JD Vance's 'childless cat lady' comment reveals GOP's views of women
Vance said he was being sarcastic in 2021 interview, but he is still wrong.
Correction: A previous version of this column incorrectly stated JD Vance’s role when he commented about “childless cat ladies” in 2021. He was a candidate for U.S. Senate from Ohio. Also, as clarification, George Washington had no biological children but helped raise the two surviving children of his Martha, a widow. The couple also raised two stepgrandchildren and financially supported several nieces and nephews.
Let’s leave the cats out of this, JD Vance.
There are cat people. There are dog people. Some people like both. Some prefer neither.
Others, like your friendly neighborhood paragraph stacker, are allergic.
Don’t make pets a political issue.
Vance is the Republican nominee for vice president. An interview he gave to Fox News in 2021 while running for the Senate recently resurfaced where he pops off about “childless cat ladies.”
“We are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by childless cat ladies,” Vance said.
This a relatively short sentence for a politician, but he gets an impressive number of things wrong in 18 words.
Democrats are hardly running America, though they did control both houses of Congress when Vance was a candidate.
Today, President Joe Biden is a Democrat and Democrats hold a 48-42 margin over Republicans in the Senate, including three independent senators caucusing with Democrats. Republicans hold the majority in the House and 72% of all members of both chambers of Congress are men.
The number of women senators and representatives who own cats was not immediately available.
At the state level, 27 states have Republican governors, including Iowa.
As of the 2022 mid-term elections, 31 state legislative bodies are controlled by Republicans, including Iowa.
Vance talked about corporate oligarchs.
This is terminology usually used to describe the rich and powerful in Russia. Still, it could also be applied to American businesses that funnel millions in donations through super PACs to buy legislators’ favor.
Yet just 10.4% of Fortune 500 companies have women CEOs — 52 of whom took the top job between 2022 and 2023 — after Vance made his sweeping and incorrect generalization.
Data on women CEOs and cat ownership was unavailable.
Vance has since said he was being sarcastic.
That’s good. You can say whatever you want if it is sarcasm.
His running mate, former President Donald Trump, a convicted felon, once said he grabbed women by their genitalia. He said it was “locker room talk.”
He got elected. He might again, too.
One wonders if Vance’s real focus was not cats, but the “childless.”
In JD Vance’s view of America, people with children should have more say than people without children.
Founding Father George Washington and his wife Martha never had biological children. Perhaps we should ignore whatever he had to say.
I wonder what Vance would say about the Shenandoah parents arrested last week accused of keeping their children in makeshift cages. Their 4-year-old son slipped out of his cage and was found by a Hamburg roadside covered in human and animal feces.
If the couple had cats, I bet they treated them better than they allegedly did their children.
Of course, this is an extreme example. Most parents do the best they can with their kids and don’t resort to horrific abuse.
But the Republican message Vance seems to be pushing is you should only have a say in society if you have kids.
This is dumb.
There are thousands of reasons why people do and don’t have children.
None of those reasons are the business of anyone except the individuals and the family and friends she chooses to discuss those reasons with.
Vance has said he believes becoming a parent changes how you look at the world.
That’s true.
I wonder if being a parent has made Vance more concerned about climate volatility caused by humankind. Republicans behind the 2025 plan want to do away with the National Weather Service because they talk too much about climate change.
I wonder if being a parent has made Vance more concerned about public schools. In Iowa, as in many states, our Republican governor and legislature are working hard to dismantle public schools by rerouting public money to private voucher schools and trying to do away with programs that assist students with learning disabilities.
I wonder what Vance would say about my beloved Parents 2.0, the east Des Moines couple who raised me after my parents died.
They were childless in the biological sense. They wanted to have children, but sometimes things don’t go your way despite the best intentions, most fervent prayers, and all medical science offers.
Adoption was an expensive and unreliable option for the couple.
So, they took in a stray.
Me.
Not a cat.
Thank God.
We know what a menace cats are to the future of America.
Daniel P. Finney is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please visit their page to view a full roster of writers and consider subscribing to their columns. Writing is hard work; people ought to get paid for it. If you enjoy it, throw them a couple of bucks. They earned it.
I always look forward to your opinions. I have been appalled by many of Vance's comments, despite his turbulent childhood he seems to lack empathy for people who live differently from him.
Great article!