Dogs, cats, and politics

It’s amazing how cats, and to some extent dogs, have been making it into the news around the presidential race in the United States, started by Republican candidates for president and vice president who are fiercely against immigration.

But let’s call a spade a spade; it isn’t just being anti-immigration but racism.

It started out with rumors that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were abducting pets and eating them. Vice presidential candidate JD Vance was the first to pick up and spread the rumors, which was repeated by presidential candidate Donald Trump in his debate with the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Moderators from ABC, the network sponsoring the debate, jumped in to correct Trump, saying there were no credible reports to support the claims about the immigrants harming pets.

Earlier, cats had already been introduced into the election’s heated exchanges when a comment by Vance made in a 2021 TV interview was resurrected and went viral. In the interview, Vance said the US, was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs, and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

Vance has, in multiple public speeches and interviews, blamed women and the women’s rights movement, for a breakdown in society. His reference to “childless cat ladies” was meant to describe those who fight for women’s rights as being childless and raising cats instead of children.

The Republicans used the term to attack Harris, who does not have biological children, but her husband, who had two children before marrying Harris, came out to talk about Harris as a great mother who raised her stepchildren.

The childless cat women ploy backfired as women come out proclaiming themselves, with pride, as “childless cat women.” Right after the Sept. 10 debate between Trump and Harris, popular singer and songwriter Taylor Swift posted a statement on social media announcing she was voting for the Democratic candidates for president and vice president. The announcement was accompanied by a photo of Swift carrying a cat, and was signed “childless cat lady.”

Reading about how dogs and cats have “entered” politics brought back memories of how, more than a hundred years ago, we Filipinos were implicated in a similar political frenzy.

It was 1904, only a few years after the US annexed the Philippines as a colony, which pro-imperialist American politicians had tried to justify as a way to “civilize” Filipinos.

To show off their new colony, the Americans imported more than 1,000 Filipinos to be exhibited at the 1904 World’s Fair held in St. Louis, Missouri. The exhibits were supposed to show a range of Filipinos in various “stages” of social progress, including “savages,” exemplified by Igorots, who were described as being dog-eaters. The world fair organizers actually supplied the Igorots 20 dogs a week to butcher in public, clearly meant to display “barbarism.” It seemed to have been a “best-seller” exhibit or event but note that many Americans responded to a call from the organizers to donate more dogs to butcher. One person from Missouri was reported to have donated 200 “fat dogs” for the kill.

The rumors of Haitians butchering dogs and cats were clearly meant to depict the new immigrants as savages but, just like the 1904 World’s Fair, we find Americans enjoying the rumor-mongering and spectacle. All kinds of artificial intelligence-generated photos have appeared in social media showing Trump rescuing various animals from the clutches of immigrants.

I actually find the childless cat lady meme even more ridiculous. How can we forget that in many, maybe even most, societies and the Philippines especially, there are many women who are childless and yet devote their lives to raising children of other people. Think of those who adopt, and like Harris, those who raise stepchildren. Think of the many aunts who never married, but raised nephews and nieces as their own children. Think of the Catholic nuns who run orphanages, hospitals, schools.

Let’s think now of women who may face childlessness because they have infertility problems. Some of those who have such problems will look into in vitro fertilization but will also learn that the Catholic Church, with its insistence on “natural,” does not allow IVF either. And if you adopt children, as I did, get ready when it’s time for the kids to go to school because several Catholic schools will not accept adopted children (and children of divorced and separated parents). I was told my situation was “irregular.”

I went ahead with adoption, raising many children, with dogs and with cats, and sending them, to schools that love all children.

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mtan@inquirer.com.ph