On January 13, 2018, the website Babe posted an article in which a young woman, called Grace for anonymity, shares the details of a date with actor, writer, and comedian Aziz Ansari. The date occurred in September. Grace was approached by a Babe reporter and was motivated to speak after Ansari wore a Time’s Up pin at the Golden Globes in support of the #metoo movement.

​

According to the story, the two met at the Emmy Awards after party. They exchanged numbers and, not long after, went on a date. On this date, Grace says, they moved through dinner quickly, and Ansari rushed them back to his apartment before the wine he’d ordered was gone. Once at his apartment, it wasn’t long before they were engaging in sexual activities. She noted that she felt comfortable at how quickly things escalated. Ansari, however, didn’t seem to notice her discomfort, and continued pressing despite her nonverbal cues and her verbal requests to slow down.

​

After repeated attempts to show her disinterest, she left; she reached out to friends and cried in the Uber on the way home. The next day, Ansari texted her, saying how much fun he’d had. She responded, telling him that she was made to feel very uncomfortable and that he’d ignored her clear discomfort. In his reply, he said that he was sad and had clearly misread the situation. He apologized and told her it was not his intent to make her feel the way she did. Ansari later released a statement confirming their meeting and their date; he said that they “ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual.” He did not apologize in the statement, but expressed his continued support for the movement.

In the hours, days, weeks that followed the publication of the story, people took to the internet to share a variety of responses. Many came from women, young and old, who related to Grace’s story and her pain. Others condemned her for what they called passivity and weakness. They chided her for not having agency, for not getting up and leaving, for not giving a firm no or setting clear boundaries.

​

I have a lot of feelings about this situation; we will get to them in due time. One of the issues with the story is that the reporting was not well done. In almost any kind of journalism, poor reporting of an important story leaves weak spots for opponents to attack. In this story, coming as it did in the midst of the #metoo movement and the moments of reckoning for many powerful men, the amateur reporting did it a serious disservice. Rather than opening a genuine dialogue about the issues at hand, the poor reporting left room for people to jump in and question the account and the motivations, which is, essentially, an attack on the victim. Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, in an article for Jezebel, points out some of the many issues with the reporting; those issues include its gratuitous depictions of the sexual activities and the trivial details such as the wine and her outfit. Had this story been handled more professionally, I hope that there would have been more space for earnest conversation and less trolling.

​

Some of the responses to the story called out both Grace and Babe reporter Katie Way for ruining Ansari’s career. Caitlin Flanagan, for the Atlantic, wrote, “Together, the two women may have destroyed Ansari’s career, which is now the punishment for every kind of male sexual misconduct, from the grotesque to the disappointing.” So, this is an interesting take. I feel that it’s important to consider that the men whose careers have been ruined have been those with multiple victims reporting predatory assault and behavior in which they obviously recognized and actively abused the disparity in power. I’m not sure I can think of an instance in which a man’s disappointing behavior led to the ruination of his career. Men disappoint me every day and I’m not out here ringing up all of their bosses. There are also a number of high profile men whose careers have very much not been ruined despite numerous allegations against them.

​

In the story, Grace doesn’t once call for a protest of Ansari’s work. Readers weren't raging against Netflix for not immediately cutting ties with Ansari. We recognize that this isn’t a Weinstein situation; it’s not even a Louis CK situation. Grace shared the text she exchanged with Ansari, in which he apologizes and seems to have genuinely misunderstood what took place between them. This story is not to condemn Ansari, but to call out the the hypocrisy of a man who is a feminist and an ally, at least performatively, and behaves very differently in private. I believe that Ansari might truly have had a different take on their evening together; in many of the stories women share, I believe that men do what they do not out of malice but out of something else. Maybe obliviousness, maybe because they haven’t been asked to face the consequences, maybe because they haven’t been taught that you should probably actively work to consider your partner’s feelings. Believing that Ansari didn’t know how uncomfortable Grace was illustrates the problem here: our understanding and teaching of consent shouldn’t allow for this much disconnect between how two people are feeling.  I’m uncomfortable with Flanagan’s stance that it’s not fair to ruin a man’s career over his “disappointing sexual misconduct.” Any sexual misconduct is worth addressing, since it’s exactly that: misconduct. Regardless of if it was egregious or just plain “unacceptable and improper behavior” (that’s the dictionary definition of misconduct), it’s still not great. I’m not willing to take the stance that as long as it’s not actual rape, it’s not worth talking about. It is not a worthy compromise to decide that it’s not worth going to battle over behavior that might fall in a grey area. As Emma Gray for the Huffington Post writes, “Behavior need not fall under the legal definition of sexual assault or rape to be wrong or violating or upsetting.” This is not an all or nothing situation.

​

Flanagan also presumes that Grace told her story to get back at Ansari for something, saying, “what she and the writer who told her story created was 3,000 words of revenge porn.” She presumes that Grace wanted something more from Ansari, like affection, and was feeling regret when she didn’t get what she wanted and was rejected. This seems, to me, like a crazy insulting take. I’m not sure what would make her jump to the conclusion that Grace told this story to lash out at Ansari for not asking her to be his girlfriend. Maybe Grace was fine with sexual activity on their date, but was uncomfortable with how quickly he moved and the night got progressively worse as he failed to respond to her signals? Maybe she just wanted a comfortable and consensual evening? I’ve said my piece about how the story was handled, but regardless of the presentation, I still feel that it’s a reach, and a harmful one that assumes gender stereotypes, to say that she was looking for affection and was only made uncomfortable by their encounter because she was rejected by him.

​

Ashleigh Banfield from CNN delivered a monologue saying that Grace has detracted from the #metoo movement, that she compromised what women have worked for by recklessly sharing her allegations. If there’s one thing I’m not down with (there’s not just one thing, there are so many things), it’s women breaking down other women. We have the whole patriarchy to do that, I’m not sure we need to pile on by not supporting each other. (also, don’t @ me, this is obviously not the case in every situation forever.) If there’s something here that’s not in the spirit of #metoo, I’d say it’s one woman discrediting another woman’s story because it doesn’t fit into her definition of sexual assault. The thing about sexual misconduct is that it’s not super cut and dry; there are a lot of grey areas that we are collectively grappling with. What one person feels is an awkward experience might seem to another to be sexual assault. Each circumstance is personal, complicated, messy, nuanced—who are we to decide which woman, which instance, is worthy of being part of the movement? If you’re going to be upset at something, maybe be angry that our education has so failed people in teaching about sexual health that many think that anything outside of a firm, verbal no is consent. Maybe be upset at the culture and the society that created an environment in which a woman can go home in tears while a man doesn’t know anything is wrong. (Also, I say woman and man here, but this is definitely not a strictly heterosexual experience; people of all sexual and gender identities face this kind of power disparity and hierarchy in their sexual encounters). Sexual assault is a hard thing to define, which contributes to  ambiguity and varying labels on what seem, on their face, to be similar situations. It’s okay to not call things the same way someone else does; it’s not okay to trivialize their trauma or to tell them that their pain or how they are sharing it is wrong.

​

I do think that, ultimately, society is largely to blame here. I think talking about widespread, foundational level cultural change is what’s important. Lena Waithe, comedian and co-star of Ansari’s show Master of None, in her response to the allegation, said, “I think there's an element of — how do you know if you're breaking a rule if you aren't aware of the rules? Or how do you know what appropriate behavior is if no one's ever communicated to you what appropriate behavior is?” That’s why this conversation is bigger than Ansari. It’s bigger than the night these two shared at his apartment. It's a conversation about what consent means, about what we should be thinking regarding the fact that experiences like Grace’s are so normalized. We assume that we’re all on the same page, that we know where the line is and how to tell if we’re approaching it, but it seems to just be the case that we are not all on the same page. Some just ignorantly so, and some willfully so, but it means that there is, on a large scale, a failure to establish what consent is and how to understand and abide by it. A story like this should encourage dialogue, because it would be better for both sides to understand each other.

​

There has been a movement, in recent years, to communicate that consent is a verbal “yes”. Enthusiastic, positive consent is the only way to be sure; it’s not enough to move forward as long as you don’t hear a no. Assuming that someone will tell you no ignores the body language and nonverbal cues that go on literally all the time in any face-to-face, human interaction. Many of the people who were angry about Grace’s story asked why she didn’t firmly say no, why she didn’t just get up and leave. In the New York Times, Bari Weiss shared an opinion piece saying that all Ansari is guilty of is not being a mind reader. Assuming that consent needs to be a loud and vocal no paints men in a very poor light. It seems to suggest that men, who functional as regular humans all the time, cannot understand body language when a situation turns intimate. Men, who go through their whole lives understanding what nonverbal cues mean in every other scenario, somehow forget how to interpret a critical part of human communication in sexual encounters. Poor, dumb men. The men I know are better than that; it’s a disservice to the men I know to suggest that they are not smart enough or sensitive enough to understand when someone is disinterested, even if they don’t say it explicitly. As a general rule, I operate under the assumption that men are able to do this; if they don’t, it’s by choice, and they need to face consequences for it.

​

I think this account is especially hard to deal with because of the man behind the allegations. To see someone who is so outwardly progressive and aware treat a person in this way in an intimate interaction is disheartening. if someone who seems to know what’s up can do this when they’re not on camera or on a stage, what can we reasonably expect from people who don’t profess any kind of allyship or forward-thinking ideals? Ansari has engaged critically with the dynamics at play in modern dating and sexuality in his Netflix show. He talks about it in his stand up routines. He is a self-proclaimed feminist.“It’s…very likely that a man who has written a book about modern dating in which he elaborates on his habit of determining if a woman is uninterested in him simply by the tone and response time of her text messages is capable of gauging that a woman who recoils from his attempts of getting her to touch his dick for 30 minutes and verbally expresses that she doesn’t “want to feel forced” is probably not excited about having sex with him,” writes Danielle Butler for Very Smart Brothas.

​

Megan Gaber for the Atlantic writes, “‘No’ is, in theory, available to anyone, at any time; in practice, however, it is a word of last resort—a word of legality. A word of transaction. A word in which progress collides with reticence: Everyone should be able to say it, but no one really wants to.” The thing about getting to the point where you have to verbally say no is that it makes the situation feel much more real and much more dangerous. If a woman has been giving off signals that she is disinterested and they have been ignored, it means she is in a situation with a partner who is likely willfully ignoring her communication because it is not what they want to hear. And not only that; we’ve seen time and time again that there are many out there who might find “no” to be a challenge, or a request that their target be convinced. As Jaclyn Friedman writes for Vox, “The response reveals the deeply ingrained ways our culture believes a woman’s resistance is a fun challenge for men to overcome, and that “consent” is a free pass one can bully out of a woman if persistent or crafty enough.” Grace was excited to go out on a date with a man she admired for his humor and his work. Who among us could go on a date with a celebrity we are impressed by and be immediately prepared to shut them down if things took a left turn? And it’s not just that. Women, specifically, go through years of conditioning, from childhood, that they are supposed to be nice and polite. They are taught this in a way that young men aren’t; they are taught to consider the feelings of others, to be courteous and appeasing. And as they grow up, they hear stories of when a woman saying no led to something dire. Women are killed for saying no, women are threatened; it many instances, it’s not safe to simply tell an interested man no. I wish this weren’t the case, but it is; and maybe we look at this and think, “but there’s no way she’d be afraid of Aziz Ansari.” Maybe that’s true, but maybe not. We weren’t there. We don’t know.

​

I have to wonder if those calling her out for her position as a victim assume it was easy for her to arrive at that conclusion. I have to wonder if they think she didn’t ask herself all of the same questions that those on the outside of this are asking. I’m sure she asked herself why she didn’t leave, why she wasn’t more forceful, if this whole situation was, really, her fault. Every woman who has had an uncomfortable experience asks herself why she didn’t handle it better. It’s easy to imagine yourself as the protagonist in a situation that you haven’t had to deal with; it’s easy to say that you would've been better, more assertive, more straightforward, but who’s to say? Maybe you have been in that situation and you did handle it in a way that left you with less pain than Grace had, and if this is the case, I’m glad for you. But it seems to me a little cruel to condemn her for not handling it just as you did.

​

After I was catcalled from the street while in my car at age 17, I later asked myself why I just kept driving, why I didn’t shout back. After I was flirted with aggressively in an elevator by a group of drunken bros, I asked myself why I didn't tell them to knock it off. I kept asking why I let myself be impacted enough that the next few elevator rides made me short of breath, that I still wait minutes for the next elevator if it means avoiding a group of boys. We ask ourselves these questions, but we know the answers. It’s hard, in the moment, even knowing that this is what it is to walk the world as a woman, to accept that you are the vulnerable one. It’s hard to consider that someone might take your aggressiveness as a challenge, that by trying to stand up for yourself, you might be the reason a situation escalates. A woman will turn these rocks of doubt over and over in her mind until they're polished stones and she will still not be sure what she could've done better, how she should’ve been, why she didn’t do this or that, and then she will be left to wonder how all of the faceless judges and juries have skated through life never once handling a situation in a less than perfect way.

​

Many of the responses to the article said that the story Grace told is just one of a bad date, of awkward sex that everyone has had. This suggests, to me, that many people have experienced this or something like it. Which means it’s pretty normalized. That’s what seems problematic to me. Even if you don’t want to categorize this as sexual assault, is it not still troublesome to think, “oh well, sometimes you give off nonverbal cues that you’re not interested and you ask them to slow down and they keep physically pushing you toward sex. Bummer, but it happens!” This should not be a regular occurrence. Why would it be a fine, insignificant thing, not worth addressing, that many women have had sexual experiences in which they were outwardly, at best, neutral, and at worst, notably unenthused. Just because Ansari wasn’t intentionally ignoring her doesn’t mean it’s not problematic.  It just means that we aren't having the right conversation about consent. Maybe her actions weren’t as clear to him as they were to her, but I can’t imagine she seemed excited. Shouldn't you want your partner to be actively enthusiastic? if you're blinded to the body language and cues of your partner because of your own desire, that’s a problem. It’s not enough to place the burden on women to hold up a big red stop sign when something isn’t going right. Sexual encounters should be equal endeavors, which means the burden should be equally shared when it comes to making sure the other is comfortable and actively enjoying what is taking place. Maybe that means verbally asking. Maybe someone feels awkward about that—but, sorry, not sorry.

​

When the choice comes down to someone feeling a little weird about verbally asking for a yes, or someone feeling like a situation could result in violence if they verbally say no, I’m going to favor the first every time. And it’s only weird because we haven’t taught people how to have that conversation. I hope that the future is one where we understand consent as a verbal yes, and as the bare minimum requirement for sexual engagement. I hope we see a world where everyone’s outwardly having fun and there is never a question of whether a line is being crossed. I wish, so much, that the initial article had been handled with more professionalism so that it could’ve opened space for a dialogue about how we make a cultural change around the language of consent instead of detracting from the larger conversation, blaming the victim, and taking the opportunity to slander a generation of women. This topic is profoundly important to everyone’s mental and physical health, and it’s a shame that the very necessary confrontation of our reality is being overshadowed by trolling and accusations.