A (white, female) friend of mine recently posted something on social media about how it's strange there is such a backlash against white women "calling the manager" on BIPOC [Black & Indigenous People of Color] when most women are still unable to get fair/equal pay, benefit, medical treatment, etc...
Which naturally got me thinking about overlapping systems of oppression and the role white women play in the patriarchy.
But before we get started you need to get on board with a basic concept that might sound radical at first; people really love to hate women. Love it. It's basically a national pass time.
Think about the vitriol female politicians face. Think about popular culture, the popularity of hate-watching real housewives shows (there is no male equivalent...). I think, sometimes, about the unpopularity Anna Gunn faced while playing Walter White's wife Skyler on Breaking Bad. People hated her for playing a wife who was mad at her husband for making meth and ruining their lives....crazy no? Don't believe me? Check this out. Women are easy to hate because they often form stand-ins for the nagging, cranky, buzz-kill, frigid, rule-enforcing, angry women we hate in our own lives. Which is a huge part of my whole theory regarding the electability of women and why women seem so cranky, angry, frigid... but that's an entirely different conversation.
For now, take me at my word that culturally, Americans and lost of people generally find it easier to hate women (Peg Bundy, Lorena Bobbitt, Carol Baskins, Skyler White, Hilary Clinton, Ann Coulter, Kim Kardashian) than men. Seriously, how was Al Bundy *more* likeable??
Now consider the roles of race and gender in patriarchy and white supremacy. Sex and gender have been used throughout history to create and maintain racial divides, from the practice of raping male slaves to "break them" ("buck breaking") during slave trade, to using white female sexual virtue as an excuse to lynch black men in the Jim Crow era, the the mythology of black hyper sexuality that persists largely today. The intersections of male power over women, sexual power, physical power, political and financial power, and power and privilege white people enjoy of over people of color. This means that where we all stand, in terms of privilege is complicated by the many dimensions of our selves and the way others perceive us.
So taking these ideas all together why is society so mad at white women, why are white women the current embodiment of white privilege and racial oppression. Yes, of course white women enjoy white privilege, and the women calling the cops on innocent black people are heinous and weaponizing their whiteness and, honestly, female victim hood to police the spaces black people occupy. But if we are being honest with ourselves, white women are rarely the architects of the systemic racial oppression that makes it possible for those "Karen" phone calls to have any effect. Rich, white, cisgendered and able-bodied men, historically are the architects of the capitalist system of white supremacist patriarchy that pits marginalized people against each other. And that feels like a part of what's happening here. By targeting white women as the personification of the evil of systemic racism, we are missing the point, and aiming at a lesser target. It's shooting at the messenger without dismantling the message.
If we really want change, we need to not only stop these women from weaponizing systemic racism but also dismantle the white supremacist patriarchy that gives these woman the power to keep BIPOC out of traditionally white spaces.
