What to do with childless cat ladies?
Now that the meme wars have begun, you’ve probably heard that fake hillbilly JD Vance called Vice President Kamala Harris a “Childless cat lady.” This week we take a look at cats (because they’re awesome) and why JD Vance’s policies make everyone’s uterus say, “no thanks.”
Cats rule
This should go without saying, but cats rule. They’re the best. I love dogs, but a cat’s not going to help the Nazis sniff people out of hiding. In fact, one of the last times humans launched a violent attack to rid themselves of cats (because they were witches, duh), a large chunk of Europe was rewarded with the plague.
My previous cat lived with me for 18 years. He was my boy. When I wanted to give up, I remembered that if I died or was homeless, no one would take care of him. So, we’d split a cup of tea, dust ourselves off, and get back to trying. He even rallied for a few weeks at the end when I asked him not to die before my birthday. He was the best cat ever.
Black cat around the shoulders.
I’m convinced people like JD Vance who see “cat lady” as an insult prefer dogs because for the most part, a dog loves you as long as you put in the most basic effort. With a cat, you have to earn it, and old Schill-billy Vance lacks the conviction for basic empathy.
Childlessness
Children were always a “maybe”; cats were a must. Cats have always been a part of my life (including the one I am throwing off my desk right now).
Kids are cool. I love mine, but the decision to have them rested on a lot of factors: did I want to try to work for the FBI or the Navy or an international NGO? I know many of the women who work for those orgs have kids, but the work-life balance in those jobs wouldn’t work out for how I wanted to raise my hypothetical kids.
Would I have my mental health in order (hard without health insurance), be able to afford them, live in a safe area, marry someone I could trust to lean on financially so I could have a flexible job that allowed me to do more time at home? I’ve known too many women who married “good” guys, but then found themselves victim of sexual, financial, or physical abuse as soon as they were pregnant or had young children and not able to support themselves financially. It was one of my biggest fears.
It's worth noting that no president has ever given birth, and if they wanted someone who had, they could have picked Hillary Clinton. And while it would be interesting to take a few election cycles and see what would happen if we only picked people who had physically birthed children, having done so is neither a requirement for working in government nor being a woman.
Plenty of women do not want to have kids. Far too many who want them desperately cannot have them. Neither of those things is anyone else’s business. And make no mistake that JD Vance could care less about Kamala Harris’ children. He’s throwing red meat to his constituents who hate women. The people he is appealing to view women as a tool to get what they want.
If we’re serious about freedom, reproductive and general, then we need to accept people’s decision not to have children.
Want more women to have children? Start fixing things instead of making them worse
If I were ten years younger and making the same decision today, there is no way I would have had children.
The planet is dying. Democracy is being attacked. Food and water are poisoned with forever chemicals and other man-made, for-profit disasters. Why would I have children today when my grandchildren might live in The Parable of the Sower?
There is gun violence and domestic violence everywhere. Women can’t trust that they or their children will be safe at home, at school, or in the general public. There is no serious attempt to pass wide-scale anti-domestic violence policies like enforcing red flag laws and removing firearms from people with a history of domestic abuse.
I live in a state with “the best schools in America” that just passed a tax meant to increase school funding. At least seven school districts near me cut or nearly cut art, music, health, and general classroom teachers because the property owners are all crotchety old people who don’t want to pay for public schools if their kids don’t go there. Fund schools better. Stop letting states deny students a real education. Stop making schools a place of danger by mandating teachers report LGBTQ kids to their parents. Stop attacking LGBTQ people.
Quit killing Black people. Every time I see another cop flat out murdered another Black person (Sonya Massey), I think that if I were Black, I wouldn’t be able to survive. Black people can’t go grocery shopping, go to church, be in their homes without the risk of state-sanctioned murder. Hispanic and Latinos are increasingly at risk of white supremacist violence (remember the El Paso shooting?). Asians are increasingly at risk for hate crimes. Jews are increasingly at risk of hate crime. Islamophobia is a national pastime in the US, and bonus, we’re living through multiple genocides and actively supporting at least one. Truthfully addressing racism is a reproductive justice/violence/health issue. When people like JD Vance with his white supremacist values raise children, they are raising them to grow up to hurt my children. Why not take racism and misogyny seriously when we’re talking about what does and does not count as abuse?
AI is taking jobs and will continue to do so, while there is no safety net for most of the planet. A handful of billionaires are destroying the environment and the economy and no one will stop them.
Children languish in foster care and abusive homes with almost no way out. Our country spends more money on prisons and war than it does on schools, housing, health and welfare, and the environment.
People hate kids. People say hateful things about kids and parents all the time. Jobs aren’t flexible enough for people taking care of children. Getting back to work due to a “resume gap” is incredibly difficult. Companies discriminate against women with children. Women with children are the demographic who fairs worst in the wage gap. Preschools are unregulated in many parts of the US and childcare costs more than rent (which is also unaffordable) in many places. For-profit health insurance, for-profit prisons, the foster-care-to-prison pipeline, the school-to-prison pipeline, control our health and welfare.
Children can’t play outside now without the risk of nosy neighbors calling social services for neglect, and that system is so broken children die in it. Who wants to risk that? Parents over-schedule their kids in activities to get them a better shot at social mobility (which doesn’t exist anymore), so there aren’t friends for “free range” kids to play with anyway.
And, if you do get pregnant it is a potential death sentence in any number of states. Or if you can’t get pregnant, you can’t do IVF either, but somehow that’s still your fault.
Conclusion: It’s irrational to actually have children
JD Vance is a supporter of making all of this, with an added side of Christo-fascism.
My daughters are less free than I was at their age. Why should I encourage them to have children?
At nearly every step of the way, our government chooses policies that make this world less and less any of us want to raise children in. So the real question isn’t, why does Kamala Harris have cats and step-kids? It’s: why would anyone want to have kids in the world JD Vance wants to bring about.
Moral of the story: leave people alone about their reproductive choices, causse it’s none of your business.
