Does Conservative Feminism exist? This is the question of the day. And, this is a question Matt Walsh poses in his latest column.

Is there really such a thing as being a “Conservative Feminist”? Walsh says no. He uses TikTok/Instagram influencer @emilysavesusa as his argument. Emily, apparently, has an issue with the homesteading trad wives. You know the ones-canning preserves and making sourdough bread. She argues that while she is all for traditional values, she’s not buying the trad wife bullsh#t that women are happy in the home making sourdough. This, according to the influencer, is being “trapped” by a man.

Not to pick on @emilysavesusa because I’ve been seeing a lot of girls on the right counter signaling the ‘trad’ stay at home mom lifestyle lately also, but I think this message is ridiculous.

Being a SAHM is not being ‘trapped’ by a man. That’s feminist BS. It’s also not… pic.twitter.com/2iiwnYCb0T

— Sarah Stock ✟ (@sarahcstock) May 1, 2025

Walsh argues that Emily slams the stay-at-home-mommies while not slamming the SAHMs. He states that polarizing as marriage as a competition and not an equal partnership is leftist in practice and philosophy:

Now let’s go through some of the specifics here. Emily says that a woman should have a job and her own income so that she isn’t ‘trapped’ by a man. She envisions the relationship between husband and wife as inherently competitive. Marriage is a zero sum game where both husband and wife are competing for control. Again, this is a fundamentally leftist conception. It is a recipe for divorce. There is nothing in and of itself wrong with a wife earning money. As I’ve conceded many times, a family may feel that they need two incomes in order to survive. Or they may want a second income. Or the wife might have a job that doesn’t require leaving the house and going to an office every day. But if she’s earning money as an escape hatch because she doesn’t want to be ‘trapped,’ that is a very bad sign.”-Matt Walsh

This mentality of “having an income as an escape hatch” dooms the marriage from the very beginning. It reeks of mistrust and cynicism. Honestly, I am not a rose-colored glasses individual by any means but, if this is a woman’s mentality going into a marriage, there may be some serious therapy involved before entering into this covenant. This is right up there with, “if this marriage doesn’t work out, we’ll just get a divorce”. We see this in Hollywood all of the time. Multiple marriages. Confused, FUBAR kids. Don’t be fooled by the rocks that she’s got, she’s still Jenny from the Block. Thank Christ she had her own income and escape hatch!

But…men want to be mentally stimulated. And, according to Emily the Influencer, they cannot be mentally stimulated by a woman who stays home and makes sourdough bread all day.

This is absurdly dismissive and insulting to millions of good, Godly, intelligent women who, while staying home with the children, are also capable of having intelligent conversations with their husbands. It also assumes that a woman who sits in a cubicle all day will somehow have more interesting things to say to her husband at the end of the day. Having a job as a woman does not make you smart or interesting. I hate to break it to the working women of the world, but your husband is almost certainly not intellectually stimulated by your job or your stories about your job. If he was able to choose between listening to a story about your office drama or listening to a story about what you did with the kids that day, he would prefer to hear about the latter. This is the sort of thing you would know about men if you listened to them when they try to tell you what they want, instead of declaring what you think they should want.”-Matt Walsh

I think part of this is a branding issue. “Stay at home mom” sounds like lounging around occasionally doing house chores, and this is simply not the case. My wife is the Queen of the household, in charge of raising and guiding the next generation (in this case, our children).…

— David Lescalleet IV (@dlescalleetiv) May 1, 2025

As a women who left the workforce after our son was born to focus on being a stay-at-home-mommy, I will tell you, hands down, working a full-time job is far easier than being a full-time caregiver. Would I have traded those early, formative years of being that stable, in-home presence for our son (and my husband) for a full-time job, “just in case”? The answer is no. And this is why:

Our son was premature. There were doctors’ visits. There were deployments when my husband was active-duty Marine Corps. There were more deployments when we moved back from overseas and he was a civilian contractor for a time, deploying to the Middle East in support of our Armed Forces. There were transitions to pre-school, elementary school and Individualized Education Plans to get our son caught up on speech and motor delays. As an active participant and volunteer at my son’s school at that time, I was able to form relationships with his teachers and school staff while my other half was away. I was able to engage in educational partnerships with his teachers and advocate for our son. This was invaluable and, eventually, got him caught-up and off his IEP in third grade. He graduated high school with Honors and awards, got an Associate’s degree in Biology in his senior year, makes the President’s list at his university and was able to score a coveted spot as one of the anatomy lab TAs for the cadaver labs in the fall. He’s smart. He’s grounded. He’s motivated and driven. He’s also kind. And, we BOTH had a role in the young adult that he is now.

Did I feel trapped? No. I have also worked since I was fifteen. But my husband and I made the decision (together) that me being home was the best for our family. Our son was also our only child. I wasn’t going to get those early years of watching our son grow up back. This was a partnership between my husband and I. No one felt “trapped”.

As I assumed a more traditionally Conservative role as a mom, I eventually did go back to work when our son was older. And, while I make a decent salary that, combined with my husband’s, has afforded us to be very generous and have a great life, would I say that my conversations with my husband are more “mentally stimulating” after a long day at work? Hardly. There are some days where my job is mentally exhausting and having a cerebral conversation is damn near impossible.

Not everything that is old or traditional is automatically good, of course. Slavery is old and traditional — and still practiced in non-western countries. It’s also very bad. But there are basic truths about how human society is fundamentally structured. Truths that have withstood the test of time. Truths that have, while civilization held fast to them, it flourished and advanced in remarkable and seemingly miraculous ways. Truths that, minutes after our society abandoned, immediately led to decline and chaos and confusion. One of those truths is that a child needs a mother and a father. Only a man and a woman can have a baby, or should. Another one of those truths is that men and women are different, and so have different roles in the home and in society. This was an idea so basic that there wasn’t even a term for it. We only started labeling it ‘gender roles’ at the moment that we decided to abandon it. And I would say that the results of that decision have not been good. Divorce, broken homes, declining birth rates, 60 million dead babies. And those are just the early returns.”-Matt Walsh

I have no idea who this woman is but she obviously isn't "all for" a woman staying home in the traditional sense at all. Snarky and envious of those of us who have made this choice, bitter because she "has worked since she was very young" and will have to keep working bc of…

— Sher_Bear (@SherryRSher) May 1, 2025

In short, Walsh is right. “Conservative” Feminism is an oxymoron. I don’t know this Emily woman or whatever her intentions were when filming this short in her car. But, I will tell you what is “cringe”. The whole “girl boss” mentality is, for one. The “girl boss” mentality and filming reels in your car is also so played out and cliche and, yes, cringe, in the social media wasteland of women saying they “don’t need a man” but “want a man” as long as he buys her things and has a certain aesthetic about him.

So, what is a Conservative Feminist? And, is there such a thing?

Whether one is trapped or not depends almost entirely on picking a good man or not.

Women should focus on vetting for things like integrity, positive leadership, generosity, and protectiveness and less on prescriptive or superficial behaviors.

— Dan The Man (@WisdomOfDan) May 1, 2025

Truth. Then, you don’t need the “escape hatch”, Babygrrrrrl. (BTWs, I hate the “babygrrrrl” line). Maybe, if you’re lucky, and you find you absolutely suck at baking, you’ll find the guy who will defend you, love you, respect you, protect you AND have the incredible talent to bake the sourdough.

This is how I know I hit the jackpot.

Photo Credit: Angel Ganev, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons/Cropped