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As it becomes increasingly likely that women will decide this presidential election, both parties are scrambling for women鈥檚 votes. Kamala Harris continues to position herself as the 鈥済irls鈥欌�� candidate by foregrounding abortion rights and and on podcasts like Call Her Daddy. 

Meanwhile, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance seem to be recognizing that a campaign whose gendered messaging has consisted almost entirely of overt misogyny is not doing them any favors with women voters. The last few weeks have seen the Republican ticket making a host of promises to women: to 鈥溾�� them, to give them 鈥溾�� that will help them 鈥�,鈥� and to ensure a world where they will 鈥�.鈥澛�

This women-specific messaging from Trump and Vance reflects an important shift in our political culture. Feminism has achieved an unprecedented level of popularity. In a time when , it has become difficult to reach women without making some kind of claim about understanding their plight.

Yet Trump and Vance鈥攚ho oppose abortion rights, have no plans to raise the federal minimum wage, and who seem to 鈥攃annot present themselves as advocates for women without undermining their own policy positions. Yet they are now addressing what have traditionally been thought of as feminist issues, such as sexual assault, Title IX, and the struggles of moms. Their gloss on the issues is, unsurprisingly, racist, transphobic, and indifferent to economic inequality. But they seem to be banking on the idea that elite women will mistake the candidates鈥� investments in oppressive systems with investments in the fate of women.

There is a preexisting reservoir of arguments available to help Republicans accomplish this confusion, and it comes from a surprising place: from within feminism. As I argue in my new book, (Beacon Press, October 2024), feminism has always had many strands within it, and some of these have sought to advance the interests of privileged women at the expense of less privileged ones.

Trump has, in recent weeks, repeated the message that he will be women鈥檚 protector. This position has been roundly criticized for being condescending to women, and for coming from an alleged rapist. But less has been said about which women Trump and his surrogates claim to be protecting, and whom he claims to be protecting them from. 

Trump鈥檚 original protector comments were embedded within a set of dog whistles about men of color. His specific promise was to and on 鈥渃ity streets.鈥�

This is part of in which Trump has repeatedly attempted to associate rape with Latinx and undocumented people, in spite of the fact that the prevalence of sexual assault is high among all racial and ethnic groups, and in spite of the fact that many rapes of migrant women are . 

This strategy of associating Black and Brown men with rape also has a longer history within white feminism. actively argued that 鈥渙ther鈥� men鈥檚 treatment of women was a reason that countries in the Global South need to be colonized. The dominant feminist response to rape in the U.S. until quite recently was what is known as 鈥�,鈥� an approach that proposes widening the reach of a racist criminal justice system as the solution to gender-based violence.

Trump鈥檚 and Vance鈥檚 borrowings from white feminism extend to another domain in which they are using the language of 鈥減rotection鈥�: women鈥檚 sports. Vance recently claimed that in sports would prevent his daughter from being 鈥渂rutalized,鈥� repeating a false image of the trans woman as a violator of women鈥檚 鈥渟afe spaces.鈥� This concept has recently resurged since its initial popularity in feminist separatist circles in the 1970s. Feminists of color were vocally critical of , because it assumed that there was one way to be a woman鈥攗sually, implicitly, the white way.  

Vance鈥檚 recent rhetoric around family and childcare draws on another, 鈥渟ofter鈥� side of white feminism. The sarcastic tone of his 鈥渃hildless cat ladies鈥� comments and his participation in banter about the 鈥溾�� seems to have vanished, replaced with a man who wants to , and instead give them 鈥�.鈥�

The idea that feminists are enemies of stay-at-home moms has its roots in . Conservatives of the time managed to block feminist efforts to secure free childcare by portraying the feminist as a judgmental career woman who looked down her nose at motherhood. 

The legacy of this period endures in the popular feminist claim that the aim of feminism is to respect individual women鈥檚 choices鈥攖hat women should be able to make decisions about their lives without fear of judgment. Yet a feminism focused on non-judgment continues to serve only the most privileged women, since the 鈥渃hoice鈥� not to work outside the home has only ever been available to the well-off. Across a range of issues鈥攃hildcare, abortion, and sexual harassment鈥攚hat women actually need is not the false guise of options, but also material support.

Whether these strategies of appealing to privileged women will win Trump and Vance the election remains to be seen. But the lessons from these appropriations of seemingly feminist arguments extend far beyond what happens this November. Unless we achieve greater moral clarity about the goals of feminism, it will remain easy for privileged women to confuse their interests with the interests of women and gender-expansive people as a group.

Fortunately for feminists, arriving at this clarity does not have to mean starting from scratch. White feminism, and its sister ideologies such as neoliberal feminism and femonationalism, have never been the only games in town. These ideologies, I argue in the book, are united by an understanding of feminism as a movement to increase women鈥檚 individual freedom. 

But feminism should really be understood in the way famously described it in 1984鈥攁s a movement against oppression. Oppression is not the same thing as restrictions on what individual women can do; it is a set of social structures that brings down women as a group. It is only by reclaiming this heart of feminism that we can fight against the proliferation of faux feminisms that serve the interests of the powerful.