Right. And while the first couple of pieces I read were careful to say “Taking her side of the story at face value…” I’m now seeing lots of articles that are just saying “Ansari is a horrible abuser” without any kind of recognition that we don’t know what happened. If there’s an anonymous source in the New Yorker, I know they fact-checked the living daylights out of that story, and I take it pretty seriously. Babe.com? This could be 99% fiction, and that’s not a good basis for destroying someone’s reputation.
Just for clarity, the article linked by @ucbalumnus is specifically about false criminal accusations of sexual assault. These data are frequently brought up in the context of Title IX or social media accusations. There are all kinds of reasons I suspect that false or incorrect allegations are more common in these non-criminal contexts, starting with the fact that filing a false police report is itself a crime, and a false Title IX report or social media accusation is not. Even if “Grace” made up the whole story, she’s not going to jail.
The story does not depict Aziz as a horrible abuser. But it does depict him as an inconsiderate, selfish jerk. It’s not illegal to be a selfish jerk, but it’s also not illegal to say someone is a selfish jerk.
Can we just agree that some people say the actions described in the article are just fine, but they’re not-- they’re the actions of a selfish jerk who doesn’t care about the other person in the slightest and just wants to use her? Can we agree that we don’t want our children and the men in our lives and our childrens’ lives to behave that way?
Being an abusive drunk is not as bad as drunk driving, but both are bad behavior that we shouldn’t approve. Similarly, being a selfish entitled jerk and making repeated physical advances that are repeatedly rejected is not as bad as rape, but it’s bad behavior we should condemn.
"The circumstances surrounding the story remain unclear. Herrmann said Babe.net “heard about this story through personal networks, and then had to speak to a lot of different people before we got to the source. Our reporter Katie Way approached her, not the other way round.”
He said the woman agreed to speak because she trusted Way – it may have helped that the reporter and source are both the same age – and “because of Ansari’s appearance at the Golden Globes wearing a Times Up pin.”
Herrmann said Babe decided to publish the Ansari account as a reported story – as opposed to a first-person essay by the woman – because “we wanted to make it clear that we reported this whole thing out – that we had read the texts on her phone and friends’ phones, spoken to the first people she told the night of the incident and the next day and verified his number.”
Herrmann said the web site initially received no reply when it emailed Ansari’s representatives for comment before publishing. “Then we texted him direct at the number he used to apologize to Grace, and his reps got in touch,” he said. “They didn’t send us a statement by our deadline, so we went without one.”
Another article which I can’t find right now indicated that there was a 6 hour window given for Ansari to respond (on a holiday weekend) as opposed to the more traditional 24 hours.
While this does not change the content of Grace’s story, it certainly leaves me with a hinky feeling as far as the reporting and publication. They convinced this woman to talk after hunting her down, and then rushed to publish. Regardless of the content of the article, I have seen a few pieces online on what some are considering poor journalism on the part of babe.
Really, - although he’s the one that says that it would be better if they both enjoyed it while they were getting their clothes back on. He’s the one that paid the cab fare home and he’s the one that texted in the morning and said thank you had a good time. Oh my goodness… It’s not my taste to be undressed 10 minutes after the end of a first date…but I would never call this guy boorish or selfish…ever. Wow. Romance is not like the Disney movies…although once she got her clothes back on she sat submissively on the floor while he sat on the couch and wanted her hair rubbed and neck massaged maybe she thought she was in a Disney movie…sounds kinda like what I do with my dog… so who knows, alota guys would have paid the cab fair as soon as she got her clothes back on…maybe I’m just too old for that kind of dating nonsense. But boorish…not really. I think he had expectations based on her pursuit and when the clothes came off he assumed she was getting what she wanted and she kept going and going and going instead of leaving. She wanted something just not what she got and that’s not a crime and that has everything to do with her communication skills.
@alh. No means no (with the obvious addition of “and if she isn’t capable of consent, that’s also a no”) was a response to a problem. Namely, that some men, and even courts, privileged their judgment of what a woman must want over her expressed desires. No means no set a standard that it didn’t matter if a woman had “led you on” by coming to your apartment, or wearing jeans, or doing something sexual with you; if she said she didn’t want it, that had to be respected. Period.
What problem does “yes means yes” solve? The problem of women having to cope with the discomfort of saying no? That’s part of being an adult. A man who is willing to stop when you say no is not a rapist. Even if he’s overly aggressive. The way to respond to a guy being overly aggressive is to decide that this is a guy that doesn’t get to the second or third date where maybe you would have slept with him.
Even though I support affirmative consent, I wasn’t arguing it is or should be the default. What I am saying is that it seems to me, for some young people, it is now what they expect. It seems to me the number of young people who do see this as a norm, and any other perspective as incorrect, is increasing. That may change the culture. Probably it won’t, but I’m watching to see. Whether that change, if it happened, would be a change for better or worse will depend on your perspective.
I have a sense if it plays out to the logical conclusion, it creates a society with fewer gender stereotypes, because we aren’t saying "men are just like that’ and women should deal with it. or vice versa.
It’s a really thought provoking discussion for me. I doubt my ideas are correct, but that is just my take on it all and it helps me to write it here.
I guess the problem it solves is the idea your partner’s pleasure shouldn’t be as important to you as your own.
The conversation has changed a lot during my lifetime. First we should know better than to go to his apt, then we have the right to change our minds and leave that apt. Now the discussion becomes he shouldn’t continue if I’m not into it. And he needs to ask if he’s not sure.
Perhaps some of the problems young people are having today when it comes to navigating romance stem from poorly developed communication skills. Ansari’s date never said “No” to his advances, and complained that he didn’t respond to her “nonverbal” cues. Was she sending him a mental emoji? Saying No is not a new concept. It’s what I was told to do when I was in my teens decades ago. Women (and men) can also say No if someone offers to buy them a drink instead of turning what used to be a benign attempt at getting to know someone into an incident of sexual harassment. How sad that young women today can’t speak up in the bedroom. Or even at the dinner table, apparently, if they get white wine when they wanted red.
After having read all the op eds and thinkpieces about Aziz Ansari, I think one of my favorites has actually been from Jezebel, go figure. “Babe, What Are You Doing?” https://jezebel.com/babe-what-are-you-doing-1822114753
The author’s argument is that the story was completely mishandled. Sloppy writing, clear bad faith agenda, and including the eye-rolling details such as not getting to choose the wine she wanted trivialized the entire story. I don’t think this is a story about Me Too or sexual assault, but it could have been a moderately valuable conversation about communication, speaking up, curbing “boorish” behavior, and enthusiastic consent. Instead, we ended up in this mess of a discussion.
One of the articles (forgot which at this point) had an interesting quote from Rebecca Traister, about how there has been a wave of sexual liberation/positivity and confidence for women, which is great, but it leads to a dichotomy of sex being either exuberant and positive, or else assault. There isn’t much conversation about consensual sex that is just plain bad.
Oh give me a break. He moves her hand to his johnson. She moves it away. He moves her hand to his johnson. She moves it away. He moves her hand to his johnson. She moves it away. He moves her hand to his johnson. She moves it away. He moves her hand to his johnson. She moves it away.
That is not “sending a mental emoji.” She made it clear she didn’t want her hand there, and he kept putting it there anyway. He knew perfectly well what she wanted, and he ignored it because he didn’t care, because he was being a selfish jerk.
What problem is “Yes means Yes” solving? The problem of men who are selfish jerks, for one. The problem of men pretending they don’t know what women want, when they know perfectly well what this woman wants and choose to ignore it. It’s part of being a good adult to not be a selfish jerk.
Babe appears to me to be some third rate website that no one ever heard of before this story broke. One visit was enough for me and I wouldn’t trust much of anything posted there. Very amateur presentation as well. I think that has a lot to do with why they hunted down this story and then gave Grace anonymity. They were looking to put themselves on the map.
And the general conclusion reached in post #707 about “how sad it is that women can’t speak up in the bedroom” is based upon what? One account by one woman? I think women are speaking up just fine lately.
@HarvestMoon1 You think women are speaking up just fine? Perhaps you should reread this lengthy thread. Seems to be much confusion out there or we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
@“Cardinal Fang” Regarding Ansari’s date. The fact is, she did not speak up. She also did not get up and leave after he performed oral sex on her, but remained there with him in bed. If this were a court case, she’d lose, and she is losing in the court of public opinion.
Full stop…if women are going to pursue and initiate then they should not be surprised if the guy reciprocates. Guys used to be (pre-seventies) be the only ones who could pursue or initiate. Yeah for progress and I mean that. But for women to take a passive seat in the whole thing when they were the pursuer and then turn around and publically whine and complain or accuse someone of assault either through media or a Title IX office on campus is ridiculous with a capital R. My guess is that many people in the general population either never knew women did the pursuing so the whole idea she was shedding clothes and giving bjs within minutes after dinner surprised them or the public never knew that people actually whined, complained and accused assault publically for a situation like the Azizz story. I feel even more sorry today for college administrators if this is the kind of garbage they had to listen to in hearings.
For all the proclaimed sexual enlightenment of the millenials and perhaps faux sophistication this whole episode makes me roll my eyeballs and wonder how the heck they managed to get from 16 to 23. She was the selfish jerk in my opinion for being passive aggressive.
Grace and Moira Donegan have made me wonder what the best way is for women to share information. Anonymous claims on the internet seem clearly wrong to me. Privately telling your best friends not to go out with someone, or work with someone, and why, seems a public service that women and men sort of owe each other.
My understanding is that the media men list wasn’t created to be shared far and wide on the internet, but it seems to me that result should absolutely have been anticipated. How should we deal with all this in the age of social media? I have absolutely no clue.
If you just tell your friends that your boss or co-worker is a creeper, new employees that don’t have friends in the workplace yet will still be available for him to harass and assault. I don’t know what the solution is, but the “tell your friends” solution is flawed.
Oh, this is just silly. Women have been flirting and giving men the come-hither eye for ten thousand years. Probably neanderthal men and women even. Different times and different cultures have different mating rituals, but in many cases women haven’t been just passive objects.
As to the Aziz date, he certainly was not a gentleman, nor was he a Casanova, whatever else one may want to say about it. At the same time, I don’t in any way agree with “Grace’s” assessment that it amounted to assault.