Trump's Karens Are Here to Stay

Conservative white women's capacity for paradoxical thinking and penchant for victimhood create the perfect storm for buying into Trumpist ideology

- KELSEY EISEN

More white women voted for Donald Trump in 2020 than in 2016. Optimistic liberals had thought that, just maybe, the sexual assault allegations, the refusal to condemn white supremacy, the children in cages and the profound mishandling of the pandemic would cost Trump some white-female support. As someone who has known many conservative white women, I was not surprised to see the opposite occur.

Conservative women have historically been viewed as simplistically family-oriented voters: They’re pro-cop because they’re pro–safe neighborhoods, pro-life because they’re pro–family values. However, these assumptions are merely manifestations of the racist, insidious myth of the inherent goodness and purity of the American white woman. Consider the insurrection on January 6. Images of the violent riot that killed five people are replete with angry, white female faces. These women clearly cannot be dismissed as simply mild-mannered housewives manipulated into supporting Trump out of concern for their families, or somehow ignorant of or indifferent to the profound heartlessness of conservative policy—they are clearly in active, militant support of it.

So how did we go from the Phyllis Schlafly model of the conservative white woman—all prim cardigans and simpering family values—to violently storming a federal building? The short answer is that Trump capitalized on the existing rage of conservative white women in a way that had never been done before. Trump took the comparatively subtle ways conservatives provide scapegoats (such as dog-whistle racial messaging) and subtracted any nuance by completely detaching from reality and going full-on conspiracy theorist.