Although you might expect to see “short story” in a sentence topped and tailed with “is the” and “dead?”, in the past few days a New Yorker short story written by the previously unknown Kristen Roupenian has gone viral.

The story of Margot and Robert, who meet at the independent cinema where Margot worked and gradually build a connection, has resonated with many readers – most of them women – to the point that it is now being held up as the perfect example of the reality of 21st century dating. Margot and Robert’s bond is constructed primarily over text messages, in which they share jokes and emojis and an imaginary correspondence on behalf of their cats, but it becomes clear both are talking to a version of the other that doesn’t really exist.

In the accompanying interview with the New Yorker, Roupenian says: “Margot keeps trying to construct an image of Robert based on incomplete and unreliable information, which is why her interpretation of him can’t stay still. The point at which she receives unequivocal evidence about the kind of person he is is the point at which the story ends.” In other words, both characters are creating worlds around this exchange – but only one of those ends with one calling the other a whore.

It struck a chord with thousands of readers online; one asked for “an investigation on how [Roupenian] wiretapped my inner monologue”. But reactions to the story have largely been along gender lines. Women have been sharing their own dating encounters with world-weary horror, while men have taken to criticising the story, derisively labelling it a personal essay, moaning about Roupenian’s apparent vocal fry on the accompanying audiobook, and slut-shaming the fictional Margot, for having sex with Robert. It has been variously called “anti-male”, “mundane’ and “unappealing”. There has been so much criticism of Cat Person from men that there is now a whole Twitter account dedicated to it.

With Giles Coren making a documentary called I Hate Jane Austen, to “save future generations of teenage boys having this dross rolled out in front of them”, we’re reminded again of the distaste for women’s writing and the misogyny underpinning the accusations of triviality that always accompany their work. How much do you have to hate women to dedicate an entire programme to how overrated you think one is?

Austen suffers from the same deliberate misreading as Roupenian, that just because the writing is ostensibly about romance it can’t be about anything else – disconnect in the age of social media, say, or class, desire and inheritance law against a backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. When a man writes about love, he’s writing about the human condition. When a woman does it, it’s emotional pornography.

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Despite the criticism, why is Cat Person so popular? It’s nothing to do with the experience it reflects, but the skill in the writing. Vanity Fair journalist Nancy Jo Sales tweeted: “Basically anyone who’s ever used a dating app could write Cat Person, just maybe not as well.” And she’s right; the fact that Roupenian is able to make it feel so personal, so immediate, so like a true experience, speaks to her consummate skill, not some channelling of the collective subconscious.

Roupenian isn’t some Everywoman who put pen to paper after a bad date in an attempt at catharsis: she’s a PhD candidate at Harvard who speaks Swahili, writes about postcolonial and transnational literature and spent two years teaching public health and HIV education at an orphans’ centre in Uganda. Diminishing her work by suggesting that it is effective only because it speaks of an underwritten experience does Roupenian a huge (and deeply misogynist) disservice. And, from a glance at Roupenian’s own Twitter account – which has gone from having fewer than 200 followers to more than 5,600 – she has a full collection of stories out on submission. Something tells me that she’s not going to find that hard.

• This article was amended on 13 December 2017, to remove a quote from an article that was taken out of context.