white womanhood — Bunk History

Manifest Destiny painting by Gast.

'Pure White' Examines the White Supremacist Origins of Evangelical Purity Culture

The new podcast discusses how purity is woven into many of the myths that have fed White supremacy in the nation’s past and continue to do so today.

by Sara Moslener, Emma Cieslik via Religion Dispatches on December 18, 2023

Portrait of Lydia Maria Child reading a book. Courtesy the Smithsonian/NMAAHC

Lydia Maria Child and the Vexed Role of the Woman Abolitionist

Taking up arms against slavery, the famous novelist foreshadowed the vexed role of the white woman activist today.

by Lydia Moland via Aeon on March 27, 2023

Edith Wharton.

Why Do Women Want?: Edith Wharton’s Present Tense

"The Custom of the Country" and its unique relationship with ideas of feminism and the culture of the early 20th century elite.

by Sarah Blackwood via The Paris Review on November 1, 2022

A woman in a horse-drawn wagon in the American west.

For Me, but Not for Thee

How white feminism failed Native Americans in the late-19th century.

by Kyla Schuller via Slate on October 25, 2021

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Just the Latest Radical White Woman Poisoning Politics

Such women have long pushed American politics to the right, and their ideas have become mainstream.

by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae via Made By History on February 6, 2021

Her Sentimental Properties

White women have trafficked in Black women’s milk.

by Sarah Mesle via Los Angeles Review of Books on December 22, 2020

Donald Trump and Joe Biden behind podiums during the first presidential debate of 2020

President Trump Gets the Suburbs All Wrong

His conception of what appeals to suburban voters is frozen in the past.

by Michelle M. Nickerson via Made By History on October 1, 2020

From Home to Market: A History of White Women’s Power in the US

The heart-tug tactics of 1950s ads steered white American women away from activism into domesticity. They’re still there.

by Ellen Wayland Smith via Aeon on September 17, 2020

Amy Cooper calling the police on Christian Cooper, a Black birdwatcher.

Amy Cooper Played the Damsel in Distress. That Trope Has a Troubling History.

Purportedly protecting white women has justified centuries of racist violence — while doing little to actually protect white women.

by Mia Brett via Made By History on March 28, 2020

Statue of Hannah Duston frowning, pointing, and wielding an axe.

The White Heroine Who Legitimized Racial Aggression

White racial violence in America has never been a random collection of individual or unrelated crimes of passion against minorities.

by Gregory Rodriguez via Contra Mundum on February 29, 2020

The Mistress's Tools

White women and the economy of slavery.

by Lynne Feeley via The Nation on February 26, 2019

Equal-Opportunity Evil

A new book shows that for female slaveholders, the business of human exploitation was just as profitable as it was for men.

by Rebecca Onion via Slate on February 14, 2019

The Settler Fantasies Woven Into the Prairie Dresses

The fashion trend is shorn entirely of the racism and colonial entitlement it once cloaked.

by Peggy O'Donnell via Jezebel on January 30, 2019

'Segregation's Constant Gardeners': How White Women Kept Jim Crow Alive

Meet the good white mothers, PTA members, and newspaper columnists who were also committed white supremacists.

by Rebecca Stoner via Pacific Standard on April 12, 2018

Woman in a KKK hood holding a baby.

No, Talking About Women's Role in White Supremacy is NOT Blaming Women

Women’s role in the 1920s KKK can teach us about racism today.

by Laura Smith via Timeline on January 23, 2018

Illustration of sex workers behind waving American flag.

How the United States Tried to Get on Top of the Sex Trade

Why should American exceptionalism end at the red-light district?

by Rebecca Mead via The New Yorker on December 9, 2024

Taylor Swift's Instagram post endorsing Kamala Harris. Swift is holding a cat and facing the camera, dressed in black.

Taylor Swift and the History of the Celebrity Endorsement

Do pop culture interventions in presidential elections make a difference?

by Addie Mahmassani via New Lines on October 23, 2024

Cover of "Suffrage Song" on left, featuring three suffragists. On right, cartoonist Caitlin Cass.

This Cartoonist Wants to Tell the Complicated History of Women’s Voting Rights

A new graphic book unpacks the role that some White women played in suppressing voting rights for all — and the lessons today in the fight for universal ballot access.

by Barbara Rodriguez via The 19th on June 17, 2024

A colorized engraving depicts enslavers selling enslaved people in the 19th-century South.

American Slavery Wasn’t Just a White Man’s Business − Research Shows How White Women Profited, Too

Human bondage was big business in the antebellum US, and men weren’t the only ones cashing in.

by Trevon Logan via The Conversation on June 10, 2024

Her Property Transactions: White Women and the Frequency of Female Ownership in the Antebellum Era

White women were especially likely to be owners involved in transactions with enslaved women, where they were listed as owners in nearly 40% of transactions.

by Benton Wishart, Trevor D. Logan via National Bureau Of Economic Research on May 31, 2024

Women wearing early twentieth-century gym suits emblazoned with 1902, some women in baskets.

How Sports Clothes Became Fashion

The evolution of women's sportswear.

by Einav Rabinovitch-Fox via Nursing Clio on May 15, 2024

An activist holding a placard that says Stop The War On Women during the protest in Los Angeles in 2019.

History Shows Abortion Bans Are a War on Poor Women

While some liberals decry abortion bans as a war on women, history reveals that this charge distorts the reality of their impact.

by R. E. Fulton via Made By History on April 15, 2024

Robert Smalls.

What a Teacher's Letters Reveal About Robert Smalls, Who Stole a Confederate Ship to Secure Freedom

Harriet M. Buss' missives home detail the future congressman's candid views on race and the complicity of Confederate women.

by Jonathan W. White via Smithsonian on February 13, 2024

Ginger R. Stephens (center), a Virginia leader of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, joined other celebrants at a 2018 commemoration of Jefferson Davis’s birthday.

Yes, They’re Pro-Confederacy. But They’re Just the Nicest Ladies!

You can call the United Daughters of the Confederacy a lot of things. But racist? Why, some of their best friends…

by Anna Venarchik via The New Republic on December 5, 2023

Betty Friedan circa 1975.

What Betty Friedan Knew

Judge the author of the “Feminine Mystique” not by the gains she made, but by her experience.

by Hermione Hoby via The New Republic on December 1, 2023

Women at National Organization for Women demonstration

Betty Friedan and the Movement That Outgrew Her

Friedan was indispensable to second-wave feminism. And yet she was difficult to like.

by Moira Donegan via The New Yorker on September 11, 2023

Betty Friedan

The Abandonment of Betty Friedan

What does the academy have against the mother of second-wave feminism?

by Rachel Shteir via The Chronicle of Higher Education on September 11, 2023

Woman in yoga pose

Religion of the Devil, Philosophy of the Coiled Serpent

In yoga’s early days in the United States, skeptics warned it would lead people (e.g., women) of good faith and standing into paganism and ill repute.

by Ramsha Zubairi, Diana L. Eck, Andrea R. Jain, Gwilym Beckerlegge via JSTOR Daily on July 26, 2023

Morlok quadruplets with a teacher next to a chalkboard.

Sleepwalking to Madness in Mid-Century America

On Audrey Clare Farley’s “Girls and Their Monsters.”

by Ellen Wayland Smith via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 13, 2023

Women looting a bakery during the Richmond Bread Riot.

What Happened at the Richmond Bread Riot?

The Richmond Bread Riot broke out during the Civil War when working-class women in the South became fed up with food shortages.

by Kellie B. Gormly via HISTORY on April 1, 2023

brought to you by

© Bunk History