There is a couple of high-profile pro-life, pro-natal, anti-abortionists in America on social media who have been criticising cat ladies for supporting abortion. One of them is Matt Gaetz. He has 1.4 million Twitter followers and describes himself as a firebrand and happy husband. He puts America first and is a Florida man, he says.
“How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?” – Matt Gaetz on Twitter
He is blaming cat ladies for trying to prevent the overturning of Roe v. Wade. He calls cat ladies ‘over-educated and under-loved’. He thinks of cat ladies as sad people eating microwave dinners! I think that there are probably quite a lot of people like that but they aren’t sad. They just choose to live like that and it is no worse than living in the conventional, conservative way with a wife and two kids in a suburban home with a dog.
There is a big debate going on in America about overturning the Roe v. Wade decision, which was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court in which the court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without interference from government legislation. In other words, Roe v. Wade supports the right of women to have an abortion and the current Conservative-packed Supreme Court is likely to decide to take that right away. I have seen arguments that the former president Trump’s support of conservative Supreme Court judges has resulted in this potential decision to overturn this famous case.
In the video below we see a passionate woman (a cat lady?!) delivering a pro-abortion speech to a crowd. The debate is hot in America.
Another right-winger and in this case a politician, J.D. Vance, has described Paul Krugman as “one of many weird cat ladies who have too much power in our country”. Clearly, Paul Krugman is not a lady! But he has brought in the concept of freethinking cat ladies to criticise Krugman who supports abortion. Krugman said:
So the economic case for pro-natalism is really weak. – Paul Krugman.
J.D. Vance is supported by former president Trump in running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio. I think he has criticised Trump in the past but Trump patched up that relationship and now supports him to become a senator. I guess Vance and Trump think the same way and they don’t like cat ladies! Because cat ladies get in the way of the legislation that they want to enact.
It is very easy and cheap to label free-thinking women who want to be independent and who are educated as cat ladies. It’s a way of making a derogatory comment about people who think differently to you. I think as well that the Gaetz and Vance tweets are misogynistic. As one commenter, Sarah Jones, said, they are frightened of cat ladies. I guess they are frightened of their free will and their desire to have the right to have an abortion if they want one. These men want the conventional dominant man and women in their shadow to be the status quo in America.
There is the image that some right-wingers may want to paint namely that cat ladies despise men. The problem is that the cat lady stereotype is well and truly outdated. The label “cat lady” is used to criticise people unfairly. And it’s unfair to link cats to derogatory comments about women by misogynistic men.
Apparently, according to Sarah Jones, cats were used in Edwardian times to criticise suffragettes as “silly, infantile, incompetent, and ill-suited to political engagement”. There were posters in which cats demanded the right to vote.
It looks as though the heated Roe V Wade debate is bringing out the worst in right-wing, conservative middle-aged white political commentators and politicians who appear, to me, to be drifting into misogyny.
A lot of us are both pro-life and pro-cat. I support abortion when the life of the mother is endangered. Many, not all, women regret having abortions, even when their circumstances made them feel they had no choice. It is a decision they can never undo but at least some wish they could. I have nothing against cat ladies as I’m the male equivalent, senior and single with a cat. One error about the U.S. Constitution in your description, which is also ubiquitously made by American mainstream news readers (we call them “News Anchors”). The American Constitution is a written document that has been amended a couple of dozen times (it’s not easy to amend) Only these written documents are the Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court makes decisions from which there is no judicial appeal,and decides what is “constitutional” until a future Supreme Court or a Constitutional Amendment reverses that decision. The written Constitution, including amendments, are virtually immutable, “written in stone” and not even the Supreme Court can change it. Only the long, involved process of a Constitutional Amendment can alter it one iota. Only this is the American Constitution. The Supreme Court decisions about what is “Constitutional” are mutable, and not “written in stone” and in fact change repeatedly over the decades and centuries. The Supreme has in the past has held that slavery was “constitutional” and that it was “constitutional” for President Franklin Roosevelt to put innocent Japanese-Americans in concentration camps merely because of their ethnic inheritance. Roe vs. Wade was just one Supreme Court decision, a precedent. It’s the law only until it changes. The U.S. Constitution itself has never said anything about abortion one way or the other.
Right-wingers like Matt Gaetz can yuck it up about “over-educated” cat ladies all they want. I have a feeling they won’t be laughing so hard in a post-Roe world in which more and more women choose feline companionship over men because — unlike men — cats will never put women in an unfortunate situation in which an illegal abortion is a consideration.
Thanks Rena. Nice comment. Even though I am a man 😎. I guess the same thought sometimes applies with men living with cats.
May 14th is going to shake this country. I hate that our Supreme Court has brought Catholic dogma into the law. Three low down lying dogs under oath claimed Roe was decided law only so they could get on the bench and legislate. I am more hope the dems will keep the house and senate and pick a several new reps and senators. Voters are going to do a abortion on the republicans.
You know a lot more than me about Roe v. Wade and the politics behind it. You should write an article on the topic. You just have to bring cats into the conversation 😊.