Immediately after the midterms ended and the media started reporting that a majority of white women voted for Republicans Ted Cruz in Texas (59 percent), Ron DeSantis in Florida (51 percent), and Brian Kemp in Georgia (76 percent), the calls for white women's heads started rolling in on social media. White women didn't vote for those candidates in higher numbers than white men, but instead of calling out men, progressive white women started self-flagellating and promising to make other white women, collectively, "do better." Others were less conciliatory, like the actor Heather Mattarazzo, who tweeted that white women should “choke to death on the white supremacist patriarchal cock.”
None of the people issuing either mea culpas or threats seem to have actually voted for Cruz or DeSantis or Kemp or Trump, but apparently they think they can sway those who did by using some combination of shame and bullying, including the Women's March, which tweeted:
This tweet was not well received, at least if the 4,800 replies—the vast majority of which are some variation of “fuck off”—are any indication. As one woman replied, "I’m going to just take a stab in the dark here, but I’m not sure if condescendingly telling an entire demographic of women that they have a lot to learn and need growth is a good strategy."
While I understand the impulse to blame anonymous populations for our problems and defeats, it's not hard to see why people bristle at this kind of message. Blaming white women for not electing Democrats is based on the false presumption that white women are a homogenous population, that we are all supposed to be allies for the great feminist cause. When the right does this—treating, for instance, all Arabs (and Indians, Pakistanis, and Sikhs) as criminals when a Muslim extremist commits an act of violence—those of us on the left tend to object, and for good reason: Punishing the collective for the actions of the few is how we get things like the Muslim ban, the border wall, racial profiling, and vague demands that all Muslims get together and condemn ISIS attacks in unison. It’s ridiculous thinking: People are individuals, and we should treat them like it—and that even includes white women.
White women are not a monolith. We don't all know each other. We don't all go to the same church or yoga class. Some of us, in fact, don't go to church or yoga at all. White women, like all populations, are a large, unwieldy group made up of individuals with an array of concerns and values, and less than half (48 percent) of white women lean Democratic. The fact that conservative women voted for Republican candidates should be no more surprising than the fact that liberal women voted for Dems, regardless of their race.
There are reasons not to blindly shout about "white women" when you’re pissed about the outcome of the election. For one, why the hell aren't you shouting at white men? They vote for Republicans at even higher rates than white women. This women-blaming rhetoric reeks of misogyny, which may be ironic considering it comes primarily from progressive women. Regardless, it won’t fix anything. The way to win races is to actually appeal to voters (or to suppress them), and the only way to appeal to voters is to either try and change their opinion (and good luck with that) or to meet them where they already stand.
by Katie Herzog, The Stranger | Read more:
Image: Twitter
None of the people issuing either mea culpas or threats seem to have actually voted for Cruz or DeSantis or Kemp or Trump, but apparently they think they can sway those who did by using some combination of shame and bullying, including the Women's March, which tweeted:
This tweet was not well received, at least if the 4,800 replies—the vast majority of which are some variation of “fuck off”—are any indication. As one woman replied, "I’m going to just take a stab in the dark here, but I’m not sure if condescendingly telling an entire demographic of women that they have a lot to learn and need growth is a good strategy."While I understand the impulse to blame anonymous populations for our problems and defeats, it's not hard to see why people bristle at this kind of message. Blaming white women for not electing Democrats is based on the false presumption that white women are a homogenous population, that we are all supposed to be allies for the great feminist cause. When the right does this—treating, for instance, all Arabs (and Indians, Pakistanis, and Sikhs) as criminals when a Muslim extremist commits an act of violence—those of us on the left tend to object, and for good reason: Punishing the collective for the actions of the few is how we get things like the Muslim ban, the border wall, racial profiling, and vague demands that all Muslims get together and condemn ISIS attacks in unison. It’s ridiculous thinking: People are individuals, and we should treat them like it—and that even includes white women.
White women are not a monolith. We don't all know each other. We don't all go to the same church or yoga class. Some of us, in fact, don't go to church or yoga at all. White women, like all populations, are a large, unwieldy group made up of individuals with an array of concerns and values, and less than half (48 percent) of white women lean Democratic. The fact that conservative women voted for Republican candidates should be no more surprising than the fact that liberal women voted for Dems, regardless of their race.
There are reasons not to blindly shout about "white women" when you’re pissed about the outcome of the election. For one, why the hell aren't you shouting at white men? They vote for Republicans at even higher rates than white women. This women-blaming rhetoric reeks of misogyny, which may be ironic considering it comes primarily from progressive women. Regardless, it won’t fix anything. The way to win races is to actually appeal to voters (or to suppress them), and the only way to appeal to voters is to either try and change their opinion (and good luck with that) or to meet them where they already stand.
by Katie Herzog, The Stranger | Read more:
Image: Twitter
