Conservative Women Vote Against Women's Rights

A woman on TikTok just shared something she overheard. A conservative woman said she would happily give up her own right to vote as long as it meant liberal women could never vote again. Read that again. She did not say she wanted better schools. She did not say she wanted lower grocery prices. She did not say she wanted safer neighborhoods. She said she would destroy her own political power to make sure other women lose theirs. That is not politics. That is psychology. In 2018, researchers Mark Setzler and Alixandra Yanus at High Point University published a study on why women voted for Trump in 2016. They studied over four thousand Americans and asked a simple question. What actually predicts whether a woman votes for Trump? Was it her income? No. Her religion? No. Her education level? No. Her region of the country? No. What predicted a woman’s vote for Trump more than any other factor, more than her political party, more than her economic situation, more than any demographic characteristic, was two things. Racial resentment. And hostile sexism. Not sexism toward men. Sexism toward other women. Racial resentment is a specific psychological scale used by researchers to measure attitudes toward racial equality. It is not the same as open racism. Most people who score high on the racial resentment scale would never say they are racist. They say things like “minorities get too many advantages” or “if they just worked harder they would be fine.” They frame it as fairness. But the research shows it is resentment toward people of color gaining ground. There are 47 million white women in America without a college degree. Over 60 percent of them voted for Trump. The first reason these women voted for Trump is they believed people of color do not deserve what they have. That belief alone made them overwhelmingly more likely to vote for him. The second reason is they resented other women gaining power. Their status comes from their husband, their church, and the social pecking order staying exactly where it is. When another woman succeeds outside that system, when she builds her own career, earns her own money, and does not need a man to define her worth, it proves there was another option the whole time. And they never took it. That is the woman on that TikTok. She just told the entire internet she would destroy herself to destroy other women. She is not voting for better healthcare. She is not voting for lower prices. She is not voting for her children’s future. She is voting to make sure other women fail. She would rather lose her own rights than watch a liberal woman keep hers. That is not strength. That is not conviction. That is a woman so threatened by other women’s freedom that she would burn her own house down to make sure her neighbor’s burns too. And she is not alone. There are millions of her. Women who see other women succeeding and feel something break inside them. Not inspiration. Not admiration. Rage. Because that success is proof that the life they chose was not the only option. And sitting with that proof is more painful than giving up the right to vote. Trump did not create these women. He just gave them permission to say out loud what they have always felt. That other women getting ahead is a personal attack on the life they built. And they will sacrifice anything, including their own power, to stop it. That is who these women are. And they just told us. Sources Setzler, M., & Yanus, A.B. (2018). Why did women vote for Donald Trump? PS: Political Science & Politics, 51(3), 523-527. Kim, C., & Junn, J. (2024). Whitewashing women voters: Intersectionality and partisan vote choice in the 2020 US Presidential Election. Politics & Gender. Frasure-Yokley, L. (2018). Choosing the velvet glove: Women voters, ambivalent sexism, and vote choice in 2016. Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics, 3(1), 3-25. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lucasbean.substack.com/subscribe