Thank gawd I’m too old for all this – “enthusiastic consent”!
I’d never heard the Cat Person story before, but even reading the original story, the girl character sounds awful in her vanity, self centredness and condescension – a narcissist indeed.
Maybe explains the development of the incel culture too – why would men want to have anything to do with such women?
I praise God that I found my wife in 2009, married her in 2010, and have had a splendid, faithful, and joy-filled monogamy all through my 20’s and now 30’s. Trying to think about sex the way that the modern world seems to want to define/analyze/commoditize it is excruciating to even hear about. Much less to actually DO.
Julian Farrows
2 years ago
I read the “Cat Person” story some time ago. It somewhat opened (or widened) my eyes to a subset of women who crave the freedoms of masculinity, yet also look down on and despise men they consider inferior i.e. men who are unable to control them. My sister once commented to me that it is a great myth that women have the monopoly on care and compassion. The story of “Cat Person” is nothing if not a story of callous cruelty.
David Giles
2 years ago
So he ends up texting “w***e” does he? Wouldn’t “psycho” have been nearer the mark?
Edwin Blake
2 years ago
I’ve, innocently, accepted that part of a woman’s desire is seeing a reflection of her beauty in my eyes. I’ve never labelled it “narcissism” though I suppose it could be, but then every human characteristic can be labelled as a pathology.
Frank McCusker
2 years ago
What a shambles.
Bring back real dating, and mutually-joyful sex, instead of this tedious casual rubbish
Maggi B
2 years ago
Narcissism evidently lacks compassion without which it is impossible to see the other. Contempt is often the reason relationships end but contempt should also be seen as a reason why they cannot start as well.
Ibn Sina
2 years ago
We’re heading back to the Victorian era.
Paul Hendricks
2 years ago
The third-person narrator whose opinions here and there intrude on the narrative, and which seem to stand in for Margot’s, manages not to comment on Margot’s remarkable fantasy of a type of “boy”–not boyfriend–who “didn’t exist and never would,” into whose arms she wishes to collapse in shared laughter at the banal details of her one night stand with Robert.
Albert, “the friend she was with” at the student bar where Robert mysteriously appears, presumably a fellow undergraduate, plainly corresponds to this fantasy type. But for some reason Margot and/or the narrator (it’s muddled) don’t recognize him as such. She has already opted instead for the first cute (yet gross) older guy to hit on her at the concession stand; and the night Albert stands in between her and Robert at the student bar, ineffectively protecting her from Robert’s catching sight of her, she doesn’t collapse laughing into his arms after all, but instead goes back to her dorm room and “curls up in bed with Tamara, the glow of the phone like a campfire illuminating their faces.”
So a picture of Margot emerges as a would-be sexless innocent and naive child whose own fantasies she doesn’t understand let alone really want to be fulfilled; but whose actions are guided by more immediate impulses she is powerless to understand or control. And so her choices are forced on her by a man, an obviously unattractive and inexperienced one at that.
Somehow I don’t believe that is what the New Yorker’s middlebrow female audience wants to hear.
Thus the silly ending–why doesn’t Margot just block Robert’s number?–which gives away the point of the story, what its middlebrow female audience really wants to hear, which is that Robert’s behavior finally allows Margot, who has no real idea of what she wants let alone how to get it, to recast his earlier behavior in a more sinister light, thus vindicating her and absolving her of her own role in a seemingly commonplace if unfortunate affair that nearly emotionally overwhelms her.
Neil Anthony
2 years ago
The question not mentioned is… was the literal application of the label “w***e” justified. He. Eventually saw her as a female who exploited him for personal gain. While it was not financial gain. She nevertheless treated him as a client.
Tom Watson
2 years ago
“One almost wonders if Roupenian’s depiction of a callous and calculating Margot is motivated more by intrasexual competition than feminism.”
It’s a head scratcher! (Given that feminism and female intrasexual competition are of course completely separate things that have nothing to do with one another).
Steve Jolly
2 years ago
Honestly both the man and the woman in the story seem to me to be selfish, egotistical, and just plain awful people. They both deserved what they got, each other. I am skeptical that either of these people are capable of building a functional partner relationship. The man seems to compensate for his unattractiveness by going through the motions of being the sensitive, caring, nice guy, but the illusion falls apart when it becomes apparent he isn’t getting any more sex out of the deal. The woman seems to be a highly neurotic narcissist who wants to control every aspect of her sexual relationships but lacks the self-awareness to understand her own desires. Honestly, her kink (getting off being worshipped by men who are, in her eyes, unworthy of her) is not particularly unusual. There’s a lot of porn out there of gross older men licking the feet of hot young things.
Dominic A
2 years ago
I sometimes have a daydreamy intuition that the female psyche has been bound, over millennia, by much the same forces, and with similar results, as the grotesquery of foot binding. They must look beautiful so as to be worshipped by power, and hobbled so as to be no threat…a story so often been lived that now a woman may struggle just to be in the world, free from a neurotic quest to be considered worshipful, and a preoccupation with appearance. Men are of course not free from such forces either, but that is not the subject here
Sheryl Rhodes
2 years ago
“It was the feeling of having sex not out of desire, but instead out of desire to be desired, to be validated in one’s beauty and allure.” Wow, this observation shook me because it helps explain why I had some regrettable unsatisfying youthful sexual encounters. Looking back, with wisdom, I wish that I had only gotten intimate in the context of my two most serious relationships (one of whom I almost married, and one of whom I did). I was socially awkward in high school and considered “ugly.” Got contacts to replace the thick glasses and went to a large university where I was shocked to realize that I was considered super-hot (the term at the time was “a major fox”). I became addicted to testing my new-found powers. It was like giving the keys to a high-powered Lamborghini to a twelve-year-old kid with a need for speed. So yes, although I wasn’t cruel, I guess I was acting out narcissism by craving the attention and then assuming that I should go to bed with some of these blokes to “pay” them for their time and adulation. Sometimes I inadvertently led them on emotionally. Careless behavior towards both myself and my partners, for sure. I didn’t fully emerge from this stupidity until my late twenties.
Big Kagi
2 years ago
This essay is a summary of what Manov said a couple of years ago on her excellent, much missed podcast “After the Orgy.” Come back to the pod, Ann!
Val Colic-Peisker
2 years ago
How did we arrive to this black-and-white world? MeToo made things between women and men nauseatingly simplistic. Things are complicated. Yes, women are often narcissistic, at least a little, because they are taught to be so from the early age. “Oh, you’re a pretty girl”, you hear as soon you can understand what’s being said, and soon you learn that’s the most important thing about you. For many men, the only important thing. So if you’re not ‘pretty enough’ then you’re full of self-loathing, feeling worthless. This terrible burden is hard to shed; it takes strength, education and some luck with one’s family of origin (e.g. not having a male shauvinist father). Good work Ann! Shulamit Firestone said it all in 1970 in her ‘The Dyalectic of Sex’ when she was only 25. If you, by some accident, have missed it, this book should be the first item on your reading list.
john barrington
2 years ago
Reminds me of a William Blake poem-
What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
I drunkenly wrote that in a friend’s wedding guest book….
Linda Hutchinson
2 years ago
I have read and re-read the first part of this article and I still can’t find out what was no evil about what the woman did. She slept with a man and then regreted it, not a unique experience, but she didn’t accuse him of rape or assault. She may have been somewhat unfeeling, but that’s not unusual in the young, we are told that she didn’t know what to do so just “ghosted” him. She was unflattering about him, but I have over-heard similar unflattering portraits of women from young men. Her room-mate made it clear that she didn’t want to speak to him and she made a hasty exit when she saw him in the bar, both of which should have told him to look elsewhere, but he started texting again and became “gross” in his texts, it looks like it’s bordering on harrassment. She was young and silly, that’s all; he, however, should know better, and just write it off.
Why should he have known better? Why should she not have known better? Why would you imagine that either a man of around thirty or a woman in her twenties, in this hedonistic era, is likely to know the first thing about maturity? But think of the double standard here. The context of both #MeToo and this literary experiment, let alone debates over them, is a culture of (selective) cynicism: “they” are all guilty of sexual victimization (even without actually assaulting or harassing anyone), but “we” are all their innocent victims (even without thinking carefully about our own behavior).
She was unflattering about him, but I have over-heard similar unflattering portraits of women from young men. But the 2nd instance does not absolve the 1st.
I thought the responses of both were interesting – his emotional responses to her advances and her emotional responses to her own advances. His resulted in a desire for a more emotional attachment and hers resulted in avoidance at all costs.
Thank gawd I’m too old for all this – “enthusiastic consent”!
I’d never heard the Cat Person story before, but even reading the original story, the girl character sounds awful in her vanity, self centredness and condescension – a narcissist indeed.
Maybe explains the development of the incel culture too – why would men want to have anything to do with such women?
You mean besides the obvious reason? Probably because they are truly unaware of what’s going on inside their minds through all this.
Everyone loses.
I praise God that I found my wife in 2009, married her in 2010, and have had a splendid, faithful, and joy-filled monogamy all through my 20’s and now 30’s. Trying to think about sex the way that the modern world seems to want to define/analyze/commoditize it is excruciating to even hear about. Much less to actually DO.
I read the “Cat Person” story some time ago. It somewhat opened (or widened) my eyes to a subset of women who crave the freedoms of masculinity, yet also look down on and despise men they consider inferior i.e. men who are unable to control them. My sister once commented to me that it is a great myth that women have the monopoly on care and compassion. The story of “Cat Person” is nothing if not a story of callous cruelty.
So he ends up texting “w***e” does he? Wouldn’t “psycho” have been nearer the mark?
I’ve, innocently, accepted that part of a woman’s desire is seeing a reflection of her beauty in my eyes. I’ve never labelled it “narcissism” though I suppose it could be, but then every human characteristic can be labelled as a pathology.
What a shambles.
Bring back real dating, and mutually-joyful sex, instead of this tedious casual rubbish
Narcissism evidently lacks compassion without which it is impossible to see the other. Contempt is often the reason relationships end but contempt should also be seen as a reason why they cannot start as well.
We’re heading back to the Victorian era.
The third-person narrator whose opinions here and there intrude on the narrative, and which seem to stand in for Margot’s, manages not to comment on Margot’s remarkable fantasy of a type of “boy”–not boyfriend–who “didn’t exist and never would,” into whose arms she wishes to collapse in shared laughter at the banal details of her one night stand with Robert.
Albert, “the friend she was with” at the student bar where Robert mysteriously appears, presumably a fellow undergraduate, plainly corresponds to this fantasy type. But for some reason Margot and/or the narrator (it’s muddled) don’t recognize him as such. She has already opted instead for the first cute (yet gross) older guy to hit on her at the concession stand; and the night Albert stands in between her and Robert at the student bar, ineffectively protecting her from Robert’s catching sight of her, she doesn’t collapse laughing into his arms after all, but instead goes back to her dorm room and “curls up in bed with Tamara, the glow of the phone like a campfire illuminating their faces.”
So a picture of Margot emerges as a would-be sexless innocent and naive child whose own fantasies she doesn’t understand let alone really want to be fulfilled; but whose actions are guided by more immediate impulses she is powerless to understand or control. And so her choices are forced on her by a man, an obviously unattractive and inexperienced one at that.
Somehow I don’t believe that is what the New Yorker’s middlebrow female audience wants to hear.
Thus the silly ending–why doesn’t Margot just block Robert’s number?–which gives away the point of the story, what its middlebrow female audience really wants to hear, which is that Robert’s behavior finally allows Margot, who has no real idea of what she wants let alone how to get it, to recast his earlier behavior in a more sinister light, thus vindicating her and absolving her of her own role in a seemingly commonplace if unfortunate affair that nearly emotionally overwhelms her.
The question not mentioned is… was the literal application of the label “w***e” justified. He. Eventually saw her as a female who exploited him for personal gain. While it was not financial gain. She nevertheless treated him as a client.
“One almost wonders if Roupenian’s depiction of a callous and calculating Margot is motivated more by intrasexual competition than feminism.”
It’s a head scratcher! (Given that feminism and female intrasexual competition are of course completely separate things that have nothing to do with one another).
Honestly both the man and the woman in the story seem to me to be selfish, egotistical, and just plain awful people. They both deserved what they got, each other. I am skeptical that either of these people are capable of building a functional partner relationship. The man seems to compensate for his unattractiveness by going through the motions of being the sensitive, caring, nice guy, but the illusion falls apart when it becomes apparent he isn’t getting any more sex out of the deal. The woman seems to be a highly neurotic narcissist who wants to control every aspect of her sexual relationships but lacks the self-awareness to understand her own desires. Honestly, her kink (getting off being worshipped by men who are, in her eyes, unworthy of her) is not particularly unusual. There’s a lot of porn out there of gross older men licking the feet of hot young things.
I sometimes have a daydreamy intuition that the female psyche has been bound, over millennia, by much the same forces, and with similar results, as the grotesquery of foot binding. They must look beautiful so as to be worshipped by power, and hobbled so as to be no threat…a story so often been lived that now a woman may struggle just to be in the world, free from a neurotic quest to be considered worshipful, and a preoccupation with appearance. Men are of course not free from such forces either, but that is not the subject here
“It was the feeling of having sex not out of desire, but instead out of desire to be desired, to be validated in one’s beauty and allure.”
Wow, this observation shook me because it helps explain why I had some regrettable unsatisfying youthful sexual encounters. Looking back, with wisdom, I wish that I had only gotten intimate in the context of my two most serious relationships (one of whom I almost married, and one of whom I did).
I was socially awkward in high school and considered “ugly.” Got contacts to replace the thick glasses and went to a large university where I was shocked to realize that I was considered super-hot (the term at the time was “a major fox”). I became addicted to testing my new-found powers. It was like giving the keys to a high-powered Lamborghini to a twelve-year-old kid with a need for speed. So yes, although I wasn’t cruel, I guess I was acting out narcissism by craving the attention and then assuming that I should go to bed with some of these blokes to “pay” them for their time and adulation. Sometimes I inadvertently led them on emotionally. Careless behavior towards both myself and my partners, for sure. I didn’t fully emerge from this stupidity until my late twenties.
This essay is a summary of what Manov said a couple of years ago on her excellent, much missed podcast “After the Orgy.” Come back to the pod, Ann!
How did we arrive to this black-and-white world? MeToo made things between women and men nauseatingly simplistic. Things are complicated. Yes, women are often narcissistic, at least a little, because they are taught to be so from the early age. “Oh, you’re a pretty girl”, you hear as soon you can understand what’s being said, and soon you learn that’s the most important thing about you. For many men, the only important thing. So if you’re not ‘pretty enough’ then you’re full of self-loathing, feeling worthless. This terrible burden is hard to shed; it takes strength, education and some luck with one’s family of origin (e.g. not having a male shauvinist father). Good work Ann! Shulamit Firestone said it all in 1970 in her ‘The Dyalectic of Sex’ when she was only 25. If you, by some accident, have missed it, this book should be the first item on your reading list.
Reminds me of a William Blake poem-
What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
I drunkenly wrote that in a friend’s wedding guest book….
I have read and re-read the first part of this article and I still can’t find out what was no evil about what the woman did. She slept with a man and then regreted it, not a unique experience, but she didn’t accuse him of rape or assault. She may have been somewhat unfeeling, but that’s not unusual in the young, we are told that she didn’t know what to do so just “ghosted” him. She was unflattering about him, but I have over-heard similar unflattering portraits of women from young men. Her room-mate made it clear that she didn’t want to speak to him and she made a hasty exit when she saw him in the bar, both of which should have told him to look elsewhere, but he started texting again and became “gross” in his texts, it looks like it’s bordering on harrassment. She was young and silly, that’s all; he, however, should know better, and just write it off.
Why should he have known better? Why should she not have known better? Why would you imagine that either a man of around thirty or a woman in her twenties, in this hedonistic era, is likely to know the first thing about maturity? But think of the double standard here. The context of both #MeToo and this literary experiment, let alone debates over them, is a culture of (selective) cynicism: “they” are all guilty of sexual victimization (even without actually assaulting or harassing anyone), but “we” are all their innocent victims (even without thinking carefully about our own behavior).
She was unflattering about him, but I have over-heard similar unflattering portraits of women from young men.
But the 2nd instance does not absolve the 1st.
I thought the responses of both were interesting – his emotional responses to her advances and her emotional responses to her own advances. His resulted in a desire for a more emotional attachment and hers resulted in avoidance at all costs.
I had the same thought – pure “whataboutery”.
Try reversing the roles in the story and check if you would judge it the same way you did. Should be an enlightening experience.