I moved to the U.S. in 2000. I’ve learned that many white Americans have a delusional amount of confidence in govt & its institutions. They’re childishly naive in believing that institutions will save them from state power, which they think will work for rather than hurt them.
That stubborn belief in U.S. exceptionalism undergirds the refusal to see the fascism that Trump brought. Black, Indigenuous, and people of colour have no such delusions. They do not expect institutions to protect them because they are so often hurt by those institutions.
No matter how often those of us from authoritarian countries who know to be suspicious of state power, and those of us who’ve fought fascism – be it via military/rule of religious fundamentalists --warned, white Americans arrogantly shook their head that it couldn’t happen here
And no matter how often we warned you that the fate of nations is not a straight line bending towards a “manifest destiny,” you only saw Iran and women in chadors or Afghanistan and women in burqas and refused to believe that their fate awaited you.
But that fate never comes overnight.
Just as Trump is not an aberration, but rather a fruition of decades of white supremacist, misogynist, bigoted rot, so too is the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court, which conservatives have worked for since the early 1970s.
#AmyConeyBarrett isn’t aberration but fruition of decades of work by white supremacist patriarchy. Even if they don’t belong to charismatic Christian groups that worship in tongues,white GOP women know what to say &do to benefit from proximity to power of white men in their lives
And it is no surprise that the conservative victory in the US is being delivered by a white conservative woman.
#AmyConeyBarrett is the Five-Star General of the Footsoldiers of the Patriarchy
So successful has white supremacist patriarchy been at convincing white women that they’re lucky to live in the U.S. and not Saudi Arabia or Iran, that so many white women did not pay enough attention to the theocracy that white supremacy was building right here at home.
It was being built by white men who look like their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, not the scary brown men with beards, right?
White supremacist patriarchy has so successfully lulled white women into a delusion of “Be grateful you don’t live over there” that those same women have sleep walked their way into the disaster that is Trump and his third Supreme Court nominee.
Conservatives celebrate in #AmyConeyBarrett what they pathologize in Muslim women. White conservative women want to feel superior to Muslim women & so refuse to see anything in their beliefs that consigns them to subservience & submission they think Muslim women must live with.
White liberal women want to save Muslim women - preferably “over there.”
And liberal, affluent, white cisgender women thought as long as Roe v. Wade survived, they could ignore whatever the Christians were saying all along - since the 1970s.
In the U.S., white & Chrisitian is considered the default, a norm.
Affluent cis white women remained wilfully ignorant that Roe v. Wade died for many Black & women of colour & poor women in the South, where one after another clinics that provide abortions were being shuttered.
Liberal white women finally found their anger over Trump after his “Grab them by the pussy” comments came out, not when he called Mexicans “rapists and murderers” and vowed to ban Muslims.
Meanwhile, Trump women wore t-shirts exhorting Trump to grab their pussies and continued to gush at his rallies, chanted “Build that Wall,” and cheered when the Muslim Ban took effect; a ban Trump said was to protect white women from Muslim men, among other reasons.
Liberal women finally recognize disaster #AmyConeyBarrett on #SCOTUS will bring them. Did they see harm SCOTUS brought the rest of us not white women, when it greenlit Trump’s vow to ban Muslims & how it’s long failed Black people, indigenous people, working class people?
And here is a woman - white, just like them - heralding disaster.
And that’s exactly why white women have not been paying attention.
White supremacist patriarchy is their patriarchy. It looks and sounds just like them.
It’s much easier to see Brown men and Black men as the danger. That is where white supremacist patriarchy always kept the attention – always promised to save white women from.
This isn’t “my flavour of patriarchy is tastier than yours.” This is “fuck the patriarchy everywhere.” This is a wake the fuck up because clearly you’ve been drifting, cruising on the delusions that your whiteness will save you from white supremacist patriarchy.
Nothing will.
I want white women to take all their earnest “How can I help Muslim women” and “Why do Muslim women submit to misogyny?” questions and obsess over their white sisters who benefit from white supremacist patriarchy and who don’t give a flying fuck how it hurts the entire world.
And it is the entire world. Those women who voted for Trump helped put in place a man who’s a danger to the entire world.
Blatant & bold theocracy conservatives have been working for is going to embolden other theocrats & hurt anyone not a white, wealthy, cishet, able-bodied man
Stop asking visibly Muslim women if their hijab makes them hot during the summer and start calling white women – those who vote for the GOP – fascist enablers and footsoldiers of the patriarchy.
And recognize how you too soldier for that patriarchy because even if you didn’t vote GOP, you haven’t been angry enough. Your whiteness, which shelters you from much of the fuckery to which the rest of us are subjected, has lulled you.
WAKE THE FUCK UP.
Amy Coney Barrett is here to stick her middle finger up your smug, white feminism. She probably would never stick her middle finger up anything but I want you to imagine her doing that as white supremacist patriarchy anoints her Conservative Feminist Queen
Take every question you ever asked about Muslim women and ask them of the white women who led the charge to the fucking disaster that awaits:
- Who indoctrinated them?
- Who taught them to submit to men?
- Why are they so brainwashed?
- Should I save them?
When I moved back to the U.S. from Egypt in 2017, I semi-joked that I was returning to save white women. Well, here I am. Telling you what to do.
I’ve written lots about patriarchy and misogyny in my cultural and faith background. I’ve never asked anyone to “save us.”
No one saves you. You save yourself. So fight! Hard. No one will save you.
Patriarchy is over here, not just over there.
And I’ll be fucking damned if I tiptoe around Amy Coney Barrett.
Essay: If Amy Coney Barrett was a Muslim Are White Women Awake Yet?https://feministgiant.substack.com/p/if-amy-coney-barrett-was-a-muslim
And I promise you, much like instant experts on Islam, Arab women, Muslim women, or any women from “over there” whose oppression they feel more comfortable dissecting because it detracts from oppression on their doorstep, I will write a book explaining white women to themselves
And my book will be called #NotAllWhiteWomen because I know that’s what I’ll hear!
