This post contains spoilers for The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin.

In addition to comparing “Red Pill Women” to Serena Joy, I have also compared them to Stepford Wives. Perhaps this is unfair because Stepford Wives are not human women, but are in fact robots. Or maybe its entirely fair given that red pill men cannot wait to own sexbots that also clean up after them.

Fair or unfair, there is at least one Red Pill woman, “TheWoolyJumper” who is a huge fan of the novel because of it’s “anti feminist message.” No, really:

This is going to seem out of place here, but ‘The Stepford Wives’. I’ve never read a book so anti-feminist in my life. It’s basic message is ‘give up looking after yourselves, your husband, your children and your home to do pursuits that ultimately help not at all will make your marriage end up on a knife blade. You seem to almost want your man to find someone else if you do so.’

TheWoolyJumper totally misses the point of the book. The women who move to Stepford with their husbands are already conceding a lot. Of course, they don’t know that their husbands are planning to murder them and replace them with sex robots, but what they do know is that their husband wanted them to move them far away from family and friends – and they loved or trusted him enough to agree.

Of the women we meet before they suffer their gruesome fate: Joanna is fiercely independent and Bobbie is a bit of a slacker. These traits might annoy their husbands, but TheWollyJumper appears to be agreeing that they deserved to be murdered and to have their children raised by sexbots for the crime of not being perfect wives.

I’ve heard other people say that conservatives, especially social conservatives, don’t understand irony. And if this isn’t a fantastic example of this, I don’t know what is. For what reason in the world would anyone read The Stepford Wives and agree that those bitches deserved what they got? It boggles the mind and shocks the conscience that anyone would have this interpretation, but there it is in total seriousness.

To clarify for those who still don’t get it: Joanna is the protagonist. We are supposed to empathize with her. There is nothing good or sympathetic about the Stepford Men’s Association. They are cold blooded misogynist murderers. If you empathize with them, there is something wrong with you. Joanna’s marriage doesn’t end because she “made her man find someone else.” It ended because he killed her and replaced her with a robot. Levin was playing with the anxieties of women during the second wave of feminism and created a story that confirmed the worst fears of women – that some men – perhaps even your own husband – really are like that, really are that bad. And it will cost you your life, and your children their mother. All of the best horror stories are feminist horror stories. Shudder. End Scene.

If you come away from this book thinking that the point is that Joanna should have been a better wife and she deserved what she got, you lack either reading comprehension or empathy – perhaps both.

Hat tip: SquashedBananas

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 14th, 2014 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.