Putting Out Fire with Gasoline
Buckle up: It’s “Cat Person” season, and once again, we’re litigating what women are allowed to say about men.
You cannot control how other people see you. No matter how hard you work to finesse your image, outsiders will reach conclusions that, once reached, you cannot change. If this is true for you and I, both of us (I’m sure) decent people who are trying our best, then it is particularly impossible to control how people perceive your ex-boyfriend, who dated a high school student when he was thirty-three years of age.
Yes: I’m doing “Cat Person” discourse. I’m sorry. The debate around author Kristen Roupenian’s viral short story, reignited this week by an equally viral personal essay by Alexis Nowicki, is about a lot of things — art, life, the extent to which one is drawn from the other, etc. It’s also about the eternally depressing topic of what women are allowed to say about men.
“Cat Person,” the story, portrayed a common dilemma. The protagonist, a young woman named Margot, can’t tell if the guy she’s flirting with is awkward or creepy. The man in question, Robert, is sensitive in a way that can be weirdly aggressive — he accuses Margot of “insulting him” when she makes an innocent comment about the snack he’s ordered — and he’s ill-kempt and oddly dressed in a…
