Fighting the far right's fascist "family values" with an emancipatory vision of gender and family
By Eli Brown
October 11, 2024
Source: Liberation Road
Ted Eytan, “Capital Pride Parade” (2018) / CC BY-SA 2.0
1. Why Is JD Vance Afraid of Childless Cat Ladies?
During a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson, J.D. Vance made a now-famous quip that the country is run 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.” Vance continued: “The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And 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?”
Vance’s words resurfaced after his selection as the GOP vice presidential candidate; he has since doubled down on them. Trump has long made similar comments, including reportedly referring to Kamala Harris as a “bitch” behind closed doors. At the recent Moms for Liberty conference, Trump outlandishly claimed that public schools were providing gender-affirming surgery to children without parental knowledge, an assertion so demonstrably false and ridiculous it would be laughable, except that he said it in front of an audience of far right-wing activists who have been instrumental in vicious direct action and legislative attacks against trans people.
Many on the left, center, and even some on the right decried Vance and Trump’s statements as misogynistic and “weird,” out of touch with the values of the American public. While Trump and Vance’s rhetoric may be alienating and unpopular to many, it points to a larger and more alarming reality: patriarchy has become a central component of the MAGA attack plan, dovetailing with its racist attacks as part of a larger vision of white Christian nationalism. And as the right ramps up its assault on gender and especially on trans people, it is crucial for the left to grasp the centrality of patriarchal oppression to MAGA’s broader social, political, and economic agenda and to fight for a different, emancipatory vision of gender and family.
Ted Eytan, “Capital Pride Parade” (2018) / CC BY-SA 2.0
1. Why Is JD Vance Afraid of Childless Cat Ladies?
During a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson, J.D. Vance made a now-famous quip that the country is run 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.” Vance continued: “The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And 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?”
Vance’s words resurfaced after his selection as the GOP vice presidential candidate; he has since doubled down on them. Trump has long made similar comments, including reportedly referring to Kamala Harris as a “bitch” behind closed doors. At the recent Moms for Liberty conference, Trump outlandishly claimed that public schools were providing gender-affirming surgery to children without parental knowledge, an assertion so demonstrably false and ridiculous it would be laughable, except that he said it in front of an audience of far right-wing activists who have been instrumental in vicious direct action and legislative attacks against trans people.
Many on the left, center, and even some on the right decried Vance and Trump’s statements as misogynistic and “weird,” out of touch with the values of the American public. While Trump and Vance’s rhetoric may be alienating and unpopular to many, it points to a larger and more alarming reality: patriarchy has become a central component of the MAGA attack plan, dovetailing with its racist attacks as part of a larger vision of white Christian nationalism. And as the right ramps up its assault on gender and especially on trans people, it is crucial for the left to grasp the centrality of patriarchal oppression to MAGA’s broader social, political, and economic agenda and to fight for a different, emancipatory vision of gender and family.
2. Moral Panic and Mass Line on the Right
Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, the right has discovered that regressive policies on abortion and gay equality are anathema to many Americans. To their dismay, they can no longer rely on anti-abortion activism and “gay panic” to mobilize their base. But through trial and error, they have been working to recycle these old lines and to shift their rhetoric to find new lines of attack. GOP-led states have passed numerous attack bills banning abortion and severely curtailing the rights of trans people. We can view the broad but disjointed attacks of the past years as a kind of practice of mass line development by the far right: which attacks stick, which are effective (and ineffective), and what energizes itsr base?
Through this process, MAGA has shifted the focus of its attacks onto transgender people and especially trans children. But the highly visible attacks on trans people are only the “tip of the spear” of a much broader assault on gender rights and bodily autonomy. As Trump and Vance’s comments make clear, MAGA has in its sights not just trans people but all LGBTQ+ people; women who defy their attempts at control; men who do not uphold toxic patriarchal ideals, whom the right lampoons as too feminine; and all others who fall outside into their narrow definitions of gender and of family.
The policing of a narrow vision of gender, sex, and family is central to the MAGA vision for fascist, patriarchal control. This vision is clearly articulated in Project 2025’s four “promises” to America. The first of these promises, around which all others are articulated, is to “[r]estore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.”
They are speaking about a certain type of family: white, heterosexual, and Christian. The framing of “protect our children” implies that all those who fall outside those lines are dangerous. This sinister pledge is crucial to their deeply dystopian vision centered on a strict, punitive vision of the heterosexual family, in which women must be mothers and submit to their husbands, even in violent marriages; a man is a father and the authority figure within the family; and the “postmenopausal female,” in J.D. Vance’s words, holds no worth in society except to care for grandchildren.
These are not idle words or empty rhetoric: the right is putting them into practice through law. The reality of life in red and blue states is becoming ever more starkly different.
In MAGA-led states that have banned abortions like Tennessee and Georgia, doctors face agonizing decisions of whether to risk felony criminal charges to provide care when pregnant patients present to the emergency room. While the doctors and lawyers and hospital administrators argue, women have bled out or suffered permanent organ damage while waiting in ER waiting rooms or after being sent home without care. The Republican-led states that are forcing families to have children are the states that provide the least support for families and respond to lack of familial resources punitively by jailing parents and taking away their kids. States with abortion bans are struggling to provide basic gynecological care as doctors move to states where they are not risking felonies by providing care, and medical residents avoid taking residencies in states where they cannot learn the full range of gynecological care.
Trans people and their families are facing desperate choices, too. As Republican legislatures have passed outright bans on puberty blockers and hormone therapy, families with trans kids are fleeing their home states. Trans adults in MAGA-led states fear arrest for using the bathroom or having their drivers licenses revoked.
3. The Dark History of Fascist Patriarchy in Europe and the United States
Why is the MAGA movement so doggedly pursuing harsh and punitive restrictions on abortion, trans healthcare, and other gender issues? These restrictions are a means of exercising social control. Access to abortion and birth control gives people a choice in who they love and marry, and sex and childbearing no longer function as a method of control and submission. And the very existence of trans people undermines the Right’s strict lines of gendered social control as people, both trans and not, are no longer forced into immutable gender roles and instead have the opportunity to make their own way in life. The right is attacking gender precisely because gender rights undermine their ability to exercise social control.
MAGA’s attacks on gender are among their clearest articulations of a fascist vision, and they emulate the fascist movements of the 20th century in their regressive views on women and LGBTQ people and harsh authoritarian restrictions on abortion, repression of LGBTQ people, and attempts to criminalize freedom of movement. Early in their rise to power, Nazis attacked Magnus Hirschfield’s Institute for Sexual Science, where some of the earliest 20th century work on trans healthcare and queer sexuality had been pioneered. Later, the Nazis passed harsh laws outlawing homosexuality and imprisoned gay men, lesbians, and trans people in concentration camps. Likewise, in Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain, women’s ability to participate in public life and employment was severely curtailed, alongside harsh punishments for abortion.
German propaganda poster showing the Nazi eagle behind an image of the “ideal” family
The fascist definition of the family was central to social control in Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s fascist regime in Italy, and Franco’s Spain. Women played the role of mother to the fascist homeland and embodied a fascist vision of fertility and femininity, raising children to be or to birth future fascist soldiers. Men were expected to adhere to a strict image of strength and masculinity, serving as fathers and enforcers of fascist discipline within the home and soldiers to the fascist state outside the home. The patriarchal vision of the family occurred alongside and was dependent upon the subordination, exploitation and/or elimination of bodies, families, and communities perceived as sexually deviant, racially or ethnically other, politically dissident, or otherwise “inferior.” In the fascist regimes of the 20th century, the valorization of “the family” was part and parcel of a genocidal project denying many actual families the right to the term.
But we don’t have to look across the ocean to find examples of the interconnection of fascism and patriarchy. US racial capitalism was formed around patriarchal relations that developed through the enslavement of African people, the exploitation of non-Black people of color and poor whites, and the extermination of Indigenous peoples, and the policies of European fascist states drew heavily on the mechanisms of slavery in the US. Within this context, the creation and enforcement of strict gender and sexual roles was a crucial mechanism of social control and economic exploitation and included the repression and extermination of Two-Spirit and gender-non-conforming people, laws banning interracial families, and widespread sexual violence by white male enslavers against enslaved women. The “cult of domesticity” that restricted wealthy (and, later, middle-class) white women to the role of mother and homemaker is inextricable from the oppression of the many other women and gender-oppressed people to whom any pretense of “family values” was denied. This was made most brutally clear by the commodification of the reproductive capacity of enslaved Black women upon which the perpetuation of slavery depended, particularly after the closing of the legal Atlantic slave trade. Even after abolition, the valorization of “the family” as a private refuge from public life continued to depend on the exploitative, low-wage domestic labor of poor and working-class women and women of color.
The fascist definition of the family was central to social control in Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s fascist regime in Italy, and Franco’s Spain. Women played the role of mother to the fascist homeland and embodied a fascist vision of fertility and femininity, raising children to be or to birth future fascist soldiers. Men were expected to adhere to a strict image of strength and masculinity, serving as fathers and enforcers of fascist discipline within the home and soldiers to the fascist state outside the home. The patriarchal vision of the family occurred alongside and was dependent upon the subordination, exploitation and/or elimination of bodies, families, and communities perceived as sexually deviant, racially or ethnically other, politically dissident, or otherwise “inferior.” In the fascist regimes of the 20th century, the valorization of “the family” was part and parcel of a genocidal project denying many actual families the right to the term.
But we don’t have to look across the ocean to find examples of the interconnection of fascism and patriarchy. US racial capitalism was formed around patriarchal relations that developed through the enslavement of African people, the exploitation of non-Black people of color and poor whites, and the extermination of Indigenous peoples, and the policies of European fascist states drew heavily on the mechanisms of slavery in the US. Within this context, the creation and enforcement of strict gender and sexual roles was a crucial mechanism of social control and economic exploitation and included the repression and extermination of Two-Spirit and gender-non-conforming people, laws banning interracial families, and widespread sexual violence by white male enslavers against enslaved women. The “cult of domesticity” that restricted wealthy (and, later, middle-class) white women to the role of mother and homemaker is inextricable from the oppression of the many other women and gender-oppressed people to whom any pretense of “family values” was denied. This was made most brutally clear by the commodification of the reproductive capacity of enslaved Black women upon which the perpetuation of slavery depended, particularly after the closing of the legal Atlantic slave trade. Even after abolition, the valorization of “the family” as a private refuge from public life continued to depend on the exploitative, low-wage domestic labor of poor and working-class women and women of color.
4. Project 2025: Restore What and for Whom?
These early foundations echo into the current structures of US capitalism in which reproductive labor is unvalued or undervalued, to the detriment of the health of the entire society. Care work and reproductive labor include having and raising children, teaching, healing the sick, caring for the elderly, domestic labor, janitorial work, and many other crucial jobs that allow our society to function and reproduce itself. These fundamental contradictions underlie US capitalism, and the right’s current project seeks to exacerbate and crystallize them further.
It is with this context in mind that we must evaluate the right’s supposed promise to “restore” the family. We must immediately ask: restore what, for whom? The preface to Project 2025 states:
“In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatural ones. You see this in the popular left-wing aphorism, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” But in real life, most of the things people “do together” have nothing to do with government. These are the mediating institutions that serve as the building blocks of any healthy society. Marriage. Family. Work. Church. School. Volunteering. The name real people give to the things we do together is community, not government. Our lives are full of interwoven, overlapping communities, and our individual and collective happiness depends upon them. But the most important community in each of our lives—and the life of the nation—is the family.
The right’s vision of “the family” draws on a long history of policing people’s bodies and reproductive capacity. All people with wombs must be forced to live as women, and all women forced to birth children, whether to reproduce a dominant elite (for white, Christian, middle class, and upper class women) or a dominated labor force (for everyone else). Policies that create greater ease and security for women and children are actually counterproductive to this fascist project. Meanwhile the rhetorical juxtaposition of “natural” and “unnatural” “loves and loyalties” makes very clear who does and doesn’t count as family, paving the way for the subsequent call for the forcible suppression of trans people, who the right calls an “ideology.” Likewise, the invocation of “real people” who care about “community” implies, chillingly, the existence of other, unreal people who do not. Here again, MAGA’s “family values” involve the extirpation of families considered less than fully human and outside the body politic—a core component, always, of fascist logic.
It takes a particularly contorted, deceptive logic to wrap an assault on the social welfare state in the shroud of “defending the family.” The right is not actually pro-children or pro-family at all. MAGA’s policy platform is horrible for families and children: it provides no paid maternal or paternal leave, slashes funding for public education, heavily restricts Medicaid and WIC, attacks access to healthcare, and seeks to turn a profit on our already badly damaged healthcare system by closing hospitals or converting them into badly funded and poorly staffed for-profit facilities. If we follow MAGA’s vision, working mothers, fathers, and parents will have to work more hours to put food on the table at jobs that abuse them and do not respect their rights; immigrant families will be torn apart; our seniors and loved ones will fall ill and not seek care until it is far too late, and then languish in dangerously understaffed facilities; and our children will go hungry.
And yet despite this, we should not underestimate the attraction of the right’s appeal to “family.” Most Americans deeply value family and community. And historically, the terrain of “family values” is one that the left has been willing to cede to the right. Given the deep entwinement of the white Christian, nuclear, patriarchal family structure with forms of racial, gendered and class violence, this is partly understandable. But if we are to successfully combat MAGA’s racist, genocidal, and patriarchal vision of the family, the left must fight for our own vision rooted in radical principles of self-determination, interdependence, and collective care.
5. A Left Vision for Gender Liberation and Family
Rather than ceding this ground to the right, we must fight both to redefine what family means and for the fundamental freedom of people to freely form family when and how they choose. We must recognize that all of the far right’s attacks across different elements of gender are connected: when MAGA attacks trans children, or access to abortion, or mixed families, they are attacking all of us.
The beginnings of a left defense of gender rights are increasingly cohering into a unified line. The majority of the country supports access to abortion and opposes abortion restrictions. In the 2022 elections, backlash against the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and the overturning of Roe v. Wade was a key driver of Democratic victories and victories in a number of referendums either codifying the right to abortion or rejecting bans on abortion. Most Americans are at least moderately opposed to bans on trans healthcare, and many feel the Right is overemphasizing trans people and should probably just leave them alone. The pro-democracy united front is increasingly hostile to attacks on families, such as JD Vance’s recent comments.
The seeds of our line are right in front of us, in our defense of access to healthcare, freedom of choice, and the value of both paid and unpaid care work. Our vision of family includes mixed and multigenerational families, immigrant families, queer and chosen families, childless cat lady families, etc. We must uplift the value of collective care and fight for a policy platform that provides what families actually need: childcare and senior care, paid family leave, strong public schools and hospitals with unionized teachers and nurses, and a robust and accessible healthcare system that gives the freedom to access all healthcare regardless of income, including abortion and trans healthcare. Policies like universal healthcare access and paid family leave are popular with the American public and would have a tremendous impact on quality of life for the average American.
Left and progressive forces within our united front should take every opportunity to fight back against abortion bans and attacks on trans rights. Our base is mobilized by these issues, particularly abortion, as are many in the middle who may be swayed one way or another. Equally important, we must resist the siloing and demonization of vulnerable groups of people, whether trans people, patients seeking abortions, or immigrants. The right’s attempts to make these groups into scapegoats are dangerous and signal their fascist intentions.
The task in this moment is clear: we must block the fascists from taking power, broaden our united front to unite with the widest possible array of forces, and build the left to take leadership in the front. Through this struggle, we have the opportunity to articulate a vision that recognizes family as expansive and truly and deeply values reproductive labor, care work, and the responsibilities we have to care for one another.
Eli Brown is a member of Liberation Road. He currently serves on the National Executive Committee and is a member of the Oppressed Gender Work Team.
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