Comment by mlyle
5 years ago
Nothing justifies threats. But in this case, the reasons that this would offend people -- that it makes untrue and unfair accusations about a real-world case-- are true. Or even worse than one would assume, even, in that it's not autobiographical and does the same about identifiable third parties.
Sorry, but Roupenian didn't get threats over this story because people thought it was making "untrue and unfair accusations about a real-world case"; she got threats because she wrote a story that painted a fictional man in a bad light and the GamerGate types came out in full force. It also painted a fictional woman in a bad light It's worth reading reporting about this story from the time it was published, e.g.,
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/12/12/16762062/cat-person-e...
Quoting from that article, also:
“Cat Person” does not bear any of the signifiers of a personal essay: It is told in the third person, not the first, and it appears in the New Yorker’s fiction section, with FICTION splashed at the top of the page. Nonetheless, the default response from many seemed to be to treat it as an essay rather than as a short story.
A lot of the criticism I'm seeing in the comments here seem to tacitly be assuming that this essay in Slate is relaying facts about "Cat Person" that were known at, or shortly after, the time of publication. They were not. If anything, the assumption was that the story was somewhat autobiographical -- and from what I can see, it really was somewhat autobiographical. The character of Margot is, again, fictional, but she clearly owes more to her author's experiences than to the essayist's.
Roupenian shouldn't have taken autobiographical bits and bobs from a stranger's life, no. But do keep in mind that she had absolutely no idea that the story was going to go viral this way; it's not like Twitter is regularly aflame with buzzy conversation about the latest short fiction piece in the New Yorker. This was an extraordinary event, and like all too much on Twitter in the last few years, chiefly driven by people who decided the story was something people needed to get outraged by. And, again, their outrage was not over Roupenian's mild appropriation.
Taking bits and bobs from the lives of strangers is one of the most time-honored traditions in fiction.
I started to get into that but thought I was already approaching essay length by HN comment standards. :)
So, yes, true -- although it's arguably also something of a time-honored tradition for the real person(s) involved to be less than pleased if they feel too-personal parts of their lives were used in fiction without permission. At the extreme this has gotten authors sued, sometimes even successfully. But cases like, well, this one are probably more common: Alexis Nowicki isn't suing Kristen Roupenian, but she's upset, feels unfairly used, and likely knows this essay could catapult "Kristen Roupenian is a bad person" (back) into the media narrative.
You're so vain You probably think this song is about you
It does not in fact make untrue and unfair accusations about a real world case. It is a work of fiction. Until this Slate article came out, there were, like, 4 people in the world that know about the story's inspiration.
It's not really about 'real world, individual people'.
It's a #MeToo era-story which is used to narrate supposedly 'real world threats'.
The reason that some might be upset, is because you have a real world story of a 'nice guy' - who was used as the basis to narrative a story about how 'men are bad' aka a warning about 'toxic masculinity' etc..
Here is 'The Atlantic's headline of the original 2017 publication:
"The depiction of uncomfortable romance in "Cat Person" seems to resonate with countless women." [1]
Here is NPR's headline:
"'Cat Person' Author's New Book Evokes #MeToo Themes" [2]
WaPo:
"Opinion: ‘Cat Person’ is a next step in the #MeToo movement" [3]
So that's literally the first three pieces that came up in the Google search - and those three publications are 'major, respected, institutions'. All three are using the 'creative fiction' to promote a narrative about men's supposed actions etc..
It's obviously not just about 'some random bit of fiction that happened to be about real people and those real people are upset'.
If this was Stephen King, who used his 'Real Life Doctor' as the inspiration for some diabolical character - that would be the story. But there wouldn't be any elevation of the story into some kind of narrative in that case ... so it'd just be about a possibly upset Doctor.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/a-vir...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2019/01/13/684894872/cat-person-author-s...
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/1...
Edit:
Here's a gem [4] it's literally an academic publication using the original story as basis for describing narcissism in the role of the oppression of women.
"I argue that Beauvoir’s notion of narcissism is an important tool for feminists today—well beyond the interpretation of Cat Person. It presses us to see systematic subordination not just as something done to women, but also as something women do to themselves. This in turn highlights the neglected role of self-transformation as a key aspect of feminist political resistance."
This is pseudo-intellectual hyperbole (published!) over a story that amounts to a giant lie.
It's intellectual bigotry.
[4] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
I agree its obtuse for OP to pretend this was purely fictional, where fictional means its detached from any reality or any message whatsoever, given we're _far_ past those claims, as the article explains at length. Simultaneously, its hyperbolic to paint "seems to resonate" "evokes" and "Opinion:" as Major Respected Institutions Promoting A Narrative.
You both seem the be making the same fundamental error, neglecting the thrust of this article, and the original piece: things are ambiguous, and in that ambiguity, we can contemplate, and people find that contemplation fascinating
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The story by itself is just a story. The fact that professionals at those respected outlets believed a certain narrative and used the story to promote it is more concerning.
It's like realizing the cancer is actually at stage 3.