Yes, she said it was sexual assault. But does she think she was the victim of a crime?
Obviously there’s a crime titled “sexual assault,” but do you think she was trying to accuse him of that crime? I don’t. I don’t know for sure that she wasn’t, but I don’t know that she was either. Assault is a crime, but we call many things “assault” that aren’t crimes. Just as not every sentence “he assaulted me” is an accusation of crime, so also, not every sentence “he sexually assaulted me” is an accusation of crime.
She called it “sexual assault,” and clearly didn’t use those words lightly. Sexual assault is a crime. It’s very difficult for me to have any reading other than that she’s accusing Ansari of a crime.
As I said, I think her friends, and maybe the journalist too, talked her into it. She didn’t think she was assaulted before then.
ETA: If you think she didn’t mean the crime of sexual assault then it’s just more evidence of how irresponsible this journalist was for not discussing with her the implications of saying she was assaulted publicly.
There is simply no such thing as “non-criminal sexual assault”. (Nobody in the real world has adopted your ridiculous attempt to redefine the word assault to include CPR and accidentally brushing up against someone.)
If your view is that maybe she doesn’t understand the plain meaning of words – sure that’s possible, if a little patronizing. After all, you don’t seem to! But why would that make the appropriate response to that article any different? We cannot read her mind any better than Aziz Ansari could. We are responding to what she actually said, because that’s how we treat adults.
Despite your attempted contortions, the plain facts are:
(1) The article contains an explicit accusation of sexual assault, a crime.
(2) On the facts presented, no such assault took place.
An appropriate response is to point out that there is no foundation to the accusation.
If “Grace” wishes to explain for herself that this is a mistake, that she did not intend to accuse Ansari of sexual assault, that the journalist misrepresented her or exaggerated her comments, she is free to do so. And it would be a welcome and wise thing to do so, in my opinion. Either way, one aspect of autonomy and agency is that freedom to speak for yourself. She doesn’t need the heroic Ser Frylock to ride in on his white steed and tell the world that she didn’t really mean what she said.
Well, then are we facing an Inigo Montoya moment – a term people keep using does not mean what they think it means?
Does the language need a term (or does it have one but it has fallen by the wayside or been coopted) for that which causes discomfort or personal offense, but may or may not involve culpable wrongdoing?
I have a problem with this. This isn’t a phenomenon that doesn’t involve men; men are one of the main groups involved in this phenomenon, and have some real flippin skin in the game, so to speak.
Yeah, men need to be listening to women’s perspectives on these events and taking them seriously. And yeah, men’s perspectives have too long been the operant ones. But that doesn’t mean men’s perspectives should no longer be taken seriously. A balance of perspectives doesn’t mean tuning men out or marginalizing men; it means including everyone in the conversation.
I’m puzzled why so many people seem to consider those the only two choices. As though anything that doesn’t reach the level of actual criminal assault is merely an “unfortunate experience” that nobody should be blamed for, like a thunderstorm ruining a picnic.
Seems to me that there’s quite a lot of middle ground in between those two options. People getting physical on dates can be harassing, annoying, insensitive, intimidating, demanding, disrespectful and pushy, all without committing any actual crime. That doesn’t mean it’s okay for them to behave that way, or that they shouldn’t be criticized for such behavior or expected to behave any better.
Not really. Guys who are good at sex tend to pursue their desires precisely via their own interest in their partner’s desires. It is not unreasonable to expect a man to pay attention to a woman’s reactions and affect as well as her words, and to modify his behavior in accordance with them even if he’s not already well acquainted with her personally.
Not actually committing criminal sexual assault is a pretty low bar for behavior in sexual encounters. It is not unfair to criticize guys for being harassing, annoying, insensitive, intimidating, demanding, disrespectful and pushy, not to mention clumsy, bumbling and needy, even if they don’t actually commit sexual assault.
If what “Grace” had was “just an unfortunate experience” due to Aziz being something of a pushy beggy handsy jerk, then what Ansari had was “just an unfortunate experience” due to “Grace” spilling the beans about it.
Which AFAICT from this account appears to be quite an accurate classification. Mind you, I am not advocating for public revelations about one-night stands with strangers. But if a guy voluntarily engages in pushy-creeper behavior during his one-night stands with strangers, he needs to accept the risk that maybe the world’s going to find out about it. I don’t see why women should be the only ones to have to accept the risk that sometimes dates can turn out very unpleasant even if nobody’s committing any actual crime.
If you choose to hook up with a stranger that you don’t know well, and persistently try to cajole and caress her into sex acts despite her unenthusiastic response, and make the situation constantly uncomfortable and unenjoyable for her by ignoring her reactions and refusals in the hope of coaxing more sex out of her, and later discover that she’s annoyed enough about it to be willing to sacrifice your personal dignity and privacy… the bad outcome is unfortunate, and a more sensitive woman would not have told that story publicly. But the person who really needs to learn from this is you.
I complete agree. In saying that “Grace” is responsible for her choices, I wasn’t attempting to exonerate Ansari’s boorish behavior. They both have autonomy and agency, and they are both responsible for poor decisions, boorish pushy behavior and insensitivity (on Ansari’s side), and a bad outcome. And it’s not a question of saying it’s 80% one person’s fault and 20% the other. They are both 100% responsible. When there is no coercion involved, it takes two people to consent to a night of bad sex.
But only one of the two people who are responsible for that night of bad sex is seeking to blame the other for what happened - to a point of accusing him of criminal sexual assault - and that’s what’s getting pushback.
Half of all males are below average lovers. Half of all romantic encounters are with partners of below average ability to read subtle cues. Half of all people are below average at communicating to partners what they want. And I suspect that more than half of all hook ups to have sex with a stranger result in below average satisfaction. Shocking that.
More importantly many people are just not good matches, sexually or otherwise. Some individuals will click wth communication with some people and just not with others.
Anyone who believes that they can judge how good or bad at sex a person is overall from one person’s take on their one hook up experience with that person is frankly both an idiot and an ass. This woman may never have had an experience she likes for all we know. We must suspect so since she said he was lie all the rest. When that’s the case maybe, just maybe, she’s the common ingredient.
To Ansari’s credit he was at least clear in the communication he sent out. He knew what he wanted to happen and he asked for it. Clearly. I’ve never been in a hook up scene, and again, married a long time, but I think that if I was in that situation then a reasonable expectation would be that my partner of the moment would be very clear about what she wants and does not want and not assume that I will figure out her cues. And that she would be as interested in my pleasure as I am in hers. I’d need the direction with a stranger.
If a woman in that private encounter did not meet that communication expectation and seemed completely disinterested in my pleasure would it be reasonable to publish an anonymous review identifying the woman to all who know her with graphic stroke by stroke description of how the woman failed as a lover? Would that be a conversation we must have?
And I’m sure you’re going to respond with the sophistry that you didn’t say they shouldn’t be taken seriously, just that they should be taken less seriously. You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
This kind of nonsense is just tiresome. Technically, you didn’t say that. But also, technically LHoD didn’t say that you said that, so your objection was unfounded. In any event, if you agree with what LHoD wrote, why not just say so? If you disagree, why not explain why to further the discussion?
I think there’s a bright line between what belongs in an expose of a named person on the front page of a newspaper characterized as sexual assault, and what does not.
I don’t know who PZ Myers is. And I don’t care after reading a blatantly false description of the account given in the original article.
It is the perfect height of a bar for accusing someone of sexual assault.
When did ‘Grace’ get falsely accused of committing a crime in her ‘unfortunate experience’? What the hell kind of equivalency is that?
‘Grace’ falsely accused Ansari of committing a crime. That’s apparent by her words in the story. That makes everything she has said suspect yet the majority of this discussion has not even broached the idea that there might be much more fabrication there. False accusations of a crime are a much more serious matter than clumsy behavior on a date, and both of them can be criticized for their behavior in that ‘date’. I am baffled by the idea that this false accusation of a crime can be justified by Ansari’s behavior, perfectly legal behavior, and by all accounts nothing but him trying to engage in sex and taking no for an answer.
Sure. But being harassing, annoying, insensitive, intimidating, demanding, disrespectful and pushy should not be normalized as merely one way of being a “below average lover”.
There’s plenty of ways to have a bad sexual experience that don’t deserve any criticism from anybody, such as inadvertent erectile or ejaculatory problems, an inconvenient bout of nausea or flatulence, inexperience and unfamiliarity with others’ bodies, shyness, embarrassment, or just plain lack of enthusiasm.
But persistently trying to coax and cajole somebody into starting or continuing sexual activity that they’re not responsive to and are expressing resistance to, both verbally and non-verbally, is a different category of “bad”. That’s a whole other level of being “bad at sex”.
And that sort of behavior shouldn’t be justified or trivialized as just some kind of excusable cluelessness or below-average sex skills. It’s greedy, arrogant and disrespectful, and it has nothing to do with how well you know your partner or “ability to read subtle cues”. That’s part of the classic “myth of the male bumbler” that excuses men for shitty behavior on the grounds that they’re just incapable of detecting when other people don’t like shitty behavior.
Sure. But what my post was about, as it says right there in the first sentence, is why these discussions so often seem to draw an artificially binary distinction between “sexual assault” and merely “having an unfortunate experience”.
I am not arguing, and have not argued, that “Grace” is justified in accusing Ansari of having committed a crime, if that is in fact what she’s doing. Frylock: thanks!
