Abstract
Although media images typically present the alt right as a “manosphere,” white women continue to participate actively in white supremacist movements. Alt right women's presence as “shield maidens,” “fashy femmes,” and “trad wives” serves to soften and normalize white supremacy, often in ironic and insidious ways. In this essay, I examine the continued investment of white women in these traditional sex/gender roles espoused by the alt right. While feminism has done much to liberate women, I conclude that the images of women as Moms circulating in mainstream politics today suggest that white supremacy and white women's complicity in it has yet to be overcome.
Highlights
Media images typically present the alt right as a “manosphere,” white women continue to participate actively in white supremacist movements
White women were active in the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, and more recently, have joined neo-Nazi groups, such as the Aryan Nation, National Vanguard, White Aryan Resistance, and the alt right (Blee, 1992, 2003; Schabner, 2006; Love, 2016)
Black female scholars developed intersectionality to analyze the multiple forms of oppression experienced by Black women (Hancock, 2016)
Summary
Media images typically present the alt right as a “manosphere,” white women continue to participate actively in white supremacist movements. The alt right opposes “women’s liberation” because it gives women choices that make it less likely that we will “get married, have children, and perpetuate the white race” Its members call liberated women “thots,” which means “that ho over there,” and celebrate the femininity and fertility of women who accept their traditional sex/gender roles, calling them as “tradhots”
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