White women defended racial hierarchy because it mediated their own gender subordination.

Evidence

Historically, white female efforts to maintain racial dominance were directly connected to the politics of heterosexism within a white supremacist patriarchy. Sexist norms, which deemed white women inferior because of gender, could be mediated by racial bonding. Even though males, white and black, may have been most concerned with policing or gaining access to white women’s bodies, the social reality white women lived was one in which white males did actively engage in sexual relationships with black women. In the minds of most white women, it was not important that the overwhelming majority of these liaisons were forged by aggressive coercion, rape, and other forms of sexual assault; white women saw black women as competitors in the sexual marketplace. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 186

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the article ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ on how dress/morality codes express class and identity competition, and echoes anti-racism analyses where gender subordination is compensated through racial status. — connects to: White women historically invoked racial superiority to assert sexual agency against patriarchal control. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1287; Post-emancipation white women worked harder to enforce racial superiority through degrading stereotypes — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 189; A white woman’s racial fantasies can weaponize race against patriarchal authority (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• White women historically invoked racial superiority to assert sexual agency against patriarchal control. #expands (0.90) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1287
• Racial imperialism let white women act as oppressors of black people despite sexism #corroborates (0.88)
• A white woman’s racial fantasies can weaponize race against patriarchal authority #expands (0.82)
• Post-emancipation white women worked harder to enforce racial superiority through degrading stereotypes #expands (0.75) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 189
• Colonial white womanhood was constituted through race, not gender alone #expands (0.72)