English Department Honors Thesis
University of California, Davis
Advised by Dr. Katie Peterson
27 May 2020
The #MeToo Movement Faces a Literary Reckoning
During the height of the #MeToo movement, as a wave of allegations levied at powerful figures flooded nearly every major media outlet, one article stood out among the rest. The piece, about the actor and comedian Aziz Ansari, looked the same as the rest on the outset: A woman accused a powerful man of abuse. While #MeToo investigations deliberately reported the minutiae of these accusations in as exacting a manner as possible, the Ansari piece exemplified an important shift in the non-fiction of the #MeToo era, an era whose themes are still playing out but which has, in many ways, lost significant traction. Before, there was a single, acceptable framework for telling a non-fictional narrative, one which privileged a neutral yet thoroughly examined, fact-driven account. This piece, however, is neither non-fiction nor journalism, rather it is publicized testimony treated as truth-telling.
The Ansari article is fueled by an agenda that appears morally righteous. It is the agenda of the #MeToo movement, a political movement primarily concerned with justice, not with seeking a definitive truth. If justice ordinarily draws from truth, then #MeToo differed in that it appeared not to consider truth as a prerequisite in the pursuit of justice. This differentiation was concerning given that justice must be both informed by and dependent upon truth in order to be truly efficacious.
The piece, written by Katie Way for the women’s site Babe, was entitled “I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life.” The story came out in January of 2018, three months after The New York Times broke the story that brought three decades of sexual harassment and abuse by media mogul Harvey Weinstein to the forefront of public consciousness. The Times’ piece, credited as the catalyst for the #MeToo movement, was the first of innumerable stories of sexual abuse and misuse of power documented in media outlets around the world.
Where renowned publications like The Times and The New Yorker conducted months-long investigations into Weinstein and other high-profile serial abusers, Babe’s Ansari piece was not an investigation. The story does not attempt to clarify exactly what occurred the night that Grace (a pseudonym) went on a date with Ansari: “Whether Ansari didn’t notice Grace’s reticence or knowingly ignored it is impossible for her to say” (Way). Grace says in the piece she “was physically giving off cues” that she wasn’t interested: “I don’t think that was noticed at all, or if it was, it was ignored,” she said. After the date, Grace sent Ansari a text message which read, in part: “last night might’ve been fun for you it wasn’t for me. When we got back to your place, you ignored clear, non-verbal cues. You had to have noticed I was uncomfortable” (Way). In response to the publication of the events in question, Ansari’s official statement read, in part: “It was true that everything did seem okay to me, so when I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned” (Way).
The cultural critic Laura Kipnis would say Grace is displaying “female passivity,” a result of the socialization of women “into politeness, niceness, deference to and overvaluation of men” (Kipnis, 203). Grace is uncomfortable, yet she cannot verbalize the “no.” Regardless of the extent to which consent and female authority has been socially celebrated and accepted, halting an intimate sexual encounter is still unpleasant. And this unpleasantness might be reasonably magnified if the sexual encounter being halted involves someone with Ansari’s stardom, with power inseparable from fame. It is then understandable that Grace found it difficult to verbalize the “no,” but by merely demonstrating the “no” — by not speaking it clearly, but instead relying solely on nonverbal cues — Ansari was also understandably ill-equipped to discern her discomfort.
In this situation, ambiguity, an intangible albeit forceful factor, is a menace that warps a single shared experience into two distorted realities. In part, this ambiguity is born out of assumption: Grace assumes her “non-verbal cues” are clearly conveying her discomfort, while Ansari assumes Grace is having the same experience he is, failing to even perceive these “cues.”
The night exists in a state of permanent disorientation; the combination of assumption, interpretation and misinterpretation creates a vacuum that is ambiguity. No one, not even Grace or Ansari, can provide an accurate account of what occurred, because they have two fundamentally different yet wholly genuine experiences of the same evening. In reporting this story, Babe takes advantage of the pre-existing ambiguity in its attempts to make a judgment call. And because there is no definitive account, Grace, who calls it “the worst night of [her] life,” is given the prevailing narrative (Way). But to allow Grace to publicly assign blame to Ansari for a misdeed he did not know he was committing is troubling. The act of assigning blame requires clarity, yet clarity is all but absent in this situation.
In the most reductive summation of events, Grace publicly accused Ansari of being a bad reader — of misreading, at best, or, at worst, of reading into a falsified narrative he had created to advance his own interests. This begs the question: What is the “right” way to read and interpret real-life ambiguity, when a misreading might prove costly? By employing ambiguity as a forceful literary tool, the thematically relevant works of short fiction published during the #MeToo movement ask readers to grapple with this very question. Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person,” Hanif Kureishi’s “She Said He Said” and Mary Gaitskill’s “This Is Pleasure” turn to ambiguity in order to complicate a fictional scenario that is simultaneously being rapidly reproduced in reality.
The seemingly endless coverage of allegations of rape, sexual assault and harassment that defined the #MeToo movement upheld a clear-cut standard of morality. The articles, published everywhere from The Times to Babe, operated on the assertion that bringing these narratives to light was a form of justice, and for justice to truly prevail, the alleged perpetrators ought to face severe repercussions. These alleged perpetrators became pariahs overnight. Of the alleged perpetrators reached for comment, a significant portion denied the events as they were laid out. Ultimately, many of the accounts are she said-he said cases that would normally be dismissed in a court of law. By bypassing the legal system and allowing readers to act as a stand-in jury, however, the prospect of a formal sentencing was replaced with new and haphazard forms of punishment. These articles yielded public embarrassment and shame which then turned into job loss, loss of financial security and loss of one’s reputation and identity.
To acknowledge this seems controversial, as it challenges the assumptions these stories are operating on — that perpetrators are just perpetrators, and to recognize their humanity is offensive. For the most part, these personal-narratives-turned-investigations — as detailed, thoughtful and well-researched as they were — ultimately vindicated the survivor and villainized the alleged perpetrator. To some extent, these investigations allowed the survivors to reclaim the acts done to them, and this was legitimized insofar as it was deserved. This is where the reality of the #MeToo movement, which continuously upheld that a black-and-white understanding of these narratives was justified, and the #MeToo movement as it existed in the fictional world, which favored nuanced complexity, diverged.
Whereas the non-fiction #MeToo investigations required minimal analysis on the part of the reader — the survivor always emerging in the right and the alleged perpetrator always emerging in the wrong — #MeToo fiction muddied these notions. Non-fiction is concerned with a version of the truth, yet fiction has the capacity to entertain uncomfortable possibilities that non-fiction tends to avoid. These differences might be best exemplified by the presence and effects of ambiguity in each genre. Real-life ambiguity, which typically poses a detriment to the certainty and stability we tend to seek, is generally avoided — as exemplified by Babe’s Ansari article. The obscure inexactness that is ambiguity is detrimental in personal relationships; frustrating and costly in the workplace and has the potential to reap both psychological and tangible consequences in romantic relations. Literary ambiguity, however, creates the capacity for infinite imaginings, whereas, in non-fiction, the capacity to imagine is constrained.
The #MeToo fiction produced by Kureishi, Roupenian and Gaitskill wade through difficult topics with an acute resistance. They are unwilling to provide any form of absolving clarity, instead daring readers to consider uncomfortable possibilities. These fictional pieces were critical contributions to the discourse emerging during this social and political movement, and they ultimately afforded readers the opportunity to engage in an important cultural reckoning. In non-fictional accounts of sexual assault and harassment, there is little room for imagining or analysis. Mining a non-fictional account for revelation might reasonably seem disrespectful to all involved parties. There is a sanctity to these stories that does not exist in fiction[1]. The reckoning occurring in the realm of fiction is different than the cultural and social reckoning spurred by the #MeToo movement as readers are permitted and even encouraged to question. In fiction, readers may question the reliability of the narrator, the account of events or the extent to which a character is deserving of punishment. With fiction, questioning is not unkind, it is literary analysis. This is the critical difference: Fiction provides the opportunity to question rather than accept a narrative upon disclosure. Thus, fiction offers certain truths that cannot be offered by non-fiction.
Non-fiction treats the definitive truth as an act of literary imagining. With this in mind, we are better able to understand how Chanel Miller, known by many as the Stanford rape survivor, rewrote her rape story when she read it aloud to her rapist, Brock Turner, at his sentencing hearing in May of 2016. Miller’s spoken letter, detailing the rape and the excruciatingly painful, year-long build-up to a trial, was so articulate and moving that whereas Turner was hated by the masses, Miller was deservedly lauded for her bravery. Miller’s letter, which preceded the #MeToo movement, was published in its entirety on BuzzFeed and read aloud on CNN and the floor of the U.S. Congress. Miller’s unwavering refusal to be just a victim laid the groundwork for waves of women who would, two years later, go public with their own stories in attempts to reclaim the acts done to them.
In January of 2015, 20-year-old Brock Allen Turner, a name now recognized and despised the world over, made international headlines after he raped an unconscious Miller behind a dumpster. He made headlines again when he was sentenced to only six months[2] in county jail and probation. The purposefully short sentencing determined by the judge[3] presiding over the case was explained as an attempt to avoid any “severe impact” on Turner’s swimming career — a fact that aptly embodies the ludicrous gains of white, male privilege (Baker). Miller, who was known at the time only as “Emily Doe” before later relinquishing her anonymity in 2019, begins her extraordinarily well-crafted letter: “You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today” (Baker). Throughout the letter, Miller makes clear that she has virtually no control over a situation that has happened and is continuing to happen to her. She describes accidentally finding the news article detailing her rape, and learning what happened to her “the same time everyone else in the world learned what happened;” she describes her inability to control the narrative both in trial and in the news (“I was warned,” she says, “because he now knows you don’t remember, he is going to get to write the script”); she describes her shocked reaction to seeing Turner’s swimming times published in an article about the rape; she describes the extent to which her personal life and character were probed by Turner’s powerful attorneys for any loopholes in his favor and, although there were witnesses to the rape and although those witnesses gave police reports, she describes how she was forced to fight for a year “to make it clear that there was something wrong with this situation” (Baker). Over four years after the rape and three years after she delivered her letter to Turner, Miller made her identity publicly known, telling The Irish Times “The MeToo movement is the reason I can come out now.”
Miller’s personal account of her rape and the subsequent experiences that followed resulted in Turner’s guilty verdict, as ruled by the court of public opinion. Brock Turner did not receive condign punishment for his actions, but that his name has stayed in our collective consciousness and that his reputation will always be conflated with this rape is a testament to Miller’s determination. In the letter, Miller is not consumed with punishing Turner (“I do not want Brock to rot away in prison,” she writes), rather her primary goal is to affirm that she is a survivor (Baker). This type of thinking, informed first and foremost with a goal of doing right by the survivor and, secondary to this, ensuring the punishment that is owed is brought to fruition, is seen in the early emergence of the #MeToo movement.
Where the #MeToo movement took a turn was when it lost sight of this thinking and instead became a reactive movement. Instead of prioritizing the survivors, there was a shift to prioritize the take down of wrongdoers. If the movement started with individuals publicly sharing that they, too, were survivors, it ended with perpetrators and alleged perpetrators alike getting “me too’d.” As the movement expanded, men who had not committed acts as unequivocally heinous as those committed by Turner were still brought down in the same incredibly loud and very public manner. When “#MeToo” stopped being a symbol for progressive reform and turned into blind rage, it was easier for critics to begin discounting the entire movement, forgetting its original aims to combat sexual abuse and violence in all its forms.
The non-fiction of the #MeToo era, taking place over the course of the past few years, perpetuated a belief held by #MeToo and the “Believe Women” slogan which assumes that allegations are proof enough of wrongdoing. This belief stems, in large part, from long-held, deep-seated frustrations with failings of judicial systems to believe women, especially in she-said-he-said cases. Women should be taken for their word when they say they have been violated. Issues arise, however, when #MeToo began to rely on the court of public opinion to serve justice and rectify wrongdoings instead of on legal proceedings. In his recent opinion piece, columnist Michael Stern, a federal prosecutor of 25 years, expresses his skepticism over the claims made by Tara Reade, who has accused presidential hopeful Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993 when she was a staff assistant in his Senate office. Stern acknowledges that his “default response […] when women make allegations of sexual assault” is to believe them, but, to him, Reade’s account appears dubious. “If we must blindly accept every allegation of sexual assault, the #MeToo movement is just a hit squad,” Stern writes. “And it’s too important to be no more than that.” This blind acceptance exemplifies the fallacies of the well-intentioned “Believe Women” slogan.
Many others, however, have voiced support for Reade while unequivocally condemning any and all voices expressing disbelief. The Vox reporter Laura McGann, one of several reporters Reade reached out to when she came forward with her allegations, has maintained close communication with Reade and her family and friends over the course of a year. In her essay “The Agonizing Story of Tara Reade,” McGann writes that although it is unfair to an individual survivor that their claims be subjected to excessive levels of scrutiny, that is “what reporters have found is necessary.” McGann acknowledges that she “wanted to believe Reade” and she “wanted to break the story,” yet she finds herself “where no reporter wants to be: mired in the miasma of uncertainty.” This does not, she says, mean that Reade is lying, but it does leave us “in the limbo of Me Too,” with a story that may be true, but that we cannot prove to be (McGann). The “Believe Women” mindset is important. It values women’s voices, validates their experiences and condemns all forms of sexual assault and violence. Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse writes that “Believe Women” is problematic when we “understand it to mean, ‘never believe another man again,’” but not when we “understand it to mean that men have had a decades-long dominance of the believability market.” The slogan, nevertheless, does assume that the person on the other end of the allegation is guilty until proven innocent. And even then, the #MeToo movement is not concerned with proving any allegations wrong, as doing so might reasonably undermine the aims and damage the credibility of the cause. By rigidly controlling the acceptable forms of truth, the movement allowed unexamined narratives to threaten actual livelihoods, suggesting a descent from the pursuit of justice into chaos.
Chapter I: Collective Adjudication of Sexual Ethics via Fiction
Legal judgement and the judgement used by journalists in the reporting of #MeToo stories removes ambiguity in a way that literary judgement does not. The existence of ambiguity is a hurdle for legal proceedings; in the reporting process, ambiguity calls into question a journalist’s ethics, thereby threatening the reputation of a given media outlet. Whereas the judicial system and the world of journalism seek truth through clarity, fiction does not share this aim. Ambiguity in #MeToo fiction was purposefully implemented in such a way whereby readers were forced to engage with sexual assault in its myriad forms.
On October 5 of 2017, New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published the first article documenting the countless instances of sexual abuse committed by Harvey Weinstein. Five days later, on October 10, Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker published allegations against Weinstein made by 13 additional women. These articles, which led to Weinstein’s subsequent and swift fall from grace, are considered to be the first, defining acts of the #MeToo movement[4]. One year after the publication of the Weinstein investigation, The Times reported that the movement had “brought down” 201 powerful men. Recently, in what was seen by many as a major win for the movement, Weinstein was found guilty of felony sex crime and rape.
No realm of ambiguity existed in Weinstein’s case — nearly 100 women[5] publicly accused him of sexual assault or harassment (Demme). He is, undoubtedly, a serial abuser. Thus, Weinstein’s place in #MeToo history exists in opposition to more ambiguously defined offenses. By replicating tales based in accusation and producing them one on top of the other, the non-fiction of the time blurred a range of infractions into one indistinguishable and inseparable clump of immorality. The #MeToo movement was flawed insofar as it unequivocally condemned all of these acts in such a way as to effectively equate them, leaving no room for nuance or recognition of the very unequal repercussions yielded by sexual assault as opposed to those yielded by unwanted attention. Relevant fiction, however, consciously separated these acts.
Mary Gaitskill’s protagonist Quin is guilty of “reckless flirting” (Taylor), and Hanif Kureishi’s Mateo twice makes unwanted verbal sexual propositions to his friend’s wife. As unwelcome as these acts may be, they exist in a realm wholly separate and apart from Weinstein’s definable crimes. In her article “Aziz Ansari, ‘Cat Person,’ and the #MeToo Backlash,” Anna Silman writes, “Now, women’s internal experiences are seen as worthy of discussing, and a lot of women are being more vocal about articulating a connection — if not an equivalence — between the kind of commonplace misogynist behavior that Ansari reportedly displayed and the more heinous offenses committed by men like Weinstein and his ilk.” If we were to imagine a spectrum of immoral behavior, Weinstein and others like him who used and heinously abused their power and position would occupy the furthest end of the spectrum, representative of the most reprehensible acts. The reckless flirting and the verbal propositions, however, would exist on the opposite end of the spectrum. The capacity to collectively pause and reflect on why this distinction was not only important but necessary got lost in a movement fueled by immediate action and rage.
When the #MeToo movement began to legitimize the outing of all bad behavior — ranging from bodily violation to annoying text messages — in an unregulated and lawless fashion, it failed to consider what was supposed to happen to these perpetrators and alleged perpetrators after their public destructions. The movement itself was, of course, not concerned with any accused individual’s life post-accusations. Yet when high-profile, previously accused individuals attempt a return to living their lives, they are frequently met with public vitriol. The personal essay “Reflections from a Hashtag” is proof of this. Penned by former Canadian cultural icon Jian Ghomeshi, the essay details his life after numerous allegations of physical and sexual abuse took down his reputation and career. Ghomeshi is a serial abuser, unquestionably much nearer to Weinstein on the spectrum of immoral behavior than to Ansari, as nearly 20 women have accused him of abuse. Although he was acquitted on four counts of sexual assault and one count of nonconsensual choking, Ghomeshi acknowledges — sort of — wrongdoing on his part, writing that he feels “deep remorse” about how he treated others and confessing that he was “emotionally thoughtless.” It is a weak apology, but the essay itself is not an apology letter. Ian Buruma, who published Ghomeshi’s piece in the New York Review of Books, saw the personal essay as “an important contribution to a discussion worth having.” Much of the fierce criticism directed toward the piece stems from the fact that Ghomeshi humanizes himself, making himself out to be more than just a perpetrator. He talks about his suicidal ideations; he recognizes that his behavior is “part of a systemic culture of unhealthy masculinity,” which might be read as an excusatory deflection, and he writes that, upon posting a video to YouTube unrelated to the assaults, “a Toronto weekly declared that [he] had ‘slithered out from underneath [his] rock’” (Ghomeshi). Because #MeToo was a populist movement born out of shared experiences and shared anger, when a perpetrator was exposed, they became a public menace. We perceived Ghomeshi’s attempts to resume living his life as akin to committing another sin — as if his very existence is a crime.
If we look at Ghomeshi’s essay from the perspective of a detached outsider, it is an interesting piece of non-fiction, not for any insight as to how and why he violated others — because he himself does not seem to know how or why — but for its presentation of a perspective largely absent from the world of non-fiction: the perpetrator’s. Buruma, who was fired for publishing the Ghomeshi piece, told the Financial Times in the article “Editing in an Age of Outrage” that he was “reminded by a member of the editorial staff that #MeToo was a movement” and publishing the piece was “way out of line.” Nuance was unnecessary, he was told, as it was “considered to be a form of complicity” (Buruma). By abolishing nuance, we disable our ability to humanize and empathize, though it might be reasonably argued that Ghomeshi and others are undeserving of empathy. Ultimately, the fact of the matter is that we have willed ourselves into disabling our capacity to understand.
It is still worthwhile to consider where our willingness to empathize begins and ends: If we cannot empathize with Ghomeshi, can we empathize with Ansari? Who is deserving of empathy and who is not? Fiction aids in grappling with these questions. Hanif Kureishi’s short story “She Said He Said,” delves into forgotten nuance. #MeToo fiction, like Kureishi’s story, not only embraced nuance, it also, either directly or indirectly, acknowledged and even, in some cases, expressed empathy toward the humanized perpetrator. Mateo, a married man, twice asks his friend Len’s wife, Sushila, to have sex with him. Len becomes fixated on trying to punish Mateo, and he is certain that he is justified in this endeavor in light of Mateo’s immoral and reckless acts. But there is a confused sense of right and wrong as Len’s attempts to rectify the situation backfire, and he causes both Sushila and Mateo’s wife additional upset. Len’s moral high ground is further shaken when Mateo begins to speak to him about the cultural shift taking place over intimacy. “In the chaos,” Mateo says, “those seeking love would make missteps; there would be misunderstandings. […] But it was essential that people try to connect, […] Otherwise, we would become a society of strangers” (Kureishi 3). It is a particularly moving moment in the text, and the sentiment is surprising in its thoughtfulness because it is spoken by Mateo, who, up until now, is the story’s villain. Instead of reacting apologetically, defensively or callously, Mateo responds with genuine feeling. Reminiscent of Ghomeshi’s supposed realizations, Mateo recognizes both his mistakes and the fact that the rules for the pursuit of intimacy have changed.
Mateo’s perspective is largely absent from the story, and because of this, we view him only from Len’s skewed perspective. Len is understandably angry with Mateo for making advances on his wife, and after confronting him, he is even angrier when Mateo responds calmly and thoughtfully. It is then that Len confronts Mateo’s wife and learns that Mateo has made “crude” advancements on other women — and that he “had been in therapy for twenty years” for this behavior (Kureishi 2). Here, both Len and the reader may feel justified in their frustration toward Mateo for putting these women through “deliberately inflicted cruelty” when he must know better by now (Kureishi 2). Sushila, however, reminds Len that the unwanted advances happened to her — that this is not “his story” — and furthermore, Mateo’s behavior was not harmful, but rather “self-destructive” (Kureishi 2). She then complicates the narrative Len has constructed by saying Mateo’s wife is celibate, though the two are “genuine companions” (Kureishi 2). This information does not excuse Mateo’s actions, but we are perhaps better equipped to empathize with his intentions. His later insight on the pursuit of intimacy frames Mateo not as the “serial abuser” Len believes him to be, but as a lonely man desperately seeking out physical relations in the wrong way (Kureishi 2). At the end of the story, Len leaves. The story ends with the line: “He started to walk quickly away, but he knew that, however far he went, he’d have to come back to this place — if he could find it” (Kureishi 3). Len’s realization that Mateo is a complex human being rather than the mere embodiment of the vulgar acts he is responsible for complicates a narrative that might otherwise have depicted Mateo as merely a perpetrator and Sushila as merely a survivor. In actuality, the story is more complex, and to showcase the nuance of the situation is to present it truthfully.
In reading the #MeToo investigations, we accepted that the alleged perpetrators were no better than the worst things they had ever done — which is why we thought it reasonable that their jobs, reputation and identities be stripped away from them as retribution. In the story, it is unclear whether Len ever returns. The vague ending elicits an intense confusion on the part of the reader that mirrors the confusion felt by Len as this cultural shift regarding intimacy and personal relations is taking place. The ending’s ambiguity is more symbolic than anything: As Len experiences these cultural modifications, he cannot return to prevailing ideologies — ideologies that are no longer being upheld, but instead called into question.
Chapter II: The Literary Predicament in Fiction and the Literary Value of Ambiguity
In reading Chanel Miller’s letter, it is perhaps impossible not to feel a sense of unmitigated rage toward Brock Turner. Now, five years after he raped Miller, we might ask ourselves: What do we want from him? Is it enough that he lives in infamy, or would justice only be complete if men like Turner, Ghomeshi and Weinstein ceased to exist altogether? The limits of our empathy are tested in pieces of nonfiction, but they are stretched even further in the realm of fiction. Fiction dares ask: Can we empathize with a known perpetrator, especially when the perpetrated acts are the most reprehensible crimes of bodily violation? The literary predicament in fiction is the extremely precise balance struck between believability and the stretched limits of empathetic imagining. Our capacity to imagine is truly tested through the use of literary ambiguity. Ambiguity asks us to interpret using best judgement. And, in doing so, it reveals the limits of our empathetic imagining.
In fiction, ambiguity is an appealing and valued element, providing an indescribable sense of wonderment and dynamism. How is it, then, that this same force is so volatile in real-life intimacy? Ambiguity as a literary and artistic tool is a completely separate entity than the ordinary ambiguity of daily life. William Empson, the first to characterize ambiguity as essential to literature, said the element effectively creates “an appeal to a background of human experience which is all the more present when it cannot be named.” Our initial inclination when thinking through the literary value of ambiguity might be to think about the element as akin to a moral guide, allowing us to flesh out right and wrong through an interpretative process from which readers will emerge redeemed via analysis. But the anthropologist Gregory Bateson suggests that ambiguity in art might serve to “confound and undermine this hubristic, hands-on impulse to be forever sorting the world out” (Parks). Remaking literary ambiguity into a spiritual process through which a reader’s moral redemption may be revealed is simplistic and self-serving. This thinking turns pieces of fiction meant to be appreciated as wholly complex and indefinable into quasi-religious texts, guiding belief systems. Novelist Tim Parks writes that literary ambiguity “encourages a contemplative rather than a purposeful state of mind.” Instead of entering into analysis of literary ambiguity believing it to be a catalyst for the revelation of personal principle, we must enter into analysis of ambiguity within #MeToo fiction as cause for rumination. Ambiguity must be considered as a means to illuminate pre-existing values and belief systems rather than a means of internal reconciliation or external retribution.
Ambiguity permeates Kristen Roupenian’s short story “Cat Person,” as a sort of indefinably sickening yet omnipresent sense of discomfort. The piece cares less about making a decisive point than it does about sweeping the reader up into an ongoing and constantly evolving discourse, oftentimes with no discernible moral compass. Ansari’s ambiguously-defined and separately interpreted conduct — which may or may not be misconduct, depending on who is asked — may have evoked in readers forms of anger, confusion, self-reflection or a mix of all three. Comparatively, Roupenian’s fictional narrative, which depicts a similarly ambiguous act of intimacy, is more interestingly ambiguous. This is primarily because delving into the ambiguity in Ansari’s situation feels offensive, especially because Grace experienced the night as a form of violation. As readers of Grace’s story, we are asked to politely observe, but as readers of Roupenian’s piece, we are invited to engage.
Told in first-person narrative, through its college-aged protagonist Margot’s perspective, “Cat Person” gives a first-hand account of Margot’s initial excitement about the prospect of a budding romance with an older man named Robert. This excitement quickly turns to anxiety and then dread when she realizes she does not want to pursue these relations further. Though Margot wishes to end the relationship, she feels trapped: As if, by entering into a romantic prospect with the best intentions, only to discover she is no longer enjoying the experience, her initial interest has effectively thwarted any say she has in whether or not the relationship continues. What begins as a classic heterosexual meet-cute devolves into an unnerving depiction and discussion about the dread and discomfort many women experience in sexual and romantic relations — even when consensual — and the emotional labor women must perform to manage the feelings of others so as to avoid confrontation, shame or even violent retaliation.
The emotions depicted are universal, and Margot’s experience is one that is unavoidable for most women. “Cat Person” is able to capture female discomfort so true-to-form as to have read, for some, as non-fiction[6]. The piece’s ability to so perfectly narrate an experience of this kind might explain the story’s virality. Fiction does not usually go viral on the Internet, so it was shocking to literary scholars and critics alike when “Cat Person” initially gained mass traction after its publication in The New Yorker at the height of the #MeToo movement. In retrospect, although a significant body of texts delving into ambiguities in cases of sexual assault had been published prior to “Cat Person,” Roupenian’s story had a sizeable impact on national discourse surrounding consent. Ultimately, everyone had something to say about “Cat Person.” The story spurred a significant amount of online debate revealing the ways in which many women saw themselves in the story while many men felt personally attacked.
The piece itself was cloaked in a sort of vague chattiness, twisting it into a hyper-specific yet generalized account of a ubiquitous narrative. The ambiguity exists most explicitly at the story’s ending, when Margot exits the plot entirely after having broken things off with Robert. The story has, up until this point, been Margot’s to tell. Without her narration, the story’s ending is left without her input and with no clear resolution. In the end, all that remains are Robert’s text messages to her:
“Hi Margot, I saw you out at the bar tonight. I know you said not to text you but I just wanted to say you looked really pretty. I hope you’re doing well!”
“I know I shouldnt say this but I really miss you”
[…]
“Is that guy you were with tonight your boyfriend”
[…]
“Are you fucking that guy right now”
“Are you”
“Are you”
“Are you”
“Answer me”
“Whore” (Roupenian 14–15).
In its review of Roupenian’s story, The New Republic, an American magazine of commentary, advised readers to avoid the piece “if moral gray zones are your thing,” as the ending rejects “nuance in favor of clarity and intensity.” This analysis could not be more shockingly ill-conceived. Part of what accounts for the massive impact “Cat Person” had is its refusal to administer clarity. The story is a clear commentary only to the extent that it depicts a particular set of circumstances and describes a specific emotional response, at once extremely relatable to so many women, and yet almost impossible to pinpoint or label — and the story doesn’t attempt to do either.
The New Republic evaluates the ending of “Cat Person” as affirmation: instead of “letting us dwell in eternal uncertainty,” the word “whore” serves as “a neat verdict on Robert.” This analysis is unsettling because it suggests that these vulgar messages are only a reflection of Robert and that ending the story in this way is too easy. What this analysis fails to recognize is that the “whore” message is a reproduction of the trope of the retaliatory text message — the message left in a woman’s inbox and then screenshotted and sent to friends or posted on social media. These text messages fail to clarify the situation for either party: Robert will never know exactly why Margot ended their relationship, and Margot will never receive an explanation from Robert about why he felt justified to send these hateful text messages.
Robert’s text messages are a microcosm of a story that is, in and of itself, an imitation of female discomfort. His messages are a social statement on toxic masculinity and male insecurity. The text messages are also an interesting literary tool, and to end the story on a text message, where meaning and tone is notoriously misconstrued, is to leave readers amid uncertainty. There is no clear resolution — unanswered text messages are abrupt an ending as possible. By choosing to end “Cat Person” as a predicament, Roupenian is refusing to give readers suggestive clues of interpretation, instead demanding that they come to their own conclusions. The significance of this bold literary decision cannot be undervalued. The ambiguous ending of “Cat Person” explains the vast and varied reactions to the story itself. It was these disparate reactions that then resulted in important in-person and virtual discord that extended beyond the scope of literary analysis and into social debate and discourse.
Throughout the story, Margot and Robert project onto each other imagined realities. There are moments in the text that fragment this fictionalized reality, such as when Robert acts impatiently and this makes Margot sad, “not so much because she wanted to continue spending time with him as because she’d had such high expectations for him” (Roupenian 3). These imagined realities cause Margot and Robert to misread and misinterpret one another constantly — evident in the fact that Robert viciously attacks Margot in the final lines on the basis of a scenario that he has completely fabricated. These failures in understanding are reminiscent of Ansari’s failure to read Grace’s discomfort. These stories are ripe with uncertainty, and it is in these grey areas that interpretation is born.
If thinking of ambiguity as a vehicle for moral clarity is reductive and naïve, we
might instead consider its presence in literature as acting as an instigator of ethical dilemma. English scholar Adam Zachary Newton’s theory of narrative as ethics suggests that “the ethical consequences of narrating story and fictionalizing person” is the binding of “teller, listener, witness and reader” (Lothe and Hawthorn 5). This relationship manifests in non-fiction in a manner separate and apart from its manifestation in fiction, thus resulting in disparate reactions, even to similar stories. The framing of Grace’s narrative validates her experience and prioritizes her view of the situation. The same is true of “Cat Person,” as Margot’s perspective is also the predominant one. If either Robert or Ansari’s own experiences are considered, it is only as an afterthought. Ethical consequences between these genres differ in the ways in which the two stories ask readers to react. In reading Grace’s non-fictional account of her evening with Ansari, we are asked to empathize. In fiction, although elements may be situated in such a way so as to aim to evoke specific reactions, no response is discounted. In non-fiction, social cues and social context serve as a reactionary guide. Fiction, however, cannot dictate appropriate reactions, therefore all reactions are created equal. This is why fiction, especially fiction that incorporates ambiguity, is effective as an instigator of ethical dilemma, leaving readers in a state of ethical limbo.
In this state of uncertainty, readers might find that they are scrambling to reorient themselves. Under the rhetorical theory of narrative, literary scholar Markku Lehtimäki proposes that reading narratives equip readers with tools for “good moral action.” He adds, however, that this suggestion “may appear simplistic,” preferring “the undecidability of meaning” instead: “In the context of representing a human face,” Lehtimäki says, “we confront the ethical dilemma of representation itself” (101). In this state of limbo created by fiction’s “undecidability of meaning,” we are left looking not to the narrative for decidability, but inward. The manifestation of the ethical dilemma referred to by Newton appears as a personal reckoning.
This ethical dilemma is further intensified by literary ambiguity, which, for readers, often manifests in the form of discomfort. For the English Philosopher Simon Critchley, ethical relations begin once a reader is “placed in question by the face of the other” (Lehtimäki, 100). The use of “the other” to provoke an ethical response is an idea touched upon in reviews of Gaitskill’s perpetrator-narrated story. In “The Spinoff” review, Adam writes that Gaitskill’s writing “has a way of rendering terms like ‘good and evil’ ridiculous.” She writes, however, that she is unsure whether she is “ready to have this degree of ambiguity extended to an abuser and their supporter” (Adam). This extension of ambiguity — and Adam’s suggestion that this extension is inappropriate — is an apt example of what scholar Katrine Antonsen refers to when she discusses the value of discomfort. Unease “may itself have an ethical force” which “encourages ethical consideration on a number of different levels” (Antonson, 121). Ambiguity begs interpretation, and interpretation is intrinsically tied to one’s ethical and moral positioning. From interpretation is born meaning. Thus, ambiguity precedes and produces Newton’s ethical consequence while also establishing literary value.
The literary value of fictional #MeToo narratives serves as a marker of success in the sense that these stories are valuable because they successfully narrate difficult experiences that real-life survivors often fail to put into words. Literary value is not indicative of or established because of success, in terms of popularity or profit. In other words, “Cat Person” is not able to narrate a difficult experience in a way that feels truthful and genuine because it went viral upon its release. Yet it is undeniable that “Cat Person” was effectively able to construct a realist narrative that read like non-fiction. Whereas scholars criticized the piece for literary shortcomings, its straight-forward, chronological structure parallels that of any piece of #MeToo non-fiction. The story begins with Margot meeting Robert at a movie theater, just as the Babe piece begins with Grace meeting Ansari at a party. The timeline of “This is Pleasure,” by comparison, is nonlinear in its account of events and begins with Margot having known Quin for five years (their first meeting is not recounted until several pages in). Notably, in imitating the chronological structure of non-fiction, “Cat Person” becomes a more effective piece of literature. And this effectiveness is further heightened in its use of ambiguity as a literary and narrative tactic whereby readers are forced into an ethical conundrum.
The act of sexual intercourse between Margot and Robert at the story’s climax exists in a confused and uncertain grey area. Although Margot consents, she repeatedly expresses her discomfort with following through, and experiences forms of physical and mental distress during the act. Rather than expressing enthusiastic or informed consent, Margot’s agreement would more so fall under the definition of compromised consent (she “knew that her last chance of enjoying this encounter ha[d] disappeared, but that she would carry through with it”) (Roupenian 10). Kipnis recalls a real-life conversation with a young woman who defined a “rape-ish” experience — existing in a “weird place in between consensual sex and rape.” She concludes that this is “a place most women have experienced but no one talks about” (Kipnis, 198). It is the same state of entrapment both Margot and Grace found themselves in. Compromised consent, at least in these scenarios, is seen when Kipnis’ “female passivity,” a reference to socially conditioned mental, physical and emotional compliance, is enacted. During the act, Margot feels “a wave of revulsion;” Robert prods her “not at all gently;” Margot’s “revulsion turn[s] to self-disgust” and then “humiliation” while Robert’s actions are described as “aggressive” and “frantic,” ultimately ending with Robert “collapsed” and Margot “crushed beneath him” (Roupenian 10). Before intercourse, Robert is depicted on top of Margot, “kissing her and weighing her down” (Roupenian 10). The positioning of Margot beneath Robert during this act indicates that Robert is in the position of authority in this situation — that he will be the one both initiating the act and ensuring it occurs according to his needs. It is evident, in the unabashed description of intercourse, that Margot feels, at best, uncomfortable, and at worst, violated or even assaulted.
Seeking absolute clarity about sex which simultaneously borders consent and rape might prove futile, yet the role ambiguity plays in a reader’s analysis of the intercourse scene must not be underrated. On one level, readers are being asked to play the role of judge and jury to interpret the act of intercourse and decide whether it can be chalked up to just an unfortunate evening for Margot or whether it is actually an instance of sexual assault. If the scene is interpreted as merely a cringe-inducing act of uncomfortable albeit consensual intercourse, the reader is implicated as a voyeur. If the scene is interpreted as something more sinister, an act of bodily violation or sexual assault, the reader is made complicit as a bystander. Ultimately, these literary decisions force us to determine what, exactly, is happening in this scene. And in deciding, readers are also choosing between one of two incriminating positions. Whether we are a bystander or a voyeur is largely dependent on how much we read into Margot’s discomfort and the significance we give to the descriptions and imagery of both Robert as a dominant force and Margot as a passive object. Additionally, neither the bystander or voyeur position is gendered, thus enabling us to view the situation from a rare perspective. The voyeur position, more frequently occupied by men, may now be inhabited by anyone, dependent only on a reader’s interpretation. Readers are uninhibited by the constraints gender identity imposes on perspective, and thus potentially enabled to take on a new outlook. By engaging with this story, the reader is placed into larger conversations concerning consent, authority in the context of intimacy and sexual assault.
“Cat Person” also presents the unique opportunity to view a version of the modern date-gone-wrong sans #MeToo movement. Margot feels that she “owe[s]” Robert “some kind of breakup message” — “We had sex,” she says to her roommate when asked why she feels she is unable to merely say she is just not interested in pursuing their relations further (Roupenian 13). Yet when she goes to draft the message (“Thank you for the nice time but I’m not interested in a relationship right now”), Margot becomes anxious that he will find “loopholes” and she will, yet again, find herself trapped (Roupenian 12). Margot’s roommate finally takes her phone and sends a message to Robert absent any loopholes (“Hi im not interested in you stop textng me.”) (Roupenian 13). This is three days after Margot and Robert have sex, and Margot’s emotional response to the situation exists in a simultaneous state of “skin-crawling loathing” and “missing […] the Robert she’d imagined” (Roupenian 12). We might consider what Margot’s emotional response to the situation would have been had she processed the night in the context of the #MeToo movement, as Grace did. A day after their date, Grace sent Ansari a text confronting him about his behavior: “I want to make sure you’re aware,” she writes in the text, “So maybe the next girl doesn’t have to cry on the ride home” (Way). In response, Ansari replies back that he is “sad to hear this,” — “Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry” (Way). Grace’s reaction was reactive and informed by a reactive movement, while Margot’s reaction escalated to the point of reactivity against her wishes.
The #MeToo movement asserted that women deserve to be emotional. How women ought to feel in situations they interpret to be assault or violation cannot and should not be dictated. Female passivity is a learned state of mind, and because women are repressed in terms of acceptable modes of outward expression, women should, at the very least, feel complete autonomy in their emotional reactivity to a situation. There is a difference, however, between settling on one’s emotional response to a situation and weaponizing these emotions. In her 2017 book, Kipnis writes that “sexual consent can now be retroactively withdrawn […] based on changing feelings or residual ambivalence, or new circumstances” (91). Grace went on a date with Ansari in September of 2017, and the article about their date came out about four months later, in January of 2018. It is unclear how long the research and reporting process took, but we might assume that Grace had at least a month or two to reflect on the night before she told her story to Babe. In late 2017 and in 2018, #MeToo stories were trending. It is clear, from her text messages sent the day after their date, that Grace felt violated. Would she, however, have gone to a reporter to detail the night months later if not for the #MeToo movement? In her Atlantic article entitled “The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari,” Caitlin Flanagan, who chalks up the Babe piece to nothing more than “3,000 words of revenge porn,” writes that the #MeToo movement was at “warp speed,” and the women behind these stories “who have spent a lot of time picking out pretty outfits for dates they hoped would be nights to remember” are “angry and temporarily powerful,” and “destroyed a man [Ansari] who didn’t deserve it.” It is undeniable that the visceral rage that emboldened those leading the #MeToo charge was, at times, blinding. Where retribution triumphed, a nuanced viewpoint was sacrificed.
Chapter III: Narratological Ethics and Empathetic Imaginings
These fictional narratives concerned with sexual abuse and published during the #MeToo era are inherently political, as the experience of reading these stories and the interpretation of these stories are contextualized by a global movement. The pieces of fiction and the movement itself are thus interrelated and inseparable. The #MeToo movement, unrelated to these fictional stories and characters, nevertheless framed how we read and interpreted these pieces.
The hermeneutic circle, a theory for understanding how readers reflect on and derive meaning from texts, asserts that fiction does not exist in a vacuum, rather the meaning of a text is rooted in the cultural and historic context which it appears in. In turning to the hermeneutic circle in our consideration of #MeToo fiction, we recognize that our understanding of and engagement with these texts is deeply influenced by external forces. Factors including #MeToo non-fiction, media coverage and current cultural discourse have conditioned all relevant thinking, belief systems and values. The hermeneutic circle itself is the discovery of the “spirit of the whole through the individual, and through the whole to grasp the individual,” according to philologist Friedrich Ast. By acknowledging a symbiotic relationship between text and external influences, we might use the hermeneutic circle to navigate the ambiguously defined relationship between fiction and the #MeToo movement itself. The two are not exactly interdependent — although it is highly unlikely “Cat Person” would have amassed global fame if not for the fact that it was published at the height of #MeToo. The stories do, however, inform the movement, and vice versa. The fictional narratives advanced relevant discourse, with added nuance, while the #MeToo movement heavily influenced the experience of reading these texts.
Yet the relationship between text and social movement becomes trickier to navigate when narratological ethics are factored in. According to scholar Liesbeth Korthals Altes: “ethically oriented approaches to narrative, […] often include the representation of Self [or] Otherness, which are high-impact individual or collective/historical experiences that put at risk human dignity and integrity.” Experiences such as “trauma, suffering and exclusion, […] radically question the boundaries of what convention morality considers appropriate to even imagine from the inside” (Korthals Altes, 31). These experiences include “violence from the perspective of the perpetrator” (Korthals Altes, 31). This is a literary predicament that concerns the ethics of imagining. Roupenian’s Margot brings a voice and a name, albeit fictional, to female discomfort. By doing this, the story advances the #MeToo movement in its aims to quash this discomfort before it is felt. In other literary imaginings, however, the presentation of sexual abuse — especially when this presentation is from the perspective of the perpetrator — stands in defiant opposition to the narratives the #MeToo movement saw as truthful and acceptable. In dictating what narratives were deemed admissible, the movement restricted our ability to entertain perspectives outside of our own. And, in doing so, restricted our capacity for empathetic thinking.
The short story “This Is Pleasure” tests the boundaries of narrative ethics by allowing a serial perpetrator to tell a nuanced and, at times, sympathetic account of his own downfall at the hands of the women he has abused. The story switches between the perspective of Quin, a well-known book editor who has recently been fired from his job after numerous women have come forward to accuse him of misconduct, and Margot, Quin’s long-time friend, who does defend his behavior, repeatedly, but not always blindly. Quin asks female friends, colleagues and sometimes strangers about their sexual fantasies and their boyfriends or gives them advice that borders on and sometimes crosses the line of overly-intimate. But it is never clear exactly where he falls on the spectrum of immoral behavior. In the story, we learn that the two women he touches inappropriately and without consent are Margot and his secretary, Hortense, yet both of these women genuinely defend him once the accusations roll in. The plot challenges the tropes of the #MeToo movement and evokes difficult and perhaps even slightly crude questions such as: Should the women who have been physically abused by Quin have more of a say in what becomes of him? At what point are victims justified in reporting? Where is the line which differentiates acts that are annoying from acts that are actual misdeeds, and who defines this — individual victims or society at large? It is these kinds of nuanced snags that intentionally confuse how we are supposed to feel reading this piece.
Just as “This is Pleasure” disorients its readers, the situations described confound the two primary characters. Therefore, any clarity we are able to surmise from the actions of our main characters is severely restricted, as both the present versions of Margot and Quin struggle immensely to find solid footing in the aftermath of Quin’s public shaming. The first sentence of the story turns out to be the first of seemingly endless Quin anecdotes recounted by Margot. “There are so many funny or awful stories that it’s hard to stop telling them,” Margot says at one point, purposefully making no distinction between “funny” and “awful,” reflecting how an anecdote meant as lighthearted humor might reasonably be interpreted differently depending on the audience. (Gaitskill 13). This first anecdote is the one of Quin, who is engaged at the time, approaching a “melancholy-looking” woman, a stranger, in Central Park, by saying “Aren’t you the gentle one!” (Gaitskill 1). The two exchange numbers then and there, and they later speak on the phone. This woman feels seen, and responds accordingly. She is delighted by the attention, and she is charmed by Quin, who is described by Margot in a later passage as not beautiful, but giving off “an unexpected impression of beauty” (Gaitskill 1). This woman is one of over a dozen women throughout the story who responds to Quin’s self-amusing and self-interested flirtation with glee. There are a handful of “self-possessed” women who respond with disgust or rejection, but notably, these are not the women who expose him (Gaitskill 12). Rather, it is a handful of his former admirers who later turn on him. In recounting this first story, Margot recalls that she and Quin laughed at this woman. “She would like being hurt, but very slightly,” Quin says of the Central Park woman. “You’d spank her with, I don’t know, a Ping-Pong paddle? And then touch her clit. This is pleasure. […] And this is pain” (Gaitskill 1). This is, of course, the titular line, and for good reason. “This is Pleasure” is concerned with pleasured pain and pained pleasure and the grey area separating the two.
It is also concerned with those indefinable acts on the fringe of sexual harassment and the ease with which these acts are equated to misdeeds of a greater magnitude. Quin’s behavior toward women, which is, at times, inappropriate, is never criminal. Quin’s accusers were formerly rapturous followers. Young, early-career girls are devoted to Quin, as if he is some sort of sex guru. He curates their wardrobes, drafts text messages to their boyfriends, asks frequent and intimate questions about their love and sex lives and, most of all, totes each new find around as if she were an accessory. Notably, Quin’s accusers are not survivors. These women derived real pleasure from his company and his attention — before her accusation, Quin’s first accuser, Caitlin, calls his flirtation “delicious” (Gaitskill 7). Prior to #MeToo, coy, coquettish behavior in everyday settings was normalized as a kind of light-hearted playfulness. The Quins of the world have found casual seduction to work in their favor, bolster their reputation and heighten their appeal. Yet as Margot insinuates in “This is Pleasure,” there is an underlying misogyny in Quin’s use of women to “amuse” and “entertain” himself and others (Gaitskill 10, 4). This mindset, which effectively lessens the humanity of women, is bred by patriarchy and replete with microaggressions. The #MeToo era effectively determined that this behavior would no longer be condoned. But because the movement lacked nuance and distinction in the assortment of levels of wrongdoing, at some point there was a slippage, and the Quins of the world, bumbling idiots who did not perceive their actions to be harmful, were wrongly seen as dangerous.
Pleasure has been plagued by fear. We all find ourselves confused in the face of erotic desire, yet this confusion is no longer benign. Instead, as a result of continuing cultural shifts, this confusion manifests as a threat. Kipnis observes that the prevailing emphasis in the realm of sexual encounters is no longer on pleasure, but on “danger and vulnerability” (9). If the prevailing narrative “is that sex is dangerous, sex is going to feel threatening more of the time,” and, furthermore, “anything associated with sex, no matter how innocuous (a risqué remark, a dumb joke) will feel threatening” (Kipnis 9). A fictionalized version of the #MeToo movement — never directly named but undoubtedly meant to mirror #MeToo — is responsible for Quin’s downfall in “This is Pleasure.” Of course, Quin is responsible for his own behavior. It is difficult, however, to imagine that Quin’s former admirers would have taken action against him had they not been told by a #MeToo fictional equivalent that his attention, once welcomed, should instead be seen and defined as unwanted. As with the real #MeToo movement, previously innocuous behaviors — unwanted text messages, flirtation, phone calls — were redefined as predatory behaviors. Whereas Quin’s former followers likely felt some shame in actively participating in a continued flirtation with an engaged and then married man, cultural shifts and prevailing ideologies told these women to accept no blame, even though they were willing, eager and enthusiastically consensual participants. Instead they were told to solely blame him. Their guilty pleasures were rewritten as harassment, and they willingly accepted this new narrative as truth.
Quin is a “creep,” a “voyeur,” a “narcissist” and a “crybaby” — his accuser Caitlin jokingly calls him these names while they are still friends, though there is underlying truth (Gaitskill 12). Importantly, he is not a perpetrator. “You’re not even a predator,” Quin’s wife, Carolina says to him. “You’re a fool. A pinching, creeping fool” (Gaitskill 18). “This is Pleasure” asks us to consider whether Quin’s destruction is warranted. Can we forgive Quin or empathize with him? And does he deserve forgiveness or empathy? Quin’s ping-pong paddle pleasure/pain quip becomes a years-long joke between Margot and her husband. In looking back at this memory, which takes place prior to the accusations, Margot asks: “Why did I think it was so funny? It seems strange to me when I look back on it now. Because I don’t want to laugh. I feel pain” (Gaitskill 1). It is unclear who Margot is directing these questions to, and because this is unclear, we, the readers, take the place of her confidant. In her review of Gaitskill’s story, Pip Adam writes that the lack of a clear moral compass in the story makes “us far more implicated in the work, [because] there’s no one telling us what to think or who to trust or that we’ll be okay — no one telling us how to be a decent human being in this situation. What makes ‘This is Pleasure’ so terrifying isn’t the risk that someone will tell us that rapists are okay, but that we have to decide for ourselves” (Adam). Adam makes a noteworthy and problematic conflation by insinuating that in empathizing with Quin, we empathize with a rapist. This is not an isolated misunderstanding. According to #MeToo, if we empathize with any perpetrator, we might as well be empathizing with a serial abuser like Weinstein or Ghomeshi.
This conflation is also evident in the text itself, as Quin’s reputation and career are destroyed by a fictional version of the “Shitty Media Men” list,[7] which was the subject of widespread discussion and debate. Toward the end of the story, it is Margot who finally explains the details of Quin’s undoing: his name is listed on a petition, signed by “hundreds of women,” that names “multiple ‘abusers’” and demands “that no one ever hire them again” (Gaitskill 18). It is this petition that takes him down. Much of the controversy that stemmed from the actual “Shitty Media Men” list was the fact that the 70 men on this list were all equally condemned, yet the actual accusations levied against them (from anonymous accusers) ranged from “flirting” and “weird lunch dates” to rape, sexual assault, stalking and physical abuse (Shafrir). When portrayed through fiction, it is perhaps easier to see how empathizing with men like Quin is made more difficult when their names are sandwiched between actual rapists and predators. In fiction, the consequences of equating men like Quin or Ansari to men like Weinstein appears more bleak.
“This is Pleasure” compels its readers to consider whether these consequences were entirely justified. As Adam points out, it does this by implicating the reader. Just as with “Cat Person” and “She Said He Said,” the presence of literary ambiguity serves to confuse our initial inclinations, thus we are left to thoughtfully sort out right and wrong on our own. Our implication, however, extends beyond forced thoughtfulness. English Scholar Jeremy Hawthorn, writes that fiction offers “something that real life does not offer us: guilt-free voyeurism” (79). But in synonymizing the reading of stories like “This is Pleasure” with voyeurism, Hawthorn acknowledges that we are nevertheless placed in a compromising position. The complex portrait of an abuser and his defender as narrators challenges and confuses relevant discourse. We discover that there is no clear-cut categorization of perpetrators and victims as right and wrong, just as Kureishi’s character Len discovers that there is no clear-cut path to retribution for an ambiguously defined crime.
Reading fiction is a suspension of the self to embody the other. This is an inherent benefit to ourselves and to our relationship with others as it is an expansion of our capacity to understand. Fiction asks us: Who would we be if not ourselves? And that answer informs our perception of the self. In order for fiction to leave an indelible impression on its readers, it need not have a clear-cut lesson. This is because “aesthetic experience has an intrinsic ethical effect, irrespective of the presence or absence of ‘message,’” writes scholar Leona Toker (Lehtimäki, 98). Widely accessible online commentary serves as real-time reaction to the “aesthetic experience” of both #MeToo fiction and non-fiction. And relatively few pieces of fiction, related or unrelated to the #MeToo movement, received as much online attention as “Cat Person” did.
In the wake of its virality, the story received a significant amount of praise. Twitter commentators said: “I found it disturbing and highly relatable;” “She struck a balance that makes people question their preconceived notions about relationships, feminism, consent” and “It was honestly so plausible I still don’t quite believe it was fiction” (Halpern). In a personal essay written after the publication of “Cat Person,” Roupenian touches upon a peculiar complication which arose as a consequence of Internet fame: In the story’s “second life as an Internet Sensation,” she writes, “its status as fiction had largely got lost.” We need look no further than Twitter commentary (“I still don’t quite believe it was fiction”) for confirmation. That “Cat Person” depicted female discomfort in so authentic a manner as to give the story verisimilitude is astounding. Although Roupenian has said the piece is not autobiographical, it reads as such for some. The text’s realism is, at once, a nod to the piece’s literary value, and also a nod to The New Yorker’s strategic timing and publishing prowess. Media outlets undoubtedly capitalized on the popularity of #MeToo stories for clicks (“Women are now very into the victim story,” as Gaitskill’s Quin brashly puts it, or, as Kipnis sees it, we have always “favored stories about female endangerment over stories about female agency.”) (Gaitskill 24, Kipnis 8). Yet the success of Roupenian’s story is not merely attributable to it being in vogue. The piece touched a nerve for thousands of readers, and in analyzing reading experiences, we are effectively analyzing the ethical effects of the narrative on readers.
Playing out inside and outside of these stories are tangible aesthetic experiences intrinsically tied to ethical responses. “Cat Person” received an influx of positive responses, and it received an equal amount of criticism. In his letter addressed to the fictional Margot and titled “Dear Cat-Person Girl,” writer Kyle Smith offers Margot a meager apology for the “awkward sex” she had with Robert before he leaps into a pathetic, slut-shaming tirade: “I don’t think you have thought through how you got into a terrible situation. Robert is your seventh sexual partner. You’re 20 years old. Margot, [and] seven is too many.” Smith scolds Margot for her choices in a deeply patronizing, condescending and upsetting manner. There is a disturbing level of genuine anger and frustration in the male author’s tone, yet there is also genuine fear. Why should fiction evoke such an intense emotional response? On the outset, the letter appears at best, bizarre, and at worst, deeply misogynistic. Smith might be easily dismissed as an angry outlier, but his letter is, in actuality, a microcosm of the male rage and male fear which culminated as a counter-reaction to the #MeToo movement.
Albeit disturbing, Smith’s letter is, at its core, an instance of literary engagement and analysis, while other, similar types of impassioned #MeToo backlash yielded real, tangible consequences. Suspecting that the movement had produced more negative than positives effects, researchers at the University of Houston tested their hypothesis with a study that asked a variety of questions to hundreds of men and women from a number of work industries. According to the findings, after the height of the #MeToo era, 19% of men surveyed said they were “reluctant to hire attractive women,” 21% of men said they were “reluctant to hire women for jobs involving close interpersonal interactions with men” and 27% of men said they “avoided one-on-one meetings” with their female colleagues (“The #MeToo Backlash”). It is possible that lessening one-on-one workplace male-female meetings eliminated some potential female discomfort, passivity and pain. It is more likely, however, that women lost out on opportunities, workplace advancements and social mobility as a result of conscious retaliation by men afraid of being accused.
These fears, which may or may not be baseless, are embodied by Gaitskill’s Quin and Kureishi’s Mateo. Of his public ousting, Quin says “this is the end of men like me” (Gaitskill 20). The accusers are “angry at what’s happening in the country and in the government,” he says, and “they can’t strike at the king, so they go for the jester” (Gaitskill 20). Notably, Quin understands that his power and position are not so great as to make him untouchable. His vulnerability leads to his downfall, and this downfall is seen as a triumph by those who feel he wronged them. The scenario is reminiscent of the apparent indestructibility of Donald Trump, a serial assaulter and misogynist. #MeToo could not strike at Trump, so it went for less powerful figures, like Ansari.
The jailing of Harvey Weinstein is a defining success and a fitting ending to a movement now overshadowed by a global pandemic, yet uncertainty and fear remains, evident in findings that suggest a significant portion of men feel they must avoid women in order to avoid being accused of wrongdoing. After his confrontation with Len, Mateo concludes that “in these impossible times, courtship rituals were being corrected” (Kureishi 3). The fear and backlash to #MeToo, embodied by Quin and Mateo, are displays of desperate self-preservation. But it is more than this. These fictional narratives delve into our ongoing cultural modification — the most noteworthy aesthetic experience at hand. These cultural shifts, taking place in the realms of romance, intimacy and sex, are ongoing. How does one respond to or even discern female passivity? Or compromised consent? Or sexual encounters that may be reinterpreted in retrospect? And what do we do with all of this uncertainty? The fact of the matter is that there has been no closure to the #MeToo movement.
In the final scene of “This Is Pleasure,” Quin walks the streets of New York and describes his surroundings: “sullen men” and “women striding into traffic” as “life rushes by” (Gaitskill 24). A beggar looks at him and says, “Don’t be so sad. It’ll get better by and by,” and Quin tells us he believes this man (“I am on the ground and bleeding, but I will stand up again.”) (Gaitskill 24). Then the beggar laughs and shouts something Quin cannot hear. In the next and final line, Quin turns, with “a dollar already in [his] hand” (Gaitskill 25) What we have witnessed is the downfall of a man. Quin, a once-reputable publisher, is now nothing, but begging to be something again. It is unclear what becomes of him, just as it is unclear what becomes of Roupenian’s Margot and Kureishi’s Len and Mateo. These characters, emblematic of the perpetrator, the survivor and the spectator, represent us. As the fictional stories end, we are left to ponder ambiguous endings and, by virtue of this, to contemplate our humanity. Gaitskill could have chosen to clarify Quin’s future — she could have served him with a lawsuit or sent him to court — but instead, his fate remains unclear. In the end, she makes him just another person who has erred and faltered and lost their way.
Non-fiction is bound by truth, and truth does not always lend itself to neat, satisfactory endings. But then again, the #MeToo movement, like most political movements, did not set out to seek an ultimate reconciliation, it sought ideological change. So if non-fiction provided truth and facts, fiction helped us think through what to do with this information. By making its audience active, complicit characters in these stories, fiction asked its readers: Who do you want to be to yourself? And who to you want to be to others? When we avoid nuance because it complicates the narrative and challenges us, we fail ourselves and each other. In the chaos of #MeToo, of article upon article upon article revealing revered men to be predators, we never slowed down to consider the unwanted ramifications in our immediate desire for justice. When we read and observed these articles, it was with suspicion and fear, not compassion or empathy. When we read fiction, we are brought back to ourselves. We are made and forced to think on our own. And we discover who we are to ourselves and who we are to each other.
Works Cited
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[1] Relatively little has been written about the moral issues associated with readers’ violation of fictional characters’ privacy. The scholar Dorrit Cohn interpreted “penetration into the consciousness of others” not as a moral dilemma, but rather as “a mark of fiction” (Hawthorn, 76). Likewise, scholar Jeremy Hawthorn writes that it is “not wrong to invade the privacy of literary characters” and in fact a “succession of commentators” believes that “doing so has a positive moral function” (Hawthorn, 78). In reading novels and short stories, Hawthorn writes, we are allowed to “mimic forms of behavior that, in real life, are morally unacceptable, so that we can learn about human behavior,” (Hawthorn, 78).
[2] Although Turner was sentenced to six months in county jail, he served only three months. He was released early for “good behavior” (Levin).
[3] Former California judge Aaron Persky was recalled from his position for his sentencing in the Turner case. According to CNN, “it was the first time since 1932 that a sitting judge was recalled by California voters.” Last year, Persky was fired from his job as a high school girls’ junior varsity tennis coach after the school district learned of his connection to the Turner case (Watts)
[4] Ten days after the publication of The Times’ initial investigation into Weinstein, the actress Alyssa Milano asked sexual assault survivors via Twitter to share their stories using “#MeToo.” Milano was unaware that Black civil rights activist Tarana Burke had coined the phrase a decade earlier (Brockes). Though Burke is credited as the “Me Too” founder, Milano popularized the hashtag #MeToo. In the first few weeks following Milano’s tweet, “#MeToo” was used more than 12 million times. (Levin).
[5] Weinstein’s recent sentencing to 23 years in prison is based on testimony by just two of the six women who have testified against him in court, though at least 100 women have accused him of sexual abuse.
[6] In her follow-up essay “What It Felt Like When ‘Cat Person’ Went Viral,” Roupenian notes that some readers confused the story as a personal essay. “I’d wanted people to be able to see themselves in the story, to identify with it in such a way that its narrative scaffolding would disappear,” Roupenian wrote. “But, perhaps inevitably, as the story was shared again and again, moving it further and further from its original context, people began conflating me, the author, with the main character.”
[7] In early 2018, the journalist Moira Donegan created an anonymous Google spreadsheet that allowed users to name men working in media to be cautious of. The document “was a first attempt at solving what has seemed like an intractable problem: how women can protect ourselves from sexual harassment and assault” (Donegan). The document went unexpectedly viral. Ultimately, some of the men who were named lost their jobs or were fired (Shafrir).
hannahholzer 