It’s unfortunate that Aziz Ansari’s date had a terrible experience, and it’s unfortunate that he is being shamed for (taking the accusation as true) a private matter.
That said, I’m happy that there’s a case like this in the news. It illustrates that there are people who think bad sex well short of harassment or assault merits public humiliation and/or professional disaster. Betrayed and heartbroken lovers may use every tool at their disposal to even the score. If Ansari and this date were in school together, I’d bet big money we’d have a Title IX complaint and possibly serious discipline.
Re: dating safety, I was dating men in Chicago for 12 years before I met my husband. I did not consider it safe to go to a man’s home after a first date, no matter what I wanted to do. After whichever date, it’s safer to bring him to my house. I know where the exits are; I know there are no guns; I know my friends and family can find me there. I went to a man’s house alone only after I felt I knew him, though to some extent that was an illusion of safety. None of that is fair, but I would still give any person dating men the same advice.
At some point, you decide that the risk is worth the reward. Relevant lyrics from The King & I:
"Is a danger to be trusting one another,
One will seldom want to do what other wishes;
But unless someday somebody trust somebody
There’ll be nothing left on earth excepting fishes! "
I have liked Aziz for a long time. I hope nothing more than this comes out about him as I think his talent and comedy would be missed. I think any prominent man at this point may be nervous about what could come out about their past. The dating scene and what transpires is not always black and white , or pretty.
For a long time women had to be worried that their reputations could be damaged by what kind of sex they had with how many different partners, if any of those partners decided to share that information. Now men have to worry about this as well. That is relatively new. However, the internet certainly complicates things. The partner can tell the entire world, and the story is out there forever.
Hmm, that is interesting. I’m still not convinced that women don’t get hit harder than men for having more partners, engaging in sexual activity on the first date, etc. in spite of the recent wave of revelations of men behaving badly. Men are getting in trouble for pushing too aggressively for sex or not taking no for an answer. They aren’t really taking hits for being promiscuous.
Yes, you are correct and I wasn’t clear. Men now need to worry their partners will talk and it will damage their reputations, justly or unjustly. This seems to me a new worry for most men. It has always been a worry for most women. imho.
It is difficult for me to decide what it all means, just observing.
There’s a huge problem of sexual assault (definitely illegal) and sexual harassment (no doubt sometimes illegal and sometimes not). Then there is discomfort as displayed by the woman who was unhappy with Aziz Ansari (some called the Babe article revenge porn). @intparent’s daughter has discomfort with getting hit on all the time because she is pretty in a male-dominated field. There are lots of kinds of discomfort in social situations. This particular situation seemed a lot more like an awkward date with clearly mixed signals. I don’t think we should be defining sexual harassment as situations in which males fail to figure out non-verbal signals, which does seem like a significant part of accusation in this case (especially when a couple is no longer wearing clothes and already engaged in consensual sexual activity). Not responding to clear verbal signals is a different thing, and it seems that Ansari did did respond (“let’s put our clothes back on”) although he didn’t fully stop his quest. But, creating a sense of victimhood out of what seems much more like an awkward sexual experience in which neither party communicated well. More importantly, I fear that going public with awkward dates is going to diminish the credibility of much more important/legitimate claims of sexual assault and significant sexual harassment.
One of the articles pointed out that there is a generational divide with respect to what constitutes sexual harassment as well as meaningful cultural differences. Millennials seem to see a number of things as constituting sexual harassment that don’t seem like it to older people (male or female). For example, 20% to 25% of millennials in the US see asking someone out for a drink as sexual harassment. (See https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/11/daily-chart-14).
I feel confident that we have higher standards for right behavior for ourselves and our kids than “It’s not sexual assault and it’s not sexual harassment, so it must be OK.”
If men are socialized to believe that they can pester and demand and and wheedle and sneakily fondle just a little, until they are able to cow or nag or startle someone into not stopping the sexual behavior they want to engage in, that’s not right. It’s despicable to believe that a man is OK to push and push and push, even when she says no, even when she is showing no interest whatsoever, in the repellent belief that a guy is entitled to take whatever he is not prevented from taking. Guys, just stop that.
It reminds me of sitting next to some person on public transportation who gradually expands. You inhale, and they move over. You move your arm a little, and they’ve moved into where it was. You cross your legs, and their foot moves over. Dammit, you shouldn’t have to tell them to respect your space. And you shouldn’t have to tell guys to respect your physical body and also respect your right not to have to say no over and over again because they didn’t get the message the first fifteen times.
Yeah, she should have left. That would have been smarter. But he shouldn’t have been such a swine. He should have taken no for an answer the first few times, instead of pressing and nagging and trying to push her into doing what he wanted. She was a naive 22-year-old. She will soon learn not to be naive, probably already has. He’s 34. Isn’t it well past time for him to have learned not to be a pig? Is he going after 22-year-olds because women his age are wise to his bad behavior?
Lots of men do this. They’re jerks. If he doesn’t want to be called a jerk, he should stop being a jerk, stop trying to use women and show some consideration.
I question why the publication would publish the Aziz Ansari story and why they would give her anonymity. Given the facts I think it was irresponsible.
Based on the account Grace gives it was a situation where Aziz knew exactly what he wanted and she was unsure. Did he pick up on her reticence? I think she participated to the extent that it is likely he may not have – when they moved to the couch he asked and she obliged. I think most people are in agreement that this scenario is not assault. Perhaps it could be defined as badgering at some point in the evening. It certainly does not define the current movement which has more to do with power imbalances and men using those imbalances to the detriment of women.
Aziz had high expectations for the evening and was aggressive in his attempts to meet them. All of us including men have been in those sorts of situations. The usual solution is to end the date and leave. I don’t think Grace is going to find all that much support from men or women in this particular situation.
In the meantime the Time’s Up Fund is now at $16.7 million. Last night I was scrolling though the most recent contributions online and of the last 45 contributions 22 of them were from men. Definitely progress.
She pursued him from day one. Let’s not forget that. I like the concept Times up much more than I ever did metoo. But nothing absolves women from communicating directly and not playing games. She played the absolute worse games you can on a first date. Don’t take your clothes off and give bjs if you aren’t that into it…men aren’t mind readers for heaven sakes. This is the kind of stuff that drives men crazy and caused colleges guys to get expelled. Jack Montague comes to mind.
To be fair to Grace, if the night went exactly as she is claiming, Ansari did act more boorish than I think a lot of publications are acknowledging. It wouldn’t exactly have taken a mind-reader to deduce that someone repeatedly backing away from you is not into what you’re doing. And once she said that she didn’t want to feel forced and expressed that she wanted to wait for next time, he should have stopped, rather than stopped for a few minutes and then resumed.
But first of all, we don’t know that that’s exactly what happened. This is the kind of thing I had in mind when I made a distinction between the Eliza Dushku story, in which even if she was wrong on certain details, absent fabrication she was describing assault, and cases in which details might matter considerably. Was Ansari really, in effect, chasing her around the room, or was she more subtly backing up in discomfort? She might genuinely believe that she was making obvious moves away from him, but they may not have been as obvious as she thinks. She may have even been giving some non-verbal signals that she was into it – “I don’t want to feel forced” is a fairly half-hearted way of expressing “No, I absolutely do not want to have sex with you,” and might mean something closer to “this is moving faster than I’m comfortable with, and I was kind of into it for a while, but now I’m feeling torn.” Going home with a guy after a date is absolutely not consent to sex, and you’re perfectly entitled to decide that nothing physical at all is going to happen. But it is pretty likely that she, too, thought there was going to be some level of romantic or sexual activity, and may well have acted accordingly before becoming upset by the pace at which things were moving.
Secondly, even if Ansari was too aggressive, as Grace has described it, there is absolutely no reason she couldn’t have simply walked out. It isn’t victim blaming to say that absent physical constraint, a woman should be able to assume enough agency to leave the room. No, Ansari should not have continued once they moved to the couch. But she could have just repeated “no, I’m not ready, and we’re not doing this,” and left the apartment.
“No” means “no” is a relatively recent concept. It used to be “her lips say no, but her eyes say yes” and men were expected to be aggressive because nice girls didn’t give in easily. Girls who gave in easily got bad reputations. Girls who left when things went beyond their comfort level were labeled teases. They just couldn’t win. Of course, they could wait for a ring, but a lot of girls wanted to know what they were agreeing to before accepting the ring.
“Yes” means “yes” was a huge shift and distressed a whole lot of folks, since it upset their idea of interpersonal norms. “What!?! - you have to ask before you kiss or touch!?! - no romance!! ridiculous!! impossible!” However, we now have at least some 20 and 30 yr olds who believe in the “yes” means “yes” concept and and extremely enthusiastic consent.
When young people who accept and follow the enthusiastic consent idea get together it will be a lot different than couples where one believes in enthusiastic consent and the other thinks you just leave if you aren’t into it. I can see how there will be serious communication problems since they aren’t relying on the same interpersonal rules, and maybe it depends on your age and also social circle what you would consider to be a norm these days.
Norms have changed dramatically in my lifetime and I am okay with enthusiastic consent being the norm.
Whether it is a norm or not, it seems like enlightened self-interest at this point in time for anyone to decide they had better behave as though it is the norm or risk ending up a bad reputation, if word gets out.
This is probably unfair. I don’t know what to do about that. The olden days (centuries) when usually only girls got bad reputations were unfair as well. We managed to deal with it somehow.
I agree with HarvestMoon wholeheartedly on this, and think the fact her name hasn’t been disclosed speaks to Aziz Ansari’s good character.
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Shawbridge’s article, linked in #691, really demonstrates how we aren’t all on the same wavelength on these issues anymore. We just can’t assume we are. It is really difficult for many folks I know my own age (self included) to come to grips with this reality.