J.D. Vance's Hatred of Cat Ladies Is Eugenics

White nationalists are weird. Also horrible.

Back in 2021, Republican Vice-Presidential nominee J.D. Vance went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show and attacked now Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris for, of all things, not having biological children. Foam spewing from his beard, Vance denounced Harris and other Democrats like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for having the nerve not to reproduce.

We are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too… How does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?

The clip resurfaced after Vance was chosen as VP. So did a number of related tweets, including one in which he referred to economist Paul Krugman as one of the “weird cat ladies who have too much power.”

Numerous people have denounced Vance for his disgusting statement. Kamala Harris’ adopted daughter, and her husband’s ex-wife, both pointed out that Harris is a committed and loving parent who has raised two children. Pete Buttigieg told CNN that at the time Vance was attacking him for not having kids, he was experiencing painful setbacks in his (now successful) efforts to adopt. Actress Jennifer Aniston denounced Vance for being awful and for opposing IVF. Paul Krugman said that Vance seemed to want to bring about the Gilead of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Krugman also noted that “around one in six American women 40 to 44 have never had children.”

Lots more people joined in and denounced Vance for being a misogynist forced-birth worshipping shithead. And that is good because he is a misogynist forced-birth worshipping shithead.

But I think it’s worth pointing out that Vance is not just a misogynist. He’s also embracing white nationalist talking points and a white nationalist agenda. Vance’s belief that biological reproduction is the main role of women in society is part and parcel of the far-right eugenic poison in which Vance and his main funder and advocate, billionaire tech asshole Peter Thiel, regularly marinate.  

The new eugenics same as the old eugenics

Eugenics is “the scientifically inaccurate theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations,” as the National Human Genome Research Institute succinctly puts it. In the early 20^th century, eugenics was embraced by many US scientists, including some who considered themselves progressive. Hitler and Nazi scientists were also big fans. Their enthusiasm thoroughly, and rightfully, discredited eugenic theory.

But unfortunately, racism remains prevalent and popular, and so eugenics continues to appeal to a lot of people. It’s behind Great Replacement Theory‚ the conspiracy theory that nefarious elites (ie, Jewish people) are backing immigration in order to overrun, outvote, and interbreed with white populations. Vance has of course echoed Great Replacement Theory rhetoric and is rabidly anti-migrant.

Eugenics is also a key component of a lot of techbro utopianism; Effective Altruism guru Nick Bostrom, for example, has fulminated about his concerns that less “intellectually talented individuals” (this is a racist dogwhistle for “Black people” ) might outbreed more intelligent individuals (like supposedly, Bostrum and his white buddies.) Elon Musk has said, “if each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, that’s probably bad,” and has himself had some 12 children with multiple women as part of his efforts to preserve his own (supposedly) superior genes.

Musk has promoted grotesque antisemitic conspiracy theories and has been credibly accused of creating a brutally racist environment at his company Tesla. So it seems reasonable to conclude that when Musk seems like he’s embracing racist eugenics, that is exactly what he’s doing.

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The role of women on J.D. Vance’s eugenic breeding farms

Again, Vance spent time in Silicon Valley, where he made connections with Peter Thiel and other billionaire nightmare people. At this point he is their creature far more than he’s the voice of Appalachia, despite his crappy memoir. When he says he wants single cat ladies to have less power, he’s saying that he wants silicon valley techbro weirdos like Bostrum, Musk, and Thiel to take that power from them.

Vance thinks that the only healthy culture is one which centers biological reproduction as the chief virtue. He thinks women without children (and LGBT people who aren’t Peter Thiel, and maybe liberal men) are betraying society, and should be disenfranchised. (The GOP is very aware that unmarried women tend to vote for Democrats.)

And of course Vance thinks women should not have bodily autonomy when it comes to making decisions about pregnancy, even in cases of rape and incest. And he thinks women should be denied no-fault divorce. Add it all together and the future Vance is looking towards is, as Krugman says, not that different from Gilead, where women are essentially owned by men, and derive value solely from their ability to have children.

What Margaret Atwood mostly brackets in her discussion of Gilead, though, is the relationship between misogyny and white supremacy. Per the Great Replacment Theory, per Bostrum, per the Nazis, a big part of the panic around female infertility is the terror that the wrong women are having babies.

Vance’s hatred of immigrants is part and parcel of his dream of cat ladies nationalized as breeding stock. The white nationalist right wants to seize control of reproduction in order to ensure white voting power and white supremacy. Superior (white) women are supposed to get down to the business of making babies; non white people are to be deported. Supersmart white men like Thiel, Musk, Trump, and Vance can then get back to the work of unchallenged patriarchy.

Yes, Vance can be a eugenicist even though his wife isn’t white

When Vance is accused of racism, he’ll generally point out that his wife and children are not white. Usha Vance is the children of South Asian immigrants.

The thing about race, though, is that it’s not, contra eugenicists, a biological reality. It is a cultural construct. And as such, racists can and do manipulate their ideas of race and racism in whatever ways they need to in order to make themselves comfortable. Far right white supremacists have attacked Vance for his marriage choices. But there are also links between the far right and Hindu nationalists, and the idea that Indians and whites are both Aryans has been floating around in white nationalist circles for some time.

I’m not saying that Vance holds to these particular ideas about Indian people being honorary whites. I’m just pointing out that eugenics is a pack of racist lies intended to give power to racists, and so it shouldn’t be surprising that people’s use of and commitment to eugenics is often internally inconsistent.

Misogynists like Vance not infrequently marry women; racists like Vance not infrequently marry non-white people. Marriage can be compatible with sexist, racist, violent patriarchal hierarchies. Racists and misogynists will sometimes make exceptions for women and/or Black people like Clarence Thomas or Amy Coney Barrett who are sufficiently committed to oppression and hate.

In any case, it's not really relevant how Vance reconciles his politics with his marriage. The fact is, his politics are rabidly misogynist and racist, and the tissue that connects the misogyny and the racism is eugenics. Vance hates childless people, and especially childless women, because they are not doing their eugenic duty to perpetuate the race and nation and guarantee a eugenic racial future in which the best techbros rule inferior bodies with their giant enlightened racist brains.

Vance is a despicable person steeped in repulsive neo-Nazi ideology; his sweeping unpopularity is well-earned. He is in his way every bit as horrible as Trump. To put it as mildly as possible, they are both completely unfit to be president.