JD Vance and the origin of the 'crazy cat lady' trope

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FILE-Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) gestures while speaking during a news conference on Capitol Hill on May 22, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

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Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, is making headlines for remarks he made a few years ago criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats, referring to them as "a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives."

Vance’s comments recently came to light after a user on X, formerly Twitter, posted a video clip on July 22 of a Fox News interview he did with then-host Tucker Carlson in 2021. Another unrelated post from 2021 resurfaced on X of Vance using the term "weird cat ladies" to insult another person.

What is the origin of the ‘cat lady’ trope?

At the time, J.D. Vance was a Senate candidate when he used the term during the 2021 Fox News interview. He complained that the nation was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs, and "a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too."

Vance continued saying, "It's just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?"

Vance is not the first to use the term, which is considered an insult, as it refers to women without children.

NPR reported that ancient Egyptians appreciated cats as a source of companionship, including in the afterlife, and associated the animals with Gods. Years later, cats became linked to paganism and witchcraft during the Middle Ages and were also used as a symbol of anti-suffragist propaganda during the women's suffrage movement, which started in the mid-19th century.

Through the years, the cat lady stereotype has been used in pop culture with portrayals of women with cats in TV shows and movies.

Vance's "cat lady" comments recently drew criticism from several celebrities, politicians, and others on social media who called out Vance for the accuracy of his "cat lady" comments, since Harris is the stepmother of two kids, and Buttigieg announced that he and his husband, Chasten, had become parents, per NPR.

This story was reported from Washington, D.C.