White Right Wing Women -- "Trump? He Ain't Moral But I Ain't Gonna Date Him"

“Half of white women continue to vote Republican.

What’s wrong with them?” asked The Guardian.”

“In November, days after the midterm elections, which saw only a slight movement away from the Republican Party by white women, despite two years of Donald Trump’s attacks on women, people of color, people who are transgender, and virtually anyone who doesn’t look like a backup singer for Lawrence Welk.

“But most mystifying of all, perhaps, is the block of young white women who continue to support the president and his party when the majority of their peers have reacted with revulsion.”

– Nancy Jo Sales, contributing editor Vanity Fair

What does this say about the political convictions of white women? The irony speaks to the battle for the soul of America, and the hope that more and more of them will break with their long, historical loyalty to white patriarchy.

Moira Donegan of the Guardian explains …

“White women’s identity places them in a curious position at the intersection of two vectors of privilege and oppression: they are granted structural power by their race, but excluded from it by their sex.”

Julie Kohler, a fellow in residence at the National Women’s Law Center and a senior advisor at the Democracy Alliance, says …

“The Republican base that has coalesced around Trump has been increasingly characterized by “hostile sexism” – antagonistic attitudes toward women that stem from a belief that women want to control men.”

In his reseach report, “Trump, the 2016 Election, and Expressions of Sexism” prepared for a meeting of the American Political Science Association (September 2, 2018), Brian F. Shaffner of Tufts University confirmed the following …

“First, partisan motivated reasoning gave Republicans a justification for reducing the suppression of prejudice against women because doing so helped them to achieve partisan goals by tolerating or even endorsing sexist statements that Trump made. Second, the outcome of the election itself served as a signal to Republicans about the extent to which other Americans found Trump’s sexist remarks acceptable. As a result, Republicans have scored higher on the hostile sexism battery since the election.”

Some Republican white women not only support the privilege of Trump's white nationalist agenda, but also employ it as a means of avoiding or denying the realities of how sexist oppression makes them vulnerable.

In her book Right Wing Women, the feminist Andrea Dworkin explains …

“Conservative women often conform to the dominant ideologies of the men around them as part of a subconscious survival strategy, hoping that their conservatism will spare them from male hatred and violence. It doesn’t work. They suffer sexist oppression anyway. But the strategy continues.

“Most women cannot afford, either materially or psychologically, to recognize that whatever burnt offerings of obedience they bring to beg protection will not appease the angry little gods around them.”

Republicans are historically a party led overwhelmingly by white men. Diversity has never been a strength of the modern-day GOP. Republican leaders have prioritized manipulating the electorate in their favor, through gerrymandering and voter suppression, over broadening representation and reach. There is some scholarly evidence that voters tend to perceive female politicians as more liberal than men.

Kohler says …

“The GOP has invested so heavily in white-male identity politics that the policies that have become its Trump-era signatures—family separation, draconian abortion bans – are widely unpopular with the American public and profoundly alienating to many of the white independent and moderate women who have historically voted Republican …

“It’s one thing to give a few women a megaphone; it’s quite another to position many women candidates to prevail when the Republican electorate is ginned up on misogyny.”

Conservative white women, having grown up in a family of Republicans and having minimal concern about how sexual oppression and hostile sexism limit their political power, continue to support Trump and his white nationalist agenda.

However, the number of women in this group seems to be changing.

In a new June 2019 Hill-HarrisX survey, a significant majority of American women – 62 percent of female registered voters – say they are not likely to support President Trump’s re-election effort in 2020, setting him up with a gender gap that may prove difficult to overcome. Fifty-three percent said they were very unlikely to back Trump while 9 percent said they were somewhat unlikely. Thirty-eight percent of women who

participated said they were likely to back Trump.

The shift is reshaping the 2020 presidential race, elevating Democratic hopes in traditional GOP strongholds like Arizona and Georgia, and forcing Trump to redouble efforts to boost rural turnout to offset defectors who, some fear, may never vote Republican so long as the president is on the ballot.

Yet, the “Women for Trump’ coalition continues working to mobilize supporters across the country and share “the President’s record of success.” They have a specific goal. Republican pollster Christine Matthews says, “If he (Trump) doesn’t have non-college-educated white women in that equation – particularly in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania – the math does not work for him.”

Meanwhile, women in general are more repulsed by Trump’s rhetoric and style, both of which have reached new levels of venom since the impeachment inquiry began. Research confirms that Trump's evaluation of women reflects his ideology about the superiority of males on females and how such ideological beliefs are ingrained in language and are difficult to be changed. This is embodied in Trump's prejudiced and inequilateral sentence "I don't frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn't have time either." The sense of inequality perpetuated in the ideas of masculine power practiced on females is conspicuous.

(Prof. Abbas Degan Darweesh and Nesaem Mehdi Abdullah. “A Critical Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump's Sexist Ideology.” University of Babylon,

College of Education- Human Sciences, Journal of Education and Practice.

Vol.7, No.30, 2016.)

And, groups like the women of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, are calling for solidarity against misogyny. Elsie Valdes, National Vice-President, issued a challenge for women of all backgrounds, races and political views to come together in a strong demonstration of mutual support against personal attacks made by President Trump against four female members of Congress.

The 2020 election will, undoubtedly, reveal the truth about white women voters and their continued support of Trump. And while he found success with these voters in 2016, he may find it more difficult to win them over this time around.

Some believe only Republican women can save their party against Trump – a sobering thought in the final months before the election. It would seem their commitment to gender equality would far outweigh their political sentiments. However, the ghost of the election of 2016 continues to haunt the women's movement. It is a hoary, demeaning specter of male dominance.

"I am a feminist. I’ve been female for a long time now.

I’d be stupid not to be on my own side."

— Maya Angelou