[Robin Abcarian] JD Vance’s ‘cringey’ view on women

I was minding my own business, living my grandbaby-free postmenopausal life, when I was suddenly confronted with an existential question:

What -- to borrow Barbie‘s lament -- was I made for?

And why should I care what Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance thinks?

Normally, I don‘t engage in evolutionary biology-based navel-gazing. I’ve heard too many sophomoric arguments about how men are biologically programmed to be unfaithful, blah blah blah. I‘m too busy working full time, raising my 14-year-old niece, cooking, cleaning, making sure the dog poop gets picked up and pining for the “postmenopausal zest” that Margaret Mead promised me.

Last week, yet another of Vance‘s cringey opinions about women and families -- this time about women past menopause -- made waves, and helped nudge his approval rating even lower than it had been.

In 2020, Vance was a guest on a now-defunct podcast called “The Portal,” hosted by Eric Weinstein, a managing director of Thiel Capital, whose founder, Peter Thiel, is Vance‘s political godfather.

During a rambling (and frankly dull) two-hour-plus interview about the state of working-class America and the ills of neoliberalism, talk turned to family. Vance declared that his young son was a “better human being” for having his maternal grandparents involved in his life.

This prompted Weinstein to suggest that taking care of grandchildren is “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.”

Vance agreed, and said that when his first child was born, his wife, Usha, was about to start a Supreme Court clerkship and his Indian-born mother-in-law moved in with the family for a year. As it happens, his mother-in-law, Lakshmi Chilukuri, is a UC San Diego provost, marine biologist and biochemist. What a gift to be a financially stable tenured professor with options like that!

Weinstein, who is also married to the daughter of Indian immigrants, allowed as how having deeply involved grandparents is “this weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman.”

Vance replied. “It‘s just one of these things. … This is what you do.”

He was probably conjuring a specific stereotype about South Asian families. But he also implied that taking care of your children‘s children is baked into the DNA of women who are no longer fertile. This is the intellectual equivalent of believing that women are programmed to look for a mate with a full head of hair and a Ferrari. Some do, some don’t. Some grandmothers care for grandkids, some don‘t.

Vance‘s comments probably would not have hit such a sour note had their revelation not been preceded by a string of other offensive remarks about people who do not have children.

In 2021, he told Tucker Carlson, “We‘re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats … by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made. And so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable too.” People who don‘t have kids, he said, don’t have “a stake” in this country.

And then, he singled out Vice President Kamala Harris, who has two stepchildren, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who is gay and was, at that very moment, in the process of adopting twins with his husband, Chasten.

As it happens, childless cat ladies are happier than most voters, according to a survey conducted in the first two days of August by the National Women‘s Law Center Action Fund with the Morning Consult polling firm. First reported by Mother Jones, the survey found that 32 percent of childless cat ladies said they were “very happy” compared with 27 percent of voters overall.

What a gift to Democrats, already energized by Harris‘ unexpected campaign.

“Childless Cat Ladies for Kamala” became an instant meme. And despite the best efforts of people like Vance‘s wife to pass off his remark as a “quip,” there was really no way to clean up the mess he’d made.

Last week on Fox News, following Trump‘s lead, Vance tried to downplay the role that reproductive rights will play in turning out voters, even though abortion protections will be on the ballots of at least eight states in November.

“I don‘t buy it,” said Vance, who has called for banning abortion nationally. “I think most suburban women care about the normal things that most Americans care about.”

How does he make room in his mouth for so many feet?

No wonder ABC News recently declared that “Americans aren‘t vibing with Vance” in a story headlined “JD Vance is more unpopular than Sarah Palin.” Ouch.

It seems that Vance‘s retrograde opinions about how American women should behave are dooming him.

“Every time JD Vance opens his mouth,” someone posted on X, “another woman re-dedicates the rest of her life to being his worst nightmare.”

There are an estimated 75 million menopausal Americans. We might be tired -- from working, from taking care of family, from living our lives -- but you know what? We‘re not too tired to vote.

Robin Abcarian

Robin Abcarian is an opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. -- Ed.

(Tribune Content Agency)