Just a List of the Bizarre, Gross, and Upsetting Things JD Vance Has Said About Women
KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/Getty Images/Amanda K Bailey
If you know just one thing about Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, there’s a good chance it’s his evident disdain for “childless cat ladies.” In a recently resurfaced 2021 Fox News clip, the then Senate candidate used the term to drag a bunch of Democrats (including Vice President Kamala Harris), saying that they’re “miserable at their own lives and so they want to make the rest of this country miserable too,” and adding that they “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country’s future. It’s easy to roll your eyes at his use of a discriminatory and tired trope—but it turns out, that’s just the tip of the problematic iceberg when it comes to JD Vance’s views on women.
What the cat-lady fa?ade implies is that the natural and morally correct thing for any woman to do is have a child—specifically, one that comes out of her own body, because apparently, to Vance, Harris’s stepkids don’t count. (It’s all very rich coming from the Ohio senator who voted against the Democratic-backed Right to IVF Act in June and was conveniently absent when the bill was up for a vote again in September.) If the above is true, it follows that a woman should only marry someone of the opposite sex and stay at home to raise their child(ren). It’s an age-old misogynistic concept, but Vance seems dead set on reviving it, going so far as to suggest women are making themselves unhappy by choosing anything but a life of motherhood (which is downright untrue).
It’s also deeply concerning given our current political landscape, which is increasingly hostile to reproductive health care. Below, we’ve rounded up JD Vance’s disparaging views on women so you can get a clearer picture of what’s at stake.
1. He agreed that helping raise children is the “whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.”
In 2020, Vance appeared on an episode of The Portal podcast hosted by Eric Weinstein, during which the two got into a conversation on how Vance’s son has benefitted from spending time with his grandparents. In response, Weinstein said, “That’s the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female in theory,” to which Vance replied: “Yes.” (Since this audio resurfaced, a spokesperson for Vance told Newsweek that his agreement—given shortly before Weinstein finished his sentence—was in response to what he thought the host was about to say, which was, “That's the whole purpose of spending time with grandparents.” But Vance didn’t make that correction or challenge the statement during the recording.)
It’s obviously grossly sexist to claim that any woman’s “whole purpose” revolves around child-rearing. But there’s something even ickier about suggesting that a “postmenopausal” woman—someone who has aged past the years traditionally associated with having kids—is good for nothing more than mothering her kid’s kids. (I mean, who else, if not “grandma and grandpa,” will resolve the childcare crisis in this country?)
2. He insinuated that abortion isn’t a “normal” thing that most suburban women care about.
Ah yes, abortion, that abnormal fringe issue. Or at least that’s what Vance seemed to suggest during a recent Fox News segment. When host Laura Ingraham asked him what he might say to the “suburban” women who have perhaps been misled to think abortion is nationally banned and are very concerned about it, Vance replied: “Well, first of all, I don’t buy that, Laura. I think most suburban women care about normal things that most Americans care about.” Blink blink. Sorry, JD, but abortion is a make-or-break issue for 39% of suburban women, according to a Wall Street Journal poll, and a KFF poll found that the vast majority of suburban women (75%) also believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
3. He suggested that women can’t be great leaders or teachers without having kids of their own.
In recently resurfaced remarks during a 2021 Center for Christian Virtue leadership forum, Vance said, in reference to how children are taught in school, “that so many leaders of the left…they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children,” adding that this “really disorients me and it really disturbs me.” (He didn’t specify on what grounds.)
To further drive home his baseless disapproval of teachers without children, Vance specifically called out Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (a trade union for educators) for not having “a single child.” The reality is more complicated; she calls herself “a mother by marriage,” presumably because her wife helped raise kids with an ex, and those kids are now in Weingarten’s life. But regardless of her actual parent status, Vance went on to insult her for not having a biological kid: “If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone,” he said. It appears he’s interested in continuing a bizarre and upsetting Republican tradition of disparaging Weingarten—and by proxy, childless educators of all sorts—for that very reason.
4. He said that women choose “a path to misery” when they pursue their careers instead of starting a family.
On a 2021 episode of the podcast Moment of Truth, run by the rightwing networking organization American Moment, the org’s president and founder Saurabh Sharma asked Vance about what he called the “corruption” of “elite culture” at Vance’s alma mater Yale Law School and why it “disgusted him so much.” Vance responded with a disconcerting rant about the school’s women: “You have women that think that truly, the liberationist path is to spend 90 hours a week working in a cubicle at McKinsey instead of starting a family and having children. What they don’t realize…is that that is actually a path to misery.”
Sharma then asked Vance about these women’s “racial and gender resentment”—which we can only assume means their drive for equity in the workplace—and whether it’s because “they just didn’t get what they want and now want to exert their anger on the world.” (Yes, really!) Vance responded by claiming that the women are all “atheist or agnostic,” and therefore “have no real value system, so the idea that they’re pursuing racial or gender equity is like the value system that gives their life meaning, but of course they all find that that value system leads to misery”—at least in part, as he concludes, because their pursuit of career causes them to pass the biological period during which they could’ve had kids (or at least, when it’s usually most feasible, traditionally speaking). So just to recap: His thinking implies that if you’re a highly educated woman who seeks out a prestigious job over motherhood, you lack values and are making yourself unhappy. Womp womp.
5. He previously supported a national abortion ban to prevent people from accessing care by crossing state lines.
During Vance’s appearance on the podcast Very Fine People in 2022, he first said that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” (a stance he’s since moderated by siding with Donald Trump’s current viewpoint—which has also flip-flopped over the years—that the states should ultimately decide for themselves). Then he went on to justify a national ban as a means of avoiding a bizarrely specific hypothetical: “Let’s say Roe v. Wade is overruled. Ohio bans abortion…let’s say, in 2024. And then, you know, every day George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California.”
Roe did indeed fall, and plenty of states have enacted abortion restrictions, forcing people to cross state lines for essential health care (though not with George Soros’s help, to our knowledge). It turns out, Vance was right to be concerned about a state-by-state scenario proving untenable; of course, the only humane solution is not to nationally ban abortion but to nationally guarantee access to it instead.
6. He once implied that a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest may be “inconvenient” but should be carried to term.
During a 2021 interview with Curtis Jackson of Spectrum News 1, in Columbus, when Vance was running for Senate, Jackson asked him whether anti-abortion laws should include exceptions for rape or incest. Vance’s response skirted around the question: “Look, I think two wrongs don’t make a right,” he said, as if to imply that the wrong of rape or incest should not be followed by the equivalent “wrong” of abortion.
When Jackson pressed him further on the same question, Vance said, “My view on this has been very clear and I think the question betrays a certain presumption that is wrong. It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term; it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.” (Vance has since clarified that he wasn’t calling rape, itself, an inconvenience—but again, he addressed the “circumstances” of a pregnancy as being inconvenient in response to a question specifically about rape and incest.)
Beyond seemingly dismissing the gravity of being sexually assaulted, Vance’s statement makes a false distinction between the two outcomes at hand; if you’re suggesting that a fetus “should be allowed to live” in all circumstances, you are also saying that a person who was raped must be forced to become a parent and denied—for a second time—the ability to choose what happens to their own body.
7. He said companies that support abortion just want “cheap labor.”
Apparently corporate America is working in cahoots with abortion providers to make sure you don’t have to take a break from the workforce to have or raise kids. Or so the logic goes in Vance’s 2021 speech at a conference hosted by the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank. In his remarks, Vance referenced a statement made by former Georgia representative Stacey Abrams that an abortion ban would be bad for business, saying: “She was right,” adding that, “when corporations are so desperate for cheap labor that they don’t want people to parent children, she’s right to say abortion restrictions are bad for business.” (Of course that’s not what she meant; she was referencing abortion access as a facet of essential health care that provides people the agency to pursue work how they see fit.)
When Vance was asked about these resurfaced comments at an August campaign event, he stood by them, claiming that “corporate America is not especially friendly to parents with young children, and especially moms with young children. And I think we have to promote a culture of pro-family thinking and pro-family policy in this country where we see children as blessings and as resources and not as curses, which is how I think way too many companies…think about our young children.”
The thing is, it’s not clear why he thinks companies in this country are anti-child abortion-pushers in the first place. Nor did he offer any actual solutions to support working parents, anyway—like, say, a national paid family leave program.
If you have been the victim of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or chat online at rainn.org.
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Originally Appeared on Self
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