Conservative Christians Don’t Love Women as Much as They Say They Do
Suburban moms have more in common with childless cat ladies than they do with conservative men.
I don’t need to lambast JD Vance for this crowd. You already know: the man isn’t just a typical conservative (though which Republican is these days?) but he also has a Christian nationalist slant, and I don’t mean that in terms of overusing the label. I mean that he doesn’t think abortion or IVF should be legal, and he has expressed wildly misogynistic ideas and policies about a woman’s role in the household and in life in general.
He’s a convert Catholic, and there’s a new trope about how adult convert Catholics are way more annoying, legalistic, and asshole-ish than generational/raised Catholics. Sorry to all the social justice-centered Catholics out there: we sent you exvangelicals who loved the worst parts of evangelicalism but wanted more guilt, more doctrine, and even weirder and stricter views on sex.
Conservative men say, with pleading voices, that this is for the benefit of cis women — primarily ones like me, white mothers with white children who practice Christianity in America. Whether it’s natural, supposedly secular TikTok videos pushing forth harmful myths about contraceptives to keep women fertile and pregnant or the world’s most overrated fantasy writer complaining that any female athlete with masculine features is a “male” despite zero evidence, women’s safety and comfort is touted as the top reason for such insane viewpoints.
Imane Khelif (pictured above) is now blessedly a gold-medal winner after several people, including reputable news sources, called her a trans woman or an intersex person and wanted her ousted from the Olympics. These folks are called “transvestigators” and they spread misinformation about biological conditions that the average person online, including yours truly, doesn’t comprehend.
If you think a reasonable argument will sway their minds, well, I wished I had that blissful naivete. At the end of the day, these people won’t be happy until the only women doing sports are complete femmes in frilly little skirts — or best yet, women are prevented from sport altogether and heralded back to the kitchen.
I wish that conservative Christians genuinely cared about women and children and families, even if it came from bullshit literalist theology. If they supported tax policies that bettered the lives of mothers and their offspring, or if they believed in no-cost-spared policies for housing, schooling, living, and medical expenses — I’d have to admit that they just wanted women’s lives to be better. But, of course, they don’t. The same people who are “so concerned” about the safety of female athletes are the ones who don’t want kids in public education to have access to free food.
And let’s not even get started on the mocking of women without children. These folks picture a world without abortion but do absolutely nothing to make that world a possibility. They don’t want a better world. They want us to forcefully give birth in a shitty world to produce more workers for capital. That’s it. There’s no love for children or their mothers.
I love being a mother, and having children is something that has defined me. I even loved getting married and having kids at a young age, which is taboo among other people my age. (For good reasons, of course — it’s usually not an easy or successful path.) But becoming a mother made me have a huge realization: not everyone is cut out for this shit.
Why do so many people want to force parenthood in a world that doesn’t offer parent-friendly working hours, that cries about remote work, and wants you to spend every waking moment on some kind of side hustle for more profit? Folks cannot afford housing on two salaries anymore, much less one. Are you going to do something about climate change, or should we all sit here and subject future children to global devastation because a few asshole men want their wives to be more submissive?
A world with more pregnancy means a world with more unwanted children, and a world with more unwanted children leads to abuse, which leads to a cycle of violence and poverty. In lieu of an approach to this problem — for conservative men, the problem is usually “working mothers” and “single mothers” — what do you expect?
Yes, many people my age would prefer plants and cats. Have you ever wondered why? Have you ever wondered why women feel unsafe around men or why women finally want to accomplish something outside the four walls of her house? Women have lived and died for centuries without historians bothering to name them or describe their household work. They may have been geniuses and visionary artists, but we’d never know that. Anyone who really cared about women would value them for their individuality, not for what they can offer men. (Or capitalism, for that matter.)
But even for ones who do want children — and they’re scared by medical concerns (which are expensive to treat) or global issues (which our politicians will not treat) — conservative men are not offering a path forward. Not only are they actively worsening the planet, but they are also against IVF and most kinds of fertility treatments. Catholic theology conveniently becomes a point of controlling our reproductive choices. Our bodies are cattle meant for calving and nursing, and if a heifer cannot conceive, she might as well be ground beef.
This is dangerous. The secular arguments are especially dangerous, and they’re infantilizing women to would-be victims. It’s easy to blame a boxer — it’s not so easy to blame a corrupt political system that has worsened women’s lives under both political parties. The Lean In movement is over and feminism is having to defend itself from attacks on basic things like reproductive freedom, living wages, and anti-trans bigotry.
If you allow them to come for our trans, intersex, or “butch” women, they will come for the rest of us, too. If you allow them to come for childless women, they’ll come for the rest of us too.
This isn’t about care. They don’t care. It’s about control. I’ve seen so many comments online where men bemoaned even a woman’s right to vote because women are largely more liberal than men are. JD Vance’s wife Usha may be an Ivy League superstar, but wealthy and powerful women will always be granted more freedom than their poorer and more powerless compatriots.
You cannot trust these people as far as you can throw them. Be suspicious of any “pro-woman” message that tries to convince a woman she must have children, must get married, and must give up a job that makes her happy — and be extra wary of the ones that say our safety will come through bigotry toward LGBTQ+ people. They aren’t on our side. We suburban moms have far more in common with a childless cat lady than we’ll ever have with wealthy politicians or public figures. And they’ll eventually come after all of us if we permit even an edge of anti-science bullshit or anti-trans bigotry.
Great piece!