This article was written in collaboration with the CPUSA Women’s Commission. A separately edited version of this article was first published in People’s World.

A sinister, seemingly innocent rhetoric has been creeping into the feeds of young women on social media in recent years. Content creators on TikTok and Instagram baking bread wearing frilly prairie dresses; wellness gurus telling women that the reason they feel unhappy is that they have let their “masculine energies” overpower their feminine sides; even just everyday social media users joking about their inability to drive, work, or handle their own money because, after all, they are “just a girl.” What do all these genres of social media content have in common?

They may seem like disparate communities, and indeed, each of these content spheres fall into slightly variant niches of the Internet. But the target audience for much of this content is one and the same: young women.

The lifestyle vloggers, the wellness experts, the average “just a girl” meme all purport to speak on behalf of women who feel in some way that the promises of twenty-first century “girlboss” feminism have failed them. They circulate the notion that women’s emancipation — supposedly achieved at some point after the third or fourth female CEO — has only given women more stress, more unequal responsibilities, and more social alienation.

The rhetoric peddled to young women on social media today is a plea for a return to innocence, domesticity, and “traditional femininity.” In some spheres, this manifests as outright right-wing propaganda, complete with anti-abortion panic and antifeminist talking points. Others chase a bioessentialist grift — as if gender is biologically set and unchangeable — in the name of mental health activism. Through popular memes and jokes, we are encouraged to associate femininity with ignorance and immaturity.

Some would argue that this content is all in good fun, that there is nothing wrong with women embracing their feminine side and rejecting a grueling capitalistic work ethos. The question remains, though — how are these strict reinforcements of gender roles supposed to emancipate women? What forms of struggle are eschewed in this “return to femininity”? And who actually benefits from this shift away from a program of collective women’s emancipation?

The totalizing effect of all this content put together is a veritable ecosystem of reactionary politics which ignores the root cause of women’s oppression, mobilized by capitalism — class exploitation and its foot soldier, male chauvinism. Even more disturbing is the complete abandonment of class politics, mass struggle, and solidarity. Instead, we are told that a pursuit of middle-class comfort and personal improvement is more important than our participation in mass movements.

The underlying sentiment which unites these communities is that the gains won by the feminist movement have only left women with a greater burden than before. But are the solutions proposed by these new strains of Internet discourse really the radical break that we need?

Tradwives, fascist dogwhistle

The “tradwife” — short for “traditional wife” — is possibly the most widely discussed and criticized of all these various social media phenomena, and for good reason.

Tradwives, whether implicitly or explicitly, advocate for a return to a glorified midcentury middle-class American past, where women stayed at home to take care of their numerous (white) children, obeyed their husbands, went to church every Sunday, and did it all with a smile and a perm. Even the tamest tradwife content will feature women cooking up a storm — with their children in conspicuous view of the camera — while waxing about the joys of serving their husbands. Some of the most extreme versions of tradwife content actively participate in anticommunism, antifeminism, anti-vax conspiracy theories, and the anti-abortion crusades of the modern alt-right.

These influencers would have us believe that they are merely offering women an alternative to the “hustle culture” of late-stage capitalism.

Many of these content creators reject the label of tradwife due to its connotations with white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and the alt-right pipeline. These influencers would have us believe that they are merely offering women an alternative to the “hustle culture” of late-stage capitalism, which places a double burden upon women to both take care of their families at home and work a full-time job. Sure, some creators will “take it too far” by turning the tradwife into a fascist symbol, but these “moderate” tradwives maintain that they are apolitical and perhaps even the real feminists in the room. “Why should my individual choice to be a housewife make me a Nazi?” these women bemoan, all the while marketing themselves in a manner that is eerily reminiscent of Hitler’s (and the Trump administration’s) three mandates for a good woman — children, kitchen, and church.

But if these women were merely content with living the lifestyle of a stay-at-home mom, they would not be reconstructing an entire mythology around it which just so happens to align perfectly with fascist rhetoric. Nor would they be selling this ahistorical fantasy to the public on every social media platform and news site that will have them.

Despite their obfuscations, one only has to look at some of the most popular tradwife creators and their income bracket — ​​Hannah Neeleman, wife of JetBlue heir Daniel Neeleman, or wealthy celebrity model Nara Smith — to see exactly which societal forces are behind the tradwife movement. It only makes sense that, as the millionaire and billionaire classes cozy up to the Trump administration, their aspirational content would make the same right-wing shift. Where bourgeois women once sold us the ideal of girlboss feminism, while it was in style, they changed their tune as soon as they saw the balance of forces shift toward the extreme right.

What many of these tradwives also refuse to publicly contend with is how lucrative their grift is. Hannah Neeleman, in particular, has created an entire brand and business off her online content, making her assertion that she is a traditional housewife who leaves all the business matters to her husband extremely dubious.

At the end of the day, the tradwife movement is motivated by an ideology of short-term profit-making, while shoring up its long-term class interests pursuing the same fascist turn that the U.S. government has made. Just as politicians like JD Vance tell women they are useless without a husband and kids — deadweight in the workforce — so these wealthy demagogues of the bourgeois class are ready to wage the same battle in the cultural arena.

The Divine Feminine craze

The regressive battle to define womanhood is being waged on multiple fronts. In order to recruit as many warriors for the cause of “traditional femininity” as possible, a certain strain of pop psychology has grown popular in recent years: the idea of the Divine Feminine.

This concept, propagated by self-help gurus through podcasts, blogs, and books teaches women to tap into their neglected “feminine energy” innate within them. Taking inspiration from a mixing pot of astrology, various polytheistic belief systems, the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang, and packaging them up in the modern discourse of self-care and self-improvement, proponents of the Divine Feminine argue that the source of women’s woes with work, love, and mental health stem from an imbalance between their masculine and feminine energies.

You can easily guess what sorts of traits these wellness experts associate with the feminine — nurturing instincts, “softness,” passivity, emotion. The masculine, in turn, is associated with action, ambition, rationality, logic. Bloggers preach that despite the constant gendered language, gender has nothing to do with whether or not a person exudes masculine or feminine energy. However, they perpetually caution against women exerting too much masculine energy. A marriage can and will go sour if a woman takes on the dominant masculine role, they warn. (A large percentage of Divine Feminine content lectures women on how to attract the right kind of man and how to keep him. If a man doesn’t treat you right, it’s your own fault for attracting the wrong kinds of energy!)

If you really want to unlock your inner goddess, you can’t do it alone. For private coaching from one of these unlicensed pseudo-therapists, you only have to cough up $333 per session. A quick Google search for “divine feminine coaching” will find you a plethora of classes, retreats, workbooks, and asynchronous programs that will run you a couple hundred to several thousand dollars.

Similarly to the tradwife, the Divine Feminine is marketed to women as a tool of empowerment, as “radical self-care.” In practice, it takes on a neo-Victorian sensibility that paints women as neurotic, childlike creatures prone to fits of hysteria and obsession if they take on a “masculine” role. It reinforces ideas that women can avoid abuse at the hands of men simply by being the “right kind of woman.”

Instead of explaining the unequal burden placed upon women, wellness “experts” prey upon women’s insecurities and exploit them for profit.

Instead of confronting the disrespect we face in our interpersonal lives while also fighting to dismantle the systemic societal abuses women are subjected to, we are told to disengage, keep quiet, and reflect on what it is about ourselves that has brought upon this abuse. Instead of offering real explanations for women’s feelings of inadequacy, stress, and mental exhaustion — feelings that are brought upon them not because their energies are unbalanced, but because patriarchal capitalism places an unequal burden upon women in the realms of work, romance, and family life — these wellness “experts” prey upon women’s insecurities and exploit them for profit.

Even more pernicious is the ways in which all of this reactionary rhetoric is wrapped up in therapy-speak in order to target the most vulnerable among us — women who suffer from social isolation, abuse, and mental health issues. With our privatized healthcare system, searching for professional mental health care is daunting and oftentimes nigh impossible to get. This is where these demagogues of spiritualism and self-improvement swoop in to sell us quick miracle solutions to deep structural wounds. Meanwhile, the multi-million dollar healthcare corporations and male chauvinist bourgeois class get to wash their hands of the systemic inequalities they foment, and let their entrepreneurial social media lackeys do the work of turning the blame inwards, on the individual women who fail to live up to a feminine ideal.

“Just a girl” politics

Can one simple phrase unite white evangelical housewives, New Age wellness coaches, and every social media user in between? Apparently so.

Both of these communities wield the phrase “I’m just a girl” in abundance to explain their desires to be taken care of, wear nice clothes, and turn their brains off. The phrase originated a couple of years ago on TikTok partially in reference to the No Doubt song of the same name, and has since been used by a range of Internet communities geared toward women. The meme on its own has also been used to poke fun at women’s supposed inability to drive, handle money, contribute to academic or workplace discussions, play sports or video games, and all sorts of extremely regressive stereotypes. Detractors of this meme, who argue that it is a manifestation of internalized misogyny, are often shut down for being unable to take a joke. It’s all in good fun, and it’s ironic anyway, right?

Certainly, brands and corporations have taken this meme and ran with it, plastering water bottles and notebooks and everything in between with this cute and belittling phraseology. As with many Internet trends, companies identified this trend as a means to create a consumer demographic, produce a surplus of commodities, and extract a wave of profits. In order to keep the money rolling in, corporations seek to extend the life of this trend for as long as possible, and so we continue to be inundated across online and physical markets with the jokes and the paraphernalia attached to them.

Men in the highest ranks of government are actively working to drive women out of the public and political life of the country.

It is all too easy to get away with calling women stupid, incompetent, and childish, especially now. The men in the highest ranks of the American government have made it clear — through their persistent attacks on abortion rights, voting rights, and what little social safety nets we have — that they are not going to stop at just rhetoric. They are actively working to drive women out of the public and political life of the country.

With this oppressive agenda breathing down our necks in some areas of the country and actively being enforced in others, are we really supposed to tolerate the same kind of misogynistic rhetoric repackaged with a cute, friendly facade and amplified by megacorporations through useless, asinine products?

Women’s role in the growing anti-fascist movement

Perhaps some still believe that we shouldn’t whip ourselves up into a frenzy over a few social media trends, that there are bigger fish to fry in the “real world.” But what happens online is also a part of the material world, and it’s impossible to ignore the effects that far-right Internet demagogues have on national politics.

It’s true that, taken individually, these trends are not indicative of a mass rejection of feminism and the goal of women’s emancipation. But the sheer amount of casually misogynistic and bioessentialist content that is shilled out in the name of entertainment and aesthetic is staggering. There are dozens of other pockets of the Internet — many of which bleed into each other and send viewers down dangerous ideological rabbit holes — all centered around reinforcing rigid definitions of womanhood. Our social media feeds are perpetually selling us a beauty product, a body type, a way of dress, a therapy class, a manner of comportment, a romantic ideal, a whole lifestyle of passive consumption and hyper-individualism. Failure to fall in line with these standards are met with harsher punishment and increased scrutiny, from the interpersonal level all the way up to the highest echelons of our government.

Women are not necessarily making the lifestyle shift en masse that social media is portraying — the majority of women just can’t afford to, for one thing — but they are also not joining the anti-fascist, anti-monopoly resistance in large numbers. Those of us who are truly committed to growing the mass movement against Trumpian fascism need to be asking what it will take to get women involved. It is obvious that many women feel burnt out, lonely, and overwhelmed by the unequal load they are made to carry at work, in the home, and in social circles. The idea of getting to turn off our brains and letting someone else take charge is tempting, for some. But these smokescreen solutions are exactly what will exacerbate women’s stress, isolation, and oppression.

As a militant collective, we must ask ourselves: what alternative visions of liberation can we provide in our organizing spaces? What does it mean to put women’s issues — issues which in reality concern people of all genders, sexualities, age, and race — at the forefront of our anti-fascist work? How can we make sure women feel welcomed and needed in the movement, while also lightening the load of emotional and mental labor so often handed off to them by default?

As the Trump administration and its satellite pundits on the news and social media continue to brazenly force their vision of femininity, family life, and women’s healthcare (or lack thereof) onto the people, we cannot tacitly accept the idea that the struggle for women’s liberation is over. Nor can we return to a time of shallow, unprincipled feminism that sells women a dream of liberation through “girlboss” individualism.

While social media corporations have relentlessly sold women a fascist ideal of womanhood, the anti-MAGA and left movements still struggle to maintain an active body of young female participants that is proportional to the population. This is due to many factors — male chauvinism in left spaces, the double burden of work and home life, the increasing rate of exploitation in the workplace, and the overall lack of momentum of a modern women’s movement comparable to the previous “waves” of feminism.

Entry points must be created for women who have been depoliticized or turned against leftist politics to enter movement spaces.

Many of the recent mass anti-Trump protests have touted the phrase “A woman’s place is in the movement” — but we clearly have quite a ways to go in making those words ring true. Entry points must be created for women who have been depoliticized or turned against leftist politics to enter such spaces. This work must be done by comrades of all genders, but men especially should be conscious of how they engage with women in left political spaces; a macho “boys’ club” atmosphere will immediately shut out women, nonbinary, and trans people. Neither should political spaces be treated like a dating pool, or as a battleground upon which to prove the depths of one’s knowledge about Marxist theory. Such attitudes are hostile and uncomfortable to newcomers, and have a silencing effect especially on marginalized groups.

All this is to say that we can only challenge these systemic and interpersonal oppressions head-on. The forces of capital seek to disengage women from political struggle — the better to fracture the unity of the working class and turn potential allies away from asking the hard-hitting questions about the real source of our problems. As communists, we can help to connect women’s daily struggles to a larger class struggle; to turn women away from blaming men, blaming themselves, and toward pointing the finger at the corporate class and its political allies which are actively trying to build a world in which women have no political, economic, or bodily autonomy.

Young women are clearly feeling the impacts of their economic and social oppression in their everyday lives, and the right-wing corporate class is more than ready to capitalize off of those frustrations. We have seen how successful this grift has been in capturing the imaginations of young men, led by the likes of the criminal Andrew Tate or the now deceased Charlie Kirk.

In the mass resistance to the MAGA agenda, a women’s movement must develop its own momentum and articulate specific demands — job and pay equality, protection from domestic violence and abuse, the right to reproductive and mental healthcare, and so much more. But this movement must also be connected to the larger class struggle which affects all genders, so that we may resist a separatist strain or co-optation by the same fair-weather bourgeois forces which have alienated many young women from any form of feminist struggle.

It is our role as communists to ground those explanations in materialist analysis and shape our strategy through anti-fascist, anti-monopoly class struggle — a struggle which invariably must include women in order to succeed. Our feelings of alienation are not a fixed and immutable force. What many young people are searching for now is some kind of explanation for the state of the world and a strategy that will guide them toward a better future. It is incumbent on us to provide one.

Images: “Traditional feminity” being promoted on social media, graphic by People’s World; Screenshots from Instagram video; screenshot from justagoddess.co; NYC Councilwoman Nantasha Williams, Rep. Nydia Velázquez, NYC Councilwoman Alexa Avilés and others pose at the Oct. 18 No Kings march in NYC, photo by Alexa Avilés (X)