You don’t hate cats — you hate women

Diem's co-founder Emma Bates on "childless cat ladies."

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But first, here’s what else people are talking about on Diem:

1. my friend can’t love me the way I need to be loved and i don’t know what to do   

2. I know it’s wrong but my situationship is seeing other women and it makes me uncomfortable

3. is it cheating if i wear another guy (coworker)’s hoodie?  

4. Do boobs get flat if you don’t wear bras    

5. how to be confident down there when gets eaten?   

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I wrote in defense of cat ladies last year, but with the trending cat lady-related conversation thanks to #1 woman hater, JD Vance (and also inspired by Diem editor Kate Lindsay’s recent FANTASTIC article for GQ, aptly named “Men can be cat ladies too” ) I felt the need to bolster my initial remarks. As an OG loud and proud cat lover since the age of 5, I feel overly qualified to participate in this discussion.

In defense of cat ladies

In my essay last year, I questioned whether people hating cats is due to entrenched misogyny. This year, I am done questioning it. I am even more certain that the answer is definitively: yes.

"[Cats] are independent and often intelligent – things that in the past if people were trying to control women they would not want them to be.” — Alice Maddicott, author of Cat Women

Obviously, if you have had some sort of traumatic cat incident in your childhood, I will consider exempting you from this broad generalization. But, if you tell me you don’t like cats and reference some line about them not loving you instantly — much like if you told me you don’t like a successful or famous woman, but you can’t tell me what specifically it is you don’t like about them — just know I will be silently judging you, and guiding you in the direction of some content about how to free yourself from internalized misogyny.

I am only partially joking. Here’s why: