“They never stop, these Stepford Wives. They just clean and work like robots!” 

The mundane suburban lives of The Stepford Wives is a fantastical dream to many men, dare I say a Utopia beyond their wildest dreams. The Stepford society allowed the men to control their wives, with the click of a remote, this was a society that valued wives staying at home to cook and clean and tend their children, this was a society whose norms are to stay friendly and not challenge the status quo, or why that woman is glitching. So who would want to live in a boring Stepford wife’s world? Who would want to live in this “Utopia”?

Utopian societies are all about cultivating a set of norms and values that align with a dream or ideal “perfect society”. However no norms and standards need to be set in place in society, subconsciously just by interacting and surrounding yourself with people in a social setting norms will automatically get made. People are drawn to a system or set of standards that surround them. So when thinking of creating a queer utopia, whether it’s inclusive or transformative (or really a mixture of the two) there will be standards and expectations. 

However, the idea exists that there shouldn’t be norms in a perfect world or that in a perfect world (like a Utopia) everyone just lives in peace and is welcome to be exactly who they are. But by describing a world that is peaceful and inclusive I am implying that the norm would be acceptance. So there inherently have to be norms no matter what, in any society. Norms are a part of who we are as a collective. We should not be disregarding them, we should be constantly questioning and analyzing the norms that we build today. It’s just a matter of what the norms in our dream world can be and what rules come out of a world that accepts everyone, is inclusive of all identities, and transforms who is in power and who is being represented (ideally).  

But this all begs the question of how are norms created? How do we change the norms we exist in today if we don’t know how the norms came to be in the first place? The majority of our society would say that we should move away from the norms that create the Stepford Wives and create new norms that can lend women and all individuals the freedom to live their lives, without the remote control.