New derisive term for white women spread after Renee Good’s murder

But for the broader core of Trump supporters, the depiction of white, urban women as violent radicals obstructing mass deportations appears to reflect old anxieties around race, gender and immigration among the non-college-educated white men who make up the core of the Trump movement and perceive their place in society as declining, said political scientist Shauna Shames, co-editor of the book. The Right Women: Republican Party Activists, Candidates, and Legislators.

The notion of “white replacement” is not new. Far-right protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanted “Jews will not replace us” in 2017. But the president’s mass deportation effort has crystallized the battle lines. And gender is rising in that divide, along with race and ethnicity.

“Everything has come to a head here,” Shames said of Good’s murder.

In fact, white, educated women may be a threat to Trump, at least among the electorate. About 17 percent of last year’s voters were white women with college degrees, nearly matching the 18 percent who were white men without a college education.

And in an election in which Trump narrowed Democratic leads among Black, Latino and Asian American voters, Kamala Harris expanded the Democratic lead among college-educated white women, winning 58 percent of their votes compared to Joe Biden’s 54 percent in 2020, according to the Center for Women and American Politics at Rutgers University. Support for Trump among non-college-educated white women held steady at 63 percent.

Charging

The term HORRIBLE is not the first derisive name directed at white women. People across the political spectrum once gleefully attacked so-called Karens, a term meant to denigrate women (usually white and middle-aged) caught using their privilege to tilt the world in their direction.

The use of AWFUL arose long before Good was killed. Conservative critics began linking him to female protesters at least last summer in the north. Conservatives say there are good reasons to focus on such women. Erickson, in a lengthy post on Substack on Thursday, called Good’s death a “tragedy,” but one that Good and “her lesbian partner” had brought on themselves.

“Good had been harassing ICE agents for much of the day,” he wrote. “Good had been involved in a progressive activist group called ICE Watch that encouraged not only obstruction of ICE, but also something they call ‘de-arrest,’ which means helping detained illegal immigrants escape.”

It is unclear to what extent Good or his partner were involved in the organized protests that greeted immigration agents in Minnesota. And while administration officials have said she was violent or mentally ill, that description bears no resemblance to the person her family and neighbors said they knew.

Liberal scholars have been diagnosing what they see as the problem. Angry Minds: The Making of the New MAGA Right Author Laura Field said social, demographic and economic changes had left men feeling like they had lost status.

“For many of them, women are the substitute for their ‘stolen’ status,” he said.

If liberal academics have their theories, Naomi Wolf, who was once a liberal writer but veered to the right after the COVID-19 pandemic, has hers. Writing on social media, Wolf said liberal men, “disproportionately estrogenized” and “physically passive,” had left liberal women sexually frustrated and eager to fight.

“The smiles you see on their faces now say it all: White women crave all-out combat with ICE – who tend to be strong, physically confident, masculine men – because conflict is a form of physical liberation for them,” she wrote.

On Thursday, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of social media site

White men have also been prominent on the streets of Minneapolis. But critics of the spate of attacks on women say male protesters are not being singled out as a cohort.

To be sure, white women who fit a traditional mold enjoy status in American society, Field said. But that mold is not what the Trump administration and its supporters are responding to in Minneapolis.

“Trump and this administration are deeply misogynistic, and that’s always a big part of what he does,” said former Republican congresswoman Barbara Comstock, a fierce critic of the president.

Comstock highlighted polls that show strong majorities now disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration, but public opinion is not moderating the administration’s tactics or rhetoric.

“I think the problem is all these guys talk to themselves and are in their own bubble,” Comstock said.

When Trump was told in an interview with CBS News that Good’s father supported him, the president responded: “I bet she, under normal circumstances, was a very solid, wonderful person. But, you know, her actions were pretty harsh.”

Charging

There are signs that Good’s categorization as a radical may not be taking hold among the general public. Joe Rogan, the influential podcaster who endorsed the president in 2024, said he was horrified to see the video of Good’s murder. “It’s complicated, obviously, but it’s also very ugly to see someone shoot an American citizen, especially a woman, in the face,” Rogan said on his podcast, which has more than 20 million subscribers on YouTube.

In all of this, race is at play, both for critics of white women on the streets and for their supporters.

“The idea that one could lose one’s life, that one is also at risk like black people have been for centuries, I think is different,” Shames said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.