White women are the fuel for the Patriarchy and they are burning themselves alive
By: Lisa M. Hayes – Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.
There are 3,275,394 white people living in Alabama. More than half of them,1,669,974 are women. All 1,669,974 of those white women have some explaining to do.
We can start off this conversation by saying, yes, I realize some people from minority demographics voted for the tyrannical woman-hating representatives who wrote and then signed into law the legislation that makes abortion AND being female illegal. However, generally speaking, Black and Hispanic folks don’t vote Republican. Hell, they are lucky if they get to vote, or their votes get counted at all. So, this is on white people – period — full stop.
As much as we like to blame the patriarchy for what’s happening now, there is a certain contingent of the patriarchy most responsible – and that is white women who joined the club, shielded by the privilege of their daddies or husbands and don’t give a shit about anyone else’s interests because those white women are doing just fine – thank you very much and God bless your little heart.
There are more white women in Alabama and every other state in the nation than there are white men. So, we can thank the women for the laws that put every woman in the nation at risk physically, legally, and economically. White women are the gatekeepers to any political district. They did this because it couldn’t have happened without them.
And you know what? They knew exactly what they were doing when they elected this legislature. They do not care. Their husbands and sugar daddies can afford to put them on a plane and uber them from the airport to the clinic in New York City for their abortions – and make no mistake, that’s happening now and will continue to happen because it always has.
The Alabama State House has a “representation” problem. There are only three women who hold seats there. White women of the patriarchy don’t typically run for office and the ones that do are bolstered by Republican men. That is typical for the Southern States. That ratio has to change because who we elect matters. It was a white woman in the Governor’s office that signed the Alabama bill into law.
I am not sure why white women fail to understand if the patriarchy is oppressing people of color they will come for the women next, every single time. Maybe because they read the patriarchy manual before they signed on the dotted line and believed the propaganda fully by the time they got their patriarchy membership card in the mail. However, the bottom line is the patriarchy traffics in racism every single time.
White women of the patriarchy are the fuel that makes the dirty work possible. Without them, the patriarchy would be a nothing burger. We need to stop blaming men.
And for the record, we cannot expect black women and women of color to hold them accountable. White women need to hold the daughters of the patriarchy accountable. It falls squarely in our laps to do and we aren’t doing it because blinded by our own privilege we’ve written them off.
We need to educate them. We need to help them see what the future holds for their daughters and what their reality would look like right now if they lost the privilege their husbands shield them with.
When we hold men exclusively responsible for the patriarchy we are failing to see the most powerful driver of the systemic racism and misogyny – the white women who are holding them up, cheerleading for them, and cooking their dinners behind the scenes, the white women who think they profit from the system that oppresses other women.
I’m not saying we should ignore the men of the patriarchy. However, more importantly, we shouldn’t ignore the white women of the patriarchy. They need educating and frankly, they need saving because they are buying into the greatest lie of all. No matter your privilege, at the end of the day if the patriarchy runs it’s course the last man standing will be just that, a man.
More by Lisa:
Editorial: When the President is Above the Law We Can No Longer Peddle the Fairy Tale of a Democracy
Lisa M. Hayes, Senior Editor of Confluence Daily.
Confluence Daily is the one place where everything comes together. The one-stop for daily news for women.
