conduit

The “crunchy-to-alt-right” pipeline. The “picked last in gym-to-wellness girlie” pipeline. And this week, after this photo of two of my favorite things, the “abortion- to-crazy-cat-lady” pipeline.

“You’re going to be all alone with a bunch of cats.”

The “abortion-to-crazy-cat-lady” pipeline is not something official, but the sentiment is everywhere. The threat that if you do not have a child, if you choose not to be pregnant, or in a relationship with a man, that you will end up alone with a bunch of cats. (This is a dumb thing to say, because if you have cats, you are not alone. You have cats.)

We’ve talked in this venue before about the threat of people who can get pregnant choosing to not have children, and/or choosing abortion. It destabilizes the patriarchal order of things, it undermines the structure we’ve been taught to rely on, the college + marriage + kids + relentless participation in capitalism that will allegedly lead to happiness and the stigmatization of lives led in other fashions. (Also, apparently the scariest thing a woman can be is…in charge of herself? In her own house?)

The cat lady thing is so tiresome, I’m kind of embarrassed to bring it up. (Here’s an article taking apart the stereotype.) My friend Therese, a feminist documentary icon who made a film about being childfree and I recently discussed that we had not ever thought seriously about what we would name future children, but we had lists of names for cats.

There are many routes to abortion stigma, and unfortunately most of them exist through language, sentiments that have buried themselves so deeply in our psyches that we don’t even think about them anymore, and the crazy cat lady myth is one of those.

Action item: Make a list of things you hear frequently in media about people who don’t follow the normative script around pregnancy, marriage, etc. Consider their roots, why they’ve been given power, how they’ve made it into your own brain, and how you can eradicate them.

Next week: Stay tuned.