J.D. Vance has great news, ladies
Post-Menopausal Females, Never Fear
You still have a purpose in life
As a post-menopausal woman myself, I was feeling left out
Childless cat ladies get their moment, right? Ever since Wannabe Veep J.D. Vance called them out for being “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,” there’s been a flood of memes and T-shirts sported by gleeful cat-loving ladies who insist they’ve found meaning in life without fulfilling their bio-destinies.
Which is, of course, to bear and raise the spawn of their Heritage-Foundation-approved husbands.
Otherwise, how else are they supposed to have any real worth to a post-liberal, neopatriarchal society? Especially, as J.D. helpfully points out, childless women, along with men (straight or gay) who fail to procreate, not to mention trans or nonbinary people (who may or may not have kids but who in either case make J.D. and his ideological bros very, very uncomfortable) can’t claim a “direct stake” in the country.
Well, I did have kids, J.D., but they grew up
What now? Do I still get a vote?
After all, it was in a 2021 speech to the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute that J.D. Vance proposed that people with kids should have more of a voice, via the vote, than those childless slackers:
“When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power — you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic — than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality: If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”
But it’s been decades since my offspring have needed me to change their diapers or read William F. Buckley to them at bedtime. They can vote almost all by themselves.
Where does that leave me?
Does it count that I’ve never been divorced? I didn’t bail out on an unhappy or violent marriage, which J.D. has suggested is something people (presumably especially women, who tend more often to be on the receiving end of said violence) should refuse to do for the sake of the kids.
Of course, I was never in a violent marriage, but still — I should get some voice, right?
True, I did remarry after my first husband died, but it’s not like I shifted spouses like I change my underwear as Vance claimed people do these days in his 2021 talk to Pacifica Christian High School in Southern California.
So where does someone like me fit in, J.D.?
I shouldn’t have worried my li’l ol’ pretty head. It turns out that J.D has the answer to my existential angst.
In a recently resurfaced episode from the Portal podcast from 2020, he waxes rhapsodic about what he discovered to be a “weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman” when, seven weeks after his wife had given birth, her mother — a professor of biology in California — took a year-long sabbatical to come and live with their family and take care of the baby.
He went on to say how much it had benefited his son to be around his grandmother — a sentiment that would, in any normal context, be nothing but lovely and appreciative.
But this is J.D. Vance we’re talking about, so normal doesn’t come into play. When the podcast host, Eric Weinstein — who is also the managing director of Thiel Capital, the ven-cap firm owned by uber-neopatriarchal, right-wing enthusiast Peter Thiel, one of Vance’s supporters and ideological mentors — made this remark:
“ . . . that’s the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female in theory,”
Vance immediately chimed in. “Yes,” he said.
Yes. So there you have it: the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.
How good to know.
Speaking of “normal” . . .
As The New Republic reports, on August 15, J.D. expressed his opinion to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that he doesn’t believe it’s “normal” for suburban women to care about their reproductive rights.
So now, not only am I irrelevant, I’m not even normal. Dang.
Meanwhile, A viral thread on X/Twitter erupted from women of a certain age who seem to think they still have a role to play in society beyond changing diapers for their grandbabies.
Among them was Margaret Atwood, who on August 14 tweeted:
So, um, speaking as a very postmenopausal woman .. if I didn’t have grandkids, I should be taken out and shot? Lacking a sole purpose? Or?
Therein lies my dilemma. Because while I’ve dutifully completed my child-rearing, my progeny has yet to reproduce. Despite my heavy-handed hints and badly disguised guilt trips, they remain child-free.
What to do? I’m left to my own devices, here at home with my husband, dog, and — cat.
Egad. I’m a grandchildless cat lady!
Do I at least get a T-shirt?
