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“Cat Person” and Me

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Re: “Cat Person” and Me

#151

Post by watwut »

kerkeslager wrote: post #147
DoreenMichele wrote: post #56

To me, the most disturbing part of this is the following section: I made plans to rent an apartment with some girls from my econ class the following year, but they told me they’d changed their minds when they found out about my older boyfriend. I'm a woman and I blog. I have made a stab at writing fiction, often loosely based on my life. People tend to assume it is 100 percent true . When I was getting divorced, if I…

> Although I absolutely support things like #MeToo -- support the idea that women should not be silenced about the bad things that have actually happened to them -- I am disturbed and concerned by the general trend that the world seems to think all heterosexual relationships are inherently abusive or something. We hear a great deal about the bad, the things gone wrong, the dark side and sometimes it seems like there…

#meetoo was mostly about workplace harassement and then abuse. If you dont want it mix with genaral relationship issues, dont bring that up in that context.

Like, dont bring up #meetoo if you want diascuss non abusive relationship. Dont bring non abusive relationships when someone talks about own abuse.

Re: “Cat Person” and Me

#153

Post by UncleMeat »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #72
DoreenMichele wrote: post #56

To me, the most disturbing part of this is the following section: I made plans to rent an apartment with some girls from my econ class the following year, but they told me they’d changed their minds when they found out about my older boyfriend. I'm a woman and I blog. I have made a stab at writing fiction, often loosely based on my life. People tend to assume it is 100 percent true . When I was getting divorced, if I…

It does not matter what was the hair color of your ex; as most women are looking for men with a future, most men are looking for women without a past and not take serious one with a past. The hair color is just an excuse. The entire evolution of humankind built that into men, it is in the genes, it is what they are. Societal pressure to vilify relations between older men and young women comes mostly from women. Studi…

I can't even imagine being attracted to a woman between 18 and 24 at this stage in my life. How are these studies supposed to jive with that experience?

Re: “Cat Person” and Me

#154

Post by brown9-2 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #142
brown9-2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not new for writers to be inspired by real-life events or for stories to have broader messages or purposes. Calling this contemporary seems naive, as a part of this thing lately where people act as if for thousands of years we never criticized each other or did anything political until now. But what do you think is the ideological narrative Cat Person aims to fit?

> But what do you think is the ideological narrative Cat Person aims to fit? As they say, if you gotta ask what jazz is, you ain't never gonna know. This story isn't really "inspired by real life events." It's a real story of a real person, sloppily modified to fit the zeitgeist's value system.

Can you elaborate on the “zeitgeist’s value system”? You keep accusing people of doing a thing and then not really defining that thing.

Re: “Cat Person” and Me

#155

Post by scotty79 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #130
scotty79 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more of a rule than an exception. What makes a creation attractive is mixture of percieved veracity with addition of some oddity. So the most popular works of fiction mix some pretty accurate descriptions of reality with the oddity comming from the authors imagination. As such it attracts the reader with the promise of learning the truth about the world but instead it moves them away from the reality tow…

> So the most popular works of fiction mix some pretty accurate descriptions of reality with the oddity comming from the authors imagination. Then eschew popular works of fiction. Talk to a reader or a book club, and get some suggestions, maybe? All books have this problem, but some less so than others. If you're aware of this issue, then reading a wider variety of voices can only help your understanding of the world…

I don't see it as a problem. It's just how human interest works. We are drawn to things that are similar enough to what we know and odd enough at the same time to be interesting.

If I wanted to read books that try to reflect reality as good as possible I'd stick to manuals and textbooks.

The problem is a general one that people are being tricked that purely entertainment pieces give them some insights into nature of reality and people. Fictional literature is held as a source of insight of human condition but the parts that make it interesting are pure fantasy of one skewed mind.

Re: “Cat Person” and Me

#156

Post by zozbot234 »

watwut wrote: post #151
kerkeslager wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although I absolutely support things like #MeToo -- support the idea that women should not be silenced about the bad things that have actually happened to them -- I am disturbed and concerned by the general trend that the world seems to think all heterosexual relationships are inherently abusive or something. We hear a great deal about the bad, the things gone wrong, the dark side and sometimes it seems like there…

#meetoo was mostly about workplace harassement and then abuse. If you dont want it mix with genaral relationship issues, dont bring that up in that context. Like, dont bring up #meetoo if you want diascuss non abusive relationship. Dont bring non abusive relationships when someone talks about own abuse.

> harassement and then abuse. If you dont want it mix with genaral relationship issues, dont bring that up in that context.

This entire thread is about a lady who did just that. (After all, at the very least, the short story's anti-hero is being verbally abusive in his last-mentioned text message to the protagonist.)

Re: “Cat Person” and Me

#157

Post by scotty79 »

whitehouse3 wrote: post #132
scotty79 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but you could apply the same exclusions to black people and be rightfully named racist for that.

I don’t disagree. However, the principal objection to racism is not discrimination, but rather that on the basis of immutable characteristics. No one chooses their biological skin colour. So we reject discrimination on that basis. Age gaps are not an immutable characteristic. Nor are they culturally common in the USA. So they are fair game for discrimination just like any other exercise of free association.

I'm not quite convinced. Acting out on your non-heterosexual orientation or dressing up as opposite biological sex is also not immutable. You may act straight, and dress accordingly to your biological sex. Dressing as opposite sex is even similarly as rare as gender gaps.

And yet discrimination against people that display those voluntary behaviors would also be strongly frowned upon.

I don't think it's due to some innate nature of gender gaps. It's pure prejudice. "We don't like people like that because we believe people like that are less moral than us."

Maybe the time will come where ageism will raise to the same status as transphobia, but currently as you notice it's far from it.

Re: “Cat Person” and Me

#158

Post by [deleted] »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #56

To me, the most disturbing part of this is the following section: I made plans to rent an apartment with some girls from my econ class the following year, but they told me they’d changed their minds when they found out about my older boyfriend. I'm a woman and I blog. I have made a stab at writing fiction, often loosely based on my life. People tend to assume it is 100 percent true . When I was getting divorced, if I…

[deleted]

Re: “Cat Person” and Me

#159

Post by Uhhrrr »

jollybean wrote: post #21
tptacek wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: “Cat Person” and Me

#160

Post by AdrianB1 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #153
AdrianB1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not matter what was the hair color of your ex; as most women are looking for men with a future, most men are looking for women without a past and not take serious one with a past. The hair color is just an excuse. The entire evolution of humankind built that into men, it is in the genes, it is what they are. Societal pressure to vilify relations between older men and young women comes mostly from women. Studi…

I can't even imagine being attracted to a woman between 18 and 24 at this stage in my life. How are these studies supposed to jive with that experience?

Me neither until I met a real case: an uncle lost his family in an accident when he was in his forties; he wanted to start over, so he marries a 25 year old woman, they have 2 kids and that was about 25 years ago (the older son is in his twenties, the younger is almost to 20).

Doing that with a woman his age is almost impossible, fertility and children health when the mother is over 30 is declining rapidly.

In any case, that made me think about life a bit different. In the same situation I would do the same.

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