"Patriarchy Hannah" Exposed

Picking Up The Pieces

I’ve been active on Twitter/X—I call it TwiX—for most of the last 8 years. During that time, I’ve gotten a pretty good look at the Christian world on that sphere, for better and worse.

There is a sector of the Christian community of TwiX that promotes the “Trad” lifestyle. That segment has always been around, but in recent years the Duggar family helped make it fashionable.

That world is known for hard patriarchy: husband works full-time, wife stays home with the kids and homeschools. More radical variations of that have the husband making all the decisions, and church communities promoting male rule in all sectors, not just church leadership. The really hardcore variations have husbands disciplining their wives. We’re talking wife-spanking cults. (And I don’t mean where the wife asks nicely, either. It’s why I call it the COVENANT™️ dungeon.)

Enter “Patriarchy Hannah”, who went by the Twitter handle “harmonizedgrace”. She garnered quite the follower base—over 26,000. She also had a podcast called Patriarchy Country (https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/patriarchy-country/5226137).

From those platforms, she promoted a “trad” lifestyle, fashioning herself as a Christian stay-at-home homeschooling mom of 14 kids, whose husband worked in construction. In my TwiX life, I knew OF her, but her tweets/posts never really crossed my feed. I can’t recall having any interactions with her over the years.

I know some “trad” folks with whom I interact, such as Lizzie (@farmingandjesus). She’s a little crazy sometimes, but she’s cool. Lizzie and her husband—former drug addicts who are now Christians—are very transparent and fight the good fight. She’s a good one to follow.

But “Hannah” was different. Some otherwise conservative TwiXers started noticing inconsistencies in her backstory, but one sleuth—Ryan Duff—decided to do some detective work. What he found: “Hannah” is a farce. You can read about it here. The executive summary: she’s single and childless. You read that correctly: no husband, no 14 kids, no homeschooling.

And subsequent investigation revealed that “Hannah” not only is not a “trad” wife or even a wife, she allegedly has a porn persona on TwiX that she runs from a different account (https://x.com/curvyjforyou).

Needless to say, the entire “trad” sector of social media world is in full meltdown.

Some commenters have asked to the effect, "But who has she actually harmed? A lot of people use anon accounts to market a brand?"

Let's unpack that a bit.

"Hannah" certainly is not the first single woman to promote Christian patriarchy; heck, single MEN do THAT every day.

The problem is she did it while CLAIMING to be married and having 14 kids and homeschooling. She literally built a brand by PROMOTING a paradigm--Christian Patriarchy--while CLAIMING that she actually LIVED IT.

But the entire time, she had absolutely no experience in that paradigm.

She marketed herself as someone who could pass as a Duggar acolyte. She made bold and fantastic claims about her life. They were all bullpoopoo.

Here's the problem: the trad movement does a wonderful job marketing that lifestyle as a panacea. Just return to the ideal where the man works a long day and brings home the bacon, the wife stays home with the kids, homeschools, grows vegetables, cooks the meals, and rides him like a Derby horse at night—and you’ll have Godly children, a marriage with great orgasmic bliss, and all the things.

Except it doesn’t always work out that way.

I've had a lot of experience in comp/patriarch churches. I've had comp/patriarchs in small groups that I've taught over the years. I've dated women who--in retrospect--were drenched in the Headship Theology paradigm. Heck, I MARRIED someone whose church had been steeped in Federal Vision. (I hadn't even heard of FV until a couple years into the marriage and her old church went kaboom over it. I could give you an earful about what we have unpacked over 15 years.)

But where I'm going: in these circles, I can count the number of "trads" on one hand. And those who have made it work: the man makes major 💵.

I am familiar with the local homeschooling community. What they all seem to have in common: most are quite well-to-do. From an income standpoint, we’re in the lower end of the spectrum. But none of them have particularly large households. The families I know? 3-4 kids tops. In my previous church, I know only one family that has more than that. And they don't homeschool anymore; she works full-time.

And that's the thing: for all the talk about the "trad" paradigm and the glories of hard patriarchy--where he busts HIS derriere in the "real world" and she stays home and homeschools and runs a thrifty household--THE VAST MAJORITY OF THOSE FAMILIES IN THOSE CHURCH CIRCLES ARE FULL-TIME TWO-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS.

In my previous church--SBC/A29--I knew of one stay-at-home DAD. But almost every family was two-income. And the one large family? She was a SAHM for a while, but she now works outside. I say all of this to give you a realistic high-level view of the economic realities.

Fact is, very few of you are going to earn the kind of money that makes the "trad" life feasible. And even if you DO, it's not a panacea. My gripe with "Hannah": she sold herself as actually LIVING the paradigm that she was selling.

What also bothers me: she was very aggressive in deriding sexual abuse victims and women who lived on the wrong side of the tracks. But she apparently was marketing a porn persona.

That's the part that leaves me beside myself: she "killed" when she could have "saved."

Promoting a ruse was bad enough. But attacking victims, and deriding women who were living on the wrong side of the tracks, ALL WHILE SHE APPARENTLY HAD A PORN PERSONA ON ANOTHER ACCOUNT...why?

I have theories, but I want to hear her express her “why.”

I hope she reconsiders her life path in the fallout of this. I would rather see favorable endings. This is painful to watch.

While I did not endorse her viewpoint as an ideal, when someone wears the jersey for Team Jesus, I want that person to represent well. I hope she finds Jesus.

But what about the rest of the Christian sector? Remember: she had at least 26,000 followers on TwiX. She had a podcast. She had been a guest on other podcasts. Other high-profile Christian figures had platformed her. The “trad” sector adored her, and men in that sector made her their poster girl. And she was a complete phony.

A friend of mine has said that “social media is not life.” To a certain extent that is true: a person can embrace a meta-persona and build a brand completely removed from his or her real self. But I’ve also personally met some of my Twitter allies; I’ve met them in person, I’ve Zoomed with some of them, I’m FB friends with them, I know some of them in real life.

But the issue is who we platform and why we platform them and the extent to which we platform them. While almost anyone can be living a double life, there comes a point where we have to be able to ascertain whether a person is who they say they are before we platform them.

If I am running a podcast and invite someone to join me, I’m going to have reasonably vetted their backstory. I won’t be able to completely vouch for his or her character, but—surely to goodness—I’m at least going to verify that he or she is qualified to speak in the realm they are speaking.

A friend of mine—who is a very high-end influencer, a former seminary professor—has a policy of ignoring anons (anonymous accounts). Personally, I think that is a wise move. If Christians did that, it would clean up a lot of the really caustic, toxic sludge that drags down Christian social media.