Everywhere we look, women are divided. The perception that a majority of Anglo-American women voted for the Trump ticket in the recent elections has created a rift between white and other women, a rift that is being produced and exacerbated on social media.

Last week on TikTok, we learned that some conservative (read: white) women in the South believed that some women on the left were “coming after them” to do them harm and/or take their man. It is a preposterous claim, and women on TikTok said as much in their response videos, but the women who believe it are not making it up — their fears over retribution for their Trump votes and support are being effectively stoked. We need to ask where these women are getting this idea, and take a critical look at that.1

Women are susceptible to this manipulation, I would guess, because of the guilt they harbor. Racism and internalized misogyny is not experienced as power per se, but quite the contrary: it is experienced as a loss of control, and as fear.2 That is why Trump supporters are acting angry and afraid even now, after they have won the election. These women have a guilty fear, and this fear is being manipulated for the political gain of others.

At the same time as women are being divided along racialized geographies, the attack on transgender women from both the political right and a tendency within the radical feminist wing (trans-exclusionary radical feminists or TERFs, now rebranded to “sex realists”) is dividing us women within the LGBTI and queer communities. This fight between some radical feminists and trans women is old news, so it should raise flags that it is being politicized on the national stage now. Up until now, no one outside of the LGBTI and queer communities was much bothered that transgender women were not allowed into spaces like the Michigan Women’s Festival or (to use a very local to San Francisco example) Osento, a women’s Japanese-style bathhouse. Our internal spats (albeit quite heated) were all but resolved, last time I checked. I suspect that, if we follow the money on this issue, we are going to find where this flare up is really coming from.

📣 Call Out: Any investigative journalists want to do this work, or teach how to do this type of research? I would pay for this course.

It is not the first time that this faction of radical feminists have gotten into bed with right-wing, conservative ideologues. The very creation, ex-nihilo, of a “conservative feminist” tendency was made possible during the “feminist sex wars” of the 1980’s — a series of heated debates within feminist circles, primarily in the United States, about issues related to pornography and sex work. These debates were divisive, shaping the feminist movement into two opposing camps: anti-pornography feminists and sex-positive feminists.3 What I am seeing now, with economically powerful forces on the right joining the radical feminist subgroup to attack transgender women (although transgender men are not escaping the political violence) is following this playbook. Also note that eliminating pornography is on the playbook of the 2025 project, so that will make a comeback soon.

Adjacent attacks on gender theory (and its cousin, critical race theory), with specific vitriol reserved for Judith Butler, also has its roots in this time period. Back then, one charge was that post-structuralist and postmodern theory was unintelligible and inaccessible, therefore elitist. Another concern was that postmodernism deconstructed subjectivity just as women were beginning to assert it, which some feminists feared could hinder the feminist movement’s political goals by destabilizing the ground for collective identity and agency. Feminists feared that it would be more difficult to argue for women’s rights if the category of “woman” or “subject” is seen as unstable or illusory.4 The debate over “what is a woman” that is foundational to Second Wave feminism (it serves as Beauvoir’s starting point in The Second Sex5 ) is now being suppressed, we are not supposed to bring this up and if we do we are not “sex realists.” In this way, the theoretical grounds for feminist theory is put under prohibition; women are under censure to not speak of what it means to be a woman.

This one I take a bit personal, as it represents the attempt to erase the work of many of us over the past decades, and to erase life-worlds and cultures that emerged alongside. I recognize that this is an attempt to disempower especially GenX women, now entering into their “invisible” age6, by making our life’s work as irrelevant as possible. The traces of the women who were spat out of the academy already litter academia, but this is an attempt at obliteration — where not only do you forget, but you forget that you forgot.

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It has never been more difficult, perhaps, to imagine a political “we” as it is now, which also happens to be a most dangerous, historically significant moment for US American/ women. We are facing a loss of control over our bodies, the right to bodily integrity and human dignity. This affects all women, and yet this has not served to unify us because of the weaponization of pre-existing divisions in our communities.

I urge all women (and their allies) to keep that in mind while consuming online content that pits us against each other, or stokes our anger against each other, in order to turn our differences into politically war-ing group identities. We are quite literally being rendered apart, and while our differences are significant, these very public conflicts are largely manufactured and need to be continually maintained. Which is not to say that the conflicts are not real, but it is to say that it takes a lot of energy and even force to keep us divided. Let’s work with that knowledge.

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P.S. This piece actually began as a commentary on Maria Lugones’ "Playfulness, 'World-Traveling', and Loving Perception" but then I realized that Lugones was writing on the heels of the successes of Second Wave feminism, at a time when it was (more or less) safe for women to air-out their differences. She is interested in a way forward for women across our differences, and proposes world-traveling to each other’s worlds, in a playful spirit. I think our current situation may call for us to build community wherever we currently find ourselves, and to create local safety. It is not a failure-of-love situ (which is Lugones’ concern), but an under-siege situ… and anyways, I don’t know that we need to have women’s unity to succeed as feminists, in this moment. Something to think about. Although this feels like a very different political moment for us women, I hope to return to this Lugones and finish my account in the coming days. This piece demanded to be written first.

To be continued…

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Bibliography

Alcoff, Linda Martín. “Towards a Phenomenology of Racial Embodiment.” Radical Philosophy, no. 95, 1999, pp. 15–26.

Dworkin, Andrea, and Catharine MacKinnon. Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality. Women Against Pornography, 1988.

Ms. Magazine. "The History and Impact of the Feminist Sex Wars." Ms. Magazine, www.msmagazine.com. Accessed 29 Nov. 2024.

Rubin, Gayle. "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, edited by Carole S. Vance, Routledge, 1984, pp. 267–319.

Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Tim Duggan Books, 2017.

Vance, Carole S., editor. Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Routledge, 1984.