Where are the childless voices?

If you read just one piece I point you to this week, please make it this one from the fabulous Yael Wolfe, in response to venture capitalist/author-turned-politician J.D. Vance's attack on the "childless left" last month, which had some Fox News hosts musing about banning childless people (i.e., us) from voting altogether. (!)

(I posted my own rant about this sorry incident here. I didn't realize then that he actually used the phrase "bunch of childless cat ladies" in a Twitter response to some of the criticism he'd been receiving...!)(For the record, I do not have a cat, nor have I ever owned one.)   

Wolfe makes the excellent point that NOWHERE in ANY of the media coverage she's seen has anyone actually bothered to ask a childless person for their response (!!) -- and, furthermore, the people who ARE weighing in and being asked to comment are mostly parents who are using their platform to defend their own demographic vs defending those of us who have no children -- the people Vance specifically targeted in his comments. Pronatalism rules the day (again)!!  :p  It's really quite jaw-dropping, when you think about it...! 

Sample quote: 

Needless to say, I’m flummoxed. I cannot fathom why big media outlets wouldn’t be knocking down the doors of childless people — women, in particular — to address this nonsense, to defend ourselves and our own, and to share our experience of what it’s like to live in a culture that is so violently pronatalist that it would actually suggest that childless people shouldn’t get an equal say in a democracy. 

But no, they have chosen the spokespeople for this fight: parents. Because parents might not get extra voting power yet, but they definitely have extra speaking power in this culture. 

Here’s the thing: This argument isn’t about children. It isn’t about families. It is about childless people. I’m all for hearing parents speak up against this anti-democratic rhetoric, but I’m not okay that they are the only voices speaking for me and other people like me.

Wolfe uses this piece by Elizabeth Bruenig of The Atlantic -- who is a parent, and whose objections to Vance's comments come from a child-centric point of view, and who barely mention the childless people Vance actually insulted -- as a case in point. Sample quote: 

...a generation of children who, by no fault of their own, are being transformed into a political talisman for the right. And for no reason: Most people, regardless of politics or identity, end up having kids at some point. 

Way to dismisses the approximately 20% of us who don't end up having children, for whatever reason. Sigh...