The Cat Ladies Would Like A Word With JD Vance

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."

Yeah, the past week has been a lot in an already feral year for presidential politics. First President Joe Biden bowed out of the 2024 race (which, honestly, some among us called a while ago), then Vice President Kamala Harris announced her plans to replace him as the Democratic nominee, and now...the cat ladies have entered the chat.

That last phenomenon is courtesy of Ohio Senator JD Vance, former President's Trump new Republican Vice Presidential running mate, who bemoaned in a resurfaced 2021 interview that our country was run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.” He offered up Harris, Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttegieg as evidence (Buttegieg has since had children with his husband, Chasten).

The backlash—from prominent voices and mega-celebrities like Jennifer Aniston—was swift. Harris's campaign clapped back yesterday, which also happened to be World IVF day, saying "JD Vance is insulting couples struggling with infertility who are sounding off on his disparaging comments about 'childless' women.” Even some prominent Republican women like former Trump aide and current The View co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin did not have time for the disempowered image Vance was trying to evoke—that of the lonely, sexless spinster in a nightgown whose house smells like a litter box. “How dare you denigrate them and say they are not as valuable?” Griffin said on her show.

But Vance's words have also done something else: rile up young women—younger millenials and Gen Z—who haven't even decided whether or not they want kids. Many take Vance's comment not only as an insult to all women, but as part of an offensively narrow ideology that ignores the full kaleidoscopic, wildly intimate experience of how a woman arrives, or doesn’t, at motherhood. (To them, this is entirely on brand for Vance, who supports a ban on abortion even in the cases of rape and incest, and who voted against legislation to protect access to in-vitro fertilization.)

For 33-year-old Emily Bernstein, whose cat Bowie meows every time Bernstein sneezes in what she’s convinced is an attempt to say “bless you,” Vance’s attack was another example of the impossible dilemma of being a woman. Not only does Vice President Harris have stepchildren who she’s helped raise (a fact both her stepdaughter and her stepchildren’s mother attested to publicly), but Bernstein point outs that if Harris did have biological children, that would also be used against her. “All the media attacks would be, ‘but how is she going to take care of her children? She’s a mother’,” Bernstein said. “And no President in the past has ever bore children.”

Bernstein, who lives in Los Angeles, is planning on volunteering and phone-banking in support of Harris, and she says Vance’s comment has emboldened her. “You come with a comment like that and women are going to fight back twice as hard.” She’s been thinking about ways to celebrate her cat-loving identity and support women’s rights. “I hope women own it," she says. "I am a childless cat lady, let’s make merch."

After hearing Vance’s comments, Amy Gunn, 39, from Kansas City, took to X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) to launch a newly minted account @CatLady4Harris, which she is using to organize fellow cat ladies. “I am a childless cat lady, but I still have a full life,” Gunn said of her life with her spouse and her cat. “To hear something like that from a potential vice president, that scares me because it means I’m just an object… I’m just a vessel for them.”

Kat Hill’s reaction was “an immediate eye roll. Like, okay, another white man is talking about women having babies.” Hill, who is 32, sees the diss as just another way of denigrating women who don’t have children. “You’re saying a woman’s only role is to reproduce,” Hill said. “That’s where the anger comes from.” In that anger, Hill feels more energized than ever to fight against the Republican ticket and is considering phone-banking and volunteering for the first time.

All this is a clear sign that, this election, young women are ready to own their own choices and bodies (because obviously, and also in the face of draconian policies) and the larger narratives about them. They've doubled down on reclaiming tired, sexist tropes and bringing a determination that could make a real difference come election day.

Since creating @CatLady4Harris, Gunn has received messages from other cat ladies and is currently in the process of planning a fundraising call with them. “We’re a demographic that’s overlooked,” she said. “But I promise if you’re making fun of us – we’re absolutely having more fun than you and our cats are too.” Or, as Emily Bernstein put it, “it’s a bad group of people to piss off. Look, we don’t have children. We have time.”

You Might Also Like

• Here’s What NOT to Wear to a Wedding

• Meet the Laziest, Easiest Acne Routine You’ll Ever Try