First why do we need to understand them? Who cares? Well, unfortunately, the reality is Trump's control over white men dropped from election to election, and it took a drastic drop after the insurgence at the Capitol. But white women? Not as much, let alone the increase from election to election. There's something wrong that any women would vote against themselves, but it goes deep and we have to acknowledge it.
Women, a large majority, have all of self value tied to our looks, and whether we like to admit it or not, to our "color". I know this because I'm not different than anyone else. I am the spitting image of my mother when she was younger and even her last living brother will tell you he sees her when he looks at me. My mother was Polish and German. The family roots with direct DNA and historical links to Berlin, Warsaw and Lviv (used to be Poland, now Ukraine). My mother's skin was a slight shade lighter than mine but not once I stayed out of the sun. My ex sister in law and I were often mistaken as sisters. She very Italian looking but half Scottish and half Italian. Both of us always thought of ourselves as "white" but because she spoke fluent Spanish (and her looks) people often assumed she was Hispanic. Neither of us ever liked that. I have to be honest. It's simply because of the way people say it when they incorrectly assume. They're being assholes. It's never genuine curiosity. It's always peppered before and after with insults. Before because they're racist f**ks and after because they are positive in their own pea brains you're lying. They couldn't possibly be wrong. God friggin forbid. So we get taught early and over and over our looks, but even our skin color means something to someone.
Except I grew up in a large Slavic area. Polish, Hungarians, lots and lots of various Slavic decent, and lots of full blooded Germans, mostly Berlin decent. My grandfather was 6'5-6'6" and dark blonde hair, somewhat olive and his entire family (and our DNA proves) is almost entirely back to Berlin. (We won't get into how tight knit German Americans were for almost a century leading up to WWII. Three of my grandfather's cousins answered the call to the Fatherland in the 1930s.). I'm so German my grandfather would speak German to me when I was little.
Now I've met German decent folks in the South. Yeah, they have no idea what I'm talking about. Lutheran churches are almost non existent compared to the Great Lakes. They complied with not speaking German or being looked at like aliens and going up North where it didn't become a travesty until after WWI.
Okay why all the history? So I haven't been insulted about the color of my skin till Trump, by a wrong assumption of my race, until this idiot not since the last election, so let's call her Karen (it might be ironic if that was her real name, wouldn't it?). She and I had similar experiences with men belittling our value at work. Poor, poor Karen. We had common ground. But her introduction of common ground was only preface to find out my race. She was quite convinced I was Native and quite flabbergasted that I told her I wasn't. I know my background, even have had a DNA test done. She absolutely had to know what it said. No Native. She just "couldn't believe it". Oh for fucks' sake Karen. Every one of you dumbasses. My immediate thought was my sons are "whiter than you".
Then I glanced down at our hands. I'm whiter than she is. I pointed it out. She was so flustered she started to argue her hand, her skin was actually lighter. It was something with the lighting, which was aimed and shining brightly on both of our hands. I held back laughing in her face. I explained that pretty much all Slavic have olive tones. Oh no, no, she insisted. I couldn't possibly be German. Her husband is German and Germans are blonde hair and blue eyed. She went on about how her husband's family knew all their roots. Nevermind that he was barely 5'6 to 5'8", dark brown hair, dark brown eyes--short and stocky. Hardly blonde, blue eyed or tall. Nothing Arian about him. I held back.
Now she went into the open conspiracy theory nonsense, the media, every thing is a lie except Trump. Okay. I held in my laughter. Come on honey. I did point out that since she was darker than me and she never had a DNA it was likely she had some Slavic or Eastern or Southern European like Italian or Greek. She was adamant she was Irish. Maybe I said but Irish don't have olive skin at all, and being the smart ass I am, again I pointed how how she was a shade or two darker than me. Yeah, she might have been close to coming unhinged. I really didn't care. Our common ground that we might have capitalized on in a sisterhood was way, way less important than her desperate need to be better than another woman.
Welcome to who these women really are. They really need to be better than other women so badly and find their value from men valuing them more than other women. They can't find the common ground with us because their value is nothing, still, without a man's approval and praise. Well, isn't that all of us?
Well, yes at some level. My grandfather and my father fed my ego well. I don't need any man's praise on how I look. I look how I feel and like to look. But I'm sure that's more because I still know what impressed the two of them. I know who I am and am secure in who I look like because of them. I don't need a random man's approval, and for better or worse, I don't need a man I date or marry to approve either. (They probably should if they're going to like being with me but that's really not about me so much as their security.). But it was clear, she needed her short, stocky husband's approval, at bare minimum. She also had tied herself to this belief system. She had to be better than me based on skin color and I'm guessing my nose. Which is sadly very Polish. Several of my Polish Americans cousins (more Pole than me) have it too. In fact, if you look up Melania Trump at 14, that's me at 14. So Melania and I would probably be pretty close in looks if she hadn't had bone shaved off the front of her skull. I don't know why women do this. But I had a grandfather tell me all the time I reminded him of his favorite cousin and how beautiful I was. Pure German American cousin. So yeah, my security even with this poor little shallow thing who couldn't recognize her husband hardly represented the blond hair blue eyed stereotype she had of German.... While mind boggling, very telling.
These women have no value other than the level of disrespect they temperate and tolerate. Their value is tied to women like Farrah Fawcett and Marilyn Monroe. Dye in a bottle. Drug addicts. Whores. That is what we told them was sexy and deep in the darkest corners of their minds they still believe it even with all the evidence to the contrary. What is more praising to misogyny, than convincing and confining women to being proud to be fake, fake hair color, fake bone structure, fake skin colors, and real whores and drug addicts? Singing a sleezy version of happy birthday to one of two brothers you've screwed in front of the one's wife and the entire nation?? Falling over drunk and coked up in interviews with everyone from Barbara Walters to Johnny Carson to David Letterman? This is who these women believe they should be. Should we be surprised that my counterpart and all that plastic surgery is appealing and defendable to them?
Eh, but what do I know? I don't have a man. Sure, but maybe that bar was set super high from the jump. My grandfather told me how I could do anything a boy could do. How beautiful I was and how amazing I could be. He told me take no crap. My father treated women with the utmost respect. He deserved my mother's and step mother's respect because he treated them like they were the only women in the world that mattered to him, respectively. With examples and the confidence they instilled in me at a very young age? Are we surprised? Really? I'm pretty sure my friend with her PhD would say my confidence is textbook level for a boy who's given all the love, support and confidence to be successful. How sad is it that all of that is often used to attack me as a woman?
So excuse me if Karen was laughable and a bit on my nerves when I gave it a thought. Her insecurities were why she insulted me, why she blew by our common ground and why it was so easy to aggravate her in response.... But it's also indictive of why 60% of white women voted for Trump. He promised them they could be better than other women again, if only for the most shallow worthless reasons. When and how do we get them to look in the mirror and live and love themselves enough that shit doesn't matter and the only thing that matters is we all have been lessened by some man just because we are women and thousands of years we have been nothing but property? Black men have suffered horrible injustices, but even now, black, white, purple, green, women get raped and it's us who get demonized. And this Karen and all her other Karen friends voted twice for someone who wanted to keep us there. Literally more worried about being more "whiter" than uniting over our common ground. And yeah Karen, I'm still "whiter than you".
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