From the Vox article I posted earlier, which was trying to explain why white women vote republican. This is a political article. And, it sounds a lot like the male psychotherapy guidelines article from APA. To me, this is the language of the progressive left. To its logical end, the conclusion is men are bad, white people are bad. Vote Democrat!! Here are some quotes.
And while there were many thrilling, historic wins for
progressive women and women of color in particular in the 2018 midterms, as well as data showing that
some white women are peeling away from Trump, white women overall rendered more disappointment.
75 percent of white women—more even than white men!—voted for Republican Brian Kemp, who is passionately pro-life, over Stacey Abrams, a
staunch protector of women’s reproductive rights,
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, a supporter of alleged assaulters President Trump and
Brett Kavanaugh, over Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is dedicated to
improving women’s health care
The numbers were similar in the
Florida governor’s race, where 51 percent of white women voted for Republican Ron DeSantis,
who has voted against equal pay and the Violence Against Women Act, instead of Democrat Andrew Gillum, who wanted to protect no-cost birth control in the state
Note, maybe some women don't see these things as anti-women? Or, maybe they vote based on other concerns of how government works?
The numbers are disheartening and disappointing and, for some progressive white women, shame inducing, that they are part of a demographic that has the power to decide key elections but continually uses it in favor of candidates whose policies are anti-women.
Note, the group identity argument for shame. I don't give a rip that Jeffery Dahmer was white. I don't feel shame because of that. Why should skin color drive this shame?
We theorize and spitball: Are they so invested in their own white privilege that they
simply don’t care about other women? Are they parroting their Republican husbands
Ah, there's the racist, privilege argument and diminishment of women's ability to decide to support something other than a progressive democrat.
the rest of us shouldn’t be shocked, because if history serves, there is plenty of precedent for white women protecting their own power and status.
Yep, all identity. All the time. We can explain everything by race and gender.
Society at large tends to make an assumption about white women voters—that because they are oppressed by white men and the patriarchy they will stand with progressive social movements and rally in solidarity with the underrepresented.
How many of you feel oppressed by white men and the patriarchy?
Time and time again some of them have proven that they identify more strongly as Southerners or Christians or GOP members than they do as women—and they vote accordingly, even if and when that vote negatively impacts not only them (voting against equal pay) and their families (paid leave, affordable child care), but women in poverty, women of color, and queer women.
Wait, so women might see other values as important? Maybe, they might have opinions about, I don't know, how the government should be structured, or taxes. . . No. That can't be right. How dare they?
It’s tempting, in light of all this, to want to give up on white women. But even if we see history for what it is and adjust our expectations accordingly, the fact remains that white women make up a voting bloc that is too massive to ignore or simply write off. In both
the 2016 general race and the 2018 midterms, white women made up approximately 37 percent of the electorate—more than all black, Latino, and other voters of color combined. Progressives may have no choice but to unglue from the face-palm position and try to connect with white women voters in the hopes of expanding their coalition.
Payne is in the somewhat tricky position of explaining what she has learned, without justifying their actions or denying the white privilege that is certainly at play for some. She says that while some see white women’s overwhelming tendency to vote for the GOP as a personal, moral failure, she believes it is a systemic problem, the result of a yarn ball of issues, including women voters having a lack of information and living with close ties to conservative men in communities that bleed red.
White women in rural, small-town, and suburban America are connected to and surrounded by more conservative white men—fathers, husbands, pastors, uncles, brothers” who they are inclined to vote in tandem with, Payne says. Especially when those same men often “control the clicker”—tuned to Fox News, of course—and women, busy doing the lion’s share of domestic labor, tune out and end up with a lack of information about politics.
So, they're being oppressed and they're stupid.
“They are swimming in the deep end of white male patriarchy,” says Payne.
I asked Payne why white women in prickly, patriarchal districts don’t just secretly cast blue ballots. Anecdotally, she says she’d been told that some do, while others plan to vote Democrat (and even tell pollsters as much) but at the final hour they fold. “These women aren’t talking to one another about what feels wrong,” Payne says. “Their perception is that they’re alone and it reinforces thinking ‘I’mwrong.’”
There are white women voters who willingly, and with all the information at their disposal, cast their votes in favor of politicians who blatantly do not have any of their best interests in mind.
