To the editor: Thanks to Robin Abcarian for shedding light on another shameful belief espoused by Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance: that postmenopausal women have no purpose beyond caring for their grandchildren.
Apparently, supporting reproduction is our role throughout our entire life. Look where this view puts women without children and those without grandchildren. To the nuclear waste colonies with all the women who are not women!
Vance apparently learned to value the role of grandmothers in child-rearing from his Indian mother-in-law, who moved in with his family when their first child was born. A real irony is that both grandfathers can play a caregiving role in extended families, and yet Vance, looking at the world through his misogynistic lens, doesn’t come to the conclusion that older men serve no other purpose. Of course not.
Vance's worldview has no place in the White House, and I will join postmenopausal women across the country in keeping him from going anywhere near it.
Kristen Maher, San Diego
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To the editor: While I agree with the essence of Abcarian’s critique of Vance and his views on the “purpose” of postmenopausal women, I find his rejection of “introspection based on evolutionary biology” misplaced.
A prolonged postmenopausal life is an interesting feature of human beings. Abcarian belittles even the question of why it exists. And he overlooks the fact that a hypothesis about why it exists does not define the “purpose” of postmenopausal women, all of whom are individuals, with their individual purposes.
His casual disdain also smacks of the casual dismissal of much of the science that infects much contemporary discourse.
Hector Neff, Long Beach
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To the editor: Thanks to Abcarian for highlighting Vance’s recent comment on Fox News downplaying the importance of abortion rights for women, because he thinks, in his own words, that “most suburban women care about the normal things that most Americans care about.”
How audacious of Vance to say that suburban women care more about “normal” things like public safety and food prices than abortion rights! If a woman cares more about her personal rights than food prices, is that abnormal?
It bothers and insults me when men, especially politicians, are quick to tell me what matters most to me.
Sandra Poppink, Sunland
