It's very difficult for me to wrap my head around how these women think but I notice that for many women, the way that modern women are expected to navigate the workplace and the endeless sexism and abuse makes for a very depressing reality, and instead of using this as evidence of the reality of sexism, they interpret it as punishment for something women aren't supposed to do. Meanwhile the ideal of "motherhood" is propped up, where you have your big "project" in the form of children, and also the only human beings you are allowed to have authority over, and where there are centuries of this role being idealised and portrayed as the only ticket to patriarchal respect. You can see similar sentiments in GC spaces where women try to push ideas of sacred femininity and motherhood as some kind of gotcha against TIMs, to which, indeed, the fact that many women cannot or will not give birth is a sensible counterpoint. Women who cannot give birth are just as female as those who did, because sex is not a spectrum!
Many women latch onto and try to rehabilitate the one patriarchal value that women are allowed to have, with feminism being just about women in traditional roles deserving a bit more respect for it and less violence. For liberal women, the traditional idealised role is being pretty and sexy (i.e. sexual in ways that pander to men). For conservative women, the role is being pretty and being a mother (less sexual because women aren't supposed to have sex drives). Both of these rely on putting the cart before the horse, because they take social expectations and define the sexes in accordance with them, as opposed to seeing the sexes as objectively real regardless of any sexist baggage on top of it. To a lot of conservative-leaning women, the male-pandering sex-object idea of a woman that libfems have is offputting, but instead of rejecting it in favour of a less patriarchal but still sexually functional idea of a sexuality, they replace it with this idea where it's natural that sex does nothing for women and that women shouldn't even pretend that it does.
A lot of straight women also have extremely naive fiction-informed ideas about gender roles where men can consistently fail as human beings because the only thing that matters is their romantic role as protectors since it shows they have, awww, a heart of gold after all (the bar is in hell). It also goes with the attitude that I see a lot in straight women where they poo-poo a lot on shitty men and go all YASS QUEEN GIRLS RULE BOYS DROOL, but...still date these shitty men?? And I don't mean the manipulative types, I mean lucidly talking about how dumb and misogynistic their partners are and how little they give a shit about anything affecting their female partner, but then handwave it as just an expected part of the gender wars, tee-hee. Women might get a sense of control out of gathering up and criticising the ineptitude and narcissism of your average man, while getting none of the fear and insecurity from criticising and abandoning the system itself (which is seen as universal and obligatory so shrug, can't do anything about it even if it fucks me over).
I also think this contrast with brutish self-absorbed men is attractive to women due to it being sold to them through so many romance stories (partially because it allows them to live vicariously through someone who actually has the freedom to move about in the world and do things), which is how a lot of straight women function - they still want their hotblooded masculine knight on a white steed that they've been promised in romance novels, and the only problem is that these masculine men with heads up each other's asses aren't romantic enough or don't wash the dishes enough, when really the problem is that masculine aggressive men are never going to do these things because they're fundamentally at odds with what they are and what they value. A man buying you roses to get sex, erm, I mean, be romantic once in a blue moon has nothing to do with seeing women as human beings.
A part of this whole naviety is also this idea that being a gentleman and a romantic is somehow a fundamental part of masculinity, again because women get their ideas about men not from actually seeing how men act irl, but from romantic stories about men, as well as the many stories and ideals of women showing themselves to be good persons by settling for for shitty men. These women think that, because of all these stories, women in the past used to have lifelong straight relationships in their little cottages (with modern plumbing and medical advances ofc) with men who totally didn't beat them and control them, but were respectful and loving masculine partners (which....kinda isn't what being masculine is).
So I guess, knowing that most women have internalised these "normal", everyday ideas, and with the addition of religious brainwashing putting a divine spin on it, it's probably not that crazy that tradwife content has some degree of female following. But one thing that annoys me is that it's very rarely mentioned that most of these consumers of tradwife content are MEN. Conservatives often try to paint female engagement and desire for oppressive patriarchal structures as much higher than it actually is, so you often see them talk about there being millions of women turning away from feminism (and very rarely actually meet these women themselves). Or you see them awkwardly roleplay or troll as conservative women in male spaces, with supermodel/porn performer icons and a very obviously male language that your typical tradwife would just not have.
