I saw this meme on Facebook a few times this week. I instantly understood—and appreciated—that it was calling out the f**ked up priorities of conservative commentators but admittedly had no idea what it was talking about. So, down the rabbit hole I went. Thankfully, our friends at Snopes had gone there already, which made it much easier for me to separate fact from outrage. It’s not all true, but there’s plenty to be outraged about.
In March, CNN ran a story about so-called “sleep” videos on the hard-core porn site Motherless. The website calls itself “a moral free file host where anything legal is hosted forever,” which sends chills down my spine despite my generally pro-porn views. Sleep videos depict men having sex with women who certainly appear to be asleep or more likely drugged. One common feature of sleep videos is the men lifting the eyelids of the women to prove just how out of it they are. Note to Motherless: unless they’re all faking it, this does not meet your bare minimum standards of legality. In general, passed out people can’t consent. Though while down this particular rabbit hole, I learned that husbands may get an exemption to that rule. Keep reading. The CNN story also included a Telegram group chat called “Zzzz” in which users shared information and advice about how to drug and rape their wives and partners. A CNN reporter posed as a user and noted that the men not only shared pointers, but they also shared their pictures and videos with each other often for a fee (preferably paid in crypto). In fact, many of the men involved were finding ways to make money off this, whether by charging for videos, setting up livestreams, or selling homemade sleep concoctions that promised to knock your wife out and keep her from remembering anything in the morning. CNN dubbed this an “online rape academy,” a phrase they borrowed from a French lawmaker who has campaigned against drug-facilitated sexual abuse (DFSA) since being drugged and raped herself by a former French senator. All of this is true and unspeakably horrifying. The part that isn’t accurate according to Snopes is the takeaway that 62 million men attended the online rape academy. That number, which was in the article, showed just how many men visited Motherless in the month of February. That’s a lot of men looking for porn without a moral compass, though it’s well below the popularity of the more mainstream Pornhub which had 4.2 billion views in March. Some of the sleep videos—which have tags like #eyelid or #passedout—had upwards of 50,000 views, but clearly many visitors to the website were seeking other content such as #lesbian or #brunette. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that people made these videos is criminal (literally), and the fact that thousands of other people watched them is disgusting. But when we point out that conservatives are caring about the wrong things and being hypocritical, we should use the right facts. Not that today’s conservatives ever do. While my liberal bubble on social media was being justifiably outraged by marital rape, Fox News was delighting in a new “study” that supposedly found young people to be embracing the “trad wife” idea. This time I have to thank Amanda Marcotte of Salon for debunking the conclusions that Fox was drawing. Fox’s Lara Trump—who parlayed being married to Eric Trump into being co-chair of the RNC and a media personality—suggested that 47% of young women wanted to be trad wives. Katie Miller—the former White House staffer who married Stephen Miller and wants her podcast to be the conservative answer to Call Her Daddy—posted the same numbers. She added:
In this case, however, the biggest lie was the statistic itself. (Before I get to that, I need to do a super snarky aside with visuals. I’m not sure you can put visuals in parenthesis, but I’m doing it. Katie Miller got dragged recently when she posted “liberal men aren’t attractive.” Most replies simply included pictures of her husband, Trump’s immigration goon whose dark soul is visible on the outside. 
Some people on X added commentary that had me laughing out loud like, “bold thing to say when your husband looks like a big toe,” and “curious thing to say when your husband looks like a cross between a rabies infected lowly worm and a hardboiled egg.” And yes, we have full license to make fun of Stephen Miller’s looks because he is a disgusting human being inside and out who seems to be running our country unchecked.) Okay, back to the point. The study cited by Lara and Katie—both of whom have high-powered careers and don’t stay home with their children—was conducted by a sketchy website called EduBirdie which will write your college papers for you for a mere $8 per page. The site surveyed college women and asked them to choose between four “role models:”
Most of the 2,000 women surveyed (the 47%) chose category one but that doesn’t mean what Fox thinks it’s means. The only thing “trad” about the definition the survey offered is that the man continues to be the primary earner. Otherwise, it’s basically having everything—happy marriage, kids, and a job. This is not the “trad wife” model that Project 2025 is pushing where women devote themselves entirely to their children and husband. In fact, as Marcotte points out the “role model” that fits that image best is actually the “trophy wife,” which came in last place having been chosen by only 14% of the young women surveyed. (I wonder if it would have had less support if the husband in question wasn’t described as rich.) In its explanation of why so few women chose this female archetype, EduBirdie admitted that “Women now care about having their own income, choices, and control over their lives.” Ya think? The description went on to say:
So basically, the survey that Trump and Miller and Fox are using to prove that women are craving relationships that have them staying home, popping out babies, and baking bread in their bonnets while giving up decision-making authority to their husbands says exactly the opposite. There’s a reason I bring this up in my discussion of the rape academy, and it’s not just because I have a sinking suspicious that the men of Zzz would like nothing more than subservient wives. Marital rape. These men were raping their wives. That’s a crime, but it wasn’t in 1850 or 1950 or even 1980. In fact, in some states, what they’re doing might fall in legal gray areas even today. Our marriage laws were based English common law which essentially saw women as the property of their husbands. In 1763, English Chief Justice Mathew Hale explained why there was no such thing as rape in marriage:
That thinking survived for more than 200 years. For most of our history, state rape laws made exemptions for spouses. That began to change in the 1970s, but the process was slow, and many would argue that it’s still not complete. The first states to take on this issue were Michigan and Delaware. In 1974 they rewrote their laws to get rid of the marital exemption, but there were caveats. In Michigan, for example, rape of a spouse was only criminal if the couple had filed for divorce or were no longer living together. The first states to completely outlaw marital rape were South Dakota and Nebraska in 1975. The first case in which a husband was criminally prosecuted for raping his wife took place in Oregon a few years later. He was acquitted, but the case called attention to the issue. The first ever conviction for marital rape came in 1979 in Massachusetts. It involved an estranged husband who broke into his wife’s house while drunk and violently attacked her. While this was progress, it proved that standards for holding a husband accountable were higher. By 1993 all states had removed the marital exemption, but many states continue to treat marital rape differently than any other kinds of sexual assault, making these cases more difficult to prosecute. Until 2019, for example, Minnesota law included protections for husbands if they still lived with and had sexual relations with the spouse who claimed to have been raped. In fact, a recent analysis showed that 30 states still provide some exemptions from rape prosecution for husbands. Want to hear the scariest one? In some states, a husband is protected from prosecution if he rapes his wife while she is mentally or physically impaired, unconscious, or asleep. What do you want to bet this fact excitedly made the rounds on Zzzz? (My law-school-drop-out guess is that if you’re the one who drugged her for the purposes of raping her, you don’t get a pass because drugging her was illegal in the first place. At least I hope that’s true.) As far as I know, the architects of Project 2025 have never said that they want to bring back marital rape exemptions, but they have said they want to get rid of no-fault divorce laws which are credited with helping women escape abusive marriages. What they really want to do is roll back women’s rights so that we have no choices other than being wives and mothers. Bringing us back to the era of trad wives is bringing us back to an era in which women had no recourse against husbands who raped them. Sorry Fox, no young woman wants that, and the bogus survey you cite proves as much. There’s a new book out called Yesteryears. It’s the debut novel by Caro Claire Burke, and it has a perfect premise: a modern-day trad wife influencer suddenly wakes up in 1855 where she faces the trials and tribulations of being a truly traditional trad wife. The book is big news in publishing. Burke got a seven-figure deal and was immediately approached by Amazon and Anne Hathaway who optioned the film. I haven’t read any reviews of the book because I hate spoilers, but I’m hoping that along with tackling the big issues of feminism and politics we also see the main character learn what it’s like to live without washing machines, vacuum cleaners, supermarkets, tampons, antibiotics, birth control, vaccines, the right to vote, and protections against being raped by her husband. Sex on Wednesday is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Sex on Wednesday that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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