As I blogged about a couple of years ago, Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance claims parents of children should get more votes as childless people don’t have as much stake in the future. Which as I note at the link is nonsense: someone childless my niece’s age (around 30) has a lot of stake in the future as she’s (hopefully) going to spend 50 years living in it. More than say, someone Trump’s age or Rupert Murdoch’s — they’ll be dead of something long before the consequences of their policies kill them.
After Biden stepped down in favor of Kamala Harris, Vance’s response was to dismiss her and all women without kids as “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives” and don’t have a stake in America a parent like himself does. Blake Masters — another protege of billionaire Peter Thiel — immediately agreed, as does vapid right-wing talking head Michael Knowles. Vance has since asserted that Of Course he’s not criticizing women without children, he’s attacking Democrats for being “anti-family and anti-child.” Nah, he’s going after the childless.
This is a sibling undead sexist cliche to “feminists are irrationally angry” Rather than feminists being pissed off because they’re too unfeminine to find a man, feminists are miserable because they can’t find a man. Sure, they have college degrees and cool jobs but then they go home and cry while they feed their cats in their sad, lonely apartment. Where they’re alone. With no man. Did I mention they’re pathetic and lonely?
This cliche goes back even before modern feminism got going. In the 1959 film Best of Everything, Hope Lange’s boss (Joan Crawford) is a cautionary tale: she’s spend so long doing unfeminine things like climbing the career ladder, she’s killed her womanly feelings and is incapable of love. After the feminist movement got going, it would be a standard right-wing trope — ignoring that many feminists were happily married and had kids (I know several). Harris, for instance, does have kids, albeit step-kids (worth noting, even though there’s no reason a childless cat lady wouldn’t be better fit for federal office than, say, JD Vance).
It also ties in with the right-wing conviction that women are babymakers first and foremost; if they aren’t willing to assume that role, by golly they should be pushed into it anyway! They are simply means to an end, whether that end is their husband’s wishes or society’s (hence Vance also supporting higher tax rates on the childless — as if parents don’t already get a number of tax breaks).
No surprise that Republicans such as Rep. Glen Grothman want us back in 1960 — before the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s, before women got the crazy idea they were ends in themselves and should be treated accordingly.
In other misogynist news:
In discussing the need for the feds to ban interstate travel by women who want abortions, Vance suggests George Soros will help black women get abortions!
Anti-vax, anti-gay attorney Mat Staver says Kamala Harris has a Jezebel spirit. In religious circles, that’s another undead sexist cliche.
One Republican makes it clear that the Republican platform not calling for a national abortion ban won’t stop them banning it.
No, Roe v. Wade did not give women the right to abort any time for any reason. Republicans lie about this.
A woman in Georgia went to a health center with a miscarriage, then left the fetus in the trash (which is legal in that state). Authorities say they’re looking for laws they can use to prosecute her.
In Oklahoma, some prosecutors say a pregnant woman licensed for medical marijuana needs a separate license for the fetus. One woman’s pushing back.
From the perspective of the men running the Southern Baptist Conference, dominating women is more important than defending them from harassment. Former SBC leader Paige Patterson saw shielding churches from harassment lawsuits as perfectly compatible with good Christian behavior.
Independent investigations into sexual abuse cases are good …unless they’re part of the coverup.
Christian-dictator wannabe Joel Webbon says women having influence in society is bad because “it’s going to be really hard for us to get friends hired, enemies fired, those kinds of things because those are things that men do.” This seems like a good argument for Kamala Harris, frankly because Webbon’s idea of a good society sounds horrible.
