Trump’s Republican Party has taken on the devaluing of women as a political identity.
Rage often conceals hurt.
The collective female rage in response to Sen. JD Vance using the “childless cat lady” archetype as an insult is driven by shared hurt at the mockery that reduces us to our reproductive capacity in a political context where women are already devalued. It demeans our dreams and aspirations outside motherhood. It seems small—but those three words carry so much emotional weight for us.
And they hurt even more if motherhood is something we wanted, but was denied us by that cruel thing called fate.
I don’t have the energy to join that collective furor. I can only feel a profound sadness that I cannot direct anywhere else but deeper within.
The Paradox of JD Vance
I knew of Vance prior to the VP pick announcement for his statement that leaving “maybe even violent, certainly unhappy marriages” is harmful to children. While he never explicitly said that people in abusive marriages should stay in them, I’m unsure what else he expected us to infer. Trying to understand him, I read Hillbilly Elegy.
It is not beautifully written, but it has a simple poignancy. And to my immense surprise, Vance’s insight at times seems—dare I say it—good.
He describes the Appalachian “honor culture” of defending women against male derision and violence, even through extralegal means, citing an incident in which an alleged rapist is found murdered shortly before his trial.
He paints a bleak picture of deeply ingrained societal misogyny in his upbringing, recalling his grandmother’s early womanhood: “Women were just shit on all the time.”
He laments how, amidst this backdrop of devaluing women in an under-educated population, she never pursued her own dreams of becoming an attorney.
He appreciates the complex dynamics of abuse and recognizes the profound damage that domestic violence inflicts, citing his own familial dysfunction over generations and its toll on his health as direct outcomes.
How does someone who comes from this background of abuse with his keen awareness of violence against women manage, almost willfully, to alienate women?
These Are Not The Values I Learned
In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance discusses psychological coping through avoidance of ugly truths we cannot confront: “We tend … to glorify the good and ignore the bad in ourselves.”
Unwittingly, he aptly describes the current political right: Humility and insight are not their salient qualities, and women are casualties.
The current presidential candidate’s profound disrespect for women is well documented. Reproductive rights, even in emergent cases, have been eroded considerably. Conservative politicians have blamed feminism for societal problems, rather than addressing male violence, the culture of freedom tantamount to irresponsibility and family-unfriendly work culture, among other issues.
Our political theater has become outrageous, Caligulean, relying on shock value over thoughtful debate and compromise. In this climate, the devaluation of women is insidiously crystallizing into a political identity. Some have happily taken the “childless cat lady” trope further, arguing that childless women have no stake in the country’s future and should not be politically engaged. These declarations demean women’s voices, giving women legitimacy only if they have borne children.
This is how I resolve the Vance paradox: Despite his visible understanding of societal misogyny, he is catering to a new political identity centered on male entitlement and devaluation of women, falling into his own trap of “ignoring the bad in ourselves.”
I do not see the values my father modeled for me in the conservative men who occupy the present political spotlight, the men to whom Vance caters with his mean-spirited sniping.
I’m particularly embittered by what I see in today’s conservatives, whose antics are entirely antithetical to the values I learned from my own very traditional father. Stubbornly argumentative but deeply loving, he has always nurtured my career ambitions, pushing me to be better, and supporting me at my worst. I remember despondently meandering about the kitchen making tea, shortly after I left my marriage. Dad approached tentatively: “Clo? You doing okay?” I couldn’t speak, so I shook my head, suppressing tears.
He nodded quietly and hugged me. “Sounds like a problem that needs dim sum.” Sure enough, he bought all my favorite dim sum to make me feel better, ensuring he remembered my beloved dan tat.
This was my model of conservative masculinity—a kind, strong man with uncompromising moral principles who made me feel valued and safe, who promoted personal responsibility, selflessness and genuine familial devotion, who never thought less of me at my worst and who never expected less of me because I am a woman.
I do not see the values my father modeled for me in the conservative men who occupy the present political spotlight, the men to whom Vance caters with his mean-spirited sniping, who have a growing political presence and see women like me as inferior.
The Emotional Burden Grows
I cannot overstate the emotional and mental health toll on us. Women like me appear as chapters in the lives of other people, offering love while life has other plans for us, and now this political identity normalizes taunting us, adding insult to injury. I imagine that women like me, women whose lives have taken unexpected turns for any number of reasons—heartbreak, illness, abuse, adultery, neglect—may feel as I often do in this political climate: disillusioned with the endless unkindness that can be overwhelming to the point that I wake up on many mornings wishing I hadn’t.
Men’s mockery is nothing new to me. I publicly shared my divorce story, cognizant of the personal risk, hoping it might comfort someone. For many men however, it is a confirmation of the negative messages about myself that I internalized during that time in my life. It is an opportunity to dissect my flaws gleefully, both for the men of my past and for those who see me as emblematic of everything wrong with modern women though they do not know me. It is truly dispiriting. There is a new heaviness in my heart now, and the colors are gone from the world for me.
I could mostly handle it before. But it is something entirely different to see that mockery displayed on the national stage in a world I understand less and less with each passing day, a world in which I increasingly feel I do not belong.
The fight is exhausting and there will come a time when I stop. But I pray that other women fight. All of us—intentionally childfree, mothers, delayed in motherhood, deprived of motherhood, stepmothers, more—certainly have a stake in the future: a hope that we may be cherished, not for the services our bodies offer men and society at large, but merely for our humanity and the women we are.
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