Edith Bouvier Beale in her Gray Gardens home in New York in January 1972. A 1975 documentary of the same name explored the reclusive life of Bill and her mother, who lived in a dilapidated house with more than 50 cats.
Tom Wojacki/WireImage
hide title
Switch title
Tom Wojacki/WireImage
Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance’s criticism of prominent Democrats as “childless cat ladies” sparked outrage among women, with many now reclaiming the age-old sexist trope as A call to action this election season.
In a 2021 interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, then-Senate candidate Vance complained that the United States was run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and “a bunch of childless cat women who are obsessed with their lives and their “The choice is painful” and we’ve made it so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. “
“It’s just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, you look at Pete Buttigieg, you look at AOC — the entire future of the Democratic Party is controlled by people who don’t have children,” Vance continued. Does it make any sense that our country has become like this?
Last week, footage of the interview resurfaced on social media, as did an unrelated tweet from 2021 in which Vance used the term “weird cat lady” as an insult.
Vance is already facing scrutiny as former President Donald Trump’s new running mate, in part because of his stance on various family policies. He has called America’s declining birthrate a “crisis of civilization” and has argued in recent years that childless adults should pay higher taxes and have fewer voting rights.
His cat-lady comments — amplified online by Vice President Harris’ presidential campaign — didn’t go over well, to say the least.
First, many questioned the accuracy of his comments. Harris is a stepmother of two children who is now in her 20s. Her children affectionately call her “Momara”.
Their biological mother, Kerstin Emhoff, publicly condemned the “baseless attacks” and praised Harris as a “loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always Presence” co-parent. Emhoff’s daughter Ella Emhoff also defended her stepmother in a social media post, writing: “I love all three of my parents.”
Vance also singled out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who announced a month after the interview that he and his husband, Chasten, were parents (we later learned they were twins).
Buttigieg told CNN last week that Vance made the comments “after Chastain and I experienced a pretty heartbreaking setback in the adoption process.”
“There’s no way he knew that,” he added. “But maybe that’s why you shouldn’t talk about other people’s children.”
Vance doubles down after bipartisan backlash
Many people stung by Vance’s comments felt the same way, including those in politics and entertainment.
Critics included former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, actor Whoopi Goldberg and TV personality Meghan McCain, who said on Twitter that Vance’s comments “caused real pain” and “inspired Women on all sides, including my most conservative Trump-supporting friends.”
Even some conservatives, such as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Fox News host Trey Gowdy, publicly condemned Vance’s remarks.
Intended goals aside, many critics see the term “Catwoman” as an insult to the growing number of women who are childless, whether voluntarily or not.
Gun control activist and former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt in 2011, tweeted that she and her husband, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly Kelly, who is trying to have a baby through in vitro fertilization (IVF), has been named as a potential vice presidential candidate.
Giffords added: “To suggest that we are somehow inferior is shameful.”
Actress Jennifer Aniston has spoken about her own fertility difficulties, writing on social media that she hoped Vance’s daughter would be lucky enough to have a baby one day.
“I hope she doesn’t need to have IVF as a second option,” Aniston wrote. “Because you want to take that away from her, too.”
Vance slams Aniston’s comments in an appearance megyn kelly show On Friday, she said on SiriusXM that they were “disgusting because my daughter is 2 years old” and that even if she does have fertility issues in the future, “I will do whatever I can to help her because I believe families and babies are a good thing .
The cat was used as a symbol of anti-suffrage propaganda but was later repurposed by some suffragists. A century later, some voters saw Vance’s “cat lady” remarks as a call to mobilization.
Ken Florey Suffrage Collection/Gadot/Getty Images
hide title
Switch title
Ken Florey Suffrage Collection/Gadot/Getty Images
Vance defended his comments on Kelly’s show, saying he was not criticizing people without children but was criticizing Democrats for being “anti-family and anti-child.”
Vance’s comments risk alienating single women, who make up a large portion of the population and a key voting bloc (63% of unmarried women voted for President Biden in 2020). Not to mention the millions of cat owners across the country.
Childless comedian Chelsea Handler pointed out in her response to the video that even America’s founding president, George Washington, had no biological children (he also raised two stepchildren).
“I want to remind you that no president in the history of the United States has been a mother,” Handler added.
She vowed, “All us childless cat and dog ladies will go from childless and crushing it to childless and crushing you in November.”
Other social media users were quick to note that Taylor Swift, the world’s most famous self-proclaimed “Cat Lady,” wields enormous influence with the voting public and has yet to endorse a 2024 candidate.
Cat Lady Metaphor’s Long Tail, Explained
An undated engraving depicting a witch and a cat on a broomstick from the mid-15th century.
Getty Images
hide title
Switch title
Getty Images
Vance isn’t the first to invoke the crazy cat lady trope. This insult has actually been directed at childless women for centuries.
We know that the ancient Egyptians viewed cats as a source of companionship (including in the afterlife) and associated them with their gods, most notably the feline goddess Bastet.
But during the Middle Ages, cats’ reputation deteriorated as they became increasingly associated with paganism and witchcraft.
While many Europeans keep cats as pets, many others view them as sinister (perhaps because of the way they treat rats, especially at night). Twelfth-century records describe the devil’s transformation into a black cat and heretical religious groups who worshiped cats.
There is a growing belief that witches – especially women – have the ability to transform into cats or use cats and other animal “favorites” to do their bidding.
Alice Kyteler was the first person to be convicted of witchcraft in Ireland, at her trial in 1324 she was accused of possessing an incubus that looked like a black cat. Agnes Waterhouse, believed to be the first English woman executed for witchcraft (1566), admitted that she commanded her pet cat (apparently named Satan) to kill local of livestock.
This negative association with cats spread to colonial America, where black cats became a feature of the Salem Witch Trials in the late 17th century. But gradually, after them, the metaphor took on a softer tone.
“In the early 18th century, when the witch trials were widely regarded as gross miscarriages of justice, single women with cats were suddenly transformed from fearsome monsters to figures worthy of pity in the public eye,” Rae Alexandra wrote in a 2021 article for KQED .
Single women and their association with cats really took off during the Victorian era.
In Scotland, an 1880 edition of the Dundee Courier declared that “without the cat, the old maid would not be typical of her class” and that “one cannot exist without another,” according to the BBC.
The newspaper said: “It is not surprising that spinsters choose cats as family pets or companions.” “Loneliness is not in line with human nature. A poor, abandoned woman is locked in a deserted “attic”, alone and brooding. With her dashed hopes, it was natural to focus her feelings on some lower animal, and there was no one more suitable than this.
A year later, in the United States, Hart Ayrault, writing in Porter’s American Monthly, described an unmarried woman as having “failed in the first aim of existence” and “tradition identified her with the cat Being associated with parrots, she should be squandering everything on these animals” There was only love left in her withered heart. “
Decades later, when women in the United States and Britain began to mobilize to win the right to vote, they found cats being used against them again.
A postcard from the British suffrage movement in 1909 shows a man doing housework, taking care of his children and cats, and complaining that he has no right to vote.
Boone/Getty Images
hide title
Switch title
Boone/Getty Images
Cats – considered passive and associated with the home, as opposed to the more active, masculine dogs – became symbols of anti-suffragist propaganda. Many cartoons depicted men at home with children and a cat, but were undermined by women’s newfound ability to participate in politics.
But some suffragettes were undeterred and tried to get the cat back.
In April 1916, Nell Richardson and Alice Burke embarked on a 10,000-mile road trip from New York to San Francisco. They traveled across the country in a two-seat “Gold Flyer” to advocate for women’s voting rights and adopted a black cat along the way.
Burke wrote in his diary that spring: “This little black cat suffered from the heat just like us, but it was hiding under the quilt, and we could only see its pink nose and young face in its corner. beard.
Named “Saxon” after their car manufacturer, the cat became their unofficial mascot and remains a suffrage symbol. The city of Mesquite, Nevada has hosted the “Saxon Suffrage Cat” art contest every year for the past few years.
The Catwoman stereotype has also persisted, and was further commemorated in mainstream pop culture through the depiction of the reclusive subject in a 1975 documentary gray gardenSigourney Weaver’s role in the movie alien (This has been mentioned by many social media users in recent days), Eleanor Abernathy (aka Crazy Cat Lady) The Simpsonsand the humorless, cat-loving Angela office.
But, just like a century ago, feminists are increasingly seeking to reclaim the title as their own. There are a lot of crazy Catwoman-themed merchandise out there, and now some of them are poll-themed.
