“…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.” ~ Senator J.D. Vance, Candidate for Vice President of the United States
“You do not have to push out a baby to help push humanity forward.” Tracee Ellis Ross
“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election…With love and hope, Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady” ~ Taylor Swift
“What is it with the Republican Party? Do they not know women can read and write and vote now?” ~ Katha Pollitt, The Nation
“Tryna rain, tryna rain on the thunderTell the storm I’m newI’m a wall, come and march on the regularPainting white flags blue.” ~ Beyonce, Freedom
We are living in turbulent and uncertain times, and in the U.S. we have an election coming up that will shape the way our country operates into the future. As such, I find it impossible to remain on the sidelines, as my readers certainly have noted! I keenly feel the responsibility of living in a self-governing nation to stay informed and do my part to elect the best people to represent my views on governing the country I love. And, as the First Amendment allows me to do so, I am wont to share those views. So, fasten your seatbelts –here goes, again:
“A Bunch of Childless Cat Ladies…”
Listening to the various candidates for public office this election season, the attacks on women just keep coming. And now, very foolishly, shade has been thrown on childless cat ladies! Do they know who they’re messing with?
And they don’t stop there.
First, a story emerged in which the Republican vice-presidential candidate previously dissed childless women and their cat companions, and then the Republican presidential candidate claimed, erroneously, that cats were being stolen, killed and eaten by migrants in Ohio! At first, both stories were so ridiculous they caused laughter and derision. But, on reflection, revulsion followed.
But before we get into the nitty gritty, just a note that it’s not only humans who are antagonized by these misogynistic, racist, bigoted and hateful remarks! Hissing has been heard throughout the land! Our awesome and beloved cat, Mendy, a 13-year-old male Russian Blue with a dash of Tabby, was particularly feeling — or rather, feline — annoyed about such slander. I assured him that while I was not childless, he was still a cat and had every right to be put out.
Mendy is concerned about all the weird cat comments.
Wrongly Blaming Childless Cat Ladies — and Apparently Cats? — For the Decline of America
Back to the not-so-funny situation. The childless cat lady comments are ancient tropes that harken back to a time when women were compared to wicked witches, or evil women who hung out with cats, which in some folklore were often described as “familiars” or creatures possessed of evil spirits that aided witches in their evil-doing. For one example, think Lady MacBeth, the three witches and the cat, Graymalkin, in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In resurrecting such images, the Republican candidate for VP seems to want to hold women, especially childless women, responsible for America’s decline.
Au contraire! Millions of others believe that Messrs. Trump and Vance are — and will continue to be — the ones responsible for America’s decline. Among numerous other things, they are essentially pushing women into slavery by manipulating government control over their reproductive rights. Consequently, and tragically for our country, this will result in the decline of women in the workforce because in great numbers they will be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies that will strain personal and national resources. Or they will die in great numbers due to the draconian lack of reproductive healthcare. Moreover, losing the income of women will not only negatively impact them, but also their spouses, partners, and families. By extension, such a situation will also have a devastating impact on America’s economy, productivity and national security.
As to specifically regarding childless cat ladies, the facts are that a bounty of accomplished women throughout history have had no biological or other children, but did have cat companions; they include actress Mary Pickford, feminist and activist Gloria Steinem, 15th century writer and philosopher Marie de Gournay, master chef Julia Child, opera star Marian Anderson, children’s book author Beatrix Potter and founder of the American Red Cross Clara Barton, among an abundance of others. There are also many accomplished childless cat gentlemen throughout history as well as today.
And, I wonder if having converted to Catholicism in recent years, Senator Vance approves of the choices made by Catholic — as well as Episcopal — nuns, as those dedicated women typically are childless. And some choose to have cats in their lives! Do they differ from other women who are childless, taking into account the Constitutional separation between church and state? And, by the way, priests, who are generally male, are also childless often have pet companions, including cats!
Conflicted Expectations of Women
What is curious, and infuriating, is the confusing messages and demands of those who have injected themselves into women’s lives, their life choices and privacy over the course of history.
Remember Nathanial Hawthorne’s, “The Scarlet Letter?” For centuries, unwed mothers have been considered to be a disgrace no matter the circumstances. Even in our modern times, unwed women and girls have been scorned for getting pregnant, and often forced into resentful and bitter marriages. Men typically have not been so scorned. In many instances, however, both teen girls and boys have been compelled to drop out of school and curtail plans for further education and the pursuit of careers in order to take care of a child when they are still children themselves.
But it hasn’t been enough to shame girls and women, and force them into bearing children against their will. It’s also shameful to choose to bear a child — while single. Many may recall the Murphy Brown – Dan Quayle kerfuffle! The then VP of the United States — the one who could not spell the word, “potato” — vilified a fictional TV character! To make his dubious point about the “poverty of values” in single motherhood, this elected official targeted the script’s lead character, a single adult professional woman played by actress Candace Bergen, who chooses to continue her surprise pregnancy and raise her child alone when the father of the child expressed no interest in the responsibilities of fatherhood. VP Quayle apparently had no problem with the unwed father of the child shirking his responsibilities, but that the successful and financially capable woman who chose to raise her child on her own was a degenerate who had to be publicly denounced!
It cannot be pointed out too often how significantly the landscape changed for women beginning in 1973, when the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision protected women’s reproductive rights, including abortion. That allowed women to chart their own life courses, rise in the workforce and progress in obtaining equal footing with men in many areas. But, shockingly, after nearly a half-century of that reproductive freedom, those rights have been torn away by the actions of the Republican former president, the Republican Senate Leader and the newly packed extremist Supreme Court, who conspired before our eyes to overturn Roe v. Wade, throwing the issue of women’s freedom back to the states. And we’ve seen how that has been working out – dangerous, catastrophic and deadly for women in nearly half the states.
In those largely Republican-controlled states, women are being forced to bear children against their wishes, even in cases of rape or incest. They are being forced to ditch their family/career/life plans and live under the threat of prison or even the possibility of losing their lives if their pregnancies go wrong and they need life-saving procedures. I found the latter personally chilling and monstrous, as I miscarried once, and although it was a physically and emotionally excruciating ordeal as my husband and I wanted to be parents, I was well cared for by my doctor in the hospital with the appropriate lifesaving procedure that is now being denied to women in many states. Hence, daughters and granddaughters now have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers have had!
And it should also be noted, that concurrent with all these demands on women, pregnant women in the workplace have not always been treated fairly, often losing their jobs once it was discovered they were expecting. Thus, women are expected to continue their pregnancies, wanted or not, but then pregnant women are too often treated like second-class citizens in the workplace. Even with the passage of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) just last year, some employers continue to violate the rights of pregnant workers.
So what do the folks who want to control women want exactly? Do they want women to bear children, and only if they’re married — to men? Do they want women to bear babies — married or not — against their will and then just put them up for adoption? The “adoption option,” however, overlooks the facts that (1) why should a woman go through the risk of pregnancy, especially now under the current draconian laws in some states that would let her die if she has complications, and (2) relinquish that child to, in many cases, an uncertain fate? Further, it appears that women must also conceive under rules set by the government; for example, some are trying to ban IVF and surrogacy, which seems anti-family to many.
We’ve also know that, typically, many who say they are champions of the unborn are not champions of the born. They seem to care more about embryos than they do actual children. Some examples of this lack of caring is cutting school lunch programs and SNAP and early childhood education programs; banning books in schools; and rolling back child labor laws, for just a few cruel and shocking examples.
So let’s circle back to the two aforementioned candidates for president and vice president. There is almost laughable irony of their and their Party’s demands, when the former is a self-proclaimed serial sexual predator and has been found liable for sexual abuse, and the latter has implied that women should remain in abusive marriages. (Note: Alternatively, the current POTUS sponsored the Violence Against Women Act more than 30 years ago).
Immigrants With Legal Status Were Not Spared
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” stated the Republican candidate for President at the September 10th debate, “the people who came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating…they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
So it seems that the Republican candidates for the highest offices in the land will stop at nothing — including spreading falsehoods — to also vilify immigrants, even those here legally, and especially those of color, in order to turn Americans against them for their own political gain.
The story, no surprise, has been debunked, but that has not stopped this Dangerous Duo from continuing to spread outrageous falsehoods about immigrants eating pets. The VP candidate, who is also an Ohio senator, has admitted that he is willing to create stories that could cost great harm to the peaceful, productive and law-abiding documented immigrants who live and contribute to his own state.
Indeed, the dog- and cat-eating false rumors spread by powerful and influential political candidates and their enablers have caused extensive harm and agony to Springfield, Ohio. Reportedly, documented Haitian migrants living in Springfield were attracted to the city by its low cost-of-living, the labor shortage, and the encouragement of employers that their newly-hired Haitian employees tell their friends to come to Springfield to fill more open jobs. Yes, the U.S. needs a comprehensive immigration policy and effective, productive and humane border security procedures; but we cannot get there by blaming and punishing migrants for fleeing their dangerous countries for asylum and killing for political reasons bipartisan bills in Congress.
That was not the only time the former president and current Republican presidential candidate — who apparently doesn’t even like dogs (the feeling is probably mutual) — has used canines in politically cynical ways. In his renewed harping on the 2021 U.S. pullout from Afghanistan (which was the result of an unsavory deal he made with the Taliban and not with Afghanistan), he made the wild claim that the U.S. Military left dogs behind. A Pentagon spokesperson debunked that claim.
How do we put up with such calumny from a presidential candidate who, again, has been found liable by a jury for defamation? How do we tolerate such idiotic and disgraceful behavior from these two individuals who want to govern us at home and represent us to the rest of the world?
And In Other Attacks…
Ohio: Republican candidate for U.S. senator Bernie Moreno has stated that he is “Absolute pro-life. No exceptions.” He has also said that Ohio women were “a little crazy” for supporting abortion rights and that women over 50 didn’t need to worry about abortions, implying that they were too old to get pregnant. Mr. Moreno demonstrates the type of ignorance that is the reason that medical professionals and not politicians (or car salesmen) should be dispensing reproductive information and involved with women’s reproductive healthcare. Someone should inform candidate Moreno that while getting pregnant over 50 is rare, it is not unheard of, and it can be very risky, likely requiring life-saving procedures that many states have criminalized. Second, women over 50 don’t live in bubbles; they often have daughters, granddaughters, nieces, younger sisters, etc., who require reproductive care or medical attention.
North Carolina: Republican candidate for governor Mark Robinson has made so many appalling statements that it defies logic that he was selected to run for any public office. But keeping in step with the GOP, his statements unsurprisingly include his attitude toward women, such as once a woman is pregnant it’s no longer her body, and that there should be no exceptions for rape and incest because, he seems to imply, those cases are merely examples of Darwin’s survival of the fittest and that rape and incest are just examples of nature taking its course. And those deplorable views are just a sampling.
The Power of Childless Cat Ladies…and All Women
So, are candidates who continually disrespect, patronize, threaten, diminish, criticize, insult, intimidate and support policies and laws that harm women, not aware that the latter can and do vote?!
Tens of millions of American women who live in suburbia, big cities or rural America, have various backgrounds, skin color, ethnicities, education levels and financial situations continue to be enraged and appalled over their reproductive freedom being summarily taken from them by a boastful former president and his radical allies. Think about how ardent gun owners would feel if their guns were confiscated and the Second Amendment re-interpreted to deny individual ownership. Then multiply that a thousand times and we can comprehend the resolve of women to get back their reproductive rights. That will be making America great again.
And that means that childless cat ladies along with millions of other women can regain their reproductive freedoms by voting this fall in unprecedented numbers for candidates who have promised to return them fully. But rather than simply taking the words of those candidates, starting at the top and up and down the ballot, who say they are for “reasonable” abortion laws, protection for women, and IVF — watch what they’ve done and check their voting records. Because women – whether they are childless cat ladies or not — don’t like being lied to. H-s-s-s-s-s-t!
Until next time,
Jeanne
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Jeanne Nelson 