New Yorker - Cat Person

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

This www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/cat-person is a very long, very uncomfortable read. This www.newyorker.com/books/this-week-in-fiction/fiction-this-week-kristen-roupenian-2017-12-11 is an interview with the author.

Basically it's all about how women end up in shitty situations because they are too polite or too scared to say no, or stop. It made me cringe inside reading it - I thought the author was scarily accurate.

I just thought the story was overblown and tedious. Cosmopolitan used to publish a lot of fairly similar stuff in their fiction section (men are shits, dating is hell, women are neurotic whinyarses who all hate each other, too...) in the early 80s.

I can't see a lot of men getting this. I read it and it really resonated with me but I can imagine some men just being offended and thinking 'why didn't you just say no'. We are brought up so differently and this article really shows that.

Muthafunker don't forget to SSDGM

I read the story and thought "this is why I'm right to date the loudest, boldest, most honest women I can find."

Easier to trust they're with you because, you know, lust and fun rather than some sense of social victimhood.

Are you a bloke, Meph?

I’m glad it is making men uncomfortable.

I am seeing A LOT of anger on Twitter from men though, it’s quite nasty really. 🙄

@hipsterfun

Not a particularly good one. Chromosomally, sure.

I used to read stories like this in my mum's Marie Claire. Heavily influenced me to categorise anything less than a tongue down my throat and a hand in my pants as just polite conversation.

"Her internal thought processes didn't chime with me at all - the thing about she imagines how he sees her and that makes her feel sexy - that's an internalisation of male gaze type of thing, feeling sexy not because you feel sexy but because someone else looking at you feels sexy because they are looking at you and that in turn, turns you on. Maybe I lack empathy or something.

I’m glad it’s not just me. I found it baffling, but I’ve long suspected I missed out some of the key indoctrination."

I don't think that this is all that's going on in this moment. This way of thinking is a way to detach from the situation, it's a way of dealing with trauma.

What trauma?

"Her internal thought processes didn't chime with me at all - the thing about she imagines how he sees her and that makes her feel sexy - that's an internalisation of male gaze type of thing, feeling sexy not because you feel sexy but because someone else looking at you feels sexy because they are looking at you and that in turn, turns you on.*

To it's an extension of how un-confident people (young women often fit this description) can only think well of themselves based on external validation. She thinks he wants her, which makes her sexually attractive, which means she then feels sexually attractive. You see?

I imagine people with sufficient self-esteem/self-worth (i.e. healthy levels of both) don't really get that. Resonates with me a lot though.

I get it.

I had a "thing" with a much older man (older than the one in the story) when I was about 20. He was nice enough, but I definitely pushed down any negative thoughts about his age and doubts about him being a serial killer, and threw myself into it in a "well I'm here now" kind of way. And (controversial, but being honest...) I did get off on the idea of myself as the irresistible hot youngster. Luckily I think I grew out of that kind of narcissism!!

LaContessa, interesting that you say "people with sufficient self-esteem/self-worth..don't really get that" as it was in the year following my rape

At least if it's going to be the Story That Everyone Bores On About for the next few months, it's a bit better written than either 50 Shades or the Da Vinci Code.

Sorry Beyond :( I do think that is a factor.

I sometimes think that women who are old enough to have learned confidence (so to speak; I count myself amongst them) don't always remember being so dependent on the validation of other people (esp men). I also wonder if today's young women (i.e. millenials) are less likely to be dependent on the opinions of their elders, as a great many of them seem to resonate confidence and security that I simply don't recall ever seeing or having at that age.

We might be in a bit of a bubble in between the confident people, to put it bluntly.

I imagine people with sufficient self-esteem/self-worth (i.e. healthy levels of both) don't really get that.

I wouldn’t say I was overly endowed with either; I am quite straightforward though.

Without knowing your posting history, Meph, and because I don’t want my arse handed to me on here, I hesistate to say I sort of understand where you’re coming from.

Lacontessa, it also resonates with me, especially younger me for what it's worth.
I also think it would actually be interesting to hear a male version of the story. Not so much one from the point of view of the man in the story, but rather one about a man going through with sex when he doesn't really want to... I suspect that the reasons would be slightly different - less to do with being "nice"/polite or afraid, and more to do with the expectations placed on men to be always up for it. But that's just a guess - it would be interesting to hear if men did have similar regret sex (rather than just the whining that a story written by a woman, about a woman focused only on the woman's thoughts and feelings which seems to be happening on twitter)

I liked it. It would be a good read for 6th formers in PCSHE to read to generate discussion.
Interesting article in the New York Times discussing the sexism around the fact that women's writing is often assumed to be memoir rather than fiction. Sadly, I can't find the link.
A good critique of the story here: www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/a-viral-short-story-for-the-metoo-moment/548009/

" it would be interesting to hear if men did have similar regret sex"

I think your hunch that it happens, but as you suggest is down to expectations about men being "always up for it" and the pressure that men feel from that. Back when I was a student, my male housemate broke up with his long-term girlfriend (for both of them it was the first serious relationship). A month or so later he brought a woman back to the house- the first I knew about it was when someone phoned for him (oh, the prehistoric days of "house phones") and I called him downstairs - he staggered downstairs semi-dressed and very ruffled. However, later, from the noises later which penetrated the pillow I had over my head, I would have said it was enthusiastically consensual sex. But the next day he did really regret it - he felt a bit uncomfortable about the whole thing (He hadn't been lied to: although he was a sexually shy bloke, the woman had been quite clear this was a one-night stand as she was on the verge of emigrating). But he'd obviously felt under some sort of weight of expectations to behave in a certain way and wasn't happy about it afterwards.

I can already see this (adequate but unoriginal) story becoming some sort of moral litmus test - if you don't like it you must have a Bad Attitude towards women/consent. And I don't think it tells much of a 'universal truth' at all - what about women who don't have sex with men (or are from such a sexually repressive culture that everything about the characters' interactions would be... not relevant to their lives.)?

(I write fiction, I read a lot of fiction; a lot of my social media feed involves discussions of fiction. Most of the negative comments I have seen on the story are not about the concept being untrue; people dislike the self-conscious, overblown writing or just reckon they have read better and more interesting stories in the past.)

I agree SGB, and with Empress's point a few posts back that women are always assumed to be writing memoirs, which is very annoying.

Though that assumption can sometimes be funny - after I wrote a novella in which a couple have a rather screwed up moment in their relationship, I had a reader send me a list of self help books which she felt I should read before attempting to embark on a relationship myself, as clearly I had a screwed up view of relationships. I emailed back pointing out that not all characters were self-inserts, and that in fiction (the clue is in the name) describing a situation wasn't the same as endorsing a situation, then blocked her!

This story was painfully familiar. I had such a similar experience it was uncanny, and I have often felt bad about it since. The man in question obviously felt either hurt or affronted that I didn't want to see him again, and was really persistent in wanting to know why, wanting a second date, questioning my morals.

I questioned my morals a lot too, because I'd led him to believe I wanted to sleep with him, knowing full well that I really didn't. But the truth would have been even more unpalatable for him than my platitudes and him thinking I was a bad person. I slept with him because I stupidly, naively went to his house, in his car, and I was frightened that he might turn nasty if I didn't give him the evening he wanted. So when he started trying it on with me I got the sex over with as quickly as possible, made excuses for why I needed to get back but still tried to be bubbly, engaging and seem like I was enjoying myself so that he would drop me back into town. He would probably be mortified to hear that, and wouldn't understand it. But he had so much power, and whether he was aware of it or not, I was. And I did what I could to keep safe, all the while cursing myself for bowing to the pressure to continue a date in the spirit of giving him a chance.

Um, the trauma that’s happening in the story, that we are reading about.

I’m sorry, but I don’t think trauma ‘is happening’ in the story. What is happening is a deeply uncomfortable experience which may result in trauma, though probably not.

I think the word trauma is getting misused/overused (a bit like OCD) and it makes it harder to talk about meaningfully.