It’s just pseudo-progressive language that hasn’t been thought through by the people who use it.
“Girls can be bosses too!” and “Men can exhibit wife-like behaviour too!” is the sentiment, yet such language implies that boss-like behaviour among women is unusual or out of the ordinary, and that wife-like behaviour is not typical for men either. Such terminology entrenches gender roles, even as it tries to celebrate defying them.
A wife is just a woman who is married, a husband is just a man who is married. It’s that simple, or it’s supposed to be. The term “malewife” insinuates that there is more to it than that, that wives should act a certain way and that men can be wives if they fulfil that wifely role.
So it’s even worse than just meanings and language being eroded.
I romanced Sera as an elf and was willing to cut her some slack. She’s not a malicious bigot, just kind of a simpleton who simply doesn’t know better because of her upbringing, and you can change her for the better.
I went absolutely awww when I agreed to marry her in Trespasser and saw what she wrote in her diary afterwards. (“WE SAID YES! Lady [name] Lavellan is my Wifey! Do I get her name? That’s like family.”)
I loved reading her diary throughout the game! Its so sweet how much she doodles the Inqusitor, worries and thinks about her, learns elvish to read to her and everything else.
me playing ff8 for the very first time knowing nothing about it, other than it must be a sequel to FF7, discovering that in fact it is NOT a continuation of the story of Cloud and the gang or even in that same world
I feel like malewife almost always is used ironically, and only sometimes to poke fun at gender roles. I haven’t ever heard of it being used in a more literal, unironic sense.