I never know how to feel about this definition of the “American people.” If you’re not a mom or a dad, is everything being said just not applicable to you? Do they not care about you, or are they intentionally excluding you? I genuinely don’t know. - ThreadSky

lindaholmes.bsky.social • 360 days ago

I never know how to feel about this definition of the “American people.” If you’re not a mom or a dad, is everything being said just not applicable to you? Do they not care about you, or are they intentionally excluding you? I genuinely don’t know.

Reposted from David Slack

To the American people: can we borrow some of your stuff for our totally empty kitchen? Like spatulas or some shit?

Comments

themiser.bsky.social•360 days ago

I find the lack of what you would consider "standard kitchen stuff" in that kitchen disturbing. Like all personal items were removed on purpose. Sterile. Staged. Put on. Fake.

ellinst.bsky.social•360 days ago

And what about people who live on take-out? Are they not real Americans?

lindaholmes.bsky.social•360 days ago

I mean, there are certainly a lot of apartment-dwellers especially who do not center their lives around kitchens.

ellinst.bsky.social•360 days ago

But a lot of them don't have children so don't count as real Americans anyway, apparently.

ricevermicelli.bsky.social•360 days ago

Somehow, they are managing to make me, a (divorced) mom who spends a ton of time in the kitchen, feel alienated.

Possibly because no surface would ever stay that clear in my kitchen. Where do they cook? Eat? Draw? Where's everyone's laptop? Where do their lego builds go?

casuallychaotic.bsky.social•360 days ago

"To just those people who choose to live in a traditional family structure that does not represent the majority of people living in this country, live from a house which the majority of people in this country will never be able to afford..."

jmk59.bsky.social•360 days ago

"Working families" (worse: "hard-working families") has had me screaming for decades. In the 2000 campaign season, both parties ran on a one-time tax rebate. Sadly, Bush was the ONLY candidate pitching a version that would include me. The rest were families only. Voted Gore, but thru gritted teeth

bafairbend.bsky.social•360 days ago

I think they're saying if you have kids you cannot afford to stock your kitchen. This picture is pretty bleak, which kinda sums the whole thing up

sanekansan.bsky.social•360 days ago

As a retiree, I'd say excluded. If you're not putting money in someone else's pocket, you have no value. If you're a female retiree, even more so. That's been my experience.

buddhaferret.bsky.social•360 days ago

They don't care.

On Purpose.

https://myferretsatepepethefrog.blogspot.com/2024/03/state-of-disunion-four-beasts-two.html

macmog.bsky.social•360 days ago

Same vibe as when a married couple uses “starting a family” to mean “having children”. Because a spouse doesn’t count, apparently.

sheerspec.bsky.social•360 days ago

Oh yeah. If you’re being talked to by people like her, then absolutely childless adults are verboten to them. They’ve shirked their “Christian duty” to be prosperous and thus forfeited the right to have a say.

wovenstrap.bsky.social•360 days ago

It's the typical Republican framing of everything that goes back to Nixon. Americans are rural white middle-class normal conservative people, and everyone else is an alien and "weird." Americans don't protest the Vietnam War.

Republicans can't do anything without putting their thumb on the scale.

ohiohawkeye.bsky.social•360 days ago

To these fascist assholes there’s only one definition of an “American” woman in particular:

white;
married;
children;
thin & cute;
maybe she has a job but only if it serves their purposes like hers does (quite literally in this case!);

and, critically, she spends a lot of time in the kitchen.

mwdelaney.me•360 days ago

Family as cult

grrrbecca.bsky.social•360 days ago

And to say this whole representing a state that is actively making it more difficult for people who want to become parents!

slimchickens.bsky.social•360 days ago

Both

lindaholmes.bsky.social•360 days ago

I feel like excluding any other demographic from a definition of “American people,” like *explicitly* (as opposed to implicitly, which of course happens all the time), tends to provoke commentary. But it seems like this definitional vanishing of people without kids basically never comes up.

cynmet.bsky.social•360 days ago

Senior assistance services often recommend we get help from our children or churches. It's just a given that I have grown children to care for me as I did for my parents.

emmagoldman.bsky.social•360 days ago

You might be interested in this Gessen/Butler interview that I happened to read just now after seeing that Chris Hayes is having Butler on his WITH pod. Your comment reminded me of the text in the screenshot below:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/judith-butler-wants-us-to-reshape-our-rage

libraryephemera.bsky.social•360 days ago

It's also a negation of the idea of citizen and citizenship, which gives the individual more agency in relation to the government. The idea of the focus on the family role creates an insularity that neuters collective action or solidarity among communities.

deserthooker.bsky.social•360 days ago

What I heard of her speech was like MOMS agree this country is unsafe and bad for kids and all I could think of was moms of trans kids like...I don't think she was talking about them either. Only one way to have a family in their minds.

sperfur.bsky.social•360 days ago

I'm not a mom, but I agree the country is unsafe.

I think one important way to address that is the gun control laws mentioned in the SOTU. Also, the Violence Against Women Act.

I wonder what her thoughts are on those issues?

newleaf.bsky.social•360 days ago

She was only talking about white Christian moms who vote as their husbands direct.

deserthooker.bsky.social•360 days ago

They're the only ones that matter to the right

kimoco.bsky.social•360 days ago

As a single person with no kids, I sure as hell NEVER felt as if the Republican party was talking to me, including me, or considered me and my needs and values worth any consideration.

ushmel.bsky.social•360 days ago

*looks at tax code* no, you are nothing to these people

adamserwer.bsky.social•360 days ago

This is deliberate, they are obsessed with demonizing single women now

caitesq.bsky.social•360 days ago

This is correct. Also, FWIW, I live in the suburbs with my husband and two kids, and I know implicitly that they’re not talking to us. This is not for unionized liberals.

ponedaddy1990.bsky.social•360 days ago

Demonizing single womanhood to promote coupling and children is next level evil. The same men who want this are the same ones who created the economy that discourages families and keeps housing, food, and fuel high.

rexs1gma.bsky.social•360 days ago

Single women, the LGBTQ+ community, children who don't want to be shot at school... the list goes on.

lindaholmes.bsky.social•360 days ago

On a personal level, I definitely feel like … I’ve always been familiar with hostility toward birth control and so forth, but there does seem to be a specific disdain for my independence itself that has always existed but seems to have accelerated.

ponedaddy1990.bsky.social•360 days ago

The GOP doesn't want birth control, IVF, or abortion...yet...they also don't want sex before marriage...what's next...sex toys? Arranged marriage? Where does their nanny state end?

heatherk.bsky.social•360 days ago

They want the whole virgin/whore dichotomy back

ponedaddy1990.bsky.social•360 days ago

It is a systemic push for a return to the traditional wife role. They have been using social media to try and win young people to this with sexed up housewives pushing the lifestyle.

heatherk.bsky.social•360 days ago

Oh for sure! But the virgin/whore thing is a part of that. The men gotta have some sluts to have sex with before they get married or if they get tired of wifey.

very-simple.com•360 days ago

There's always been the undercurrent of hostility to abortion and birth control, but the doubling down recently with things like Texas' challenge to the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would force more pregnant women out of the workforce, makes the "control women" piece of it much more explicit

adamserwer.bsky.social•360 days ago

The focus is relatively new because conservative social scientists have narrowed in on single women as a particularly “woke” constituency https://www.aei.org/articles/how-single-woke-females-are-reshaping-the-us/

kbethany.bsky.social•360 days ago

Not surprising they’d have a particular hatred for the demographic that very specifically counters their worldview that women (should) only exist to further the lives of men. In a world where women have agency, men (and married women who believe their value comes from their men) have less power.

kimoco.bsky.social•360 days ago

And I don't think they like the fact we tend to vote in large numbers.

stahl.bsky.social•360 days ago

the consistent republican strategy of "the people who don't vote for us are immoral and should be punished"

adamserwer.bsky.social•360 days ago

Yes constituencies are good and evil based on whether or not they vote republican

angelozanola.bsky.social•360 days ago

I always think that in politics Democrats are tortured over trying to do the right thing so they can keep considering themselves the good guys and Republicans start with the premise that they are the good guys so everything they do is right.

cacasey.bsky.social•360 days ago

even people who are reliable democrats say stuff like "do you have a family" when they mean "kids" and I hate the "are you a full person?" implications.

timcarvell.bsky.social•360 days ago

It feels like another branch of the tree that’s brought us 20+ years of “Poor Jen” headlines about Jennifer Aniston’s supposed misery at not having started a family with any of a series of ex-boyfriends who turned out to be absolute trainwrecks.

lindaholmes.bsky.social•360 days ago

Yes. Poor her, with her extraordinary wealth, long career, and series of hot boyfriends. The horror.

bikebrh.bsky.social•360 days ago

I've always thought that Aniston's people feed the tabloids like no other celebrity. They've kept her wealthy and relevant as she released bomb after bomb post Friends, and it's all because of the name recognition from tabloid stories. Any other actress would have been in "Actress Jail" a decade ago

pdxpup.bsky.social•360 days ago

And you can see how a Taylor Swift acorn fell off that branch and grew an entirely new tree about not only her supposed misery of "failure" with love, but now also calling her a "psy-op" and getting mad when she encourages her social media followers to vote. Single women brain rot is something else.

kimoco.bsky.social•360 days ago

And portraying a "perfect woman" as one in the kitchen with her husband and kids and not a dish in sight.

hangedman1984.bsky.social•360 days ago

Honestly you could drop the "now" and it'd still be just as accurate

virtuistic.bsky.social•360 days ago

I'm not sure it's a "now" thing so much as a more visible thing. Fundies and conservative Xtians have been obsessed with that as long as I've been alive. I hadn't even graduated college before the "better get your MRS degree before it's too late" warnings started from people who helped raise me.

lindaholmes.bsky.social•360 days ago

Right — this is kind of where I come down. It’s not new, but it’s much more explicit and much more consistent, and it’s much more mainstream to talk like this.

chrisb2.bsky.social•360 days ago

from the party that wants to end no-fault divorce...

pnutsmama.bsky.social•360 days ago

i know everyone focuses on the conservative christian agenda but this is really more in line with the theology/rules of the catholic church which are way, way more stringent and more specifically controlling

adamserwer.bsky.social•360 days ago

Because not about catholicism per se it’s francoism, religion provides pretext for ideology

oldohman.bsky.social•360 days ago

My kitchen may be clean but it's not sterile and impersonal like a model home in a new development.

grooveholmes.bsky.social•360 days ago

Yeah, and I feel that it gives its proponents a sense of innocence in justifying what they are doing, as they frame it as they are just doing god's will, etc., etc. And as that is the highest virtue anything is acceptable in its pursuit.

pnutsmama.bsky.social•360 days ago

oooooooh i’m liking this. do you have any good resources (if not i’m totally fine to search) on francoism influence?

abracadocious.bsky.social•360 days ago

Umberto Eco had a good essay on ur-fascism. The cult of the woman is part of it. It and summaries of it can be found online.

smilner.bsky.social•360 days ago

Keeping her in the literal kitchen was an insane mask off moment, and I can't really believe that it wasn't intentional.

kentropic.bsky.social•360 days ago

Much as the term “working class” in American journalism ALWAYS refers to the *white* working class. It’s unmissable one you start noticing it, & it’s maddening.

karenswilcoxphd.bsky.social•360 days ago

i would go with they don't care

madelyn112.bsky.social•360 days ago

Hello

zoopaul.bsky.social•360 days ago

They're in no way speaking to me - a lifelong New Yorker from Queens who has a wife, no kids and loves cats. Maybe out on Long Island - definitely Suffolk County. Of course they're a little more open than most Republicans about the swinging they do.

sapindaceae.bsky.social•360 days ago

I think I used to assume it was just tunnel vision, but lately I do assume it's intentional from the Republican side--active animosity towards single women on the rise.

lizamezzo.bsky.social•360 days ago

To me it feels like a dig at LGBTQ people and an attempt to enforce gender roles. Maybe also trying to reference the old “family values” slogan

turblescelbor.bsky.social•360 days ago

Yeah this is almost certainly an element. The penultimate goal for the conservative social movement is to make it illegal to be queer both in public and in private.

artistic-menace.com•360 days ago

Yeah and while a lot of anti-LGBTQ+ people and politicians ARE overt about it, either in speech, action, or legislation, many will also deliberately alienate people with subtle things like this heteronormative, nuclear family definition of “family.”

(Whether or not that’s the case here…)

texasinafrica.bsky.social•360 days ago

Progressives do it, too, often without thinking about it. A woman in my community just started a PAC to elect progressives (Great idea!) to state offices. And called it [State] MOMPAC. See also, Moms Demand, Free Mom Hugs... So many of these groups don't seem to consider what their names convey.

drmag00.bsky.social•360 days ago

See also “average American.” Average age? Average pigment? Average gender? And even if you identified such a person, there’s so much diversity that only a select few would live similar lives. They so often choose these terms to only include their target audience.

lindaholmes.bsky.social•360 days ago

This is absolutely true. Using “working families” as if it means the same thing as “working people” is longstanding across the political spectrum.

energetic-nova.bsky.social•360 days ago

Non-working Disabled and never included. Tax payers, working anything, moms and dads… middle class.

Yeah most the rhetoric of not all.

energetic-nova.bsky.social•360 days ago

I’m not seniors or veterans either. So….

sparkieguy.bsky.social•359 days ago

I think you do know, but the thought of being right about it is scarier than the thought of being wrong. (Answers are: No it isn't, No they don't, Yes they are - you're not American to them)

bonnieedwards.bsky.social•360 days ago

All of the above? I really wonder if anyone, I mean *anyone* who doesn’t fit this description is included.

harfenist.bsky.social•360 days ago

If you're not sitting at an empty kitchen table with your creepy family, you're clearly a SINGLE LOSER who probably looks like THIS at their COMPUTER

harfenist.bsky.social•360 days ago

(Honest, family-having Americans only wear their Hacker Hoodie™ while they make bad crypto investments and/or take money out of their 401k to donate to Donald Trump’s legal fund.)

grantsanders.bsky.social•360 days ago

Yes to your statement. Inclusion will never be part of their policy. They have such a narrow minded, unifocused view of reality.

mechanic.lol•360 days ago

Old married people are the most reliable voting demo. Godless heathen liberals obsess over them too they are just more subtle about it.

maxkennerly.bsky.social•360 days ago

I'm a dad, so it's targeted at me, and I always interpret it as intentional erasure of non-parents because their views are deemed irrelevant. (I assume these "American families" proponents would exclude my family's views too, because they differ from theirs.)

barrettmadden.bsky.social•360 days ago

It also reminds me of local meetings where tenants are treated as people who don’t care about the community because they don’t pay property taxes on a home.

lindaholmes.bsky.social•360 days ago

It feels like an opportunity for somebody to reach out to the (more and more!) single people and people without kids and say “look, this is also a valid way to be a citizen and we value you,” but I can’t remember the last time I saw that done.

blake.bsky.social•360 days ago

In these times especially, it's more than understandable that so many people are single and/or childless. To the point where I see families with young children and think, "You sure about all this?"

thurberteam.bsky.social•360 days ago

VP Harris was single for a long time, she'd be a natural, but the WH probably wants to highlight her family/ stepmom credibility

jmgreene28.bsky.social•360 days ago

I'm married, and I this kind of rhetoric just reminds me of the long, protracted fights we had (and are still having) so that my LGBT friends are free to enjoy their own matrimony.

energetic-nova.bsky.social•360 days ago

I’m married to someone trans and yeah…

Pretty sure it doesn’t matter, they hate us.

ckjohnsonbk.bsky.social•360 days ago

Are married people with children high propensity voters? Higher than non-parents?

maxkennerly.bsky.social•360 days ago

Lot of ways to address that, but IMHO single people, especially women, are an underappreciated part of the Dem base. Dems can't win without single women leaning heavy D.

2020 Share of the electorate / Dem lean
Single women 25 / +28
Single men 19 / +6
Married women 28 / 0
Married men 27 / -14

blemley.us•360 days ago

It’s an outdated view of the “American family” to call back to the boomer, Norman Rockwell paintings of mis-remembered youth. The more I dig into genealogy of my and my wife’s family, the more I find out of wedlock pregnancies, abusive parents, alcoholism, etc. This is not the norm.

blemley.us•360 days ago

My mom never knew when her mom and dad got married. Turns out, my grandma was 6 mos pregnant in 1937 when she got married. My wife’s granddad grew up raised by his grandma. His mom was who he thought was his sister. The Norman Rockwell family dinner table is bullshit.

birchduck.bsky.social•360 days ago

Not performing gender right, you're no longer quite people

cannon4nh.bsky.social•360 days ago

Not a new stance by the GOP, several have floated that if you don't have kids then you don't deserve to vote

cannon4nh.bsky.social•360 days ago

lurkymclurk.bsky.social•360 days ago

Working class minorities are also not counted

lindaholmes.bsky.social•360 days ago

Oh of course -- as I said, it happens all the time in practice; it's less common for it to be announced in out-loud words.

thulcandrian.bsky.social•360 days ago

Agree with you that a more inclusive definition of “American people” is soo much more interesting. They are absolutely leaving non-heterodox families out. They don’t want to acknowledge it’s a possible choice, much less a desirable one!

thulcandrian.bsky.social•360 days ago

It never occurs to them that not everyone aspires to live that kind of life (grew up evangelical). It’s deeply embedded in every assumption about the choices you will make in your life and to challenge that narrative is to question the whole foundation. Super powerful myth.

fincoot.bsky.social•360 days ago

Excluding? Oh no. No not at all. They have special categories to include US into. It just goes without saying.
Failure
Spinster
Damned Sinner
Hater of God...quite a long list actually, now that I think of it.

newleaf.bsky.social•360 days ago

Charitable of them, really, to give everyone a handy label.

fincoot.bsky.social•360 days ago

"We're saintly"
https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExN2x2bnl0a2R0ZGttNTNnNXhlNjZ0aGhhb3IwN3k3cXI4ZG1ib25ydSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/fXnippRSYoS7a4F5Ef/giphy.gif

iquanyin.bsky.social•360 days ago

when anyone says "the american people" they are trying to manipulate others to get something.

iquanyin.bsky.social•360 days ago

i know how i feel: annoyed that it's even a thing.

jenniferweeks83.bsky.social•360 days ago

Per the Census Bureau, roughly 50% of US adults are unmarried

vincent2023.bsky.social•360 days ago

I don’t think they care, which I prefer. They’re only ever in the way anyway, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be counted as one of them.

ninetailedwitch.bsky.social•360 days ago

It's true that Republicans are being exclusive here. I think that this being rhetoric adopted decades ago with a specific conception of who Americans are, is pretty good evidence for intentionality. What's harder to prove but I still find true is that these are the only people they want to serve.

rockshrimp.bsky.social•360 days ago

They’re intentionally excluding us. It’s christofascism

southaustinhippy.bsky.social•360 days ago

These are not "American People". These are Aliens From The Planet Zork in meat suits.

You know, Pod People.

kateweb.bsky.social•360 days ago

The UK equivalent is "hard-working families"; a someone with no kids, who does a pretty cushy office job, I definitely don't think I'm the group they have in mind.

efredericks.bsky.social•360 days ago

There are some people to whom I give the benefit of the doubt, but not a Republican senator giving the SOTU response; I read this as a really intentional rhetorical choice, esp given how much time I spend around conservative rhetoric about how marriage & family are the only proper goals.

wastelandrover.bsky.social•360 days ago

I was curious as to if they framed last year's SOTU response in the same way, and it looks like Sarah Huckabee Sanders was presented as "GOVERNOR" whereas Katie Britt is very obviously being presented as "MOMWIFE."

Also the last male republican SOTU response was Rubio in 2013.

oafe.net•360 days ago

Well, that makes sense: when Obama beat Clinton in the '08 primaries, they nominated Palin for VP thinking they'd get all the former Hilary supporters just because she was a woman. All these years later and they still can't grasp why that didn't work. "Send out the new girl, they'll like her!"

sjhnstl.bsky.social•359 days ago

It means white people. who are male, wealthy, Republicans. Women included in the definition if married to or blood relatives of WMWRs.

newleaf.bsky.social•360 days ago

Yes

richardkeppler.bsky.social•360 days ago

I hate to be so direct but what if you find America’s violence and cruelty so shocking you can’t imagine bringing a child into it?

empowlr.bsky.social•360 days ago

Yes, this is intentional. Moms are prized above all else, but in this context, only if they’re white.

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