0:02 Every four years, America runs the same
0:04 experiment. Change the candidates, keep
0:07 the pattern. Black women vote for
0:09 progress. White women vote for control.
0:13 In 2016, 52% of white women chose Donald
0:18 Trump. In 2020, 55%. And in 2024, still
0:20 more than half. How did the group most
0:23 targeted by his misogyny become one of
0:26 his strongest allies? I wanted to find
0:29 out not as a journalist but as a white
0:31 woman. This is the story of white
0:33 womanhood fear and the illusion of protection.
0:40 Since the earliest versions of American
0:42 womanhood, the angel in the house, the
0:45 homemaker, the moral guardian, white
0:47 women have been told that safety comes
0:50 from alignment. align with your husband,
0:53 your church, your flag, and in return,
0:56 you'll be protected from chaos, from
0:59 crime, from men who aren't yours.
1:01 Historically, that protection was
1:04 inseparable from whiteness itself. White
1:07 women's purity was also used to justify
1:10 lynching, segregation, immigration bans.
1:13 The story of protecting our women has
1:16 kind of always been code for protecting
1:18 our hierarchy. Sociologists call this
1:21 the patriarchal bargain. Philosopher
1:24 Kate Man calls it something sharper, a
1:27 moral economy of misogyny. In her book,
1:29 Downgirl, she writes, "Misogyny's
1:31 function is to police and enforce a
1:34 patriarchal order by rewarding women who
1:36 conform and punishing those who don't."
1:39 That emotional logic, reward the
1:42 obedient, shame the defiant, still
1:47 shapes world politics. Act two, 2016.
1:50 white fright. When Trump descended that
1:53 golden escalator in 2015, his audience
1:56 wasn't the downtrodden working class
1:58 we'd heard so much about. It was people
2:01 who felt their status slipping.
2:03 Political scientist Christopher Parker
2:06 in the conversation in 2016 called it
2:08 white fright. He argued that Trump's
2:10 victory had at least as much to do with
2:11 support from voters who remained
2:14 unencumbered by economic anxiety as
2:17 those driven by it. He wrote, "Rapid
2:19 social change, which poses a threat to
2:21 this tricated version of American
2:23 identity, activates anxiety and anger on
2:25 the part of those who lay claim to this
2:27 identity. Many Trump supporters believe
2:30 themselves to be losing their country.
2:32 They weren't voting for change. They
2:34 were voting for a rewind to a version of
2:36 America where white Christian
2:39 heterosexual men reigned and white women
2:41 were safely beside them." And here's
2:44 what's also crazy. Education didn't
2:47 inoculate anyone. College educated white
2:50 voters supposedly more tolerant still
2:53 leaned Republican. As Parker put it,
2:55 "The boundaries of American identity
2:57 intersect with whiteness, patriarchy,
3:00 xenophobia, and homophobia. Donald Trump
3:03 sold nostalgia as safety, and white
3:07 women bought it." Act three, the moral
3:10 mirror. By 2020, millions of women had
3:13 marched in protest, worn hats, and
3:16 said never again. But then they voted
3:19 for him again. According to NBC exit
3:23 polls in 2020, among white women, 43%
3:26 supported Joe Biden and 55% supported
3:28 President Donald Trump. That was
3:32 virtually identical to 2016. Reporter
3:34 Amanda Becka noted that these voters
3:36 said they didn't like the president's
3:39 rhetoric, his handling of the pandemic.
3:41 Ultimately, they chose to stand by him.
3:45 So, what happened? Enter Kate Man's next
3:48 insight, disgust. She argues that white
3:50 women often act as moral enforcers
3:53 within the patriarchy, the gatekeepers
3:56 of goodness. Disgust is their tool. It
3:59 lets obedience feel righteous. When
4:01 crowds chanted, "Lock her up about
4:04 Hillary Clinton," that wasn't policy.
4:07 That was purification. Psychologically,
4:10 disgust separates the clean from the
4:12 contaminating. It's why some white women
4:15 can call Trump vulgar, but still see him
4:17 as the less disgusting option, the one
4:20 protecting them from feminists,
4:23 immigrants, or woke ideology. They're
4:25 not necessarily voting for cruelty.
4:27 They're voting for order. They just
4:29 refuse to see that those are the same
4:33 thing. Act four, the protector king.
4:35 Nowhere is the emotional contract
4:38 clearer than among Christian women. In
4:40 January this year, Mother Jones
4:42 interviewed psychologist Kate Gadini,
4:45 who studies evangelical women. She
4:47 describes what she saw at the Liberty
4:50 University after the 2024 election. They
4:52 felt like this was God's will. He has
4:54 spared the nation by giving us Trump.
4:56 Even after we've made so many mistakes,
4:59 he's giving us one last chance to get it
5:01 right. Gardini told Mother Jones that
5:04 for these women, Trump's appeal operates
5:06 on multiple planes. It's the sense of
5:09 having a protector and a defender in
5:11 Trump. He's going to protect us from
5:12 this woke liberal elite that wants to
5:15 take us down. The left is concerned with
5:17 wokeness and identity politics, while
5:19 Trump is concerned that you can't afford
5:21 a tank of gas. He's going to protect our
5:23 country from China. He's going to
5:25 protect our borders. That protector
5:28 identity operates on so many different
5:30 levels and is hugely effective with
5:32 these women. Here's the line that kind
5:35 of sums it up. Trump said at a few
5:37 campaign rallies, "I want to protect the
5:39 woman." One Christian woman I
5:40 interviewed said she wept when she heard
5:42 that because it was so resonant with
5:45 what she needed. Protection is at the
5:47 heart of the contract, the emotional
5:50 transaction that makes hierarchy feel
5:53 holy. Gazini continues, "Within their
5:55 gendered system, women are the soft,
5:58 nurturing ones, the caretakers. Men are
6:00 the strong ones, protectors, and
6:02 defenders. This gendered system is built
6:04 into conservative Christianity. So, it
6:06 makes sense that they would apply that
6:08 to politics and want a candidate who
6:11 fits that mold." In 2016, she says Trump
6:13 projected a kind of devil make
6:15 masculinity they found quite attractive.
6:18 Whereas in 2024, he seen more of a
6:20 protective fatherly or even
6:23 grandfatherly figure. The swagger turned
6:25 paternal. The misogynist became the
6:28 father figure and that made obedience
6:32 feel safe again. Act five, the paradox
6:34 of the protected. Protection always
6:37 needs a threat. A protector with no
6:40 danger to fight loses his purpose and so
6:43 does the person that he protects. That's
6:46 the paradox. Safety depends on fear. And
6:50 in Trump's America, fear is infinite.
6:52 Fox News fills screens with crime waves,
6:55 border invasions, gender chaos. Each new
6:57 threat reactivates the emotional
7:00 contract. As Mother Jones reported, the
7:01 younger women are getting a lot of their
7:03 news from social media. What they're
7:06 hearing is that the liberal left hates
7:08 them. For mothers, their sense of
7:10 needing protection is all around
7:12 children. They need to protect their
7:14 children as mothers and they need a
7:16 paternalistic figure as president to
7:18 protect their children on a larger
7:20 scale. And for older women, their
7:23 primary concern tends to be immigration.
7:24 Keeping our neighborhoods safe, keeping
7:26 women and girls safe from perceived
7:29 physical threats and immigrant men. In
7:32 this worldview, every cultural change
7:35 from racial justice protest to trans
7:38 rights becomes a home invasion. The
7:42 emotional pattern repeats. 1920s KKK
7:44 promised to defend white womanhood.
7:47 1960s John Burch Society promised to
7:50 defend Christianity. 2016 MAGA promised
7:54 to defend real America. Act six. 2024
7:58 and 2025. The contract renews after
8:00 Trump managed to get back in. The
8:02 Guardian reported that Trump's return to
8:04 power was powered once again by the
8:06 loyalty of white women voters,
8:08 especially those without college
8:11 degrees. The piece noted that Harris
8:13 narrowed down the gender gap, but not
8:18 the racial one. White women broke 5643
8:20 for Trump. Meanwhile, the Pew Research
8:24 Cent's 2025 demographic study found that
8:26 white women, especially those who
8:28 identified as born again or evangelical,
8:31 remained among Trump's most reliable
8:34 supporters, even as his share among
8:36 white men, started to decline slightly.
8:38 This isn't an anomaly. This is
8:42 endurance. The contract holds, and it
8:45 just keeps rebranding itself. What began
8:48 as family values became law and order,
8:51 then anti-woke and protect the children.
8:54 It's the same deal. It just has new
8:57 flashy packaging. Act seven, the other
9:00 half. There's an easy way to flatten the
9:02 story. To call these women brainwashed
9:05 or ignorant or complicit, but that
9:07 misses the deeper truth. They're
9:09 emotionally fluent in a system that
9:12 rewards their fear. Meanwhile, black
9:15 women, Latina organizers, queer
9:18 activists, they keep expanding democracy
9:21 from the margins. In 2020, black women's
9:23 turnout in Georgia flipped the Senate.
9:25 As Alternate reported, black women got
9:28 the vote out in urban centers, making
9:30 for the close results in Georgia,
9:32 Pennsylvania, North Carolina. Black
9:36 women organized communities to vote. So
9:38 while white women voted to preserve
9:41 safety, black women voted to create
9:44 safety. Act eight, the rebrand of
9:46 submission. The new conservative
9:50 feminism doesn't call itself submissive,
9:53 it calls itself empowered. Gadini again,
9:56 the new role model is Amy Coney Barrett.
9:58 She's married to a man. She has tons of
10:00 kids. And yet she's on the Supreme Court
10:03 advocating conservative values. It's a
10:05 version of having it all. She notes that
10:08 many Christian women now say, "I want to
10:10 have the choice to work part-time or
10:12 work full-time or stay home with my kids
10:14 and homeschool. I want to have that
10:17 option." Crazy. Because we fought for
10:18 heaps of years for you to have that
10:19 option. Then you voted to take it away.
10:21 You're so crazy. They've absorbed
10:24 feminist language, choice, empowerment,
10:27 all to defend patriarchal outcomes.
10:30 Gadini calls it feminism infiltrating
10:32 their conservative sphere, propelling
10:35 them forward even as they oppose it. In
10:38 other words, the contract adapts. It
10:40 learns the language of liberation to
10:43 preserve the logic of control. Act nine,
10:46 the mirror moment. If we zoom out,
10:48 Trumpism isn't just about one guy. It's
10:51 a big mirror showing white women the
10:52 reflection we weren't actually supposed
10:55 to see. Because I'm one of them. I'm a
10:57 white woman. And it's uncomfortable to
10:59 admit that people who look like me,
11:01 people raised on the same Disney
11:04 feminism and suburban safety drills, are
11:06 some of the most dependable foot
11:09 soldiers in a movement built on fear. A
11:11 movement that takes rights from us, that
11:13 hides the Epstein files, protects
11:15 rapists, and even elects one into
11:18 office. It's a movement that I'm
11:20 genuinely terrified by. It forces the
11:23 question, what does safety mean if it
11:26 always comes at someone else's expense?
11:29 That's the moral reckoning hiding inside
11:31 of all the data and the numbers.
11:33 Breaking the contract.
11:35 Maybe the contract is starting to
11:38 expire. Younger women, multi-racial
11:40 coalitions, even some suburban voters
11:43 are beginning to see safety differently.
11:46 Not as walls, but more like as networks.
11:48 security, not from protection, but from
11:51 solidarity. But breakups are messy.
11:54 Because what white women were promised
11:57 wasn't money or power. It was safety.
12:00 And giving that up feels like danger. If
12:03 democracy dies, it won't be because one
12:05 man broke it. It'll be because women
12:08 kept it running. The paradox of the
12:11 protected is this. The safer they feel,
12:13 the smaller the rest of us become. If
12:16 this story made you uncomfortable, good.
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