I am talking about whether or not he, personally, in himself, has an apologetic attitude, and how that would affect how easy or simple it would be for him, psychologically and practically, to do what needs to be done to get back into people’s good graces.
No–I’m saying that the reason revenge porn is shitty is basically the reason why what she did is shitty, and just as there shouldn’t be an exception for “warning others” in revenge porn laws (“Don’t bang this chick, she’s trans, here’s pictures of her naked!” “Suzy looks good clothed, but she’s goddamn fgly naked, check out her gnarly scars in these pictures!”), there shouldn’t be an ethical exception for what Grace did.
6,595 “randos” to be precise, which is a “small number” only on the scale of astronomy or the national debt. But whether this petition is of any actual impact upon Ansari’s future projects with Netflix (he has previously stated that he does not have any current plans for a third series of Master of None) is not the point; rather, as a public figure in an industry which is particularly sensitive to public perception, wanton character defamation has potentially long standing professional consequences. Ansari will be answering questions or having to skirt around the topic of his sexual behavior for a long time to come, notwithstanding the impact upon him personally in his dating life and other interactions with women (which you so cavalierly dismiss as unimportant).
And lets be clear about this: the website and the accuser ‘Grace’ are not a part of the #MeToo movement. In fact, babe.net is using the angst over legitimate harassment and abuse to gain publicity it has not previously enjoyed. The women (and a few men) who have participated in this movement have made public accusations in their own words under their own names against media figures who used their celebrity status or employment power to subject victims to their predations and then enforce silence of their acts by threat or legal action. These victims have been enabled by social media to pubicize their abuse and get the support and validation of others who have suffered the same abuse but they are also liable for any inaccuracies or false statements, and have been clear about wanting apologies from abusers and legal action (where possible) in addition to the public shaming and professional removal from positions of authority.
‘Grace’ and babe.net are not doing any of this; the account is largely secondhand and anonymous; Ansari had already previously offered an apology even though he did not interpret the encounter as being non-consensual; and no legal action or independent investigation has been requested. We have only the account of events presented by ‘Grace’, which if literal does include actual (if somewhat implausible) descriptions of assault in Ansari repeatedly putting “his fingers in my throat”, to which ‘Grace’ apparently didn’t respond with the normal human reflex of violently gagging. What even ‘Grace’s’ account shows, however, is that despite Ansari ignored ‘Grace’s’ “physically giving off cues that I wasn’t interested,” whenever she made a spoken request he complied immediately. By her account, Ansari did not restrain her, or threaten to ruin her reputation, or even attempt to exchange some kind of professional favoritism or promise of a relationship in exchange for sex. There was no attempt to silence or discredit her, and no actually plausible indication that Ansari was anything more than a clumsy lover who didn’t read the ‘verbal and non-verbal cues’ of a woman he’d known only for a few hours who nonetheless came up to his apartment and received and performed oral sex with him without objection.
In other words, ‘Grace’ appears to be a young woman who does not know how to say “No,” even to a man who holds no authoirty over her professional or personal standing and who does not understand how to assert herself or express her internal reluctance or revulsion in words that can be unambiguously interpreted by another person. This is a common problem of a society which despite being titillated with the lurid aspects of sex is reluctant to actually teach women how to assert and protect themselves against sexual pressure and predation. It is not, however, Aziz Ansari’s problem to be her guide and mentor into adulthood. His problem, if he has one, is in assuming that the attractive young adult woman who by her own accounting thrust herself at him him was actually interested in being with him rather than just getting a free meal and a selfie, and that if she were uncomfortable with his sexual attentions that she would speak up and let him know.
None of the bullshit attempts to redefine what “sexual assault” means in some non-legal pseudo-context or analogies about hypothetical wallet-stealing golddiggers challenges the notion that if ‘Grace’ had said something to the effect of, “I like you, but I’m not comfortable having sex so quickly. Can we just watch some Seinfeld?”, there would have been no story and no unwanted (or regretful) sex. The victims of the #MeToo movement have spoken out as much against the conspiracy to silence their experiences as the actual unwanted sex acts themselves; in this case, there was no effort at silence and no indication that Ansari used any means of force or intimidation to obtain sex or prevent the supposed victim from reporting an abuse. And of course, no follow-on “Ansari also made me drink white wine, the horror! The horror! #MeToo” accounts from other women whom he might have hypothetically preyed upon with his vaunted celebrity status. In fact, despite the dramatic handwringing in the babe.net story about how differently Ansari acted in person versus his portrayal in Master Of None and his comedy routines, by ‘Grace’s’ account he is pretty much exactly the slightly guileless, awkward, ‘trying to figure this shit out but needs some cluing in’ personality he presents.
Stranger
Do you have a particular passage from his book or show in mind when you say that? What exactly has he said or written to be called “woke”?
And I believe Stranger on a Train has hit the nail on the head.
A conversation about consent, and the interpersonal negotiations that folks are trying to evolve (see the history in Lindy West’s column), feels like a different conversation vs. the one about institutionalized abuse in a Male Gaze dominated world.
I hear the people disputing Ansari’s “outing” because it is a completely different conversation.
I hear folks like Sam Bee and Lindy West saying “it remains a legit conversation to have.” Personally, I agree with this assertion, but wish they introduced their POV’s by recognizing that it is a different conversation.
Too late to add: the reason these are two different conversations is the perception of agency in the two situations. A person experiencing institutionalized abuse is in a situation where their agency is being systematically taken down. In an interpersonal consent situation, each person’s agency feels more in their control, if the behavior is not physically restraining and more jerkish, as Ansari’s looks to be.
And then you have to go ruin stuff by introducing things like “facts”. Don’t you know its about feeling now?
Wonder if you have seen Samantha Bee’s effort this week (linked to earlier in the thread)? I am a fan, but I think its her weakest output yet. She always is someone who preaches to the choir, but this episode displayed her limitations (or maybe her formats limitations) as she was unable to deal with a topic where the “her” side was in the wrong.
Why. Are you guys. Mad that someone was “humiliated”. When what they’re being “humiliated” for. Is being extremely, aggressively, boundary-pushing, unthinking, oblivious of nonconsent signals, at least potentially dangerous?
“Humiliated” my ass.
He got caught. He’s a bad dude who did a bad thing and got caught.
She’s not making fun of his dick. She’s not saying he has poor technique. She is not making fun of him. She is talking about what a terrible and hypocritical person he turned out to be.
Like.
I have to do double takes at a lot of what I’m seeing in this thread, I have to ask myself if I’m on the wrong side when I see Dseid and LHoD on the other, because in other threads I find them insightful, wise even.
But on a great deal of reflection, I still just can’t see it. I have no idea why you guys are putting the focus where you are. After reflection on the humiliation angle, it seems more clear to me that that’s not just a poor focus, it’s practically inaccurate. I mean he was humiliated in a technical sense, but not in the “revenge porn” sense, in the “getting caught being a really bad person” sense.
I can’t understand why anyone would sympathize with him. And whether the sympathy is “felt” or not, to focus on his humiliation is to sympathize with him.
I really don’t want to think anyone in this thread identifies with him. But it’s one of the easier explanations for what’s going on!
Broader issue and possibility: maybe, just maybe, society is not equipping young women (or at least not doing a good enough job) to be able to properly assert themselves when it comes to sex and related issues. Maybe, just maybe, society is sending strong signals to young women that it’s wrong to say “no”, to be assertive, etc. Some women assuredly develop the self-confidence and skills necessary even with such possible societal barriers, but maybe some women do not.
If so, that isn’t Aziz Ansari’s fault. But it’s also not this woman’s fault for telling her story (assuming it’s true).
Maybe society is just failing lots and lots of young women (and, conversely, young men as well, in a mirror-image way, perhaps by teaching men that apparent reluctance or reticence from women can be ignored).
Nothing to disagree with here except I think the question of fault here doesn’t admit very clear yes/no judgments.
Not everything is going to give us “very clear yes/no judgments”. Ansari may be someone who likes to violate boundaries, or he may have been a doofus who thought a clumsy and awkward and obnoxious move was actually suave and sexy, or someone in between. I don’t think we can know with any confidence what kind of person he is just based on this one account, but it’s also not particularly important, perhaps – what’s far more important is what this tells us about society, not about one dude. Maybe, anyway.
And she’s a saint right? Stalking him, leading him on, and then falsely accusing him of sexual assault are all virtues aren’t they?
As have a dozen others making the same summary of events. It’s pretty easy, you just read the article and relate the facts.
How about you respond to the substance of the post?
I posit a meaningful distinction between humiliating someone a la revenge porn (i.e. with a focus on body shaming) and humiliating someone a la calling them out on immoral behavior.
I posit that what happened her was an example of the latter, not the former.
I posit that the basis of the criticism of him was not in aspects of his body or his sexual technique, but in a posited unethical breach of boundaries.
I posit that as described, what he did was unethical.
What do you disagree with?
MAny women have long experience with guys who use purported “clumsiness” to excuse many things up to and including rape.
They are tired of hearing about “clumsiness.”
When I was sixteen years old, I misread signals from my best friend and put my hand on her thigh in a sexual way. It stayed there for some time. The next day she told her friends about it, that it made her uncomfortable. One of them told me about that. I told the friend I didn’t even know my hand was there (not to get into details, this wasn’t completely implausible given the situation). She relayed back to the friend. The friend and I never once talked about it between ourselves. She and I remained friends, and are good friends to this day in fact.
I sexually assaulted her, and then used clumsiness as an excuse to get out of it.
This is a thing guys do. I am not making direct claims that this is what Ansari was intentionally doing. Rather, guys often do this without even really understanding they’re doing it–they learn unconsciously they can get away with a lot if they just don’t pay attention to what the woman actually wants. Moreover he could be not even doing that, it’s fine. But we need to make “clumsiness” no longer a good excuse, and calling a person out for his hypocritical unethical behavior in this regard is as good a place as any to get going with this process.
Edit: To stave off the inevitable–if my friend had decided to instead go to the school newspaper and print a tell-all about it, she would have been perfectly within her rights and any question like “why didn’t she say no” would be completely missing the point.
That what he did was unethical. Falsely accusing him of committing a crime was unethical. So was taking her revenge anonymously while naming him. I will continue if you provide enthusiastic consent for going tit for tat.
Assuming you think everything else I said is true, I think the question of whether what he did is unethical is a very valuable discussion and should be the central discussion. If what he did was unethical, what she did was not, so the question of her ethics can be staved off until/unless the question of his ethics is resolved.
Just as a data point, in torts class we were taught that the basic English common law definition of “assault” is “an unwanted touch.” The first example that we were given wass that a surgery that you didn’t authorize is an assault.
That’s civil assault. Criminal assault is defined in criminal statutes.