Either you know ‘Cat Person‘, the short story published in the New Yorker that has everyone shook, or you don’t. If you don’t, then I highly recommend taking ten minutes to read it here and then coming back.
If you can’t be bothered to read it, and are just here to see men absolutely melt down over a story where one of them doesn’t come off all that well, then here’s the quick synopsis: a college girl meets a man in his thirties who she briefly dates, sleeps with, finds repulsive, and ghosts.
It’s about how women often pressure themselves into sex rather than make a scene, how we fall in love (or lust) with a false person we’ve created in our heads rather than the real thing, and how people are just kinda shitty to each other when it comes to new relationships.
But because it describes, with painful accuracy, situations that women have found themselves in but have never put into words (“He rolled over and kissed her forehead, and she felt like a slug he’d poured salt on, disintegrating under that kiss”), it’s easy to overlook the fact that the young woman – Margot – isn’t exactly a flawless person herself.
Her disgust at Robert‘s body shape has led people to call the piece fatphobic, and the way she ends her relationship with Robert – by allowing her friend to text him “Hi im not interested in you stop textng me”, and never speaking to him again – is an incredibly low blow. We’re not supposed to like her, even though we relate to her.
But some dudes are absolutely losing their minds over this story about ‘nice guy-ism’ and the ickiness of dating, and now a Twitter account has been set up to document their reactions.
“They have thoughts,” the Twitter bio of @MenCatPerson reads, and boy, do they EVER.
This Twitter account is absolutely doing the lord’s work.
How else would we know about Bobby‘s plan for a sequel?
— Men React to Cat Person (@MenCatPerson) December 11, 2017
Or David‘s hottest of takes?
— Men React to Cat Person (@MenCatPerson) December 11, 2017
Or Norman‘s insight’s into post-sex act etiquette?
— Men React to Cat Person (@MenCatPerson) December 11, 2017
Or Ross Geller‘s casual slut-shaming (and with a namesake like that, surely he knows what the fuck is up).
— Men React to Cat Person (@MenCatPerson) December 11, 2017
In an interview accompanying the story, author Kristen Roupenian said that it was inspired by a real life encounter she had with a person she’d met online.
“I was shocked by the way this person treated me, and then immediately surprised by my own shock. How had I decided that this was someone I could trust? The incident got me thinking about the strange and flimsy evidence we use to judge the contextless people we meet outside our existing social networks, whether online or off.
“Especially in the early stages of dating, there’s so much interpretation and inference happening that each interaction serves as a kind of Rorschach test for us. We decide that it means something that a person likes cats instead of dogs, or has a certain kind of artsy tattoo, or can land a good joke in a text, but, really, these are reassuring self-deceptions. Our initial impression of a person is pretty much entirely a mirage of guesswork and projection.”
People have been falling over themselves for the best take on this story, but I argue that they all failed, except for this one:
I have read “the cat person”- and would argue that although he loves lasagna and talks, biologically he remains a cat
— 👍 (@takethetwoo) December 11, 2017
