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 found it scarily accurate and I'm finding all of the different interpretations so interesting.

I was brought up to always consider others feelings, give people a chance, don't upset anyone etc etc. And I can definitely recognise her thought processes and the way she a) slept with him and b) agonised over breaking up with him because she didn't want to hurt his feelings. I've certainly done both of those things when I should've been old enough to know better.

My interpretation of it was that she almost felt obliged to like him once he started flirting with her and because of her fear of hurting his feelings, unconsciously put her own feelings and instincts on the back burner to try and make him happy and as a result ended up in a horrible situation.

To me the 'villain' in the story wasn't the guy - although he wasn't great- it's the way many women are socialised into being nice, kind and always appreciative of male attention. I don't think I'll ever fully shake it off but I'm trying so instill a certain amount of 'put yourself first' with dd.

What I find interesting is how much discussion there is about how realistic it is - it's fiction and a lot of fiction is pretty unrealistic. Many male authors write horrendous female characters who behave in thoroughly implausible ways and yet their stories are just accepted, lauded and given prizes. Why are women always held to a higher standard?

I think the biggest issue is that too many people simply don't read enough fiction

That's a very good point about the double standard, Croissant. There are many male "literary giants" whose female characters I find to be cardboard cutouts or glued together collections of rampantly sexist stereotypes.