The Wonder Chronicles: 13
The Wonder Chronicles: 13
On Childless Cat Ladies
Photo: Batman Pages
This is part of a running series. Read the previous Wonder Chronicle: On Ugly Feminists
I am not less anything. I am childfree by choice.
I do not have a cat but being childfree by choice is very similar to being a cat.
I refuse to sit on command.
Hence the patriarchal fucks who claim we childfree women have made a miserable place of the U.S. when the real misery is their inability to make of us their lapdogs.
Because cats, unlike dogs, refuse to behave on command for a treat.
Because commanded is the opposite of uncontrollable.
Because we childfree women refuse to obey the “laws of nature” and patriarchy (a redundancy, those patriarchal fucks would claim because they’d say they are one and the same.)
Because we are not walking incubators for the patriarchy. The wonder is refusing.
The means of (re)production between my legs refused to go into service for patriarchy’s demand of more workers and soldiers and heirs.
For countries experiencing declining birth rates, who is more powerful than a childfree by choice woman who refuses to surrender? That is her wonder.
There was no room in the womb for this childfree-by-choice woman, back when patriarchy tried to shame it into keeping time with its commands. That was my wonder.
And now, uterus and I are finally free of the command to reproduce, I am quite sure that when my ancestors in ancient Egypt revered cats, the older cats were especially exalted– for who is more uncontrollable than a postmenopausal woman who refuses to regret? That is our wonder.
Goddess Bastet as a Cat on a Lotus Column, 664‐30 BCE, bronze. Photo: Brooklyn Museum
I am childfree by choice because I wanted to be free. To live how I want. To live where I want. To do with my life as I choose.
The wonder of the childfree by choice woman is that she controls her uterus and does not clock in anywhere–biology or patriarchy’s demands.
I am happy with the life I have created.“You’ll regret it when it’s too late,” some said. I am on the other side -- it is “too late” -- and Je regrette rien.
M is for Mona, not mother.
Selfish they will call us childfree by choice women. Selfull, I say. The wonder of choosing ourselves.
The wonder is the rage that refusing to clock into patriarchy’s clock inspires.
The trouble that the childfree by choice woman makes is the wonder and startle of her “No.”
Untethered. Unburdened. Unmothering.
Oh the danger! Oh the wonder!
“There is something threatening about a woman who is not occupied with children. There is something at-loose-ends feeling about such a woman. What is she going to do instead? What sort of trouble will she make?” - Sheila Heti in Motherhood.
The woman who does not surrender her womb (because it is war), the woman who regrets nothing (because they will fight dirty), is the woman who upends patriarchy’s mockery; to patriarchy, mockery is more acceptable than sheer terror.
The trouble that the childfree by choice woman makes is the wonder and startle of her “No.”
Fellow childfree by choice women, cats or not: terrify the patriarchy!
My goal: that you are found by wonder.
My wish: that you intensely live.
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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
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