The extremists who run the GOP are obsessed with our uteri. Like, weirdly obsessed. Their fixation is about more than forcing women to give birth whether we want to or not, though Lord knows they are plenty concerned with that.
No, our lady bits are their business, no matter where we are in life. They can’t ever leave us be. Not even in stinkin’ menopause, when you’d think we’d finally be out of range.
Not a chance. Here comes JD Vance — again! — the vice presidential nominee who believes with all his heart in the retrograde, authoritarian, Christian Nationalist orthodoxy that has taken over the GOP, and who has pontificated publicly so often in his short career that every week reveals another of his perverse perspectives on a woman’s rightful place.
The latest: In a 2020 podcast interview, Vance agreed with a host who said caring for grandchildren is “the whole purpose of the post-menopausal female.’’ Vance praised his mother-in-law, a biology professor, for taking a sabbatical to fulfill that divine purpose.
“Why didn’t she just keep her job, give us part of the wages to pay somebody else to do it? Cause that is the thing that the hyper-liberalized economics wants you to do,’’ said Vance, who has also called universal day care “class war against normal people.’’
Look, it’s great that Vance’s mother-in-law was willing and able to help out with child care. It would be lovely if everybody had the luxury of that choice. But to the notion that caring for children is “the whole purpose’’ of older women: No thank you! And how exactly do post-menopausal women without grandchildren justify their existence in this scheme?
They don’t! They’re just like the “childless cat ladies’’ Vance derides, who, he has said, are “miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.’’ It follows that grandchildless cat ladies — or those who choose not to put their lives or careers on hold to rear their children’s children, or can’t make that choice at all — are miserable and hell bent on dragging the rest of the country down, too.
Is this a fight these guys want to pick? Trust me: They do not want to mess with those of us in the Give No … um, Darns stage of life. We haven’t endured years of secret night-sweats and hidden hot flashes while trying to hold down jobs, only to be judged by tiny, insecuremen who pine for the good old days, when men were men and women were obedient incubators.
Is there any part of the gynecological universe to which these guys don’t lay claim? They’re also freaking out about a law signed by Minnesota Governor and Democratic VP pick Tim Walz requiring that public schools provide free menstrual products to all students who need them, starting in the fourth grade. They’re calling him “Tampon Tim,’’ as if that is some kind of sick burn. And, never willing to forgo an opportunity to whip up trans panic, they’re accusing Walz of requiring tampons and sanitary napkins in boys’ bathrooms, too. Wrongly, it turns out, but what do they care?
And heaven forfend women should have any control over their bodies between puberty and menopause. Vance, like all the extremists in his party, wants a national ban on abortion, and has opposed exceptions for rape and incest, though he has lately tried to walk that back.
Babies for everyone! Especially for those who share his privilege and values. If you can’t afford to have babies, the GOP will give you no help to raise and educate them. Like many champions of his retrograde brand of masculinity, Vance believes no-fault divorce is a scourge, and that women should stay in even violent marriages, like his heroic hillbilly grandmother did, after getting pregnant at 13.
The crux of it all is controlling women, from the cradle to the tomb.
Stopping them in their tracks should now be “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.’’ And everyone else who cares about women. Vance and his ilk can keep their hands — and creepy ideas about us — to themselves.
Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com.
Image Credits: Copperstate OBGyn
