Is a Christian “tradwife” influencer really an obese porn actress?
The strange story of Patriarchy Hannah
She was a Christian “tradwife,” a conservative woman who’d devoted her life to her husband and her 14 kids. She was known as ‘Patriarchy Hannah’—and became the center of an online community.
From behind her anonymous icon, in her social media commentary and podcast Patriarchy Country, she gave lessons on family, religion, anti-feminism and home cooking, just the way men like it.
This week, a shock exposé played out online. It turned out that ‘Patriarchy Hannah’ was someone else.
A woman having 14 kids at age 37 is math that works in “tradwife” circles.
Women get started having kids early, and don’t stop, this being female destiny and all. But it’d worked out for ‘Hannah’. She kept her real identity veiled, but offered a vision of Christian life done right.
She and her husband and children centered their lives on church and family. Or she said they did. Her husband, Tony, managed a construction firm. And she was at home, holding forth to millions of Christians on how to be a wife and mother.
She had new adventures regularly. She recently adopted a new baby. Fans sent gifts.
She made traditional Christianity seemed like it really worked.
She and Tony even got married without any dating, just the way the “tradwife” God likes it.
She believed in the whole “patriarchy” thing.
Or that’s what she said—day after day, for years—ever praising female “submission,” since after all, that’s how God intended it.
For a “tradwife,” Hannah sure had a tart tongue — especially about other women.
At any provocation, she’d tear many down as ‘Jezebels’, ‘whores’, and ‘harlots’. It was extreme. It was sort of entertaining too.
Fans could also be surprised by Patriarchy Hannah’s frequent talk of eating a lot of junk food. For all her demonstrations of Christian cooking technique, she often seemed generally unhealthy. She said that she had Lupus, and needed a kidney transplant.
Also, she liked rap music and smoked marijuana and had a transgender sister and was ‘sexually trafficked’ as a girl.
Hannah’s voice was a little…surprising.
She’d talk to fans on the phone, but never video chats. As one guy put it, she “sounds like she chain smokes two packs a day and shoots gin straight.”
Then Hannah would be online at all hours of the day and night. For a tradwife, it was a little strange?
Her real name, ‘Jennifer’, would sometimes appear. She’d even share a photo of herself…privately.
Publicly, fans never saw her face, though they did see her hands.
Hannah would post photos of cooking projects, and her hands were on display. Did they seem…different?
And what was going on with that Mason jar?
One time, Hannah posted a photo of another cooking project. To zoom in was to see the reflection of a woman.
Fans asked: Who is that?
But mostly, viewers stopped by at any time to find Hannah being a “tradwife.”
She hated feminism and yoga, which was ‘pagan’ of course. She especially hated yoga pants, which were ‘immodest’. She also hated women who criticize their husbands, and women in politics. Isn’t that an activity for men? The Bible tells her so.
And she told the world.
Her biggest problem turned out to be Google Image Search.
As questions and concerns about discrepancies in her stories had circulated awhile, a Christian “Internet sleuth” named Ryan Duff went in search. He found the selfie she’d share privately, and found via Google it was a woman named Alison on Facebook—who wasn’t “Hannah.”
The photos of houses that Hannah had posted, saying they were owned by her or her family, could also be reverse-searched. That led to a range of family records, which produced her real name: Jennifer Bays, age 37, originally of Arkansas. Duff searched public records, and found Jennifer wasn’t married.
She had no children.
She did have a rap sheet, however. In 2011, her life of crime started with getting arrested for identity theft.
On February 14th, Duff posted an X thread that exposed her, and it went viral.
He laid out the real estate evidence, and his searches of public records, and a range of other points. Some believed it. Others didn’t. Everyone waited for Hannah to reply.
None of it was true, she said, and addedthat the matter was so beneath her, she wouldn’t be dignifying Duff’s lies with any further response.
The sleuthing continued.
Like a Christian mystery, fans continued to work on the cues that Hannah had dropped, and the unknown Jennifer Bays emerged. A woman with a social media channel, ‘CurvyJForYou’, looked remarkably like her.
But this was a woman named ‘Jen’, a self-described BBW, or ‘big beautiful woman’, who did obese porn for pay.
Was it the same woman?
Fans of Patriarchy Hannah were left studying the online career of an obese porn actress, trying to decide if was their favorite “tradwife.”
It was a difficult day in Christianity.
Then Hannah was gone.
Her X account, her podcast, everything was just suddenly deleted. No explanation. No apology. Nothing.
News continued to come out.
Alison, the woman from the photo, spoke out. She’s lesbian. She knew ‘Hannah’ or rather Jennifer years ago. She thought Jennifer had a boyfriend who died in a drug overdose. He’d worked in the porn industry.
Among Christian fans, there was disorientation, even shock. There was efforts to unpack the emotional investment many had in her.
“She would try to act like the cool mom and she spoke with such authority on things. I didnt think someone would lie about having kids & being married when they made that their whole personality.”
In retrospect, there were “red flags,” many agreed.
It might’ve been interesting to muse over why they’d been ignored. Had “Patriarchy Hannah” been telling them what they wanted to hear, and so they just believed everything?
But mostly, everyone preferred to think about what she did wrong. A man offered: “The problem is that she catfished women for years into guilt and made herself a false standard.”
A woman added: “Well and she catfished men into being arrogant, controlling, misogynistic bullies.”
At the time, it was just ‘religion’. 🔶
Added: Jennifer Bays returned to X to make an apology that struck many as unheart-felt. As sleuthing continued, she was discovered to have ads on S&M websites like Collarslave, going by “Jen the Slave” and “seeking a sister slave.” She had journal entries about women “learning their place.”
A woman comments tartly:
“Further proves that the ‘Trad’ movement on Twitta has always been fueled by a fantasized fetish rather than a real lifestyle they all claim to live.”
