I used to be minding my very own enterprise, dwelling my grandbaby-free post-menopausal life, after I was all of a sudden confronted with an existential query:
What — to borrow Barbie’s lament — was I made for?
And why ought to I care what Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance thinks?
Usually, I don’t have interaction in evolutionary biology-based navel-gazing. I’ve heard too many sophomoric arguments about how males are biologically programmed to be untrue, blah blah blah. I’m too busy working full time, elevating my 14-year-old niece, cooking, cleansing, ensuring the canine poop will get picked up and pining for the “post-menopausal zest” that Margaret Mead promised me.
Final week, one more of Vance’s cringey opinions about ladies and households — this time about ladies previous menopause — made waves, and helped nudge his approval score even decrease than it had been.
In 2020, Vance was a visitor on a now-defunct podcast known as “The Portal,” hosted by Eric Weinstein, a managing director of Thiel Capital, whose founder, Peter Thiel, is Vance’s political godfather.
Throughout a rambling (and albeit boring) two-hour-plus interview in regards to the state of working-class America and the ills of neoliberalism, discuss turned to household. Vance declared that his younger son was a “higher human being” for having his maternal grandparents concerned in his life.
This prompted Weinstein to recommend that caring for grandchildren is “the entire objective of the post-menopausal feminine.”
Vance agreed, and mentioned that when his first baby was born, his spouse, Usha, was about to begin a Supreme Courtroom clerkship and his Indian-born mother-in-law moved in with the household for a yr. Because it occurs, his mother-in-law, Lakshmi Chilukuri, is a UC San Diego provost, marine biologist and biochemist. What a present to be a financially steady tenured professor with choices like that!
Weinstein, who can also be married to the daughter of Indian immigrants, allowed as how having deeply concerned grandparents is “this bizarre, unadvertised characteristic of marrying an Indian lady.”
Vance replied. “It’s simply considered one of these items…. That is what you do.”
He was in all probability conjuring a particular stereotype about South Asian households. However he additionally implied that caring for your youngsters’s youngsters is baked into the DNA of ladies who’re not fertile. That is the mental equal of believing that ladies are programmed to search for a mate with a full head of hair and a Ferrari. Some do, some don’t. Some grandmothers take care of grandkids, some don’t.
Vance’s feedback in all probability wouldn’t have hit such a bitter observe had their revelation not been preceded by a string of different offensive remarks about individuals who wouldn’t have youngsters.
In 2021, he instructed Tucker Carlson, “We’re successfully run on this nation, through the Democrats … by a bunch of childless cat girls who’re depressing at their very own lives and the alternatives that they’ve made. And they also wanna make the remainder of the nation depressing too.” Individuals who don’t have youngsters, he mentioned, don’t have “a stake” on this nation.
After which, he singled out Vice President Kamala Harris, who has two stepchildren, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who’s homosexual and was, at that very second, within the means of adopting twins along with his husband, Chasten.
Because it occurs, childless cat girls are happier than most voters, in response to a survey carried out within the first two days of August by the Nationwide Ladies’s Regulation Heart Motion Fund with the Morning Seek the advice of polling agency. First reported by Mom Jones, the survey discovered that 32% of childless cat girls mentioned they have been “very completely happy” in contrast with 27% of voters total.
What a present to Democrats, already energized by Harris’ surprising marketing campaign.
“Childless Cat Women for Kamala” turned an on the spot meme. And regardless of the very best efforts of individuals like Vance’s spouse to go off his comment as a “quip,” there was actually no approach to clear up the mess he’d made.
Final week on Fox Information, following Trump’s lead, Vance tried to downplay the function that reproductive rights will play in turning out voters, despite the fact that abortion protections might be on the ballots of not less than eight states in November.
“I don’t purchase it,” mentioned Vance, who has known as for banning abortion nationally. “I feel most suburban ladies care in regards to the regular issues that the majority Individuals care about.”
How does he make room in his mouth for therefore many toes?
No surprise ABC Information lately declared that “Individuals aren’t vibing with Vance” in a narrative headlined “JD Vance is extra unpopular than Sarah Palin.” Ouch.
Plainly Vance’s retrograde opinions about how American ladies ought to behave are dooming him.
“Each time JD Vance opens his mouth,” somebody posted on X, “one other lady re-dedicates the remainder of her life to being his worst nightmare.”
There are an estimated 75 million menopausal Individuals. We could be drained — from working, from caring for household, from dwelling our lives — however what? We’re not too drained to vote.
