🩷 The Patriarchy in Pink: White Women, You Are Your Men

A love note and a mirror—especially today.

Grace is not letting harm slide. Grace is inviting someone back to their own humanity when the world has told them to forget it.

I often talk about the grace Black women extend to white women in this work.

But what I want to ask you today is: Do you extend that same grace to your men?

Because when the cishet Christian patriarchy starts tossing its weight around, white women are not standing up to it in numbers that match their Instagram bios. They are not putting bodies on the line. And when they do, it’s often after Black and Indigenous women have already broken the door open.

We talk about the 92% of Black women who show up, who vote, who organize, who march.

But white women? You are your men. You vote like them. You love them. You protect them. You excuse them. And too often—you become them in skirts and sweaters and soft-smile fragility.

Every few weeks, it happens again.

A white woman reaches out—shaken, confused, often hurt—because a cishet white man in her life said something violent. Voted against their shared values. Mocked a protest. Undermined her work. Or simply reminded her, in action or in silence, that patriarchy has always made room for him.

And they ask me: What do I do now?

And I say: Give him the same grace that Black women have given you.

That’s the part no one wants to sit with.

We—the ones you call on when the world burns—have held space for your awakening while being set on fire ourselves.

We’ve taught. We’ve marched. We’ve made room. We’ve softened our rage so you could enter the work without fear. We’ve made you feel safe, even as you weaponized your fear against us.

You know what we haven’t done?

We haven’t asked you to hate white men.

We’ve asked you to do the work with them.

To speak truth at the dinner table. To challenge patriarchy in your homes and bedrooms. To model accountability, not erasure.

But time after time, when the cishet Christian patriarchy rears its head again, we watch white women scramble for new words… when what’s required is old work.

White Womanhood Lives in a Paradox

And grace isn’t about denying that paradox. Grace is about holding it.

You are both:

• Victims of patriarchy and its enforcers.

• Hurt by white supremacy and protected by it.

• Marginalized by men and elevated above the global majority.

White Women Have Never Just Been Victims

• You became the face of fragility while Black women were made the face of rage.

• You were protected when you cried, while we were punished for surviving.

• And now? Now is the time to stop asking Black women to make you feel safe, and start making the system unsafefor patriarchy.

You don’t need to be stripped of your pain to be held accountable. You don’t need to erase your trauma to tell the truth about your power. It is not your job to save white men—but it is your responsibility to stop leaving us to do all the confronting for you.

But here’s the catch: If you don’t acknowledge the both/and, you’ll keep cycling through performative liberation that never actually liberates anyone.

Grace Means Seeing Your Men As Human—So They Can See Themselves

You want to do something radical? Offer your men the same grace we offered you:

• The grace of not giving up on you when you didn’t know better.

• The grace of challenging you with love, not disgust.

• The grace of calling you in instead of just calling you out.

White men are drowning in patriarchy & supremacy culture and calling it dry land.

They don’t need more worship. They don’t need more protection. They need someone to hold the mirror up and say:

You’re not a monster. You’re not a savior. You’re a man who’s been lied to. And I will not let you destroy what you could heal.

Grace isn’t silence. Grace is standing in someone’s humanity even when they’ve forgotten it.

Grace is accountability rooted in love—not compliance.

Grace is saying: I believe in your ability to change, and I won’t pretend otherwise to make you comfortable.

The Liberation You’re After Requires You to Let Go

We don’t need you to fight for power inside the system—we need you to dismantle it alongside us.

Stop chasing the corner office while the building is still on fire.

Stop asking to lead movements you only just joined.

Stop curating your liberation while we are still fighting for basic humanity.

Liberation that stops at your own reflection is just rebranded power-hoarding.

If you’re not willing to call in your community—your family, your partners, your congregations—then you’re not building liberation.

You're just curating proximity to it.

What Does That Look Like?

• It looks like disrupting dinner table supremacy—not just biting your tongue for “peace.” (Right to comfort)

• It looks like inviting your partner to unpack patriarchy, not just venting to your girls about him afterward.

• It looks like raising your sons to cry, to question, to lead with compassion.

• It looks like refusing to use your whiteness to protect violence, even when that violence looks like your father, your husband, or your pastor.

And it looks like doing all of this not because Black and Brown folks asked you to—but because you know your own liberation depends on it.

Black women have shown up for democracy, for justice, for everyone’s babies—not because we’ve been protected, but because we refused to become what harmed us. We extended grace to you while carrying our own grief. We didn’t do that because we had to. We did it because we refused to leave anyone behind. Now it’s your turn to do the same.”

You Are Your Men

If they go down, you go with them.

Not because you deserve their punishment, but because you were never meant to inherit their throne.

You were meant to burn the whole damn castle and build something new.

The problem is, too many white women still want the crown—just in pink.

FACT CHECK THIS: History Holds Receipts

• 📍At the 1963 March on Washington, Black women organizers were asked to stand aside—even as they were the ones holding it all down behind the scenes.

• 📍 In the 2020 U.S. election, 55% of white women voted for Trump.

• 📍 In 2024, many white women continued to vote for anti-DEI, anti-abortion, anti-human policies—because they believe that alignment with white men protects them.

• 📍Grace is not new. From Sojourner to Fannie Lou Hamer to Anita Hill to Audre Lorde, Black women have always extended vision, labor, and leadership to white women… even when that grace wasn’t returned.

So, White Women… What Are You Willing to Let Go Of?

The question is not: How do we get more women into power?

The question is: What are you willing to let go of to create a system where no one has to be oppressed for you to thrive?

Are you willing to confront hard truths? Are you willing to sit with the grief of your complicity? Are you willing to make room for the white women who are leaving patriarchy behind—and being called traitors for doing so?

Are you willing to:

• Be uncomfortable?

• Hold each other accountable?

• Stop seeing yourselves as just victims—and start recognizing how you uphold the systems you claim to fight?

Because white women, you don’t need to become your men to be free.

You need to burn the system down instead of repainting it in pastels and calling it progress.

Grace, Reimagined

We’ve held grace for you. We’ve made space. We’ve translated our rage into lessons so you could come along. We’ve let you cry. We’ve offered maps.

And now?

We’re asking you to extend that same grace—to your men. To yourself. To the world you say you want.

Not the grace that hides. Not the grace that excuses. The grace that transforms.

Let’s Be Clear:

You are not the enemy. But you have always had a choice: To disrupt the enemy’s plan—or become part of it.

If you are a white woman who wants to be in this work, let me lovingly say:

• You are not here to just unlearn.

• You are here to rebuild.

• And that work starts at home.

❤️ A Note from the Deep Place

🌬️ To the Black women who are tired of holding both the burden and the blueprint—may you rest without guilt.

🌬️ To the white women who are ready to do the real work—may you listen more than you speak, and love more than you fear.

🌬️ To the white men who are willing to choose humanity over supremacy—your reckoning will not ruin you. It will return you.

Grace in Action: 7 Ways White Women Can Begin

1. Invite, Don’t Instruct. Start the conversation with curiosity, not condemnation.

➡️ “I’ve been thinking about how patriarchy affects both of us—what’s your take?”

2. Model Accountability in Real Time. When you mess up, own it out loud. Let him see it.

➡️ “I realized I said something rooted in bias—I’m working on that.”

3. Refuse to Co-Sign Harm for Comfort. Don’t laugh off the joke, excuse the behavior, or ignore the silence.

➡️ “Hey, I know you didn’t mean harm, but here’s how that landed…”

4. Ask Deeper Questions. Disrupt the script by going beyond performance.

➡️ “Who taught you that strength meant silence or control? What would it look like to unlearn that?”

5. Share Resources, Not Blame. Pass him the book, the podcast, the article that challenged you.

➡️ “This changed the way I saw myself—I wonder what it might open for you.”

6. Practice ‘Yes, And’ Conversations. Don’t shut him down—build from where he is.

➡️ “Yes, I hear you. And can I offer another perspective?”

7. Normalize Grace as Accountability. Let him know you believe in his growth without excusing harm.

➡️ “I love you enough not to let you stay small. I believe you can do better—and I’m here for it.”

THIS IS THE WORK:

Grace is not alignment. Grace is truth. Truth with teeth. Truth that liberates.

• Extend grace, but not at the expense of justice.

• Speak truth to the ones in your life who’ve been coddled for far too long.

• Understand that deconstructing whiteness and patriarchy is not betrayal—it is liberation.

• And if you're ready to go deeper, I’ve created a full pay what you can e-book on Dismantling Supremacy Culture: Understanding and Overcoming Its 15 Pillars. You can grab it here: 👉🏾 https://desireebstephens.bio/shop/50ea9892-cedb-48de-bf77-65ba4629c70b

• And join us live every day 9:30 am EST Live, where we practice this grace, this disruption, this becoming—together.

In solidarity and sacred disruption,

Desireé B. Stephens

Educator | Counselor | Community Builder

Founder, Make Shi(f)t Happen