American Lies

TRIGGER WARNING: EVERYTHING (Rape, murder, suicide)

Last week was a tough week to be a woman in this world - I mean, it’s always a tough week. But last week was very rapey and took a turn for the murderous.

Two members of the House of Representative resigned last week amidst rape and sexual misconduct allegations. Eric Swalwell, the Democratic frontrunner for the California gubernatorial race, and Tony Gonzales, a Republican out of Texas who already had made the news because his staffer took her own life, via self immolation. By Wednesday, CNN dropped the story that a website with over 62 million hits per month, was dubbed an online rape academy by French lawmaker (who was drugged by her own colleague). A place where men can ask questions about how to drug and rape their own partners, where they can buy drugs to rape them.

Mind you, this is all while Sam Altman is bringing up a case against his own sister who is claiming he raped her until he was 21 years old. And by Thursday we have a highly publicized murder suicide case – where the former Lt Governor of Virginia murdered his own wife and then took his own life and left the bodies for the CHILDREN TO FIND.

Also, the Epstein Files.

I’m not surprised at the men defending the men or even the women defending the men at this point. And none of that is what this essay is about, I just need you to know the events leading up to white women across the United States demanding the patriarchy be torched without even so much as mentioning our inextricably linked system of white supremacy.

Welcome to American Lies: a series that will likely become my life’s work where we talk about the lies told to white Americans, to keep us separate from our brothers and sisters of different races in an effort to control all of us and keep us from an equitable society.

Every time I bring up white supremacy, the refrain from white women is that it must be the patriarchy. Because we, white women, we’ve truly done – nothing. Which is historically so inaccurate, but absolves us, sort of. And I know that’s why we white women do it, despite being a load bearing demographic for both the patriarchy and the system of white supremacy, white women have been trained to play the victim so much over the last four hundred years in the United States, it couldn’t have possibly had anything to do with ✨US ✨.

That’s our American lie this week: white women are the victims of the patriarchy, and therefore couldn’t have been a part of the problem of white supremacy because they were/still are victims themselves.

But we, women, we’re complex creatures, and we, white women specifically, our place in history and the present day is also complex. It’s nuanced, just like us, just like our brains, and just like our bodies. Complications abound. It’s why I become beyond infuriated when white women play the victim card. We may be victims in the system of patriarchy, but we are oppressors in the system of white supremacy and they linked BY DESIGN.

I NEED YOU TO READ A BOOK. Specifically, They Were her Property by Stefanie E Jones-Rogers, or Selling Hate, Marketing the Klan, by Dale Laackman.

So let’s start with our own history - as we remember from last week, part of this series’ goal is to understand our own history as white Americans so we can break free from it.

Historically, white women were part of the owned group. The United States was built for rich white men, by rich white men, and white women fit into the “property of class.” We were owned too. BUT it wasn’t the same because white women while still being women, were, say it with me: WHITE.

Because of white women’s precarious position in the white man’s world, we’re both victim and oppressor, predator and prey. Our tears leveled entire towns. False accusations led to entire summers of white violence on Black cities, towns, people, and more. And we were fashioned into a tool. A fucking battering ram, if you will. Used by men, and often levied by women themselves to ruin lives.

Oh you may be saying, but, Amy, that was so long ago.

Emmitt Till could easily still be alive today, if it weren’t for Carolyn Bryant. May she rot in fucking hell.

The term “Karening” was created because white women were policing Black folks having fun. In the era of camera phones no less, also known as present day. The Central Park birdwatching incident, where Christian Cooper was policed by a white woman, Amy Cooper - big disgrace to my name - happened in twenty fucking twenty (he won an Emmy and has continued to crush life despite that bitch).

“Karening” is the oldest tool in the white supremacy toolbox - the crying white woman begging for the authority’s help because of scary non-white, historically Black, men or boys are coming to harm her! In recent years, “Karening” has expanded to all non-white folks.

I mean, fuck dude, the very first trend I saw on TikTok was white women crying morphing into a Cheshire cat smile and it was terrifying. We, white women, can be incensed over the patriarchy and we SHOULD BE. Our anger is righteous, but we’re in a unique position in this fake social hierarchy born out of both white supremacy and the patriarchy and while we instinctually want to play the victim, because of generations of conditioning and being bred for that we also play the role of the oppressor. This unique position gives us power and I think it’s time we step into it.

We have power, we know we do, we wield it as we wish, though rather than as a unified. Can you imagine, if white women actually worked together? We’ve been conditioned to compete with each other, rather than working together because if we always worked together we’d be a force of fucking nature.

We’ve been conditioned to stump for the white man. To find the strong white man wherever we can and align ourselves with them. Plenty of white women continue this tradition today. We know this based on voting records. Despite the fact that Donald J Trump and his ilk consistently create laws against women, still over half of the white women who showed up in 2024 still voted for him.

That said, one third of Americans of voting age, did not show up in 2024. Which means, of the two thirds who showed up, one half of white women voted for Trump. They skewed uneducated. Which means for white women today, we can take over this demographic. We, educated white women who voted for Kamala, why the fuck not.

Let’s work together with other marginalized groups to tear down both systems. Why can’t we? We have the numbers right? We have the educated young women coming up. That’s the future. We MUST break our own generational curses and that is fucking HARD.

It’s so hard to break away from the whiteness focused, paternalistic culture, we were raised in, for, and used as a tool of. But it is doable, change is possible, it has to start with us individually, then we can move it into our communities, and finally into the country and world at large. Does it take time? Yes, but it’s worth it.

Oh and by the way - BLACK WOMEN, INDIGENOUS WOMEN, BROWN WOMEN have been screaming this for decades. If you’re coming out of this essay thinking “woah, what a great idea, I never thought of it that way,” you’re falling prey to both systems we’ve been talking about today.

So check your ego, go follow amazing Black, Indigenous, immigrant women on instagram, tiktok, youtube, or wherever you imbibe content. Start a women’s group in your neighborhood, have the hard conversations, remind women how much power we have everywhere and at every moment in time. And let’s immediately start stripping the power away from both systems of patriarchy and white supremacy at once.

You can find more of me on Youtube (where I’ll be launching a new series on Friday - called American Lies), at The Foolish Optimist, or on Instagram. Books for this series are here.