Sisters in Hate: American Women and White Extremism

by Seyward Darby

Conservative women’s activism derived from their faith, their community, and their fear that change might compromise their interests. Race was also a source of division. Research showed that black women tended to favor the amendment,17 while its adversaries drew strength from the memberships of racist organizations like the Klan, the John Birch Society, and Women for Constitutional Government, which described its female-led opposition to civil rights as a matter of “racial self-respect.”18 This too made sense: If feminism was, in Andrea Dworkin’s words, “a revolutionary advocacy of a single standard of human freedom,”19 its successes could disrupt more than traditional gender roles and relations. White supremacists, including female ones, saw a complex threat that they intended to stop.

Not much has changed