The Women of the Right-Wing

‘I’ve always said women are smarter than men,’ President Trump pronounced in September of last year during the controversial confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, ‘I’ve said that a lot. And I mean it.’ The mention of his coveted statistic of ‘The 53 Percent’ soon followed – the proportion of white women who voted to get him into the White House in 2016. Despite the ‘lock her up’ chants and locker-room talk which defined the Trump campaign, white women, one of the largest voting blocs of the US, were not deterred. Jodi Smith, a Republican from Indiana, told a local paper that, at the end of the Trump presidency, she expects people to say, ‘Wow, this was the best thing that ever happened to women’ – a tone-deaf contrast to the millions of women who yearly partake in the Women’s March on Washington to protest the current administration. Arguably the most ideologically incoherent of all American voting blocs, white women exhibit an increased separatism to the plight of other women and people of colour. In 2016, 94% of black women voted for Hillary Clinton while 69% of Latinas did the same. It raises the question which has a myriad of racially motivated and illogically-founded answers; why are white women, on a global scale, becoming so enchanted by right-wing populism?

To make the United States the exception, to segregate it as an irreformable case study which could not possibly be emulated – is tempting. It would be easier to watch from across the Atlantic if we ignore the white female involvement in the recent right-wing upsurge, easier to pat ourselves on the back for repealing the eighth, to smugly look (but not too closely) at the women in power across Europe. The truth is, we have long lost our right to do our best Nelson Muntz impression to our audience across the pond.

All over Europe, women are considered to lead the most electorally successful right-wing parties; Marine Le Pen of the National Rally Party of France, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland and vice chair of the rightist Law and Justice Party, Beate Szydlo and Pia Kjarsgaard of the Danish People’s Party. When electorates have flirted with fascism and right-wing ideologies in the past, men have always been on top. As female voices now begin to be the ones to inculcate and support anti-immigrant and racist sentiment, it is ironic that they stand atop a movement which has for so long boasted misogyny. Elisa Gutsche has denoted this female leadership as a ‘modern guise [used by right-wing parties] to appeal to female voters. These are not progressive parties; there is no real gender equality.’ While Gutsche may be right, it is undeniable that these parties still possess a strong, white, female base – but why?

The love/hate relationship white women seem have with the patriarchy of populism is one which is cited by Andrea Dworkin as a survival strategy. Dworkin, the author of Right Wing Women, says that in aligning herself with the right wing, the white woman ‘ransoms the remains of a life… by promising indifference to the fate of other women.’ By making a deal with the devil of conservatism, white women believe they are ensuring their survival in a world economically dominated by men. In supporting policies which financially benefit her (white) husband, she is preserving her societal position in comfortable suburbia. While the economic feasibility of their husbands may lay the foundations for white female rightists, it is impossible to ignore the fact that white women are in a politically and economically privileged position.

The feminism of many white women is becoming more performative than it is intersectional, more self-effacing than it is selfless, so much so that it has been granted the title of ‘white feminism.’ Deanna Zandt said in an interview with The Undefeated that ‘the second-wave feminist mantra of ‘the personal is the political’, the notion that women’s everyday struggles fit within the larger political system, has been warped to ‘if it’s not my personal experience, it’s not my politics.’’ This etymological evolution is evident in the ‘identity politics’ which has recently polarised the United States. White women live in a privilege paradox, ‘they are granted structural power by their race’, explains Moira Donegan, ‘but excluded from it by their sex.’ So, they separate themselves from the issues of oppression faced by their gender and instead indulge in the privileges of their ‘whiteness’ – the recent confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is an exemplar of this.

Kavanaugh, upon being nominated for the life-long role of Supreme Court Justice last year, was accused of sexually assaulting Dr. Christine Blasey Ford when he was 17 years old. During the divisive hearings, Kavanaugh neurotically pointed at calendars which detailed exactly who he was lifting weights and drinking beer with at any given time during his teen years as Blasey Ford emotionally illustrated her startling, albeit disarranged story of assault. Political pundits predicted a swift exodus of women from the Republican party – but it never came. Out of all voting demographics, Republican women were the only one that increased its support for Brett Kavanaugh during these hearings. President Trump, who has himself 22 allegations of sexual misconduct against him, constructed a conspiracy of false accusations. He contorted into a wrongly accused son about to lose his job in one speech, begging, ‘Mom, what do I do? What do I do?’ Republican women flocked to his side and founded the campaign ‘Moms for Kavanaugh’, more protective of their sons than their daughters.

In the fearmongering of false accusations, the Republican party implies misogyny. A report by Stanford University documented that, according to FBI statistics, ‘only about 2% of all rape and related sex charges are determined to be false, the same percentage as for other felonies.’ Republican women support Trump despite his calls to defund Planned Parenthood, to repeal the Affordable Care Act, to denounce victims of sexual assault. Inevitably, they face accusations of internalised misogyny. Following the 2016 elections, Hillary Clinton said to MSNBC, ‘when I see women [supporting Trump], I think why are they publicly disrespecting themselves?’ The presidential runner-up harbours more hard feelings for her question of internalised misogyny that she may let on. In the midst of her first bid in 2008, Clinton was advised to downplay her gender because voters did not want ‘someone who would be the first mama,’ despite Republican Sarah Palin simultaneously self-identifying as ‘Mama Grizzly.’

These paradoxical definitions of gender and femininity are adding fuel to the fire of right-wing populism of which ‘identity politics’ are the oxygen. Traditional binaries are now burning in the public arena and the right rush to revive them – ‘the real people’, ‘the silent majority,’ clamoring to protect the perceived loss of privilege and culture stimulated by an immigrant influx. The racialised scapegoating of minorities becomes common practice while their civil liberties burn at the stake. Regardless of gender, many are being seduced by rightist politics of which pseudo-intellectuals like Jordan Peterson are the gateway drug. In voting for the right, there is an implicit justification of the isolation of the ‘Other’ which transposes in right-wing policies. It is caged children on the Mexico border, it is police brutality, it is refusing the rights of people who do not fit the binary of white, or cisgendered, or straight, which sets the world alight. If we do not take action now, we risk watching it burn.