. One thing that I've seen a lot with some influencers and people I know is
00:28:17.900kind of going deeper down the well like you start out going to like a cool church
00:28:23.240and you're like I need something even more restrictive because that feels more safe so
00:28:27.940then you start going to a more evangelical church even more and then like one of the influencers I
00:28:34.160follow left her evangelical church and is now part of like an orthodox church like she has to
00:28:41.160she covers her head like she she basically it seems if you're reading between the lines that0.81
00:28:45.620she is craving even more control than ever before and she's actually dragging her husband along with
00:28:53.040her which is fascinating like convincing her husband to become part of the church and to
00:28:58.780become the patriarch yes have you seen that similar progression of like becoming more and more
00:29:04.060oh yeah it's very common also it's very common for the woman to lead the men into it because
00:29:09.500she's at home doing the research and she's saying here's the solution so i think what happens is
00:29:14.860there's this ever constant doubt process that this formula didn't work clearly we need more
00:29:22.120we need more structure we need more rules and the patriarchy is always feeding you this diet of
00:29:27.280more rigid and more rigid and there's never a point where you where you've done enough
00:29:31.560you know there's you've never reached this limit where oh we submitted to these ideals and now we
00:29:37.560have this happy family and we have no problems and nothing bad ever happens to us because we
00:29:42.020were so obedient. That never happens. So as you face problems, and as things happen to you,
00:29:47.900and you face challenge and struggle, you go you drill down harder and harder and harder. And so
00:29:52.340when you're in one group, and it wasn't quite satisfying, then you become more orthodox in your
00:29:56.740progression. That's really common. That's how that's how the extreme views manifest, because
00:30:02.040each author leads to another author, each teaching leads to another. And the movement becomes more
00:30:07.800restrictive and more restrictive because it's in pursuit of ideological purity way back to the
00:30:12.860original definition of fundamentalism they are in pursuit of a pure ideology and they're using
00:30:19.080this formula in order to achieve it so you're constantly trying to purify and narrow to get
00:30:24.820what you want um the promise never delivers that's the that's the big joke on everybody
00:30:30.260there is no this does not lead to the what they promise and if we look at the fruit of what they
00:30:36.780produce we'll see that we're just so caught up in the process you know it's it's the the message
00:30:42.120is always well if it fails it's something you did so you must perfect yourself more and do this
00:30:46.960better and um it was just you were just missing this ingredient you know pray more pray harder
00:30:51.820that kind of thing and so you just keep doing more and more and more because there's never
00:30:55.260there's never an attainment and there's never enough high control environments breed more
00:31:00.860high control practices, not the other way around. Yeah. Okay, our next question is actually there's
00:31:07.280a ton of questions that we received about a specific element of being a trad wife. And that
00:31:12.920is fundy baby voice. Yes. The first time I saw people talking about this was when Alabama Senator
00:31:19.640Katie Britt gave the Republican response to President Biden's State of the Union address
00:31:24.200back in March. So we're going to hear a little clip of that. Good evening, America. My name is
00:31:29.880Katie Britt and I have the honor of serving the people of the great state of Alabama and the
00:31:35.360United States Senate. However, that's not the job that matters most. I am a proud wife and mom of
00:31:43.200two school-aged kids. And some people compare her voice to Michelle Duggars, so we will also hear a
00:31:50.240clip of that. So this is our great room and Jim, I wanted to design it where it was open to the
00:31:56.720kitchen area because that's where mom and the girls spend most of our time cooking and doing
00:32:01.720all that. So we can be a part of everything that's going on. And it just makes it really nice.
00:32:07.040I know this voice. I didn't know it was called Fundy Baby Voice. Like I just know it from like
00:32:11.820a certain type of like prayer circle. But where does where does this voice come from? Can you
00:32:16.980talk more about it? Yes. Okay. So first of all, we should say Fundy Baby Voice is an outsider term
00:32:22.240applied to this phenomenon that an attempt to explain it we did not call it fundy baby voice
00:32:27.720when we were doing it we we called it sounding childlike keeping sweet staying sweet um gentle
00:32:35.300spirit uh being feminine and again it's that breathy almost sexualized child prosody that
00:32:42.860coaxes you along and so it is a vocal manipulation to make a woman sound less threatening changes the
00:32:50.500sound of her own voice. If you practice that voice long enough, you will no longer sound like0.96
00:32:54.000your maturity. And it takes work. I've had to go through extensive vocal retraining just to get
00:32:59.740back to the sound of my own voice after leaving because you don't just snap in and out like a
00:33:05.360code switch when you're groomed to sound that way. As far as where it comes from, that's a little
00:33:10.660more complicated to tease apart. It's one of those parts of our culture that's so pervasive that
00:33:16.580it's hard to say one thing although i can tell you that there's this dynamic in high control
00:33:21.680religion and certainly in the 50s as it became like the 50s housewife and sounding sweet and
00:33:28.440pleasing and being hyper femme and all of that in 1963 two books came out the feminine mystique
00:33:33.440and fascinating womanhood the fascinating womanhood is technically a mormon book but
00:33:37.820it didn't lead with its mormonism and people don't always realize that that's its source
00:33:41.840It's still in print today, and it teaches women to be ultra-feminine and childlike so that they will become an angelic, soft, feminine self.
00:33:51.660It's a big part of my story because it was handed to me by so many women, and that is how it's passed along from woman to woman.
00:33:57.700There were fascinating womanhood groups.
00:34:00.380And this is where women learn to actually take that on so they can call their husbands big hairy brutes and fight and get basically coax the entire role play, you know, into place.1.00
00:34:12.980If a woman sounds like a baby, she's not threatening.1.00
00:34:17.960And she can get you to do the things that you maybe don't want to do.
00:34:21.960So it gives her a feeling of empowerment, like getting him to cooperate.
00:34:25.580the one way it's talked about is um the man is the head of the house but the woman is the neck
00:34:30.600well the vocal training is how she turns his head or his will to her will uh it's so funny
00:34:39.900because there's this when i was writing a piece on um trad wife influencers last year like there's
00:34:45.740this woman who is not christian forward and i actually i'm pretty sure that she's playing
00:34:51.560everything up for the algorithm i do not think that of the vast majority of these women but
00:34:55.360this woman i do and she was cosplaying as like marilyn monroe and her fundy baby voice was right
00:35:02.960on that cusp of marilyn monroe which is fascinating because it's like the biggest it's like the voice
00:35:09.180that is associated with the biggest sex symbol of the last hundred years but also a sex symbol who
00:35:15.020was incredibly powerful but was like always understood as innocent there's there's a lot
00:35:20.760of overlap happening right now in what you just said um so another thing that happens with the
00:35:26.060baby voice is that women's voices can truncate at the age they were first molested or interfered
00:35:30.700with and so sometimes they sound like young children because they were interfered with as
00:35:34.640young children and they kind of got stuck there vocally um that's not coincidental because when
00:35:40.420you want a grown woman to sound like a child and that grown woman is someone you sleep with and
00:35:45.360find sexually attractive those two things are related he is now finding a childlike adult woman0.67
00:35:51.740attractive which breeds more sexual abuse and sexual abuse is a huge part of the patriarchy
00:35:58.260so it these aren't things that we can like put in little boxes and say well this is this and this is
00:36:03.920that just like you can't wait where it comes from the impact is all very much the same now when katie
00:36:08.840brit splashed on the scene and brought it into the mainstream it stirred up a lot of things a lot of
00:36:13.380emotions for people, because it is so tied to their own subjugation, self-subjugation,
00:36:18.780and their own sexual abuse stories, and this idea of modesty culture where the church repeatedly
00:36:26.260tells us that that is where women are safe, and that is where children are safe, except
00:36:30.280statistics don't breed that out. Statistics show us that church is one of the most dangerous places
00:36:35.120a woman or a child can be, because the church doesn't take abuse seriously, and because they0.95
00:36:39.740continually sexualize young children. And voice, the voice is one way, the tell is where it comes
00:36:45.240out is that they want you to sound like a baby, but they're gonna have sex with you. The disjointedness0.99
00:36:51.080like I lose my words when I think of the horror of that, because that is that is the mind fuck0.99
00:36:56.500that we experience in that kind of high control religion. So this is a good transition into0.99
00:37:02.580kind of going back to May's question, like the whole belief system is designed to keep people
00:37:07.800in to keep them bound by secrecy bound by like this understanding that this is the only way to
00:37:13.800salvation like that's something that I think sometimes gets lost is like people think if they
00:37:17.940leave then they are damned and their children are damned like how do you get around that that's
00:37:22.320really difficult so what has to fall into place for people to leave I think a survival instinct0.98
00:37:29.420um they're going to they're going to make sure that you know you're damned by demonstrating it
00:37:34.200So when you leave, you do lose your community, you are going to be condemned, they're going to call you names, they're going to call you heretic and whore and Jezebel, they're going to cut you off from the resources and everything that you had, I was excommunicated and formally shunned. It's part of the experience. And so unless you have a vein inside of yourself that says, I know that's what they're going to do, but that does not actually mean I'm spiritually damned.0.86
00:37:58.840you might fall for it because they're going to be very convincing.
00:38:02.460In my case, and what I think I've witnessed from other survivors,