According to the Associated Press, 53% of white women voters in the 2024 Presidential election voted for Donald Trump, with 46% casting votes for Harris. The commentary in the progressive circles where I hang out online was fierce, with questions in the vein of, “What the actual hell, white women?”
On a more personal note, my younger cousin, a fierce young woman studying medicine, asked me in one of the many post-election debriefs, “How can women vote against their own rights?”
As a queer white woman raised by a straight white woman in the climate of communal economic trauma that was Youngstown, Ohio, after the majority of steel mills closed in 1977, I have some thoughts. I’ve also had the experience of working with white women from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds in my roles as a clinical trauma specialist and educator. And I am a woman in long-term addiction recovery myself.
In recovery support circles, we often work with women to learn to trust and befriend other women. Building healing friendships with women can be tricky. This is because, either by experience or acculturation, we were trained to view other women as competition: competition for male partners in the marriage market and competition for jobs and success.
When the memes and questions ask, “How can women turn on other women?,” my gut answer is, “Easily. I’ve been seeing it my whole life.”
My mother was the first woman to shape my view of other women. Looking at one of the reasons why white women didn’t support Kamala Harris, racism and ingrained white supremacy are significant variables in the equation.
While I saw my mother, an educator and school administrator, be very kind to Black people and others she referred to as “minorities” with kindness in direct interactions, her snide comments at home revealed something else. I heard constant complaints about “affirmative action” and people being promoted “because of their skin color in the name of diversity.”
Granted, she also said this about Black men, but her tone had more bite when talking about women. Examining her early developmental influence while writing my memoir, I can see where jealousy or bitterness factor towards other women can amplify racism with the force of a chemical accelerant.
But what makes women so jealous? The fear of not being seen as special enough compared to other women? Not sufficiently wonderful or attractive enough to attract the perfect mate whose very presence will prove that we are important because somebody wanted us?
I can hear many conservative women I know protesting, “I am my own woman. My husband doesn’t tell me what to do.” While some may genuinely feel that way, I wonder if they’ve done the deep digging to explore the paradoxes in which many of us are raised.
Again, I turn to my mother. On one hand, she raised me to be a fierce over-achiever. When others in my family complained I was “too bossy” as a child, my mom declared that I was simply showing leadership skills. She wanted me to aim high, to be a medical doctor or another career in the sciences.
Yet, at the same time, she vocalized, sometimes hurtfully, disdain about the growing size of my body and concern that I would never be able to find a husband – someone to take care of me, both financially and socially. While I’m not proud to admit this, as I look back at my adult life and the two marriages that didn’t work out, a belief that “it’s better to be divorced than never married because at least some man wanted me” can still knock on the door of my psyche.
In the United States and many places around the world, women are acculturated to see our value in relationship to the men who surround us: our fathers, our husbands, and yes, the masculine version of God gifting Jesus as Savior.
This acculturation happens even without religion. Look at the fact that we have a 70 billion dollar “wedding industry” in the United States. In soul-searching about my first wedding, I realized that much of the motivation for planning the perfect wedding was to keep everyone happy.
In the church-school where I experienced bullying as a child, I wanted to put on a display that some man wanted me. At the time, it felt redemptive, like I was somehow sticking my tongue out at the other girls who bullied me. Even though plenty of boys also bullied me, it was the girls I wanted to notice me.
The Christian influence on the founding of Western society no doubt shaped many of these messages about worth, value and wedding size in secular arenas. Yet, when religion directly shapes a woman’s worldview, the accelerant presents itself once more.
While this pattern can appear in traditional expressions of many religions, my lane is Christianity, which is where I focus. The interpretation of the Christian message that many, if not most, Americans lean into is that of “Jesus as Savior.”
I need a man to save me, to redeem me. Without that man, I am nothing. My soul is lost.
By putting such commentary out there, even those who are friendly to my perspectives might accuse me of mocking the Christian faith. While there are many interpretations of Christianity, with some of us seeing the miracle of the incarnation and the social ministry of Jesus to be what’s truly special, I acknowledge that the theology of “Jesus as savior of the world who died for my sins” might even be the perspective of many progressive Christians.
Believing that is your right. However, thinking we need a Savior, especially a male savior, can spill into other areas of our lives.
This belief can lead me to think I need a male partner to guard me like a white knight and show the world that I have value. It can suggest that I must follow the pastor or priest’s words to the letter because he knows what’s best for me. And with both — partner and pastor — staying in their good favor can keep me safe.
This is subtle misogyny that many women internalize without even realizing that they are doing it. It’s so ingrained culturally, like the parable of asking a fish, “How’s the water,” to which the fish replies, “What’s water?”
I know what conservative, MAGA-supporting women would say in response. After all, I was on track to become one. I’ve read their social media content and even attempted to have conversations with them in the last few years.
They will declare they are independent and their choices are their own. They are choosing to support Donald Trump, follow Jesus, or live traditional lives with their husbands, whose job is to provide and keep them safe.
All these choices may even fill their lives with meaning. And as a lover of choice, I must admit that your choices are yours. But are they really a choice if you operate from the acculturated message that these are the things you need for safety, security and meaning?
When I look back at the conservative Christian religions in which I was raised until early adulthood, I see how easy this way of living was and how it kept others happy.
Not until I realized I was in prison could I begin my plan of escape.
And I now can see as clearly as the morning how Donald J. Trump embodies everything that women, especially white women, have been taught that we need. He is a “savior” who will fix everything. He will keep us “safe,” especially from invaders (a belief rooted in racism) and those who threaten our way of life.
Even women who are survivors of sexual assault can be vocal in their support of Trump, a convicted felon who has been successfully litigated against for sexual abuse of a woman.
While that can seem like a baffling paradox, it makes a lot of sense. Many of us who are survivors have needed to bond to perpetrators to maintain our sense of safety and value. It’s literally the water in which we’re raised to swim in as American women.
There are other levels of nuance here, of course, such as the lesbian and bisexual women married to other women who support Trump. Like every other woman who voted for Trump, I have theories but no easy answers.
I do, however, hope that women keep having conversations. I hope that we, white women, can hold ourselves accountable. Because while many of you may be happy in the water you are swimming in, for others, it is poisonous.