The collapse of dialogue, consent, and the controversy over Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person”

Abstract

This paper provides a Bakhtinian reading of Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person” in order to register the status of dialogue pertaining to questions of sexual coercion and consent in the wake of the #metoo movement. I identify two prominent discourses in the short story: feminist critiques of domination (perspectives that account for structural imbalances that tend to put men in a hierarchy above women) and sex-positive feminism (a worldview that promotes female sexual agency). These two discourses, this paper argues, are relevant to understanding why a collapse of dialogue ensues in the narrative. I then use “Cat Person” to propose a way of contemplating the contemporary media landscape as a generator of failed dialogue.