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Notes -
I just read about a real life version of the "isn't there someone you forgot to ask?" meme. Woman finds out a guy in his 30s dated a girl 13 years younger. She writes a story with their details, except in her story the guy is a creep. And now they're making a movie based on the story.
This is the short story: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/cat-person
This is the movie trailer: https://youtube.com/watch?v=J2VukOLSxoY
And this is an essay where the girl in the relationship says the guy was great: https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/07/cat-person-kristen-roupenian-viral-story-about-me.html
Alexis, a senior in high school, briefly worked with Charles at a restaurant. She was a hostess and he was a waiter. They liked each other and texted a lot. They slowly started dating. He was the liberal type who wouldn't own a car because it was bad for the environment. He even asked for consent before he kissed her for the first time. She said he was very gentle and caring and they had lots of things in common.
The only downside of the relationship was the fact that she felt people judged her for it, and that she felt she was growing up too fast by being in love with someone so old. They eventually grew apart and broke up when she was a sophomore in college, after dating for 2 years.
A few years later, Kristen Roupenian has an "encounter" with this Charles, after which she finds out that he dated someone much younger than him. She decides to write a story that includes personal details about him and the girl, including their small hometowns, places they worked at, the place they had their first date at, the way the guy dressed and a description of his house. Except in her story the guy is a creep, bad at sex, a liar and manipulator, who becomes abusive when the girl breaks up with him.
The story goes viral during the metoo movement. Alexis and Charles find out and are weirded out. Alexis thinks the author couldn't have known so many details about her life without stalking her online. Charles said he started questioning whether he was really an asshole and would go through old texts to make sure that was not the case.
A few years later, Alexis finds out Charles died. No cause of death is mentioned, other than the fact that it was unexpected. Earlier in the essay she says he was on antidepressants, so suicide is a possibility in my opinion.
Alexis tries to contact Kristen and she responds via email with a half-assed apology in which she says she shouldn't have included some of the details. Alexis writes this essay to tell her side of the story, but it doesn't change much.
And now they are making a movie based on this story.
Also, these are the pictures of the women mentioned in this post. I will let you figure out who's who.
https://imgur.com/2gApE3K
https://imgur.com/l2cfZtd
I always found the decision to write the Slate article rather weird. It felt like grabbing the spotlight for herself. If I were her*, if the story features the guy as a creep, then it clearly isn't my story. After all, he wasn't a creep. It's a weird reflex insecure people carry to show their whole ass under broad accusations, like people getting upset at someone being called dumb or ugly because it is mean to dumb or ugly people, as though anyone who isn't wildly insecure would group themselves under the categories "dumb" or "ugly."
In the final analysis it's a fairly innocuous story structure, the kind of thing that happens every day on every college campus across the country. While certain details made it identifiable to those close with Nowicki, Roupenien did change many details; Nowicki's argument is that Roupenien did not change enough of them. The interesting thing about the story is the internal monologue of the hypo-agentic and anhedonic protagonist, not any particular plot point lifted from Nowicki's life or not, which most anyone would understand bore only a vague similarity to any real person. She could easily have said to the handful of people who would have identified her "Hey that's not how I remember it, I've never even met this writer" and moved on with her life. Instead she chose to make the whole incident the first Google result under her name, taking it to the whole public, not just to those who knew her then and remembered these details, but to everyone she would meet in the future. That's an...odd...response to the supposed invasion of your privacy. Taking what would have been a private fun fact and making it into the first thing any new employer, romantic partner, etc will learn about you.
To me it is perfectly legitimate to write a story like Cat Person, in which you hear about a scenario and then imagine how you would feel if you were in that scenario. I'd imagine that is one of the most common ways that authors create stories, they hear about a scenario and then they insert themselves into it, how would I feel how would I react what would have made me do something like that. From Lord of the Flies to For Whom the Bell Tolls to The Killer Angels. It's.a long tradition. Jean Ross' Family still takes the time to critique the classic musical Cabaret every time there is a big production of it, "Our Grandmother Wasn't a Whore!" is always good for one or two headlines in a few midwit newspapers; the controversy is the primary reason anyone ever talks about Jean Ross anymore, which lead me to read more about her fascinating life. Seizing the controversy for oneself is seizing a slice of fame from a great work for oneself.
For what it's worth, regardless of the (dead) author's or most people's interpretation of Cat Person, I found it a very strong and interesting work of fiction. Not so much as a critique of men along the lines of "the guy was a creep all along" or whatever, but as a critique of the female protagonist's mindset. The way she drifts in and out of wanting to be involved in any of this, but lets herself get swept along for lack of any better ideas, the way she gets distanced from her friends and peer group by her relationship with this older man, is a genuine warning to girls. The kind of warning my mother gave to both me and my sister when we reached early teenage years: Never Go On A Mercy Date. Don't date people who you aren't super into. If you end up doing too much with them, that will be upsetting; if you reject them anyway you are only making it worse after stringing them further along. You think you are doing them a favor by giving them a little bit of you, but this will only make them angrier when they can't have all of you. You think they should be happy you spent time with them at all, they get angry that you won't spend more time with them. "Whore" is how that transaction inevitably ends. ((I mostly followed this advice, but not always as well as I should have.))
It comes back to the generalized advice I give to all young people: the optimal relationship states are Happily Married, and Slutting it Up. You should always be aiming to remain at one of those poles, the spots in the middle are hazardous, that's where people get hurt because they are emotionally depending on something that has no substance to it. If you're not married, or on the path to getting married, no commitment, no dependency, you don't make any decisions in your life with them in mind.
*I can't, of course, speak to what the viral story about your life experience must actually be like. The largest audience a short story or poem written by a former love ever found was a creative writing class; I'm lucky to have avoided sleeping with good writers, or I'm lucky to be so boring my story would never catch on.
Almost everyone is doing this (usually the former), though. What is even the middle ground between your (a) - looking for or working toward a serious relationship that can lead to marriage and (b) - being noncommittal and having, or trying to have, casual sex?
Maybe some weird poly people (although I suppose by their definition many are “happily married”), but even serial monogamists are usually trying to find a long term relationship, they just fail at it for various reasons. I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone outside those two categories since high school, maybe (and even there kids in their first real relationship often think they’ll get married, because that’s what it feels like when you’re 16). What even exists outside those two groupings?
The things that are not “happily married” or “slutting it up” are usually the product of people trying sincerely for either (again, usually the former).
Serial Monogamy, and particularly cohabitation prior to marriage, that's what I'm arguing against. We're going to be arguing definitions and personal anecdata here, but there's nothing else to go off of. The whole concept of a "Long Term Relationship" that is not on a direct and planned path to marriage is that middle ground I'm arguing against. You phrased (a) as "a serious relationship that can lead to marriage," I phrased it as "on the path to getting married." That's a difference big enough to drive a truck through.
By "Path to Getting Married" I mean direct, short term, achievable (within two years) timelines and checkpoints that will lead to marriage. As in: next year, or when we graduate in two years. Not "Eh, maybe, eventually, in a few years, when I've got everything else in my life in order, I would consider starting to have a conversation about marriage." More like, before any commitment is made the conversation is had about what you're looking for, what the timeline is, and what the checkpoints are. We're distinguishing intent here, so arguably it is useless advice, but what I want is a ruthless look at whether you really plan on marrying someone, if you picture the rest of your life with them and no one else, and if not you should cut them out immediately. I'd argue most 20-somethings aren't in those kinds of relationships, they're in a series of vague sort-of long term relationships from 3 months to a year, that both parties sort of understand are unlikely to end in marriage but are good enough for right now; when they picture their lives they imagine they will have more of these kinds of relationships.
Maybe your friends were more direct, in which case I applaud them, I found that most of my friends got into multiple "serious" relationships over the course of their lives, and many (largely women) missed out on opportunities they turned down for a partner who wandered off anyway, or wasted their 20s on a series of losers and wound up hitting their 30s unhappily single when they would have preferred to have been married. Or moved across the country to stay with a girlfriend who ditched them. Or spent their college years doting on a sexually frigid girlfriend they didn't wind up marrying anyway when they could have been out at parties. Or moved in together, broke up, and got screwed on everything from leases to furniture to pets with no legal framework to determine who owned what. Or merged social circles, only to break up and make everything awkward as their independent friend groups had withered on the vine years ago.
Serial monogamy is a trap. It lures people into a false sense of chastity, it's ok if we're in a relationship and we love each other, what total bullshit, serial monogamy is temporal polygamy, your body count isn't discounted for saying you were dating. It lures people into a false sense of security, moving or making financial or social decisions based on a person who can disappear from your life with no obligations to you whatsoever. It lures people into making bad tradeoffs, the opportunity cost of investing in one person you don't end up with instead of enjoying pleasure, freedom, and choice. It makes people into liars, normalizes lying about one's intentions.
It is best if one is brutally honest. If one is looking for a casual encounter, whether sexual or merely someone to go to the movies with, say so. If one is looking for marriage, say so and under what circumstances it will occur, plot a course for marriage. Don't drift vaguely in the direction of marriage and hope you wash up on its shore (or worse, that you don't).
I know you married young, but in my experience this just isn’t true. Almost everyone I know in a long-term (certainly after 2+ years) relationship expects that they will marry that person unless something very surprising happens. They don’t picture that they will have many other relationships in their life, they’re expectant this will be the relationship that leads to marriage.
Serial monogamy is what trying to date seriously for marriage in modern secular culture looks like. You’re not particularly trad and have no problem with sex before marriage so I’m not even sure what you’re suggesting the difference is between dating for marriage and want most people who want a relationship are doing, really.
Is your body count discounted if you have an open relationship and sleep with others after you’re married? I’m surprised you’re commenting on a sense of chastity (I’m still curious about how you’d feel if your wife sought out a male lover, even for a one-night thing). I agree that serial monogamy can be an excuse for promiscuity, but that’s really because the term is broad enough to fit a large number of behaviors.
I don't particularly value chastity for myself, but many people do, and I want those people to be able to get what they want out of life. I eat meat, and basically can't get through four hours without dairy, but when I'm cooking for a vegan friend I do my best to make sure that what I'm serving allows them to stay within their beliefs. I've seen quite a lot of girls do the whole "Well it's ok to have sex if he says he loves me" thing, compromising their personal code of morals only to be disappointed over and over again, and find themselves in a quiet crisis by their mid to late 20s. A lot of people use the faux-commitment of a "Serious Relationship" to deal with their guilt over sex that they want to have. I'd like to see those people think about things honestly, and then decide to make love or to remain chaste on an honest, rather than a false, basis. Confront the realities of what is going, and see if you really believe that what you are doing is good. If you think it is, great, do it; if you think it isn't, don't.
As for my wife, if she said that her being free to seek out a male lover was a condition of our open relationship, we would then close the relationship and be monogamous. Our relationship structure has always been about what works for both of us and makes us both happy. I'm not pretending I'm some hyper-libidinous-alpha-Dionysus who needs fifteen lovers to be satisfied, I don't need anything extravagant but it's fun and if it makes everyone happy I have no problem taking it. I've been happily monogamous before and I will be again in the future.
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I think the implication is that you shouldn't enter a relationship (maybe you thought it was marriage potential, maybe the person you were slutting it up with wanted to take it further and you went eh, why not, still getting laid) and, once it starts looking like you're in something serious but it's not about to lead to a marriage (or you don't want that), you continue dithering and sticking around with it instead of breaking it up.
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Alternative hypothesis: the story is actually deliberate propaganda against a particular type of guy (and against a very specific guy, once you're familiar with the details), and arguably even a particular type of girl, and it's reacted to accordingly. It's a little bit like someone wrote a ficitional story about Jews murdering Christian babies, and drinking their blood, and when understandably people got upset you counter with "Well, do you murder Christian babies and drink their blood? No? So the story is not about you". Bonus points for the characters closely resembling a particular Jewish family.
Or to take a less inflammatory example, given tomes upon tomes written about various types of representation, and how they're problematic, it seems par for the course to point out the problematic nature of this particular representation. Especially since, again, it seems to closely resemble very specific people.
And when all her friends are swarming her with text messages asking if this story is about her, maybe she has a point?
That's where the story being propaganda comes in. Maybe she didn't like the looks she was getting when dating the guy, and she doesn't like the idea of the story making people treat other women the way she was treated?
But not only was "the guy was a creep all along" how the "dead author" meant it, it's how most of the audience saw it as well.
Is that what she did? Or did she write a story where her ex is a creep, as some kind of release? Because it definitely doesn't look like she just put herself in Alexis' shoes, she also had the male character behave in very particular ways, and of course she had to finish the story with him texting her "whore", just so it's clear he's a bad guy. Writing as release might still be valid, but see below:
Except this being nothing new doesn't automatically mean the authors are the ones who are right. This was even a point of drama in The Haunting of Hill House, the family was salty at their brother who made bank from writing a story about a traumatic even they all went through. Are their grievances automatically invalid because artists gonna art? I'm not convinced. Apparently neither was the author of the Haunting, since he thought it would make for a good point of drama.
I think a complication in this metaphor is that, as far as I know, Jews murdering Christian babies and drinking their blood was never once actually a thing that happened. But this archetype of creepy man is very much a real thing, and I know of a few guys at the school I went to like that. I am sympathetic to your point, because when the archetype in fiction and also the blogosphere becomes really common, it makes it seem like roughly 50% of guys are like that, and that's like an attack on all guys. But there are a real rough 1% of guys who really are just like that and I think it is important for people, and especially women, to be aware of and slightly on guard against that archetype.
If someone would write story inverting reality, with enough details that it would identify me as being involved - then I would at least try to make clear that they are malicious liars.
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The Haunting of Hill House was written by Shirley Jackson? Or are you talking about the recent TV series?
TV series. Wanted to read the book but never got to it. I thought the adaption is fairly faithful?
There are two movie adaptations that I know of; the first is a 60s black and white movie which scared the crap out of me when I watched it on TV as a kid, and then a late 90s remake which I haven't seen, but which seems to have taken some liberties.
Looking at the Wikipedia article on the series, it does seem to be loosely adapted - they made the characters into siblings of a family which moved into the house, instead of the original SPOILER idea that they were a group recruited for a paranormal study, hosted in a haunted house. It seems to have mashed together the original builder of the house with the modern family and made a lot of other changes.
The 1963 movie seems to be the most faithful adaptation.
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I haven't seen the TV series, but based on this review it seems like a very loose adaptation. Shortly after reading the book I watched the 1963 adaptation The Haunting and thought it was very close to the plot of the novel (but not as scary). I don't read a lot of horror but the novel is one of the better horror novels I've read, worth checking out.
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Isn't this more like the argument had over and over in fantasy and sci-fi circles, where any "greedy race of traders and merchants" (Trek's Ferengi, HP's Goblins) gets called antisemitic, and any violent and stupid race gets called racist against blacks/arabs/whatever? I disagree with it there, I disagree with it here.
I don't really get the obsession on all sides with the ending of the story. It strikes me as pretty milquetoast, neither providing material for a harrowing psychological thriller nor an automatic indictment of character. He used a bad word to talk to a girl who dumped him, that's pretty normal behavior. Hell, my best friend and I used to get drunk and make free online texting numbers just to bother his ex-gfs, when inevitably the new boyfriend would text back threateningly, we would issue a florid challenge to fistfight and then give him an address at an empty house we'd find for sale online in the wrong town. Only two of them were ever dumb enough to actually show up, then text the fake number to call his putative opponent a pussy. It was great fun, normal human behavior.
Bro... no.
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This seems pretty douchy and childish.
Yes. It was. Which can be great fun and is normal human behavior (particularly for a 20 year old male), not indicative of a deep psychological or moral flaw.
Which is my point, people do flawed bad things all the time every day.
I disagree (though maybe it depends on what you meant exactly by "make free online texting numbers just to bother his ex-gfs" - but my assumptions are that it was going into things qualifying as deep moral flaws)
You consider making annoying but harmless pranks against people you personally dislike as deep moral flaws?
"make free online texting numbers just to bother his ex-gfs" does not sound like "annoying but harmless pranks" but rather like "nasty crude harassment"
(possibly it was actually good-humoured prank but "when inevitably the new boyfriend would text back threateningly, we would issue a florid challenge to fistfight" suggests otherwise)
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Call me crazy, but I get the impression that especially the DS9 Ferangi were very deliberately taking inspiration from Jewish culture (not in an antisemitic way, though).
Sure, but the point is that the author knew how the intended audience is going to react to it (given how ubiquitous pop-feminism was/is), and the critics knew that's why she put it there.
Huh, I always thought the joke was that they were runaway capitalists, a parody of 20th century Reagan-consensus Americans. We see in the eternal Jew the flaws we hate in ourselves? (Ferengi itself is an antique Persian derived word used to refer to European traders)
Sure, but then let's push back on that attitude of simpering prissiness rather than give into it. In the same way that the reaction of Ferengi are greedy >>> They Must Be Jews says more about the reader than it does about the writer.
I may be out of line as I'm hardly an expert on Jewish culture, but the scenes with the Grand Nagus, and Quark's and Rom's mother felt like they're playing with some stereotypes (again in a harmless gentle ribbing, or even heartfelt appreciation kind of way).
But why does that involve pretending she did put that ending with a very specific purpose in mind?
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I enjoyed it when I read it: it has a certain amount of subtlety and complexity that I like in a story. Where it goes off the rails is when it has the guy call her a whore abruptly at the end, which comes out of the blue and mostly serves to make it more of a simple morality tale. Even if that wasn't the author's intention, it adds nothing to the story and coarsens it by encouraging readers to view it in that frame.
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