Thread by @mollypeonies

Last night I couldn’t sleep (what’s new), so naturally I spent 3 hours going down the Twitter rabbit hole of white women in the suburbs who love Harris but are married to a male Trump supporter.

It’s this whole other world of women of all ages sharing their plans and fears. 🧵

They were talking about keeping it a secret from their husbands; maybe going out of town on election day so their husbands can’t vote (they’ve already voted); not reminding them of Election Day (bc of course it’s *their job* to manage his daily life for him).

They all had some kind of plan either for keeping their vote from their husbands or “not reminding them to vote.” Their husbands are disengaged in the election and the electoral process, but they’re still 100 percent supporting Trump. Bc it doesn’t impact them.

Some of the women said they were afraid of what might happen if “he found out” they voted for Harris.

Men chimed in that it was their “godly duty” as wives to do as their husband says.

One dude said he was taking screen shots & telling their husbands.

These were women of all I ages and in all parts of the country. Some young women were like, “we just got married, and I don’t feel like we are strong enough to go through this.” One said she told her husband, and now he isn’t speaking to her.

I can’t stop thinking about this, and how many women there are out there not only experiencing fear of retribution from their husbands bc they voted for Harris, but *experiencing relationships where their power and autonomy are erased every day.*

Some women also chimed in: I could never do this bc I made a commitment before god when I got married. I might not agree, but I made those vows.

We are in 2024 and women are afraid to tell their husbands they are not voting for a man who wants to take away their bodily autonomy, and deny freedoms and human rights to others. He’s promising to lock up women who disobey him, or help others travel across state lines.

I know there are lots of heartbreaking things about this election. But I see them first-hand. I see the direct impact Trump supporters have in my community.

But this was the first time I’ve seen the impact from women who experience it in their own homes. From their own husbands.

Sure, there are awful suburban white women who are full-on Trump supporters. But I think we also need to take a good hard look at the ways white suburban women, in particular, Christians, are prisoners in their own homes.

The way their husband, church, friends, community upholds patriarchal control, and the ways the internalize it in themselves. Just as “whiteness” and colonialism have become imbedded in all cultures, misogyny is also internalized in women.

I think we need to do a deep reset after this election and change course. Not to “win” elections. But to protect women, femmes, and all people (including cis het men) from the dangers of patriarchy and misogyny.

We can’t talk about justice while also villainizing women who have been intentionally made powerless by patriarchal white supremacy.

We can’t talk about racial justice without naming the way patriarchy is foundational to white supremacy, and the ways “powerful qualities” of the patriarchy—control, domination, gatekeeping, entitlement, resource control—are the foundations of this country.

And when women can’t tell their husbands they are voting for Harris, it might seem like “silent resistance” to pressure all around them. But the reality is it’s also one of the few times they can exercise their personal agency. But only in private. And many are scared to do that.

It’s such a sickness that women can’t tell their husbands they like Harris, because their husbands are so deeply against any shirt from the white-male-centric status quo they have benefited from for so long. Even when it hurts their wives, sisters, mothers, daughters.

This ended up being a much longer thread than I intended (ha), but I am also trying to unravel it in my own head and heart. Looking back at my anger and frustration in 2016, and the votes from white women that went to Trump. I still feel it in my bones. Just so angry.

And then reconciling that with the systems of oppression, and the way it snakes through communities, churches, families, and homes. And what it feels like when you are told you don’t have power, and you aren’t supposed to have it. Because that’s the way god intended.

When I think about liberation, I imagine it as using our power and agency to be who we want to be in the world, and to shape the world together into something beautiful that honors all of us in it.

And I wonder what it looks like to build that for all people in this context.

I don’t know what it looks like to build it alongside women with whom I am probably very different—culturally, socially, politically. But I am willing to try my best.

Because the very brief deep dive I did into their conversations around their fears showed me I need to.

@Inghabo Some said their husbands were so disengaged they didn’t even know they were on Twitter.

It made me sad imagining their lives at home. And all the beauty of themselves and the world they will miss out on being locked into a relationship with someone who doesn’t value them. 😭

@ZulaQi One doesn’t definitely negate the other and there is deeper reckoning to be had about the ways white women abuse and gatekeep in the name of white supremacy as well.

Adding for add'l context: It's absolutely critical to name how white women are complicit in upholding racism and racial harm, and call on them to intentionally and actively dismantle and redress their own racism and the systemic and structural racism they benefit from.

AND...

We can also name the ways that all women are harmed by misogyny and the patriarchy, while *never excusing racial harm.*

We can't work undo racism and misogyny and move towards liberation for all people while also blaming women for marrying terrible men.

It's a sickness that any woman—white, Latina, Black, AAPI, Indigenous--feels like they have to keep their vote for president a secret from their spouse. It's a reflection of the way patriarchal relationship dynamics are normalized.

There are even DNC-funded commercials touting "your vote is private," with women giving knowing glances to one another. This isn't cute or funny or something to celebrate. It's deeply sad.

The cultural norms and values placed on women to marry are part of long-standing machinations of the patriarchy and white supremacy. We hear it in the Trump campaign--women are vessels of reproduction; it's their duty to reproduce for the good of America, aka white supremacy.

So while it is admittedly easier for me to lump them all together as part of the problem, I also am challenging myself to look at the ways I also use social constructs designed to divide us, including my beliefs about suburban white women, many of whom Vance is talking about.

If we're normalizing women vote in "secret," what does it say about how we've normalized women's entire identities to be erased in relationships? I don't know the answers. But I'm willing to listen bc right now all I see are the ways the racist patriarchy is destroying all of us.