You may have heard about JD Vance’s “childless cat ladies” riff. But even if you have, it’s worth revisiting the full quote — and reminding yourself of what it says about the movement that may wind up in charge of this country after this year’s election.
In 2021, while running for the Senate, Vance explained what he saw as one of the biggest problems facing America: It’s being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He name-checked, among others, Vice President Kamala Harris.
It’s a statement, as my colleague Jessica Grose writes, that shows the desperation of Republicans who are still “clinging to the tag line that the G.O.P. is the pro-family party.” But even for a red-meat, red-state Senate candidate, this was a remarkably harsh — and conspiracy-minded — insult to a large number of people: Around one in six American women 40 to 44 have never had children. It’s the kind of comment that makes you wonder if Vance thinks that he has been nominated by the Republican Party to serve as the vice president of the Republic of Gilead.
Sorry — yes — Vance knows that our nation is still called the United States of America. But there’s a real “Handmaid’s Tale” vibe to a lot of what we’re hearing from the right.
First, my main point: As Vance’s statement illustrates, many people who call themselves conservatives — and who, routinely, as Donald Trump did on Wednesday, accuse moderately center-left Democrats like Harris of being “radical” — are actually the real radicals. That is, they seemingly can’t stand America as it is and want to transform it back into a kind of society we haven’t been for generations. This is especially true when it comes to gender roles.
Modern America is by no means free of sexism. It is, however, a society that offers women far more freedom to choose their paths in life than societies of the past. And it has been that kind of society for a long time.
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