This is nothing new. We never could get the Equal Rights Amendment passed to secure our social, legal, economic, and bodily rights. It’s simply diabolical that white women were persuaded to not fully include our black sisters in our fight for gender equality. We are all poorer for it.
The life lesson we must all embrace is to meet any effort to divide us against one another with great skepticism. We know this is the playbook, so let’s stop falling for it.
Thank you. I saved your black women post because I thought it was so important. Yes, I'm a white woman over 50, overwhelmed by everything these days. Thank you for your passion and willingness to keep participating.
As a white woman born in the 1950s, I came of age politically during the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the women’s liberation movement — the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Equal Rights Amendment, and Roe v. Wade. Those moments shaped the way I understand the world. Most days, I’m deeply grateful for that education — it instilled in me a lasting commitment to human rights and a habit of paying attention.
Lately, though, some of my white women friends say they’re exhausted — worn down by what feels like a never-ending fight just to hold onto ground already gained. I understand that fatigue. But the clearest lesson from those early years is this: our shared sense of humanity can be manipulated for political power. It requires vigilance. It requires protection.
I’ve always been aware of the privilege I carry, and I’ve felt a responsibility to use it — not to step back, but to step forward and push harder where I can.
As a RCOSWWP (reasonably comfortable old suburban white woman progressive), I find this essay, as well as the previous essay "We don't listen to Black women" to be absolutely brilliant. I would especially like to call out the section in which XPlisset ties the shamecalling of white women to the terms used to identify white racism (eg "Karen") to give moral coloration to the demonizing, thereby consolidating both racism and misogyny and justifying violence.
Spot on, and thank you for your insight, thoroughness, and very clear understanding of the issues at hand today.
My response to your post about not listening to Black women was short because that’s all I had time for, but I’ve been aware since I was a little girl that we have not listened to the wise and prophetic voices of Black women and we are worse off for it. Black women have a wisdom in their hard-lived experience and we could learn so much from their foresight and clear understanding of what is happening, what has happened, and what the outcome of things will likely be.
Back to this post — I think many men are afraid of women’s voices (both Black and white) because we have lived experience and insight that frightens them. The oppressed always have knowledge and experience that the oppressor doesn’t have. I believe it’s why men were afraid to let women vote and are generally afraid to allow women to hold positions of power, which would mean that the male view of life and the way men go about it would crumble, or at the very least become questionable, and that’s frightening… and threatening.
Women can be acutely insightful, wise, strong, aware, understanding, forgiving, intelligent, intuitive, compassionate, good at conflict resolution, etc. Women like Noem and Bondi are power-hungry and cruel, and in my view, have very little lived experience on an even keel, much like POTUS.
Gonna be clear. White Women are a very big part and Reason Trump is in office. Those White Women Obama Voters became Trump Voters which I will never understand. And those MAGA men hate them.
If you look at the demographics of who these characterizations of white women exclude, it becomes clear that the angry white and non-white men on the right are shrinking their own base by their actions and as a result becoming more paranoid and violent.
and the teachers’ union is part of the same game plan. Divide divide divide and sow fear. That’s the predatory capitalist way and has been for a long time. We gotta keep working against it.
I admit I skimmed this post - I am neither "affluent" nor "urban" - just a white great grandmother who is freaking fed up and done with this bunch of fruitcakes (repubs) and their numnut "leader".
Their treatment of anyone who isnt bending the knee & nodding their head in time - ANYONE - makes clear that they were unprepared for people in Minneapolis and elsewhere to stand up and protest in favor of people who are being treated unfairly - to put it mildly.
And - in response to someone commenting that white women - formerly for Obama - voted for this absolute piece of garbage - NOPE - I voted for Obama twice & frankly would have done so again. I think doofus won in 2016 mainly because too many men AND women are afraid of a female president - just like 2024! What a bunch of wimps (there is a better word for it but I'll be polite.
This post stirred up a recent memory, and thinking about that memory stirred up an older one. I live in Hawaii, where the white population is under 25% (excluding mixed-race folks like my kids). Stirred into action by the immediate abuses of the 2nd Trump administration, I attended several of the early mass protests in Honolulu. I was really surprised to see how many white women (a lot of them of my advanced age group) were participating. A lot more than 25%, that's for sure. I hadn't seen so many haoles in one place since Garrison Keillor came to town. As the protests have grown, the percentage of white women has shrunk, even though their absolute number (in my observation) remains about the same. So I can see how MAGAts can see them as enemies. Because they are. But another question also occurred to me. Why so many women, and why now? And it is that question that stirred the older memory. One of my favorite movies is "White Men Can't Jump' (As a white man who loves basketball but never could jump, I could relate). In one scene, Sidney tells Billy that, even if he can't understand it, "women KNOW s**t." The presence of so many white women, and women as a group, at these early protests might be an example of women catching on to things before their male counterparts. A lot of them saw through Trump and Trumpism almost by instinct. And MAGAts know that smart women are a threat.
(Oh. And your initial observation made me go back and look at your essay We Don't Listen to Black Women, which I found to be predictably brilliant.) Your stuff is great, but sometimes we get overwhelmed.
If the word “protected” lands like “women were safe,” I get why that would feel insulting. In the Taylor Lorenz conversation that sparked this piece, she frames “protection” as a political role….the story society tells about which women are supposed to get deference and whose fear gets treated as legitimate…not a claim that women are ever safe from male violence. She even describes the right offering white women “a fantasy, a protection, an elevated status,” which is different from bodily safety. That distinction is what I’m pointing at here: the moment certain women stop serving that role, the culture flips on them fast. And you’re right none of that erases the reality that sexual violence has always been part of women’s lives.
This is nothing new. We never could get the Equal Rights Amendment passed to secure our social, legal, economic, and bodily rights. It’s simply diabolical that white women were persuaded to not fully include our black sisters in our fight for gender equality. We are all poorer for it.
The life lesson we must all embrace is to meet any effort to divide us against one another with great skepticism. We know this is the playbook, so let’s stop falling for it.
Thank you. I saved your black women post because I thought it was so important. Yes, I'm a white woman over 50, overwhelmed by everything these days. Thank you for your passion and willingness to keep participating.
As a white woman born in the 1950s, I came of age politically during the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the women’s liberation movement — the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Equal Rights Amendment, and Roe v. Wade. Those moments shaped the way I understand the world. Most days, I’m deeply grateful for that education — it instilled in me a lasting commitment to human rights and a habit of paying attention.
Lately, though, some of my white women friends say they’re exhausted — worn down by what feels like a never-ending fight just to hold onto ground already gained. I understand that fatigue. But the clearest lesson from those early years is this: our shared sense of humanity can be manipulated for political power. It requires vigilance. It requires protection.
I’ve always been aware of the privilege I carry, and I’ve felt a responsibility to use it — not to step back, but to step forward and push harder where I can.
As a RCOSWWP (reasonably comfortable old suburban white woman progressive), I find this essay, as well as the previous essay "We don't listen to Black women" to be absolutely brilliant. I would especially like to call out the section in which XPlisset ties the shamecalling of white women to the terms used to identify white racism (eg "Karen") to give moral coloration to the demonizing, thereby consolidating both racism and misogyny and justifying violence.
Spot on, and thank you for your insight, thoroughness, and very clear understanding of the issues at hand today.
My response to your post about not listening to Black women was short because that’s all I had time for, but I’ve been aware since I was a little girl that we have not listened to the wise and prophetic voices of Black women and we are worse off for it. Black women have a wisdom in their hard-lived experience and we could learn so much from their foresight and clear understanding of what is happening, what has happened, and what the outcome of things will likely be.
Back to this post — I think many men are afraid of women’s voices (both Black and white) because we have lived experience and insight that frightens them. The oppressed always have knowledge and experience that the oppressor doesn’t have. I believe it’s why men were afraid to let women vote and are generally afraid to allow women to hold positions of power, which would mean that the male view of life and the way men go about it would crumble, or at the very least become questionable, and that’s frightening… and threatening.
Women can be acutely insightful, wise, strong, aware, understanding, forgiving, intelligent, intuitive, compassionate, good at conflict resolution, etc. Women like Noem and Bondi are power-hungry and cruel, and in my view, have very little lived experience on an even keel, much like POTUS.
Gonna be clear. White Women are a very big part and Reason Trump is in office. Those White Women Obama Voters became Trump Voters which I will never understand. And those MAGA men hate them.
This strikes so close to home for me. As an 82 year (young) white woman, I agree with Laurie who said your essays are " absolutely brilliant"!
Thank you again for your work.
Missing Jessie Jackson today. 😞
If you look at the demographics of who these characterizations of white women exclude, it becomes clear that the angry white and non-white men on the right are shrinking their own base by their actions and as a result becoming more paranoid and violent.
Time for T-shirts: RACE TRAITOR on the front. PRO DEI on the back.
The vitriol directed at Hillary
and the teachers’ union is part of the same game plan. Divide divide divide and sow fear. That’s the predatory capitalist way and has been for a long time. We gotta keep working against it.
I admit I skimmed this post - I am neither "affluent" nor "urban" - just a white great grandmother who is freaking fed up and done with this bunch of fruitcakes (repubs) and their numnut "leader".
Their treatment of anyone who isnt bending the knee & nodding their head in time - ANYONE - makes clear that they were unprepared for people in Minneapolis and elsewhere to stand up and protest in favor of people who are being treated unfairly - to put it mildly.
And - in response to someone commenting that white women - formerly for Obama - voted for this absolute piece of garbage - NOPE - I voted for Obama twice & frankly would have done so again. I think doofus won in 2016 mainly because too many men AND women are afraid of a female president - just like 2024! What a bunch of wimps (there is a better word for it but I'll be polite.
Race traitor? Today’s version of n*gg*r lover, I suppose?
This post stirred up a recent memory, and thinking about that memory stirred up an older one. I live in Hawaii, where the white population is under 25% (excluding mixed-race folks like my kids). Stirred into action by the immediate abuses of the 2nd Trump administration, I attended several of the early mass protests in Honolulu. I was really surprised to see how many white women (a lot of them of my advanced age group) were participating. A lot more than 25%, that's for sure. I hadn't seen so many haoles in one place since Garrison Keillor came to town. As the protests have grown, the percentage of white women has shrunk, even though their absolute number (in my observation) remains about the same. So I can see how MAGAts can see them as enemies. Because they are. But another question also occurred to me. Why so many women, and why now? And it is that question that stirred the older memory. One of my favorite movies is "White Men Can't Jump' (As a white man who loves basketball but never could jump, I could relate). In one scene, Sidney tells Billy that, even if he can't understand it, "women KNOW s**t." The presence of so many white women, and women as a group, at these early protests might be an example of women catching on to things before their male counterparts. A lot of them saw through Trump and Trumpism almost by instinct. And MAGAts know that smart women are a threat.
(Oh. And your initial observation made me go back and look at your essay We Don't Listen to Black Women, which I found to be predictably brilliant.) Your stuff is great, but sometimes we get overwhelmed.
Mansplaining. Bigtime.
"Not protected anymore"?
Probably every one of your white female readers has been raped.
Etc.
You appear to have
no
idea.
If the word “protected” lands like “women were safe,” I get why that would feel insulting. In the Taylor Lorenz conversation that sparked this piece, she frames “protection” as a political role….the story society tells about which women are supposed to get deference and whose fear gets treated as legitimate…not a claim that women are ever safe from male violence. She even describes the right offering white women “a fantasy, a protection, an elevated status,” which is different from bodily safety. That distinction is what I’m pointing at here: the moment certain women stop serving that role, the culture flips on them fast. And you’re right none of that erases the reality that sexual violence has always been part of women’s lives.