Another day, another recent recording from J.D. Vance displaying his deep and, well, weird misogyny and his deep, dangerous and, well, weird obsession with women having children — with some racism and xenophobia thrown in for good measure.
The Guardian reports on another newly unearthed podcast interview that Vance gave in 2021 — a reminder, folks, that this was just three years ago, not ancient history — in which he said that professional women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize careers over having children. He professed that “one of the weird lies the elites have been told is that it's very easy to start a family when you're 45. Well, … God says otherwise.” He also claimed that men in America were being “suppressed” in their masculinity.
The Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate said of women like his classmates at Yale Law School that “pursuing racial or gender equity is like the value system that gives their life meaning … [but] they all find that that value system leads to misery”.
Vance also sideswiped the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a one-time Somali refugee, claiming she had shown “ingratitude” to America, and that she “would be living in a craphole” had she not moved to the US.
It’s interesting to note that Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, had a thriving law career as a working mother for many years — including when this interview was recorded. It’s also interesting to note that she left her law firm job just last month "to focus on caring for our family." I guess this move was meant to tamp down any accusations of hypocrisy.
The Guardian notes that a video version of the podcast was published to YouTube on September 20, 2021, and events discussed in it suggest that it was recorded in the days immediately before that date. The recording was initially published as an episode of the podcast of American Moment, a rightwing 501c3 non-profit whose website says its mission is to “identify, educate, and credential young Americans who will implement public policy that supports strong families, a sovereign nation, and prosperity for all.” At the time, Vance sat on the group’s advisory board.
In the recording, Vance repeatedly offered a dark vision of the lives of women who prioritized their professional careers.
At about 39 minutes into the recording, when asked what he saw inside elite institutions like Yale Law School that made him view them as corrupt, Vance answered: “You have women who 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.”
Vance added: “What they don’t realize – and I think some of them do eventually realize that, thank God – is that that is actually a path to misery. And the path to happiness and to fulfillment is something that these institutions are telling people not to do.
“The corruption is it puts people on a career pipeline that causes them to chase things that will make them miserable and unhappy,” Vance said. “And so they get in positions of power and then they project that misery and happiness on the rest of society.”
Other “gems” in the interview:
- Vance appears to be oddly and weirdly obsessed with masculinity. He claims that “traditional masculine traits are now actively suppressed from childhood all the way through adulthood” and says that if China were to invade the United States our country wouldn’t be defended by “soy boys.”
- He mocked the claims of Afghan refugees to have helped the US military in its occupation, saying: “Apparently, Afghanistan is a country of translators and interpreters because every single person that’s coming in, that’s what they say is this person is: a translator and interpreter.”
- Referring to the large Somali community in Minneapolis, he claimed that people in the community “are frequently hatcheted to death in the street.”
In the Guardian article, Sophie Bjork-James, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who has written extensively on topics including US evangelicals and populist politics, sums up Vance’s deeply misogynistic and dangerous world view:
“Vance represents a new articulation of rightwing politics that is bridging the Christian right and a tech-influenced hypermasculine conservatism.
“He appeals to evangelicals with the message that we find happiness by fulfilling traditional gender roles, which is a cornerstone of white evangelical Christianity. He also speaks to a misogynist trend emerging out of the tech world among people who would prefer not to talk about any kind of diversity at all.”
“What they share is the view that women shouldn’t be in paid work: they should be in the home and rearing children. But the public line isn’t ‘we hate women’, it’s ‘women will be happier if they stay at home’,” she added.
So in J.D. Vance’s world, he can’t imagine women getting satisfaction and fulfillment from a career — that is reserved for the menfolk. He also can't imagine that some women simply have not option about whether or not to work, they have to work to keep their family afloat. None of that matters to J.D. Vance. He just wants to see all women in the home making babies. Gilead here we come.
This disturbed and disturbing man has no business being anywhere near the White House.
If you can stomach it, here’s a link to the full interview:
