Why Are Conservative Men So Scared of Cat Ladies?

Consultant Matt Gaetz and Senate applicant J.D. Vance speak to the press just after an April 30 marketing campaign rally in Newark, Ohio.
Picture: Drew Angerer/Getty Photos

To the banshee, the succubus, and La Llorona, increase the cat girl. Possibly you have viewed her, however handful of do: She is a solitary creature with a fondness for evening walks and lousy television. Typically underestimated by her foes, the cat woman is ruthless in the pursuit of her prey. No traditional spouse and children is safe. The church offends her. She despises males most of all for they rejected her and must pay the rate.

Or at least that’s what conservatives appear to feel.

“We are correctly operate in the state by using the Democrats, through our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their very own life and the options that they’ve produced, and so they want to make the rest of the place miserable much too,” Vance explained to Tucker Carlson in 2021. The cat woman did not prevent Vance from successful a Republican Senate major on Tuesday potentially she is basically biding her time.

I will have to admit some defensiveness in this article. I have two cats, no young children, and a therapist. I am also married to a man and went to Bible higher education, so I might not in shape Gaetz’s definition of the horrid specter. But I am also curious (a key feline trait): What are men like Gaetz and Vance genuinely frightened of?

The cat girl is an old stereotype centered on silly beliefs about spinsters and feminists. Affiliated with women and “the domestic sphere,” cats appeared in anti-women’s suffrage imagery “to portray suffragettes as foolish, infantile, incompetent, and unwell-suited to political engagement,” according to the Culture Webpages. The concept is that if a cat is allowed to vote, anything has absent terribly improper. The same is genuine if a woman shuns household everyday living to encompass herself with cats.

The cat-girl jibe is a affordable way to own the libs. A playground taunt, it also claims something about the bully who uses it. Hatred and dread are frequently so intertwined they can be difficult to convey to apart. The cat girl canonically has no male. Her wants and routines are not dictated by a spouse and small children. She can make up her own mind, and she is absolutely free to do what she likes, which means she has the time to be political. With out the ballast of a household, a woman can be tricky to handle. I can see why that would irk conservative adult males like Gaetz and Vance.

Or perhaps they just loathe cats. There is no accounting for style.